Re: Re: [GZG] Small thought re: Orbital Assault

as an old battletech player, there is nothing worse than a contested
drop 
zone, there's to much confusion and to many people firing on you as you 
leave the ship, when dropping planet side you need a base that can
easily be 
defended and lets you move unabated, so as to capture key facilities, eg
the 
power plant, radar , and airfields etc, if you think that you can just
drop 
on your target and they'll capitulate, then why didn't the allies do
this in 
world war two,hello Adolph were the 82nd cop this. or in  Iraq, because
a, 
not enough intelligence b, the enemy can react quicker than you can
deploy 
c, its to far away from help that can make a difference d, supplies,it's

always better to get them to come to you, then use your ortillery
asset's, 
and other capabilities to whither the defender's down so that they have
to 
surrender, remember that if it cost's more in money and lives and
property 
damage to take a colony the, you could of bought the thing or set up one
of 
your own for far cheaper than it cost to mount a military campaign, then
you 
have to defend it.

and as for insurgent type games, remember that a 15yr with a 1000 dollar

black-market  rpg 9 can take out a multimillion dollar Abrams tank, 
according to the pentagon and janes, or his mate with a sniper rifle can
tie 
up a company of troops for a couple of hours game of tag, I think that
it 
comes down to what a person wants in his games and some of the funniest 
things can go wrong with a platoon chasing one person all over town, is
alot 
of enjoyment for some and dam right pain for other's, if you think not
alot 
happens in this type of game, then remember that the v.c did this sort
of 
thing to the u.s and did it well , then the Afghanis did it to the
Russians 
, but they haven't met with the same degree of success this time round
with 
the Americans, why some could argue tech and that does have a huge
effect, 
and that they don't have a superpower backing them this time.

at the end of the day this is just a game and a dam fine one at that,
you 
play what you want and the type of scenario you want, everyone's
different, 
and always take comments onboard as constructive and try to make the
best 
out of every game you have.

that's my rant.
regards james mitchell.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "John Atkinson" <johnmatkinson@gmail.com>
To: <gzg-l@lists.csua.berkeley.edu>
Sent: Thursday, November 24, 2005 5:04 PM
Subject: Re: Re: [GZG] Small thought re: Orbital Assault

> On 11/24/05, John Tailby <john_tailby@xtra.co.nz> wrote:
>> When I made my comments about equatorial landing zones I made the 
>> assumption that the landing craft would be a more advanced version of
the 
>> space shuttle. If the landing craft have full antigrav then they
could 
>> land straight down.
>
> They'd have to be to have any value.	You'd also have to land
> somewhere useful.  Land in the "Central Africa" equivalent on a colony
> with 125,000 inhabitants clustered in the Italy equivalent, and you're
> wasting your time.  By the time you road march the whole way, you've
> lost a lot of troops to environmental factors, much of your equipment
> has been lost to wear and tear and accidents, and you'll have wasted a
> lot of time as well.
>
>> If you have shuttles that fly like aircraft they might well need long

>> landing spaces to set down.
>
> Which makes them incapable of fulfilling the role of landing craft. :)
>
>> The last 50 years of earth history has been full of advanced nations 
>> losing wars to local militia. The Europeans all lost their colonial 
>> empires to local revolts. Some were managed in semi peaceful
transitions 
>> but others were violent rebellions. Yet they had the technology and
the 
>> economics to suppport their army if they wanted to. The Americans 
>> suffered a similar reverse in Vietnam as did the French.
>
> There has not been a case in the last 50 years of a major power's army
> suffering a defeat in a conventional battle.	Political decisions not
> to continue fighting a counter insurgency have been made.  But every
> time local forces stand and fight, they die like flies.
>
> I'm very carefully seperating conventional warfare and insurgency.  My
> model is an initial phase of high-intensity conflict to secure the
> major population centers and defeat the garrison, thus assuming
> effective control of the colony.  Then there is the counter-insurgency
> phase.  Which I'm not going to worry overmuch about because it makes
> for some piss-poor wargaming scenarios.
>
> To properly capture the flavor of guerilla warfare, you need to run 30
> scenarios where the government forces run up and down the road and
> cordon-and-search and so on and NOTHING HAPPENS.
>
> Then, on the 31st scenario, throw in a roadside bomb or some suicide
> car bomber or some joker in the village who decides to die for Allah.
>
> Then 30 more scenarios where nothing happens.
>
>> I agree that campaigns set in the FT universe won't suffer from the
CNN 
>> effect of recent conflicts and the armchair quarterbacking of 
>> politicians.
>>
>> I can see the same kind of politics going into outfitting the
invasion 
>> fleet though. The "there's only a bunch of half assed mountain boys"
you 
>> won't need any armoured vehicles or aerospace fighters.
>
> That would be possible.
>
> John
> --
> "Thousands of Sarmatians, Thousands of Franks, we've slain them again
> and again.  We're looking for thousands of Persians."
> --Vita Aureliani
>
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