Armies of the Fifth Frontier War - Coming Next Week!

[MongooseMatt]

Just a week to go before Armies of the Fifth Frontier War comes out!

Learn how armies use technologies available, and how this is reflected in their tactics. Covers the unified armies of the Imperium, the Zhodani Consulate, Darrians & Sword Worlds...



The Fifth Frontier War is generally seen as primarily a naval conflict, but without control of populations naval victories are meaningless. Naval forces are capable of turning cities into slag, and should the conflict become one of total destruction such devastation might be inflicted on a frequent basis. There is no indication this will transpire, so both sides will need to secure population centres in order to make their naval victories count. It is a reasonable generalisation that ground operations are impossible without naval forces, and naval operations are pointless without a ground campaign.



Without boots on the ground, to use an ancient term, gains made by the naval forces can quickly be lost to insurrection and rebellion. This may or may not matter all that much; minor worlds are typically not worth a lot at the negotiating table unless they occupy a strategic location. It may be that it is preferable to bypass some worlds, leaving their ground forces to ‘wither on the vine’ without support, or to demand surrender from orbit in the knowledge that it will not be honoured if the tide of the naval war turns.

 

[boggo2300]

That Marine in Battledress is Awesome!

 

[JBRocky]

That Marine in Battledress is Awesome!

I know, and I am excited to see the rest of the artwork.

 

[MongooseMatt]

The battle dress is the reason this book was delayed a bit - we have really been going round the houses with the design (and the work will continue long past this book...)

 

[ottarrus]

The Underdogs of the Imperium... the Imperial Army! I'm looking forward to seeing how it differs from GT:Ground Forces.
But who're we kidding? Two-thirds of 'Armies 5FW' will probably be about the His Majesty's Maroon Monkeys in the Meatcans, the Marines.
[Note: the book below DOES NOT exist! If it did, I'd own it already.]

 

[collins355]

Fingers crossed it differs significantly from GT Ground Forces. I’d like to see a 57th Century army, not a late 20th reheat.

 

[Sigtrygg]

If you study the order of battle in the FFW boardgame the TL15 Imperial Army vastly outnumbers the number of TL15 Imperial Star Marines.

 

[Condottiere]

It should, if there's a Marine regiment of five thousand plus per subsector.

 

[boggo2300]

The battle dress is the reason this book was delayed a bit - we have really been going round the houses with the design (and the work will continue long past this book...)

I was really worried when you mentioned it before, that we were going to end up with something WH40k, but this was immediately obvious as Imperial Marine Battledress, and my fears are allayed, not too clunky, not too dainty

 

[ottarrus]

Fingers crossed it differs significantly from GT Ground Forces. I’d like to see a 57th Century army, not a late 20th reheat.

I'm not seeing the Unified Armies as a '20th Century reheat'. There were some VERY good ideas in GT Ground Forces.
If you're just talking about the TO&E of a Lift Infantry Brigade, I don't think I've ever seen any sci-fi military that didn't borrow from current tropes, everything from the 11th ACR as Hammers Slammers to Harrington Hornblower in SPAAAAAACE. Even Dune's Sardukar are just Egyptian mamluks with katanas.

 

[ottarrus]

If you study the order of battle in the FFW boardgame the TL15 Imperial Army vastly outnumbers the number of TL15 Imperial Star Marines.

And as GDW and Mongoose have said for 50 years, 'The wargames do not reflect the conditions of the tabletop RPG."
HOWEVER, you are right in that line infantry should outnumber Marines by a goodly margin. Not even the Third Imperium can afford to equip every single infantryman in the Army in Battle Dress with a plasma gun. For one thing, the Navy would squeal like a pre-teen at a Taylor Swift concert. All those troops in high speed /low drag armor might cut into their budget! Admirals might find themselves sleeping standard staterooms!

 

[Sigtrygg]

And yet the canon going all the way back to LBB:4 is that they do:

"Tech level 13: All infantry is generally,now in combat armor and equipped with gauss rifles. Battle dress is issued to selected assault troops.
Tech level 14: A higher proportion of the infantry is equipped with battle dress, and the standard small arm for such troops becomes the PGMP-13.
Tech level 15: Most infantry is by now equipped with battle dress and has converted to the FGMP-14. The gauss rifle remains the standard arm of non-powered troops."



I personally think someone needs to sit down and consider what changes on the battlefield as you advance up the TLs, just sticking infantrymen in battledress or powered armour doesn't even come close to the likely changes in the near future, let along by the 57th century.

Do you use cyber implants, if not why not? Drug based and biological enhancement?
How about Robot wingmen and robot sensor platforms, kill networks, loitering smart munitions, and that's just current US tech.

For example thanks to the author of High Guard moving 50t bay meson guns to TL11 then orbital meson bombardment will be a thing from TL11. How does that affect the battlefield?

 

[ottarrus]

And we're back to 'we need to re-write Fire Fusion and Steel....

As for meson weaponry, if you can put nuclear dampers in a battalion to reduce the damage of a nuke then ergo it should be possible to field mobile meson screens to do the same thing. Neither of these technologies should render a formation invulnerable, only mitigate the damage. Every weapon should have a tactic to deal with it, every technology a counter-technology.

 

[Sigtrygg]

Meson screens have never been detailed as vehicle scale options... regardless ship mounted screens are TL13 minimum these days.

 

[Condottiere]

Budget constraints, and logistics.

Battle dress appears to have endurance limitations.

Imagine, the entire army suddenly running out of gas.

 

[Sigtrygg]

The Fifth Frontier War boardgame counters show the bulk of the Imperial Army at TL15. The regular Imperial Army units are those black on red, the white on red are the colonial troops, not the regular army.
There are 7 TL15 5c field army regular units, only 1 TL14 5c field army, then there are 4 TL15 1c corps, and 2 TL14 1c corps, 5 TL15 20 divisions, 3 TL14 20 divisions, 4 TL15 10 brigades, 2 TL15 5 regiments, and 2 TL14 5 regiments.

Total combat factors - TL15 40c +50
TL14 7c + 70

The white on red colonial forces include 2 TL15 5c field armies

The bulk of Imperial Army and colonial forces are TL15.

Now onto the marines and huscarls - there are 8 TL15 5 marine regiments, total 40., and 6 TL15 1 huscarl batalions for a total of 6

Imperial Army TL15 40c +50 (4050 combat factor total)

Imperial Marines TL15 40, so the regular Imperial Army outnumbers the Imperial Marines 100 to 1.

 

[Vormaerin]

The Imperial Army, where every man carries a squad support weapon and it's the specialist who carries a weapon capable of discriminate fire.

 

[Sigtrygg]

As I said earlier, I think it is time to re-appraise "ground" combat in light of real world, near future and then science fiction.

The TL scale of LBB:4 didn't really change much in the way systems have changed in the real world since the mid 19th century. Is a TL 11 soldier all that different from a TL7 almost TL8 soldier?

What does the battlespace look like from TL8 to TL16, it should be as far removed as we are from WWIV weaponry

Weapons
Armour
Mobility
Comms
Sensors
battlespace awareness
kill webs
sensor networks
remote control/drone systems
robot/autonamous systems.
missiles
artillery

Then there is the topic of augmenting the soldier...

 

[Condottiere]

I recall that after I read Pournelle's Falkenberg, I knew that everything that flies will be shot down.

And, because I'd be operating at one technological level down, I'd jam everything, and try to get into close quarters.

 

[MongooseMatt]

I was really worried when you mentioned it before, that we were going to end up with something WH40k, but this was immediately obvious as Imperial Marine Battledress, and my fears are allayed, not too clunky, not too dainty

We used 40k as a thematic touchstone, rather than a stylistic one.

Basically, we felt that some depictions of Battle Dress were simply too close to Combat Armour. And we needed it to be something... more. You see Battle Dress, you know things are going to go down.

The 'thematic' difference we started with was the divide between Power Armour and Terminator Armour - but without the shoulder pads (!). We needed something a bit beefier, and this is an arena we will be returning to after Armies of the FFW. There is a proposed Battle Dress supplement outline, and I personally would like to explore Battle Dress a lot more - different types and styles, different 'classes' (where we will need to define the line between Battle Dress and walkers) and, of course, different species. Aslan Battle Dress should be something else...