Re: How big is a troopship? [DS/FT/SG2] (and what it all means)

On Thu, 23 Sep 1999, Phillip Pournelle wrote:

>     Actually Marines don't drive ships and there are good reasons for
that.
> Just look at those "marines" in Aliens.  They got their @$$ kicked. 
As a
> former gator frieghter driver, I must say that we generally don't want
to

There were lots of organizational things I didn't like about aliens. 

The entire troop compliment went down to planet side with noone on the 
ship. This made for getting additional support from the ship difficult 
when the APC bought it. 

The Ship had all sorts of weapons, none were ever used to support 
the op. 

The use of just one of the two landers when the ship had the capacity
for 
more troops to use the additional assault shuttle. 

The helter skelterness of the op.

The dumbass Lt that led the whole op. 

The act of leaving the entire battle ship when there was a big bug on 
board. Surely there are internal defensive systems that could be used...

> land in a heavily opposed area.  In fact, the advantage of an
amphibious
> force is that you opponent does not know where exactly you are going
to land
> and must spread his forces out to oppose you.

And the advantage of an over the horizon amphibious force is that they 
can't respond to your force quickly enough. 

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