Battle Dress Designs, anyone?

[Trent]

These sorts of discussions really make you wonder why (other than out of sheer bloodymindedness) anyone would ever even try to go up against a force equipped like the ones here.

At some point, you'd think someone would say, "Um, they have guns that can shoot through and into mountains and sensors that can see you wherever you run to, so why again are we declaring war against the Empire, sir?"

It all reminds me of the battles described in the Lensman series where planets would be burned to ash by the forces unleashed between two opponents trying to capture the place. This is why I try to keep it toned down a little and more "conventional" IMTU. I have to reflect the TL but find a fine line between what is possible and maybe more realistic given the tech available, and something that I can involve the players in from time to time (even if only as caught between two forces) without killing them all off in the first combat round with meson cannons and nuke-firing drones.

Reminds me too, of what my brother used to tell me when he was stationed in southern West Germany in the early to mid 80's: he was on "fence duty" running up and down the Czech translating radio traffic with the Bundeswehr Panzergrenadier unit he was attached to. The Germans used to tell him they figured their lives (including his in his little jeep and radio trailer) could be counted in minutes if the Warsaw Pact rolled over the borders. They'd sell them dearly for thier country but they had no illusions about what the end result would be. And if NATO unlocked the "tactical" nukes because the Soviets started using chemical weapons or overwhelming NATO forces before a Reforger could start working, well, the joke my brother used to say was passed around the unit was that "in Germany you are only 2 kilotons away from the next town."

Now that was just with what we have today and with both sides equipped fairly equally, if not in numbers at least in comparable TL. How could anyone ever even dream of a war in Traveller with the stuff we are talking about being a survivable prospect if you aren’t even close to the same TL?

There was a cold war era joke in Germany that roughly translated to "What's the definition of a 'tactical' nuclear weapon? One that is used on germany."


In all fairness to the russians, though, and not to step on toes but to stand up for the truth, given the scale of atrocities that germans committed against the russians in WW2, killing about 1/4 of the populace, it's no wonder the russians weren't too fond of the germans and would have been willing to use WMDs on them.

The russians used to have a saying about the fact that "Most americans grandparents died in their beds, most of ours died in the great patriotic war." Which basically meant we didn't have any right to judge the russians since our country wasn't invaded and out people subjected to atrocities during ww2. And it was true. Pearls Harbor was attacked but the american mainland was never invaded or occupied.

Yes, yes, I know stalin was a bastard and murdered a lot of people too. It doesn't change what germans did in russia though, or how most russians felt, and had reason to feel, towards germans.

 

[veltyen]

Afghanistan: 1 TL difference in the cities, 3 in the wilds.., just under 1 in equipment. The Afghani luddites won.

I assume you mean the 80-88 war.

Doesn't really count in some ways. Material support from a higher TL partner (starting before the war) makes it more a proxy war, then a direct higher TL vs lower TL confrontation. That combined with extensive third party aid makes it even more muddy.

The closest Traveller equivalent would be an Imperial invasion of a Zhodani border "neutral" world, with the insurgency receiving extensive deniable support from the Zho's as well as material, personel and monetary support from other border worlds.

Spoiler:

To fully make it complete the Ine Givar would then need to be also attacking Zhodani targets later in their existance as a fully fledged independant entity. But that might be getting too political.

How do you face BD with lower tech troops? Economics. If your basic BD marine costs multiple MCr to equip, then even at a 1000-1 loss ratio then with enough numbers any conflict quickly becomes unviable. Even just components wearing out might get to this ratio.

If you BD is basically combat armour with a couple of servos and a grav belt (costing in the order of KCr's instead) not only can you field more - and be at more locations, losses stop being as critical.

The reason you don't put F-22's in the air every time there is a bank robbery. You send a dozen flatfeet with pistols and flak vests instead.

 

[sabredog]

Yes, well....that's all well and good - the Germans killed, well everybody, ...and the Soviets killed them back (with a little help from their friends...dah,dah,dah...daaaah).

Now that that's settled, something more germane ("germane", get it? I kill myself sometimes!) to the thread is what I was trying to point out that given how much more devastating wars will be in the Imperium, how often do they really happen at all?

I don't run the OTU and am not at all (beyond playing 5FW and Imperium) up on its history, but it would seem to me that a lot of dukes and such would take it very unkindly should the Imperial Marines have to pay a visit to put down some local brushfire war. And what kind of maniacs would think they could ever win against such forces if they are not equally equipped?

I was merely trying to use a RL example of what it was thought to be like between two equal combatants in our own time (you know, not like Gulf War 1&2, but something with two cutting edge nuclear armed forces going at it).

 

[sabredog]

Let's see... the US revolution: almost a TL of difference in local capability; far less in available equipment.

The Boer War... 2-3 TL difference. British political will didn't get broken, but it came close.

Indian Rebelions against the UK: a TL of difference... massive numbers out-weighed the difference.

Afghanistan: 1 TL difference in the cities, 3 in the wilds.., just under 1 in equipment. The Afghani luddites won.

Bad analogy:

US Revolution: no TL difference in the TL involved - brown bess was the same as what the US had...only difference was the length of the supply lines and the will to combat was underestimated on the part of the Brits. Also, the French ran interference for us as privateers and supply runners (not for our own good maybe, they had their own designs too, but the enemy of my enemy is my friend)

Boer War....same thing - a .303 was a .303, and the British will only came close to breaking due to the unconventional tactics they used (POWs shackled to the locomotives to prevent rail sabotage and summary executions of commandos) made for bad press at home. But no TL difference just because the Tommies had machineguns and paddewheelers - the supply line was long enough to negate that. It was just rifle vs rifle.

Sepoy Rebellions: ok, TL differences except for the rifle and cannon equipped sepoy units and the lance and tulwar equipped native (mainly Sikh) loyalists on the Brit side. Still, pretty even and didn't last long enough to be a war of TL industrial level versus another. Just who had the greater will to combat, and the British had it this time.

Afghan/ Sov war : The mudjha's won because they had the US and press on their side. Otherwise the Soviets would have wiped them from the face of the Earth. It has been called the Soviet Vietnam for a reason: we also could have won that, and were winning it, except that with the "help" of the popular press and mob at home the political will to win was lost. All those shots of napalm sticking to kids got more press than our troop being tortured in the Hanoi Hilton. Not to mention no one listening to what the Cambodians, Laotians, and South Vietnamese were scared was going to happen (and did) if we pulled out.

The Soviets were wiping out the Afghan's quite handily until the US started sending money and weapons to the insurgents. The Stinger won the war. The press embarrassed the Sov's with stories of the atrocities they were committing and the political will was crumbling in Moscow as a result as world pressure was brought to bear. TL counted only till it was evened up by an outside source. Classical asymmetric war until "sponsors" got involved so it might be the best analogy here.

 

[sabredog]

The closest Traveller equivalent would be an Imperial invasion of a Zhodani border "neutral" world, with the insurgency receiving extensive deniable support from the Zho's as well as material, personel and monetary support from other border worlds.

And I can't imagine much left of the place afterward.

How do you face BD with lower tech troops? Economics. If your basic BD marine costs multiple MCr to equip, then even at a 1000-1 loss ratio then with enough numbers any conflict quickly becomes unviable. Even just components wearing out might get to this ratio.

If you BD is basically combat armour with a couple of servos and a grav belt (costing in the order of KCr's instead) not only can you field more - and be at more locations, losses stop being as critical.

The reason you don't put F-22's in the air every time there is a bank robbery. You send a dozen flatfeet with pistols and flak vests instead.

But those marines are also supported by ortillery, meson guns, dampers, railguns throwing collapsing rounds, and rapid-pulse fusion guns. High tech rapid-response point defense systems, and nuclear shoulder-fired tac missiles.

So doing the Fuzzy-Wuzzy on them would really just result in the 1000-1 loss ratio working the other way. Pretty soon its 2000:2....then 3000:3, and its rapidly unviable for Fuzzy-Wuzzy, not the Marines.

Sure those are expensive suits n' toys, but the losses would be far too great, not mention collateral damages from all the heavy ordnance going down range to stop the next ambush/human wave/suicide bombing/whatever...unless the Imperials are tying themselves down with the same sort of ROE that we tie our troops up with. Then it works as you describe with the press screaming equally about the "horrendous losses of innocent life caused by brutal Imperial Marines" and "another Imperial Marine died today in the war". That eats at the political will to win and might stop the war, but somehow I imagine that in an Empire with another Empire lurking beyond the border (the evil Zho) the politics might not care so much about what the press says.

So the world just get burnt to ash in order to save it.

 

[Zutroi]

Going back to grav mobility... I use this to replace Heinlein's 'jump jets'... This is your brake when you drop, and the 'leap (to the top of) tall buildings' capability. While using it to fly along at 90 meters is perfectly possibly, doctrine would prohibit allowing Imperial Property (you and your suit!) to be so callously destroyed by the enemy...

 

[Trent]

As to fighting the 3I, it might happen for several reasons.

In one adventure I'm planning to run for an EABA/traveller game coming soon at a convention, I had one of the players being a refugee from a world that was conquered by the 3I after it was discovered the planet had massive Zuchai deposits and was unwilling to mine them fast enough to suit some imperial megacorps.

Soon the press started carrying stories that the planet was an Ine Givar base and supported Ine Givar raids into the imperium. Soon imperial diplomats demanded the right to conduct unlimited searches for WMDs, er, excuse me, IG bases and ships.

Not long after the 3I issued an ultimatum: Stop harboring IG based or else. Naturally since there were no WMd, Er I mean IG bases, the planet couldn't comply.

Boom. Invasion. The populace fought but never had a chance. While the search for IG dominated the spotlight the megacorps quietly came in, threw a lot of people off their property ar riflepoint and began strip mining Zuchai, doing massive environmental damage that somehow never made the press.

The planets population waged guerrilla war thru assassinations, sabotage, ambushes, etc. for years. Eventually the last trace of zuchai was sucked up, the imperium left and some years later massive outbreaks of biological agents occurred on some nearby imperial worlds. Probably coincidence.

Another case might be a non imperial world near the border and far from zhoad space. They don't have a psionic dictatorship like the zhoads but don't oppress psionics either. maybe the imperium decides it could use a few hundred new psionic agents, so fire up the propaganda machine, whip the sheeple into an anti-psi frenzy and it's invasion time.

The psionc population now enjoys the choice of serving the imperium or rotting in prisons.

 

[veltyen]

And I can't imagine much left of the place afterward.

Sorry, I can't accept that. I like Battledress, and that arguement removes any need for it.

If you start with saturation bombing, you don't need boots on the ground.

So doing the Fuzzy-Wuzzy on them would really just result in the 1000-1 loss ratio working the other way. Pretty soon its 2000:2....then 3000:3, and its rapidly unviable for Fuzzy-Wuzzy, not the Marines.

Bougainville

Slings against helicopter gunships.

The slings won.

Eventually.

That rapid fire xray laser is all well and good while it is still in your hands.

(Also Fuzzy Wuzzy is more then a little insulting - on the plus side it did remind me of the angels and the Bougainville conflict)

 

[sabredog]

Sorry, I can't accept that. I like Battledress, and that arguement removes any need for it.

If you start with saturation bombing, you don't need boots on the ground.

Of course you do, tell that to the Marines in the island hopping campaign of WW2 where the Japanese were shelled for days or weeks at a time and they still had to be dug out one bunker at a time by the Marines.

The soldiers at the Somme and Ypres who attacked the German positions after hours and hours of shelling and found it hadn't done anything at all.

The troops in the Gulf who saw B-52 waves bomb the Iraqi army for weeks (GW 1, when they actually had one) and then had to go in and physically occupy the ground to take and keep it, and still found resistance.
Not al lot, but it was still there.

There will always be a need for boots on the ground. Thats part of why there is battledress - because after the meson and nuclear ortillery slags the enemy positions and the commando jump troops have shut down the underground meson batteries the groundpounding dogfaces will come down in BD and "winkle the other guy out of his hole by the point of a bayonet" -(Heinlein, Starship Troopers.

Bougainville

Slings against helicopter gunships.

The slings won.

Eventually.

The exceptions will always be there to prove the rule.

That rapid fire xray laser is all well and good while it is still in your hands.

You're assuming the personal weapon is the only one at the trooper's disposal. So what's you're point?

(Also Fuzzy Wuzzy is more then a little insulting - on the plus side it did remind me of the angels and the Bougainville conflict)

Boo-hoo. I was referring to the Sudanese conflict in 1884. Sorry I offended your delicate sensibilities.

 

[sabredog]

As to fighting the 3I, it might happen for several reasons.

In one adventure I'm planning to run for an EABA/traveller game coming soon at a convention, I had one of the players being a refugee from a world that was conquered by the 3I after it was discovered the planet had massive Zuchai deposits and was unwilling to mine them fast enough to suit some imperial megacorps.

Soon the press started carrying stories that the planet was an Ine Givar base and supported Ine Givar raids into the imperium. Soon imperial diplomats demanded the right to conduct unlimited searches for WMDs, er, excuse me, IG bases and ships.

Not long after the 3I issued an ultimatum: Stop harboring IG based or else. Naturally since there were no WMd, Er I mean IG bases, the planet couldn't comply.

Boom. Invasion. The populace fought but never had a chance. While the search for IG dominated the spotlight the megacorps quietly came in, threw a lot of people off their property ar riflepoint and began strip mining Zuchai, doing massive environmental damage that somehow never made the press.

The planets population waged guerrilla war thru assassinations, sabotage, ambushes, etc. for years. Eventually the last trace of zuchai was sucked up, the imperium left and some years later massive outbreaks of biological agents occurred on some nearby imperial worlds. Probably coincidence.

Another case might be a non imperial world near the border and far from zhoad space. They don't have a psionic dictatorship like the zhoads but don't oppress psionics either. maybe the imperium decides it could use a few hundred new psionic agents, so fire up the propaganda machine, whip the sheeple into an anti-psi frenzy and it's invasion time.

The psionc population now enjoys the choice of serving the imperium or rotting in prisons.

So it sounds like the iron fist of the Imperium's Marines is a threat used only as a last resort, and most conflicts are low-level surgical attacks and guerilla actions? Makes sense. I think if the Emperor unleashed the full force of his troops it would scare a lot of would-be rebels into line, or at least really cause the population of that world to turn against them rather than provide the usual hiding holes and support? Makes a lot of sense.

But those cursed Zho teleporting commandos must be a tricky lot to deal with. When I first got the game it never had any of the OTU in it and I could never understand why there was this public prejudice against psionics until I read about the Zhodani in JTAS. And I'm still trying to figure out how the Zhodani keep thier combat armor down to only 4kg and BD at only 20kg.

 

[sabredog]

There was a cold war era joke in Germany that roughly translated to "What's the definition of a 'tactical' nuclear weapon? One that is used on germany."


In all fairness to the russians, though, and not to step on toes but to stand up for the truth, given the scale of atrocities that germans committed against the russians in WW2, killing about 1/4 of the populace, it's no wonder the russians weren't too fond of the germans and would have been willing to use WMDs on them.

The russians used to have a saying about the fact that "Most americans grandparents died in their beds, most of ours died in the great patriotic war." Which basically meant we didn't have any right to judge the russians since our country wasn't invaded and out people subjected to atrocities during ww2. And it was true. Pearls Harbor was attacked but the american mainland was never invaded or occupied.

Yes, yes, I know stalin was a bastard and murdered a lot of people too. It doesn't change what germans did in russia though, or how most russians felt, and had reason to feel, towards germans.

I think you somehow misunderstood my post - I know what the Germans did, and I know what the Sov's did in return. I also know what both sides did to Poles, Jews, Czechs, and a whole bunch of their own people even before the war.

I also know that the tactical doctrines of both sides during the Cold War, which I grew up and served in the military during, was to use WMD's if the other side did. The difference was that the Soviets treated them as an integrated part of their tactical doctrine, and the US (and NATO) treated them as primarily a strategic option, which is why putting Pershing missiles in Germany freaked everyone out so much. It created a situation in which nukes would definitely now be part of NATO's tactical doctrine. Because it had the potential to escalte the conflict because of the different ways both sides saw the reasons for use of WMD's.

I was only speaking to those issues to draw a comparison to what seems to be how those weapons are treated as part of a future (OTU) tactical doctrine and the effect that has on deterring conflicts, or if it does at all.

As for why the Red Army did what it did in WW2 in revenge for what the Germans did to Russians from '41 on, more power to them. War is heck. But I don't think it had anything to do with, nor have I ever read anything to support the idea that the reason the Warsaw Pact was training and prepared to use chemical weapons was anything more than to offset the NATO technological advantage and deny ground to NATO forces that the Soviets would be equipped and trained to move through quickly.

It wasn't because they were hoping to kill all the Germans. It was just the Warsaw Pact version of shock and awe: kill everything in sight and take the ground as fast as you can to keep on schedule regardless of losses while reinforcing only the successful breakthroughs. If gas helped it happen before NATO could rally and choke off the supply lines with its doctrine of "deep offense" combined with delaying actions then they were going to use gas.

 

[Icosahedron]

Yesssss.....I have one of those too. Disposable and 15cm, though. I wanted to make sure it could fly far enough away I didn't repeat the Army's "Atomic Grenade" experience.

Well, the Striker 0.1kt warhead has a tertiary blast radius of 30cm (300m) and the TL7 8cm RR has an effective range of 150cm (1500m), so I figured the troops were safe enough.

I never really get to use all this stuff in the game very often, though, so it mainly just ends up as stage dressing to scare the crap out of the players when they see the Marines deploying on a planet they just got stuck on because a capacitor blew.

Likewise, largely background props. No way the players are going to get their hands on stuff like that...

 

[sabredog]

Likewise, largely background props. No way the players are going to get their hands on stuff like that...

No way!

 

[aramis]

Striker also doesn't cover fallout, secondary radiation, nor incidental fallout effects, Icos. Let alone the massive increases in cancer/lukemia rates.

 

[Icosahedron]

I agree that a TL difference of more than a couple of points would make a war unwinnable for the lotechs. Look at War of the Worlds and Independence Day (and remove the deus ex machina viruses in both cases).

No matter how many lotechs you have, a several km meson gun killing zone around your base will create a resonable deterrent, IMHO.

I know someone wrote recently about taking down an air raft with a balista, but that was only after a catalogue of criminally stupid errors on the hitech side.

A political leader would have to be megalomaniacally insane to declare war on the Imperium... er, ok, so it's gonna happen - a lot. Sounds like an adventure hook to me. :smirk:

 

[Icosahedron]

Striker also doesn't cover fallout, secondary radiation, nor incidental fallout effects, Icos. Let alone the massive increases in cancer/lukemia rates.

But the troops are in BD. THey're largely immune to that low key stuff, and anyway it will have no direct bearing on the immediate battle.

I was arguing the difference between an 8cm and 15cm projectile range here, and figuring that the 8cm weapon had sufficient range. Your arguments are equally valid (or invalid) for both weapons.

 

[sabredog]

Striker also doesn't cover fallout, secondary radiation, nor incidental fallout effects, Icos. Let alone the massive increases in cancer/lukemia rates.

But it does describe nuclear dampers on the battlefield. Page 12. Book 2 says that they are able to "completely remove fallout and radiation from the area of a nuclear detonation."

That, and their regular point defense duties means that a lot of the nuclear weapons going of are not going to have a lot of long term radiation effects on the troops. I suspect the real effect is just going to be the primary and secondary blast zones and the immediate casualties from that.

Besides, anyone ever wonder what the radiation effects are of P/FGMP's, plus the results of all those grav vehicles having their fusion plants breached?

The dampers and BD render all that a non-issue to the troops, and I'd be willing to bet that by at least TL-10+ there are anti-radiation drugs for both purging and prophylaxis of contamination.

 

[Trent]

Striker also doesn't cover fallout, secondary radiation, nor incidental fallout effects, Icos. Let alone the massive increases in cancer/lukemia rates.

At the risk of sounding ignorant, wouldn't traveller era nukes mostly be laser induced fusion devices that had no fission triggers and instead use a one shot, solid state laser system to trigger fusion in a pellet of crystallized deuterium or tritium, thereby producing a largely clean fusion blast with little to no fallout or contamination?

 

[Trent]

So it sounds like the iron fist of the Imperium's Marines is a threat used only as a last resort, and most conflicts are low-level surgical attacks and guerilla actions? Makes sense. I think if the Emperor unleashed the full force of his troops it would scare a lot of would-be rebels into line, or at least really cause the population of that world to turn against them rather than provide the usual hiding holes and support? Makes a lot of sense.

But those cursed Zho teleporting commandos must be a tricky lot to deal with. When I first got the game it never had any of the OTU in it and I could never understand why there was this public prejudice against psionics until I read about the Zhodani in JTAS. And I'm still trying to figure out how the Zhodani keep thier combat armor down to only 4kg and BD at only 20kg.

Well, I think you missed the point: Someone asked why anyone would fight the 3I given it's overwhelming power, and maybe if you don't want imperial megacorps coming and raping your planet for resources that you'd rather mine slowly in an enviromentally friendly fashion, and those corps decide to create a situation that leads to an unjustified invasion then the people might fight even if it was hopeless.

That's the point I was making, that some people might fight an unbjust invasion even if there was no hope of winning, and in the future possibly retailiate in some pretty underhanded ways that conventional military might can't defend against.

 

[ThunderChilde]

I'm not sure why the Imperium would bother with the dog and pony show if its as grasping and uncaringly, starkly evil as you describe it.

Just impose a Naval designated Red Zone, do what you have to to get what you want, strictly limiting your exposure to the indigs, unleash a host of quite natural, unknown to them or thier biosphere plagues and keep the red zone in place for another 100 years, then quietly drop it if the plagues have run thier course and nearly eliminated the population. Nuff said.