Re: Troop Capacity

On 14 Jun 98 at 17:10, John Atkinson wrote:

> Fine.  If you wanna customize your background, that's your call. 
> I'm using the assumptions presented in More Thrust and Dirtside. 
> You know, the ones where on average orbital fire missions wander? 
> And have a 200m blast radius, 400m if specifically designed as
> ortillery?  And leave residual radiation like nuclear weapons?

Customizing it is what it's all about, and it's actively encouraged.

> More Thrust 'strongly reccomends' ruling that to provide orbital
> fire support, a ship must be in low orbit, as opposed to
> geostationary.  Sounds to me like they do need to sit in nice
> predictable orbits, at least when firing.  Which makes swatting them
> with SMLs fun and easy.

Which in turn means you have to find a way of taking the SML's (or 
whatever land based system) out. Any suggestions?

 
> Oh, you meant standing armies.  I thought you maybe meant wartime
> strengths, seeing as how we are talking about fighting wars.	But
> even standing armies have remained relatively large, compared to
> batallion-sized landing forces.

Good point. And another good point. So how do we find a way to make 
(space) naval invasion achievable. Or is your contention that they 
shouldn't be other than with extremely large numbers of troops, which 
is going to be awkward to play out with Dirtside sized engagements.

> I didn't insult their bravery, simply their sanity.  It's a mentally
> unstable person who takes up a profession where death is as close to
> garunteed as possible.  But fighters are sexy, hence fighter jocks
> will always be with us.

It's a mentally unstable person that puts their life on the line when 
it's *needed*? In a long war, being a 'fighter jock' suddenly isn't 
so glamourous

> >average pilot had a lifespan of two weeks from entering active 
> >service. They were not idiots. We were actually running out of 
> >people to be pilots, rather than planes. It was a serious problem.
> 
> If they're so bright, why did they end up dead?  History is filled
> with courageous people who's sanity I question.  But better them
> than me.  I like my nice safe job playing with land mines.  At least
> I can hide.[1]

Huh? They ended up dead because the fighting was extremely intense, 
fighting against other people as skilled as they were. Neither side 
were idiots, it was the nature of the combat. I guess it would have 
been brighter for everyone to have called in sick, but then again, 
you end up losing the war.

> 
> John M. Atkinson
> [1]For the terminally clueless:  Yes, this is at least half-joking,
> as was previous comment.  I'll say the same sort of thing about most
> of the combat elements of various services--except mine.  It takes
> all kinds, but that doesn't mean I have to view others in the most
> positive lights.  12-Boom-booms, Dumb grunts, Snake-eaters,
> Tread-heads, REMFs, Zoomies, and Squids, we're all on the same side,
> but having fun at each other's expense is an ancient tradition, not
> likely to change in the next 200 years (there--I made it topical!)

Hmmmm.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Richard Slattery	     richard@mgkc.demon.co.uk
It is not necesssary to understand things in order to argue about them. 
     Caron de Beaumarchais
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