On Fri, Sep 5, 2014 at 12:10 PM, Onno Meyer <[email protected]> wrote: > Evyn replied to me: >>> >>> Is it the Navy's job to escort the landing forces all the way into the >>> atmosphere? >> >> Yes. No, it really depends how your forces are set up. > > > I'm trying to find out what "should logically follow" from the GURPS 3E > rules at TL11, with a focus on the space and aerospace assets -- but a > logical structure has to be built from the ground up. > > I've convinced myself that vectored thrust flyers replace ground vehicles. > Say those are generally unstreamlined, to minimize the armor area. > Sufficient thrust gives them a speed of 600 mph. That makes it possible to > fly into orbit, but that is no survivable tactic in a high-threat > environment. The flying AFVs stay close to the ground clutter. For > MBT-equivalent or IFV-equivalent vehicles, the main guns go into a turret.
Ok, there are couple of ideas here the first is decide what your model of combat is. How do you fight your wars? Which theatre are the big questions answered in, in that in the Navel model the concentration of your military expenditures are fleet assets, with which strive to achieve Space/air Superiority over the contested Planet in this case. This model works in that once achieved the High Ground the rest is mop up by garrison troops that you can land at your leisure. This model assumes that residual opposing ground forces will be forced into the primitive aggressor in a Asymmetric conflict. The other model is the ground warfare model, where ground based assets can resist/attack space based assets with some impunity, thus a forced landing and ground conflict is required to silence said space threatening assets. In this case Close Air Support alongside ground based artillery support is necessary. As is the combined arms force landing, which circles around to who provides Air Support and Ground fire Suppression support and with what sort of assets. Dipping into the Traveller model here as it supposes that all High Tech vehicles are air mobile the exact line where a tank and a transatmospheric fighter/bomber/CAS ship gets real blurry. And that lime might all depend on what that ship's loadout is on that day. Sidenote; there isn't a whole lot of difference between a MBT's main Gun and a Ship's 5 gun, other than the amount of ancillary hardware supporting the weapon. > > Capital ships of the space force are unstreamlined as well, because they > don't do go down into the atmosphere in a tactical situation. The > battleships have big spinal mounts and aim by turning the ship, plus > missiles. I'm not sure if there are carriers. > > Obviously there have to be streamlined aerospace vehicles, but are they > "fast planetary forces" scaled up from the flying AFVs or "aerospace navy" > scaled down from the capital ships? And it gets really interesting if there > are both, with different strengths and weaknesses. Imagine the same weapons > load, one in a single-seater with a small cockpit and the other in a small > starship with enough crew to operate for several weeks. Or an equivalent > weapons load, but not exactly the same. I kinda hit all this with my above commentary. But also consider this how big is the smallest effective combatant got to be? then doe the trade offs for endurance from those minimal figures... > >>> If you need an exit strategy for ground forces, can you make pickup in >>> orbit >>> or do you need a hyperdrive to get into the outer system? >> >> I guess that would depend on the radius of operations your >> "Amphibious" or more properly "Space borne" fighters can operate with. >> The idea of parking your invasion fleet at the edge of a system and >> conducting operations from that base amuses me. Heck from that model I >> would look at Riverine operations instead of air operations. Your APCs >> would be Tango Boats, your primary escorts and Heavy fire support >> would be Monitors with PBRs, Alpha Boats and Swift Boats being your >> intercept forces. > > > Interesting analogy, but were the brown water navy craft ever deployed from > ships rather than shore bases? The range of anything with a hyperdrive is > enough to get into the outer system. More than a few operations had their "Base" with a anchored tender, so when they needed to move the operational center of the the unit they hauled up the anchor and everybody moved. In places in vietnam they used both a Barracks Ship and/or Barracks barge and the tender center of operations. I also seem to recall they repurposed a Gator with a well deck to act as a floating drydock for repairs. All of these ships and boats would be rafted together at anchor in a suitable channel. -- Evyn _______________________________________________ GurpsNet-L mailing list <[email protected]> http://mail.sjgames.com/mailman/listinfo/gurpsnet-l
