[GZG] Traveller Battle Dress

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t to clarify a few points about Traveller and its use of Battle Dress
aka
powered armour....

1) GURPS and the GTU are a bit different to other versions of Traveller.
A
bit more coherent in places, such as the minimal levels of competence
you
get from military training, but they also filled in a lot of fluff that
has
game ramifications (Doug B did some good work with Ground Forces). In
the
GTU, Battle Dress is fully stealthed and is the standard armour of the
Imperial Marines.

In other versions of the Traveller Universe, Battle Dress would be:
1) Good armour, but in theory vulnerable to small arms of varying tech
(Classic Traveller) and stealth was not a factor in such sorts of
things,
and also not the 'standard gear' of anyone since the original Classic
Traveller universe, pre 3rd-Imperium, actually was very sketchily
described.
I actually have an old article that suggested laser rifles and reflec as
standard Imperial Forces weaponry. (Of course, the 3rd Imperium and
later
supplements in the CTU changed things and gave more hard detail on what
weapons would be available at what tech...)
2) Good armour, nigh invulnerable to many small arms that were not a
TL-13
laser rifle or a plasma or fusion gun or a RAM grenade. Standard
equipment
of the Marines quite likely, limited in operational life by power
requirements, sometimes having chameleon features (but this was mostly
optical if I recall) and sometimes using grav belts. Some of the fusion
and
plasma guns had their own gravitic support. (MegaTraveller)
3) Great armour, invulnerable to small arms except some high tech ones
like
possible the Gauss Rifle which was much nastier in this rules variant
than
its predecessors (plus fusion and plasma guns), and built using
essentially
vehicle construction rules. (T20)
4) GURPs GTU Battle Dress already described.
5) T4: Shuddering just thinking about that. Won't go look, burns the
eyes.
6) Mongoose Traveller: Haven't actually looked this one up yet.
7) T5: Snuck out without me looking, have to acquire a copy soonest.

The point of all that being that in some iterations, the battle dress
was
not stealthed and was somewhat vulnerable, in some versions it had
optical
stealth but not other forms, in some versions it is very resistant to
small
arms or invulnerable to things like pistols and rifles firing normal
slugs,
and in some iterations Grav belts were options, some weren't mentioned,
some
were standard equipment.

My own favourite ruleset in MegaTraveller (best skill system) and it
made
battledress the thing you didn't want to see unless you had a *very*
powerful modern weapon. Vehicles, however, could probably cook it at
loooong
ranges if they had even moderate sensors and even a crappy TL-9 main
gun.

When we look at examples in canon of the use of Battle Dress, we see
flying
Droyne troops with Battle Dress and fusion or plasma weapons, Imperial
Troops depicted as patrolling in flying Battle Dress, etc.

One important thing to keep in mind with the *TUs is that they all have
fragmented tech across sectors of space, even planet to planet. This
means
Imperial Marines might well encounter many environments where their
Battle
Dress is essentially immune to local weapons through armour and range
limits
of the weaponry relative to those possessed by the Marines. So if you
are
suppressing an insurgency or even fighting a main force that has low
tech
weaponry, your Marines could use the grav belts and Battle Dress very
aggressively, even in close contact. If the enemy tanks have to focus on
your Battle Dress, that renders most of their force useless, and your
personal plasma or fusion gun may well be able to injure or kill the
lower
tech MBT and certainly your APCs weapons can (Tac Missile) with efficacy
and
at long range. Enemy infantry is almost a waste of effort and your high
mobility makes you hell-on-wheels for a lower tech command structure to
fight.

In high-tech conflicts, you are hoping that the enemy has equal or fewer
guys if he has the same tech, because your troops are vulnerable. They
are
highly mobile, resistant to most small arms and partially resistant to
heavier arms, but ultimately are only as good as the enemy infantry and
enemy PDS, ADS, and vehicles will kill your guys. Of course, approaching
on
foot at speeds less than 100kph doesn't necessarily change that at all.
So
even what are essentially PA troopers in high tech forces fighting one
another are roughly as casualty prone as lower tech infantry fighting
each
other, if you adjust for med-tech differences.

John A covered the real crux issue though:

If you are fighting enemies who are near your tech, floating around in
the
sky in predictable ways is a good way to get walloped. Of course, your
gear
may be stealthed, you may used dispersed formations (classic skirmish
tactics), or your grav belts may have random evasions and your suit may
have
active countermeasures. But still, you don't get ANY benefit from cover
or
concealment up in the sky unless you use skyscapers and the like in
urban
areas as cover (a possibility for flying troops who may be able to crash
in
and out of skyscrapers with ease).

Weightwise, John also points out that the unit would have to cancel its
own
weight. The issue here is battery life. A powered down suit of Battle
Dress
or a powered down Grav Belt are just excess weight. And, often, a
sizable
one as once  you get used to having available power and grav, you often
cease to worry about unpowered weight much.

Think of grav belts as an extension of the hang glider, ultralight, or
parafoil or the new flying wings. We use them to deploy troops to a
battle
area but we don't parachute into fights, no one would fly an ultralight
(even an armed one) into a battle, and the glide wings or hang gliders
are
all about getting you into position to work, not transport during
tactical
engagements. They ARE good for movements (even risky ones) you have to
take
to redeploy, exploit or fill breaches and they are good in some
situations
for casevac and scouting. But bounding in combat would be NOE and
probably
at speeds no greater than 50 kph (a guess).

Although Traveller didn't explore it, one assumes you might have a
variety
of anti-PA mines and weapon systems and similarly anti-grav mines and
weapon
systems as well as grav detectors. These may vastly change the optimal
tactical and strategic uses of these sorts of technologies.

Last thought: They don't stress it much, but even in Traveller,
high-tech
forces live and die by their logistics chain. If you've got PA going,
you
need to recharge every so often and not just one-guy-at-a-time so you'd
need
some sizable power infrastructure. Grav belts will need power too.
Spares
will need to be available for battle damaged units. And so on.
Fortunately,
a higher tech force has higher tech logistics, but this is something to
bear
in mind as well.

Tom

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