Re: invading planets

Adrian Hurt writes:

>Problem number one for this sort of defence is that one can easily build
>streamlined, heavily armoured ships that will snigger at lasers.

Ok, lasers are a bad choice, nukes or meson weapons are the way to go.

>Problem number two is that it will probably be impossible.  Try imagining
>the same idea converted into real life, present day.  "It doesn't take much
[...]
>cannon, along with a tax bill to pay for it.  Of course, the fact that the
>U.S.A. isn't actually at war with anyone (yet) makes such a proposal
>difficult, but if you wait until you are at war, it will be too late.  The
>same goes for the high-tech planet.

How many ICBM silos does the USA have?  The tax payers did foot the bill for
building them.  The same is true of the (former) USSR, but they didn't get
quite as much of a choice in the matter.  I'll admit that putting a battery
in every building is a bit excessive but sprinkling lots around the planet
isn't too bad.  Once, war breaks out you are too late.  However, if you
predict the war and can convince the people that it is likely to happen
then installing such 'defensive' measures isn't going to cause that many
problems (look at the cold war years for an example of this, those bloody
commie bastards are going to destory our enlightened way of life therefore
we must have bigger and better weapons to destroy them first :-).


>The first thing an invader would probably do is try to find all the planet's
>power sources using his neutrino sensors, and give them all some free mesons.
[...]
>Without power, those deep site meson guns are just holes in the ground.

Trading one spinal capable ship for each power source sounds like a pretty
bum deal to me.  All the planet would have to do now would be to build
many small fusion power plants rather than a few big ones.  Once you reach
a minimum size, scale efficiencies no longer improve and the way the design
rules work, there is no constant cost to pay (which is pretty stupid).  You
could always say that large civilian plants have a better efficiency and
recreate this problem.  Putting a power plant with the deep meson site won't
be all that difficult either, power plants are relatively cheap.  Also, if
you don't start your power plant until there are capital ships in range
you won't get destroyed until after you've got one (or maybe two).  Batteries
or fuel cells are an expensive alternative too.



Steve Higginbotham writes:

>If neither side is willing to risk their big ships in combat,
>you might as well save money and never build them in the first place.

Your own comments later (which I deleted in this reply) provide the
answer to this one.  You suggest big fighters/small spinal riders when
meson weapons are present and big fighters/big capital ships when they
are not.  That is you wouldn't build big ships if meson weapons are available.

Why is this?  Becuase the big ships are useless when faced with a couple
of riders that can (& will) kill them in the first exchange of fire.
Without meson weapons, big ships can survive long enough to make
themselves useful.  In fact, a big ship is good because you don't suffer
the freebie hits from large spinal PAs and your armour will protect you
from everything else quite well.


>"I can't risk *that* ship!  It's my best one!"  --- far too many
>wargamers for my taste.

You're too right about the too many wargames bit.  But I think in
traveller there is some justification for this line of reasoning.  I did
the analysis for high guard a long time ago and basically, put two ships
with large meson spinals (factor >J ??) and they will quite effectively
fry each other.  I believe that the same result will convert over to MT
once sensor tasks have been performed (given lots of small cannon-fodder
small ships around assuming that one of them has managed to get a lock
isn't too much to ask).  I think that it will be even easier in MT since
the new design system has made agility harder to get.  The only time
mutual kill is good is when you can better afford the casualties than
your enemy.

[ I think factor J gave kill if hit and you needed a bigger factor to
  make the hit more likely.  I don't have my trav books at work, so
  I cannot regenerate the figures.  If you go to two on one the one
  is going to look very sick after the first salvo. ]


>Unlikely.  When a solar system takes days to weeks to cross, and ship
>velocities may be thousands of Km/s different, fights will frequently
>last weeks.

I stand corrected, I should have written 'ship combats'.  Once the big ships
get within range they are dead.  Getting the ships into range is another matter...


>	Nuclear Dampers, on the other hand, have a constant power
>requirement.  Maybe having one generator on each of two different ships
>as far apart in your formation as possible would allow one set of
>dampers to protect any ship between the two vessels.  Food for
>thought...

Black globes also have a constant power requirement.  A planet
sized black globe ought to be enough to delay the invasion a while.
One idea I've toyed with is building a huge ship in a very thin/long
needle configuration which will provide a huge volume surrounded by its
globe/damper/meson screens and might even provide the small ships with
some defence.

Finally Bruce writes,

>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.

I believe that the enemy will be hard pressed to get close to the atmosphere
let alone into it.  The range of starship weapons is quite impressive.  It
should be possible to overwhelm the defences of the planet by sending lots
and lots at it, this way you ought to be able to nuke the population enough
to sap their will.

Steve, assuming you've suffered my babblings this far, could I also receive
your TCS campaign stuff?

        						Pauli

Paul Dale                       | [email removed]
Department of Computer Science  | [phone removed]
University of Queensland        |
Australia, 4072                 | Did you know that there are 41 two letter
                                |     words containing the letter 'a'?