Tim,
>>Thank you for your considered response.
> So you mention aerospace superiority, but this becomes a mission in
> its own right.
Yes, that's correct. It appears to be a necessary pre-requisite for
carrying out an orbit-to-ground mission of the type described.
>>I would prefer to do without this feature of operational planning.
> That is you now present the anti-grav mounted force with two
> missions: defeat the defender's aerospace forces, and achieve the
> goal of the operation, whatever that may be, on the surface.
The missions need not be carried out by the same force, technically.
Even where they are carried out by the same force, it seems unlikely
that the same vehicle types would be ideally suited to both roles, but
I'm not sure whether the disparity would be great enough to justify
bringing along specialized vehicles. It would very likely depend upon
the details of the Traveller rule sets in use since they vary so much.
>>Yes, agreed with this.
Essentially as a mercenary force I would prefer to keep the operation as affordable and simple as possible.
> How will the achievement of the first mission affect the second? So
> you achieve the aerospace superiority, but while doing so the
> opponent obtains the time to deny (by whatever means) the goal of
> the entire operation on the surface.
Yes, that is quite a plausible outcome, and one that a mercenary
commander (or their employer) would need to consider.
>>I have considered it several times, and tried playing it out. The lag becomes too great to fit an orbital ground assault wave in.
> So here are the seeds of the technological arms race. Facing an
> opponent's overwhelming sensos/weapon arcenal, the only solution is
> to field better sensor countermeasures and some way to defeat the
> weapon effects?
There are many solutions depending upon a ridiculously large number of
factors, and there is unlikely to be a clearly best solution.
>> I think that when you sit down and think about it you too will realise that there are a very limited number of solutions despite the very many factors. However, when I have a contract, and the lives of many of my personnel to consider, nothing but the best solution will do.
My argument, if I may be permitted to be arrogant again, is that this 'nothing but the best' need not be technology, or technology alone.
> A "powerful interstellar force" doesn't use tactics. Tactics is a
> term that applies ONLY to units engaged in combat, that is to a
> combat environment limited to weapon ranges.
That's the sense in which I used the term, so I'm not sure what your
objection is. In this case the interstellar force (mercenaries) is
engaged in combat with planetary defence forces, and is using the
particular tactic you described of coming in from high orbit distance
straight down at 50 km/s to a planetary target (specified as the seat
of planetary government in your post), with the stated aim of
minimizing engagement time. Is this not a correct interpretation of
what you wrote?
>>I didn't know what you think the term 'tactics' mean since many people use it 'off-handedly'
A "powerful interstellar force" suggests ships, lots of ships,a nd so a Strategy rather than Tactics.
I like to think of interstellar mercenaries as an 'interstellar tweak' rather than a force :-)
"the seat of planetary government" was intended as an example of an objective.
Yes, your interpretation is correct - I'm looking to reduce engagement time to seconds, or none at all.
> @ So then you have the Planetary Assault Operations: A White Paper
> <
http://www.freelancetraveller.com/features/rules/plntasslt.html> written
> by a former member of an Airborne MI unit US Army.
> Read that, and you will realise that a) his thinking is deeply rooted in
> the Second World War doctines, and b) his thinking is deeply rooted in US
> Government POLICY.
I'm not sure what you're aiming to convey here. Are telling me to read
a white paper that you immediately argue is not worth reading?
>>I found it worth reading to get an idea how other people versed in Traveller canon see orbital assault operations.
>> First it has to slog its way in from the 100D limit, in a good case
>> taking about 3 hours (though in adverse cases it could take a lot
>> longer).
>
> Why is this important?
Mainly because you were describing the entire engagement as lasting
only 1 minute followed by 59 minutes of surrender negotiations,
whereas that seems extremely unlikely to me for the reasons described.
>>Ah, I see. I consider the orbital assault as separate from the Jump-space movement to the orbit, which I call 'operational reach jump'.
> The task is therefore to evade the "most of the space-based assets,
> and any ground or orbital defences with significant range.", not
> destroy.
In this context, detection and weapon ranges are greater than 100 Mm,
and the planet is on the order of 1/10th that size. Reaching the seat
of planetary government planet means being within the effective combat range of essentially
all the defending forces. Evading the zones of fire of the defending
forces is not feasible, though evading individual attacks may be
feasible for some limited time.
>>So my problem is making "Evading the zones of fire of the defending forces" feasible
The notion of "evading" defending forces smells of surface combat
thinking, in which effective combat ranges are usually short compared
with the breadth of possible fields of battle. There are plenty of
terrain features to limit detection, and provide cover against weapon
fire if detected. So a force can attempt to avoid detection, and even
when detected remain outside combat range of the vast majority of
enemy forces.
>> "The notion of "evading" defending forces smells of surface combat thinking" - I had to start somewhere!
Yes, for the rest.
That does not apply here. In Traveller space combat, there is usually
only one meaningful field of battle: the mainworld and its orbital
space. In almost all cases the whole region is visible to and within
weapon range of almost all combatants. There are no obscuring terrain
features for attacking forces, and no cover before reaching the
surface. (If meson guns are in play then there is no cover even then)
>>Yes.
>> "Either way, it is likely that a significant portion of the planet's
>> armed forces are in effective range of the landing site."
>
> What you describe is a physical impossibility because if the landing
> site is the location of where "the top government leaders" that
> physical areea is unlikely to also contain "the planet's armed
> forces" :-)
Why would the location of the planet's leaders not have significant
armed forces within the range within which they can reasonably
respond? What makes this "a physical impossibility"? Does the smiley
indicate that you intended it as a joke? If so, my sense of humour
may be lacking in this respect as I'm not sure what is funny there.
Ok, so if we are talking a relatively populated planet of say seven billion, and its total armed forces are about 2% of the total population, i.e. 120 million, than the planet's emperor would occupy same space as at least 60 million of his troops.
However, this isn't feasible. Consider the canonical population of the 1st Death Star which was 1.7 million people and 400,000 droids. In the end Darth Vader found himself alone, but even if he had been on board, his immediate protection would have been a very small percentage of this number.
Even if the top leaders of a planet choose to locate themselves within a vast military complex, how would one design this to allow the entire force to rapidly concentrate against a single axis of assault?
I was thinking of the Enders Game where they burned through the extraterrestrial swarm of defending droid fighters, and even there the droids were physically incapable of concentration, but only able to replace destroyed units, yet defender's tactics required keeping other potential avenues of attack covered also lest Ender switched his thrust. It is very much in the thinking of the ToM as proposed very early on in the book using the fencing analogy.
As I was thinking of Enders Game, I smiled and hence the smiley.
> The cleint (Patron) has in the past had one of those 'keyhole'
> surgeries performed by a nano-robot that was performed without
> ansthesia and allowed for a post-procedure recovery of just five
> minutes. Surely a mercenary unit can do 'keyhole surgery' on the
> current planetary government?
I'm sure a Patron can have any delusions that the GM deems
interesting.
>> Perhaps most GMs find any delusional Patrons in the game interesting?
Greg