Liners in service

Michael wrote:

Date: Thu, 26 Aug 1999 18:48:16 -0700
From: Michael Llaneza <maserati@flash.net>
Subject: Re: Civilian Shipping

At 3:43 PM -0400 8/26/99, Ryan M Gill wrote:
>On Thu, 26 Aug 1999, Thomas Barclay wrote:
>
>> An interesting one might be a Falklands-in-space type scenario
where a
>> major power has impressed a cruise ship as a troop carrier (quite
>> likely as big ass troop carriers probably are too expensive to keep
>
>Passenger Liners were frequently build with government money on a
>contingency that if the nation went to war, the vessels would be
pressed
>into serverice by the military for Troop Ship duities. Most Liners
were
>done so during WWI and WWII.

And proved to be almost worse than useless in actual combat. Things
may be different for spaceships, but for floating liners the
disadvantages are:

1) High target profile, very easy to hit.
2) No armor
3) Usually had second-rate armament

somewhat surprisingly, crew quality was rarely a problem.
Michael Carter Llaneza

-----------------------------------------
Okay, but I'm fairly certain the intention was not to have them
engage - they were "TROOP TRANSPORTS". Engaging any troop transport is
bound to be bad news for that vessel. The liners had high target
profile and were easy to hit. In the GZGverse, if time permitted, they
might have 2xPDS, a fire control, and maybe an SMR mounted. They
aren't meant as line ships or assault ships. They are meant to move
mainline bodies of troops (larger than your assault marine formations)
to a hostile zone but they are meant to be escorted by some escort
cruisers or at least ships with ADFC and enough teeth to hold off the
raiders.

Like merchant carriers, they were used because they filled a niche
quickly and without the peacetime expense of maintaining the military
lift capacity the military requires in "hot war" situations. They are
vulnerable, but may be your only choice.... and to put them in a
scenario would assume they were "caught out" and the enemy located
them and could mount a credible attack. Then the trick for the
defender is to keep them alive....

Tom.