Re: DS2: Design questions of my own.

--- Roger Burton West <roger@firedrake.org> wrote:

> >>3)Use them only on planets you really couldn't
> care
> >>less about whether the population loves or not.
> >Like someone else's planet in an assault.
> 
> And then your nice friendly occupation/defence
> troops come in with flags
> waving and baskets of sweets for the kiddies... "Oh,
> no, _we're_ not
> like those nasty mercenary types at all! It's a
> great life as a citizen
> of the (name of interstellar power)!"

Ummm. . . something like that.

Well, we just ran a scenario a few months ago
involving an NRE Thematic mechanized infantry platoon
augmented by a Swiss PA section (5-6 guys in PA). 
There's this crappy little villiage we're fighting
over, against Dutch troops with alien mercenaries (Don
was using some Dark Eldar troops).  So we set up in
overwatch positions and send the Swiss into the town. 
 They chuck a grenade into the church, which sends it
flying sky-high (turns out that the nice friendly
Mormon colonist had been stashing weapons and ammo in
the damn church).  About this time, the alien mercs
move into the edge of town and take some colonist
families hostage.  We push them back out of the town,
secure the colonists, and start slugging it out with
the Dutch and their auxillaries.  So then the Mormon
men start coming back.	So about this time, the Dutch
realize they havn't got a hope in hell of taking the
town (3 IFVs up, their armor support was down, and my
platoon had secured all the building and was fully
intact).  So they agree to pull back in return for a
trade concession on these fruit trees (the whole
reason we were fighting it out--their fruit had
compounds of pharmaceutical value).  They help us
slaughter the last of the alien mercs, and then the
Mormons show up--and surrender when we point out that
we have their families secure and unharmed.

We never threaten to change their status.  We just
remind them that we have them secured.

Final situation:  Alien mercs liquidated (NRE detests
aliens), Dutch troops took light casualties but
secured a trade concession (considering they were
actually working for that Dutch trade company, not the
government), the NRE got a bunch of productive
colonists to get relocated to New Mesopotamia (and
spread around suitably Orthodox communities--they'll
be practically Greek in a generation or two), we got a
settlement mostly intact to start farming those
miserable trees with good, reliable Romans, and we
have a legitemate reason to execute the Mormon clergy
(stockpiling illegal weapons).

The Swiss took 1-2 dead, about 3 more wounded.	Death
benefits aren't that expensive.  Less so, actually,
than the sucess bonuses we had to pay the survivoirs.

NRE losses:  1 man WIA when the Dutch walker shot up
one of our IFVs.

John

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