Land Battles on Basilisk

While I tend to like space combat over ground, I did find another possibly
interesting fictional source. I just finished reading the first
Honor Harrington novel, _On Basilisk Station_.  The final space battle
wouldn't make an interesting scenerio. A frigate chasing a Q ship the size of
a dreadnought! The only other space battles is the fleet training exercises
which could be quite interesting, but not enough detail is given to be useful.

But on the ground has lots of potential, especially if you change things a
bit. You've got the marines jumping around in their battle armour along with
the lightly armoured local forces. There are heavy weapons, artillery, air
support both from grav cars and very small space ships, and a weapons that
fires some type of nasty darts. The
battle in the book is too one-sided to be interesting with the good
guys (marines and local forces) against a huge number of native armed only
with flintlocks.

But if ones who armed the natives were to add a little support with weapons
comparable to those of the good guys, then it could be interesting. Can the
bad guys destract the good guys long enough to allow the natives to close to
hand to hand range. Then the thousand to one advantage of the natives would
overrun our marines. Balanced well, this could be a tense scenerio.

Anyway, just a though. Do the other Honor Harrington novels have more ground
battles?

Enjoy,

> On Wed, 13 Nov 1996, Tom Granvold wrote:

> While I tend to like space combat over ground, I did find another

...no, a light cruiser chasing a Q-ship, in what is mainly a missile
duel with lots and lots of ECM. The Grav Lance and Energy Torps (...why do
they remind me of Starfire's Plasma Guns?) could be interesting in FT,
though...

> Anyway, just a though. Do the other Honor Harrington novels have

There is the assault on Blackbird in 'Honor of the Queen', where Manty and
Grayson marines assault a Masadan ground base on an airless moon. Most of the
fighting is underground, though, so I guess Legions of Steel

would be more appropriate <g>

> On Wed, 13 Nov 1996, Tom Granvold wrote:

> Oerjan Ohlson wrote:

> ...no, a light cruiser chasing a Q-ship, in what is mainly a missile

> though...

Opps, yes Harrington's ship is a cruiser not a frigate. But it still seems a
unbalanced fight to me. Her ship, the Fearless, had two forward missile tubes
to the Q ship's six. Also, she had far fewer missiles. They both have point
defense against the missiles in addition to
anti-missile missiles.  The Fearless only won because Honor Harrington
lured the Q ship into the Grav Lance range (very short range) and hit the Q
ship by surprise. The Q ship could have easily destroyed the Fearless by
firing on it from medium range. The only other advantage the Fearless had is
that its technology was somewhat better that that of the Q ship.

In the book of course the Fearless wins, but in a game one would have to be
extremely lucky to win with the Fearless.

Enjoy,