Re: Retrograde gimmickry

I'm going to be making fairly frequent snips here, as there are only
certain parts that I'm responding to.

stiltman@teleport.com wrote:
> The purpose of a starfleet of any sort of starfaring power is to keep
your
> enemies from going places where you don't want them.	The reasons for
this
> aren't too difficult to figure out.  Oerjan touched on it a bit, but
I'm
> not sure he quite got the point across, so I'll state it a bit more
> explicitly. The general point is that science fiction is rife with
examples of
> what happens when a starship is given some sort of free rein to hammer
away at
> a planet that can't run away from it, regardless of how slow it is.

	Yes, but then again while your ship might do well on offence
(although
its lack of manuverability gives even that problems), I'd hate to try to
DEFEND a system with them. They're too damned slow. If the system has
more than one place worth attacking (by which I mean factories,
shipyards, etc.) you're going to have to divide up your force a lot to
defend everywhere, which leaves you open to being defeated in detail by
an assortment of forces, including high-speed raiders.

[assorted examples snipped. I'm going to provide a counter-example]

	One place where this has been discussed at length is in the
'flavour
text' which accompanies the game "Renegade Legion: Prefect" (which
includes fighters, carriers, battleships, etc. ranging from 100-ton
fighters (and less) up to 
2.5-km long Battleships (which are roughly resembling your Dreadplanet,
except more manuverable). The one thing that they do is talk a LOT about
doctrine, and why certain forces are suited for certain missions.
	Now, in a major assault, BIG ships are warranted. Still, most
battles
aren't going to BE major assaults aimed at invading an entire star
system. Most battles will be raids with the objective of destroying a
particular target.
	There are several possible ways to run a raid. First, you can
take a
minimal force, which hopefully won't be detected until it's too late for
the defenders to concentrate their forces at the point you're attacking
(if they even know what it is - the longer you can keep several points
inside your manuver envelope, the longer you'll keep the defenders
guessing). Of course, to avoid being intercepted you can probably only
afford to make one high-speed pass, so you have to be lucky, or slow
down and try again (and face a tougher defence).
	Alternately, you can take a BIT ship (eg Dreadplanet) which can
(hopefully) take out the target even if the defenders are concentrated
on it. Of course, that also presents problems. It's going to be hard to
hide something that big, which probably gives your local system
commander enough warning to call in the theater reserves (which will
give you a rather hot target to take care of). Further, a large ship may
not have the endurance to take out a target very far inside the enemy
zone of control, whereas a light raiding group can probably get farther
faster without being detected.
	Now, admittedly, this is something of a simplification (and it's
worth
getting Prefect, IMO, for their commentary alone, much less the game,
which I quite like), and depends somewhat (although not exclusively) on
the specific technology of the Renegade Legion universe (which is
somewhat, although not THAT much, different from the canon GZG-verse).
Still, it provides something to think about. (by the way, the commentary
also provides a long discussion on the problem of defending multiple
targets, and intercepting attackers, and manuver envelopes - the stuff
involved isn't THAT critical to the GAME (at least most of it), but it's
a SUPERB overview of the logistics behind potential invasions).

	Your dreadplanet also depends on your civilization having A LOT
of
resources to put towards a single ship (not to mention a BIG shipyard).
As an example, in the universe where I game, the ENTIRE FLEET (minus
planetary defences of ~500 points/system) is less than 100,000 points
worth of ships. I would NOT want to run a war AND defend my home systems
with 20 ships - they CAN'T be everywhere.

> _That_ is why I would not give a lot of respect to the broad
effectiveness
> of a retrograde keepaway force and be more inclined to consider it
"gimmickry"
> than a dreadplanet overloaded with fighters.	In a serious war effort,
the
> effectiveness of the keepaway forces will be marginal.  The
dreadplanet can
> let them brag about being able to drive it off in open space all they
like;
> it'll just head straight to the enemy homeworlds and reduce them to
their
> component atoms.  A few short bursts of high-focus plasma will do that
rather
> nicely; the dreadplanet can happily ignore the comparatively light
breeze of
> long-range beams it takes in return.	Then the dreadplanet will simply
leave
> under FTL again, and if the enemy wants to claim bragging rights for
holding
> the empty space that remains where the homeworld was blown away, I
think the
> dreadplanet will happily let them.

	Again, I'm also quite a bit less likely than you to think that
one
ship, EVEN one dreadplanet, can take out a planet. A planet is BIG.
REALLY BIG. (and no, I don't buy the Star Wars OR the Star Trek one-ship
planet-killers). A 1200-mass ship is (canonically) 120,000 tons. You can
bombard cities, yes, but it'll take a LONG time to take out a planet
with a 120,000 ton ship (IMO). This, again, is why I like the Renegade
Legion example - planetary invasions are rare, complicated, and about
the only things that involve Battleships (on EITHER side). Most warfare
is raiding (taking out shipyards, factories, communications arrays), and
Dreadplanets are optimal for neither attack NOR defence in those battles
(IMO), because the opponent is under no obligation (in an actual war) to
restrict him/herself to the same point value that you brought.

[massive snip - mostly reiteration (and simply a different philosophy
than my own)]

The one comment I'd make is that saying that long-ranged skirmishers
have NO place in a reasonable interstellar society isn't warranted - or,
IMO, correct. They have a place (but more as raiders than as defenders -
or, at least, sole defenders). This is mostly a matter of how YOUR
universe works - in the types of games I play, a dreadplanet-based force
would die, quickly, because they simply could NEVER establish
superiority in an attack without leaving gaping holes in their defences,
and because it would take TOO long to replace one that you lost (not to
mention the fighters).

Again, to each her/his own. Most of this is about how I play GZG games
(and, I must admit, I usually use Full Thrust to replace Leviathan in
playing out games in the Renegade Legion universe (or, my own universe,
with RL-style physics)).

-Brian Quirt