Thread: Twilight 2025
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Old 08-14-2018, 09:38 PM
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ChalkLine ChalkLine is offline
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Okay, here's my idea of where the differences between modern warfare and twilight warfare are plus some key events that will shape change in the T2k world.

Cold War gone Hot
The initial war is much like we expect and have planned for. Main force units meet in a series of clashes of mobility and firepower. Technological edges are used to their extreme limit. The destructive power of each combat arm is massively multiplied causing immense damage to the combatants.

Back to WW2 and The Missile Drought
The hectic pace of operations and the staggering losses to all facets of the armed forces starts to slow the pace of operations. The high tech weapons, carefully stockpiled before the war, are expended faster than they can be restocked as strategic warfare is practiced. Soon things like ATGMs start to become scarce when their field expenditure is many times higher than has been predicted. The initial Orbital War destroys the satellite system and GPS is only available via ground based towers. The trend swings away from high tech solutions to straight out military effort. At this point the mandatory conscription of combatants is practiced right across the globe.

Back even further to WW1 and The Fuel Drought
Soon strategic warfare has destroyed the upper end of prewar technological capability. Fuels become scarce and hard decisions are made to maintain production of lower rated fuels, lubricants and plastics at the cost of high rating fuels. Aircraft become rarer to extremely scarce. Air-mobility ends as a military concept while a new generation of fuel-efficient aircraft are introduced.
On the ground the lack of fuels means the two greatest breakers of the Trench Deadlock; tanks and aircraft, become scarce. With the difficulties supplying the troops static warfare starts to become the norm. Troops are incapable of moving more than 20km across the battlefield in a day. Still, command attempts to maintain manouevre warfare if at all possible. in some fringe theatres horse-drawn and horse mounted troops reappear.

The Collapse or Back to Vietnam
Bio-weapons, natural diseases, chemical and nuclear weapons thin out the troops to fractions of the numbers used in the height of the war. Static combat lines falter and break with the lack of troops to maintain them. Rather than long trench lines new 'fire base' cantons appear that try to project control around their surrounding areas. Command finally collapses under the strain of trying to feed the troops and the war is seen as not only unwinnable but possibly unsurvivable. Cantons start to protect local civilians and contract into small federations that occasionally undertake common objectives in the summer to acquire strategic stocks to better survive winter. Troops now protect civilians and may or may not be part of the small communities' health and education systems, if any.
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