[SG, DS] Bugs and [FT] Full thrust Dirtside conversion

When I'm translating anything from one system to another, I will ignore the
PSB for a moment and concentrate on the effect of the weapons and how I would
accomplish that in the first place. As far as STT the horde of bugs are
assault troops, not much more than that. Take line infantry, maybe line
calvary (those are fast buggers) and make them all assault teams. As far as
the large armored bugs, the ones that burrowed up from under the poor grunt's
position, those are AFVs with DFFGs (Why did the bugs have AFVs and the humans
not?). As far as the underground placement, they use the hidden unit rules (a
flipped letter marker coresponding to the tank unit in question). The brain
bug is a class 2 command center with an armor value of 0

The large plasma throwing anti-ship bugs would follow modular tank rules
(it takes 100 DSII capacity to mount a single class 1 battery*) and have
little else, but we really didn't see them in combat with the grunts so we
don't really know what they carried.

-- the rest was meant as a footnote but it got out of control. It's nice
info to know though------
*DSII to FT conversion (I did this to figure out how much it took to mount a
mobile planetary defence battery, and to figure out how many beam cannons
there were to be salvaged from a single 'c' battery off a downed scoutship.
The scary thing is that heavy rocket artillery fits the damage profile and
mass requirements for submunition packs.)

Logic follows: 8 capacity (DSII) holds 1 class 1 vehicle. 4 cargo (FT) holds 1
class 1 vehicle. 4 cargo = 8 capacity Reduce to the lowest common denominator:
1 cargo = 2 capacity. 1 mass (FT) = 50 cargo So by the math this means: 1 mass
= 100 capacity.

I used HEL to represent beam batteries as they were the only weapons that had
the range to be used in starship combat, this meant that a 'c' battery
consists of either:

49 class 1 lasers -Total Weapon Class: 49, chits of damage After normal
Validities: 25
24 class 2 lasers -T.W.C. 48, A.V 24
16 class 3 lasers- TWC 48, AV 24
12 class 4 lasers- TWC 48, AV 24
9 class 5 lasers- TWC 45, AV 22.5

At an average damage of 1.56 poins of damage for 1 chit ( see DSII "FMA
enhancement" thread, digest #215 for details on the math.) that means that a
class 1 battery does 37.44, or simply 37 points of damage per hit (a very
lucky shot in DSII damage can still do twice the average damage). This number
is useful if you think that you have enough firepower to knock out an
interface lander on the ground** (Dual DFFG/5's at close range are your
best
bet, anything less than a triple mount of MDC/5s at close range won't do
enough damage to abalate the single hit that Interface landers have.) You can
also use this to fire that grounded interface capable troopship at DSII
targets (Unwanted Vision:a grounded troopship or even a battleship Vs. a heavy
modular cybertank. <shudder> Be afraid, Be very afraid...)

With the fleetbook abolishing the ship classes, orbital bombardment from non
dedicated monitors needs to be re-figured. Maybe someone can use this
bit of
trivia to re-engineer beam battery fire on ground targets. I'd suggest a
conversion relative to the normal artillery fire (A class 6 weapon doing 3
chits over a radius) instead of picking upwards of 16 targets on the ground,
per class of battery. Of course this brings us back to the concept of giant
bugs shooting at ships in orbit, and those ships returning fire

**AA is still effective against landers due to the fact that Interface landers
in the air are more fragile than ones on the ground. In the air the relatively
fragile wing structures and large open thruster ports are vulnerable to damage
and necessary to keep the lander from crashing, and its occoupants from
developing deceleration trauma resulting from massive kenetic energy
poisioning