Mesons and the ground combat picture

[Carlobrand]

Not 100% sure where to put this, but it's about a technology, so this is as good as any.

Jewell: A777999-C, Naval Base, Scout Base
Local army: 1200 battalions strength, equipped to TL12 standards.
TL12 standards means the best available meson screen is a Factor-1, at least for ship-mounted systems. There might be better for cities - I hope - but one presumes they're too big or too power-hungry to be carried on even the bigger ships, if they exist. However, if they're big and power hungry, they're of little use to the troop in the field. Meanwhile, the best available meson spinal for Jewell's planetary defense force is a Factor K, which is nice but ... well, let's move forward.

Canon has it that Jewel came under attack during the opening days of the Fifth Frontier War, with the Zhodani 3rd Assault Fleet engaging the Imperial 125th. We will leave aside the orbital combat and look at what's happening on the ground.

If we go by Striker, the Zho type M meson gun - we'll go with the type M as a reasonably powerful gun, not too overwhelming - has a burst radius of 21 cm, or 210 meters. Whump, everything in a radius of 210 meters is dead: soldiers, vehicles, pigeons, trees, all dead. Buildings crumble, lions lay down with lambs, teeny little angels appear and blow a teeny little 210-meter range horn of the apocalypse, general nastiness. That's one ship, one shot, radius big enough to put 4 platoons and all their equipment on the casualty list. Up in orbit, those guns are on ships that travel in squadrons, six to eight ships, and there's a fleet of them up there.

So what do we have? He sends down his drop troops, they probe gently forward until they find the local defenses, they say, "Shoot here" - and a battalion of local troops is dead in the first exchange. And then another. And then another.

We can hope in the case of Jewell that the planetary defense batteries are shooting back (though they're likely having to penetrate a factor-6 meson screen and have a -2 to do that) and that the 125th is doing its best to persuade the Zho heavies to not get close. However, here's the thing: once the mesons are securely in orbit, it's over. If you do not have the tech and the planetary defenses to hurt them in orbit, they will turn entire square miles of your defensive line into sterile zones of death. They'll do that even if you DO have the tech to hurt them, but at least you can make them pay for it.

The only defense I can see is speed and concealment. Your troops can't allow themselves to be seen from orbit, and when the enemy encounters them or they encounter the enemy, they have to move fast to survive. They have to get in close and tight with the attacker to keep the attacker from going to his big guns, and when they withdraw they have to do it fast and far to keep from being targeted on the disengagement. The army units in effect need to behave like jet aircraft.

This changes the nature of the ground combat. Digging in is suicide unless you're so well camouflaged that even the enemy ground forces can't see you. The local infantry can dig in, camouflage themselves, and then play eyes and ears for the faster forces, but they can't draw attention to themselves unless they're ready to close in tight or move away quickly immediately afterward.

And if you're TL11 or lower, your army bases have to be abandoned - they're fixed targets, easily destroyed. Your power stations are sitting ducks. The enemy in orbit can destroy what he wishes, when he wishes.

Am I missing something? Am I getting something wrong? How does one form a defensive line when forward observers can eat whole companies with meson fire called down from orbit? Given this and the problem with dreadnoughts, I think sometimes the game would be better if meson weaponry didn't exist.

 

[Piper]

Am I missing something? Am I getting something wrong? How does one form a defensive line when forward observers can eat whole companies with meson fire called down from orbit?

No, I think you've covered the salient points, You can disperse and/or stick closely to the enemy ground forces. You have to move fast, move far, concentrate rapidly and violently suppress forward observers. Grav vehicles are a help here, extensive ECM might be useful as well.
You might want to peruse the Army field manual on nuclear operations. Some similarities there:

http://fas.org/irp/doddir/army/fm100-30.pdf

One thing to consider, a planet is a pretty target rich environment. Those gunners are going to be busy dealing with a large number of fire requests. There may be entire areas of operation that aren't going to have full time on demand meson orbital support. Depends entirely on the number of ships of course, but it might be a mitigating factor.

Given this and the problem with dreadnoughts, I think sometimes the game would be better if meson weaponry didn't exist.

Probably. Or better still, if GDW had provided some concrete rules for dealing with this. COACC missed an opportunity there.

 

[mike wightman]

Jewel has an IN base - these are equipped to TL15 standards and will be bristling with factor T meson guns, PAWs and missile batteries.

Never mind the Jewel home defence forces, that naval base is the real fortress that has to be neutralised.

This is, unfortunately, totally absent from FFW rules

 

[robject]

Am I missing something? Am I getting something wrong? How does one form a defensive line when forward observers can eat whole companies with meson fire called down from orbit? Given this and the problem with dreadnoughts, I think sometimes the game would be better if meson weaponry didn't exist.

Will ground meson screens help blunt the orbital meson attacks?

 

[rancke]

Will ground meson screens help blunt the orbital meson attacks?

Perhaps fixed meson installations can be bigger and with greater ranges than ship-mounted, making it suicide for capital ships to get withing range of the surface until the meson defense have been destroyed in ground combat?


Hans

 

[robject]

Perhaps fixed meson installations can be bigger and with greater ranges than ship-mounted, making it suicide for capital ships to get withing range of the surface until the meson defense have been destroyed in ground combat?

Good question. How well do the listed High Guard meson screens work? And did MegaTraveller expand on the list?

 

[Carlobrand]

Good question. How well do the listed High Guard meson screens work? And did MegaTraveller expand on the list?

MegaTrav offered a range of higher tech meson screens through TL21, and data for same. Also offered a range of higher tech meson projectors, through TL19. Neither MegaTrav nor CT offer any clues about ground-based installations, which is a royal pain. I tend to presume, with greater freedom of room, that a ground-borne projector or screen would be more effective than its space-faring counterpart, but for such a presumption to work, we have to imagine systems so big or power-hungry that no one would consider mounting them on even a dreadnought - else we're left to ask why the Navy doesn't use them.

Assuming equal value computers, the best TL15 meson screen (factor-9) will stop any meson projector of factor B or lower, has about a 15 in 36 chance of stopping a cruiser's N-meson, and has about a 1 in 6 chance to stop a dreadnought's T-meson. They're honestly not tremendously effective, but they don't take up much power or space, so they're worthwhile as a last ditch defense.

 

[Ulsyus]

Jewel has an IN base - these are equipped to TL15 standards and will be bristling with factor T meson guns, PAWs and missile batteries.

Never mind the Jewel home defence forces, that naval base is the real fortress that has to be neutralised.

This is, unfortunately, totally absent from FFW rules

That's it! TL15 deep batteries - does Jewel have moons? If so they'd be buried in them, as well as the surface of Jewel. The Joe's, even if they penetrate to the planet itself, would face a wracking time dealing with the deep emplacements.

Perhaps fixed meson installations can be bigger and with greater ranges than ship-mounted, making it suicide for capital ships to get withing range of the surface until the meson defense have been destroyed in ground combat?

Hans

Wouldn't it just be a matter of power and size? Once upon a time the 12 inch naval gun was the ultimate, but then some bugger developed a bigger bore gun with a longer barrel and hey presto: the 12in is yesterday's weapon.

I tend to presume, with greater freedom of room, that a ground-borne projector or screen would be more effective than its space-faring counterpart, but for such a presumption to work, we have to imagine systems so big or power-hungry that no one would consider mounting them on even a dreadnought - else we're left to ask why the Navy doesn't use them.

Again, the element of power and size.

On the BR spreadsheet I put here I included a weapon design sheet. Playing around with that, I built a TL15 meson gun with a discharge energy of 750000Mj and a length of 250m. The range bands were 10-20-40-80, and the damage values were 13-13-13-11. Checking the screen on a Voroshilef in BR, it as a value of 11. So even at closer range it's going to be able to take hits from a single battery.

What if three or four batteries hit it at the same time: does it's one meson screen protect against all batteries? What if all the escorts have been eliminated and the DNs and BBs are subject to withering missile fire? Then there's the issue of starships vs spaceships, DNs vs monitors even before the attackers get anywhere near the planet.

I think there'd need to be a lot of simulating play done to test how the system is defended before the worrying about meson fire on the ground. Not that it's a good question, but missile fire would be more of a concern a lot earlier though.

 

[BlackBat242]

There is always throwing rocks from the outer orbitals...

 

[jec10]

I think the basic point is quite right. You don't rely on fixed fortifications in Traveller. They are literally sitting ducks!

At stellar tech levels a mobile defence is the only way to go. You have your SBDs and grav vehicles in "hides" underground or underwater. You have a dispersed passive sensor system combined with redundant landline comms to the hides and to your deep site mesons or missile silos. You pick the right moment to engage with any of these systems. You protect your population and power stations as best you can with meson screens and nuke dampeners.

 

[Carlobrand]

...On the BR spreadsheet I put here ...

Ummm, here where? That's an 11 page thread.

CT High Guard meson screen protects against all inbound meson fire. It just doesn't do it very well.

"Withering missile fire" is a bit problematic: given enough armor, even the nuclear missiles only scrub weapons. The ship pulls back, does some repairs, comes back and starts bombarding again. You can buy a bit of respite with missiles but you can't take a heavily armored antagonist out, and he's taking your ground forces and other sundries out.

I think the basic point is quite right. You don't rely on fixed fortifications in Traveller. They are literally sitting ducks!

At stellar tech levels a mobile defence is the only way to go. You have your SBDs and grav vehicles in "hides" underground or underwater. You have a dispersed passive sensor system combined with redundant landline comms to the hides and to your deep site mesons or missile silos. You pick the right moment to engage with any of these systems. You protect your population and power stations as best you can with meson screens and nuke dampeners.

Hide and seek. I push forward armor, the local counters with armor, they tangle and my unit pulls back - and my orbital forces track the local vehicles as they return to their hides, use densitometers to scan the hides, then meson whatever they can see. If the hides are deep enough - and apparently a kilometer's deep enough at TL15 - then I can only close the entrances, but that will still create problems for the hiding force. I might be able to target by neutrino signature, but I'm less sure on that. Of course, that does depend on having uncontested control of the orbital space, which is clearly every bit as bad (for the other guy) as having uncontested control of the skies above a modern battlefield.

Which brings us to the importance of planetary defenses. First, there is no defense without orbital defense. The defense is severely handicapped if I can monitor and bombard from space at will, and how handicapped is determined by how many ships are up here with me and how many targets are down there.

That means that the Imperium has a simple choice: to Hades with the tech level business, put adequate meson defenses on any world they wish to deny to the enemy, or allow a world that lacks such defenses to capitulate when the enemy takes control of the orbital space. 1-kilometer deep hides are expensive, not easy to build, and only middling solutions. An uncontested meson in orbit is every bit as wicked as a particle accelerator over a vacuum world.

(That particle beam rule's always been odd to me. You fire it at a ship and the ship goes, "Ouch," and fights on. You point it at a vacuum world, and they give up. Dig, people! If they can make a buffered planetoid spaceship, you can make an affordable home that doesn't disintegrate in a particle beam hit.)

Might also help if you could fuzz a densitometer or a neutrino detector somehow.

Also brings up the power quandary. Meson weapons take huge amounts of power. Fusion plants putting out that kind of power are easy to find and kill, even if the meson weapon isn't. (Well, strictly speaking they're Difficult to find, but every ship gets a chance, so a fleet full of ships is going to find them.) Finding another power source is tricky. Fission gives a neutrino signature too. Hydrocarbons would surprise, but they eat 300 times as much fuel by volume as fusion plants do; a month's volume of fuel for a fusion plant is 2 1/2 hours fuel for an MHD turbine, and at a thousand or more EP, a deep meson weapon would go through an enormous amount of fuel very quickly. Fuel cells are a possibility only because the Traveller fuel cell might as well be a cold fusion device: it produces way more power than could be explained by an H2/O2 reaction.

A thought is to keep the mesons powered by using the planet's heat, going deep, deep for the lava and drawing that heat for energy. If you make your own geothermal source, the folk in orbit won't be able to find either your meson or its power source, and you can keep killing them until they find and kill the last sensor. Which is what canon says is supposed to happen.

 

[Ulsyus]

I think the basic point is quite right. You don't rely on fixed fortifications in Traveller. They are literally sitting ducks!

At stellar tech levels a mobile defence is the only way to go...

Like Carl said, deep meson emplacements baby, deep mesons

Ok, Carl left the baby bit out.

Ummm, here where? That's an 11 page thread.

Sorry, it was in the second post or so, but I realised when I was playing around with it that I'd limited the TLs to 12 so had to adjust here. It was all based on TNE FF&S.

CT High Guard meson screen protects against all inbound meson fire. It just doesn't do it very well.

Does that mean there's no degradation to the screen from multiple incoming beams? That makes it a very (Very) powerful defence really.

A thought is to keep the mesons powered by using the planet's heat, going deep, deep for the lava and drawing that heat for energy. If you make your own geothermal source, the folk in orbit won't be able to find either your meson or its power source, and you can keep killing them until they find and kill the last sensor. Which is what canon says is supposed to happen.

That is an excellent concept! It would cost to tunnel down into the crust, put in geothermal plants, then install meson batteries, but it'd be cheaper than building vessels for space, so this could be how somewhere like Jewel holds out for so long. Plus the whopping big fleet stationed there, plus system defences.

I just had a look at the 5FW map - only Jewel and Louzy in the Jewel Subsector had any system ships when the war started, 120 & 500 respectively. Regina is listed iwth 10: no wonder it was targeted!

 

[rancke]

I just had a look at the 5FW map - only Jewel and Louzy in the Jewel Subsector had any system ships when the war started, 120 & 500 respectively. Regina is listed with 10: no wonder it was targeted!

The listed system defenses for Regina are unbelievable and Regina wasn't targeted. The only evidence that it was even subjected to hit-and-run raids is one TNS newsbrief that may have been facetious; every other source indicate that the Zhodani never got into the system.


Hans

 

[Ulsyus]

Fair enough, I should have consulted my copy of Dagsushaam's "The Fifth Frontier War: Failure to Farce", always a good read if you don't like Santocheev and are unsure of Norris' abilities.

So does all this validate Carl's queries about meson ortillery (as such) being a final arbiter of ground combat if an attacker can gain orbital superiority, or even just be close enough to a planet to accurately hit surface targets?

What implications does this have for planetary invasions? I was reoganising the loungeroom recently & dug out my copy of Invasion Earth - is it now redundant if an Imperial fleet is sitting pretty looking down at all those Solomani targets?

 

[McPerth]

If we go by Striker, the Zho type M meson gun - we'll go with the type M as a reasonably powerful gun, not too overwhelming - has a burst radius of 21 cm, or 210 meters. Whump, everything in a radius of 210 meters is dead: soldiers, vehicles, pigeons, trees, all dead. Buildings crumble, lions lay down with lambs, teeny little angels appear and blow a teeny little 210-meter range horn of the apocalypse, general nastiness. That's one ship, one shot, radius big enough to put 4 platoons and all their equipment on the casualty list. Up in orbit, those guns are on ships that travel in squadrons, six to eight ships, and there's a fleet of them up there.

So what do we have? He sends down his drop troops, they probe gently forward until they find the local defenses, they say, "Shoot here" - and a battalion of local troops is dead in the first exchange. And then another. And then another.

We can hope in the case of Jewell that the planetary defense batteries are shooting back (though they're likely having to penetrate a factor-6 meson screen and have a -2 to do that) and that the 125th is doing its best to persuade the Zho heavies to not get close. However, here's the thing: once the mesons are securely in orbit, it's over. If you do not have the tech and the planetary defenses to hurt them in orbit, they will turn entire square miles of your defensive line into sterile zones of death. They'll do that even if you DO have the tech to hurt them, but at least you can make them pay for it.

The only defense I can see is speed and concealment. Your troops can't allow themselves to be seen from orbit, and when the enemy encounters them or they encounter the enemy, they have to move fast to survive. They have to get in close and tight with the attacker to keep the attacker from going to his big guns, and when they withdraw they have to do it fast and far to keep from being targeted on the disengagement. The army units in effect need to behave like jet aircraft.

This changes the nature of the ground combat. Digging in is suicide unless you're so well camouflaged that even the enemy ground forces can't see you. The local infantry can dig in, camouflage themselves, and then play eyes and ears for the faster forces, but they can't draw attention to themselves unless they're ready to close in tight or move away quickly immediately afterward.

And if you're TL11 or lower, your army bases have to be abandoned - they're fixed targets, easily destroyed. Your power stations are sitting ducks. The enemy in orbit can destroy what he wishes, when he wishes.

Am I missing something? Am I getting something wrong? How does one form a defensive line when forward observers can eat whole companies with meson fire called down from orbit? Given this and the problem with dreadnoughts, I think sometimes the game would be better if meson weaponry didn't exist.

Well, as you say meson fire can devastate to no end large areas, but the only case I can remember of this being done is in Illelesh equatorial zone, that the IN so sterilized as a punishment after the Illelesh Revolt.

It can devastate and no effective defense against it, only Political reasons avoid it to be used (at least at large scale), as most navies capable to do that are part of larger political entities who don't want retaliations.

After all, neither is told (AFAIK) in FFW about nukes being used in ground combat.

 

[Carlobrand]

...Does that mean there's no degradation to the screen from multiple incoming beams? That makes it a very (Very) powerful defence really. ...

There's no degradation to the screen from multiple incoming beams. It creates a a field in which mesons decay prematurely. As such, it doesn't really care how many mesons there are; it's just making a slight change in the local physics.

Unfortunately, as I mentioned, the most powerful field available at TL15 has no better than a 42% chance of stopping a single cruiser's meson beam, so the fact that it has a chance to stop multiple beams is not so great, since only one hit is needed to pretty well cripple the ship. Big mistake in the rules, IMO. They should have allowed for more powerful meson screens, and allowed them at all tech levels, with perhaps the screens becoming less power-hungry as one progressed in technology. That would have helped with the groundwar problem as well since a brigade could take a screen into the field and have a reasonable expectation of sheltering their most important assets under it.

As it stands, there is no balance between offense and defense. Two cruisers firing at someone under the best available screen have almost a 5 in 6 chance of crippling or killing the unit protected by the screen - even if that unit happens to be a dreadnought, or a city block, or a power station. Imagine if the capital ships of WW-II all fired shells with little nuclear warheads; a single nine-inch gun would be more than enough to obliterate the Missouri, not to mention any battalion or installation in range. The only defense is to either not be seen or not be there when it goes off - or to kill the ship firing the nuclear shells before he kills you.

...
That is an excellent concept! It would cost to tunnel down into the crust, put in geothermal plants, then install meson batteries, but it'd be cheaper than building vessels for space, so this could be how somewhere like Jewel holds out for so long. Plus the whopping big fleet stationed there, plus system defences. ...

Thank you. I'm not sure if it's an original idea, but it's one I'd like to see the game incorporate. (That and rewriting the meson screen rules.) Too easy to target and kill the power plants as a means of shutting a world down and forcing capitulation.

...What implications does this have for planetary invasions? I was reoganising the loungeroom recently & dug out my copy of Invasion Earth - is it now redundant if an Imperial fleet is sitting pretty looking down at all those Solomani targets?

Recall that the Solomani can shoot back. Three corps-size planetary defense bases, 16 division size planetary defense bases, four mobile planetary defense regiments, together hypothetically able to take out an entire squadron or more each turn under ideal circumstances, given that game's damage tables. (Those are two week turns, but the fleet in orbit suffers under the same odd time constraint.) I figure the pop of Earth at that point to be in the tens of billions, but total bombardment factor of just the PD units is about 50% greater than that of the 35 squadrons the Imperials brought to the party. Extrapolating from a game is tricky, but if Jewell is proportionally as well defended, then there are planetary defenses equivalent to about 10 to 30 naval squadrons at Jewell, depending on what Earth's population actually is. (And even a world with only tens of millions population would have at least one or two deep meson sites to persuade the enemy to either stand off or come in greater force.)

Pity that isn't reflected in FFW, but it might explain why the Zho had such trouble at Jewell in canon, though canon doesn't actually mention the effects of planetary defenses. I'm tempted to extrapolate some sort of rule or guideline on the PDs.

 

[Enoki]

Wouldn't you also have to consider other defenses the planet might have like orbitals, stations / bases on moons and that sort of thing?

I mean, if you need a meson screen why does it have to be ground based? Satellites in orbit could generate one presumably shielding the planet from space.
Orbitals with limited maneuvering capacity would be at a large advantage in terms of weapons, protection, and power not having to have jump drives, might have only a minimal maneuver drive, and even possibly having reduced fuel aboard as they could normally be refueled more frequently.

 

[robject]

And layers. If a single screen fails 58% of the time, ten nested screens fail 0.4% of the time. Nest as much as needed, power is essentially "free".

 

[McPerth]

And layers. If a single screen fails 58% of the time, ten nested screens fail 0.4% of the time. Nest as much as needed, power is essentially "free".

See that meson screens power needs rais with the volume to protect. I don't think the power to put a meson screen in a city would be so "free", as amounts would be vast...

And not only cities could be targeted...

And of course, if you're covered by a meson screen, forget about meson communicators too (my guess, not specified in rules, but I think it logical).

 

[robject]

See that meson screens power needs rais with the volume to protect. I don't think the power to put a meson screen in a city would be so "free", as amounts would be vast...

And not only cities could be targeted...

Good point. Perhaps just protecting the anti-assault gun emplacements, then?