Arty

Some thoughts out of this disussion:

Ortillery: Powerful. Certain varieties may be fast to arrive (laser or
particle) and reasonably accurate with lower power. Certain varieties
may take a while to get there, but be devastating (missile or gun).
Long lag time on fire missions unless your ship is overhead waiting to
engage. Being "on-station" like this, to cut reaction time, increases
vulnerability to any hidden surface weapons. (Note this tells us our
FT ortillery ship should be armoured and have a tough hull! If you
have to get close, you'd better be able to take a slug or three from
several class-4 batteries on a planets surface). Good for assaults,
long running defences, not so hot for mobile fire-and-move combat.
Standard doctrine should force you to get orbital superiority before
you move up to use ortillery - or else expect loses in your ortillery
force.

SP Arty: GEV MRLS or SP tracked or wheeled tube guns. These would be
the standard. Fire quick salvoes then move. CBR can be a risk to them
if enemy arty is CB tasked. Faster fire missions than Ortillery, but
less dangerous.

Towed or emplaced Arty: Rarer. Cheaper. Used by colonial or indig
forces. These would include cheapo katyusha style MRLS and tube-guns
with less sophisticated (but still dangerous) projectiles. It has a
big risk if it meets with someone with CBR or mobile counter-arty.

Arty types:

MRLS - Cheap or expensive. Low recoil relative to CPR guns. Expense is
a direct product of the sophistication of a round and some FC
component. Good range. Can deploy submunitions.

tube-guns - Cheap or expensive. Cost is related to sophistication of
gun and of FC. Recoil compensation may be employed. Can deploy
submunitions.

missiles - Everything from dumb as salvo style katyusha rockets, to
fin guided Thor Javelins from orbital ortillery satellites. Cruise
missiles - terrain following. Missiles that deploy submunitions.

Arty platforms:
GEV - fast, but must ground to fire recoil weapons.

Wheeled - cheap, robust. Not as fast as GEV.

Tracked - more expensive than wheeled, but able to carry heavier
weapons. Not as fast as Wheeled.

Ship - Costly. Distant. Expensive to risk versus orbital defenses.
Longer lag time. Probably deployed between 20K miles up and 400 miles
up. Only close in if and when fire support is expected. Otherwise
delays are longer. But the trade off is hang time - a ship in the
lower orbit would not (I think...) be able to hang around as long.
Maybe a faster arriving mission but shorter in duration.

Satellite - Faster than a ship (lower orbit), less risk to men and
machines than a ship but still vulnerable. Probably a good
compromise - esp if the satellite can adjust its orbit to prevent
predictive fire destroying it.
Good to deploy both as attacker and defender. Deployed at 300-400
miles up.

Drone - Faster than a satellite - flying around the battle area - the
drone can either bear a munition or BE a munition. RPV with weapons
guidance - can deploy weapons of varying types - smart missiles, glide
or chute bombs or vertical attack penetrators. Can be more responsive
than other methods, but runs the risk of being shot down even with
stealth. Not altogether cheap.

Well, I've enjoyed this discussion - it sure changed my mind about
some things and it made a few interesting points about ortillery that
I didn't consider. Certainly worth discussing... :>

Thomas Barclay
Software UberMensch
xwave solutions
(613) 831-2018 x 3008