mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
I was thinking along the lines of ancient Greek heroes - but in battledress.
Or medieval tourneys - in battledress
You could even break out the bioengineering or cybernetic augmentation rules for your champions...
MGT Only: 5,000 ton battalion transport
- Thread starter Brandon C
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Or medieval tourneys - in battledress
You could even break out the bioengineering or cybernetic augmentation rules for your champions...
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
They would do nicely.
History is full of occasions where cities and countries chose to keep fighting even when they were faced with superior forces and total annihilation.
This tactic can end badly if the opposition IS willing to slaughter populace wholesale.
And occasionally even if the threat of total destruction at the hands of an overwhelming enemy is not enough to dissuade resistance..
I do recall even in the face of ATOMIC weapons a good portion of the Japanese military wanted to dig in and fight on...and some were determined to the point of armed insurrection to prevent surrender..
So the scenario isn't a stretch..especially when facing an enemy who can't mount a ground assault. Dependence on orbital superiority has it's limits.
it's a game of chicken..if you're bluff gets called you either commit genocide,or settle in for an extended blockade.
And If you haven't removed all external source support/assistance/relief. Blockades favor the defender...all they have to do is wait, and keep you at arms reach.
Condottiere
SOC-14 5K
It costs a lot to train, equip and feed modern troopers; and that's before you calculate in the cost of interstellar transport.
So only sociopathic or incompetent commanders carelessly spend or waste that currency.
It's said that the War of Imperium Aggression cost far more in treasure and lives than all of the Frontier Wars, and the assault of Terra may have made most Imperium flag officers shy away from trying anything similar again.
So only sociopathic or incompetent commanders carelessly spend or waste that currency.
It's said that the War of Imperium Aggression cost far more in treasure and lives than all of the Frontier Wars, and the assault of Terra may have made most Imperium flag officers shy away from trying anything similar again.
I find more sociopathic the one that bombs the planet until rendering it uninhabitable without regard to the life of its population...
And about incompetence, wasn't Salvor Hardin (in Asimov's Fundation) that said the phrase "Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent"?
This war involved several sectors, while the Frontier Wars only infolved one, and even then not all of it.
And most assaults will not be against anything like Earth, but against medium population planets with somewhat lower TL.
while the average and median citizen will be from a TL10 to TL15 Pop 10 world, the average world is pop 5 and TL 9-ish...
900,000 people are, at typical 1:1000 through 8:1000 ratios, going to be lucky to field a full brigade, and are likely to have merely a couple battalions. (A peak force from 900K people is likely to be 70,000 - about 450 companies, or about 50 regiments, or about 17 Bde, or 4-6 divisions. a minimal force for 100K is about 100 - a company, and not even a full strength one, at that.
(US is 2.3 million troops of 300 million people censused; UK is 225K troops of 64 million. Both numbers count reserves.)
900,000 people are, at typical 1:1000 through 8:1000 ratios, going to be lucky to field a full brigade, and are likely to have merely a couple battalions. (A peak force from 900K people is likely to be 70,000 - about 450 companies, or about 50 regiments, or about 17 Bde, or 4-6 divisions. a minimal force for 100K is about 100 - a company, and not even a full strength one, at that.
(US is 2.3 million troops of 300 million people censused; UK is 225K troops of 64 million. Both numbers count reserves.)
kilemall
SOC-14 5K
GJ, really puts both empire type forces and merc units in perspective. Most 'player-sized' outfits can do good service in that enviornment.
Violence is the last resort of the amateur ...a professional knows not to wait that long...another version I heard...
Tsun Tsu had words about war and diplomacy..I cant remember the exact quote but it was along the lines of
" war is no replacement for diplomacy...but the threat of war is a tool of diplomacy."
and as for weapons making war so terrible only a true madman would fight a war..I think Gatling and Maxim both had that idea..weapons so powerful only an idiot would fight another war...and some poor deluded fool at Trinity test site.... probably had the same belief...
Here's the real kicker - anything below Pop 5 is unlikely to be able to field an effective standing army, except as reserves... as a company is about the smallest that a standing force can be and still be "an army"...
and pop ≤4 is about 40% of the worlds.
Note that occupation forces often run (10 to 15):1000::troops:Occupied Pop. for long term, and up to 30:1000 for the pacification.
Police forces tend to run between 1:5000 and 3:1000 as well.
So a pop 4 world with 50K people is likely to have 10-150 police - 10 if they have an armed culture or a standing army, up to 150 if not... and an "army" of 50 to 400 people... and most nations have between half and 1/4 their troops as part timers. So, the "Mustered Minutemen" are a company, and the cadre might be a single full time platoon and staff support section.
A pop 4 world can be garrisoned initially by a battalion, then occupied by a company.
A pop 3 world can be taken with a handful of merc cruisers... one per urbanization. If they aren't urbanized, then you can defeat in detail and depopulate with a single merc cruiser and a little luck with the NAS... but don't need to bother, because they aren't likely to be cooperative with each other anyway, and may not even notice your mining op...
Condottiere
SOC-14 5K
Pournelle's Fuiure History basis was that the mercenary-professional/nationalistic-conscript military went in cycles, so you had planetary militaries renting out their forces, and that a highly professional mercenary force had an inordinate effect in a conflict in relation to it's size.
Few governments wanted to maintain, or could afford to maintain, a military, and those that did found them a heavy drain on their budgets.
The CoDominium deliberately squeezed the Navy's budget, but I suspect that they had to maintain or increase the numbers of their Garrison Marine-Military Police regiments.
Few governments wanted to maintain, or could afford to maintain, a military, and those that did found them a heavy drain on their budgets.
The CoDominium deliberately squeezed the Navy's budget, but I suspect that they had to maintain or increase the numbers of their Garrison Marine-Military Police regiments.
It also had small, isolated, colonies that were just big enough for a Brigade to totally overwhelm. (Brigade=Legion = 8 Battalions... but no regiment level subunit. Conventional 1960's to 1980-ish US organization. Strategy Page mis-lables the legion as a regiment of 8 Bn + 3 companies, but noting an extra battalion was added.)
Very much like both random generated Traveller sectors and like the OTU.
(As an aside, the Slammers unit diagram also on the above link shows it as a 25 company Regiment with no battallions... as large as some of the largest British regiments ... but note the slammers are taking on slightly larger prey, and dealing with pop 7+ societies, let alone worlds.)
Condottiere
SOC-14 5K
I tend to rate only what Pournelle actually wrote as canon, but that's because the sequels were crap.
Tried/trying to read Hammer's Slammers, though I'm still stuck on the first story, which seems obviously a historical analogue rather than what you'd expect in military scifi.
You can get away with common basic weaponry in the CoDominium, because the assumption is that everyone has very effective SAMs, and that the colonies would have problems supporting heavily equipped and sophisticated military units, beyond what off world logistics can provide.
I sympathize with the twenty five company regimental structure, since I'm working on a ten company one; it works if you can have secure communications so that you can control them, and if the company officers are rather competent.
Going back to the CoDominium, I think one military type that everyone tends to overlook are mercenary units recruited directly from Earth, which would have an unlimited recruiting pool, and training and discipline would vary widely; heavy weapons support might be an issue, though supposedly there are there mostly as garrison troops and bulk up the army, compared to the Covenanters, who would be the assault troops.
I think that if I wanted that scenario, I'd play the Earth mercenaries. Suitably supported.
Tried/trying to read Hammer's Slammers, though I'm still stuck on the first story, which seems obviously a historical analogue rather than what you'd expect in military scifi.
You can get away with common basic weaponry in the CoDominium, because the assumption is that everyone has very effective SAMs, and that the colonies would have problems supporting heavily equipped and sophisticated military units, beyond what off world logistics can provide.
I sympathize with the twenty five company regimental structure, since I'm working on a ten company one; it works if you can have secure communications so that you can control them, and if the company officers are rather competent.
Going back to the CoDominium, I think one military type that everyone tends to overlook are mercenary units recruited directly from Earth, which would have an unlimited recruiting pool, and training and discipline would vary widely; heavy weapons support might be an issue, though supposedly there are there mostly as garrison troops and bulk up the army, compared to the Covenanters, who would be the assault troops.
I think that if I wanted that scenario, I'd play the Earth mercenaries. Suitably supported.
GT:Ground Forces spends a few pages on determining the non-naval military forces of a world, primarily based on population and tech level. It uses 'battalion equivalents' (500 man units), which near the end of the process are converted to larger units.
FWIW, a Pop 5, TL-9 world starts with one raw battalion. The various modifiers might bring this up to two.
OtOH, a base 25% of the population can be counted as militia, but the actual percentage and quality varies greatly.
See that in Traveller, the cost of space transport would make the movement of mercenary units quite rare (IMHO) unless paid by a very rich patrón (probably a Megacorp or Government)
... who would have quite a few reasons and motivations to do so.
defending resource extraction operations from objecting native inhabitants or intelligent territorial animals.
overthrowing uncooperative local leaders, either under "authority" of other local leaders who "request support" or via captive "revolutions" or outright.
dealing with other mercenary units employed by competitors.
Condottiere
SOC-14 5K
Don't give away the plot to Avatar II.
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