Unreviewed High Republic Heavy Combat Engineer Company

[Dacian Quee-Paddox]

OUT OF CHARACTER INFORMATION

• Intent: To provide the High Republic with a combat engineer unit
• Image Credit: Image generated through Grok
• Role: Heavy Combat Engineers
• Permissions: N/A
• Links: The High Republic

GENERAL INFORMATION

• Unit Name: High Republic Heavy Combat Engineer Company (HCECs)
• Affiliation: The High Republic (sponsored by Lucerne Labs, Lucerne Personal Defense, and Lucerne Biological Systems - Unit bought from company, and decided to sponsor them afterwards)
• Classification: Combat Engineer Company
• Description: Small numbers of specialist troops can sometimes make or break a battle due to their special abilities, and the High Republic's Heavy Combat Engineer Companies (HCECs) are a good example of a unit who consistently do this. Highly trained in technical engineering tasks and extensively equipped with a variety of construction and demolition technology, these combat engineers can rapidly build field fortifications reinforced with explosive mines and obstacles, demolish standing structures, and repair vehicles in the field. While these tasks are common to many combat engineers, HCECs take these abilities to the next level by using cutting edge technology and a grueling education system. Each soldier is equipped with specialized engineering power armor that grants them great strength and the ability to use multiple tools at once while they work alongside teams of dedicated engineering and utility droids. Dozens of portable molecular furnaces allow engineers to supplement the supplies they bring by converting local materials into anything from durasteel rebar and duracrete slurry to fuel and explosives. Each Heavy Combat Engineer Company also brings unusual tunneling Sarlacc-class Special Purpose Vehicles and terraforming Kybuck-class Chemical Response Vehicles, which allows the group to shape the battlefield in ways that most combat engineering units simply cannot do. While HCERs can provide impressive technical abilities in the middle of a battlefield, they are not dedicated combat units themselves, and typically are accompanied by more dedicated infantry and armor units on the battlefield. Few of those units ever doubt the ability of the HCERs after working alongside them, and HCECs enjoy an enviable reputation within the Grand Army for their technical skills.

COMBAT INFORMATION:

• Unit Size: Medium
• Unit Availability: Uncommon
• Unit Experience: Veteran
• Equipment:
• Kreetle-class Drop Miners (when deploying onto hostile worlds)
• 20 Sarlacc-class Special Purpose Vehicles
• 12 Kybuck-class Chemical Response Vehicles
• 20 Thrinx-class Utility Speeders filled with mission specific supplies
• All troops: 1 set of Burowga-class Combat Engineer Armor, 1 LPD-45 Firespray Shotgun with TruSight-series Multi-Optic Sight, 1 L4 Adjutor-class Combat Utility Droid
• Typical HCEC Squad layout with equipment
  • Command Element
    • 1 Sergeant: 1 Fornax-series Portable Molecular Furnace, 1 Droch-series Individual Field Disruptor
    • 1 L5 Cunicularius Field Engineer Droid
  • Engineering Team Aurek
    • 2 Construction Engineers: LPD-76 Nova Edge Therm Hatchets, cans of corellian epoxy, cans of insulfoam, various bi-state memory plastic prefabricated shapes, rolls of Plasto-canvas
    • 2 Repair Engineers: Levare-series AntiGrav Lifts, vehicle tool kits, computer tool kits, animated metal sealant cans, foamcast cans
  • Sapper Team Besh
    • 2 Offensive Sappers: 2 LPD-36 Fire Pillar Detonation Charges, 8 7-PrG Proton Grenades, Quickflash burning gel, 1 X5R Demolitions Kit
    • 2 Defensive Sappers: 2 LPD-80 Stormsteel Fragmentation Mines, 8 LPD-68 Hammerblast Mines, 1 X5R Demolitions Kit, spools of monafilament wire
• Combat Function: Heavy Engineering Companies do not fill the typical direct combat roles of most other ground units. Instead, their role might be better understood as conducting engineering operations that happen to occur in combat environments. To that end, every combat engineer actually starts out as an engineering technician generalist during training, with every combat engineer capable of performing some basic construction and repair work as well as using explosives both defensively and offensively. After this basic training, they specialize further into being construction engineers, repair engineers, offensive sappers, and defensive sappers. This means that every squad is relatively flexible when being tasked with missions, as the specialists in a certain field can direct the others in conducting the basics of their craft without having to directly oversee every single action. As an example of this, a construction engineer could instruct an offensive sapper to weld sections of framework for a new building and not have to worry about the basic quality of the work, even if the sapper would not understand the finer points of field architecture in a certain environment. Consequently, every squad member is expected to and can contribute something to the mission, even if it is outside their normal specialization. This small level unit flexibility has been key to the unit's success, as it allows squads to individually quickly react to changing environments, even if the Heavy Engineering Company's command is known for reacting slowly to rapidly changing battlefields. When tasked with construction work, squads typically use vehicles and droids to rapidly excavate foundations, tunnels, and other earthworks before using a number of prefabricated parts and multipurpose materials to combine with locally gathered materials to make a structure. With some time, portable molecular furnaces can provide additional specialized materials that were impractical for the engineers to come with or find in an austere environment, such as durasteel rebar or duracrete slurry. Thus, with time, the engineers can turn basic field expedient structures into full-fledged galactic standard buildings. Repair work on existing structures, vehicles, and other technologies is very similar to construction work. Repair engineers typically rely on a small number of spare parts, basic materials, and common tools to fix and maintain the technological marvels while molecular furnaces are put to use to build further spare parts and materials. Offensive sapping operations is probably the least complex tasks, as sappers typically dig to their targets via construction droids or tunneling vehicles before precisely placing explosives to defeat enemy fortifications and vehicles. When conducting these missions, combat utility droids assigned to each trooper are sometimes used to place explosives far away from the engineers, or to act as mobile bombs, further enhancing the reach of HCERs. Defensive sapping work is only slightly more complicated, as not only are explosives placed to take advantage of the terrain to help defend areas, but defensive sappers often shape the terrain and add further obstacles and traps to stymie enemy advances. When conducting sapper operations, each squad's molecular furnace is typically used to make combustible fuel and explosives to supplement the explosives brought by the engineers onto the battlefield. While Combat Engineers do focus mostly on the engineering aspect of their work, they can fight if need be. When forced to fight, the Combat Engineers prefer to use explosives, traps, and obstacles to wear down their opponents before engaging them in close quarters combat, where their shotguns are exceptionally powerful and the brute strength of their power armor can allow engineers to overcome their opponents in melee combat.
• Force Abilities (Force User Units Only): N/A

Strengths:

• Quick Builders: Heavy Engineering Companies can build some impressive structures, especially underground and earthen structures, in relatively short periods of time thanks to their vehicles, engineering droids, explosives, and tools. It's not uncommon for a series of trenches and underground rooms reinforced by minefields, monofilament wire obstacles, and local shield generators (from the Sarlacc-class Special Purpose Vehicles) to be ready in a half hour. Given more time and materials fed through their Portable Molecular Furnaces, Heavy Engineering companies can make more complex structures, ranging from bridges spanning across water and simple housing structures for other soldiers and displaced civilians to resilient fortresses and ornate municipal buildings.
• Environmental Shapers: Heavy Engineering Companies cannot only build artificial structures, but they can also shape the environment itself, such as by destroying existing structures with carefully placed explosives, by moving earth around through vehicles and droids, and even by altering the atmosphere and local temperatures with Kybuck-class Chemical Response Vehicles.

Weaknesses:

• Defensive Fighters: Direct fighting is very much a tertiary concern with the Heavy Engineers, as exemplified with the unit being issued with only one type of ranged weapon: a shotgun, which is known for taking less skill to hit with than most other guns. Engineers typically only fight indirectly and defensively by using explosives, traps, and shaping the terrain to their advantage. If forced into direct combat, their shotguns are powerful if short-ranged threat.
• Supine Tactical Leadership: Combat is not something that interests most of these unit's leadership, who are typically much more involved and inclined to focus on the technical skills of their trades. With such a lack of interest and time invested in combat leadership, it is unsurprising that Heavy Engineering companies have a reputation for reacting sluggishly as a whole unit to rapid changes on the battlefield.

HISTORICAL INFORMATION
Combat Engineering as a trade has existed for almost as long as fighting has: even in low tech warfare, forts and booby traps can present significant challenges to attacking forces, who in turn have their own specialists who have to develop ways to overcome these defensive barriers. As years passed and technology progressed, combat engineering evolved too to include the use of explosives and dizzying array of construction equipment and materials. Combat engineer units constantly evolved to the point where they would be unrecognizable to their direct predecessors. The militaries of the worlds of the High Republic are no different, and many combat engineering units within the local defense forces have storied histories that can reach back thousands of years. With their inclusion into the High Republic, some of these worlds took a look at their periodic need to reequip their forces to meet current galactic standards, and opted to work together and with the Lucerne Labs consortium to create a more standardized engineering force. The resulting Heavy Combat Engineering Companies are large enough to tackle many construction jobs by themselves, but still small and mobile enough that they can be rapidly deployed. High Republic Heavy Engineering Companies typically accompany other High Republic forces onto the battlefield, where they act as force multipliers to either increase the defenses of other forces by rapidly constructing fortifications and repairing equipment, or offensively to breach through enemy fortifications and alter the environment to the advantage of the High Republic. While the engineers have not impressed their counterparts with their direct combat skills, they have become known for some impressive feats of quick engineering among the High Republic's Grand Army.