Re: Troop Capacity

> > Minor peeve--note that it's only possible to actually conquer a
small,
> > small colony from space.  Once you get a couple million colonists
with
> > a homegrown industry, it becomes impossible to physically land
enough
> > troops to do more than raid.  Example:  Israel, with 6 million
> > inhabitants, can field 13 armored divisions, and one parachute
division
> > (or is it 12 and 1?  I don't recall).  Taking down a force that big
> > would require either massive and indiscriminate use of orbital
support
> > (trashing what you're supposed to be trying to conquer!) or one even
> > larger--which would be prohibitive to transport.
> >
>   This is especially true with the troop capacity listed for FT/MT
> dropships. The example in MT shows that it takes a 60 ton vehicle to
> deliver 31 vehicles and 197 combat troops (including vehicle crew).
> As was pointed out above, this is very poor odds.
>   With the FB the maximum size limitation is gone, but ships are
> generally more massive to accomplish the same thing as in FT2/MT. I
> see this type of thing in many SF games. I would like to see this
> system revised.
>   I usually picture several ships that launch dropships carrying
> specialized assault forces. These forces job is to clear and hold
> enough ground to land the real troop carriers. The main troop
> carriers would be atmospherically streamlined cruisers carrying
> thousands of troops in cryosleep or hundreds of Armored Vehicles.
>   For this to work, usually, a force would have had to landed
>   special
> forces to take out the tactical/stratgic infrastructure
> (communications, radar, etc.) timed with the assault. And the
> assault force would need to gain space/air superiority.
> 

I'd go along with this. I've thought about the problem of large 
populations having large standing armies.. requiring fleets with vast 
amounts of troops to prosecute a ground war...

Well, it assumes that you won the space war to be able to land the 
troops, so you have got some pretty good space 'ortillery' to back 
you up, so that evens things out. And lets assume that your special 
force dropship and missiles from space managed to take out the 
planetary defenses in orbit or on planet...

Numbers of troops... Well, standing armies have been shrinking as 
technologies increase.	The equipment is vastly expensive, and you 
need very well trained troops to operate it.  So perhaps you end up 
with pretty small numbers of troops with very advanced systems.

Which tangentially brings me to fighters in FT. They seem to have an 
extremely short lifespan. Are they remote piloted? Military forces 
can't put up with the massive wastage of men, and the morale 
implications are rather poor. Even if the fighters can be mass 
produced, the pilots probably take years to train, and soon run 
out. Or should we perhaps think of kills in FT for fighters (and 
perhaps even for normal ships) as being mission kills. The drifting 
hulks recoverable and many survivors picked up by the side that 
'holds the field'.

Just my .02 credits ;)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Richard Slattery	     richard@mgkc.demon.co.uk
Creative semantics is the key to contemporary government; it consists of
talking in strange tongues lest the public learn the
inevitable inconveniently early. 
     George Will
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