If I understand the look and feel correctly, there will be small isolated oasis settlements. They will have their own militia at least in practice, because troops stationed there for long durations, likely have a tendency to go native. They will protect the settlement from raiders (the primitive people and plain outlaws) and act as local security forces.
There will be one or more large towns, that are more directly under the control of the central goverment. (Even if there is actually no large town, the area around the starport would have most of that qualities)
The central goverment will still want to keep the small settlements in line. More so if they have some large impact on the ecconomy (do you plan to have some sort of spice with serial numbers filed off and less impact on galactic scale, so it fits to traveller?).
So the central goverment will want to have some commando units, who can take over an oasis settlement, fast, with little if any advance warning and without causing too much general destruction. That way they can keep the threat of retailiation hanging over the settlements, without having permanent watchdogs.
The commandos might very well all come from one or a few tribes of the primitive people, that have some sort of loyality bond to goverment figures and exchange services for high tech equipment. Or there is a long tradition of members of that tribe serving the military (kinda Gurkhas).
They will also be dedicated to become guerilla fighters, should the Zhodani take over the planet, that might even be the offical reason for them to exist.
I think the best look and feel, in terms of meeting tropes, would be if they are able to diguise themselfs as ordinary primitive people trade caravans most of the time. They can have stashes of equipment hidden in the desert, though that equipment should tend to be infantry equipment. Equipment maintanance happens along with primitive people nomadism.
They can exist alongside and cooperating with a more traditional SDB planetary defence.
Regarding hiding SDBs. You could hide them in caves in rocky areas. If it's desert area and practically no one lives there, the goverment can create many caves of suitable size. Even if their locations get known eventually, you can have a lot more caves then SDBs.
Does anyone have an idea how fast stuff gets burries in the sand, if you pick the right spot in a sand desert? Would it be viable to land the SDB at a good spot (make a Survival(Desert)) roll and wait till it's under a dune? If you do that, you can also have the army bury decoys. (And you can have soldiers complain, that they want a more glorious job, then burying scrap metal in the desert.)
One mans groundfloor is an other mans earthmissle @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Johannes Trimmel @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ _______________________________________________ GurpsNet-L mailing list <[email protected]> http://mail.sjgames.com/mailman/listinfo/gurpsnet-l
