Babel Armed Military Force - 'BAMF''s Offensive Shock Troopers are the heavy infantry of the Remnant Conglomerate's armed forces specialized to fight an engagement via overwhelming assault. They are often better trained and equipped than other marines and are made up of veterans from all over BAMF, and expected to take heavy casualties even in successful operations. To achieve this OST are organized for mobility with the intention that they will penetrate enemy defenses and attack just into an enemy's front lines or their vulnerable rear areas.
To this end, the OST are the primary users of specialized equipment and weapons tailored around dancing the knife-edge of offering maximum damage output and survivability.
OST receive months of intense training in specialized units within a shock corps due to the high attrition of their profession requiring not only rapid replenishment at a moments notice but also for trainees to have hands-on experience that can only be found outside of controlled environments to prepare them for the eventualities and reality of OST life and warfare.
In training, which usually takes around three months consists of grueling physical work and training to prepare them for the heavy Einherjar armor each of them aspires to be capable of wielding. To offset more than just physical training OST recruits are trained in complex obstacle courses and specialized movement training to put in place a strong sense of direction and control for the use of the OST's staple maneuver gear each of them will use in combat.
Being thrown or jumping from tall objects, structures, and obstacles with the maneuver gear, as well as long marches and runs to properly get a feel for the anti-grav maneuver gear and how it offsets the movement and range of movement of an individual are key and recruits often wear their maneuver gear with their daily training lives until it becomes an extension of their body and actions leading them into the next phase of their training in squad tactics, in which teamwork is a priority. In one example, remaining candidates are to don a full set of OST training gear and are given weapons loaded with tactical training rounds, and are then thrown out of Griffin transports directly behind a veteran OST company already expecting them. The recruits must then perform a series of objectives under the assumption that their EI(Enemy infantry) is unaware of their drop.
Recruits must then proceed to perform these objectives as their veteran counterparts adapt and encircle them putting increasing stress on them such as fielding overwhelming numbers, Mechs, etc. as a drill instructor within the group gauges their every response to the deteriorating tactical conditions until the OST trainees are eventually overwhelmed and forced into checkmate.
From there, trainees are put immediately into more and more follow-up scenarios without rest and with increasingly dwindling supplies and swapping out their team members for those with other teams and set with varying objectives and pre-determined outcomes of success or failure. The mental and physical stress and fatigue of this process often causes the most washouts of the program while curating those with the mental faculties to withstand constant deployments into high-stress environments with constant attrition and loss; A constant encounter in deployment in OST warfare being the high death rate and attrition of OST corps and the constant loss of comrades and the ability to instantly mesh and meld with new comrades after experiencing the loss of old ones to ensure that OST marines are not subject to the attitude of becoming bitter loners but instead that they will come to terms with this reality and strive harder to keep each and every new comrade alive.
Additional training is completed within their corps as OST rookies are integrated into the unit where they will augment veteran OST marines in lighter and medium OST armors to support and backup their heavier veteran counterparts who take the brunt of the fire until they too someday are seasoned enough to wear the Einherjar armor.
OST is more than just jumping out of griffins or from starships. An OST corps is an entire marine corps with roles ranging from cavalry mechs to light recon with the ground pounders falling from orbit being only one facet of their force.
Drop Troopers are what everyone thinks when they picture OST. Marines in shock armor falling from the skies and jumping about and into enemy positions to create maximum carnage. While every marine in an OST corps who holds a weapon is drop-trained only a portion of the corps actually wields maneuver gear. Most shock corps has two battalions(1,500-2,000 marines average battalion size) that each has 2-4 drop companies of 200-250 marines per company which are drop-designated and equipped with OST armor and maneuver gears and perform the duty while the other half of the corps battalions are based around more conventional warfare such as standard infantry, cavalry, etc. Who deploy after and behind the drop-equipped battalions and often punch through the weakened defenses in the chaos their forward battalions drop-troopers create.
Drop troopers in these battalions and companies are issued Maneuver gears, and either light, medium or heavy OST armor and are extremely mobile with little more support than often light vehicles or the occasional light and scout-mechs.
The average drop-trooper has a variety of roles and equipment to go along with it.
OST 'Shock' is the standard marines. Equipped with medium OST drop armor they drop from orbit or jump across the battlefield on their maneuver gears and tear apart their enemies in close contact with weapons such as the Fausthammer OST rifle, Gjallahorn 20mm, the OST boarding ax, etc. They often wear the standard BAMF OST Medium drop armor.
Pathfinders are specialized lightly armed and equipped drop troopers who specialize in recon, scouting, intelligence gathering, and sabotage. Unlike the usual specialty of OSt drop troopers they are often inserted ahead of their battalion days or sometimes weeks in advance to scout terrain, geography, the local climate, and the local population in advance of the main force. Their intelligence is often uplinked to ships in orbit or small satellite decoys smaller than a suitcase that drifts in orbit around a target and transmits the data to friendly BAMF vessels when they arrive.
Contrary to popular belief pathfinders are not assassins or stealth specialists or even raiders unlike members of the special projects group, and are not trained for any such roles. Their job is to properly mark and guide their comrades in advance of their drop to ensure the best possible assault and when regrouping with the main force act as guides and specialists for the main force.
Pathfinders wear light OST drop armor and often are equipped with weapons such as the Fausthammer OST rifle, and the Longinus anti-material rifle.
Heavy assault OST marines are those veterans or specialists who wield the heavy OST armor and weapons and have the best combat experience and instincts in their company. Assault OST are the hammer that falls on the enemy of the Lady and rarely leave any survivors. Due to the more powerful servos in their heavier armor Assault, OST marines often carry heavier weapons such as the Caladbolg Heavy Machinegun, the Huilu flamethrower, the and the OST Boarding Ax, etc.
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