templariomaster wrote:

so 1 jovian man should deal with 5 or more transhumans easily if the jovians spects to be a military power on hand to hand

Maybe against transhuman civilians, but I would expect mercenary groups like Direct Action, Love and Rage militia, and Scum pirates to at least stand toe to toe with them. Jovian disdain for nanotech likely means that they won't want to rely on guardian swarms, and so they're likely to pack EMP grenades and missiles to deal with nanotech threats. AGI wouldn't just be held in disdain, they would be a dark secret that could topple the Jovian government if it was found out they were being deployed.

You build your military around the threat you expect to face, and the Jovians have been nothing but paranoid for a decade now. They're going to employ as much long-range, difficult-to-countermeasure weapons as they can to keep themselves out of nanoviral range (why take a chance post-fall?) and take advantage of the nature of space combat. That means lots and lots of mass drivers and missiles, mounted wherever they can for artillery support. So most if not all your battalion squads will have targeting capability for these weapons. This is Space!Murica, after all, and America's got a so-far proven methodology that involves a lot of artillery and airstrikes. Space combat in any kind of infantry-level is going to be either entirely open or very cramped in-habitat, so smaller 10 man squads split between even fireteams or pairs with low-velocity weaponry for primary action within or around most habitats. If the exoplanet has a breathable atmosphere, you can mostly disregard the LV loads, though you'd have at least one person per squad with a corridor-clearing weapon, either sonics or spray; one or two with a SAW or other heavy support weapon; a marksman/rifleman or two; medic; and other specialized roles as needed. Nanotech is only going to be used by black ops squads or in cases of special jurisdiction. Jovians don't demonize nanotech, they're just extremely, extremely cautious about it and other new technology. Proven tech will be authorized in approved methods, which means that Jovian nanotech (and other hypertech for that matter) will be much more focused than the transhuman standard. That said, it's the modern equivalent to firing Danger Close. You do it if you have to and always have the capability, but you build your strategy to make it as unlikely as possible. Pyrite's right, they'd have conventional countermeasures in place and ready in any defensive situation. What nanotech or other tech the Jovians employ may actually be fairly sophisticated, but it'll be clamped down either by built-in restrictions or by chain of command. If, as it sounds like, you're setting up a defensive situation or garrison, that means lots of overwatch. Drones/satellites, sensors everywhere and hidden in the environment, mines and perimeter traps, snipers armed with the biggest railguns you can haul through that gateway. Transhumans are, as you mentioned, extremely dangerous, but the further away you can spot them coming, the more layered firepower you can release on them. And Jovian combat doctrine is going to reflect some modern day assumptions, namely that anyone on the other side should be treated like a possible bomb, assumed to be infected by the TITANs, and always presumed to be a threat even when disabled or killed until properly disposed of. Gear is going to depend on a lot of environmental factors. Fully sealed battlesuits are pretty likely in some numbers, though. If they want to keep this exoplanet, they're going to throw in everything they have. Jovians do make use of resleeving and combat morphs, it needs to be said, but far, far less commonly than the transhuman communities because they're so restricted. Think of how many legal hoops a civilian today needs to jump through to get and maintain a demolitions licence. And the Jovians are...well, thieves. It's mentioned thorughout the books that they tend to cry foul when their stuff is taken, but have no qualms about swiping things. See the Cloud Skimmer in the MRG for an example. If this installation is important enough, expect borderline fanatics sleeved into Reapers (elsewhere in the forum there was a rather chilling idea of martyr-forks, sleeved off forks who would believe they had no souls to corrupt and thus were WH40k levels of violence in a can) and other high-end combat morphs. Synthmorphs can also be modified to be teleoperated exclusivey, too, so that's definitely one option to explore. Odds are good that the Jovians know they can be hacked, so they'd have the best protocols and firewalls possible along with deadman switch cut-off protocols to prevent their weapons from being turned against them. ....Can you tell one of my players is a Jovian? We've done a lot of brainstorming for what her military background was like.

templariomaster wrote:

For that reason I don't really think that would also reject any use of nanotech, nanowarfare is something to take into account when the enemy can use it in a lot of ways not directly related to attacking troops but the enviroment that surrounds them, so we can expect some level of nanotech for pure and specialized defensive roles.

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AUGC actually deals with this, and while it's not canon it's got some ideas.

excuse my ignorance but... who/what is AUGC?

The Jovians are extremely anti-nanotech. They view it as essentially the quickest way to infect themselves with what the TITANs had/used. They don't use nanotech-based tools frequently if at all (some military operatives might have access to a healing vat or a nanofabricator), but actually putting nanomachines into themselves on purpose is one of those body horror things for them. AUGC is my own personal homebrew weapons and combat supplement, and includes descriptions of fighting forces made from a projection of real-world technology into Eclipse Phase. http://eclipsephase.com/ultimates-guide-combat

Well, based on how they're described in some of the materials (and samples stats in NPC files), your standard Jovian Expeditionary Force infantryman will be a Flat or Splicer, clad in a battlesuit or other appropriate powered armor. They'll have a railgun for primary weapons (unless they care about where they're fighting, then they'll switch to conventional ballistic) and have an underbarrel seeker or use a combi-weapon for versatility. And they'll lug around a couple of grenades of whatever type they're issued. Depending on the situation, they might actually have guys fall into dedicated roles; I'm sure they're trained in them, but in some situations the AT guy or the Designated Marskman might not be effective. Jovians will have combat medics, but given their distrust of typical nanotech as a giant security risk vector, that guy isn't rolling nanobandages. He'll carry a medicine Tool Kit, and probably work to stabilize injuries and repair minor damage, so they can be CASEVAC back to the Jovian field hospital where they have a couple of healing vats under super security measures. I'd also wager their armor is probably Faraday modded to prevent unwarranted radio subversion. Jovians use LoS laser links, or god forbid actual talking. They won't risk TacNet. They're gonna have a lot of Cybernetics augs, and some Bioware whenever available. The expensive stuff too. Toxin filters, Reflex Boosters, Hardened Skeleton, etc. Jove pours a lot of money into their military budget and does enhance their career troops. These people are going to be Fall combat veterans or they're gonna be pretty fresh members who have spent a lot of post-Fall time practicing. Other than that, mostly what people have covered what they'd bring, heavy and light armor support, transportation for air and ground, command and support elements, etc.

templariomaster wrote:

I wasn't talking about AGIs but, digitized consciousness that would be used in the same way jovians diplomatics have to use splicers, its just not practical for their job to stick to the bioconservative ideals when the enemy can have teams of infomorphs that will act faster and more efficient than any physical technical can, and lets also have into account that its not only infomorphs but AGIs which are objetively better at the task, so or the Jovians make the concession for at least virtualized human minds or the enemy will always have the electronic domination of the battlefield, and when the enemy dominates it doesn't matter how good shielded are the doors to you castle or how many systems they will have to go throught, they can break them and they will do it really fast since they work at the speed of thought.

Part of the advantage that Jovians have over the other factions is that they do not rely on the vulnerable tech that other factions do. They don't (usually) use synthmorphs so cyberbrain hacking is out. Most of them don't have implanted mesh, so a lot of that is out as well. Jovians also have a healthy appreciation for air gapped sec protocols. You can't remote hack the castle's doors when they aren't wired up for it. And at the same time, virtual warfare would be under the purview of their ONI equivalent (they examine it in Firewall). Their spooks have access to all the tools and tricks that the other factions do, they just have a healthy appreciation for not networking absolutely everything.

UnitOmega wrote:

I'd also wager their armor is probably Faraday modded to prevent unwarranted radio subversion. Jovians use LoS laser links, or god forbid actual talking. They won't risk TacNet. They're gonna have a lot of Cybernetics augs, and some Bioware whenever available. The expensive stuff too. Toxin filters, Reflex Boosters, Hardened Skeleton, etc. Jove pours a lot of money into their military budget and does enhance their career troops. These people are going to be Fall combat veterans or they're gonna be pretty fresh members who have spent a lot of post-Fall time practicing.

I think the Faraday Mod would be more for specialized units (think EOD). It's effectively nega-camo, which is something that modern troops would consider no-go. That said, they could easily use metamaterials (I like the Radar Invisibility cloak from Panopticon) for some of that, and the low-res audiovisual inputs would certainly be used. Since you say (and I agree) that Jovians would bend the rules for their own military, you'd have plenty of people deployed with invisibility cloaks on their combat exos - This would become very similar to the Starfist books.

templariomaster wrote:

So the thing is that right now he has to employ what a jovian batallion normally have to defend the Pandora gate from attacks(the extrasolar colony is in a very juicy place for resources or knowledge) and they have to start constructing defenses from zero, and at the same time avoid the mutal hatred between them and other colonists like anarchists(so that means that they can't make big changes, only add defenses this is why I specifically needed to know the composition of a batallion since this calls for a more mobile defense).

So there are a few things that you should keep in mind, then. First is that Jovians are by default the most experienced soldiers in the setting. There hasn't been sufficient time between The Fall and game clock for unaugmented humans to start to die from old age. They also have the most experience with a strongly organized command structure, with a healthy respect for tactical drills and maneuver tactics that emphasize combat objectives over all else. Properly equipped, these guys will not be fragged with. So in terms of defenses, the Battalion has been pulled in to do sec work. This means they would probably demand operational command in that dept. They won't be allowed to care what goes down behind closed doors (much as they'd like to), but they will take the authority to put any @'s in their place if it compromises opsec. If someone starts acting funny around their perimeter or garrison, they will shoot on sight because those demihumans aren't so squeamish about resleeving. Far as they are concerned, they've been brought in to secure the site, and they *will do that*. Tactically, you're going to want layered defenses. Trenches with directional explosives, pit traps, "dumb" turrets (think the turrets from Aliens - they aren't Wireless, they're off of Ultrasound sensors or audiovisual stuff) that the only command they accept over wireless is "arm". They will have bunkers and pillboxes set up to minimize casualties, set up fatal funnels and kill zones. You're going to have a lot of EMP weapons, explosives, and hopefully some artillery zeroed in. At the same time, if they've been told that the site can be evacuated, those defenses should be outward facing as well - perimeter defenses, claymores, sensors, etc. The only restriction is that existing defenses should not have LOS on each other - they would not risk the opfor taking one post and using it as a staging point to take others.

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I think the Faraday Mod would be more for specialized units (think EOD). It's effectively nega-camo, which is something that modern troops would consider no-go. That said, they could easily use metamaterials (I like the Radar Invisibility cloak from Panopticon) for some of that, and the low-res audiovisual inputs would certainly be used. Since you say (and I agree) that Jovians would bend the rules for their own military, you'd have plenty of people deployed with invisibility cloaks on their combat exos - This would become very similar to the Starfist books.

It's only a +10 to be detected by Radar, which isn't too bad compared to what the Jovians would get out of it. But, since the Battlesuit or Powersuit are both vehicles and armor, you could easily stack in some Chameleonic Coating or Radar Absorption/Invisibility to balance out the modifiers.

ThatWhichNeverWas wrote:

In my EP, the standard Jovian squad equiped with battlesuits and rail-machinegun/seeker-rifle combination rifles, with extra gear/armor augmentations depending on the wearer's specializations. All battlesuits are devoid of wifi and are controlled via the wearer's access jacks. They contain an airgaped lasercom system, which connects via separate jacks to the user's mesh inserts. An isolated ecto in the helmet monitors the user's brainwave activity - should they become incapacited (such as via Basalisk Hack), it shuts down all sensory input to the user and hard-restarts the whole system from a read-only backup.

SquireNed wrote:

AUGC actually deals with this, and while it's not canon it's got some ideas. Modern military forces are built around combined arms, so here's what I'd expect to see in an assault force of battalion strength...

Slightly off-topic; I didn't want to post this on the AUGC thread (or ShadowDragon's Book of Armaments), but this seems... antiquated. It assumes a level of technological development much lower than EP presents. Simply put, IMO tanks and armor are obsolete, because establishing high altitude or orbital "killsats" (as the AUGC call them) is trivial. Orbital insertion is possible with a man-portable rocket - and all you need for artillery support is to make a creepy with a mounted long-range seeker/sniper rifle and attach a weather balloon.

I think the point of such batallions are for when you wouldn't see a killsat or the like. With egocasting and the mesh, modern military objective have been changed greatly. Most habitats can't sustain real conflicts, and where else are you going to see military forces? Mars? Earth? Titan? Not really feasible in any of those places. AUGC reflects fights for things like the Pandora Gate, or Hyoden, or other full-fledged combats taking place on planet(oids) where a stray missile doesn't space everyone. The majority of state-sponsored violence in EP is either very direct (e.g. assassinations), or very brief (e.g. blowing the hab up, killsats). The difference between the majority of legitimate combatants in EP and a paramilitary organization when both are operating in confined spaces is the former's increased rules of engagement, though with copious resleeving it's possible that many combatants simply draw the line at anything that destroys cortical stacks. However, exoplanets and places like Hyoden still reflect places where you might see the occasional brush war spring up, and when they do we know that they still use things like tanks. Killsats are nice, but they're expensive and their only setting is "Do the village!" rather than precision strikes. Artillery is effective only once it gets past the scale in Eclipse Phase. A full size missile with the right warhead might be able to play at it, but even that's more suited to an AT or cover penetration role than to actually doing damage. Likewise, tanks in EP are probably fast. Modern military tanks reach 60 mph, but I'd imagine that EP's tanks have both better power sources and more durable and flexible locomotion, meaning that we could conceivably see vehicles that hit speeds you'd expect from a buggy or cycle in the right terrain. 120 mph, especially around places with lower gravity (less tread damage) or with hover-tanks or tanks with articulated limbs like the Fenrir, is not at all impossible. Of course, keep in mind that I ignore the expanded anti-armor rules, since I simply add more dakka in vertically rather than try to make current dakka fit desired output levels.