Landing Ships

	Greetings All,
	While the discussion of merchant vs. military hulls for troop
transport
has been going on, I have been reading Tom Clancy's new non-fiction book
"Marine". The book has some good information on the USMC for modern
gamers.
I took the ships carrying a Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU) and tried to
convert them to Full Thrust ships with equivalent carrying capacity.
	The LHD-1, USS Wasp, is a helicopter assault carrier. It was
listed as
carrying one rifle company , the battalion weapons company with 24
hummers,
the battalion and landing force HQ and support elements, one battery of
6
towed 155mm guns, four LAV-25's, two LAV-AT, twelve medium transport
helicopters, eight heavy transport helo's, four cobras, and six
Harriers.
	I made the following assumption. The rifle, weapons and HQ
companies are
about 200 men each with their slice of the MEU's support troops. The
artillery battery is also 200 men plus 20 size 1 vehicles. The LAV's are
size 2 and have 36 men for crews and support. The air squadron is twelve
size 3 VTOL's, eight mass 3 dropships, four size 2 attack VTOL's, with
the
Harriers counting as a standard flight of six aerospace fighters. The
air
squadron adds another 150 men in pilots and support staff.
	So far we have the NAC Troop Carrier ( CVL\T ) with:
	800 troops from the marine battalion @ 4 CS each = 3200 CS
	186 men from the LAV's and VTOL's @ 4 CS each=	744 CS
			44 size 1 vehicles @ 4 CS each =    176 CS
	10 size 2 vehicles and VTOL's @ 8 CS each =	       80 CS
			12 size 3 VTOL's @ 12 CS each =    144 CS
						total	      _________
							    4344 CS or
87 mass
	I think we have a problem here! In order to have the troop
carrier to
embark only one-half of the MEU it will have to be a supership. Maybe
I'm
taking the comparison of Full Thrust starships to contemporary wet navy
ships too seriously but I would think that it should be possible to fit
this force in a large but not supership sized starship. Adding the one
fighter flight and four standard bays for the mass 3 dropships brings
the
total mass to 117. The ship needs only defensive weapons and the
equivalent
to the Wasp's armament would be three PDAF and one ADAF for 6 more mass
for
a total of 123 mass of troops and weapons and a ships mass of 246. This
design didn't take the three LCAC's from the Wasp into account, add in
three mass 6 dropships for another 18 mass of weapons load. 
	Jon, am I looking at some thing wrong or do the Full Thrust\
Dirtside
rules in MT need tweaked. Did you intend that troops were mostly shipped
frozen or should I assume that troops are moved in company sized units?
								      
John Kinder
Jkinder@worldnet.att.net

"Never wish an infantryman a good day"
Charles Schultz