Renegade Legion

Interceptor was the first game of the Renegade Legion series, and was based on single- or two-crewmember starfighter combat. A second Edition of the game was announced but not published. Interceptor used a complex diagram of ship systems to track internal damage; this feature proved difficult for players to use and was not carried into the other games of the series.

Centurion, the second in the Renegade Legion series, covered ground combat. The primary units were high-speed antigravity tanks; the game also included ground vehicles, artillery, and infantry.

Leviathan covered capital ship combat. The starfighters from Interceptor were represented not as individual units, but as whole squadrons launched from massive starships. While Leviathan used the same template-based damage resolution mechanic as the other games, the templates were much less complex.

Prefect was a more traditional wargame with large fold-out maps and hundreds of small cardboard counters, that shifted the action from the tactical level to the operational and involved the invasion of an entire star system. The player of Prefect was a high-level commander in either the TOG or Commonwealth forces and controlled thousands of ships, tanks and soldiers fighting over multiple worlds and millions of miles of space.

Circus Imperium was the fifth of the Renegade Legion board games published by FASA, but unlike the others in the series, this tongue-in-cheek game of chariot racing was played strictly for laughs. The game involved anti-grav chariots being pulled by carnivorous beasts, with the object of the game to defeat the other racers, usually by knocking them out of the race or getting them eaten by the monsters. Outcomes of player actions were often random and unpredictable, and players could get points for eliciting laughs or the loudest cheers from other gamers. Ral Partha produced a series of lead figures for the game, including chariots, senators and imperial guards. Older catalogs have had these figures present as items available to order but in the exchange of BattleTech figures the Identifiers have changed. There were 3 variants under the old Ral Partha banner dependent on country of purchase.

Legionnaire was the role-playing game (RPG) set in the Renegade Legion universe. It expanded the original Renegade Legion setting with three new alien races: the Menelvagoreans, the Vauvusar, and the Zog.

One of the most common technologies of the setting are anti-gravity devices that allow planetary vehicles, starfighters, and other machines to fly. The largest vehicles are corvette class starships used as scouts, couriers, and landing craft. The main unit of the armies of Renegade Legion are grav tanks, grav APC's for transporting infantry, and Bounce Infantry that use grav belts to enable them to jump long distances even while fully loaded. Gravity control is even used for nuclear devices in the form of a device known as a HELL bomb. The bomb instantaneously increases the local gravity to such an extent that nearby matter undergoes nuclear fusion and explodes.

Because of the use of Grav vehicles, roads are not nearly as important to armies of the Renegade Legion setting. Rivers often become major routes of travel as they are clear of obstructions. Tank battles can also occur far out at sea, as grav tanks fly above the surface of the ocean, popping up from the troughs of large waves and exchanging fire with the enemy forces. However, the altitude limit of anti-gravity is usually several hundred feet, and the top speed is 500 miles per hour at that altitude. Flying a few feet above the ground is safer as grav vehicles are vulnerable to hits from below, and this also slows their top speed as they avoid crashing into terrain.

The visual art style of Renegade legion most often depicts grav vehicles as having a box shaped hull with two downward sloping prong bow section with upturned tips. Frequently a large cannon is fitted into the hull between the bow prongs, as well as a turret with secondary weapons on top of the box hull.

Another common weapon, but best known in the Renegade Legion setting for being a source of misery. The crystals used to make the lasers are mined on various planets, but the crystals are toxic and mining them in the TOG is done with slave labor, often in a penal unit as punishment. Very large lasers are the Main armament of Starships and group-fired in large batteries (or bays) of 10-100 guns each. These guns range from 7.6 cm (3") to 37.5 cm (15") in diameter. Smaller ships (fighters or ground vehicles) are limited to the 7.6 cm as their maximum with smaller weapons available.

Military forces in the Renegade Legion setting make extensive use of electromagnetic projectile weapons, variously referred to as "mass drivers" or "gauss cannons". These weapons range in size from infantry small arms to massive short-range weapons mounted in the bows of some starships, known as "spinal Mounts" they are referred to by crews as 'Crowbars' and used to open massive holes in the armor of ships that wander too close across their bow. These weapons are not available for ships configured as Fighter Carriers. Smaller weapons of up to 20 cm (8") are carried by ground vehicles as their main armament. these weapons can cripple enemy vehicles with as little as 1 hit, though usually more are needed.

Military forces in the Renegade Legion setting also commonly use guided missiles of various types. Most starships carry mass volleys of powerful anti-ship missiles, Ground vehicles use smaller missiles of 2 type a laser-enhanced missile used to penetrate armor, also used by infantry, and a submunitions missile used to weaken armor ahead of other weapons. Fighter doctrine varies, the RL have missiles but tends to prefer weapons with more battlefield endurance such as lasers and mass-drivers, while the TOG prefers large missile volleys as their main fighter weapons, with other weapons as backup, for use when the missiles run out.

Plasma and various variants of high energy weapons (Proton, electron, neutron particle guns, etc.) also exist with one of the best known types being the Thorium Plasma Projector.

Various weapons of mass destruction also exist including the THOR satellite system (orbital kinetic-bombardment) and the HELL bomb, which instantaneously increases the local gravity to such an extent that nearby matter undergoes nuclear fusion and explodes. HELL bombs are similar to 20th century nuclear weapons.

Ground combat in the Renegade Legion setting has a number of types of long-range fire support, including both indirect-fire artillery munitions and orbital kinetic-bombardment weapons (referred to as Thor satellites.)

Faster than light travel (FTL) is possible in Renegade legion by spaceships that enter Tachyon-space, also known as T-space. T-Space travel requires a ship to accelerate under computer control along a precise flight path before activating the T-space drive. Once inside T-space the ship cannot turn in any direction as T-space does not follow the normal laws of physics. In addition the energies involved will build up within the solid matter of the ship and crews, requiring no more than a month of travel in T-space before becoming dangerous. An equal amount of time must be spent in the real space to dissipate the energy, known as Shimmer Heat, so named for the visual shimmering effect crews can see when entering and leaving T-space. The ships of the Leviathan board game feature large fins on their hulls, and these are used to dissipate Shimmer Heat.

Exceeding the recommended maximum of one month in T-space will result in the over-charged solid matter exploding.

The faster than light (FTL) communication related to T-space travel. The range is limited, but it is possible to communicate with nearby star systems. The devices are small enough to fit onto small spaceships. However, the P-comm cannot be used while actually traveling in T-space.

VLCA stands for (Very Large Communications Array) and is the fastest communications technology available. Only the TOG possesses this technology, which requires huge surface or orbital facilities. It can also be mounted on large, specialized starships. The arrays are large space stations and can transmit and receive over far greater distances than the P-comm devices, even across the entire Milky Way galaxy. This allowed the Republic/TOG government to make use of smaller forces for maximum effect than their enemies using only P-comm system. However, they are quite large and must operate by line of sight to other known relay stations, rendering them useless on moving starships, or starships not at their assigned coordinates.

Most military vehicles, ships, and fighters are equipped with invisible energy shields. They deflect incoming attacks, though their protection is based on their flicker rate. Shields cannot run continuously, so instead they cycle on and off many times a second. A fixed percentage of attacks are rendered harmless due to their flicker rates, and higher quality shields have a better ratio of on-cycles to off-cycles when compared to low quality shields. However, shields have limitations beyond this. In grav tank battles the solid metal rounds fired by main gun/Gauss cannon are not affected by shields, as well as Thor satellite attacks and nuclear detonations. Lasers, missiles, and infantry weapons are potentially stopped by shields, or hit with full impact depending if the shield was on or off at the moment of impact.

Shields are also directional. A ship or tank can have very powerful shields in one direction, but weak or even no shields in another direction. Grav vehicles usually have weak shield below them to save weight, and simply fly very close to the ground to avoid being hit in this weak spot.

Legionnaire was the name of the role-playing game set in the Renegade Legion universe. While designed primarily as a stand-alone game, it could be integrated into the board games in the series, with stat conversions and guidelines for players who wished to do so.

In addition to the board games and the role-playing game, two computer games set in this universe were published by Strategic Simulations, Inc. Renegade Legion: Interceptor was a straight translation of the turned-based board game of the same name, and allowed two players to fight each other with a squadron of starfighters. The Interceptor computer game also contained a ship creation generator, providing players the ability to produce custom ships.

The second game was called Renegade: the Battle for Jacob's Star. This game deviated from the Interceptor game system by becoming a space dogfighting simulator, very similar to Wing Commander.

A sequel to this game, titled Renegade II: Return to Jacob's Star, was near enough to completion to be reviewed in professional gaming magazines,[2] but was never released. Next Generation reviewed the PC version of the game, rating it two stars out of five, and stated that "In its defense, Renegade 2 has succeeded in cutting down load times, and the high-res graphics are gorgeous without the need for the kind of horsepower required for Origin's latest, Wing Commander IV. Still, none of this is enough to keep Renegade 2 from being anything but a mediocre game at best."[2]

Nightshift games had given Don Gallagher the task of evolving the background as well as revising Interceptor into the long-announced 2nd Edition and creating the announced Phalanx board game.

In his proposal for the background, TOG collapsed and a new human ./. Kess Rith-conflict ensued. In Fan circles, this was received with mixed emotions, and many fans continue to play in the old storyline.

Interceptor, 2nd Edition abolished the flow chart-like internal damage system, in effect making it to "Centurion in Space". The completed rules have been released freely onto the internet, and have a certain following, but never existed as a published work in book format.

Phalanx was to be the game of individual combat, like Battletroops in Battletech or DMZ in Shadowrun. Luc Nadon and Dallen Masters did a playtest version that differed heavily from the Battletroops rules, in effect making Phalanx a tabletop game. No more than a HTML-ed playtest version exists. There is talk on the fanbase to merge the existing Phalanx and Sam Lewis' Battletroops into a Centurion-compatible game; the realisation status of this is unknown.