So would 60/40 of Rookies and vets, respectively, be a nice ratio or maybe 70/30?
New Survey coming this weekend!
You can go as low as 90/10 but 75/25 is better. This gives each old hand 3 newbies to watch. It more depends on how many experienced officers/NC Os you have on hand.
At 60/40 you might as well shrink the unit size to just the elites. That'll make them less effective but more precise.
You could do like they do in the SEA Ls and have enlisted personnel be the "shooters" and officers rotate through.
They should have sent a poet.
Titanfall mechs with their pilots in zero-g space, breaching a station or starship and their pilots taking the station/ship, and the AI mechs hold positions at the breaching area holding of fighters, dropships, etc trying to take it back.
Viable? Or just Rule of Cool
Plausible, but keep the mechs small.
It makes more sense if the space station was made of a hollowed out asteroid (bombarding it is a bit like punching sand) and there was a plot to disable the outer defenses.
The fun thing about scifi, we don't need to go realistic.
Night Clerk of the Apacalypse.
More rule of cool but sometimes that is fine. VOTOMS pulled off mechs assaulting large space bases with giant EVA packs.
Who watches the watchmen?
Oh yeah. VOTOMS was great about it's mechs in that they did feel like actual military machines, maintenance, limited operations, immune to small fire but troubled against larger arms.
VOTOMS? HELLO! You forgot about Gundams! The Universal Century timeline is full of "realistic" mech combat in regards to ships, space stations and the like.
Sure the UC is generally good, but it still branches a bit into Rule of Cool at times and can sometimes be a bit unrealistic.
Night Clerk of the Apacalypse.
UC isn't even close to being the most realistic Gundam. MS Team 8 does a far better job. Overall VOTOM still winds that particular contest hands down.
Who watches the watchmen?
^ 8th MS Team IS in the UC continuity.
Night Clerk of the Apacalypse.
Except it isn't a direct part of it but one of the many spin offs and it is pretty obvious. Given UC has some of the most bat shit spin offs there are like Endless Waltz it is all over the spectrum. Saying it is the most realistic is frankly not even a reasonable statement.
By and large VOTOM avoids the vast majority of the weird and crazy that litters the Gundam verse.
Who watches the watchmen?
I'm having a bit of a hard time believing the Titans wouldn't be destroyed by the time the Pilots finish their mission.
If these were Space Fighters which could leave the AO remotely after breach, then I could see it.
New Survey coming this weekend!
... Endless Waltz is Gundam Wing.
UC Universal Century covers Gundam original, Zeta, Victory, Thuderbolt, ZZ Gundam, 08th MS Team, 0080, Stardust.
Night Clerk of the Apacalypse.
Echo; Both of which are spin offs of UC just like 8th MS Team is.
I take that back. They are spin offs with spinoffs in several cases and then you get the weird stuff like the Gunplas anime. The basically took each installment, said it is Gundam and repeat numerous plot points adnauesum in most cases.
edited 6th Jan '18 4:57:18 PM by TuefelHundenIV
Who watches the watchmen?
Your friendly neighbourhood Regent
Really?
Really?
Are you really trying to Tuefelsplain Gundam continuities?
Angry gets shit done.
Night Clerk of the Apacalypse.
Rob: Better then your usual denials.
Remind me again how many different times they drop, have dropped, or try to drop a colony across how many shows? At least one show skips the foreplay and the drop is prologue.
How many times are the heroes are ridiculously young pilots who are somehow special almost always flying unique machines frequently prototypes or limited production models?
Bad guys that are Space Nazis obsessed with any number of wunderwaffen machines and are distinctly aristocratic with predictable self defeating traits?
How many key bad guys wear a face concealing mask?
edited 8th Jan '18 1:28:29 AM by TuefelHundenIV
Who watches the watchmen?
They did try something different with Mobile Fighter G Gundam ...it, uh, didn't work.
edited 8th Jan '18 5:32:07 AM by Belisaurius
08th MS Team is indeed part of the original UC continuity. Gundam Wing and Endless Waltz are both part of the AC continuity. And are both garbage.
There are different continuities, with only at best 3 having Colony drops actually occur within them.
Mobile Fighter G Gundam is a super robot series and utterly ridiculous.
UC and IBO are generally the best about treating their giant machines like giant machines, with IBO having the fights feel like actual fights.
To get back on path, swarm tech countermeasures. What would you use?
ECM, Chaff, and Decoys.
Actually destroying it would involve area effect weapons like flak, air bursting artillery, and hand grenades.
Lost in Space
Guided swarm tech? EMPs to disrupt their systems.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Any reason you couldn't load an EMP burst into a flak shell? Best of both worlds, you drop EMP-vulnerable drones, and even if they're hardened, you might still splash them with the flak.
Crew wise. go with a little of both. A small cadre of elite soldiers and handpicked rookies. The idea is that the veterans can train the rookies the way they want. This helps pad the rosters while remaining very versatile.
You really don't want to go one way or the other. Pulling elite personnel often means depriving frontline units of the veteran NC Os that hold them together. Rookies, on the other hand, are unreliable no matter how promising they look. A rookie could crumble at their first taste of combat, or they could go through the first battle fine and then crack at the second, or they keep going until one bad battle finally gets to them. There's no way to tell.