VIRD was involved in order to prevent Aryta siedge in Septentria by stiking from the rear with an amphibious attack, pierce the siedgers lines from the rear and reinforce the defenders. But they were waited by the artillery and suffered so much loss that, despite successfuly piercing the ennemy lines, they were too few to change anything. VIRD teams are described in the book by a YJ officer. In their functions, they are pretty close to the MRRF (and have a name close too) but the technology they have access to compared to the Frenchs and Belgians means they can deploy faster and with more means than their Ariadnan counterpart. At first, Immediate Reaction Divisions weren't meant to be Varunan troops only but they were those which were the closest fitted to the job at the creation of the divisions and so, were chosen to fill all the workforce of the divisions.
Yeah, there's actually pretty good write ups on it all. Also, the massive damage suffered by the Shock Army of Acontecimento left PanOceania needing to draw on manpower reserves from other sources.
My guess is tech; they're counter-terrorist operatives who are an obvious target for anyone wanting to make a statement, so not having one be actually killed by a lucky Shock Marksman Rifle or Sniper shot is worth the investment for the sake of morale. We know Shock Immunity can have nothing to do with toughness or even especially advanced gear; heavens knows the Bakunin Moderators aren't known for their surpassing endurance or sufficient funding and they've got it, so odds are the PanO Military-Industrial complex just sprang the extra thousand Oceana so they could quote "no fatalities" to the media and the Board more often.
Alpha-Gel from Kingmen 2. Harry lived despite eating a bullet to the face(literally). No reason Kamaus having one just in case :p
The Fixer series by Andrew Vaillencourt has similar tech, compression suits will essentially self-tourniquet to stop you bleeding out from a bad wound.
That’s pretty situational, and don’t really qualify as big deal. You need your Kamau get shot in the face with shock ammo (no other types, only shock), and not so much to lose two wounds, only one, then you need some doctor and some command tokens and some extra orders at hand to go there, heal up, start again. And then, your shock immunity did something. I get it why it’s great on troops with NWI (though still would prefer the ~1pts Biomunity there), but I don’t think it does much on Kamau. Most of these don’t apply to Kamau.
You're not a Varuna player, are you? :) The Kamau Sniper (in a link) is such a dangerous piece (even in ARO) that the chances of you taking two hits on the chin in a Face to Face roll are relatively low. You lose a wound? Drop prone behind the cover you were sitting behind and then your Trauma Doc can crawl 2" to heal you up next turn (because you always deploy her 2" away and prone. :)). Your opponent can't rush over and finish the job because you're so far back that they'd have to cut through your entire army to get to you. So, the Kamau gets back up the following turn and goes back to murdering the world. It's huge for Kamau Snipers in Varuna, maybe less so for other Kamau pieces though.
I see that they can face a Sniper rifle without fearing to get straight killed. They can take their chance to dogde a mine and only fall unconscious in the worst case. Same apply to CK and detonating Kuang Shi. Shock ammo is very common, between assisted REMs, SMG, SMMR, RF, Light and Heavy MULTI, deployables and MML1. So, I think that, with their mimetism and high BS, they can potentially clean some hits in FtF and tank part of the remaining. Like said just above, they are pretty good fighters, like Nisses and BM. But Shock Immunity means you can get them back on track while the two others have no second chance.
Agreed, PanO design ethos seems to be Tech, not skills. Or you could just use Box markers as your camo markers... Pretty sure I have a file with 6 boxes about the right size lurking around after I printed off a set to use for myself. Very much agree with this!
Seriously... being able to put the maybe scariest ARO piece in the game back on its feet is the main use. And it's far less situational than the usual 15 point ML mook. As others pointed out a Kamau will very often only barely drop (or straight up win any FTF). In between not dying to begin with and being able to be patched up very reliably if he happens to drop a Kamau is a bitch to deal with for most armies - especially in later truns after VIRD kills the scarier stuff and the amount of pieces who can go face to face with a Kamau Sniper dwindles. Shock Immunity does nothing against Viral. BTS6 helps but if a Kamau fails a roll vs Viral he is toast.
