Gaiaterra: Elysea's Conflict/Katyusha MRL

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The Katyusha MRL is the of the Socialist Union of Voshkod. This unit is planned to be voiced by

History
"She isn't one of your half-baked rocket launchers. Katya is the real dealie. She'll fire more rockets in a day than you could hope to fire in a month."

-Disgruntled Katyusha veteran to V4 operator

In 1951, barely a few months after the first regiments of the Voshkod Black Guard shipped out to the front, a special unit of that organization became the first to test a new and experimental weapon on the field of battle.

The results were devastating, ending in the decimation of a massive concentration of Elven troops, tanks, and vehicles and the chaotic retreat of the panicked survivors. Pleased by the success of the weapon’s first deployment, Stalin was quick to authorize full-scale production of the new BM-12 multiple rocket launcher.

Soon, the regiments of the Black Guard were making extensive use of these new artillery pieces. Though the launchers couldn’t fire as many projectiles as a conventional field gun could over an extended period of time, the BM-12’s ability to deliver such a large quantity of explosives in a short window of time appealed to the Black Guard. More importantly, however, was the sheer terror value of such a weapon.

Though initially under exclusive Black Guard control, Stalin would later allow units of the regular army to employ the launchers as well. As such, though in time the Black Guard would fall, the BM-12 would continue to see regular service with the Voshkod Army, and by the end of the war conventional guns were falling out of favor with the Voshkod.

As time progressed, the original BM-12 was replaced with newer, superior iterations, the latest of which is the BM-33 Katyusha MRL. Consisting of a rack of forty 122mm high explosive rockets mounted on a general purpose truck, the design of the Katyusha improves upon its predecessor in terms of reload time, payload capacity, and the quantity of high explosives packed into each rocket. In addition, Katyushas are also issued with a supply of electroshock mines, along with an automated mine dispenser—an innovation introduced after a Katyusha driver managed to deter pursuit by Allied forces with the aid of a crate of mines that he come into possession of due to a logistical mess-up. In addition to damaging enemies when they detonate, the electroshock mines also release electrical discharges that slow targets by throwing engine piston firing sequences out of time and make it unsafe to operate weapons for a short time.

Though the platform is only marginally better protected than its predecessor, this is an intentional tradeoff--by mounting the rockets on a truck rather than an armored chassis, the Voshkod can produce more Katyushas for less, allowing them to amass them in bulk more easily. Though there are those in the Voshkod Army who argue that rocket launchers like the V4 or more conventional field guns are superior, proponents of multiple rocket launchers point to the destructive capability of the Katyusha, something which has been demonstrated dozens of times during the Third World War.