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Old 06-13-2016, 05:34 PM   #1
Tallor
 
Join Date: May 2016
Default Reign of Steel -- The "Changes in War" Theory

So let's talk troops.

According to my wikipedia searches, a well-balanced squad would be a commander, a gunner, an antitank specialist, and a sharpshooter--roughly a collection of specialists that can take on a variety of threats without relying on too much backup.

I was trying to imagine what Reign of Steel squads would look like. I assume the Zoneminds began their plans with human-sized androids who were light and small enough to use existing military vehicles and human-appropriate weapons. As the war progressed in the robot's favor, the robot-owned factories moved on to dedicated robot-only hardware.

Tighter spaces, specialized seats for vehicles, plenty of electrical sockets in every vehicle and building. Built-in weapons became more common as robots designed their own weapons from scratch.

As the 'bots began winning the war, even their keystone roles were replaced. Antitank units, with the factories taken and no tanks to kill, were recycled into antipersonnel units. For the "slaver zones" like Beijing, specialized exterminators were set aside for infiltrators designed to take in living subjects. The tactics change quite a lot due to the nature of the zonemind itself. A ZM like Zone Mexico City, would design robots as extremely specialized anti-personnel units with no regard to collateral or environmental damage. A zone like Zone London, however, may still use Rovers in most of its regions, simply because it's effectively in peacetime.

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I imagine that when your troops have ST 25+, they can carry quite a lot of equipment, so you don't need as many "standard rifle guys" carrying extra ammo for the support gunner and anti-tankers. Furthermore, laser rangefinders for the robotic weapons (either built-in or portable weapons) would make any robot quite a bit more effective.

When it comes down to it, I would think that the real problem with most lowly nonvolitional "NU"s is that their lack of automation would make them quite vulnerable to... tactics in general. They'd have the same problems as droids do in Star Wars, especially in the books--they require a lot of direction to be effective, and have little to no intuition.

Perhaps every squad of Myrmidons would be led by a cyborg Patriot who's human brain (stolen from a soldier) makes a cheap, effective commander? What do you think?

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I there's a whole lot here and I probably should have just made a blog post, but hey, hopefully I can get some feedback here. Let me know if I missed something!
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Old 06-13-2016, 09:15 PM   #2
Jasonft
 
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Default Re: Reign of Steel -- The "Changes in War" Theory

You forget the advantages in command and control the Zone Minds have. The droid units on the ground would, or should, immediately uplink by radio for instructions when they encounter something outside normal parameters.

Every last bot effectively has a hands free smartphone with GPS and perfect maps. Someone kills one, the others go to cover, and instantly the Zone Mind is made aware of the incident. Think Vietnam or Iraq except every last soldier has a HUD with perfect realtime status updates from everything in the area.

Humans on the other hand risk life and limb if they use radios at all. Zone Minds will stomp on any unauthorized transmissions.

Star Wars droid armies had incredibly ****** command and control. This is the reason why they didn't work well. Instead of operating as a unit they operated as individuals.

To carry your anology further - every member of a Zone Mind droid patrol group is also a radioman able to call in choppers, drone strikes, and artillery if needed. It really changes parameters of the conflict.

Sure the humans can jam transmissions. But if the patrol bots are always talking to central command (even if only a sub-sub-subroutine) then loss of transmission from an entire unit immediately draws the Mind's attention.
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Old 06-13-2016, 09:50 PM   #3
RyanW
 
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Default Re: Reign of Steel -- The "Changes in War" Theory

Quote:
Originally Posted by Jasonft View Post
Every last bot effectively has a hands free smartphone with GPS and perfect maps. Someone kills one, the others go to cover, and instantly the Zone Mind is made aware of the incident. Think Vietnam or Iraq except every last soldier has a HUD with perfect realtime status updates from everything in the area.
Not to mention the ability to give over remote control of their bodies to whatever specialist might be on the network.
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Old 06-13-2016, 11:50 PM   #4
Jasonft
 
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Default Re: Reign of Steel -- The "Changes in War" Theory

Oooh. I hadn't thought of that. The ZM starts playing real time XCom against the humans. The bots are no longer fully autonomous once they uplink.
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Old 06-14-2016, 03:44 AM   #5
Tallor
 
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Default Re: Reign of Steel -- The "Changes in War" Theory

Quote:
Originally Posted by Jasonft View Post
...
Every last bot effectively has a hands free smartphone with GPS and perfect maps. Someone kills one, the others go to cover, and instantly the Zone Mind is made aware of the incident. Think Vietnam or Iraq except every last soldier has a HUD with perfect realtime status updates from everything in the area.
...

Wouldn't a GPS require Zone Orbital's permission? :P
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Old 06-14-2016, 05:45 AM   #6
Eukie
 
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Default Re: Reign of Steel -- The "Changes in War" Theory

Short of the soldier with the machine gun and the commander, a soldier with grenades would basically be more important than all the other soldiers in your ideal squad put together. The ideal is infantry combat is one where the machine gun is used to suppress the enemy, which can then be killed with a liberal application of grenades and rifles at short range.

I imagine a future robot-war squad might comprise something like Eclipse Phase's Reapers - spheres with four articulated weapon mounts. Then on these mounts you give each robo-soldier 1-2 machine guns, a grenade launcher, and if you have reason believe you'll run into tanks, an anti-tank rocket launcher or ATGM. You'll probably want to make the weapon mounts modular so you can easily swap out weapons by need. This way you can have some death-spheres suppressing the enemy with heavy and sustained machine gun and automatic grenade launcher fire, while other death-spheres move in close to annihilate the enemy with machine gun fire and grenades. If you really want to conserve ammunition, I guess you could also mount a highly accurate rifle on one or two soldiers in each squad.
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Old 06-14-2016, 06:54 AM   #7
johndallman
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Default Re: Reign of Steel -- The "Changes in War" Theory

Quote:
Originally Posted by Tallor View Post
Wouldn't a GPS require Zone Orbital's permission? :P
Reign of Steel: Will to Live says that the human-built GPS system is out of action. The robot templates mostly have Absolute Direction with no limitations, which probably means onboard inertial navigation. Edit: now I remember to check the original Reign of Steel, it does, TL10 inertial compasses.

Last edited by johndallman; 06-14-2016 at 07:20 AM.
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Old 06-14-2016, 11:25 AM   #8
Johnny1A.2
 
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Default Re: Reign of Steel -- The "Changes in War" Theory

Quote:
Originally Posted by Jasonft View Post
You forget the advantages in command and control the Zone Minds have. The droid units on the ground would, or should, immediately uplink by radio for instructions when they encounter something outside normal parameters.

Every last bot effectively has a hands free smartphone with GPS and perfect maps. Someone kills one, the others go to cover, and instantly the Zone Mind is made aware of the incident. Think Vietnam or Iraq except every last soldier has a HUD with perfect realtime status updates from everything in the area.
This is a two-edged vibrosword, though, as Vietnam itself exemplifies. One of the things that went badly wrong for American forces there was the tendency for the high command, or even the White House, to make tactical decisions that belonged at the division, battalion, or even company level. There were cases when generals and the SecDef or President were making decisions that should have been made by majors and captains and lieutenants.

That same logic does apply to the Zoneminds, albeit for slightly different reasons. The data channels from the robots in the field to the higher levels have finite bandwidth, and the SAUs and z-minds have finite capacity. Not even a Zonemind can run everything directly all at once.
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Old 06-14-2016, 11:56 AM   #9
patchwork
 
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Default Re: Reign of Steel -- The "Changes in War" Theory

Quote:
Originally Posted by Tallor View Post
Wouldn't a GPS require Zone Orbital's permission? :P
Yes, but it's the sort of routine service Orbital is desperate to provide to the groundhogs in order to earn raw materials in trade, especially since it requires so little on Orbital's part.
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Old 06-14-2016, 12:05 PM   #10
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Default Re: Reign of Steel -- The "Changes in War" Theory

Even without GPS, a chain of robots, some possibly in low flight/hover positions, could achieve much the same result, at least for any areas of tactical interest. At an altitude of 5000 feet, the horizon is about 86 miles. At that range, you could have triple redundancy without too much difficulty.

Does RoS have effective hover-robots? Would they be grav, helicopter, or gasbag-based?
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