Boarding Ships and Landing Ships

A long discussion of marine boarding ships...

Long Range Drop Shuttle (LoRDS)
Military Shuttle 2 * 1.5 * Mass   Streamlined
Q-Ship Base    1.5 * 1.5 * Mass
non-FTL
Thrust 8	  2 * Mass

FCS
DCM
 .1 * Mass Cloaking System, 2* Mass

At 50 CS per Cargo Mass a 10 Mass Long Range Drop Shuttle
can deliver 325 CS of troops to the surface for
70 points (Military Version) or 63 points (Q-ship Version)

That is about the Marine strength of an 80 Mass Dreadnought.
For boarding purposes you may wish to require a class 3
vehicle per 8 man squad as the small craft alotted to each
ship would be insufficient to transport so many marines
in power armor.  This conveniently amounts to ~1/4 the
cargo area, so a 10 Mass LRDS would have a total boarding
strength of a ~70 Mass ship.  I figure a class 3 vehicle is
about right because that is what mechanized infantry have.

Lets see:
6 Squads (32 each) + 6 Class 3 vehicles (12 each) +6*2 Crew
(Crew also boards, effectively you have 10 man squads,
or 2.5 BDF each)   Cost per 10 man squad, 52.
Total Cost 312	For 15 BDF.  The LRDS has its own 10 man squad
integral to its crew, +12 CS for a Class 3 vehicle  = 324 CS
making a total of 17.5 BDF.

That leaves 1 CS for the ship's mascot, a small cat named Shadow.
If you assume the ship has a Class 3 ships boat integral to her
design you can add 2 marines on a Class 1 space scooter.  The
scooter is normally used for external damage inspections.  For
a nice even 18 BDF.  Each vehicle should have its own hull
breaching equipment to get its marines inside.	I consider that
reasonable equipment for an APC-sized craft.

Incidently, while these craft would have much less endurance
on the ground, they might have _some_ use in ground operations.
Maybe they have wheels and can use roads while having enough
thrust to jump over periodic obstacles.

On some missions it will be more appropriate to have the crew
stay with the vehicles, reducing the boarding factor to 14, or
the marine strength of a 56 Mass ship.	According to the book
the marines can just board in power armor, so I'd go with the
18 PDF figure for most boarding actions.

Because planets do not move unpredictably it is quite easy to
approach fairly closely under cloak.  There is a chance that
orbitting enemy forces will get one shot before the LRDS is
in the atmosphere.  I imagine crossing an entire system under
cloak would result in navigation errors comparable to those
of an FTL transit, but for shorter hops the landers should be
able to get right up to the edge of the atmosphere on the right
vector for landing before they decloak.  I don't recommend
cloaking while trying to land however... :) :) :)

As Drop Shuttles are significantly heavier for the same drop
capacity, (32 Mass of drop shuttles would be required for the
same load), at about the same cost, what could be the reason
for going with drop shuttles?

I suppose some of that mass must be engine and fuel, to be
able to get the shuttle back up into space.  LRDS might be
considered to run out of fuel faster by landing, but if a
deltaV of 7 Miles/Second is a significant portion of a ship's
fuel supply, how do ships get around solar systems in times
less than months or even years?  Maybe drop shuttles drop
in a straight line, exposing themselves to much less 
ground-to-space fire than a conventional ship entering the
atmosphere would do?

Can one use hyper to save time and fuel going from, say,
Jupiter to Earth orbit?  That would really hurt the effectiveness
of system defense boats w/o FTL!

I suppose drop shuttles might be quicker to load and unload,
so likewise the Q-ship lander would be quicker to load and
unload than the heavily compartmented Military hulled lander.

Marine Boat-Support  (MoBS)
Military Hull Streamlined 10 Mass   30
Thrust 8					   20
Damage 5

Systems:
FCS
DCM
Cloaking Device  1 Mass 		   20
6  Ground Troop Support Package:

1)
Long Endurance Fighter Bay
or
2)
ADAF
C Beam PCS
C Beam PCS
Enhanced Sensors
or
3)
PDAF
PDAF
level-1 Shields
C Beam

25 CS for supplies, troops.  (usually vehicles for the ship's
integral marine complement)

The LRDS and MBS are designed to sneak onto a planet while
the enemy still has forces in the system.  They also are used
for Special Forces insertions.	Because they are part of the
Marine Branch of the armed services, the ships are commanded
and crewed by the ground forces.  

As in Vietnam, the air support flown by the marines will fly
closer to the ground, be more effective, and take more
casualties from enemy action because the support will be flown
by someone who has seen firsthand what makes air support
effective.

The tactics of using LRDS and MBS is that your system 
superiority fleet enters sensor range of the planet's orbit
about a turn or so before the landing ships are scheduled to
decloak and enter the atmosphere.  The cloaked landers
attack the planet from the opposite direction from the fleet.
As the enemy fleet will have broken orbit in order to intercept
the attacking fleet they will have fewer weapons which can
attack the landing force.

The enemy forces then have to decide whether to return to
orbit in order to bombard the beachhead, thus being sitting
ducks for long range missile fire or to move away from the
planet, conceding the ground support advantage to the invaders.
I'd hate to see the morale effect of watching your defending
fleet _leave_ while you are under attack, especially if
communications between the fleet and the ground forces
is primarily at the command level.

They would make great smugglers and are useful for keeping
ground forces supplied as well as getting them there in the 
first place.  Without the cloak they are probably the basic
ground-orbit, ground FTL-limit cargo shuttle.

How would the mechanics of ships in orbit attacking ships
in the atmosphere work?

What sorts of ground missiles could target a ship which
enters the atmosphere, either to provide ground support or
to land troops?  How would enhanced ship sensors work
versus stealthed ground targets?

Michael Sandy