Alrik Vas wrote:A collection of good firing positions to create a kill zone will pretty much waste anybody.
But let's look at group make up of each side if it were a platoon engagement...
4 Special Forces OCC (this includes the Lieutenant and the Staff Sergeant, they will have light or medium NG power armor)
6 Wilderness Scout OCC (this includes the other Sergeant)
30 Merc Soldier OCC
MOS Split: 16 Grunts, 4 Medics, 5 Heavy/Pigman (they'll have NG grenade launchers, heavy rail guns, rocket launchers etc), 3 EOD (can never have enough boom, or ways to save yourself from boom...), 2 Communications
As a Note: 20% of them will be psychic, as humans and most D-bees tend to be. We'll assume they're all minor and have mostly non-combat abilities aside 2, which one will have sixth sense and the other TK push. Now if some of them are D-Bees, like Quick Flex or *gasp* a Grackletooth, this can change things quite a bit...
Now let's look at the opposition:
The Coalition platoon
1 Military Specialist OCC (the Lt)
2 CS Rangers (one is a Sergeant)
4 Dogboys
2 Psi-stalkers
3 RPA Pilot OCC (2 Super SAMAS, 1 Smiling Jack)
6 Technical OCC (Radio, sensors, 3 medics, 1 Operator)
16 CS Grunts (of various skill make-up to fill in gaps and add depth to the roster)
2 Special Forces OCC (assigned Striker SAMAS each, one is the other platoon sergeant)
1 CS Juicer
1 CS Cyborg Soldier
There's a lot more psionics in this group because of the dog boys and psi-stalker, plus another 20% of them would have powers as well. Plus there's a lot more OCC's with PA readily available. a CS platoon might also have 10 or 20 skelebots assigned to it, depending on if it was a long range patrol.
Of course, this is just my envisioning of what each force would have. I think the NG platoon is underskilled and has less variety, and i believe that would be true in practice rather than just my theory. Of course...in reality...a group with NG tech has no compunctions about using magic, but that's a whole different can of worms.
That does not look like a standard platoon set up as it is crossing into to many corpse.
That is looks more like a elite custom strike force than a military platoon. More of standard platoons would be.
SF platoon is likely to be
20-36 CS SF. All with striker Samas.
Infantry platoon would be.
25-40 CS grunts.
1 military operation specialist (officer)
Probably being transported in APCs
(PA and dog packs are more likely to be battalion assets assigned as needed. Outside of open warfare with mage state most platoons will not have them. This is partly based on logistics.)
PA platoon.
25-40 Pa pilot MOS
with what ever PA they are assigned most likely SAMAS.
Recon Platoon.
15-25 CS rangers
4-12 Dog boys.
1-2 psi-stalkers.
Large patrols may have a squad of Samas assigned to fly close air support. Patrols looking for mages are likely to have a dog pack assigned to them. So in truth what you encounter is dependent on the unit and mission.
The Clones are coming you shall all be replaced, but who is to say you have not been replaced already.
Master of Type-O and the obvios.
Soon my army oc clones and winged-monkies will rule the world but first, must .......
I may debate canon and RAW, but the games I run are highly house ruled. So I am not debating for how I play but about how the system works as written.