Directorate Officer
- Intent: To provide a Silver Jedi garrison unit for Lantillies
- Image Credit: "Battle Buddy" by Shimmering Sword
- Role:Artillery Regiment / Garrison for Fort Stonespire
- Permissions: N/A
- Links: Fort Stonespire, Silver Jedi, Gir Quee, Lantillies, Lantillian Planetary Security Forces, Lucerne Labs, Lucerne Personal Defense
- Unit Name: 3rd Lantillian Artillery Regiment - “Old Steelsides”
- Affiliation: Lantillies, Silver Jedi
- Classification: Artillery Regiment
- Equipment:
Massiff Blast Armor with Vornskr Blast Helmet OR Carabello-series Armored Uniform with generic blast helmet and Bantha Modular Load Bearing System (standard combat uniforms – armor pieces often partially removed or cut down by individual practice as shown in picture)
LPD-23 Firespike Submachine Gun (standard rank and file weapon)
LPD-18 Stormburst Slugthrower Pistol (standard sidearm for NCOs, officers, and other specialized troops)
Capricorn Rail Gun (Standard artillery piece, one per 'squad' of 8-10; approximately 280 railguns in the regiment)
Kaadu-class Mobile Defense Unit in Munitions Launcher configuration (~250 in regiment)
- Description: The 3rd Lantillian Artillery Regiment is a unit of the famed Lantillian Planetary Security Forces that effectively runs Fort Stonespire, the key to Puran Star Port and the world's capital city. While its current iteration is several hundred years old, it recently has undergone a refit when the world turned the Silver Jedi's sphere of influence. ISAF influence brought in minor organizational changes, primarily in organizing it to bring it more in line with the old Imperial Artillery Regiment lines for ease of standardization, and new equipment and vehicles from Lucerne Labs and its subsidiary Lucerne Personal Defense. The group's main mission remains the same though: garrison Fort Stonespire and shoot any enemies out of the sky, and if any enemies manage to land, subject them to intense bombardment from railgun artillery and warhead salvos.
- Unit Size: Large (~3520 individuals)
- Unit Availability: Unique
- Unit Experience: Trained
- Combat Function: The 3rd Lantillian Artillery Regiment, popularly referred to as Old Steelsides, is a unit within the famed Lantillian Planetary Security Forces charged with garrisoning Fort Stonespire and manning an assortment of railgun and multiple rocket launcher pieces of artillery. While in theory it can be deployed away from Fort Stonespire to other parts of Lantillies or other areas of Silver Jedi interest, in actual practice the unit spends the vast majority of its time within Fort Stonespire, to the point where the words “Fort Stonespire”, “Old Steelsides”, and “3rd Lantillian Artillery Regiment” are often interchangeable among the local populace. In this garrison role, the members of 'Old Steelsides' are primarily concerned with destroying airborne threats with their weapons, and then quickly snuffing out any that manage to survive with the same artillery weapons. To this end, the unit uses hardline fire control networks to produce patterned fire over areas, to initiate simultaneous time on target fire, and elements of the famed Carigan Defense in the form of hidden artillery batteries. This preoccupation with quickly destroying enemies has led the unit's commander, Colonel Dom, to instill a quick, take-charge attitude within the leadership below him in order to ensure that elements of the unit react rapidly to changing situations on their own initiative even without orders from above. This has lead to concerns of a shoot first ask questions later philosophy, which some critics have found unsettling, but Dom is quick to point out that this philosophy has to led to almost all interlopers being destroyed or routed before they could pose a threat to Fort Stonespire or Puran Star Port. While primarily heavy weapon or vehicle crews, the members of the Old Steelsides are also viable urban combatants, where their light armor and compact personal weapons make them agile fighters well-suited to hit-and-run tactics and initiating ambushes. Because they are lightly armed and armored on a personal level, this is usually a last resort or to act as a supplement to the 90th Regiment, a Silver Jedi Expeditionary NORCOM Regiment, that also calls Fort Stonespire home.
Heavy Firepower (Artillery Weapons): As artillery unit, it's not surprising that they possess heavy amounts of firepower. About 280 railgun artillery pieces and 250 Kaadu MDUs configured as multiple rocket launchers provide the “Old Steelsides” with an impressive amount of firepower that is capable of wiping out ground units and even large starships in a single salvo.
Home Field Advantage (Fort Stonespire): The unit is usually ensconced in Fort Stonespire, whose massive thick walls and theatre shield generator provide the unit with an exceptional amount of defense. Built with the principles of Carigan defense in mind, some roofs and walls within the fort can slide open to reveal waiting guns and Kaadu's, giving opponents a nasty surprise. The unit also has established secure datalink cables within the fort, allowing them to produced networked fire to cover arcs in patterns to increase probablity to hit or to conduct exacting time on target attacks. Certain points on the battlefield or in its aerospace are usually pre-dialed into the weapon's fire control systems, meaning that fire onto those areas is usually quick and accurate. Crews are similarly practiced at firing many of their weapons at almost point-blank range, and most railgun crews have dialed in minimum safe depression angles for the use of explosive shells, making them dangerous to groups of enemy infantry or vehicles within or around Fort Stonespire or Puran Star Port.
Urban Combatants: While primarily preoccupied with their profession as artillery men, the soldiers of the 3rd Artillery engage in frequent combat drills in Fort Stonespire and within the Puran Star Port. Not only are the troops familiar and well practiced in the inevitable close-quarters fighting tactics in such environments, their light armor and weapons also makes them fairly agile on foot, and many opponents often have difficulty chasing them down in practice or frequently run into ambushes in such terrain.
Rapid Reaction: Colonel Wurth Dom encourages his subordinates to quickly react to situations as they evolve, even without orders. This can lead to a shoot first ask questions later psychology among the troops, but it also means that the troops of Old Steelsides are almost always ready to act, and even when leaderless, the next-ranking member quickly takes charge of the situation., meaning that its members are in a disarray even among the most trying of circumstances.
Weaknesses:
Lightly Armored (Personal armor): The individual troops of the 3rd Artillery Regiment wear lighter armor than most regular ground soldiers. This is a product of the regiment's unusual practice of allowing soldiers to pick which approved uniform they want to wear at any time's notice (armored clothes or blast armor) as well as unofficial practice of allowing soldiers to remove pieces of established armor as they need for comfort or increased mobility.. Leadership has rationalized what had started out as a practical tradition, since they spend most of their time in the walls of Fort Stonespire, as an individual right.
Lightly Armed (Personal weapons): Since the regiment's main focus is on manning artillery pieces, individual soldiers are lightly armed with pistols and submachines. While these weapons do not get in the way as much as larger and more conventional weapons, they do not provide the same range or firepower as many other weapons commonly found in enemy soldier's hands.
Known Tactics:: The 3rd Artillery Regiments tactics and many of their fire vectors are well-known to even casual observers because of the age of Fort Stonespire and the countless pirate raids they have fought over the years. Only a smaller number of the regiment's prepared firing sites remain unknown to determined observers.
Stationary Weapons: While the regiment's Kaadu MDUs are mobile, their Capricorn Railguns are mostly static and employed stationary weapons. While they can be moved by Kaadu MDUs acting as gun tractors, it then takes valuable to redeploy the railguns once they reach their new position before they fire. In practice, this means that railguns are stationary in most engagements.
HISTORICAL INFORMATION
The 3rd Lantillian Artillery Regiment traces its lineage to a number of smaller ancient units of the famed Lantillian Planetary Defense force. These units were merged together and coalesced into the units current form about three years ago to form a garrison for Fort Stonespire. During its early years, the 3rd Lantillian Artillery Regiment fought off a number of pirates seeking to raid Puran Star Port but were driven off by a combination of the units artillery and star port based starfighters. During one of these engagements, a stricken pirate fighter crashed into a steel casemate on the top of Stonespire. Despite this conflagration, the nearby battery continued to fire on the other intruders, earning the unit's sobriquet as 'Old Steelsides'. As the fort has evolved and modernized over the years, so has its guardians. Recently requipped after the world entered the Silver Jedi's sphere of influence, the regiment benefited from the world's personal relationship with Admiral Quee, an old member of the Lantillian Spacer's Brotherhood. Now equipped with Lucerne Labs weapons and vehicles and with personal equipment from its subsidiary Lucerne Personal Defense, the members of 'Old Steelsides' are perhaps the best they've been equipped in decades. While most of the unit spends its time guarding Puran Star Port from the ramparts of Fort Stonespire, it's not uncommon for smaller elements of the regiment to deploy in support of other elements of ISAF or the Silver Jedi's allied forces.
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