Re: Troop Capacity

You wrote: 

>I thought that we weren't taking sides, just exploring the envelope.
>I thought FT missiles (not SML's) each had an AI? That makes them 

Not much of one--fly in a relatively straight line and detonate a 
nuclear warhead when you get close.  Doesn't deserve the title of AI.

>or make it dangerous to go near it, anyway. You nead about six sites 
>aroud the planet to give an all aspect defense, unless you want the 
>attacker to come close via your blindside.

Sure--but what you're more likely to see on a sparsely settled colony 
will be a half-dozen semi-automated sites near the spaceport.  

>Did you come up with any rules for planetary defenses yet?

Not yet.  I'm having difficulty taking into account scales and the 
atmosphere.  Take beam batteries, for instance.  Whipping out my 
handy-dandy TNE Fusion, Fire, and Steel (an invaluable resource for 
anyone playing with semi-realistic science fiction), I note Particle 
Accelerator Weapons (as the FT "official" beam batteries are) can 
either be charged or not.  Charged beam weapons have piss-poor vacuum 
abilities (range multiplier of .001!), and neutral beam weapons have 
fairly lousy atmospheric permformance. (Note for TNE users--am assuming 
an atmosphere code of 6 or 7, ie fairly Earthlike)  An N-PAW firing 
from orbit (same 30K km space combat hex) is treated as if it were 
firing at a vacuum target 50 hexes away.  A charged particle beam is 
about ten times as good--but it still takes something out of the 
performance.  And if the charged particle beam has to interact with a 
magnetic field like Earth's, accuracy is degraded further.  N-PAWs can 
be switched to fire charged particles when necessary-but still note the 
degredation for the orbital fire.  In other words, this gives A 
batteries a max range of 3.6 inches.  Now that's roughly 3,600 km, 
right?	Max range, mind you.  And a 1,200 km range for the class one 
batteries.  Now, I don't know a thing about a orbital mechanics.  Which 
is another hindrance.  I don't know what's low orbit, geosynchronous, 
etc.

PDS are another issue.	I've always assumed they are computor directed 
laser clusters.  YMMV.	Now, operating those things in an atmosphere 
will (again, going of TNE FFS, page 128) impose a range multiplier of 
.01.  Hence the former 6000 km range becomes 60 km.  Much less 
intimidating.  Of course fighter weapon ranges are also much reduced.  

Missles will, I'll venture to guess, not be terrifically affected.  If 
in a vacuum they can accelerate to a significant fraction of 
lightspeed, then they can do almost as well in an atmosphere.  Of 
course, it works both ways, no?  We can drop nuclear warheads from the 
full 24,000km range of a SLM system, and a MT missle has a range of. . 
. 18x3 is 54,000 miles.  This does present nasty issues like "Umm, 
doesn't dropping big whonkin' nukes sorta nullify the whole point of 
the war?"  But that's philosophy not tactics.  You could, I imagine 
remove the warheads of a salvo of missles to produce a kinetic weapon 
(at .1c, do you really need to explode?).  You'd even have decent odds 
of hitting your target, presuming perfect intelligence on where 
everything of value is.  Of coures, against a orbiting warship, it 
would also be much easier to target (perhaps d3+3 are on-target?).

John