Faction tactics and strategies and preferred loadouts

[C r o w]

Now, Mr. Helios, being you very documented about the lore and the average behaviour of the people and the states  of the world of Guns Of Icarus, would you mind talking about either the Baronies or the Guild?
Hell, even both if you want!

[Carn]

I see the Republic as savage, cruel, and brutally efficient. My type of people.  It should be noted that they have two neighbors who are heavy expansionists, and they hold them off. Like the Chaladon, they are not on the same landmass, and have harsh seas as a natural border.  Any invaders would first have to get past that, then there's the land itself.  So cold, the Angleans live mostly underground.  They likely have a technological marvel that can create food, and they could likely seal themselves off from the surface.

The tactics I think they would use would be planned ambushes and shock and awe. If they can't take it back in a raid, they make sure others can't use it.  They don't wait in an area hoping some sod comes along, they are cold and calculating.

For strategy, I believe that they would employ blindingly fast, and precise strikes. I see them favoring Squids, Junkers, and Pyramidions.  The Squids forray out and distract the enemy, then the Pyramidions arrive, tearing through them with front guns and ramming, and if anything is still flying by that point the Junkers are there to mop things up.

Quick, brutal, efficient, and calculated.

[C r o w]

Sorry to notify you Mr. Carnage, but the second (first even?) reply to this topic was about the good old Anglean Republic.
Still, your description serves well the purpose of representing the Angleans as being the ones who HUNT, and not the ones that ARE HUNTED.

[Carn]

I know the thread dude, these are open to interpretation and I was giving mine.

[Helios.]

nobody in their right mind would attempt to invade the anglean homeland, its WAY too damn cold, and everyone there is either teched up to the eyes or tough as nails, or both. whether or not the cities are entirely or only partially underground is anyone's guess, but in my headcannon its like three quarters or more underground with some military folks up top to guard the openings and to maintain the airfleet which would likely be above ground, if only because the dockyards would take a lot of space and digging out that much space would be hard! ntimpossible, but unneccicary and a lot of work...
teh devs descibed anglea as 'tech rich and resource poor' so they use their awesome tech to give them the edge in attacking and stealing the resources they need.

there has been a TON of excitment abotu the angleans taking slaves or thralls (slaves) or prisoners (slaves, or ransom?) and i dont think it's right. first of all, the angleans are not flush with food it doesnt seem like a worth while endeavor, getting more mouths to feed. second of all the angleans are the most technologically advanced people in teh place, who could they possibly want to capture that knows more than they already do? MAYBE the chaledonians who have made some forays into tech the ancients never did, or didnt carry over, but not in a HUGE scale.

we also know the angleans have found, or reverse engineered or engineered automatons. so in terms of unskilled labor, they have that covered (and they dont have to feed them woo!)  given all this, as teh toolbox informs us, thre is no word in anglean for 'happy' the closest translation is 'without suffering.'  they hae hard lives full of battle and theft and hunger and work, but it is WAy worse for those who they attack.

their attacks are likely designed to minimise casualties, as they cant really afford to replace broken parts or damaged people. fast, without warning, gone with the goods as fast as possible.

one angle we havnt talked about is the possibility of seige warfare: woudl the angleans even bother? theres a LOT of resources in cities, but they are hard to get into. worth it? who knows?
we shoudl probably discuss cities and seiges somewhere else though, but im interested to see waht you guys think about it!

[Helios.]

i imagine teh merchantile guild to be less a navy as much as escort ships and mercenaries

their primary goal is to make a lot of cash, adn protect the cash they got, so they are primarily a escort force for the merchant vessels, or even merchant vessels refitted to be military ones. they thrive on a show of force, their bright yellow pennants clearly mark them as part of the largest 'don't fuck with us if you don't want to get fucked' force in the world we know of. a potential ambusher might look at that and think '... maybe il get the next one that comes by...'
the golden banners also show who they are, and advertise them to prospective clients, as well as announcing the arrival of new goods with STYLE! also i wouldn't doubt they hire out as mercenaries, where good performance would recommend them to anyone with money who might think that they were worth the money after balking at first at their outrageous cost.
they also obscure the shape fo the ship somewhat, and since being ambushed is kind their jam, its nice that a few of the ambushers shots might go harmlessly through a cloth than destroy a balloon. 

now there is a time and a place where the fleet might be taking action on larger scales than this: invasions of reseurce rich areas, or retributive attacks on strongholds of those who would dare to oppose them. when the risk is worth the reward, either in material or reputation, then there's no reason not to act. the prologue video describes them as 'the ruthless operators of the mercantile guild' after all!

they have had in the past pretty protracted battles with the arashi, and made pretty bitter enemies with them, but everyone else (except the angleans very likely, for similar reasons) it seems like is happy to let their caravans move back and forth around the world. these caravans are not the only trade around for sure, but a pretty big player in most every province.

[Helios.]

i imagine the fjordlanders line their looong ships up and let lose huuuuge broadsides in bigger battles, while most of the time they are just sort of hanging out. the spire is a fjordlander ship, but its the only one we have seen that is tall, all the rest are long and sleek. i imagine its more of a watch tower sort of thing, hiding or blocking off passes between mountains.
their tag line in the prologue is 'forgotten nobility' so i kind of imagine them like the early days of musket warfare, where everyone is in big lines of people in a field and then everyone shoots the crap out of each other.

that, but with huge ships! the fjordlanders make a big line (in 3d, it might be more like a wall, depending on the terrain) and then a'blasting they will go!

we dont know for sure a lot about them, sadly, but hopefully soon we will!

i imagine this line battle strategy would work pretty well as they expand out of the mountains. the flatter the land, the better their lpong range broadsides will work. its likely they would be very comfortable in siege warfare, given that a static battle line would be to their advantage more than some of the more chaos of battle exploiting forces we have discussed.

[C r o w]

Ah, the baronies, probably the faction that I'll join in Alliance mode.

Before the Great War the Fjordlands, since their geographic shape, the fjords were used as strongholds and citadels for one of the ancient faction, and in fact was a placed where troops were gathered and generals dispatched orders.
Every lineage of nobility of the current Fjord Barons comes from one of the Great Generals of the GW (Great War). After The End the generals and high ranking officers decided to keep their soldiers and the people residing there together and thus was born this semi-feudal government. Every nobleman is half a politician and half a warrior, and most of them are brought up with the objective in mind to raise them to be war-commanders like their ancestors. The descendants of the soldiers and of the civilians of the GW Age, having become used to putting their trust into the barons, generation after generation, have grown very accustomed to this kind of government: the Baron (Lord) trusts the the soldiers to obey his orders and to fight well and the civilians to work and keep the state going.
The soldiers trust the Baron to give them good orders and to guide them to victory and fight for the civilians as they also have families among them. The civilians trust in both the Lord and the soldiers to protect them and keep them safe from raids and assaults.
The only known ships from the Baronies are two: the brawler-killer ship Crusader and the defense-glass cannon Spire.

The Spire is very well known both among trespassers fighting against it and by the border guards who use them.
It was once said -"Its hull and armor are made of paper-thin metal, hopes and dreams, but mostly hopes."-, meaning that it couldn't be more fragile or else it would fall apart by simply taking off.
While also it is not a fast ship, no one can engage it face-to-face and come out of the fight unscathed.
The Spires are very tall, as once they were air towers, but now they are capable of movement, and it appears very compact both if seen from the side and from the front. This shape helps this vessel in hiding in the deep fjords, where a well planned ambush could ruin anyone's day.

The Crusader, on the other hand, is a heavy vessel, that has no easily targetable balloon, has a very long hulls and has enough firepower to rightly answer to a port-side attack by a galleon. It carries multiple heavy and light weapons, all having an offset positioning, making them able to target forward and side targets.
The Crusader also has a very protruding frontal armored section, that suggests that the ship is also a valiant rammer.

Other northerners, like the Angleans, are trained since children to behave like raiders, soldiers and infiltrators and by the time they become adults everyone, even the most average person, behave like they are part of an elite corp: quick, brutal and efficient.

The fjordlanders, on the other hand behave more like a regular army: there's the general, that has the Fjord Baron as its current representative, everyone follow the general's orders they all more or less trust each other, the soldiers do the actual fighting and the civilians are the logistic asset.

[Helios.]

the angleans are trained from young ages to be soldiers, its true, but if they fail they dont NECESSARILY die. if an arashi makes a mistake, it usually kills them (not saying their neighbors kill them, the desert does) so it leads them to be much more lethal and pragmatic, rather than the theatrical warfare that serves the angleans. the arashi spend almost 0 time on anything but survival, or survival derivatives, because death is everywehre

[James Campbell]

I always saw the Mercantile as a very dystopian style society, very akin to Dishonoured but more Dieselpunk than Steam.

this is due to the fact that they are internally representing their own people, and in turn are isolated, but very wealthy. I always envisioned them as the "British Empire" of the land, but a bit more focused on wealth, with internal banking clans and the like. In terms of fighting, they'd hire privateers and mercenaries to do the main heavy work, while they'd maintain a sort of Royal Gaurds to defend the major players, and occasionally get into a skirmish or send a message

[Helios.]

i know that the mg hire themselves out as mercenaries and sell ships, because, after all, war is good for business, if you are in the business of war. the MG are in every business. they make a lot of money in peace and in war.

we know that the mercantile elite have sort of a subdued opulence, modesty is at least payed lip service. the whole nation is called the guild, so its unclear if everyone is involved in manufacturing and traveling around or in the support activities required to maintain that effort. if everyone has a stake in this endeavor, they might not be that destitute on the bottom. we know that the free market can, and usually is, not all that compassionate, but in a city with a huge demand for goods and services and having survived a huge plague not TOO long ago, there might be labor shortages in such a bull market. if the MG is as constantly at war as we might assume, especially if they are hiring out as mercenaries, there might be a pretty simple method out of despondent poverty: enlisting. in such a volatile world, its not unbelievable that the guild would be constantly looking for more folks to go do dangerous jobs, and given the community-first attitude that hold over from the days of the cure searching, i'm sure there would be no trouble in finding volunteers looking for fortune, and some would certainly find it. this avenue to fortune would create a huge pool of potential mercenary sailors, their support personnel who make a healthy living enabling them: ship builders, munitions factory workers, etc.
society could be awful in general, but the people we are playing as, if we play for the MG, they are likely fortune hunters or grizzled veteran traders, who have seen it all and survived. they have seen every kind of war, against every enemy: raiders, pirates and probably even the formal militaries of more than a few of the factions.

[Jamini]

The Great war caused an upheaval of climate change where the world entered a period of disorder. No only were nations stripped to ruins but the environment was also brought to its knees. As living standards dropped, disease became common and struck hardest in the pocket of land now called The Vastness, current home of the Mercantile Guild.

A merchant of the guild is always a composed individual, adorned in the richest but simple cuts of fabric with only some jewelry--like a single shining star in an otherwise black night. A guild merchant moves carefully, speaks meticulously, and is never boisterous like their local town market counterparts. This is because a guild merchant never forgets how he came to be, how his ancestors afforded him this life of abundance. The Blight struck The Vastness the hardest and many thousands died. The early merchants realized they needed to look towards the outside world for help, a cure that constantly slips between their fingers and is carried by the winds. The same wind that carries the dust is thought to have brought the Blight to their people.

The Guild has much to offer, but is never satisfied. There is always more to gain and there is always someone who has it.

Nothing will slip through their grasp

Looking at the Mercantile Guild, they are foremost Merchants and Entrepreneurs.

Of any other faction, they are the most likely to have massive caravans bound for other countries from which they need to protect from raiders (especially the Arashi, who border them). Guild lands are large, empty, and mostly flat, which leads to the development of the predominantly long-range sniper platform Mobula.

The Guild is likely one of the factions least interested in waging outright offensive wars. Their diminished population and reliance on other factions for trade and survival would disincline them to direct conflict, and their true enemy (the Arashi) do not have a standing army. Much of their military assets would be caravan guards, arms distribution, and mercenaries units that sell their goods and services to other factions.

Guild Mercenaries would act much like their signature ship in a conflict, hanging around the edge of a conflict to disable and pick off enemies at long range and evading close range encounters. This not only would allow them to be a very effective compliment to the groups that hire them should they run heavier ships with more maneuverability (and thus, ability to protect flanks) but allow Guild Mercs to more easily disengage if a battle turns sour.

The Guild also very likely incorporates ships from other factions into their own fleets. Particularly for setting up fortified trade posts or defending their own land from large-scale assaults. Their standing fleet would likely be one of the weaker fleets(Outgunned by the Yeshan, Barony, and Angelean fleets), but their logistics would be unmatched and no matter who they faced they would almost certainly have an third player as a military ally to supplement their fleet.(Willing or coerced, depending on the exact situation).

TL:DR
-Army of mostly Caravan guards and Mercenaries loyal to the guild, few enemies outside of the Arashi
-Prefer long range ships/sniping due to terrain, favored gunship, and supporting role in conflicts
-Most likely faction to incorporate ships from other factions
-Weak military, but lots of hooks/favors to pull unrelated allies in to protect their assets. Plenty of money for bribery.
-Unmatched Logistics, world-wide trade network.

[Helios.]

in general, i agree.

in specifics i think there are a couple assumptions that are incorrect, namely that the population numbers are still recovering from teh epidemic. i think that the main effect of the grey wasting, or whatever it was called, is the cultural affects you described of some level of modesty and humility in the face of the mountain of dead countrymen who let them get where they are today. 

in terms of battle ships, from the mobula as well as the alliance ship the magnate who is also of MG design, we can see that the MG navy is designed for overwhelming force. the mobula as we currently see it almost exclusively is a long range disabler ships, but remember that in other configurations it could be a incredibly versatile 'anything' ship. its one constant feature is that it has a LOT of firepower put all up front. the magnate is maneuverable but largely designed for vicious broadsides, with two light guns and a heavy gun easily able to be brought to bear.

my theory is that the MG hope that their flamboyant golden-yellow heraldry and their powerful first strike capabilities would disincentivise attacking any trade convoy protected under the aegis of the MG.

it also makes them valuable as mercs: such a powerful first strike both minimizes casualties for whatever side hired them. good for the employer, good for the employee: the ruthless operators of the mercantile guild

[Jamini]

Debilitating diseases tend to have population impacts for generations, and it's outright stated that the MG were hit the hardest by the grey wasting. The primary guild territory is called "The Vastness" even to this day, explicitly implying that much of the land they hold is empty and sparsely populated.

Compared to the other heavy ships from alliance, stating that the Managate is designed for "Overwhelming firepower" is a bit disingenuous. Most ships, except the goldfish, featuring a heavy weapon have at least one light weapon they can bring to bear alongside it. I wouldn't say it has disproportionate firepower compared to them, if anything it's a lighter "heavy" ship.

That said, you are right. The MG sees to prefer to frontload their damage potential at the expense of durability. The Mobula (was) fairly fragile and slow in close quarters, but very dangerous if it could bring it's forward facing guns to play. The Magnate seems the same with high damage primary arcs, but with a relatively fragile hull.

my theory is that the MG hope that their flamboyant golden-yellow heraldry and their powerful first strike capabilities would disincentivise attacking any trade convoy protected under the aegis of the MG.

That would make sense for caravan guards/escort ships. I suspect MG-supported mercs would act differently however.

[Helios.]

no other ship in alliance has a trifecta with a heavy gun except the magnate, so  felt like that counted as overwhelming firepower. its mobility and small blind spots make it ideal in counter ambush situations

the yeshan galleon is of course the heaviest loaded out ship in terms of a ship of the line, but its not a ship that would be very useful in an ambush. the yeshans are expansionists: they push forward with overwhelming numbers and strength, with hug capitol ships like the galleon and smaller support ships to guard their blind spots and chase down fleeing enemies.