Re: 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)
> 
> I would think that such a ship would be hard pressed to avoid my
> planetary missile system. I I place an equivilent point cost of
> missiles on the planet that would give me 11 missiles to fire at
> your ship. If the planet is represented by a 6" radius planet, gives
> an orbit of 6" above the planets surface, that means that any ship
> in orbit will automatically be in range of my missile launched from
> the planet. Goodby landing craft.

I had indeed thought about it, but the planet is going to be in
the way of some of your missile arcs.  Missiles fly in straight lines
after all.  You'd need three missile launch sites to cover the
entire atmosphere.  And the concept can always be scaled down.
Are you going to waste missiles on 14 point ships?  These same
missiles would target any kind of lander I use, including the
by-the-book Drop Shuttles.  Targeting ground missile launchers
from space is very difficult without surprise.	We are going to
have to get rid of them anyway, so sneaking in some ground
troops or atmosphere capable spaceships seems the way to go.

Of course, the biggest reason Cloaked Landers don't fear missiles
is that missiles can't be launched at them in time.

Hunh?  You say?
Read the sequence of events:
Write Orders
Fire Missiles
Move and _Decloak_ ships.

Your planetary launchers don't have anybody to fire at during their
Fire Missile Phase!  You can fire all the beam weapons you like
at them, but the Landers are going to be in the atmosphere the
beginning of the turn after they Decloaked, and at the end of that
turn they should be landed.  If you can use ground to space missiles
against ground targets the Dirtside II people are going to want to
know about it!

> Brian Bell
> pdga6560@csi.com
> http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/pdga6560/fthome.html

Michael Sandy