From: Thomas Barclay <Thomas.Barclay@s...>
Date: Tue, 15 Sep 1998 19:56:51 -0500
Subject: [SG2] [DS2] PA or non-PA - renamed from OT women gamers
John spake thusly upon matters weighty: > 1. I imagine most skirmishes will be small (Brigade or smaller) in the Seems likely. > 2. Transport will be at a premium. Why transport APCs/Tanks/GEV Mind you, to a macrocosm, this argument applies to PA. It is also quite possible 1 suit of PA is as much of a logistics load as 1 full APC. > 3. PA will be airtight making it great for harsh/vacc environments, This is an advantage. If we are living in a non Star Trek ish universe with a lot of planets with crappy temp (too hot, too cold), crappy atmospheric pressure (too high, too low), crappy atmospheric composition (poisonous, contaminated, insidious, exotic, unbreathable), then some combat will happen here. Of course, we'd choose to colonize the Earth like worlds if we can find em, thus perhaps removing a lot of the need for this harsh enviro gear. > Don't get me wrong, I love tanks and big armored formations. I just Only important, big battles. They can still kick PA. Why transport all these units to > wipe out a colony when you can sit there pounding it from orbit. I'm assuming you would be the defenders with this gear on more settled colonies. Otherwise, you are right. Although if FTL is as cheap as John's setting and ship construction seem to make it (much cheaper than some other systems), the long haul, big lift capacity doesn't seem so much of an issue. The ultimate counter seems to be rooted in logistics: 1. Assume PA is complex (actuators, sensors, manipulators, optics, EM systems, EW systems, stealth, chameleon, IR masking, armour (possibly active), weapons systems, targetting, longer term life support (for those hostile worlds), heat regulation, damage control, comms/crypto, medical feeds, etc. etc.). 2. Assume PA is fairly expensive. It probably is due to its complexity. 3. Assume it takes a lot of training to run PA like a pro. Hence troops are expensive. This is partly due to PA's complexity. Partly due to the complex range of capability it provides. 4. Assume such complex systems have expensive costs to maintain, both in a money sense, and a personel/training, personel/maintenance sense. Maintenance techs required to mothball/demothball suits for transit and combat drops - even if all troopers shipped as frozen fish sticks. Medtechs required to hook up troopies to life support gear (watch the team that hooks up the modern day astronaut for a guide). No rapid reaction capability here - it takes hours to get a PA guy ready to drop or to even move. Logistics chain to support power/fuel/food/air resupply and field maintenance. With high stress gear like this, maintenance cycle between PMs might well run in the 40-60 hour range. That means downtime for a lot of your potential force. 5. Perhaps the ultimate reason: To keep the peace in a jungle on X2, To patrol the mines of Amlak Mor, To kick ass on rebellious peasants on New Gananoque: These tasks DO NOT require powered armour or elite troops. Normally trained green/regular mix troops with normal equipment (and locally procured transport - jeeps, trucks, hoverjeeps, grav lifters) can do this job quite fine. Hard to justify sending an expertly trained New Anglian Confederation Drop Marine platoon to sit gaurding a string of pumping stations on East Durango IV. But somebody might well have to do it. And because no one local would mess with PA if it was there, no battles. But if the locals thought they could take the (much cheaper and more logistically sound) garrison force, then that's another story. You are right in one sense: comparing to the island campaigns of the past, you can see the advantages of PA. But assuming the logistics train and the training requirements are what they are (to say nothing of cost), then you may well decide that it isn't as cheap as you think. Especially when (if you have a platoon of these guys at (for example) 1 million NACBucksSterling(tm) a head) I can easily (as an enemy commander) consider the deployment of vast artillery and potentially nuclear strikes which PA isn't robust enough to survive. And the island campaign scenario assumes a shooting war between two major powers deploying line troops - in which case, yes you'd probably see jump troops, PA, orbital assaults and bombardments, the whole nine yards. But a lot of SG2 scenarios and DS2 scenarios will revolve around rebellions, terrorism, banditry, suppression of same, privateering (or whatever they call it on the ground), and things which neither merit these kind of overkill responses nor which probably encourage the deployment of such assets. A cheaper, more cost effective (to keep right at hand) solution would be infantry, easily portable vehicles (hummvee Mark 27 with TOW 22), and some basic low cost air support (VTOLs or choppers), and some light arty. This formation could probably do more, over a wider area, in more situations, for less costs, and require less of your recruiting and logistics talent to support, thus allowing you to have your elite PA units for those "Hot Wars" and "Flashpoints" where the expense is worthwhile or even necessary. But lots exists to justify non PA scenarios. Of course, if you think PA is robust, problem free, dead simple to operate, has long battery life, can be run by a high school dropout, and can be parked, entered, exited, and maintained by said low skill troopie, then that changes a lot. Sure everyone will have it. But in that case, your colonists probably will too - if it is that ubiquitious and easy to use. Watch out for those PA equipped miners and farmhands! I don't think that is the official setting, and I don't think it is all that likely in the future, unless it gets THAT cheap and easy to use, and then that changes A LOT of the assumptions underlying the GZG world. Tom. /************************************************