Transport Capacities

Well, Jeff has made a good point. Several actually.

In my previous posts, I just went with the canon assumptions on mass
(Never bothered to think about it).

But if it boils down to 1 Marine = 4 Spaces = roughly 1/6 mass = 1/6 of
100 Mt.... well that seems kind of gross. Even if you give the guy his
kit plus a stateroom, 16 Mt does seem pretty horrendous. Yes, you have
to include kitchesn and the like, but as I recall in MegaTraveller (and
their tonnage was disp based rather than mass based), they alloted 4
tons for a stateroom that could be single or double bunked. So if you
double bunked your marines, you could get a Marine for two tons. Awake.
That's (if mass and disp were equivalent measures) about 8 * as many
marines on a Traveller ship.

So the initial figures do seem to indicate that the MT figure is....
unappealling.

For those who like cannon, and varying rules versions (FB, MT), then
stick with the standard rule.

But perhaps it is a figure worth examination.

We know a Marine as a fish stick should take up some amount of space.
Let's start there. I'd say 1 Mt. that's 1000kg. That includes our 150 kg
Jarhead, a 250 kg cryoberth, and 200 kg worth of support machinery and
still leaves room for 400 kg of kit, which is quite a bit.

So that being said, 1 Marine shipped as a fish stick would take up 1
DS/SG cargo space, which (in our model) would be 1/100th of an FT Mass.
So now, rather than putting 25 Jarhead-brand Freezersticks into 1 Mass,
we could put 100. That's an improvement.

If we extended this to the *live* version, we'd then get 25 live
Jarheads in that same 1 Mass, rather than 6. I'd call that a quantum
leap. Now that would mean about 4 Mt per Marine. What would that be? I'd
guess 2 Metric Tons worth of staterooms, sanitary facilities etc, 0.5 Mt
worth of space devoted to common workout/living areas (which means about
the size (mass) of 4 staterooms in an 8 man squad), and 500 Kg devoted
to personal kit, leaving 1000kg for vehicle transportation (or 8000kg
per squad).  That seems quite reasonable.

So now, to move a division of Jarheads with some basic transport (I'm
not talking an armoured division here, just 5K of warm bodies), instead
of requiring about 200 Mass as FreezerSticks and 800 Mass as body-temp
ambulatory bodies, you now only require 50 Mass and 200 Mass. These are
far more practicable and pragmatic values for moving large forces
through space.

So using a 1 Mass = 100 CS seems far more palatable. That also means,
following the 8/5 rule for vehicles transporting other vehicles, that in
that 100CS you can put about 65 DS2/SG2 spaces worth of vehicles (and in
theory, store them full of stuff if they were trucks or the like, but
I'm not going there just now). That is the equivalent of 4 size 3 Medium
BTs.
Or the better part of 3 Heavy (size 5) BTs. So now moving our armoured
regiment of 150 various class MBTs now takes maybe 50 Mass. That too is
much more palitable.

So, I guess if you feel compelled to stick to the Canon, all is well and
good. But I'd *HEARTILY* suggest that St. Jon the Cleric In His Own
Religion think about an FB2 conversion factor that matches this.
Because.... this level of carrying capacity makes some of the large
scale wars discussed in the GZG timeline AND all the numerous small
scale conflicts almost practical. It makes the movement of an Army Group
(25 divisions lets say) something that might take 5000 Mass....
admittedly a gross figure but doable with good cause... as opposed to
20,000 Mass which is way more grotesque.

Jeff, you've sold me. I'm a convert. :)