Landing Ships

Greetings All, While the discussion of merchant vs. military hulls for troop
transport
has been going on, I have been reading Tom Clancy's new non-fiction book
"Marine". The book has some good information on the USMC for modern gamers. I
took the ships carrying a Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU) and tried to convert
them to Full Thrust ships with equivalent carrying capacity.
        The LHD-1, USS Wasp, is a helicopter assault carrier. It was
listed as carrying one rifle company, the battalion weapons company with 24
hummers, the battalion and landing force HQ and support elements, one battery
of 6
towed 155mm guns, four LAV-25's, two LAV-AT, twelve medium transport
helicopters, eight heavy transport helo's, four cobras, and six Harriers. I
made the following assumption. The rifle, weapons and HQ companies are about
200 men each with their slice of the MEU's support troops. The artillery
battery is also 200 men plus 20 size 1 vehicles. The LAV's are size 2 and have
36 men for crews and support. The air squadron is twelve size 3 VTOL's, eight
mass 3 dropships, four size 2 attack VTOL's, with the Harriers counting as a
standard flight of six aerospace fighters. The air squadron adds another 150
men in pilots and support staff.
        So far we have the NAC Troop Carrier ( CVL\T ) with:
800 troops from the marine battalion @ 4 CS each = 3200 CS 186 men from the
LAV's and VTOL's @ 4 CS each= 744 CS
			44 size 1 vehicles @ 4 CS each =    176 CS
10 size 2 vehicles and VTOL's @ 8 CS each = 80 CS
			12 size 3 VTOL's @ 12 CS each =    144 CS
                                                total         _________
                                                            4344 CS or
87 mass I think we have a problem here! In order to have the troop carrier to
embark only one-half of the MEU it will have to be a supership. Maybe
I'm taking the comparison of Full Thrust starships to contemporary wet navy
ships too seriously but I would think that it should be possible to fit this
force in a large but not supership sized starship. Adding the one fighter
flight and four standard bays for the mass 3 dropships brings the total mass
to 117. The ship needs only defensive weapons and the equivalent to the Wasp's
armament would be three PDAF and one ADAF for 6 more mass for a total of 123
mass of troops and weapons and a ships mass of 246. This design didn't take
the three LCAC's from the Wasp into account, add in three mass 6 dropships for
another 18 mass of weapons load.
        Jon, am I looking at some thing wrong or do the Full Thrust\
Dirtside rules in MT need tweaked. Did you intend that troops were mostly
shipped frozen or should I assume that troops are moved in company sized
units?

> Greetings All,

'Lo!
> While the discussion of merchant vs. military hulls for troop
SNIP
> Jon, am I looking at some thing wrong or do the Full Thrust\ Dirtside

I think that from the point of view of playability, this is the wrong way to
approach an FT/DSII conversion.
The important thing is to represent each _significant element_ of the
ship and her abilities. DSII forces can be assumed to be more capable than
their present day equivalents. Looking, for example, at the artillery, Wasp
carries a typical towed field artillery battery. The DSII equivalent is 3
medium weapons, probably SP.
HQ & support elements?  Forget them!  Well, not quite- a couple of
command teams and the DSII C&C requirement will cover it, if you just mumble
something about automation. Armour? A scout platoon and an AT section.
Attack VTOLs- a section of 2 or 3.  All those Hummers- what does the
weapons company have? Simulate its capacity in terms of AT, LAD etc and give
it DSII elments and transport to match. Can the helos lift the whole force at
once? Clearly not: get enough transport VTOLs to move the armour and artillery
together, and that should be it (giving you as commander plenty of command
choices to make and hopefully increasing your involvement as a player). The
Wasp only needs
defensive weapons- no ADAF!  And you don't need to represent CIWS on a
one for one basis, either. The Harrier is a bit less capable than a dedicated
strike aircraft- perhaps you'd be closer to the mark with 3?

Another trick (from the first rules I ever played "Battle! Practical
Wargaming" by Charles Grant- great stuff!) is to downsize your force.
Let platoons represent companies, and companies represent battalions.

Cheers,