On Fri, 1 Jan 2016, Onno Meyer wrote:
Johannes replied to me:
I was more thinking about a pickup with a heavy weapon mounted on it. Or
infantry. That is more expendable then a battle cruiser and the tactics i
have in mind would depend on the expendability of individual units.
Especially the advantage of covering lots of ground and detecting enemy
troops early must outweight loosing a few units on the long run.
Battlesuits are going to be more expendable than tanks, but much less
expendable than the recon drones mentioned by Stephen. I wonder how small
(and cheap) a viable drone can become.
Say the target is a SM+0 suit with basic cloaking (-7) and I want to detect
it at 450 yards (-14). Even with a high sensor skill (18?) a scan rating of
13 or more would be desirable. That's 1 lb. and $4,000 for a PESA.
If drones have good long range communication abilities (including
protections against jamming and detection by looking for communication)
and/or are trusted to act independently including attacking, then they
likely will replace some of thoose suits. I assumed that this is for some
unspecified reason not the case, to keep humans in danger for narrative
reasons.
>
> It sounds as if you are clearly on the pro-flight side of the debate.
>
Sofar all my ideas have come up with uses for flights. Though with some i
suspect, if i develop them long enough, eventually the suit might get
dropped and i end up with a grav cycle with a bazooka equivalent or
something. And as a personal preferrence i don't like suits much, so it
might be, that i have a bias to optimize them away from being suits.
Johannes
The old TL11 has no contragrav, but vectored reactionless thrust gets the
same look-and-feel.
- An enclosed grav cycle with integral armor or an open grav cycle with body
armor for the rider? Would the "air cav" trooper fight mounted, dismounted,
or both?
- How does that work in space ships/stations, urban areas, or arcologies?
- If you go with the concept, why not two-seat models with a driver and a
gunner? The flying equivalent of a jeep with a TOW.
- Historically, motorcycle troops were a failure. Jeeps worked better, but
mostly behind the frontline.
Sofar I only got to "What i use the suits for, is to have a fast moving
heavy weapon. The most straight forward way to get that is to attach a
drive and a crew station to that heavy weapon. If i picture that i would
call it grav cycle".
I have not thought yet about enclosed or not. That would depend on a cost
analysis (including cost of transporting the vehicle and such).
I was thinking of fighting mounted.
I was thinking of regular military not commandos or swat teams, that would
be called to fight inside space stations or urban areas, that are not
supposed to be considered "terrain with many rock like features, that can
be easily reshaped by bombardment"
2 crew stations would be a possiblity. Depends on if your bottleneck is
soldiers or weapons, and if having twice as many units, that work with
penalities because of an overtaxed operator are a net advantage or
disadvantage.
A jeep essentially is a slightly larger motorcycle with a better
stability. I guess the advantages mainly come from the latter. With grav
vehicles you no longer have stability differences.
Johannes
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