Some more thoughts and questions: What is the right size for the battlesuited Marine detachment on a starship? Impossible to answer without more information, of course.
* Heinlein had individual platoons on small assault ships, plus larger ones. * Weber had about a company on a light or heavy cruiser (one battlesuit platoon and two unpowered platoons), a battalion on a battlecruiser or dreadnought, later a platoon on a destroyer due to manpower shortages. * Traveller had squad-sized detachments on some ships. I don't recall if the type was specified, maybe Patrol Cruisers? * How many Marines in one place do you need for proper training and administration? Would an individual squad effectively come under the administration of the Navy officers? Who writes their fitness reports? * How would three Marine platoons from three different ships have to be organized so that they can form an effective company? The headquarters and specialists would have to integrate -- three corpsmen and no surgeon? Would company and battalion officers ship out with the platoons, in the hope that any random assembly of shipboard platoons has a few senior officers to run the show? What is the right size for a dropship/shuttle? Too many small craft and they are hard to maintain and crew. Too few big craft and all your eggs are in just a few baskets. * At one ton per battlesuit, even one squad is quite a load, comparable to an utility vehicle or two. * If there are two or three people in each shuttle, what percentage of the total manpower are crew? Twenty percent? Ten percent? Is that too much? * In the real world, amphibian crews are Marines, landing craft crews are Navy, right? On a different note, would a battlesuit unit need battlesuit recovery vehicles? Are those other suits or wheeled/tracked/grav vehicles? * I had the idea to give medics unarmed suits with extra power. That runs into game mechanics problems in 3E -- the Body ST accoring to the Robots formula is capped at twice Body HP, and that depends on area. Doubling ST would require about three times the volume. * Is another suit with roughly the similar size the right thing to recover a damaged or bogged down suit, or would you do better with a larger vehicle with a winch, A-frame, or crane? * In a combined arms force, will the tank recovery vehicles handle the requirements of the suits without breaking a sweat? * Do you need an ambulance with enough room/payload to hold a battlesuit and then get the trooper out? How large is that if the suit is 9' long? 12' by 5' by 5' = 300 cf or is that excessive? How quickly do you have to recharge the power cells of the suits? Even a big TL11+ dropship would need a few minutes to recharge a dozen rE cells -- an hour for a full platoon. Any comments and brainstoms? Regards, Onno _______________________________________________ GurpsNet-L mailing list <[email protected]> http://mail.sjgames.com/mailman/listinfo/gurpsnet-l
