Planet Defence

 . Paul Dale says putting Laser Turrets on buildings and passive snsors all
 . over the place plus meson silos would be a successful defence.

Hasn't the past couple of weeks of TML mail been discussing shooting "down"
from orbit pointed out that lasers are next to useless in atmosphere?  MT
laser weapons don't appear to do enough damage to deter a detemined attack
and once they're in your atmosphere you really don't want to use your nukes.

The first couple of nukes would be a big morale problem for your population
and the site of enemy ships in the atmosphere would cause panic.


 . Lewis T Goss gives a possible method of carrying out space combats.

The closest thing we have TODAY to 3d combat is aerial dogfights.  If you
add in a carrier then you've got a reserve/coordinator but its not really
safe.  I was once told that there was a major flaw in the US Carrier Fleet
wargame simulations in that Carriers were _unsinkable_.  Sure you could
damage them but not sink them.  My strategy for taking them out would have
been to send out scouts, get a rough idea of where they were based on scout
losses to carrier based fighters and then layout a pattern of ICBMs or Cruise
missiles to ruin there day.  Anyway thats drifted off the topic but the
formations in MT will have to be 3D and the larger the area you cover the less
force you have to use in any one spot and the longer the time it takes you
to react to activity with your reserves.

HIGHGUARD/TCS (and I suppose MT as well) are geared towards the philosophy
of "You go out there and kick ass" or "run away".  If you can't do the first
and you can't do the second then you either surrender or waste your military
in a glorious last stand.  The battle formations don't appear to be very
valid in that you really want EVERYTHING in there because every weapon and
missile COUNTS.  Even that laser turret on that transport can help shoot
down incoming missiles or help strip turrets fom enemy ships.

Get there firstest with the mostest.


 . Adrian Hurt points out that the first thing that an invader would do is try
 . to find and destroy all the defenders power plants.

Surely, if the defender has a decent number of meson silos then the attacker
won't get a lot of opportunity to hit the power plants unless the defender
is significantly out gunned/shipped/siloed.  Also, I would have made each
silo self sufficient with its own intrinsic power plant.  Buried deep
enough you wouldn't have much to detect, would you?  Of course you could
use spies but I think it would be difficult to sneak a fleet into orbit
without the planet knowing they were nasty people and should be shot at.

A friend of mine is a WWII nut and was telling me that the Allies did not
intentionally target power sources (DAM Busters was a dramatic exception and
if carried out properly to get all the Ruhr Dams would have been a major
blow to German war effort instead of the nuisance it actually was).  This was
apparently true of the German/Soviet side of the war.  Everyone was real keen
to clobber civilian and industrial targets but not the power plants.  Can
anyone shed some light on this?

Wouldn't it be easier to pre-scout a planet with spies and such and then
after wiping the system clean of defending ships you simply drop nukes on
each military base via THOR delivery systems (or missiles) and then ask
them to surrender.  You don't need to get very close to the planet to deliver
these weapons so they won't get a decent shot at your forces and you would
bring enough ammo to overwhelm their anti-misile defences.  After all, they
arre just sitting targets.  Its not as if the base can dodge the attack.
Sure they could evacuate the site and disperse to pre-arranged defence
positions but the loss of those bases and the broadcasts from space saying
that the next target will be ABC and then destroying it will tend to throw
the civilians (and government) into a panic.

 . Steve points out that a 5,000 Km diameter meson screen would require 2E19 MW
 . and a 1,200 Km diameter fusion plant.

What about an anti-matter power plant?

But then I think its impractical to have a large meson screen because your
enemy can get inside it (do your ships have individual screens too?), you
would have a terrible time firing your meson guns (all synchronised?) through
the meson screen flicker (do they flicker to allow you to shoot out?).

How would you handle 3+ enemy fleets (all enemies to each other)?


Command Control
- ---------------

Ignoring (for the moment) the formations used in space combat; what sort of
command control are you going to have once the nukes start going off (causing
communications disruptions etc) and ships are fighting for their lives.  We
have never had a REAL nuclear war here on Earth so we only have all these
theoretical problems/solutions.

In HIGHGUARD/TCS you count the number of missiles in your fleet and select a
target and blow it away in a combined attack.  If you calculate out that
you can mission kill 2, 3, 4+ plus of them with missiles then you allocate
them accordingly and its just a stastics calculation as to who will win.n
the big battle.  Providing of course that you know exactly what each side
has.

No battle plan survives first contact.


Bruce...            [email removed]