AFAIK there are no rules about planetary sieges in the boardgames published (FFW, Imperium), only for planetary assaults. So the length of a planetary siege will be infinite (until assaulted or take in peace talks).
Planetary defensive deep meson sites
- Thread starter Vladika
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AFAIK there are no rules about planetary sieges in the boardgames published (FFW, Imperium), only for planetary assaults. So the length of a planetary siege will be infinite (until assaulted or take in peace talks).
A rulesset that cannot duplicate canonical historical events must be considered flawed and can be dismissed as inadequate to the task of emulating the fictional reality it is supposed to reflect.
Such a rulesset can, of course, still work for the purposes of having an enjoyable game. Just not an accurate one.
Hans
Traveller Invasion Earth on pg 14 (other uses) is a section on running Invasions on other worlds and with different levels of Tech.
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It keeps being planetary invasion/assault, not siege.
I cannot remember if Imperium had rules for out of communication outposts to surrund, but this will probably be again as peace talks develop, not as falling to siege.
T4s Book 8 Pocket Empires had extensive rules and quarterly meta-tasks for Offensives against other Pocket Empires and Individual Worlds, Including things like Blockade Offensives. It also has rules for war and planetary Invasions as well.
Perhapse you should take a look, Its one of the few T4 books I like and seems to be the base for a lot of the planetary expansion info in T5.
Sadly, T4 disappointed me so much (as commented on other threads) that I only bought the core book and a couple of suplements, and Pocket Empires was not among them, something that, given what I've read about it in this forum, now I regret. So, I'm afraid I cannot look to this book.
You know its offered on the FFE website....and while I know that buying the T4 disk gets you everything, the price is worth it for the few T4 things that are worth having.
I know, shameless plug, but having to wait for Pocket Empires to show up on E-Bay or the like is a drag.
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
Meson weapons don't fire two particle beams - in the rules as written the meson gun generates mesons within the weapon and fires them at relativistic velocity in order to decay within the target and dump the energy into it.
So you only have to aim one particle beam, and know the exact position of the target's future location for when the mesons decay. Pretty much as ridiculous as aiming two beams
I really wish they'd come up with a better weapon...
As for sieges - during games of FFW the high pop high TL worlds are more than capable of tying up substantial Zhodani assets for turn after turn.
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Deep meson sites are best taken with infantry. Getting infantry down, however, requires not being hit by meson fire.
Further, there's the local insurrection issue. You can police a pacified population with about 1:1000 adequately (Nominally, this is the ratio of police to civilians in the US), but you need between 3 to 10 times as many for a hostile force. A lot of the time to "take" a world is likely spent seeking and attacking guerilla units and partizans, and finding sympathizers to coopt into your forces.
Terra is taken in the 990's... it's still occupied by the Imperial Marines in 1105.
Yep. It's one or the other. Possible both.
And it took nearly 8 months and many troops and losses (both, space and dirtside) to take it, something impossible in FFW, where once you have orbital superiority you can bomb the whole force and reduce it to nothing (or remants at least) in 4-5 turns (weeks), without any danger to your space forces (unless space forces show up), to then assault it and take the planet in 1-2 weeks.
As told in another thread, years ago I tryed to organize a multiple blind FFW. To overcome this "inaccuracy" with OTU history, I planed to use several zones in each planet, depending on size (modified by hidrography) and population, each zone having its own troops and had to be taken, with movement allowed between zones (I'm afraid I've lost the exact formulas and rules).
The planets also had their own space attack power to attack ships in orbit (and so supporting the landed troops). IIRC they had a space combat factor equivalent to (POP-5)^2 x (TL-11) to be used in the bombardement table.
So, Rhylanor (pop 9, TL 15) would have about 64 space factors to attack enemy fleets in orbit each turn. You could not attack it without expecting losses in your space forces.
As a comparison, see that Earth woud have (at me moment of Imperial assault, in 1002) 75 factors (pop 10, TL 14). In IE it had a total of 121 factors in its PD units, that are halved when firing ships in orbit, but used fully (if at range) against bombing units. Not too far from those numbers...
Garyius2003
SOC-13
The 3I didn't want to destroy the ancient capitals of Roma, London, and Washington Columbia.
So it took longer.
Someday the reunited Imperium peoples will thank the Throne for the preservation.
Probably, but I guess even in FFW both sides tried to avoid losses among civilians and facilities (after all, the fact in FFW you can use captured starports shows us they are not blown up), and yet planetary invasions are resolved quite quickly.
And even so, in IE you (as Imperial) have no limitation to bomb any location, regardless its historical importance (or the fact of being a urban hex). And IIRC I read somewhere they bombed dams protecting inhabitated zones (due to sea level raising)...
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