[Denied]Each species' armaments.

[sdtwbaj]

This isn't really expanded on in much of the lore, as far as the equipment that each species uses militarily. I want to compose a bit of a lore thing for each species' military arms.

Humans [mention]Zundy[/mention]

Human infantry weapons tend to follow the trend of directed energy, although some ballistics are still in use. The most notable military arm is the Pulse Rifle, which fires a high powered energy bolt at a target, capable of bursting through bulkheads, doors, and most conventional armor with ease. The power of a human laser can usually be told by it's color. A red laser is the standard. Lowest power, but also costs the least to fire. Red lasers are fielded most in carbines or patrol rifles, especially in areas that can't afford to have collateral damage, such as aboard ships. Blue lasers are significantly more powerful, being the choice for the pulse rifle. Synthesizing a blue laser has a high energy cost, as well as the need for very fine, and by extension very expensive electronics and internal systems. Green lasers are a type of laser more rarely seen, but commonly used by special forces or in specialized tactical missions. Green lasers are synthesized using xray radiation, firing a bolt comprised of concentrated xrays and light. The bolt is designed to stream past armor and straight into the target. Ballistics still in use tend to revolve around the extremes--long range or short range. At long ranges, it's common to see an updated version of antiquated railgun technology being used for marksman or sniping roles, while up close anti-armor flechette rifles are used. Flechette rifles fire a mass of dense superheated metal at a target--basically a 25th century shotgun. In recent years, combat synthetics have made a swing in popularity, the top of the line being the Hunter-Killer positronic chassis, as well as combat cyborgs. Most combat synthetics, like Vaurca drones, are somewhat mindless, with the weapons directly attached to their systems.

While humans have lost interest in atmospheric fighting for the most part, preferring to design their ships to be able to operate within atmospheres, human militaries still make use of atmospheric shuttles, and antiquated railgun battle tanks on some outlying worlds. The investment in vehicles instead turned to rigsuits, humans trying to catch up with the Unathi breacher's 'walking tank' style. This leaves much occupation to be done remotely, while vehicle development is being focused toward orbital and ship-to-ship weapons. Weaponry in fleet combat tends to be focused more on quantity than quality, with weapon technology being considered almost a century behind Skrellian navy technology. Human ship-mounted weapons consist primarily of phase cannons, which are considered an early-stage development of high-energy particle weaponry, as only ships can generate enough power to utilize them. Phase cannons are designed to rupture shield systems and cut through the hulls of other ships, with the added benefit of being immune to known point defenses. Compared to Skrell weapons, phase cannons are crude and unrefined, the musket of particle weapons. Phase cannons have a limited range however, and rely on exotic particles collected and stored by the ship to fire. Ships also use more antiquated attacks, such as guided antimatter missiles, kinetic railgun projectiles, or occasionally bluespace torpedo launchers. Defensively, human ships have multiple point defense installations across the outer hull, as well as a deflector shield surrounding the ship. Humanity hasn't quite mastered large scale energy shielding, so they instead rely on polarized hull plating and advanced multilayer ablative armor panels to protect the ship. Human ships are also highly maneuverable, as an attempt to evade incoming attacks before they can hit the ship at all. Human ships also utilize AI control systems to assist in tactical decisions and ship operations.

 

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Two early Human battlecruisers during an exercise.

Skrell [mention]Loow[/mention]

Skrellian military units are considered to have the most advanced equipment in known space. Their infantry units primarily use plasma-based weapons. Skrellian plasma bolts have little raw power against the environment, but are devastating to an organic target, being capable of vaporizing an unarmored target. All Skrellian infantry are also issued ionic disruptor pistols, which have a threefold purpose. All of the pistol's projectiles are ionically charged, making them devastating against synthetic combatants. Additionally, they can function as both a powerful killing or stunning sidearm, capable of disrupting the cohesion of a target's atoms for very lethal effect, or disrupting a target's nervous system for time ranging from a few seconds to a few hours, depending on the power level. The Skrell also issue personal shield belts, which generates projectile shielding around the soldier, capable of standing up to most ballistics, and a couple of shots from the most powerful settings of Pulse Rifles. Skrell special units and commandos make use of highly energized particle weapons, which are a much further development of phase cannons. The particle stream is capable of vaporizing most matter, both organic or material, as well as overloading many forms of shielding and cutting through materials. The pride of the Skrell military forces, and most elite special forces units, are the Tup commandoes. The equipment that these units are equipped with isn't wholly known outside of small groups of Skrell military or government officials, but needless to say it is the absolute best that the Skrell can muster, and then some.

Skrellian ships are another beast entirely, making up a very formidable force against even the larger Human navies. Skrell ships are able to project regenerative energy shielding, as well as make use of holographic cloaking devices on smaller vessels. Skrell ships have long abandoned missiles, transitioning to both guided and unguided quantum torpedoes. Their standard ship mounted weapons are subatomic disruptors, which discharge highly energized quarks to shred the subatomic particles within atoms, essentially a very advanced particle bombardment. Skrellian ships also make heavy use of ion weaponry to disrupt other ships' systems, as well as highly advanced cyberwarfare suites. Skrellian ships are also capable of deploying infantry to any hostile ship through the use of onboard teleporters, capable of beaming infantry to unshielded enemy vessels. Skrell ships somewhat lack in maneuverability, instead relying on the shields to tank incoming fire. Navigation is done by specially programmed calculators or teams of specialized skrell crewmen, as the use of AI is forbidden. Skrellian ships use a variety of FTL travel mechanisms, focusing less on bluespace and more on either conventional warp drives or quantum tunneling systems.

 

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Skrell frigates during a live-fire training exercise.

 

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A Skrell flagship.

Vaurca [mention]Bygonehero[/mention]

The Vaurca don't tend to maintain a codified military in the conventional sense, instead relying mostly on bound warriors as soldiers, and a few unbound tacticians who work with a given queen. As an extension from this, Vaurca military doctrine treats soldiers as much more expendable than other species, even going so far as to turn the bound into suicide bombers. Vaurca weaponry tends to be energy or immolation based, burning targets severely due to a warrior Vaurca's vulnerability to fire and burning. Vaurca weapons tend to be rather old and worn, losing some of their power in their old age. Vaurca have since begun regressing to melee or suicide combat, running large masses of bound augmented with explosives to destroy targets, or using plasma cutters, energy swords, and other short range weapons. The differences in the hives are few, equipment-wise, however environmental difference plays a hand. The Zo'ra hive haven't seen need to dedicate sizeable resources to maintaining a large military force, owing to the protection and stability of human space. K'lax, however, have bolstered their military forces much greater in recent years, almost forced so by their relationship with the Hegemon, maintaining constant exercises and breeding more and more bound warriors, concerning both the Zo'ra and the humans they live with.

Vaurca ship technology is mostly unknown, as the arkships aren't built as warships, with weapons almost being tacked on as an after thought. What is known though is that Vaurca weapons focused more on creating boarding opportunities through punching holes through swathes of a vessel, as well as launching tow cables and boarding craft that would drill through a hull, and less on destroying the ship itself. Kinetic railguns, torpedoes, and large harpoons are all part of known Vaurca ship armament.

Tajara [mention]Mofo1995[/mention]

(since Tajara ground weapons are already expanded on, I'll only make a segment on their ships.)

Tajaran space vessels are considered universally crude by all spacefaring species, still relying on chemical engines and having little in the way of advanced armor or shielding. Tajara space doctrine tends to rely on swathes of fighters outfitted with machine guns or small unguided cannons, while capital ships may have a few bulky, low yield energy beam emplacements. Tajara have strong anti-fighter and anti-projectile systems, deploying flak fields around their ships to shred incoming fire. Tajaran society hasn't yet learned how to work with antimatter, supermatter, or any other power source that could safely power an FTL capable ship, leaving them as a pre-warp society, with their ships mostly confined to their own system.

 

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The PRS Vostok engages a raider ship.

Unathi

In modern Unathi warfare, it's hard to find any semblance of large-scale standardized equipment, the closest being the Hegemony's defense forces, which are somewhat small compared to the combined forces of the many vassals under the Hegemony. Hegemon troops tend to use a mix of weapons, mostly based on the social class that the soldier comes from. The lowest classes of soldiers tend to be issued nothing more than a claw sharpener, thought of entirely as a meat shield. Other commoner soldiers tend to be issued shock spears--long, spear-like weapons that have electrodes built into the spearhead to stun or shock an enemy as they're attacked--and steel short swords. Wealthier commoners may find themselves issued energy-based weapons, such as energy glaives, swords, or carbines. Soldiers coming from nobility find their equipment more than adequate, being issued specialist equipment like grenade launchers, laser rifles, or the occasional xray rifle. Nobility take less to the 'down and dirty' of melee combat, and are usually delegated to mounted units when diving into the thick of close combat. The Hegemony military has been steadily growing, as attempts of consolidating Unathi society have begun in the military, the defense forces slowly trying to absorb the clan armies. The Hegemon are also the only military force that have the industrial and technical base capable of fielding breacher suits, placing them central to any push as a mix of shock trooper and battle tank, so to speak. Breacher units usually have their equipment tailored to the strengths of each soldier, but many common choices include flechette launchers, grenade launchers, energy glaives, rocket launchers, or the sparing Pulse Rifle acquired from Human merchants. Clan militaries make up the bulk of Unathi military personnel, but have just about as much variation. Poorer clans tend to field weapons sparingly, and issue little to no armor outside of their commanding officers. Steel swords, spears, and ballistic pistols are common sights among the least wealthy clans. On the other end of the spectrum, the richest clans can field units almost on the level of the Hegemony's nobility. Some wealthy Clans even field their units with tactical combat RIGs, acquired from a variety of Human corporate and government sources. Energy weapons are a common sight among clans who train on the idea of victory being first and foremost, fielding units that specialize in ranged combat, while clans that consider themselves more traditional and honor-bound will use energy shields, energy swords and glaives, and if not a RIG, then other robust tactical armor.

unathi space things are already expanded on

Edited January 14, 2018 by Guest

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

Hello! I am the lore overseer for the Unathi species and so I and my deputy [mention]Tomiix[/mention] will probably just focus on that aspect of this canonization.

I want to make sure that you've read the page describing the formal structure of the Hegemony's military. Breacher suits are main battle tanks, and are 'rare' relatively speaking.

https://wiki.aurorastation.org/index.php?title=Unathi_Military_Structure

The army is an amalgamation of a bunch of different vassals to the Izweski pooling their forces. There is no standardization to be had except in the navy and what the Izweski personally field. However, Not'zar is going off on his centralization shenanigans so this could change in the future?

There is also segments describing, briefly, the gist of how Unathi fought and what they were armed with. While it's for the Contact War, it still generally holds true.

https://wiki.aurorastation.org/index.php?title=Contact_War#A_New_Model_Army

The Unathi's form of knights are War Riders.

A flechette launcher sounds sick. These weapons could probably get included.

[DronzTheWolf]

A flechette launcher sounds sick. These weapons could probably get included.

 

I love the smell of new weapons in the morning.

[sdtwbaj]

rewrote a lot of the Unathi stuff to make it a much more class-based and clan-based military.

[Mofo1995]

Nah. But I like the picture, I'm keeping that.

[Loow]

I can't follow up that response. I just can't.

[Bygonehero]

You have gotten some points, but I am afraid you missed the other more important points when talking about Vaurcan weapons, and technology. Vaurcan energy weapons are based almost entirely upon their mastery of phoron and tachyon particles, Indeed, their two most well-known weapons, the Zo'ra Blaster and Thermal Lance, use the former and latter respectively in their operation. A Zo'ra Blaster fires a globule of phoron at a target, where it clings to the target and ignites, similar to napalm. A Thermal Lance is a sustained beam of ionized tachyons. All known hive ships are equipped with such Thermal Lances as their main gun, which is virtually unmatched in its raw destructive power. Miniaturized tachyon lances can be found among Bound Za and as implants. Their only real obstacle is projected energy shields, which Vaurca never historically developed. The hive ships themselves were in fact not designed as warships, or any kind of ship really. They were designed as ark-ships, more as a mobile city than anything. Every ship is its own environment and equipped so to sustain and protect itself. Every ship possesses advanced missile defense systems as well nuclear payloads.

When thinking about Vaurcan technology it's helpful to think about how they evolved. Vaurca historically never valued personal space or ergonomic design. The complex operation of a mechanism isn't seen as complex when you were quite literally born to perform a specific complex operation.Indeed, instead of sleek and compact designs, Vaurcan constructs tend to be large and sturdy. Both K'lax and Zo'ra hive-ships have survived direct hits with thermal Lances and modern nuclear weapons, but most impressively perhaps, would be either the Lii'dra hive ship surviving a direct impact with an object traveling at faster than light speeds or the K'lax hive-ship performing a controlled crash landing upon Trets polar ice cap in one piece.

Vaurca tend to organize their military into battalions of bound, with several Unbound Za directly overseeing their operation in battle. These Unbound Za are called Ancillaries and historically have been the primary targets of ground warfare between hives. Bound Za are often equipped with implants that provide them weapons that can be projected from their bodies. Zo'ra are historically seen as having the most advanced implants, with some of their most successful combat warrior's given truly, exotic and ancient implants. K'lax are often cited as the architects of many of the monolithic constructions attributed to the Vaurca, most notably the hive ships. Because of their civilization, Vaurca have based much of their culture upon biotechnology and genetic engineering and have perfected the processes involved in such endeavors long ago. Because of this, there is virtually no research into artificial intelligence.

As far as Warfare is concerned, Vaurca tend to be efficient, and would not waste effort capturing an enemy ship unless the act of doing so is absolutely needed. Vaurca did not tend to take prisoners of war either, with almost every conflict in their written history resolved as part of a diplomatic agreement of vassaldom. The common trend would be,

>Two or more hives go to war

>War continues until one side cannot achieve victory or the negatives to continued warfare outweigh the benefits of victory.

>Sue for peace by surrendering to vassaldom of a larger hive

It's important to note that because of their biology and civilization, the existence of the hive is paramount. Egos concerning different hive ideologies, or really any competitiveness rarely if ever manifested.

[sdtwbaj]

Nah. But I like the picture, I'm keeping that.

 

but why :eyes:

[Coalf]

Zero responses since conception and multiple people in this thread are either not active or resigned from their post, thus I'll put this under denied and archive.

Locking and archiving.