On Mon, Jun 22, 2015 at 12:16:22PM +1000, Greg Chalik wrote: > A chaser commander may choose to progress through these, but an > ambusher will simply drop the entire force in on the theatre > objective, orbit-to-objective movement. Yes, you can do a great deal if you have overwhelming aerospace superiority and there are no defending weapons that can touch your craft. Grav technology means a huge advance in mobility, with all sorts of follow-on effects in tactics, logistics, strategy, and even political objectives. If you don't have that overwhelming superiority though, it's a very expensive form of suicide. In an open warfare situation, even approaching orbit is going to be difficult, since Traveller's sensors and weapons typically have effective ranges much greater than planetary diameters. So it's the sort of tactic that could be employed by a powerful interstellar force against a very lightly populated or low-tech planet, especially if the attacking force isn't viewed as a threat, but isn't likely to work well against any credible prepared defender. > The tactics are simple - the entire unit drops from orbit onto the > most obvious location of the planetary seat of Government at about > 50km/s. 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). If it can get that far, then I suppose it can be assumed that it must have been able to destroy most of the space-based assets, and any ground or orbital defences with significant range. At 50 km/s, it's going to be very obvious where the ships are headed long before they reach atmosphere. After that it gets messy. Whether or not the target was the seat of planetary government, it's up to the defenders whether the top government leaders are there by the time the invaders arrive. Either way, it is likely that a significant portion of the planet's armed forces are in effective range of the landing site. What happens next is variable, but extremely unlikely to be "combat takes 1 minute, surrender negotiations 59 minutes." - Tim
