 August 6, 2010 - 1:24pm | Ref: digitally remastered KHs pages 95-96 Item 1 They quote the old maxim that shore batteries have the advantage over ships cause they cant be sunk and because any weapon that can be put on a ship can be built bigger for a shore battery. Planetary batteries can destroy a ship at the edge of its atmosphere but not beyond. What if the planetary battery is built on an airless moon? would it not have the same reach as a laser weapons for ships? so isn't the atmosphere's limit a bit too limiting? The book suggests that they are bigger and more powerful and that ship based lazer weapons cannot hurt ground tragets since their area of effect is so small. The book also suggest that Planetary defenses include missiles, which weapon would you say these are? With the ability to launch ships into space why would a missile cease to function beyond the atmosphere? I understand that the writers didn't want to let PCs be able to bombard and hold whole planets hostage from space, in fact the book says this explicitly, however some of these limitations seem all wrong? If the UPF could build big cannons (of the like seem in Empire Strikes Back ) that could shoot beyond the edge of the atmosphere and you combined that with mine fields around a planet, you could run planetary seige scenarios. the beseigers must first clear the mine fields and snipe at other orbital defenses from beyond effect range of the planetary defenses before commiting the landing shuttle wave. I'm thinking that atmosphere should have some sort of a range diffusion effect that prevents shooting beyond 6 hexes for battery weapons and 4 hexes for cannon weapons. Not sure what to do with the missile weapons suggested in that section. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
 August 14, 2010 - 5:11pm | Yeah I agree, In general they made the game to be streamlined and playable not realistic in the biggest picture sense of the world or Galaxy. Its an RPG and not a strategic or tactical wargame. We have to remind ourselves of that. Although these are great discusions. And there are a great many theories on how to fight a galactic war. It just goes to show that most Player characters will not have the means to do any of the above. Unless the PC is the King or Dictator or President or Prime Minister or pick a title ( Big Kahoona of Volturnus?) Anyhow most PCs wont have to worry about this except as backround or backdrop stuff to an adventure. The Battle on Volturnus in the Adventure module would be the exception to the above statement. But it was written as a module to be the exception. If I were the sathar Leader and my Ground forces just got wooped by a ragtag army led by some do gooder Federation people, I would pull my ground force back a safe distance and start the orbital bombardment, and then go in again. Of Course Volturnus is uncolonized so there are no defenses to worry about and the only thing stopping me is the UPF fleet if and when it arrives. You could do most anything you want to an uncolonised world. I think I am going to start a thread about where Star-Law and Local Law meet and who has rights or Juristiction. The bombing starts in five minutes. |
August 15, 2010 - 6:51am | In general they made the game to be streamlined and playable not realistic in the biggest picture sense of the world or Galaxy. Its an RPG and not a strategic or tactical wargame. We have to remind ourselves of that. Although these are great discusions. Thats the biggest problem here: it was designed as a game to give a certain feel and playability was what was important. But then you logical brain notices "holes" and says but..... I'm not sure that lack of reality is a serious problem because if something wasn't playable then it would not be played. We strayed into discussion on the number of hulls and good points were made but I'd like to point out the following: Manyer smaller strike forces and patrol groups are active throughout the Frontier. The composition of these task forces does not remain constant, as ships are often reassigned from one group to the other. The patrol groups usually consist of one or two assault scouts and a frigate. Small strike forces often contains several frigates, a destroyer and a light cruiser. despite what the campaign game specified the UPF has any number of ships you need it to have; you want double or triple, you have it. There is no upper limit, though I would guess the specified number of battle ships maybe a hard limit of 3. The point was made that we start to get into a situation of 100's of fighters and 1000s of missle and that borders on non playability. It would certainly stand to reason that heavy population industrial planets would have 100 fighters for planetary defense. Maybe moderate population planets would have 50-75 and small would be lucky to have 25. I was laying in bed dreaming/thinking until the kids started yelling this morning and I had to get up. BUt I was thinking that it might be fun to run planetary bombardment as WW2 style bombing. Image 2 types of bombers: tactical (HS 3) and strategic (HS5) carrying laser batteries, bombs and a new weapon that is a stepped down laser- its fairly useless to weak compared to the usual ship to ship weapons but designed to do a limited number of damage to fighters and missiles as it goes in for its bombing run. a HS3 would keep its LB lose its AR adding the bombs, but add gatling lasers 1-5 or 3 pts: a tac bomber would also mount gatling lasers in the nose tail and one on both sides. The way a bombing run would play out is the attacking player would first reduce orbital defenses lest his bombers get chewed up before they even reach the planet. The the bombing run is committed with its fighter escorts. If neccessary the bombing run is played out as standard KH rules to reach the planet, this is only if there are space based defense still active or if the defending player commits some of his fighter strength to intercept the bombers away from the planet (naturally the rest of the fleet will be there and the fighters are not likely to survive long). When the bombers reach their planet they are moved to a battle board like the one used in Axis and Allies where your line up your forces. the Defender commits some or all of his fighters and some or all of his missles. The defender would divy up a number of missiles and fighers against each bomber. every fighter escorting a bomber can tie up a defending fighter in a dogfight (dogfight combat boils down to a skill roll with most results being a tie unless one pilot rolls significantly better than the other then roll for damage) missiles are easily intercepted by gatling lasers and the bomber simply states a number of gatling lasers against the missiles and marks them off. The LB is used against fighters and gatling lasers can be used against the fighters Any fighters not engaged in a dogfight and any missile not intercepted as well as the bomber's laser weapons are rolled to see if they hit and damage is applied. if the bomber is not destroyed it proceeds with the bombing run and pulls up into space afterward. The basic idea is a memphisis bell sort of mission. much of the bombing run is abstracted. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
 August 21, 2010 - 8:20am | Nice thread. It is great to flesh out ideas such as these even if the PCs aren't directly involved in the attack or defense. An adventure could take place involving this sort of setting. Or just having the situation thought out could be handy if you need to RP anything regarding planetary defense. Not too long ago a couple of us touched on the kinetic weapon idea by slamming large HS ships into the planet as a terroristic act. Suicidal Sathar Agent kind of thing. I suppose it wouldn't be too difficult to do it in an unmanned fashion either. Another thought hit me as I read the thread. Regardless of how a planet defends (rockets, fighters of beams), the large dying space craft hulls will add additional damage to the planet as they surrender to the gravity well. Nothing to do with game mechanics...just an observation. |
 August 21, 2010 - 10:09pm | I like Sargonarhes' sniping planetary batteries as a prelude to invasion concept, but would it really be necessary to use a live crew for these missions? A bunch of 'smart' ships without a living crew could be used instead if they weren't too expensive. Hmm...  My SF website izz: http://ragnarr.webs.com |
 August 24, 2010 - 12:58pm | A faction with sufficient industrial capacity could fight an entire war with robots and not risk any of their people's lives until their enemy is already shattered. It has a lot of implications don't you think? |
 August 24, 2010 - 2:46pm | Specially built drone ships made for sniping at planetary batteries or even the ICM launchers. If we really think about the tech spy satellites have today, this will then force planetary defenders to hide the ICM and batteries from orbital ships view. It's back to heavy electronic warfare packages, and planetary lasers trying to blind the drone or 'smart' ships sniping at them. The more we flesh these ideas out the uglier it's going to get. In every age, in every place, the deeds of men remain the same. |
August 25, 2010 - 11:39am | How about this: The assault would be two pronged. Transports will attempt to HALO drop robot troops in drop ships. They would enter the atmosphere as fast as possible without burning up and decelerate as close the ground as possible. Since they're robots we don't care how bad their casualties are and they're more resistant to the extreme forces they'll be under so they can make a much faster and safer approach than flesh and blood soldiers. Simultaneously, starships, fighters, and bombers attempt to engage and destroy the planetary defenses directly using a variety of ordinance such as torpedoes, kinetic impact weapons, and rockets. This is done entirely with drone ships so again the casualties are acceptable. The ship based attack is similar to a wild weasel mission. Basically the defenders are forced to make a choice between having their defenses bombed out or being destroyed by ground forces. Hiding the ground weapons would be impractical against this attack because they can't stay hidden while firing, and if they don't fire then they're guaranteed have an army on the ground to deal with. You could do the entire thing without robots of course, but the hundreds of thousands of casualties might be a problem. These are probably all story elements more than anything else since as someone already said, the PC's probably aren't going to invade planets.....but it's still fun to think about. |
