Re: Merchant Hulls and Amphibious Vessesls

>On Sun, 2 Feb 1997 AEsir@aol.com wrote:
>
>> Having served on a U.S. Navy Amphibious Flagship and seeing
merchants, I can
>> tell you that they are not the same.  The Rules in MT regarding
amphibious
>> ships should be changed.
>
>Amphibious spaceships...? <g>

Actually, if you think about it "amphibious" means "double lived", with
nothing about the "doubling" being water and land, so thinking of it as
"space and surface" is pretty reasonable.

>>  IF you have a merchant ship and convert it to carry
>> troops then you save money on the design and carry the burden of lack
of DC
>> capability or hull integrity.
>
>Exactly. However, the MT troop transports (at least in the section Mike

>and Jon wrote) seem to be purpose-built troop transports - but without 
>the high structural integrity and the many redundant systems of the
true 
>warships; not a hastily converted liner.
>
>Note, however, that most space liners would probably have enough 
>auxiliary craft - read 'shuttles' - to let them work as troop
transports, 
>at least for infantry, without too large refits. The difference between
a 
>landing shuttle and a military assault shuttle is probably quite a bit 
>less than that between a wet naval landing craft and a wet naval
life-boat.

I agree- a lander designed for repeated atmospheric entry would have to
be
pretty tough, amounting to an armoured aerospace vehicle in DS2 terms.

SNIP
>A space troop transport wouldn't need to close enough to the planet to 
>get shot at, if it's shuttles have a long enough range... and thus 
>wouldn't necessarily need to have the extra hull integrity.
>
>Regards,
>Oerjan Ohlson

	I think this is one of those questions best answered by natural
selection- if your campaign has strong system defence flotillas then you
might find the grunts have no ride home if they use merchant transports,
but
as Oerjan points out, if they can be safely dropped from far enough out,
it
would be a waste to buy military hulls if they're unlikely to fight.

Cheers, 
Rob Paul

Rob Paul
NERC Institute of Virology 
Mansfield Road, Oxford OX1 3SR	  Tel. (01865) 512361
rpaul@worf.molbiol.ox.ac.uk
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