Re: Communication and Travel

You wrote: 

>motivation goes up.  Likewise, if the attackers resort to
>ortillery bombardment the motivation will either go to elite
>or down a level.  You take your chances by inflicting civilian
>casualties, after all.

Not to mention unless you're fighting some sort of apocalyptic, 
genocidal, all-or-nothing war (WWII would be a good example) blasting 
away indiscriminately expensive factories and valuable natural 
resources is kinda self-defeating. 

>grow.	A lot of equipment may be cheap obsolete equipment.
>A way to reflect this would be a much lower ECM rating
>for militia troops, unless the communications infrastructure
>of the planet is such that the locals produce their own
>comm gear.

Doncha know it.  That's the Achilles Heel of the colonial militias in 
my background.	That d4 when someone shoots GMSs at you hurts!	Settled 
planets with Thematic (locally maintained professionals in this hybrid 
background) forces have a lot less to worry about, and Tagmatics 
(central government's standing army, best trained and equipped) tend to 
laugh at GMSs.

>And heaven help the government which tries to displace
>them for new immigrants, whether it is their mother
>country or not!  On such a world, all the locals can be

Wasn't there a David Drake book along those lines (Patriot or Patriots 
or something?) based on actual history of Vermont or New Hampshire or 
something.

>would also be an attractive prize.  It is quite possible
>that several rival ethnic groups colonized a rich planet
>as different governments controlled the orbitals.

What would likely occour often would be that colonies of different 
nationalities could be planted on same planet.	After initial 
skirmishes, both central governments form some sort of agreement.  
Fine--until some scarce resource causes renewed conflict.

>Or the defenders could attempt the NVA tactic, "Engage the
>enemy at close ranges, grab him by the belt buckle at the
>landing zones".  The attackers would not be able to evacuate
>a heavily pressed beachhead without heavy casualties.

Umm. I hesitate to take lessons from the NVA unless you're willing to 
blow a couple million troops inflicting a lousy 50K (and your opponent 
will back down after taking 50K).  Terrain dictates your engagement 
ranges.  The Steppes of Central Asia would be a bad place to try to use 
a knife-fighting strategy, but a back alley in Beiruit is not the place 
to try out your new HEL with the 6km range.

>A lot depends on the level of motivation of the troops and the
>initiative of the officers.

And that on sentence more or less summarizes the Art of War in a 
nutshell.  :)

John