Re: Not the ultimate comment on planetary invasions

Marc Alexandrovich Volovic [email removed] writes:
>   The very fact that spending is limited would favour an attacker or
> defender who balances the quantity of medium priced combat vehicles with
> a quality of high priced combat vehicles (be these vehicles TL9 grav
> tanks or TL15 super dreadnoughts). There may be 5 Atlantis battleships
> (Robert Dean's Prize Baby :-) in a star system, but a mixed force can
> outmaneuver it and perform a planetary landing.

Perhaps, but there had better be something that can take out those 5 Atlantis
class battleships, or at least keep all 5 occupied for a long time, or else
at least one battleship will come and make the invasion very costly.

>   On another hand - a planetary assault may take place WITH THE CONSENT
> of the defender - if an attacker finds himself faced with an apparently
> impenetrable defence belt, he may just give up the idea of an assault
> and accelerate a few medium sized asteroids at the target planet. Thus a
> situation similar to a battle of Maldon may arise - the defender
> granting battlespace to the attacker.

The whole assumption in this discussion is that for some reason, the attacker
can not/does not want to destroy the defender totally in this manner.  (Why
was such a tactic never used during any of the Frontier Wars, by the way?)
Otherwise, if the attacker finds himself faced with an unbeatable defence
at any stage, he can just give up, take off and nuke the planet from orbit.

>   If the above comments hold true the deciding stage in an invasion
> would be how much of the attacking force can the defender destroy before
> an engagement on the world surface, but without making him desperate
> enough or hurt enough to bombard and jump outsystem. This may or may not
> be the fine art of generalship in the future.

Fine art?  Either the attacker wins, or the defender wins.  If the defender
wins, the attacker brings up the asteroid.  End of defender's story.

>   The future batlefiled itself depends very much on the concept of
> anti-gravity. If it invented (and within Traveller it is assumed so),
> filed artillery and infantry will rapidly decline in importance. Indeed,
> infantry is losing importance even now, long before even air-cushion
> combat vehicles have appeared.

Why?  There are reasons why the infantry has to get out of the vehicles
and fight on foot.  The only way anti-gravity will put an end to fighting
on foot is if every soldier gets a grav-belt, and anyone with Striker will
know what that will do to the unit's maintenance costs!

>   Infantry shall continue to be used in city assaults, police and
> security work, shipboard actions and heavily broken areas combat.

The first and last of those come under the heading of "Getting stuck in
and capturing the real estate".  Assuming you actually want control of the
planet, you're going to have to take control of the cities, which means
city assaults.  If the cities have been bombarded, it means broken areas
combat.

> Artilley shall probably lose all almost all use except for the most
> rapidfiring cannon in light anti-vehicle combat.

Certainly it is true that at higher tech levels, you can build vehicles which
are invulnerable to any practical conventional CPR or mass-driver round.
So long as the infantry stay in their heavily armoured APC's, or in their
bunkers, they are safe.  (And so long as someone doesn't let off some nuclear
rounds.)  Artillery will still be a good way of keeping their heads down, and
weakening their morale.

- - --
 "Keyboard?  How quaint!" - M. Scott

 Adrian Hurt			     |	JANET:  [email removed]
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