Designation:Relaug Advanced Officer's Pod |
|
||||
|
|||||
 |
|||||
 |  |  |  |  |  |
| Total Height (without antenna): | 15.9 m |
| Total Height (with antenna): | 17.7 m |
| Total Depth: | 9.9 m |
| Total Breadth : | 5.7 m |
| Weight: | 49.5 metric tons |
Note: all plasma-shock expansion engined draw their plasma from a single fusion pile.
(*) Terran designation. The Tirolian designers considered the sensors part of the design and did not assign separate designations for these systems.
The armor of the Relaug is composed of an advanced titanium-steel alloy. The armor stops all small arms and heavy infantry weapons fire, provides reasonable resistance to light mecha-mounted weaponry, such as the Zentraedi 22.3mm HE autocannon round, and poor resistance to medium mecha-mounted weaponry, such as the Valkyrie's 55mm APFSDS round, if the latter strikes perpendicular. Due to the sloping armor, incoming fire has a higher chance of a glancing hit.
The Relaug provides full protection from nuclear, biological, and chemical hazards, using a sealed cockpit environment. The internal consumables supplies can provide atmosphere for four days maximum.
The Relaug was the successor to the well-known Glaug command battlepods, and a contemporary of the Lotzor battlepod, which was intended to replace the signature Zentraedi Regult infantry mecha. The Relaug offered many advancements over the Glaug, including better armor, more capable armament, better C3I equipment and enhanced mobility. These enhancements did however cause a 20% increase in weight, and the heavier armament required additional power draws on the energizer system. The Relaug was therefore far more complex and drained its protoculture cannisters far faster than its Glaug predecessor.
The Relaug had a more angular body than the Glaug, and both a wider and shorter main body. The arms and legs were more sturdy than those of its predecessor, and the overall dimensions are smaller. This made for a smaller target, and also increased the armor protection by decreasing the vulnerable surfaces. Improvements in propulsion technology made the Relaug more mobile than its predecessor, with improved running speed, acceleration, delta-v capacity and control responsiveness.
The most obvious improvement lay in the armament. The large, high-mounted particle cannon of the Glaug was replaced with a turret mounting two rail cannons. This design feature was not adopted without argument, as the cannons had considerable recoil, and were placed in the worst location possible for stability. However, this problem was mostly solved with the incorporation of dedicated recoil compensation thrusters at the aft end of the gun barrels. In addition, the projectile weapons were far more reliable and had a larger range in adverse atmospheric conditions than the energy weapon they replaced. The guns were of the same caliber as the grenade throwers in the Queadluun-Rau and Nousjadeul-Ger power armors, but fired totally different ordnance. Specially developed for this mecha were a relatively heavy APFS round with maximum armor penetration and a plasma-tipped general purpose shell. The rail cannons fired these at very high velocities, and all this combined led to a gun system with effects beyond what was common for its caliber.
The second increase in firepower lay in the arm cannons. In place of the Glaug's two Makral Martszur-4 quad-barrel cannons, the Relaug mounted no less than four quintuple-barreled particle beam cannons. In addition to this large increase in the number of sub-barrels was a 40% increase in the yield of each sub-barrel. However, space considerations did lead to the removal of the light impact cannons from the arms; thus removing the secondary low-power requirement weapons from the arms. However, as long as the energizers had access to fresh protoculture cells, this was not am major problem. What was however unavoidable due to the shape of the armor slope and the space requirements of the nose sensors was the relocation of the light anti-personnel autocannons. It proved impossible to place these in a forward pointing position, and both guns were mounted between the engines, pointing aft and down. Their usefulness in this location was in severe doubt, and a redesign was prepared in which these cannons were deleted. However, this redesign never made it off the drawing screens.
Additionally, two rudimentary tri-digit hands were installed in the arm cannon mounts. These hands are not capable of holding gunpods, but can be used in the construction of makeshift fortifications, or for short duration transportation work. With their far wider reach and dexterity these hands are a major improvement over the Glaug, which only had two small winches attached to simple clamps.
Although close to hundreds of thousands of Relaug battlepods had been produced by the few converted secondary plants, the new battlepods remained a small fraction of the total number of Zentraedi mecha. In addition, the units that were equipped with the new mecha were invariably planetary garrisons near priority objects. In this way, the supply lines were simplified, and the advanced pods were distributed where they were believed to be able to do the most good. It is ironical that the most important battles took place over Earth, far from the planetary garrisons, and thus that the Relaug pods were never encountered in the Solar System.
Return to Zentraedi Mecha Index.
Return to Robotech Reference Guide Home Page.
Robotech (R) is the property of Harmony Gold. This document is in no way intended to infringe upon their rights.
Content by Pieter Thomassen, with Peter Walker and Rob Morgenstern