On Sun, Sep 7, 2014 at 4:30 AM, Onno Meyer <[email protected]> wrote: > Evyn replied to me: >> >> 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. > > There are two aspects to this -- what is "dictated" by the technology, and > what can be "decided" by the writer of the setting? Even without near-C > rocks, it seems that the space force can always devastate a planet. Some > missiles will get through. That has to be neutralized by political means in > the setting, or only the Navy counts. It could be a formal treaty, an > unilateral declaration by somebody with enough power to make it stick (cf > Traveller, or David Weber), it could be MAD, it could be the inherent value > of earthlike planets in a setting which has few of them. > > So assume that mass orbital bombardment is out.
But I still have the High Ground then i have access to detailed intelligence, with the ability to deploy precision ground strikes by means of through atmospheric bean and gunfire as well as guided and dead fall munitions and Troop delivery and guidance. >> >> 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. > > If space assets must stay in orbit -- because hypering in and out would make > precision strikes impossible and area strikes are unacceptable -- the ground > forces have the advantage of hiding in ground clutter. But can a tank-sized > ground asset hurt spaceships, and would a battleship-sized ground asset > remain immune from saturation bombardment? It could be that something this > large justifies some collateral damage. > > My current draft for a TL11 "Navy Aerospace Craft" does 6.4 G loaded and 8 G > light, with DR 1,000 armor and force screens. It would clearly be vulnerable > to tank-sized laser batteries which hide under some trees, or in a garage, > and get cued by ground sensors before the ship comes over the horizon. >> >> In this case Close Air Support alongside ground based artillery >> support is necessary. > > Are ballistic tube artillery or bombardment rockets survivable against point > defense? A lot of these questions you have decide with your background, Look at Drake's Hammer's Slammers, he used central computing along side a large distributed array to provide line of sight air defense out to orbital ranges. Also used direct fire assets (Tanks and Combat Cars) to suppress ground defensive fire so his ballistic artillery could operate. Star Wars used planetary scale shields to protect ground assets from orbital bombardment, such that a landing was required to reduce the base. But as i was saying you as the setting designer need to decide where those action points are going to happen. In my most recent examples a landing is forced out of line of sight of the protected region and a ground siege is required. >> >> 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. > > I think there is a clear difference. > > The tank is optimized for a direct fire duel with accurate, armor-piercing, > low-collateral-damage rounds. It can resist some hits in this class, at > least beyond 1/2D range, at least on the frontal arc. The point defense is > designed to deal with ATGM-equivalent missiles, which are shorter-ranged and > more numerous than SAMs. > > The transatmospheric fighter or gunboat is optimized for quick firing > passes, which release a variety of ordnance in a short time before getting > the hell out of dodge. The armor is not enough to resist their own weapons. > The point defense is designed to deal with SAM-equivalent or shipkiller > missiles. The fighter might be re-armed for CAS or counter-ship strikes, but > it won't become a tank. All I am pointing out is once you can float heavily armored vehicles the specific differences become fewer and fewer. As a point of order most Armored vehicles can not withstand fire from their own main weapons, this is a design feature incase you need to quickly disable one of your own vehicles in the field to keep from falling into enemy hands... >> >> 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. > > Two points here: > > The 3" or 5" gun on modern ships is no longer the main weapon. It is a > backup to the missile silos, with cheaper and smaller ammo. That all depends on your engagement envelope and mission. Up close and personal your missile assets ain't worth bupkis if you need to hip shoot a target under a mile or so, Heck there are a large number of smallish combatants that the Radars and directors won't pick up, and that 50 caliber mount won't disable fast enough that you will be glad you have some heavy direct fire for. The used to have a hand director for the CIS for moments like these, now they are mount 20mm cannon on deck mounts now. Plus the 50s and other small arms... But I digress, Mind you and Abrams mounts a 120mm smooth bore and a 5 inch naval gun is approx. 127mm, the big difference is the mission. The Tank needs to hit hip shoot a direct fire shot at a target that is also moving within terrain within a nautical mile or two, so a lot of it's wide field target acquisition is from the sensors and reports of it's platoon mates and associated scouts (Hint this is also how air combatants work as well). While a Ship's 5 inch gun is it's generalist, it does everything a tanks gun does, but it also has to act as a artillery battery as well as such it gets more ancillary equipment that is a pain to fit in a tank even though they are similar sized weapons. Remember Tank main guns started out as Naval cannon.... > > And there are differences. The tank gun is optimized for maximum punch, at > the expense of RoF and range. Consider how many are still manually loaded. > The naval gun has about three times the RoF and several times the ready > rounds. With autoloaders and a team of poor schmucks feeding the loading tray as compared to that single poor bastard in the back of the turret. But the point is after a certain point the main weapon on a tank and air defence fighter are going to look the same if the are both armored to the same levels. Because it always comes down to the Sacred Triangle, Speed, Firepower and Defense. For every mission you want and much of all three as you can aford while still being able to get the job done. >> 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... > > The smallest effective hyperspace warship needs to: > - Travel between inhabitated star systems. > - Detect stealthy warships at useful engagement ranges. > - Carry weapons which can put small to medium ships at risk. > - Carry armor and point defense to degrade the attack of other very small > ships, but not stop it. > > Note that I'm calling for an "overarmed" craft -- it can threaten something > several times larger, but it will be terribly at risk. > > Call it 100 tons, with four 4-ton shipkiller missiles and a decent laser? I fear there is a lecture on Space power in the back of my head but since I don't have solid terms to couch it in I am going to leave it there. But getting back to our little buddy the APC, who is he delivering and what is their mission? From a SpecWarfare point of view, fast enough to get us there and back in a reasonable time, stealthy enough to get us in there without being noticed and hard enough to keep the flys off if we have to beat feet. The quiet matters for the delivery and the egress if the mission went to plan, the fast and hard if it didn't -- Evyn _______________________________________________ GurpsNet-L mailing list <[email protected]> http://mail.sjgames.com/mailman/listinfo/gurpsnet-l
