On 11/24/05, John Tailby <john_tailby@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
When I made my comments about equatorial landing zones I made the
assumption that the landing craft would be a more advanced version of the
space shuttle. If the landing craft have full antigrav then they could
land straight down.
They'd have to be to have any value. You'd also have to land
somewhere useful. Land in the "Central Africa" equivalent on a colony
with 125,000 inhabitants clustered in the Italy equivalent, and you're
wasting your time. By the time you road march the whole way, you've
lost a lot of troops to environmental factors, much of your equipment
has been lost to wear and tear and accidents, and you'll have wasted a
lot of time as well.
If you have shuttles that fly like aircraft they might well need long
landing spaces to set down.
Which makes them incapable of fulfilling the role of landing craft. :)
The last 50 years of earth history has been full of advanced nations
losing wars to local militia. The Europeans all lost their colonial
empires to local revolts. Some were managed in semi peaceful transitions
but others were violent rebellions. Yet they had the technology and the
economics to suppport their army if they wanted to. The Americans
suffered a similar reverse in Vietnam as did the French.
There has not been a case in the last 50 years of a major power's army
suffering a defeat in a conventional battle. Political decisions not
to continue fighting a counter insurgency have been made. But every
time local forces stand and fight, they die like flies.
I'm very carefully seperating conventional warfare and insurgency. My
model is an initial phase of high-intensity conflict to secure the
major population centers and defeat the garrison, thus assuming
effective control of the colony. Then there is the counter-insurgency
phase. Which I'm not going to worry overmuch about because it makes
for some piss-poor wargaming scenarios.
To properly capture the flavor of guerilla warfare, you need to run 30
scenarios where the government forces run up and down the road and
cordon-and-search and so on and NOTHING HAPPENS.
Then, on the 31st scenario, throw in a roadside bomb or some suicide
car bomber or some joker in the village who decides to die for Allah.
Then 30 more scenarios where nothing happens.
I agree that campaigns set in the FT universe won't suffer from the CNN
effect of recent conflicts and the armchair quarterbacking of
politicians.
I can see the same kind of politics going into outfitting the invasion
fleet though. The "there's only a bunch of half assed mountain boys" you
won't need any armoured vehicles or aerospace fighters.
That would be possible.
John
--
"Thousands of Sarmatians, Thousands of Franks, we've slain them again
and again. We're looking for thousands of Persians."
--Vita Aureliani
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