Re: Planetary defenses

> OK I've noticed that many people on this list seem to assume that
> orbital strikes, ortillery and woning orbit means it's pretty much all
> over for a planet, that it might as well roll over and die.
> 
> I'd like to throw it back at everyone and ask, if you had to design a
> planetary defense to counter such a situation what could be done? How
> effective would be ground based wepons? Obviously they could be very
> effective against atmospheric craft but what about Stuff in space?
> 
> 
> I know fixed defenses may be a problem but what about underground
> defense complexes connected by hundreds of kilometer of underground
rail
> where heavy weapons fuel with the vast power reserves available to a
> planet could pop up shoot and scoot? Any ideas? I'm thinking about
> defensing the planet here not subjugating it.
> 
> Los

Do you mean to ask, what sort of planetary defenses would there
be in the FT universe, ~2183 AD, or how to build effective planetary
defenses using the various FT rules?

If you want _effective_ planetary defenses, I recommend halving the
hull and structure costs (but not necessarily the armor costs) for
planetary bases.  This takes into account the fact that life support
and living space are comparitively free, and some defenses are
really cheap, just bury your facilities under a _lot_ of dirt, rock,
sand and concrete.

I'd put some really long range beam batteries on the various moons.
They'd be limited to 1 or 2 arcs, and turning the moon isn't really
an option.

Planet based fighter groups and missile racks are probably the best
from a game mechanics point of view.  The planet can launch its
defense before the attacker can hit them, the defenses don't risk
being plinked to death from long range.

The question then arises, is it better to have one big Uber-Base
or several dozen minimal sized bases?

If you have lots of small bases with one Salvo Missile Rack, long
range, each, it is possible that the enemy won't be able to detect
all of your bases before they fire, or detect which ones actually
still have weapons left.  Even if the attackers scanners can
detect bases and determine their approximate size, a couple 
hundred 6 point bases mixed with some large number equipped with
missiles could be very hard to dig out.

Michael Sandy