nothing new to report yet, still working out their stuff.
found myself reading the posleen war books by Ringo, darn good reading. though the teddys aren't anywhere near that bad. the posleen are you typical "horde" army, just armed with anti-tank guns. the chor'ii should be easier to take out using traditional weapons given their lack of armored vehicles and lighter weapons.
That raises the ugly prospect of Chor'ii combat drugs...or maybe even a quick version of a Chor'ii Juicer....quick creation with minimal equipment aboard a troopship, average lifespan of a year(more like 2d4 months)...
i don't think juicers really fit..
Drugs to keep them groggy in transit, and thus not using much in the way of resources, drugs to perk them up, maybe drugs to give them some adaptation to an alien environment, then more drugs to kill pain and make them even more aggressive...The ship's med-officer(s) are basically drug-pushers, less there to treat wounded and more to keep the drugs mobving...or find substitutes for teh drugs when supplies run low...
maybe more like the combat drugs given to the master's civilians in robotech? inject the troops while landing so their alert, feel no pain, and are suicidally motivated to attack?
i like the idea of drugs used to keep them groggy and slow in transit. cheaper than coldsleep. maybe like the hibernation drug in ringo's books? slow the metabolism and bodily functions down to real low levels, so they can go to sleep and don't need to eat or use as much air for months at a time?
Hmmm...instead of ranks, maybe Chor'ii have an 'Expendability Index' that rates your value to society...from 'Fertilizer' through various grades of 'Meat', 'Cannon-Fodder' and so on....Getting a bump in military rank isn't as important as getting a bump up in your Expendability Rating...
i liek that. at least within the levels of society. royals (the elite families) having one scale (officers), loyalty enforcer clans having another (security/commisars, and the elite troops),and fodder having a third (workers/grunts)
i see the typical fire team of a chor'ii platoon being 20 teddys, 1 royal, 3 loyalty enforcers, and 16 fodder. fodder wear no armor and carry rifles, while the royal and enforcers have body armor and the heavy weapons. like smart missile launchers, autogrenade launchers, machineguns, and so on. the fodder exist to serve as ablative meat shields for the royals and enforcers, who are the ones with the real firepower. a Chor'ii comapany is about 1000 troops, roughly 50 fire teams. call it 5 platoons of 100 troops each.
a standard teddy company would then be 10 royals, 30 enforcers, and 160 fodder. with 160 rifles, and 40 heavy weapons.
(yes, i did steal this idea from the posleen books, but i like how it works. a nice counter point to the modern military orginization of the real world, which most 3G's groups would use.)
oh, and the term "teddy" was inspired by Lord_Z over at
nexus nine, who mentioned that he thought his players would look at the description and start calling them "crazy teddy bears."
which of course, was part of the reason i did it. the human psyche is wired to equate "monster" with "ugly" or "scary". the idea of a cute little monster is hard to accept. you expect a shark to attack and kill you, but not a house cat. in a way, the idea of cute little teddy bears out to eat you and strip mine your world is more disturbing than if they were a mass of writhing tentacles.
