Well, actually, I did have a thought about a potential larger unit in a speical scenario.
1 Lt, 2 Sgts, 4 Coropals and 30 PI troopers.
(1 Coropal is a medic)
The 30 PI troops are recruits on their graduation mission. Live ammo, only got blasters no heavy.
They are on a moon doing a drop, along with 2 missions.
First mission is clear and secure a landing zone. All the targets are mocked up Machines that shoot e-balls (these are an electronic version of paintball, that their suits will register and do appropriate simulated damage (suit control AI) ).
During the night they do rest and AAR with the recruits doing guard patrol duty (just like they would in real life. The next morning they are to do an assualt on a building/structure similar to the day before.
Now for the actual scenario, during the night, 3 different patrol individuals report that they swear up and down that they heard and saw Machine movement.
The DI's put it down as jitters, since they have seen and heard this before.
As the troop moves to assualt the structure, 2 troopers go down, complete suit shutdown? and no chatter/answer from the down suits even when questioned by the the DI's (Not normal)
The LT sends the Medic to check them out while having the rest of the troops continue the exercise.
The 1d6 turns later, the Medic screams Live Nightmares and then commo silence.
The Machines recon ship noticed the training area and had landed the day before, 12 k from the training site. They moved onto the training site during the night and have replaced most of the dummy/auto one.
Ie, half of the known exercise machines are now real. Until they open fire upon the troops, it is not known which are which.
Dave Chase