Planetary Defense Batteries

Thanks, now I can quote names at him.
I toyed with the idea that firing through an atmosphere increases the 
effective range by one band (short is treated as medium etc.) but 
nothing was ever finalized. Alternatively the atmosphere itself might be

the equivalent of level one screens (but not to ortillery).
Now we have missile magazines could we see planetary strike missiles? I 
can imagine a cruiser caught out, her tubes loaded for a planetary 
strike facing an unexpected defender.

I don't know about ships attacking planets, we never got that far. Line 
of sight at least though. The closest we had were abstract rules for 
bombardment to reduce a planets productivity.

The whole topic of planetary defenses came up during a discussion about 
the next set of campaign rules, basically I would write something and he

would tear it apart (generally constructively and certainly without 
malice). The problems came from our different perspectives, most 
fundamentally on the speed of the war, mine was much slower than his.

As to a reason for them, I like artillery. The bigger the better. 
Seriously though disabling the guns would be a commando mission to allow

the invasion to proceed (e.g. The Guns of Navarone). So one little 
Stargrunt battle or two could decide a planets fate.

Ortillery is much better at leveling cities, and is not radioactive 
either. I also assume that the defense batteries might be huge (class 5s

anyone?) after all you can feed them with a continental power grid 
(until that gets shot to pieces).

I also like the idea of big gun platforms in orbit, again mounting huge 
cannon.

Fighters and missiles are definitely better based in orbit, I would rule

that they lose a turn of endurance just climbing out of the gravity 
well.
Unless we take a lesson from 2300 and mount our fighters with disposable

boosters (German Udet class I think). For FT 2 missiles we costed the 
boosters at one mass and five points I think.

Michael

______________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com