Roger replied to me: > >If you're thinking that way, why not carry battlesuits as tank > >riders, like the WWII troops? > > If you still have tanks, sure!
Of course there will be tanks. Battlesuits are super-infantry, only one arm of the combined arms team. The TL9 battlesuits can probably get DR 200 to DR 250 laminate, which is enough to protect them from TL9 rifles and GPMGs, artillery splinters and 'plain' ICM bomblets. They are vulnerable to TL9 smart ICM, HMGs and autocannon and direct hits from HEAT above 40mm. Think of battlesuits as a more compact and agile version of an uparmored HMMWV with a HMG/AGL/TOW. Despite dire predictions, ATGMs haven't made tanks obsolete, they just have to be even more careful. I've been thinking some more about the armament of the TL9 suits. I see three requirements: * Dealing with unpowered, body-armored infantry. Call it 15d(2) or more. A minigun, maybe? * Dealing with other battlesuits and light armor. About 40d(2) or 16d(10). A little electromag autocannon or a big AGL. * Dealing with heavy armor. A reasonably large ATGM. Would all battlesuits do all three requirements? Different models? Or dump the minigun and use anti-battlesuit weapons on unpowered enemies. When I calculated how much armor the TL12 suits can carry I found that I probably have to upgrade the punch of their weapons, at the expense of RoF and ammo: * General-purpose rifleman with 3.6-MJ xaser (6d*8(2), RoF 8*, 562 shots) and 10-lb. missiles (6d*32(10), 3 shots). * Automatic weapon with 3.6-MJ xaser (6d*8(2), RoF 16*, 562 shots). * Heavy anti-armor with 108-MJ antiparticle beam (6d*110(2), RoF 1/3, 20 shots). Even so the big gun averages only 2,310(2) points of damage, while grav tanks will have frontal armor in the five digits, and several thousand points of DR on the other facings. (Compare GURPS Traveller TL12, with a grain of salt, or my TL13 grav tank from last year.) Do I want the heavy stuff in each fire team or are they kept at the platoon level, parceled out to squads as required? The rapid-pulse xaser is a bit like a machine gun -- effects comparable to a rifle, but a higher RoF -- while the slow-firing antiparticle beam could be compared to a real-world RPG or a M79 with HEAT only. Weird thought: does suppressive fire actually have to be fired to make people keep their heads down, or is it enough to ping the enemy with active fire control sensors? The risk of going active shows you are there and you are getting serious. And scattered bursts of xaser fire are no threat, you need multiple hits from a well-aimed burst to burn through a battlesuit. Lighter powered armor or 'cybersuits' (from UT) may be a different matter. Regards, Onno _______________________________________________ GurpsNet-L mailing list <[email protected]> http://mail.sjgames.com/mailman/listinfo/gurpsnet-l
