Re: Troop Capacity

On 13 Jun 98 at 22:10, John Atkinson wrote:

> 
> Ortillery is a nasty proposition--but very limited in actual
> abilities with regards to providing accurate fire support without
> trashing the entire planet.  A lot like nuclear weapons.  And as for
> the Planetary Aerospace defenses, a fortified SML emplacement with a
> vast magazine and a couple points of armor (concrete slabs) will
> have a field day knocking ships out of nice, predicatable orbits. 
> And if you build as many of them as, say, the Mississippi had river
> fortresses during the 'Merican Civil War, it'll take a LOT of
> killing.

How is it limited? Why should it be innacurate? It can be accurate as 
we decide it is...

Planetary defenses, I agree, are a tough nut to crack, depending on 
their limitations. Ships do not need to sit in nice predictable 
orbits. In FT the manuever capability of a ship seems to be massively 
larger than the problems gravitic attraction from a planet causes.

> 
> >Numbers of troops... Well, standing armies have been shrinking as 
> >technologies increase.  The equipment is vastly expensive, and you 
> 
> Beg to differ:  From 1789-1918, armies multiplied in size rapidly. 
> In WWII, much the same levels were maintained, but spread out over
> the globe instead of all crammed into a teeny-tiny European front. 
> The phenomenom of smaller professional forces is interesting, and a
> likely indicator of Things To Come, but don't always bet on it.

But since 1918, and during the recent sudden rise in technology, the 
standing forces of the advanced technology countries have been 
shrinking radically. (Other than the US, who had a pre WWII standing 
army of only 100-200,000, not including national guard, but this was 
very atypical of the time)

> 
> >need very well trained troops to operate it.  So perhaps you end up 
> >with pretty small numbers of troops with very advanced systems.
> 
> Or perhaps much larger forces with not-quite-as-advanced-but-pretty-
> good stuff.  Like GEVs with HKPs instead of Grav Tanks with MDCs.

It all depends on what you want as a game/universe designer, and what 
is most economic, what is easiest to supply, what is most felxible, 
and what fits into the doctrine of the authoritative body. So, since 
we are designing it for our own purposes, we have a lot of leeeway, 
provided we give sensible reasons.

> >Which tangentially brings me to fighters in FT. They seem to have an 
> >extremely short lifespan. Are they remote piloted? Military forces 
> 
> Nope.
> 
> >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'.
> 
> Lots of idiots wanna be fighter jocks.  Check the average lifespan
> of pilots in historical wars--grotesque attrition throughout the
> first ten missions.  

It takes more than an idiot to fly a fighter. It currently takes 
two years of very expensive training to be ready for fighters.
I'll also choose to not take that as an insult to the bravery of the 
RAFduring WWII, where at the height of the battle of britain the 
average pilot had a lifespan of two weeks from entering active 
service. They were not idiots. We were actually running out of 
people to be pilots, rather than planes. It was a serious problem.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Richard Slattery	     richard@mgkc.demon.co.uk
For most men life is a search for the proper manilla envelope in which
to get themselves filed. 
     Clifton Fadiman
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