Second Sphere Infantry Construction Rules

The Poor Bloody Infantry

At the end of the 22nd century, the infantryman is still a vital component of any military on both the offense and defense. As so many conflicts both large and small occurs in and around the works of humanity - which are unsurprisingly scaled for humans - the need for infantry to go fight remains paramount. Armed with powerful weapons, equipped with sophisticated sensors and clad in hypercomposite body armor any one could take apart an entire platoon of pre-space infantry. Many are not even human; in many formations the number of organic soldiers has diminished to merely filling the role of officers and NCOs. In others every soldier is accompanied by a semiautonomous robotic support weapon. Yet others use force-grown 'bioroids' and 'replicants', engineering biological robots with the agility of cats, the pack behavior of wolves and the viciousness of sharks.

Like most ground units in Sphere, as an abstraction infantry are bought (and normally deployed) in Battalion-sized (~1000 'shooters') formations. The rules below explain how to design infantry units and how they work.

Infantry Design Overview

Due to the relative uniqueness of infantry soldiers from a design perspective, they have a distinctive design system. Instead of the familiar construction slots for craft and ships that can be used for any item, infantry have a selection of Gear Slots. Each gear slot may only accept a specific type of gear. The different gear slots are described below.

Gun Slots: Each infantry formation has a certain number of gun slots (5 for standard Regulars) to represent the assorted weapons available to a battalion and in what ratio. These can range from rifle/longarm type weapons to various support weapons up to light artillery. All gun slots must be filled. Empty gun slots mean that a certain portion of your troops have no weapons at all!

Armor Slot: Infantrymen need armor (or a lot of luck) to survive on the modern battlefield. All infantry formations have one armor slot which applies to all members. Armor does not need to be filled, but its certainly recommended.

Misc Slots: Miscellaneous slots are for everything that isn't a weapon or armor. Extra sensors, jump packs, speeder bikes, robotic drones, special training, cloaking devices, cybernetics, etc. Misc slots do not need to be filled.

Types of infantry

Regular Infantry

Regular infantry is the standard GI, a trained professional soldier. Most competetive militaries field troops of this caliber.

Regular infantry get five (5) gun slots and two (2) misc slots.

Elite Infantry

A step up in skill and dedication from regularly infantry, elite infantry are the sharp tip of the spear. Trained harder and commonly of greater veterancy, elite infantry are generally tasked with the most demanding tasks and live by mottos such as 'leave no one behind'. Elites are generally not equipped with more powerful weapons than regulars, but commonly carry more useful battlefield doodads or special training.

Elite infantry get five (5) gun slots and three (3) misc slots. They can also be expected to use their guns more effectively than regulars.

Special Forces (SPF)

The best of the best. Special forces are consummate professionals in skills, generally with multiple years in 'lesser' infantry roles before even being considered for special forces training. They excel in low-intensity conflicts and behind-the-lines operations. As an interesting shift since their origins in the 20th century, 22nd century technology means that prospective candidates are screened almost exclusively for psychological attributes with limited regard for physical attributes; barring unfortunate and rare cases, it is a relatively routine process to give a successful candidate almost arbitrary physical abilities.

SPF get two (2) gun slots and five (5) misc slots.

SPF, while deployed in 'battalions', are actually made up of a relative handful (less than a hundred) of soldiers. Thus they are very lethal combatants, one on one.

Shock Suits

While most infantry wears some form of lightweight power-assist body armor (rarely substantially more than ~25 kg for the ensemble), true power armor is generally substantially larger, massing several hundred of kilos even before the marine inside is counted. With full power assist troops so equipped can shrug off small arms fire and even light vehicular fire while wielding oversized weapons much too heavy or bulky for single soldiers to otherwise handle.

Shock Suits get three (3) gun slots and three (3) misc slots. The weapons on shock suits are larger examples and have improved performance.

Weapons

TBD

Miscellaneous Items

TBD