Jonathan_S wrote:cthia wrote:There are special cases where dropping troops would not only be unavoidable but recommended, even if the orbitals are controlled. Remember Blackbird? Situations where there are hostages.
Remember my scenario in roseandheather's wonderful POV thread, where Beth and several in line for succession are held on Darius? You just can't bombard. Especially if fanatics are involved. Like Blackbird. Like Darius.
Having said that...
It seems there would come a point where the risk outweighs the utility. As you say, it would become a priority target. Losing one of these things is worse than losing an SD full of your best officers. If indeed they can carry that many people, you are likely to only send one. Making you completely reliant upon that one.
If you are going to send an extra or two for backup, then there's no need to make them that large, less carrying equipment. IMO.
Right. In my effort to be brief and focus on all out planetary assault (then only place you'd need the monster transports that Rednek731 was asking about) I failed to touch on raids, boardings, or unconventional interventions. Despite the rules of war there are still good reasons for warships to carry some ground forces and the small craft to drop and support them.
Even the occupation of Masada requires more troops, even with the constant threat of orbital bombardment, than you might expect for a non-fanatic surrendered planet.
And in addition to the Blackbird raid you mentioned, there was Honor's marine intervention on Basilisk, the anti-terrorist orbital drops in the Talbott Sector during the annexation debates, the boarding parties of the surrendered SLN ships after Spindle, and others where we saw use of well equipped (but fairly small) Marine or landing/boarding forces used where no other solution seems likely to have worked.
I certainly didn't mean to imply that the rules of war eliminated the need for ground forces - just the need for vast numbers of them in any one planet.
cthia wrote:No worry Jonathan. I was speaking to the notion and not to you directly. As far as I'm concerned, you CYA and made that clear when you said "So there isn't a perceived need for dropping and supporting hundreds of thousands of troops."
I took it that you were questioning the number and not the notion.
However, I'd like to add a slant that we've missed. I caution using them as ship transports for military personnel for the reasons I posted above. But I think they'd have a niche use. Such as planetary evacuations. Especially emergency evacuations.
Ferrying people "away from" than "to," a destination.
Like getting all of the Manticoran, Havenite and Grayson civilians and officers off of Earth right before Lacoon II.
Redneck731, as I spoke of in this post of the utility of your design in "ferrying away from," here's your "solution looking for a problem."Found.
snip
There’s no question that Yildun would be a legitimate target in terms of its contribution to the Solarian war effort, but it would be a very messy target and difficult to hit without creating an Eridani Edict violation unless the attackers were prepared to bring with them transports with sufficient lift for four or five million civilians.
snip