Technology and Warfare in Traveller

[Renaissance Man]

Would there be a similar time lag if Maser comms were used rather than Laser?

Maser would avoid the difficulties with obscurants that lasers could have trouble with.

Yeah, masers would be better than lasers for LOS communications, and LOS will be preferred in all instances because it can't be easily intercepted or jammed. But in order to have a resilient network connection the comms will need to be able to switch over to radio as needed.

In the case of a small unit, moving through an urban environment, soldiers in LOS will have a hard laser or maser connection with whoever they see, and radio for whoever is popping behind walls or out of sight, plus one or more of them will be forming a radio "tether" that links them up to the nearest node of the wider network. As long as one of the soldiers is connected to another who can form a chain to a network node, everybody will be connected.

The more connections each soldier has to each, the more robust and quick this network connection will be.

The whole comm package shouldn't be too large because nobody needs to have a tremendous range. That is, as long as they're linked to a node - say a gravtank or apc - that can boost the unit's communications over the wider network. Maybe one member of the unit might have a bulkier comm package to increase the operating range of the network. Something like that.

 

[Major B]

Good, because that was the idea behind the M560 system I posted in the Ship's Locker forum awhile back.

In addition to the lateral networking, I wanted something that avoided some of the LOS problems by "talking up." Initially I saw the fleet elements doing that, but it needlessly tied the ships in orbit when they might be needed elsewhere. The M560 can loiter indefinitely if it has enough light for the solar panels and it keeps the troops on the ground in commo while the fleet goes hunting for those damn SDBs (or retires for cocktails).

 

[Renaissance Man]

Good, because that was the idea behind the M560 system I posted in the Ship's Locker forum awhile back.

In addition to the lateral networking, I wanted something that avoided some of the LOS problems by "talking up."

It makes perfect sense that those with space superiority will be able to use satellites like your M560 to create a faster, more reliable and resilient network - a "trunk" for the various "roots" to connect with.

As for those defenders on the ground who don't have the benefit of the command of orbital space - lateral networking will have to do. In fact, for an insurgency such lateral networks become indispensable.

This raises another question. Today we have wire-guided missiles that can kill pretty much the best tanks out there. We have man-portable surface to air missiles. Is there a possibility at higher tech-levels of man-portable satellite killers?

 

[Major B]

I'm figuring the answer would be yes. If you look at some of the missile defense stuff in development there are proposals for air-launched stuff that can reach that high. Ground-launched stuff to do the same has more gravity to overcome but it is in the realm of 'hard' rather than 'impossible.' (I'm a historian so I classify my scientific terms as simply as possible)

Man-portable systems that can target objects in close orbit would probably be expensive and the man-portable part may not be as practical as it sounds. After all the 4.2" mortar was man-portable, technically...

But they need to be able to detect the system in orbit in order to target it. That's why the M560 uses solar power and tight-beam communications. No emissions only leaves it vulnerable to active EMS. And if you own the orbital battlespace, your ability to replace M560s will probably be greater then the dirtside folks' ability to replace their EMS scanners. I'd hope so anyway.

 

[Renaissance Man]

But they need to be able to detect the system in orbit in order to target it. That's why the M560 uses solar power and tight-beam communications. No emissions only leaves it vulnerable to active EMS. And if you own the orbital battlespace, your ability to replace M560s will probably be greater then the dirtside folks' ability to replace their EMS scanners.

Yeah, an active EMS scanner of any significant power would tip the defender's hand and attract a lot of attention.

Just another way those who control space have the dirtside folks by the proverbial stones. Even if a defending force manages to locate and take out one or more sky-eyes, the attackers still have the lateral network. Still, it's another couple of tools for the toolbox - satellites and satellite killers.

If I'm attempting a beachhead on a hostile world, that would be priority two after removing major anti-ship planetary defences - taking out the enemy's major communications and sensory assets. And as a defender, I'm going to want those sites to be as protected and difficult hit from orbit as possible.

 

[whartung]

Meson Guns are expensive. Really expensive. Simply put, there are cheaper weapons out there. If you're fighting someone with Meson Guns, it would be unsurprising that they too would have Meson Guns to fiight back.

Pretty soon you just have ST-TOS "Taste of Armageddon" where the populations just walk in to distintegration chambers...

If it were me, I'd demarcate the "We'uns vs Them'uns" battle line, locate every idle neutrino source on "their" side, and start volleying in the Meson Gun bursts. That should knock out the bulk of the "heavy" equipment, leaving basically man portable stuff behind. Hard to move a modern army without fusion generators.

The basic problem with Meson Guns is that, as mentioned, they don't work well against fast moving targets. I'd also suggest that as whole, the Meson Gun is, most likely, a "soft target", so it may well be readily vulnerable to things as simple as cluster bomb munitions. Cluster bomblets distributed via long range MLRS I think would be some bad love to a MG troop.

Those damn, cheap as a rock, battery powered tracked rocket launchers taking out your 60MCr meson battery. Son of a...

The MG is the perfect weapon. It's clean (no nasty residual radiation I believe, save heat), does not need LOS, and is immume to counterbattery fire. The mesons simply "appear" on top of their target. So, for those without the MG, it's effectively magic. The hand of God obliterating everything in its path with aplomb.

I wish it were easier to play out larger scale Traveller battles and see how much havoc an MG can do in open battle. See what it's weaknesses are. How many Zulu's does it take to take out a Meson Gun.

Do either of the Striker rule sets cover all of the necessary aspects to handle something like this? Specifically you have the gun itself, cycle time, reliability, cost, FO rules, detection rules, etc.? Because the game is whether the Meson Gun is worth the money and maintenance they cost to deploy. Can it earn its credits back, or is it perhaps too soft to really deploy in practice. Are Meson Screens so cheap as to make deployment less profitable, etc.

 

[Major B]

Renaissance Man, its arguable about whether the commo systems of the Meson Guns are more important. If I was building a target list, I'd have both at the top of my priority list. Eliminating the enemy's ability to share targeting information is the reason.

Also, as Whartung points out, the power sources are probably easier to target than the guns themselves.

Off the top of my head it seems that the Meson Gun's bulk (and resultant lack of mobility) and power requirements are its main weakness, and its inability to track and target small, moving objects limit its effectiveness (it it more like an old coastal defense artillery site than a point defense system).

The Meson Gun's main strength is its ability to shoot through obstructions and the magnitude of the destruction it can bring to bear on anything that can't get out of the way.

Deep sites are the logical way to hide a system that can't move but can shoot through obstacles. Whartung's point about targeting the power source is valid, but like everything there are potential counters. If defending a planet with abundant geothermal power sources, you could power the Meson Gun deep sites and the power source would blend into the background.

In this case, the only way to find the deep sites I can think of would be to use a very high penetration densitometer, and that would take a lot of time.

In this case, the only thing to do may be to find and destroy the sensore that allow the deep site to target. Once the gun is blind, then it becomes irrelevant, unless it then starts to destroy surface and close orbital installations following a target list with predetermined targeting coordinates...

 

[jec10]

I wish it were easier to play out larger scale Traveller battles and see how much havoc an MG can do in open battle. See what it's weaknesses are. How many Zulu's does it take to take out a Meson Gun.

Do either of the Striker rule sets cover all of the necessary aspects to handle something like this? Specifically you have the gun itself, cycle time, reliability, cost, FO rules, detection rules, etc.? Because the game is whether the Meson Gun is worth the money and maintenance they cost to deploy. Can it earn its credits back, or is it perhaps too soft to really deploy in practice. Are Meson Screens so cheap as to make deployment less profitable, etc.

Re, large scale combat, the rules in the MT Referee's Companion are the main ones that come to mind. Check them out to see if they meet your needs. Bit of preparation required in constructing conglomerate units but then its all gravy.

CT/Striker has Meson artillery, which generally functions like other indirect fire artillery (is called in as a fire mission by a forward observer who can see the target, etc). Meson artillery is not subject to CB fire in CT/Striker. However, technically within the rules you could use the radio location rules to find a meson battery (if radios were used as communicators) and then send a remote drone/air strike to that location. Yes, under CT/Striker mesons are hellishly expensive and maintenance intensive. Each meson gun requires 50 maintenance points, by way of comparison an MRL launcher requires 2 points. Meson screens do not feature in CT/Striker (nor in TNE/Striker II IIRC, but I'll check that later).

 

[Renaissance Man]

The MG is the perfect weapon. It's clean (no nasty residual radiation I believe, save heat), does not need LOS, and is immume to counterbattery fire. The mesons simply "appear" on top of their target. So, for those without the MG, it's effectively magic. The hand of God obliterating everything in its path with aplomb.

I must confess that because my most recent Traveller experience is with T4 and Milieu 0, I haven't got much background with meson weapons. I vaguely remember them from MT, but that was twenty years ago.

But I should think the best way to neutralize meson weapons would be to eliminate the sensory, communications and FO infrastructure that supports the weapon. While they may be able to shoot beyond obstructions that plague other weapons, they need extremely rich targeting information because they have to set a specific "depth" along the meson beam for decay. Unlike other beam weapons, you need more than just and X and a Y to score a hit. In order to shoot from behind the wall, you've got to be able to see through the wall - that leaves neutrino sensors and densometers or somebody or something out there to FO.

I'm willing to bet that if a planet has enough scratch to put together a deep-site meson weapon, it will have the resources and the space to have a bigger, better sensor suite than an approaching ship - not to mention a better chance of having FOs resources to bring to bear. And a planet is a pretty noisy background for a good targeting lock, as the Major noted. A series of decoy neutrino sources would be as easy as pie to set up. Meanwhile, the deep site has only the cold background of space to worry about. Sure, an attacking fleet can find meson site from it's neutrino trail. But probably not before the deep site has already fired its first shot.

Though a meson neophyte, I'd say they're the ultimate planetary defence weapon. Less useful as a planetary siege weapon.

 

[whartung]

MGs have no more of a problem targeting than any other indirect fire weapon. There are few IF platforms even today that have LOS on their target, and they all rely on an FO to provide either coordinate information (which today can be a laser fed GPS coordinate) or active targeting (laser painting, for example).

The problem is the power of the MG. In theory, it's described not quite as a distintegrator (as there are later actual disitegrator weapons mention in at least MT as I recall at high TLs), but simply that for game effect they MG eliminates all unit in it area of effect.

Now, that's different for TNE at least where the MG "simply" causes internal explosions on vehicle regardless of armor, and there isn't much discussion about effect radius (perhaps in Striker II). But an IE on a small vehicle (i.e. armor) is essentially lethal.

So, as a gaming effect, eliminating all units in radius regardless of capability (barring meson screens), is quite powerful.

If the MGs are space based, and you don't have orbital superiority, then the jig is up on the ground. You can't elimiate all of the FO and comm capacity simply because it's ubiquitous. In the past, you could hit the guy with the big box and antenna on his back, but that's not going to fly at TL15. Everyone will have comm capability. They may not all USE it (using some kind of chain of command and comm discipline guidelines) but as the chain gets disrupted, if there's a active unit nearby, then there's more than likely someone with comm capability nearby.

Since there's not counterbattery effective for MGs, and because of the AOE of a MG burst, it tolerates BAD FO's. As long as the FO can keep the MG from landing on his own head, as long as he is combat capable, he can direct and correct "cheap" MG fire on an enemy position.

As they say, close only counts for hand grenades and atom bombs. Well, close also works with MG bursts.

What we don't know is how tuneable a MG is. In Striker, the AOE is 100m diameter...football field size circles going *BAMF* in a bright flash. Can the gunner reduce that to, say, 50m or 25m? I dunno. But if you got a guy on a bluff throwing out 100m fireballs, your line is going to have a Bad Day.

Imagine a ship with several bay mounted MGs, say 10. Doing a simultaneous Time On Target salvo, and you have a 600m x 100m area of troops and equipment with their status all reset to "extra crispy". I mean, pow...gone, all gone. REGARDLESS OF TERRAIN. Plains, water (above and below), rough, forest, deep in caves, whatever. And that can most likely happen as walking barrage fire every "turn", however long that is. I don't know what the ROF of a MG is. But if it's faster than the equipment and troops can get out of the way once they see the barrage walking toward them, then there are are going to be problems.

That's some powerful stuff. Don't need a real skilled FO to walk that kind of fire. And a single starship can most likely provide that kind of capability assuming they don't simply deploy MG sleds on the ground.

Satellites, spies in the sky, some poor GI Joe with a Mark 1 eyeball and a walkie talkie. If you're not obliterating the front line, then you can tear up the rear areas. Look, an ammo dump, staging area, mess tent, whatever.

So, like I said it seems all powerful. It curious what the counter is to it. Well, the counter is to simply overrun the gun site, destroy the gun. The question is what does it take to do that on the ground, and what does it take to do that against a starship. And at what TL is it essentially a hopeless task. At what TL do you just give up as soon at the MGs arrive on site, either in orbit or on the ground.

 

[Major B]

Yeah, that's bad, but remember that nothing is as good or as bad as first reported (Murphy knows these things).

First off its hard for me to call MGs indirect fire because they shoot in a straight line. Ok, they shoot the particle through the mountain rather than over it. I guess the concept is the same.

Maybe the problem is my training with mortars but that training also taught me the need to shoot and scoot. If you waited around after the fire mission there was a good chance a 400m X 400m box of 122mm or 152mm HE was going to land on you so it was best not to be there.

Solutions to battlefield problems can take many shapes - some examples are material, tactical, and organizational.

A material solution would be to develop Meson shields capable of deployment on the ground (want to bet someone is working that one right now?).

A tactical solution would be to ensure everything in your force could move and move fast so that you were out of the target area before the call for fire can get transmitted to the guns, a firing solution developed, and the guns are set and fired.

An organizational solution might be to create units of psionic teleporters like the Zhodani.

Also, no matter how impressive the MGs are in their effects, there are going to be practical limits to how many 100m X 600m zones of destruction you will be able to create. The ship can't stay parked overhead forever and the gunners can't stay at their posts forever (unless rotated and then the guns have to be maintained eventually). Targeting is always problematical especially when you consider that every advance in sensor technology just adds more information that needs to be analyzed, matched with like data, confirmed, and communicated before it is of any use. And if computers are used to do the analysis then you are now susceptible to having your sensers be fed inputs to manipulate their conclusions.

All this is a long way of saying that I think MGs will, like all of the revolutionary technological innovations that the battlefield has seen, briefly have a significant impact when first introduced. After the material, organizational, tactical, and other solutions are fielded, the MG will become another system that is useful in the right circumstances. In other words, it will become important to the battlefield commander, but no longer be critical to his success.

I hope that presents the MG in the perspective I see them from.

 

[The Oz]

We know meson screens are possible, and later editions of Traveller allow them to be field-mobile units (you can build a "battlefield meson screen" using FF&S). So there will be counter-tactics for meson guns, eventually.

Of course, counter-tactics lead to counter-counter-tactics. Presumably meson screens can be detected in operation, since they must be emitting something that caused the mesons to prematurely decay,(not sure about this, I can't find any positive reference one way or the other) allowing their location to be triangulated, leading to counterattack via non-meson gun firepower aimed to knock down the meson screen and allow meson guns to open up.

And this is countered with "shoot-and-scoot" for meson screen vehicles, where they move randomly in their area of coverage, radiating their meson screens in a programmed pattern to allow maximum coverage of friendly troops while (hopefully) not keeping any one meson screen switched on long enough for it to be tracked and attacked.

Lots more crunchy tactical goodness at TL15+, even without disintegrators or other fun new weapons.

 

[jec10]

What we don't know is how tuneable a MG is. In Striker, the AOE is 100m diameter...football field size circles going *BAMF* in a bright flash. Can the gunner reduce that to, say, 50m or 25m? I dunno. But if you got a guy on a bluff throwing out 100m fireballs, your line is going to have a Bad Day.

Read CT/Striker a little more closely, or better yet try playing it. ;-)

It specifically says that you can 'detune' a meson strike to be less than the diameter it is capable of covering. The forward observer just includes the spcifications of the diameter he/she wants obliterated in the fire mission order. So you can take out a specific room in a house, or a specific bunker, provided you have eyes on the target and comms to the gunner.

As said before, meson weapons make fixed positions and fortifications obsolete (absent meson screens). You must adapt your tactics to the new weapon as Major B outlines above.

In general if I were defending a planet, I'd make sure I had buried fibre optic communications (or future improved equivalent) plus alternative tightbeam laser/maser redundant commo network (with imported meson communicators for a few critical nets). I'd rely heavily on camouflage and denial and deception with plenty of dummies and cheap decoys. Key fixed assets like centre of government, power supplies, etc would get meson screens if available or be concealed underground. I'd make sure valuable military targets are in the heart of civilian areas or targets an invader would not want to destroy. Military units concealed underground or underwater with fusion engines off until enemy shows himself in the atmosphere. Lots of SDBs in ocean and/or gas giant. Deep site mesons and meson subs, or air/space defense missile subs if mesons unavailable. Home Guard network of civilians with cheap commo to act as observers.

 

[mbrinkhues]

One should not forget that most military actions in the basic Traveller setting are low key "mercenary" affairs. And IMHO Mercs don't have access to TL15 meson sleds (or meson weapons AT ALL). After all even a "planetary scale" meson gun would make a dandy weapon for a pirate Q-ship. Let the Gazelle or Typ-T get close while pretending to be a merchant, aim at bridge or engine room, fire, collect spare parts.

 

[Icosahedron]

Read CT/Striker a little more closely, or better yet try playing it. ;-)

It specifically says that you can 'detune' a meson strike to be less than the diameter it is capable of covering. The forward observer just includes the spcifications of the diameter he/she wants obliterated in the fire mission order. So you can take out a specific room in a house, or a specific bunker, provided you have eyes on the target and comms to the gunner.

It doesn't specifically say so in the rules, but I'd impose a minimum strike to a meson gun, otherwise what will you have it do - take out a house, a room, a person, a limb, a weapon, a battery pack...?

I'd go with half diameter, a quarter maybe, in extremis perhaps 10%, but I'd impose some very heavy accuracy DMs in there - A meson gun is no surgical instrument. I reckon a 10m dia should be the absolute limit, only achievable with excellent gunnery and FO skills working in perfect harmony.

 

[Major B]

This thread (and a few others) has had me thinking about the Imperial Marines and Imperial Army as well as the mirror organizations as echelons below the Imperial level. I have lots of ideas about the two organizations but want to get them out for others to see and gather fresh insights from everyone else's experience.

Rather than hijack this thread, I'm starting one in the Fleet forum to discuss the topic further.

 

[Major B]

As you were...

Just spent an hour typing and then lost it all when I tried to post. <expletive deleted>

I'll try again tomorrow - look for the new thread then.

Tonight I'll have to drink some beer and overcome my discouragement.

 

[Renaissance Man]

Ah GAWD!!! I hate it when that happens! :frankie: I've taken to copying everything before I click submit, especially with long posts. But not always. And it's always the time you DIDN'T save that everything goes poof.

Well. Looking forward to it anyway. It's an interesting discussion for me; I want to be able to describe military ops to players with realism and detail, and for the military-type characters, it adds a lot to their background.

 

[epicenter00]

Reading this thread reminded me of something sort of unpleasant, which in a moment of schadefruende, I'll share will all of you regarding the "realities" of warfare at TL15:

One of the biggest "stupidities" of (many) in the New Era Traveller had nothing to do with Reformation Coalition, the Virus, or the Wilds.

It was the Regency Marine Corps.

I don't think I really could think of a force with a mission more idiotic. They're apparently the TL15 force of some that was called in when the "gloves were off" and without any kind of light touch (which is what the Regency Army was stuck doing - all the unglamorous duties like counter-insurgency). I really didn't understand what kind of 15-year old boy thought up of their mission and weapons, but they had the typical TL15 grav belts, battle dress, and fusion guns, their tanks had even bigger fusion and were backed up with battlefield meson guns and all this other stuff and would just blaze away and destroy everything like some "Superforce" at TL15 commanded by Archduke Norris' lesser-known cousin, Chuck Norris.

The problem with the force was (and is for me) ... what's the point? Just disband them.

If you're just going to indiscriminately destroy your enemy without much regard for the lighter touch (which I identify as minimizing civilian causalities and destruction of property) why do you need ground troops at all? If Marines are practicing such callous destruction, with each one armed with some hand-held fusion weapon that can "level a building in a single shot" (and apparently not carrying lighter because that'd be the realm of the "wimpy" army). I don't see the point of such forces on the Imperial level besides it being some archaic soldierthink on the part of GDW's writers in some unholy union with the He-Man warrior fantasies of drooling gearheads - who needs an force of lotharios armed with weapons like that?

Just get the Navy's more powerful orbital batteries to just pound the offending areas to atomic (or subatomic) pieces using the superweapon of the day, anti-matter, Meson Guns, fusion bombs, megatons of water ice dropped from orbit, whatever. The resolution of sensors at TL15 would certainly allow starships to hit even small groups of people on the ground with whatever superweapon you want to hit them with. It'd just be that video we all saw of the AC-130 blowing the tar out of those guys on the ground in a display that was so "unfair" to me that "terrorists" or "insurgents" or not, I actually felt sorry for those guys.

Once the Navy's done pounding all the obvious and suspected forces of resistance (including I'm sure countless "innocent" people, but that's war, right?), land the Army to garrison the planet and mop up residual resistance and call the job a good one. Yeah, it's not as fun for the players, but I think that'd be "all out" war at that Tech Level.

Now, I think the Army's mission would be a lot more interesting at TL15 with a dilemma we understand today: "Conventional Forces in the age of Nuclear Weapons." Same with "low-intensity" forces in Traveller I think - they have these meson guns and such, but due to the collateral damage, they couldn't use them.

 

[Renaissance Man]

Well, this is the reason for the thread - to explore the various roles that Traveller ground forces would play. When I started this thread I didn't even think there was much use for large numbers of ground forces, and certainly no mission for grav tanks and such because of pinpoint accuracy ortillery. Now I think its clear that there are countless scenarios on the ground, as there are in space, and that a wide variety of missions exist for the Imperial Marines, Army and Navy - and their opponents.

And I also think there is a general consensus in this thread that in the main, dirtside missions would skew toward insurgency/counterinsurgency operations as naval victors attempt to assert political and military control over a world without harming their infrastructure.

Cases of total war would be limited. Maybe during the Solomani Rim War the occasional border world was obliterated, but I don't think the Imperials would have pursued scorched earth policies with their invasion of major industrial centres like Terra, for instance.