Roger said:
Why would you bother with a dangerous orbital drop when you
can send in air/space transports if it is
going to be unoppposed?
[Tomb] Good question.
1. Is an unopposed landing dangerous? (Answer: Probably not all that
dangerous). No significant ADE assets to suppress, and few unsuppressed ones
to dodge, hence landing at your choice of location should be quite
straightforward. 2. Sometimes you use what you got in system.
3. I still think dropcaps will be faster time-
to-ground than a lander. Let's say you want
to insert your force on top of an enemy outpost to hit them before they can
really figure out what is happening. That's one case.
> 2. Sometimes you use what you got in
OK, you have dropcaps on a ship, but no landers? What about resupply, MEDIVAC,
pick up at the end of the mission?
> 3. I still think dropcaps will be faster time-
Then surely this wouldn't be unopposed? Gets back to the need to /
reasons for scatter....
> On 7-Jun-02 at 00:47, Thomas Barclay (kaladorn@magma.ca) wrote:
Your chance of a screwup is going to be much greater. Screwups, when dropping
from orbit, are going to be lethal.
> 2. Sometimes you use what you got in
You still need ground-orbit to recover those men.
They aren't one-shots.
> 3. I still think dropcaps will be faster time-
Orbit->Ground will take about the same amount of
time for a drop capsule or a dropship, the orbital mechanics are the same. The
ship could even be faster due to heavier heat shielding.
Roger Books schrieb:
> You still need ground-orbit to recover those men.
Right. But depending on the situation, you may not need the same capacity,
protection and speed to carry them out that you need going in.
For a raid type operation, you are right, you want to get out as quickly as
possible again.
If your intention is to grab and hold territory, you want to go in fast with
large numbers and elite forces to overwhelm the defenders. Once the objectives
are taken, you can ferry in the garrison forces and remove the Space Marines
at your leisure.
Greetings
> If your intention is to grab and hold territory, you want to go in
Would not surprise me to see things done this way but it would be prudent to
be able to recover the assault troops if the defenders are not quite so
overwhelmed as your staff assured you they would bee.
In other words under this line of thinking the assault force is operating
similar to WWII airborne forces, "victory or death.
Robert Minadeo schrieb:
> > If your intention is to grab and hold territory, you
In an ideal world, you are right.
> In other words under this line of thinking the assault
But assume ressources are limited.
Assault landers/recovery vehicles are expensive/rare/take up lots of
cargo space, drop pods are cheap/plentyful/easily stowed.
You don't have enough assault landers to overwhelm the opposition with them
alone. Add the drop pods and can bring in (hopefully) sufficient numbers.
Do you go in with drop pods or cancel the operation because of insufficient
landers?
Greetings
On 7-Jun-02 at 10:23, KH.Ranitzsch@t-online.de
(KH.Ranitzsch@t-online.de)
wrote:
> But assume ressources are limited.
Sorry, I have trouble seeing disposable drop pods as being more cost or space
affective than a reusable drop ship.
> But assume ressources are limited.
of
> cargo space, drop pods are cheap/plentyful/easily stowed.
> Sorry, I have trouble seeing disposable drop pods as being more cost
Well, look at the various means of getting stuff into orbit: rockets vs.
shuttles. There are arguments either way.
Here's some points I want to make
1. Landing on a coastline is not the same as landing somewhere on a
planet -
defending the line of a coast must be easier than defending orbital airspace
and every field a interface lander could set down on
2. Unlike landing on a coastline - when proximity to embarkation point
is an issue, every point on a planet is pretty much as easy to get to from
orbit
3. Of course the attacker will probably want to land in proximity to
objectives, thus cutting down the area needed to protect
4. The Torch Landings during WWII landed in an area where resistance was
probable, it would have probably been easier to land elsewhere -
presumably because it was in line with the mission goals for Torch; to secure
Tunisia and Morocco in a mutually supportive manner and to catch Axis forces
inbetween US and UK forces.
: the point to the long-winded sentence being that if you want to land
where you can achieve objectives there will probably be resistance (even if it
can be politically solved)
5. Opposed landings are fun
So what I do is have a strategic hex map for the world in question -
[you'll
get one of these from the Traveller world book, or Battletech's Battleforce
book]
Decide on the location of major cities, resource centres Decide which hexes
have strategic air defence Decide on quality of air defences
Attacker decides where he wants to land
[may want to send in a crack platoon of PA to take out air defences in
daring commando raid]
Roll Quality of Interface Craft piloting +ECM
vs. Quality of Air Defence
[as you would for Aerospace Attacks in DSII]
Air Defence result exceeds Interface Craft = everyone loses their lunch
=
troops on board lose one Confidence Level, Green troops panic
Air Defence result doubles Interface Craft = black hawk down, as it were
In a message dated Fri, 7 Jun 2002 10:34:56 AM Eastern Daylight Time,
> books@jumpspace.net writes:
The way I get around droppods is this. Infantry and mecha pods are stowed on
the outside of the "mothership". These take no interior space of the ship and
are connected via a docking hardpoint which is part of
the ship. My dropships can also be pre-loaded and docked this way or
stored in hanger bays of which then they take up the internal space
requirements.
Most of my capital ships can also carry these externally docked pods and
dropships.
For dedicated transport ships, I divide the mass of the ship by 2 and round up
for Infantry pods. For mecha pods and dropship hardpoints, I divide by 5 and
round up. So a assault transport of mass 60 could have hardpoints for 30
infantry pods or 12 docked dropships or any combo in between depending on how
the transport is designed.
> 2. Unlike landing on a coastline - when proximity to embarkation point
That may depend on the orbit, but I'm not certain on that.
> So what I do is have a strategic hex map for the world in question -
> Battleforce book]
Very neat idea. Can I steal it?
> If your intention is to grab and hold territory, you want to go in
Or you could have a special forces team who's going in for recon and training
insurgents. Drop a team, drop some supplies, come back in a few months and see
what's happening.
> --- Robert Minadeo <raminad@earthlink.net> wrote:
Shouldn't be an either-or situation.
You have X amount of landing craft/shuttles. You have
many more cheap disposable drop capsules. You use the drop caps to land lots
of powered armor troops, plus you use the shuttles to land heavier equipment.
If you need to pull out, you're pulling out a lot less troops than you landed
and landing a larger first wave helps improve the odds that you won't have to
pull out.
> On Fri, Jun 07, 2002 at 10:33:25AM -0400, Roger Books wrote:
We don't (yet) have completely re-usable ground-orbit, because it's
more cost effctive to throw some of the thing away each time.
And: if you're not going to reuse the heat shield it can be ablative
> > Sorry, I have trouble seeing disposable drop pods as being more cost
Their not, but the you can risk a low cost drop pod on missions you would not
want to risk a dropship. Also, if drop pods are "canned" (need no maintence
before use), they could have a real logistics advantage for mass landings.
> We don't (yet) have completely re-usable ground-orbit, because it's
This is very debatable. Most U.S. launchers, other then the Shuttle, are
ex-ICBM's. Non of the intial R&D costs are included in their cost.
Only the R&D costs of converting them to satelite launch vehicles. It could be
cost effective to build a re-useable launch vehicle, but the problem is
the return time on investment. Billions now that won't be recouped for 20
years, or more. Some of the most interesting ideas for re-usable launch
vehicles are for two stage, where both stages are fully recoverable and with
low down time between flights.
> And: if you're not going to reuse the heat shield it can be ablative
But if you want real economic efficiency, you can have reusable drop capsules.
They are much cheaper then interface shuttles, can be used in more risky
insertions, and can be reclaimed after use. They'll probably need to be
refurbished between use.
> But if you want real economic efficiency, you can have reusable drop
Yeah,if you have control of the battlefield afterwards there would be no
problem with recovery.
> Roll Quality of Interface Craft piloting +ECM
> Very neat idea. Can I steal it?
Well, since it's really only a streamlining of FMA, for ease of use with
large numbers of interface craft - I'd really have to say
"of course" or "talk to Jon (GZG)" depending on how straight a face I can keep
*grin*