Re: Troop Capacity

On 19 Jun 98 at 11:07, Tony Christney wrote:

> At 05:40 PM 6/19/98 +0000, you wrote:

[snip]

> >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)
> 
> Speed is the key. A starship in orbit has to wait while the planet
> rotates under it in order to target a particular point. Several
> squadrons of aerospace fighters can attack places all over the
> planet simultaneously. This suprise factor would likely be critical
> to overcoming the planetary defences.

This doesn't follow. A starship in orbit can pop around to the other 
side of the planet in a short time by manuevering. FT ships manuever 
pretty fast compared to the size of a planet.
Planetary defenses are going to be all over the planets surface, 
having a blind spot is a critical weakness. So attacking all over the 
place means getting shot down all over the place. You have to 
concentrate on creating a opening, then exploiting it. Also, a planet 
is going to field it's own aerospace fighters. The trick is that the 
attacker can choose where to attack, while the defender has to defend 
many places.
Possible invasion tactic would be thus:
Defeat/drive off defensive space navy.
Drop aerospace fighters with a lot of dummy emmiters, make a 
concentrated attack on the planetary defenses in that area to allow 
your fleet to mount an invasion.
Spread out from that location, using the horizon as your main defense 
against planetary defenses, roll out the attack to other key targets.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Richard Slattery	     richard@mgkc.demon.co.uk
The word aerobics comes from two Greek words: aero, meaning 'ability
to,' and bics, meaning 'withstand tremendous
boredom.' 
     Dave Barry
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