Zan replied to me: > > Could there be a world > > where TL13 armies face each other across a fortified border? > > > How about this scenario: > > Two TL13 civilizations want the same planet. The first one invades a > peaceful planet (so it has minimal military forces) and drops ground > troops while holding space superiority. They establish a beachhead and > begin holding territory. Then the defender gets its space fleet in order > and counter attacks. Heavy losses on both sides but the defender comes > out on top and begins dropping their ground troops to reinforce the > local militia.
Would that be a single-planet nation, whose (deployed) navy and space marines counterattack to liberate their homeworld, or does that make more sense for a multi-planet nation, which counterattacks to regain an invaded planet? > This would get you two TL13 armies on the ground with fairly equal heavy > equipment. The defender might have nearly unlimited manpower and light > weapons for green untrained militia infantry. The attacker has surprise, > hardened veterans, battlesuits and tanks. The defender will have these > too after they get forces to the planet, but in limited numbers. I don't think infantry without battlesuits does matter at all. There are cheap suits and expensive suits, but no suits at all make about as much sense as a knight on a horse. > The space combat cycle can repeat as often as necessary. And one side or > the other gets supplies and reinforcements to their ground forces during > the repeated space fleet engagements. Reminds me of the books by Rick Shelley, which have the look and feel of the Brits in Falkland. Relatively small forces are dropped from starships, and the space battle governs the actions of ground forces. > It could also be a sort of Dune scenario where two Houses or > Corporations are fighting over a planet for the spice or whatever, but > there is an over-arching Empire which enforces rules of war and limits > what weapons can be used. You might not even use very restrictive rules of war. Imagine a world with two colonies. There is some sort of biological resource which would be destroyed by space-based WMD. So both sides deploy ground forces. The problem is why there would be two colonies. The usual assumption is "one world, one colony". There the empire you mentioned comes in. Multiple corporations are allowed to claim plots which "belongs" to the whole empire. Then things come apart and the corporations fight. Basically a civil war scenario, which would allow more outcomes like this: Imagine civil war on a homeworld. Both factions have planetbusters, neither faction will use it unless it becomes a suicidal last stand. They use ground forces to determine who gets how much of the land. And when the fighting dies down, the factions will settle into a cold war. Regards, Onno _______________________________________________ GurpsNet-L mailing list <[email protected]> http://mail.sjgames.com/mailman/listinfo/gurpsnet-l
