Hazardous Environment Combat

Fighting in space, Low and high pressures, toxic environment, and vacuum brings many hurdles that need to be overcome to fight effectively.

Space

Space has many difficulties that cause conventional combat tactics and weapons to behave in a totally different manner. Firing a mass weapon, such as a rail gun, causes recoil. On a planetary surface the vehicles friction and mass keep the craft from flying backwards. In space there is no friction, just the craft's mass. TV shows craft firing massive broadside kinetic weapons with no ill effects. The reality would see the craft pushed sideways with that amount of reaction mass. To combat this a StarCraft's drive systems are tied in to the weapons systems. As a weapon fires the drive is activated to compensate for the recoil. Missiles and energy weapons have little or no recoil and do not cause any ill effects.

For the individual soldier zero-g combat is a lot harder. Some hard suits have compensation systems tied in to the weapons. On other occasions the soldier has to brace themselves against something to negate the effects of recoil.  Hand-to-Hand combat requires intense training. The RSF have developed their Regimental Core Combative (RCC) to achieve superiority in this realm. RCC covers all aspects of combat drawing the best bits from other martial arts and police/military combat systems. Starting on Earth and progressing through Mars, Moon, and Ceres. 

Low-Gravity

The biggest issue with low-g worlds is staying on the ground. A soldier or vehicle in the air is unable to manoeuvre without reaction thrust. This makes them an easy target! Crews learn how to keep the vehicle down and to compensate for the low gravity. Recoil from weapons is not as bad as space, but, it can still cause issues if not properly braced against. Low gee also affects round trajectories with less pull to ground.

Pressure

High and low pressures cause a variety of effects to projectiles. Decreasing and increasing range, friction effects, area of effect weapons radius and effect can be both increased and decreased. As with most hazardous environments any damage taken to a suit can be catastrophic. RCC has a variety of techniques to disrupt an enemy's life support systems.

Radiation

Radioactive zones can really restrict operations. Although it is not common to operate on naturally radioactive planets, it is a risk that an enemy uses nuclear weapons against the UK. Decontamination activities must be carried out reducing the number of operational soldiers.

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