Re: Troop Capacity

You wrote: 

>How do you send Aerospace fighters down to a planet thet you haven't 
>invaded yet to take out the SML launchers that are stopping you 
>invading in the first place?

Usually, you sit outside their max range with your carriers, and send 
them in like you would an airstrike on an enemy fleet.	

>Drop capsules? Why aren't they shot down by planetary defenses? Where 
>do the fighters go once they have expended their ammunition? Drop 
>supplies? Drop an airbase, drop defenses for it? 

Why are you basing them on the planet?	That's why God invented 
carriers.

>I suppose that of the fighters are successful you start the invasion 
>proper, but what can a little aerospace fighter carry that a 
>starship can't that goes through the many meters of armour that the 
>SML's are under, that itself can stave off starship mounted weapons.
>(sorry for the sentence structure)

The Aerospace fighters can't be targeted by SMLs, right?  They can drop 
precision-guided weapons (preferably, you've inserted SOF long before 
and are lasing the targets) which penetrate then explode a la that bomb 
the US used in Desert Storm to kill bunkers that could survive a 
nuclear near-miss.  The one that started with a surplus 8-inch howitzer 
barrel.  They've got to worry about smaller air defenses, but you can 
afford to loose some aerospace fighters tangling with the SAMs, whereas 
you can't afford to loose a battleship.

John