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300

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Wed, 2012-03-21 18:16

Prophet710 Prophet710's picture

300

So what if, you were to send a group of say 300 decked out Remades, with nanofabbed weapons and armor of say, the Bronze Age (swords, shields, spears, etc.) Then pit them up against an entire legion of Spartans or Athenian Hoplites. Who do we think would win?

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"And yet, across the gulf of space, minds immeasurably superior to ours regarded this Earth with envious eyes. And slowly, and surely, they drew their plans against us."

Wed, 2012-03-21 19:27

Tyrnis

Re: 300

The Romans fought in Legions, not the Spartans or the Athenians. Are you asking about a number of Spartans/Athenians equivalent to a full strength Roman Legion (~5,000 troops), or about the much smaller number of troops that an Athenian or Spartan force might actually have fielded in a single unit (closer to 600 troops)? The smaller the opposing unit, the more things favor the Remades, since they'll be individually stronger, faster, smarter, and better able to recover from injuries than any normal human, and they can communicate with one another instantly. If you're talking on the order of 5,000 against 300 on an open field, the Remades lose badly. If you want a biomorph that would really wreak havoc on a classical military force much larger than it is, it's not even the Fury that would be the most effective (though they'd be more effective than a Remade, being built for combat -- bioweave armor and extra speed being huge advantages.) It's the Ghost. Coordinated sneak attacks and assassinations with virtually no chance of detection would make for a very brutal force of guerrillas. It doesn't matter much if the opponent has 5,000 troops if all the officers are dead.

Wed, 2012-03-21 19:52

CodeBreaker CodeBreaker's picture

Re: 300

Tyrnis wrote:
Coordinated sneak attacks and assassinations with virtually no chance of detection would make for a very brutal force of guerrillas. It doesn't matter much if the opponent has 5,000 troops if all the officers are dead.

'specially when those guerrillas have sniper rifles that can shoot from 1.5k away with perfect accuracy. And seeker rifles that can fire, at SA, missiles that will kill anyone in a 25m radius. With the same range.

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Wed, 2012-03-21 20:42

Lord High Munchkin Lord High Munchkin's picture

Re: 300

I was thinking when I saw this thread... say 300 Remades having to guard a barricaded, compact dirt-side installation against a legion of Jovians in 'Hoplite' armour. The Jovians could have cut them off from reinforcements, and then manage to extract from a captured AI some vital information about a secret back-door entrance.... Your mission: to sneak in and retrieve something (quite possibly what the Remades were guarding) while everyone is busy being heroic. Corny, but possibly has something.

Wed, 2012-03-21 21:26

Tyrnis

Re: 300

CodeBreaker wrote:
'specially when those guerrillas have sniper rifles that can shoot from 1.5k away with perfect accuracy. And seeker rifles that can fire, at SA, missiles that will kill anyone in a 25m radius. With the same range.

The OP specified ancient weapons, though. If modern weapons are involved, there's not even a contest.

Wed, 2012-03-21 21:59

King Shere King Shere's picture

Re: 300

Well, the parameters doesnt seem to indicate any skill set amongst the remade "combatants", unlike the military hoplites. For all we know it could be toddlers inhabiting the remade. So its a win for the hoplites as their "label" is synonymous to military/warrior training. Especially the Spartans.

—

[img]http://boxall.no-ip.org/img/tc_userbar.jpg[/img] [img]http://boxall.no-ip.org/img/exh_userbar.jpg[/img] [img]http://boxall.no-ip.org/img/argo_userbar.jpg[/img] [i]"To find fault is easy; to do better may be difficult."[/i] Plutarch

Wed, 2012-03-21 23:15

Prophet710 Prophet710's picture

Re: 300

Yes a legion of roughly 5000 not including runners, escorts, military miscellany etc. It amazes me how far this community tends to truly pick at the minutia. OK OK, Highly trained, melee specialized Remade, 300 of them, against a force of about 5000 primitive ape-men from the Bronze Age.

—

"And yet, across the gulf of space, minds immeasurably superior to ours regarded this Earth with envious eyes. And slowly, and surely, they drew their plans against us."

Thu, 2012-03-22 08:33

Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture

Re: 300

The Lanchester equations for attrition warfare might be loosely applicable here, and they would (since there are no guns) be the linear ones. This means that the "strength" of armies would be proportional to their size and to their deadliness: big armies are still dangerous, but far less powerful than armies that can concentrate remote fire. This is of course what the real Spartans exploited: they had much better troop value, and exploited the terrain so they could ensure that they only met a small set of enemies at any moment. A 22nd century military force is not just going to have some awesome bodies, they also have awesome training. Maybe not entirely optimal for iron age fighting, but they will have taken classes in military history and tactics that will tell them not just this era's situation, but tricks from every subsequent era. They will "get" tactics in ways that are downright spooky to the ancient soldiers, and have no compunctions about using strange or dirty tricks as force multipliers. Memetic warfare, guerilla warfare, information warfare, superior technological knowledge (biowarfare?) and utter fearlessness (they have backups at home and emotional dampeners, if I remember right) - they have the arsenal of the gods. Going back to the Lanchester equations, given that it took days of attrition warfare for the Persians to get the Spartans, we can assume that if they are just an order of magnitude better in their remade bodies with superior training, that they could keep going for a month at least (just through simple proportionality). Now, how well does big armies function when they have to hunker down in unfriendly territory with an ongoing morale-killer at the front? I suspect the remade would eventually win simply by causing enough mutiny and plague.

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Thu, 2012-03-22 09:41

Xagroth

Re: 300

Arenamontanus wrote:
Now, how well does big armies function when they have to hunker down in unfriendly territory with an ongoing morale-killer at the front? I suspect the remade would eventually win simply by causing enough mutiny and plague.

Add to that the little detail of the enemy needing to fight uphill eventually. I doubt they will have pauses for taking away the bodies... But if the remades are wearing some sort of (discreet) bioarmor, plus some bronze-age armor (they can carry more weight for more time with lesser penalties...), there is the chance of them being considered superheavy infantry with the movility of light infantry. That can be... cheat mode XD Oh, and give them some time and you might find they made some late-medieval armour. The 25Kg one that was a walking tank, largely inmunne to anything but large hammers and really good piercing attacks...

Thu, 2012-03-22 13:57

#10

Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture

Re: 300

If any of the remade have night or IR vision then the Persians are in real trouble. The remade could fight defensively during the day, then as darkness falls they send troops into the camps to spread chaos, decapitate and sabotage supplies. The remade would have a huge advantage, both in terms of fighting and psychologically.

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Thu, 2012-03-22 20:32

#11

Lord High Munchkin Lord High Munchkin's picture

Re: 300

Don't forget the Persians went round the back after being shown a mountain goat path by Ephialtes of Trachis.... The Spartans knew they'd lost, that's the point of their heroism. Of course, there is also the possibility for another outcome... à la Sphacteria. That perhaps would be far more interesting as a widescale event in an EP setting (as it was in Greece).

Wed, 2012-04-11 10:40

#12

nezumi.hebereke nezumi.hebereke's picture

Re: 300

This reminds me of a recent discussion on, I believe, reddit, regarding a hypothetical situation where an entire USMC batallion is transported to Roman times and basically pitched against the entire empire. The answer was that they'd be basically unbeatable in the short term, but over the long term, they're wholly dependent on supplies (which aren't forthcoming). 300 remade could likely outrun all but the most dedicated mounted couriers, and have the tactical knowledge to pick a safe location to fight from. The terrain will always favor them. They can choose to fight or to run. But even if they're strong enough to resist a prolonged siege, or decide to run to the next continent, ultimately their own bodies conspire against them. Their super musculature and brain power almost certainly comes at a cost of increased nutritional requirements (not worth mentioning in EP, but certainly notable here). Nuclear batteries last months or years, but will be impossible to replace, and heavy to carry. Solar cells can last indefinitely, but difficult travel conditions, combat, and other events will eat at that supply as well. Nanomachine hives eventually expire, or balk at missing resources (where do you find cobalt in central Europe? Or helium?) and will shut down. We don't have any information on it, but I'd be very curious to know how long a remade can live 'off the land', or how many farmers have to work to support one. This would ultimately be the factor determining their survivability in a long-term siege scenario (as we'd expect to see when fighting 6,000 troops).

Wed, 2012-04-11 12:18

#13

Xagroth

Re: 300

Nezumi, the "needs more food" detail is listed as a drawback in one of the supplements, and it means the character requires about twice as much food as a normal person. While I agree that the scale is the scale, Eclipse Phase includes "flats", or unmodified human bodies. Remades don't have that drawback (at least, the default models don't). Thus, I'd say they require no special amount or type of food. Even if they would, they could still raid the enemy for supplies. The problem with your example of the USMC in the past is that you only took into consideration a few details, flashy but irrelevant: the gear. The problem is that the body of a USMC is the same basic "morph" as the one of a, for example, macedonian soldier in the times of Alexander the Great, or even a soldier during the Illiad. A Remade morph, however, is not. Also, while nowadays people would have trouble starting from scratch with only their bodies, an EP morph has its own "intranet", with a computer and enough internal storage to contain all of today's Internet. Assuming only 1% of applied science/preindustrial books, we have millions of pages of data that could help them in that situation, plus the Muse that can stay as a sentinel 24/7. Not to mention people using Remades tends to be Ultimates, and those people are what I would call "spartan Munchkins fans of Nietzche". Meaning they don't stop, they don't surrender (unless its advantageous to them in the long run), they don't have fear... and they come with the "crazy prepared" trope trait. Drop them naked anywhere in humanity's history until 2012, and they will rise to power in no time eventually. Which points to an interesting plot involving Aliens and an old Valerian comic about an alien recreating different time periods with "actors", so... What would your players do in, let's say, 500 years before the fall of Rome, with a single morph modified to their preferences? Let the games begin!