A lot of these weapons also just so happen to be good insurgency weapons. The Chain Rifle for instance is low-cost, low-training. Landmines and IEDs are fairly "easy" to make, and IFF systems can either be omitted or disabled. Infinity's shotguns are more like air-burst rounds than modern scatterguns so you may be onto something there. It might be fiddly to represent in-game but I wonder if a modern shotgun would still be legal since it'd not be an area-effect weapon, but probably be more like something with fairly good accuracy over the short range, but with low damage further out as less shot hits the target? About the only way that comes under any "inhumane" arguments might be if the convention also claims low accuracy and a risk of collateral damage is a violation. They're again a good insurgent weapon, being cheap and probably common still.
I think that the argument about Shells in Infinity (noting that slugs aren't O-12 banned, only shells of shot) is that many smaller projectiles makes the one hit more likely to damage a cube accidentally. And I think that the argument for O-12 units using the "illegal" weapons would be that they are only going to use them against the Combined Army. I expect to see O-12 sometime after the "Archeron Falls" CA breakthrough, once the fighting expands to multiple worlds.
Well, unless they throw us a curve-ball and Humanity actually gears up for a counterattack instead....
Thanks @Section9 and @Del S for explaining this issue to me. This way it makes more sense to me and allows for an effective O-12 faction to exist.
O-12 has its own world: Concilium Prima. Isn't there already a SciFi police faction called the Imperial Service Sectorial?
A counter attack through to an alien world would be awesome actually. Could have local alien civilization as the defenseless victims of the CA, with the Sphere looking to leech resources from the Paradiso front by launching an expeditionary force there. Lots of potential for new stories and settings!
Ah, I don't mean that they aren't a power in their own right, I guess they could pile up various Sectorials within the O-12 faction. But if you have that faction work like NA2 you've got no worries about balancing everything all together in vanilla, you can run O-12's Section Spatha as one Sectorial, with room to play with various Paradiso Coordinated Command Sectorials as well to mix and match interesting units like we see in the NA2 merc companies.
They're a Sci-Fi Secret Police/Death Squad. Like the Judges from 2000AD, who were Judge, Jury, and Executioner, but in the case of the ISS it's more Executioner, Executioner, and Judge (with side role of Executioner).
It'd be good for adding some stakes to the setting. As of right now, what is really at risk for the Combined Army? if this offensive into Human space fails... no big deal, right? That's kind of lame.
As usual the RPG gives us a lot more insight into how things will look. We're told that Section Spatha, also know as the O-12 Military, consists of a tactical police unit, a very small army, and a significant naval force. Internally the section is sometimes jokingly referred to as “Team Escalation” because the Bureau is charged with enforcing the rulings of the Concilium Courts, and when Section Statera (the legal branch) can’t make those rulings stick, Spatha is the escalation to make it happen. In the face of the Combined Army’s invasion, Spatha’s institutional culture and mission statement are apparently shifting. We're told that phrases like “defence of humanity” are suddenly much less ironic and much more literal. But the question of how that will translate onto our game tables remains.
From the CA side of things: the EI has a deep desire and NEED to figure out how to ascend. It needs humanity under its heel to do this, because the Tohaa did something to suggest that we know how to do it. It will spend every race currently under its sway to do this. Its literally a fight for their survival, since the only way that CA fails is if all the Shasvastii, Morats, and Umbra are extinct.
Nope, nop. EI was designed by the Ur to seek Trascendence as an Ur (since their first attempt produced an IA that trascended without them), eventually merging with them in a gestalt-like consciousness. Then, as part of its prime directive, the EI started looking for new viewpoints since it was stuck. Cue several alien species assimilated or eradicated. Assimilation of a Species inside the CA requires one of two options: first, to be useful (Umbra, bodies recycled into the Aspects, the Maakrep/Fraacta, the Morat, the Exrah...) for the expansion part; or second, to be a race inclined towards trascendence, something that includes developing an Artificial Intelligence as one of the check boxes (the Shasvastii fall into this category). Humanity, by having created Aleph, is of the same importance to the IE than the Shasvastii are. Then, the Tohaa did, indeed, make sure that the EI would focus on Humanity to alleviate its pressure on them: The Tzechi Compiler found in Paradiso, which position was filtered to the CA and Humanity by a hidden Tohaa faction (the "Tohaa Cerberus", or "Novus Ordum Tohaa"). This faction is NOT known in-universe, nor is the fact that they are directly responsible for Ariadna having been isolated from Humanity for so long, or that the sister ship that was carrying the 2nd wave of colonists to planet Dawn (Ariadna's) was instead redirected to Paradiso, where that faction performed experiments and then hid their tracks as much as they could.
Well, who knows. The Shasvastii might ascend tomorrow, there might be another race hiding out on a planet somewhere that could help. There's nothing that indicated that humanity is particularly valuable, compared to these other species.
More valuable than Morat, or that any other "surrender or be blown up with your planet" ones, frankly. That is why I suggested at some point that Aleph is "negotiating" with the EI in a common language (accomplishments, presented on the battlefield) to either win or secure a nice, cozy position inside the CA for Humanity and herself.
While going a bit back in the discussion, the important part in equipping an army is remembering the relative sizes, its not if PanO could afford production cost of Zeta TAG level units, they can, it is a question of is it economically viable to manufacture the required numbers of of Zeta level TAGs in a meaningful numbers for its actual military, that is probably a no, on the other hand O-12 army is small enouph to be able to have such units. Infinity shows small behind the scenes skirmishes, not actual military engagements and in the fluff in actual wars PanO and Yu Jing send formations of TAGs to fight in engagements.
Nah, @psychoticstorm the problem is not "manufacture costs". It's logistics: time to craft the TAG, time to ship it off (in big enough numbers, wich means taking time), the maintenance problem (spare parts, raw materials, trained engineers, installations where you can do it, troops to protect that positions and the supply lines...). So it's a matter of long-term feasibility, something O-12 has better options than PanO thanks to owning most of the Circulars (instead of having to piggyback onto another faction's, or deploy its own military ships with Minotaur drives), which also lets them use big ships with engineering capabilities if needed. Essentially, you want fast and light units sturdy enough for patrol and reconnaissance because they can be at more places in the same time that a single strong unit does the same. On an open battle, however, you want a strong center and a mobile harassing group... specially if that fast group can punch over its weight because of artillery support the enemy can't reach because the heavier units act as a mobile wall that protect the artillery ones.
