Royal Gong Ship

**Dev. Status** | Unknown

 **Key Features** | »» Four Giant, Reflective, Shield Gongs»» Huge cargo bay»» Active Phased Array Radar»» Two All-Terrain Hoop Wheels»» Equally Large Stick (to ring gong)

## Tactical Analysis

* **Royal Barge:** The Royal Gong Ship serves as the Kingdoms aquatic transport, capable of carrying up to three vehicles safely across any stretch of water.

* **Come on, HIT ME!**: Thanks to its unique shields, the Gong is capable repelling enemy fire and send right back to its attackers. Though its not a 100% redirect, meaning that they lose a small amount of their shielding each time they reflect. But the damage to the shield when deflected is only a quarter of the original. And if it gets surrounded the crew can disable the computer to make it so that an attack in any direction is reflected back with more power, though without the regulation radiation will begin to leak into the crew compartment and damage the ship until the computer is switched back online.

* **Shields Down!**: Like all of the Atomic Kingdom’s vehicles the Gong requires power operate, without which it will be unable to either move or defend itself.

* **They came from behind!**: Due to technical limitations the Gong can only repel fire from one direction at a time leaving it vulnerable if attacked from multiple opponents. And it can only deflect attacks when it has shield power, so once its shield is down, either through the power failing or breaking through enough attacks, it's essentially unarmed.

## Background

*"Target locked, uncloak and fire on my mark..."*

- Last words of a lone Mirage Tank on patrol at Johore Strait, Malaysia
After the Royalist Pacification of China, the Atomic Kingdom begun its outward expansion and its first steps on a planetary scale revenge. After the relatively swift takeover of Hong Kong, the Chinese war machine diverted parts of its expansion force to Southeast Asia from the newly acquired ports in Hong Kong and began its invasion of Burma. The Navy from Hong Kong and the Invasion Task Force moving through Burma and Thailand would perform a giant pincer move, and if successful would completely surround the Allied forces garrisoned in Vietnam.

However, there was an obstacle in the way of Atomic Kingdom's plan to conquer Southern Asia and that was the Island Fortress of Singapore at the Southern tip of the Malaysian Peninsula. This threat, if not neutralized could potentially unravel the entire invasion. From this fortress' location, the Allies can resupply and reinforce the navy in the South Chinese Sea or launch an amphibious assault northward through Malaysia and push back the invasion force in Burma and Thailand.

This small island must be destroyed for the Kingdom's plan to come to fruition.

The First Battle of Singapore was very similar to the battle against the last NRA stronghold, the only difference being that the forces stationed at Singapore were the battle-hardened IPDI soldiers and an Allied Peacekeeper Division, not the weakened and mad NRA. These IPDI forces managed to fight the Royalists into a bloody stalemate, due to the IPDI sheer weight of fire and use of chemical weapons. The Viceroy soon realized that no matter how much force they sent into the Allied wood chipper, the Royalists would fail to do any lasting damage due to their close combat reliance.

The Viceroy had also realized that another large part of why the battle was a stalemate was because they had no ships that could actually transport their forces over seas. Since the reason why they couldn't get a foothold was that their forces couldn't even reach the shores.

Invading on foot was considered too costly and required putting all of their efforts into it. Since Singapore only had one causeway to the island meant their forces can be easily funneled in and killed, the irony in being beaten by the tactics they used hasn't gone unnoticed, and trying to make another bridge would have it bombed by the airforce before they even started. Teleportation was out since they couldn't get exact coordinates to teleport, again due to anything that flies in proximity to the island getting destroyed, and even if they did the city itself was packed with enough soldiers, in part due it its small size, that any forces that teleported into the city would be shredded before they can make a proper foothold as they can’t teleport a large enough invasion force at once.

Their naval forces, while able to fight the Allied and IPDI fleet into a stalemate until heavy air support came, lacked any way to actually move onto shore, severely limiting its ability to damage the island since none of their ships have proper bombardment capabilities, making them unable to support any Mobile Garrison and/or marine landing forces from being blasted to bits.

And trying to fly in assault forces with their Thunderbirds and Defiance's only led to both getting blown apart by the thousands of anti-air batteries lining along the shores, some roofs on HDB flats, and its neighboring smaller islands, noticeably the resort island Sentosa, before they can even reach shallow waters. The Soviet's high command are painfully/amusingly reminded of the Mt Fuji incident, especially after reading a spy report of a particular wave of Thunderbirds that was shot down ending with the only survivors of the attack, a marine captain and a tiger, getting frozen.

After the First Battle of Singapore, the Viceroy quickly commissioned the Tai Hejin Armour Construction company to construct a support vehicle that can act as strong points in the advancing Royalist formations and transport their forces on the seas. The company, drawing its inspiration from the recently unveiled Planar Shields technology quickly came up with a design.

This support ship, dubbed the **Royal Gong Ship** due to the four round, and gigantic, reflective shield generators on its bow, port, starboard, and aft, utilizes an *Active Phased Array Radar* and an on-board logistic computer to detect and calculate the trajectory of incoming projectiles and activates the shield gongs on its chassis to effectively *bounce* the projectiles back at its attackers, while at the same time having a cargo bay large enough to hold a small army.

While an almost perfect design, the ship does suffer from a single drawback. Its atomic engine only has enough power to maintain its logistic computer and one gong shield. And it lacked any other weaponry since the gongs took up what little space was left that wasn't for transporting their forces. But in desperate situations the Gong Ship can power down its computer and activate all of its shields but will begin to take damage from the violent overload of the Jade-powered engine.

With the new Royal Gong Ship and other new additions to its army, the Atomic Kingdom is now ready for the inevitable Second Battle of Singapore.