Arming the Collaborators

As has been often noted, Collaborator communities were one of the most effective weapons that the Invid had for hunting down and eliminating resistance groups. As humans, they had a far greater understanding of the resistance than the decidedly alien Invid could ever hope to manage. Furthermore, they could adapt themselves to suit their circumstances and level of involvement with the Invid. On top of that, a human community might outwardly appear harmless and non-threatening to resistance fighters, something that obviously the Invid were incapable of.

However, in order to enable their role, the Invid's collaborators would need access to weapons. This lead to the situation where the Invid obviously wanted a disarmed and pacified population, but at the same time needed to arm a segment of that population. As such, collaborators were allowed to possess weapons, as long as they did not try to use them against their Invid masters.

The most important restriction on what a collaborator community would be armed with was what the Invid would allow them to keep. This was generally quite restrictive, as the Invid did not usually allow their allies any weapons that could be used against them. This was as much to stop resistance groups from getting their hands on those weapons as it was to stop the collaborators from turning on the Invid themselves. And while the vast majority of the war materiel used by the Army of the Southern Cross and other armed forces had been destroyed during the invasion, there were still plenty of weapons in circulation, from small arms to Hover Tanks.

In general, the most common weapons used by collaborators were conventional projectile small arms.  Many of these were simple civilian weapons, like hunting rifles or shotguns that had been comparatively common in many communities even before the Invasion. Military-grade firearms were also commonly seen, usually looted from police or military armouries as well as scavenged from wrecks or even battlefields. The M-25 Wolverine assault rifle was one of the most commonly seen, but other firearms such as the submachine guns were also employed by their forces. Heavier weapons were far less common, but not unknown, although their use was often restricted.

Conversely, energy weapons were far less likely to be used by collaborator forces. There were two principal reasons for this omission. The first was that the Invid in general were a lot more wary about letting their supposedly loyal subjects carry energy weapons that could be potentially used against them. The second is that many collaborator communities lacked the resources and infrastructure to support the use of such weapons. With stable electrical supply being uncommon across Invid-occupied Earth, charging energy weapons was beyond many communities.

Body armour was far less common among collaborator forces, but not unheard of. Most collaborator groups that possessed armour usually only deployed low-end options such as police stab vests or the like. Others simply made do with improvised armour made from leather or even scrap metal. Military-grade body armour was rare, especially full-body suits such as Gusoku or CVR-3 armour. In a number of cases the leader of a force might have access to such armour, while everyone else was only lightly armoured or not at all.

The availability of vehicles could vary wildly between communities during the occupation, which also meant that there would be considerable variance between different collaborator groups. Typically such groups would use whatever vehicles were available, which usually amounted to civilian ground vehicles. Sometimes these would be modified with improvised weapon mounts, but these were rare. Some of these could even be purpose-designed, such as Norristown's police force, which possessed a fleet of pre-war Police trucks for maintaining order and hunting down resistance fighters.

Finally, while exceedingly rare, there were cases of collaborator groups being armed with heavier vehicles. At the largest extreme, the Ethiopian Freeholds fielded an army of armed 'Technicals' that mounted various scavenged weapons. These were accompanied by a small number of ancient LCAV-60 IFVs which had been inherited from their pre-war counterparts. Given the small Invid presence in the Horn of Africa, it is likely that the Freeholds were allowed to operate these weapons as proxies for the Invid. Even then, they were more often used to conquer surrounding communities then they were to hunt resistance fighters.

Anything heavier seems to have been forbidden by the Invid. This included tanks, any Mecha or any form of aircraft including helicopters or other VTOLs. These weapons, when found, were to be handed over to the Invid or destroyed on-site to prevent their use. The same applied to any related munitions or other equipment, such as missiles, explosives, mecha parts and so on. Any Protoculture cells captured were immediately handed over to the Invid for their own use. More than one community tried to hoard these sorts of finds for themselves, only to be destroyed by the Invid for their transgression.

There was one known exception to these standards. Under the leadership of Johnathan Wolfe, the resistance forces in Soldiertown were allowed to keep using Protoculture, energy weapons and even Cyclones. This exception was borne of the nature of the community, with Wolfe effectively serving as a 'trap' for resistance fighters. As long as Wolfe kept up his fake raids and slowly feeding his own men to the Invid, he was allowed to keep the equipment that was used to maintain the facade. This arrangement did not survive Wolfe's death, as within days the Invid poured into the town and destroyed it along with anyone left there.

Obviously men with small arms and maybe light IFVs were not going to take down resistance groups on their own. A pair of Cyclones would be more than a mob armed with shotguns and hunting rifles likely could handle, and they would have no chance of taking down anything larger. However, direct engagement was not the point of such groups. Indeed, battles between collaborators and resistance fighters were comparatively rare during the occupation.

Rather these groups were usually intended to delay or detain individuals or small groups and hold them until they could be turned over to the Invid. Likewise they would spy on suspicious activity to report to their masters, who would then in turn dispatch Mecha to intercept and destroy resistance fighters. With that being said, there were also cases where collaborators would hunt down lone resistance fighters or stragglers themselves or with Invid aid. For example, the groups pursing Lance Belmont in San Jose, Uruguay consisted of townspeople with shotguns, supported by Invid Hive Guards.

Finally, it needs to be said that many collaborators had one other thing going for them. Many resistance fighters were reluctant to open fire on other humans, even those that were aiding the Invid. This might come from a feeling of altruism, a desire to hold some sort of moral high ground, or simple naivety as often happened with the survivors of the First and Second Reclamation Forces. However, there were also resistance fighters that were more than willing to extract vengeance or punish collaborators for their actions. Finally, there were also cases of resistance members who actively hunted down collaborators, and would continue to do so after the Invid's departure.