Re: Communication and Travel

Sorry for my tardiness in response, I've been out of town for a 
week.

On 15 Jun 98 at 23:51, John Atkinson wrote:

> You wrote: 
> 
> >What did the americans do in Beruit or was it the Lebanon when they 
> >were sniped at. Used the New Jersey for fire support on at least one 
> >occasion.
> 
> In the first place, Lebanon was a case where they actually could
> identify areas controlled by the various militias, making it
> possible to target them.  In the second place, the New Jersey ended
> up plastering a bunch of villiages a couple valleys over and doing a
> lot more harm than good.

My example was to show what actually happens, not what was a good 
idea.

> >What did they do when they got a truck bomb in a barracks? They kept 
> >doing their job until they were told not to.
> 
> Actually, the government panicked and pulled back.

Well,  I meant 'they' as in the troops.

> >As a note, there is little reason why you can't use smaller ship 
> >mounted 'ortillery' for pinpoint attacks, or use some sort other sort

> >of fire support platform. You use the weapon that does the right job.
> 
> Particle beams are not "pinpoint".  Nothing is "pinpoint" in the
> military.  It's like this "surgical strike" nonesense.  You don't
> conduct surgery with high explosives.  To pretend you're getting
> precision with anything other than a SOF strike is loony.  They've
> yet to build a weapon that can go in, search the hootches for
> weapons, check IDs, and take appropriate action in each individual
> case.  And they never will.

Hmm, hitting a ship from several thousand miles away is pretty 
pinpoint, and they are dodging. Planetary surfaces are fairly 
predictable in their movement.
Deciding what is a sensible target, as you point out, is the real 
issue. It's what special forces and forward observers are for, but 
that means putting /them/ in harms way.

> >FT allows pretty darned big fleet actions, so that base is covered.
> 
> Yup.	I'd like to see more rules for Planetary Defenses, though.

So would I. Want to throw some ideas out here?

> >Dirtside and Stargrunt however, are relatively small scale. So how 
> >to integrate them into the picture while allowing the actions that 
> >you can portray in them to be of significant scale to the whole 
> >planetside action. Or do we need an 'operational' level ruleset for 
> >ground warfare?
> 
> Options:  
> 1)Realize you're never going to simulate the entire war on a
> tabletop with minis.	I've yet to see this done for, say, the
> Eastern Front in WWII, so why do we insist on it for SF wars?
> 2)Bathtub scale.  Don't ask me how this term came into being.  But
> what it refers to is a series of Command Decision WWII campaigns
> played at the 1:25 scale.  IOW, one Batallion's worth of miniatures
> would be used in the campaign for every 25 batallions in the real
> war.	So for every Corps, you might have a combined arms regiment in
> minis.  

I don't insist on using minis. However, there are some WWII 
rulesets that allow divisional/corps engagements with minis. (Each 
1:300 tank represents 5 or so) That was why I wanted to get actions 
down to the size that could be portrayed with similar rulesets. If we 
have planetry invasions take scores of divisions, then it's another 
scale up again, and tabletop mini gaming gets awkward. 1 model = a 
division starts to get icky. 
If you have invasions which take hundreds of thousands, if not 
millions of combatants, then supply becomes an even more critical 
issue. Third Reich in space anyone? ;)
I'll toy with the idea of what a game like that would need 
represented in it for a week or two.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Richard Slattery	     richard@mgkc.demon.co.uk
The basis of action is lack of imagination. It is the last resource of
those who know not how to dream. 
     Oscar Wilde
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