Technology and Warfare in Traveller
- Thread starter Renaissance Man
- Start date
Maybe you're referring to particular notes in scenarios or stories, but I don't see why the Marines couldn't scale back if the mission required it. Perhaps the examples you saw are missions that didn't require it, but that doesn't mean they're incapable of doing it.
Renaissance Man
SOC-12
Ditto here. Definitely got a lot of education and worked out some ideas from the contributions to this thread. But robject, you make it sound like this isn't the norm
Well, don't know if this counts...
Using this as a basis for comparison, I'd guess finding and hitting targets from orbit is harder than it would seem at first glance. And that having to have a Z coordinate adds even more hassle to the situation. Still again, once it's rocking, well, death comes a knocking.
While it seems like the grunts in the AC-130 are having an easy time, don't you bet. Not that RL is a video game, but I was playing (want to say Call of Duty, but maybe not) well, a video game that let you run a mission as an AC-130 gunner and that is a lot harder than it looks, for one you have to deal with the movement of the aircraft, that orbit can really mess up a target solution till you get used to it. Then there is the picking of the right resolution and weapon so as not to...ummm, say drop a 105mm shell on or even near your blue forces (sorry guys!), there was lots of switching of sensors and weapons. All in all it gets hectic. So don't feel to sorry for the badguys, our peeps had to work to get them dead. Now once you got it all together, well, yeah, it's Fun-Time Charlie, but till then it's a cast iron bitch.
Using this as a basis for comparison, I'd guess finding and hitting targets from orbit is harder than it would seem at first glance. And that having to have a Z coordinate adds even more hassle to the situation. Still again, once it's rocking, well, death comes a knocking.
First off I have to say this was an awesome thread with various ideas of how the 3I's military would work against another force. The discussion of meson cannons and the communication networks were excellent, and definately applicable to a planned attack on a world by the full might of the Navy.
However, it does seem that the delay of Travel, communications and the simple act of refueling seems to be somewhat ignored. I'd love to hear your thoughts of the following:
Frontier space, say even the Spinward Marches. Even with a significant presence in the Regina subsector and around Jewel, it didn't stop the last Frontier war from spilling over into 3I space. It even mentions in the Spinward Marches books that most the subsector patrol fleets are old. They aren't these TL 15 meson equipped units, but they are probably going to be the first to respond to any problems.
So ground troops, Grav-Tanks, all those might be used not because they are optimal, but because they are 1.) Available, and 2.) Cheaper. War costs money, but keeping your massive thousand solar system spanning Navy in the best ships, with the best equipment.. is impossible. Just look at the age of the majority of our RL war technology. True there are a lot of really nifty weapons out there, but it still comes down to M16s and tanks.
On the idea of control of space, that is assuming you have the stronger force in the area. I could easily see the following scenario being common if a war was just breaking out.
40 year old battleship "Stormgard" comes out of J-Space on it's usual patrol through a system. The battleship runs with a few small, older support vehicles and enough fighters to deal with the pirates they might come across. Sensors pick up similar sized group of ships refueling off the gas giant, who don't respond to hails. Soon the two forces are engaging.
The Stormgard realises it's outgunned when another battleship arrives from j-space, a little slower than the other ships. It is approaching and will join the engagement in a few hours. The Stormgard wont be able to outrun the other ships, but it keeps them off long enough to launch a scout to jump and warn the closest naval base, four parsecs away.
Even if that scout hits another patrol on it's jump, reinforcements are still weeks away. The Stormgard launches lifeboats to the systems world, a small frontier colony.
Reinforcements arrive to find the battleship long destroyed, and two enemy battleships, one trying to destroy any small craft that may attempt to escape the planet, the other near the gas giant, a source of refueling for the enemy fleet that will be jumping in soon.
This time the Imperium's force is larger, but they still don't have their full might. After all, it was just a frontier base. The enemy has launched ground troops to try and control the ground of the colony, the resources would be able to reinfoce the coming fleet.
Space combat resumes, the ground forces cut off as the battleship moves join with the other enemy ship, regrouping before they clash.
The rest of the initial enemy invasion jumped further in, moving at a slow jump-1, but soon reaches that naval base which is now without much defense, destroying logistic support.
----------------
Could continue on and on, with each group pushing the other back and forth. Ground targets being useful to control or destroy, and neither force has the best tech. Once word reaches those top end fleets, months have passed. The winners of that battle will already have been decided.
So, it's great to discuss the depth and awesomeness of ideal situations in war, but plans never go as planned. I know there is a quote about plans and battlefields somewhere..
Most wars are fought with whats available, and when reinforcements are weeks to years away, you use what you have to get the job done.
However, it does seem that the delay of Travel, communications and the simple act of refueling seems to be somewhat ignored. I'd love to hear your thoughts of the following:
Frontier space, say even the Spinward Marches. Even with a significant presence in the Regina subsector and around Jewel, it didn't stop the last Frontier war from spilling over into 3I space. It even mentions in the Spinward Marches books that most the subsector patrol fleets are old. They aren't these TL 15 meson equipped units, but they are probably going to be the first to respond to any problems.
So ground troops, Grav-Tanks, all those might be used not because they are optimal, but because they are 1.) Available, and 2.) Cheaper. War costs money, but keeping your massive thousand solar system spanning Navy in the best ships, with the best equipment.. is impossible. Just look at the age of the majority of our RL war technology. True there are a lot of really nifty weapons out there, but it still comes down to M16s and tanks.
On the idea of control of space, that is assuming you have the stronger force in the area. I could easily see the following scenario being common if a war was just breaking out.
40 year old battleship "Stormgard" comes out of J-Space on it's usual patrol through a system. The battleship runs with a few small, older support vehicles and enough fighters to deal with the pirates they might come across. Sensors pick up similar sized group of ships refueling off the gas giant, who don't respond to hails. Soon the two forces are engaging.
The Stormgard realises it's outgunned when another battleship arrives from j-space, a little slower than the other ships. It is approaching and will join the engagement in a few hours. The Stormgard wont be able to outrun the other ships, but it keeps them off long enough to launch a scout to jump and warn the closest naval base, four parsecs away.
Even if that scout hits another patrol on it's jump, reinforcements are still weeks away. The Stormgard launches lifeboats to the systems world, a small frontier colony.
Reinforcements arrive to find the battleship long destroyed, and two enemy battleships, one trying to destroy any small craft that may attempt to escape the planet, the other near the gas giant, a source of refueling for the enemy fleet that will be jumping in soon.
This time the Imperium's force is larger, but they still don't have their full might. After all, it was just a frontier base. The enemy has launched ground troops to try and control the ground of the colony, the resources would be able to reinfoce the coming fleet.
Space combat resumes, the ground forces cut off as the battleship moves join with the other enemy ship, regrouping before they clash.
The rest of the initial enemy invasion jumped further in, moving at a slow jump-1, but soon reaches that naval base which is now without much defense, destroying logistic support.
----------------
Could continue on and on, with each group pushing the other back and forth. Ground targets being useful to control or destroy, and neither force has the best tech. Once word reaches those top end fleets, months have passed. The winners of that battle will already have been decided.
So, it's great to discuss the depth and awesomeness of ideal situations in war, but plans never go as planned. I know there is a quote about plans and battlefields somewhere..
Most wars are fought with whats available, and when reinforcements are weeks to years away, you use what you have to get the job done.
No Plan Survives Engagement with the Enemy!
Nice points there and now I really am sad that I missed out on the FFW PbP that happened here a while back. It had that comm lag built into it so that the various players had to deal with the lack of intel and such.
Funny, now that I think about it, war in the Far Future might not have such a need for boots (would say LPCs but then BD isn't made of leather) on the ground as we do now. It seems that most of the "real" combat will be in space and landing troops kinda traps them on the surface.
I must consider this now....
Nice points there and now I really am sad that I missed out on the FFW PbP that happened here a while back. It had that comm lag built into it so that the various players had to deal with the lack of intel and such.
Funny, now that I think about it, war in the Far Future might not have such a need for boots (would say LPCs but then BD isn't made of leather
) on the ground as we do now. It seems that most of the "real" combat will be in space and landing troops kinda traps them on the surface.I must consider this now....
Renaissance Man
SOC-12
Funny, now that I think about it, war in the Far Future might not have such a need for boots (would say LPCs but then BD isn't made of leather
I must consider this now....
I'd say, broadly speaking, that this is correct. Once you win the war in space, the "conventional" ground war is largely over before it begins. Despite what you said about the difficulty of hitting targets from orbit, my feeling is that with TL 12+ computers aiding in firing solutions and a properly established network of orbital and ground-based sensors, you could vaporize a car from space with little effort.
A dirtside military effort will typically involve one of the belligerents in control of space, therefore pushing it into "asymmetrical" territory. At this point political efforts and the establishing of good ground-based intelligence become essential for the long-term success of the mission.
But then, others have already brought up a number of valid points that present an alternate view. And as Anthelios said, with different TL's and different available weaponry a wide variety of situations can evolve.
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Discrimination...
Discriminating between Blue Forces and Red Forces was also a pain, but as you point out, a TL C+ computer might be better at this than a lone human and his cadre. Though it did help to have dudes who had run the sim before helping. In the future I suppose that function would be taken up by the computer...
Gunner Jones, setting up his weapons "Blast 'em!"
Computer "I am sorry, Dave, I can't do that."
Discriminating between Blue Forces and Red Forces was also a pain, but as you point out, a TL C+ computer might be better at this than a lone human and his cadre. Though it did help to have dudes who had run the sim before helping. In the future I suppose that function would be taken up by the computer...
Gunner Jones, setting up his weapons "Blast 'em!"
Computer "I am sorry, Dave, I can't do that."
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
Unless you are willing to adopt the ancient Vilani doctrine of win the space war then steralise the planet you are always going to have to have ground troops to take and hold.
Then you have all the fun of police actions and counterinsurgency operations to deal with (look at the typical assignments in Mercenary again).
Then you have all the fun of police actions and counterinsurgency operations to deal with (look at the typical assignments in Mercenary again).
BlackBat242
SOC-14 1K
And how often your UPP-generation system produces the "government" result of "Captive Government"?
Renaissance Man
SOC-12
Discriminating between Blue Forces and Red Forces was also a pain, but as you point out, a TL C+ computer might be better at this than a lone human and his cadre. Though it did help to have dudes who had run the sim before helping. In the future I suppose that function would be taken up by the computer...
Gunner Jones, setting up his weapons "Blast 'em!"
Computer "I am sorry, Dave, I can't do that."
I think you are right that getting a hold of an appropriate target from space can be difficult. But the technology is there at TL C+; it's just a matter of "software" and how much processing power you have at your disposal to maintain an effective "battlenet."
Also remember that IF the invading force is using ortillery to support forces on the ground, a higher TL "battlenet" will give the orbital weapons platform (usually a starship) real-time battlefield information from soldiers in the field to complement the satellite-eye perspective.
The way I'm seeing it in MTU, establishing and maintaining this sort of data-rich battlefield environment is one of the primary functions of a high-TL ground force.
Individual soldiers don't really deliver the hardest punch (though man-portable weaponry of that TL would be impressive) -- but while they are engaged in operations of any kind, they also automatically double as forward observers for orbital support weaponry. And vis versa: eyes in the sky are amplifying the ground force's battlefield intelligence.
Computers are working hard not just in getting locks on appropriate targets -- that's only one comparatively elementary function among the many vast tasks required to properly analyse, prioritize and organize this data for human soldiers to use in situ. I'd say at TL 11+ a large scale ground operation is even more computer intensive than a space war. The data are muddier, communications are spottier and there are more potential data points over a much smaller area.
It also means that modern 3I warfare has a very important and very active front that can complicate ground operations and even frustrate orbital support weaponry: control over the enemy's network of battlefield information. In other words, electronic warfare, and what is now being called "cyberwar."
Hence the emphasis on laser or maser communications at every possible moment -- they are less likely to be intercepted, monitored, or used as possible entry points for military hackers, network "viruses", trojans, etc.
The ground war is thus as much about pushing your enemy into greater COMSEC (communications security) breaches, trying to create opportunities to crack the network and do as much damage as possible before they discover the exploit.
...anyway... I digress a bit.
In this scenario, an ortillery "gunner" is sitting at his station wearing a VRHUD, with a combination of voice and somatic controls, navigating the virtual battlefield, designating targets with a gesture through the eyes of single soldiers, or from the air at various levels of magnification, various spectrums, various filters, etc. The "skill" is in being able to bear up to the pressure, keep your head amidst all the chaos of combat and the miasma of data, and find ways to acquire the correct targets using correct, actionable information. The turret computer does the rest. Zip, pow, dead. Or in some cases, as you say "I'm sorry Dave, I cannot acquire a perfect firing solution."
This is where you separate the men from the boys, so to speak in advanced gunnery. A true gunner can instruct the targeting computer to guess... he or she can augment the formidable powers of the computer with intuition and a notion of the psychology of his or her enemies. They can take over, point, drag and say "fire," and see what happens. Thus, gunnery retains a bit of that Star Wars "I got one!" feel, despite looking very much like an intense and highly technical, multi-layered virtual reality video game.
Usually more often than I'd like - that shows up a bit too often for most of my ideas!
mega:Usually more often than I'd like - that shows up a bit too often for most of my ideas!BlackBat242 said:
A thought that may help you: Logically, a government code of '1' denotes a world that is run as a company, i.e. the government is structured as a board of directors (And a majority of shares in the company should be help by people who live on the world). The worlds that are owned by interstellar corporations should by all logic be considered as having captive governments (Often they're run by autocrats appointed by the companies).
Yes, I know past Traveller writeups have described some gov. code 1 worlds as corporate possessions, but I don't think this is logical. Though it may be explained away as tax dodges
.Worlds under Imperial administration would also count as captive.
Hans
