I may procrastinate alot, but I always update my things... eventually
I'll give this a bump so I can find this easier. The SL forum is about dead, but I'll continue on this thread now that Battlegrinder updated his story.
If none of you know of this yet, I have a thread going over the bosses in AL in detail. See the "AL Boss Compendium" if you like this here or AL itself.
Scorn Technology and Tactics
Technology:
Most military forces are limited by the technology they have available, and the Scorn are no different. First off, Scorn military hardware is not significantly more advanced than the equipment fielded by the UC. The main reason I say this is because Scorn and UC technologies are compatible. Scorn armor and weapons can be upgraded using UC components and UC equipment (ex, lvl 40 customized armor/guns), and as we've seen on the UCS Savant and in Crusade, Scorn technology can be readily adapted to use UC plasma cell technology, or a reverse engineered derivative. If one side or the other had technology significantly more advanced than the other, that wouldn't be possible. Imagine trying to upgrade a F-14 Tomcat using parts from an F6F Hellcat. The two planes had been built by the same company, but a mere 30 years’ time made them completely incompatible.
Scorn infantry hardware appears to be inferior to the bleeding edge, customized equipment used by mercenaries (a Voleria run isn't much harder if you use level 39 UC gear instead of level 40 Scorn gear, and pink grade UC weapons are as good or better than Scorn equipment), but Scorn equipment may have an edge when pitted against the standard issue equipment of the UC military. I say may because Voleria is the only time the two militarily forces are known to have engaged one another, and it's impossible to tell if the UC lost because of inferior hardware or because the Scorn had a massive advantage in aerospace technology and the element of surprise. The Scorn do possess a number of infantry technologies that UC forces appear to lack or do not commonly employ (high powered sniper rifles, grenades, deployable force fields, jetpacks, landmines), but the combat utility of such equipment is suspect. Landmines and snipers are especially noteworthy, as both the mines and targeting crosshairs are easy to spot. This is most likely because UC sensor technology is able to detect and warn soldiers of landmines, which would explain why the Scorn stop using them as the war goes on. The targeting crosshairs are likely part of an active scanning system built into the sniper rifles, and UC sensors can likewise detect such emissions and warn troops were the snipers are aiming (and given how long it takes snipers to line up a shot, it's also possible the UC ECM technology can interfere with said scanning systems). The bottom line is that the Scorn are on a roughly even footing with the UC when it comes to infantry.
The same cannot be said of Scorn aerospace technology, which appears to be substantially better than anything the UC has to offer. On Voleria, Numa Prime, and STS-25, Scorn aircraft seem to operate unopposed. On Voleria, the initial Scorn attack appears to have crippled local air assets (shot-down UC aircraft are scattered all over the area) and even after the UC launches are counter-attack the Scorn are able to freely reinforce their infantry forces and make bombing runs, so the UC's efforts to deal with hostile aircraft were clearly ineffective. Deploying transport aircraft in contested airspace is extremely hazardous, so it’s unlikely that the Scorn would have dropped reinforcements so freely if the transports were likely to get shot down. The same pattern repeated itself on Numa, with Scorn aircraft freely dropping off troops all over the area. It’s worth noting that the Scorn did not employ bomber aircraft on Numa Prime, most likely because bombers might damage the terrain in the area and make moving around the plateau difficult. I’ve done some hiking around the Grand Canyon (where the terrain reasonably similar to that of Numa Prime), and adding a bunch of bomb craters to the trails would not have made hiking any easier.
The Scorn have a very strange approach when it comes to building and deploying armored vehicles. They have several variants of the “Golem” that seem to act as high powered anti-infantry units, and they have creatures like Durrex, which act more like tanks. We’ve seen three different versions of the Golem, all of which heavily armored melee combatants. The Voleria Golem (and likely the Savant variant) was at least air-droppable, and may have been able to fly under its own power, while the Numa Prime Golem lacked the hovering and jet propulsion technology of the other two, instead being a bipedal unit. None of the Golems were used in a conventional infantry support role, instead they acted as guards for sensitive or strategically vital areas. Durrex appears to be a hybrid of Scorn mauler/breathers and Vular tanks, fused with advanced weapons and armor. Durrex’s tail cannon is way to lethal to be intended for anti-infantry use, so he was mostly likely designed to engage hostile vehicles and other armored threats.
The Scorn have advanced bio-technology. Breathers, Maulers, (hereafter referred to as “bio-constructs” or bio-cons) and even Durrex appear to have been genetically engineering. Bio-constructs seem to share some traits with creatures Native to Numa Prime, while Durrex appears to have been created based on Vular DNA. Numa Prime had a small population of Vular along with the burrowing creatures that seem to share a lineage with bio-constructs, so it may be that the Scorn collected some samples of the local wildlife from Numa at some point.
Scorn Tactics:
The Scorn military seems to be an entirely airborne force. Every type of infantry, creature, specialist unit, vehicle, and type of equipment has been deployed by air (with the exception of Durrex) one at least one occasion.
Scorn infantry frequently deploy from low flying aircraft or use jetpacks to drop down onto the battlefield. This deployment system may explain why the Scorn use infantry deployed force fields instead of constructing more solid physical barriers, namely that the weight and bulk of such equipment makes it difficult for the Scorn to air-drop it. Most Scorn infantry squads have far more specialist personal (like snipers and heavy weapons troopers) than is standard for current military units, but it’s possible that Scorn tactical doctrine is different than that used by human forces. However, a more likely scenario is that a normal Scorn squad has only a few specialist personal attached to it, but because said specialists are much tougher than standard troops, they make up a much larger percentage of active combat troops late in a campaign (you’ll notice that there a lot of dead Scorn troopers on the beaches of Voleria, but very few heavy weapon’s troopers or snipers).
Scorn bio-constructs are also deployed from above, but they use a different method than soldiers. Bio-cons used something along the lines of Halo style ODST drop pods when deploying on Voleria. Bio-cons were not used during the Numa Prime conflict, most likely because (like ODST drop pods) the deployment system they use was not accurate enough to land them on the narrow plateaus that make up much of Numa Prime’s surface, and the Scorn were not willing to randomly fire dozens of bio-cons in the hopes that one or two would land near hostile forces. Oddly, Zyra Roh does deploy via drop pod, indicated that either the pods used by elite troops are more accurate than the ones used by bio-cons, or that the situation was so desperate that the Scorn had no choice but drop one of their best warriors and hope for the best. Given that Roh was deployed to the widest point on the plateau, the latter situation is more likely.
Scorn heavy units, like Golems, are not usually deployed in an offensive manner, instead being relegated to defensive and guarding actions. The Golems are clearly able to deploy from above (Governor Underwood found this out the hard way), and the models deployed to Voleria and the UCS Savant were clearly equipped with some variant of jetpack technology, so it seems odd that such powerful weapons are not used on the frontlines. However, it’s possible that the jetpack and hover technology built into the Voleria golem were actually descent gear, intended to allow the Golem to decelerate as it dropped to the ground. It so, that would explain why Golems are not used offensively. Golems have limited all-terrain capabilities, and likely require specialized transport craft to deploy and recover them. Since Scorn military tactics seem to be based around rapidly deploying and redeploying combat units, incorporating a unit like the Golem into such operations would be difficult.
The central theme underlying these specific tactical situations is offense. The Scorn rarely employ defensive weapons or technologies. Voleria had been fortified, but during that conflict the Scorn had the specific goal of doing whatever it was they were doing with the Beacon, plus they’d taken losses during the initial attack, and they were trying to withstand the full force of a UC counter-attack. Under those circumstances, digging in was the only reasonable choice. However, in later attacks the Scorn tactics changed, into what I believe to be their normal operating procedures. The Numa Prime and STS-25 attacks lacked several elements that had been common on Voleria. Defensive turrets were missing, along with the lightweight barricades employed at Voleria, and the Scorn ground presence was mostly limited to small patrols, with the bulk of the invasion force deployed in the area. Mines were also missing, which may have been because UC technology was able to effectively counter them at Voleria, but another possibility is because mines are a defensive weapon, which would be of little during an offensive. The last piece of evidence for the offensive theory is that all Scorn equipment seems to be designed for offensive functionality. Scorn turrets have small, spindly legs, which hint that the turrets are intended to be mobile and easy to deploy, unlike UC turrets which are far larger, far bulkier, and are built with massive bases, illustrating that UC turrets are defensive weapons. Additionally, the Scorn force field generators are small, lightweight devices carried and deployed by individual trooper, and given how quickly the field they project is, they are clearly designed to provide only a brief respite from opposing fire (and thus encouraging troops to keep moving). Finally, Scorn grenades are fairly weak devices, with a blast radius of only a few yards, showing that they are equivalent to modern offensive grenades, and are designed to be have a small blast radius that prevents the thrower from being killed by his own weapon (as opposed to defensive grenades, which have blast radius of up to 25 yards). All these elements indicate that the Scorn usually employ pure offensive tactics (and more disturbingly, they suggest that Voleria was only a UC victory because the Scorn were operating in an unfamiliar tactical mindset, a suggestion backed up by the string of successful Scorn offensives).