| rdfs:comment | - During the Great Crusade era, the Ultramarines Legion armoured forces included a wide range of vehicle classes, patterns and types, including the very earliest patterns of war machines which were subsequently deployed in large numbers across the entire Legiones Astartes. Some of these had been kept operational by constant field repair and had not received the attentions of the Legion Forge for many decades. Conversely, the Legion's forces included vehicles only just beginning to see use, one of which was the Damocles pattern command Rhino, a Deimos pattern armoured carrier modified by replacing most of its troop carrying capacity with a suite of sophisticated communications equipment. Designed to the specifications of the ever-expanding Ultramarines Legion, the Damocles was easier both to
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| abstract | - During the Great Crusade era, the Ultramarines Legion armoured forces included a wide range of vehicle classes, patterns and types, including the very earliest patterns of war machines which were subsequently deployed in large numbers across the entire Legiones Astartes. Some of these had been kept operational by constant field repair and had not received the attentions of the Legion Forge for many decades. Conversely, the Legion's forces included vehicles only just beginning to see use, one of which was the Damocles pattern command Rhino, a Deimos pattern armoured carrier modified by replacing most of its troop carrying capacity with a suite of sophisticated communications equipment. Designed to the specifications of the ever-expanding Ultramarines Legion, the Damocles was easier both to manufacture and deploy than the venerable Proteus-Explorator Land Raider variants, which commonly fulfilled this role during the Great Crusade's early years, and less resource-intensive to forge and less marked upon the battlefield than the powerful Spartan Hermetika siege command vehicles which were entering service during the latter days before the horror of civil war encroached upon the Imperium. The Damocles was just as able in its task, but unfortunately far less durable than either of its counterparts, being based on various patterns of the ubiquitous Rhino chassis. Following the Ultramarines' example, this command and control platform was beginning to enter service across the Legions by the close of the Great Crusade, the sons of Guilliman leading by example and sharing their hard-won battle doctrines with their brother Legions. Equipped with sophisticated communication, cognis- analysis and tracking equipment, including a powerful orbital-interface secure vox-transceiver, the Damocles Command Rhino was designed principally as a command and control vehicle to serve as a direct and all but unbreakable link between a Space Marine Legion formation in the field and its brethren elsewhere within the war zone and in high orbit above during planetary operations. Using these systems, skilled Techmarine crew were able to read the ebb and flow of battle, call in reinforcements and supporting fire, and war off enemy forces through interdiction targeting.
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