Drop Pods and Planetary Invasions

[Warshield73]

Watching a new Youtube series and this video on Drop Pods got me thinking. There is nothing in any PW book about drop pods but I have using them since the beginning largely getting the idea from the old Roughnecks cartoon and the Drop Pods they use. I did make a fair number of changes after the TV show Andromeda came out, they had a High Guard drop pod that was pretty neat and of course Halo where we see these in action a lot.

The Video makes some good points:
1) All of this depends on your inertial dampening, for PW it is CG generators
2) Planetary defenses

In fact, I really like him taking the supply/demand chart and applying it the usefulness of drop pods.

Would drop pods be usefully in PW and for those that use them what kind of features do you give them?

Spoiler:

I have several types and they tend to be kind of generic
A Heavy pod with high MDC and impacts at high speed with lots of defenses and even decoys

A stealth version is coffin filled with heat resistant gel that breaks apart after entry for a person wearing EBA and using a parachute or CG pack to land with minimal signature

[taalismn]

I've been working on a couple, but nothing postable yet.
The degree of sophistication varies on what sort of environment you're dropping into, both natural(such as planets where CG doesn't work, or you have enough atmosphere for passive deceleration systems to work) and defensive(to the right sensors CG systems just light up.....on the other hand, if you drop ENOUGH active CG emission sources, enemy defense sensors might be overloaded...and miss the cold-body gliders dropping down).

[Warshield73]

I've been working on a couple, but nothing postable yet.
The degree of sophistication varies on what sort of environment you're dropping into, both natural(such as planets where CG doesn't work, or you have enough atmosphere for passive deceleration systems to work) and defensive(to the right sensors CG systems just light up.....on the other hand, if you drop ENOUGH active CG emission sources, enemy defense sensors might be overloaded...and miss the cold-body gliders dropping down).

Not sure what you mean here. CG has 2 types, the FTL doesn't work near a planet but CG sub-light engines do work. The CG Pack has stats for in an atmosphere. Also power armors and ground vehicles use CG to operate so a drop pod could use a CG drive similar to the grav pack to stop a fast moving pod or protect the occupant from the impact.

Now the sensor issue is something. We don't have actual stats on how CG show up on sensors at sub-light. We only have basic stats for how it works at FTL.

[drewkitty ~..~]

Watching a new Youtube series and this video on Drop Pods got me thinking. There is nothing in any PW book about drop pods but I have using them since the beginning largely getting the idea from the old Roughnecks cartoon and the Drop Pods they use. I did make a fair number of changes after the TV show Andromeda came out, they had a High Guard drop pod that was pretty neat and of course Halo where we see these in action a lot.

The Video makes some good points:
1) All of this depends on your inertial dampening, for PW it is CG generators
2) Planetary defenses

In fact, I really like him taking the supply/demand chart and applying it the usefulness of drop pods.

Would drop pods be usefully in PW and for those that use them what kind of features do you give them?

Spoiler:

I have several types and they tend to be kind of generic
A Heavy pod with high MDC and impacts at high speed with lots of defenses and even decoys

A stealth version is coffin filled with heat resistant gel that breaks apart after entry for a person wearing EBA and using a parachute or CG pack to land with minimal signature

These should be easily made through he AU:GG ship construction rules. or my Hyperthruster construction rules. The things you'd need would be: hull, some sort of stealthing, TransAtmosphereic Capability, maybe an ECM lite, and a force field. If you want them to be usable for retrieving troops or captives add in a AG lift motor.

Then send the result through the good to MDC conversion black box if you want to using them in the Rifts game.

As for drop commando drop capsules; ala Starship Troopers & In Fury Born: Those would have to be individually created. Probably individual for each type of PA unit desired to use them.

[taalismn]

Not sure what you mean here. CG has 2 types, the FTL doesn't work near a planet but CG sub-light engines do work. The CG Pack has stats for in an atmosphere. Also power armors and ground vehicles use CG to operate so a drop pod could use a CG drive similar to the grav pack to stop a fast moving pod or protect the occupant from the impact.

Now the sensor issue is something. We don't have actual stats on how CG show up on sensors at sub-light. We only have basic stats for how it works at FTL.

I figure that anything that manipulates gravitic fields enough to provide lift and drive is going to show up on the right sort of sensors, including the low-end CG drive systems. Heck, anything powered will show up as artificial and therefore susopect on the right sensors. Ideally, you want to come down with a minimum of telltale power emissions, and with a minimal sensor signature(heat, radar cross section) that makes you look like anything other than a piece(and a SMALL piece at that) of space debris.

CG lift and propulsion is great if you're dropping in on somebody without high tech sensors...you can make high-speed silent(aside from any sonic boom you make zipping through the atmosphere), near-vertical insertions, but if you're going up against somebody with the means to detect fighter- or missile-scale CG-drives, you're going to show up rather conspicuously and attract attention.

[glitterboy2098]

Triax 2 has various type of air droppable fortifications and troop carriers meant for use with the dragonfly transport and similar vehicles. you could probably adapt many of those to the 3G's techbase.

[Warshield73]

Not sure what you mean here. CG has 2 types, the FTL doesn't work near a planet but CG sub-light engines do work. The CG Pack has stats for in an atmosphere. Also power armors and ground vehicles use CG to operate so a drop pod could use a CG drive similar to the grav pack to stop a fast moving pod or protect the occupant from the impact.

Now the sensor issue is something. We don't have actual stats on how CG show up on sensors at sub-light. We only have basic stats for how it works at FTL.

I figure that anything that manipulates gravitic fields enough to provide lift and drive is going to show up on the right sort of sensors, including the low-end CG drive systems. Heck, anything powered will show up as artificial and therefore susopect on the right sensors. Ideally, you want to come down with a minimum of telltale power emissions, and with a minimal sensor signature(heat, radar cross section) that makes you look like anything other than a piece(and a SMALL piece at that) of space debris.

CG lift and propulsion is great if you're dropping in on somebody without high tech sensors...you can make high-speed silent(aside from any sonic boom you make zipping through the atmosphere), near-vertical insertions, but if you're going up against somebody with the means to detect fighter- or missile-scale CG-drives, you're going to show up rather conspicuously and attract attention.

It wasn't clear in my last post but let me just say that I agree with everything you just said, all I was saying is that it isn't clearly stated. We don't even have great info on how CG works in SL or FTL and sensors and stealth are even more poorly defined.

In my game grav sensors work best in areas without large natural gravity bodies so picking up a CG source in space easy but if you drop a pod to about 500 feet above a 1 G planet and flash it on for less than 1 second (remember the description says that a CG drive can stop instantly) you can probably safely drop a pod without being picked up.

I also figure that part of stealth is the ability to muffle a low level grav field from detection. If they didn't have this I would imagine that CG would be less common on military land vehicles than say advanced hover systems.

Triax 2 has various type of air droppable fortifications and troop carriers meant for use with the dragonfly transport and similar vehicles. you could probably adapt many of those to the 3G's techbase.

I have used these extensively to update some of my Portable Fortifications as well as materials from the Northern Gun books but truthfully my drop pods have been worked over so many times that I really didn't change them much for this.

I just go back to my original question - "would drop pods be useful in PW". For me I view them like a Zodiak or SEAL delivery submersible for space forces. Something that would allow a group of special forces to covertly land on a planet for purposes of intelligence gathering or sabotage, but the video really got me thinking if they would even be practical.

[taalismn]

In my game grav sensors work best in areas without large natural gravity bodies so picking up a CG source in space easy but if you drop a pod to about 500 feet above a 1 G planet and flash it on for less than 1 second (remember the description says that a CG drive can stop instantly) you can probably safely drop a pod without being picked up.

I also figure that part of stealth is the ability to muffle a low level grav field from detection. If they didn't have this I would imagine that CG would be less common on military land vehicles than say advanced hover systems.

Funny you should say that, because one of the ideas I was considering was expendable CG-drives for drop pods...they burn themselves out(literally fuse to slag) in the act of both slowing the pod down and shielding the contents. Why expendable? Keeps the cost down and denies your enemy the use of a CG-drive if your attack goes bad. Want to extract your forces? Use follow-up shuttles or invest in more expensive pods that are essentially full-blown(but miniaturized) proper spacecraft.

But yeah, if you're actually on a masscon, deep in a gravity well, detecting CG fields isn't impossible, but just more difficult, like trying to detect aircraft flying NOE.

[Warshield73]

In my game grav sensors work best in areas without large natural gravity bodies so picking up a CG source in space easy but if you drop a pod to about 500 feet above a 1 G planet and flash it on for less than 1 second (remember the description says that a CG drive can stop instantly) you can probably safely drop a pod without being picked up.

I also figure that part of stealth is the ability to muffle a low level grav field from detection. If they didn't have this I would imagine that CG would be less common on military land vehicles than say advanced hover systems.

Funny you should say that, because one of the ideas I was considering was expendable CG-drives for drop pods...they burn themselves out(literally fuse to slag) in the act of both slowing the pod down and shielding the contents. Why expendable? Keeps the cost down and denies your enemy the use of a CG-drive if your attack goes bad. Want to extract your forces? Use follow-up shuttles or invest in more expensive pods that are essentially full-blown(but miniaturized) proper spacecraft.

I too have several versions of single use CG drives, both FTL and SL. I use them for escape pods, drop pods, even intra and inter-solar missiles. I have them made from inferior materials, older technology, and/or with much lower safety margins compared to other drives. I think this just makes sense as they can be made much cheaper or smaller than standard and allow for greater variety of uses.

Some of them, like FTL escape pods are even single burn. Turn it on and you can go 0.1 to 0.25 LYpH for a certain number of hours but if you shut it down early you can't turn it back on.

One of the things I created the most for my game is ships larger than fighters to smaller than destroyers. Fast attack shuttles like you see in Mass Effect and Halo (or even the Raptor in the RDM Battlestar Galactica) all the way up to corvettes. What I often refer to as hero ships. Shuttles that can drop hundreds of troops are interesting as setting information but players need ships that carry a dozen or less.

But yeah, if you're actually on a masscon, deep in a gravity well, detecting CG fields isn't impossible, but just more difficult, like trying to detect aircraft flying NOE.

My thought exactly. Even if such things make no sense from a scientific POV you need things like this in for story purposes.

[drewkitty ~..~]

viewtopic.php?f=7&t=159344

Added some Drop Pod text to this topic in the HU forum.

[taalismn]

https://palladiumbooks.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=159344

Added some Drop Pod text to this topic in the HU forum.

Why, thank you, kind sir!

[glitterboy2098]

In my game grav sensors work best in areas without large natural gravity bodies so picking up a CG source in space easy but if you drop a pod to about 500 feet above a 1 G planet and flash it on for less than 1 second (remember the description says that a CG drive can stop instantly) you can probably safely drop a pod without being picked up.

I also figure that part of stealth is the ability to muffle a low level grav field from detection. If they didn't have this I would imagine that CG would be less common on military land vehicles than say advanced hover systems.

Funny you should say that, because one of the ideas I was considering was expendable CG-drives for drop pods...they burn themselves out(literally fuse to slag) in the act of both slowing the pod down and shielding the contents. Why expendable? Keeps the cost down and denies your enemy the use of a CG-drive if your attack goes bad. Want to extract your forces? Use follow-up shuttles or invest in more expensive pods that are essentially full-blown(but miniaturized) proper spacecraft.

But yeah, if you're actually on a masscon, deep in a gravity well, detecting CG fields isn't impossible, but just more difficult, like trying to detect aircraft flying NOE.

one use or limited endurance CG drives would make sense for another role as well.. escape pods/lifeboats. so that if your ship goes down in deep space or in an unsettled out of the way system, the survivors can make a trip closer to rescue.

that would also open up the potential for FTL capable drop capsules.. which would be useful for covert operations insertions.

[taalismn]

[

one use or limited endurance CG drives would make sense for another role as well.. escape pods/lifeboats. so that if your ship goes down in deep space or in an unsettled out of the way system, the survivors can make a trip closer to rescue.

Especially in close-packed, well-charted space-lanes where the inhabited systems are fairly close together....like 5-10 light years apart...still far enough apart that a regular radio distress call would take YEARS to reach help, but well within the range for cheap, rapid-fatigue FTL system that could fit on a life pod. Star systems with a space version of the Coast Guard might even designate regions of space specifically for where preprogrammed life pods could drop into real space and be assured of getting immediate attention from the local space guard.

[ShadowLogan]

Would drop pods be usefully in PW and for those that use them what kind of features do you give them?

It depends on the overall capabilities of the faction in question.

Those with magical capabilities (via spell, ritual, item, TW, etc) may not have as much need for them compared to one more heavily invested in tech given they would allow teleportation via "portal" (classic MOTU cartoon Travel Corridors) or "site-site" (Star Trek Transporter style) that even tech in the 3G/PW isn't up to duplicating. That said they likely do have escape capsule systems that could be pressed into service as drop pods. TW via Space Magic is also an option.

Those with a heavy technology focuslikely are going to base drop pods on their escape capsules IMHO, perhaps even stripped down versions of said systems and/or based around their shuttles. This would be geared more toward moving multiple people down (and equipment/supplies/facilities). Systems intended for Individuals alone might not need to go all the way toward elborate capsule systems, they might be something even more basic that works with their spacesuits (which EBA qualify as) that would allow them to function as "orbital skydivers" or something like NASA/USAF concepts* in the 60s for astronauts to return to Earth without the vehicle they launched in (spacesuit coupled with a bare bones re-entry shield). These have the advantage over the single person drop pod in that they are smaller in terms of storage which means you can carry a lot more of them, such a system would also be scalable to other robot/ground vehicles to be dropped.

*
http://www.astronautix.com/m/moose.html
http://www.astronautix.com/p/paracone.html
http://www.astronautix.com/g/geliferaft.html
http://www.astronautix.com/e/encap.html

[glitterboy2098]

Now I'm imagining UWW "beachhead" pods that contain a TW portal device so you can deploy entire platoons direct from your ship using only one pod.

[taalismn]

Now I'm imagining UWW "beachhead" pods that contain a TW portal device so you can deploy entire platoons direct from your ship using only one pod.

Shades of a Harry Harrison short story('..Nor Battle's Sound') where the antagonists' strategy is to land a freighter on a planet with a large teleport terminus through which they can fire ICBMs, fly strategic bombers, roll entire divisions of armor...

[glitterboy2098]

I was thinking of STO and the vaudwaar, who use droppods with transporters to deliver troops to ground battlezones such as kobali prime.

[Warshield73]

https://palladiumbooks.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=159344

Added some Drop Pod text to this topic in the HU forum.

These look good. Bigger than the ones I was thinking about, but these would be great for larger transport ships and I like the idea of militaries scaling the capabilities of the pod for how much they value the soldiers inside.

one use or limited endurance CG drives would make sense for another role as well.. escape pods/lifeboats. so that if your ship goes down in deep space or in an unsettled out of the way system, the survivors can make a trip closer to rescue.
The Fleets of the Three Galaxies book has an example of an escape pod that uses a standard FTL drive but I have used the short endurance model for so long that I just stuck with it and ignored it in my games completely.

that would also open up the potential for FTL capable drop capsules.. which would be useful for covert operations insertions.

This is tough because, to me, stealthing an FTL signature seems like something that should be expensive meaning not disposal. Also, I think the actual drop pod itself part of the effectiveness would it being small so adding an FTL and power plant would reduce the overall effectiveness.

I created a ship, about proctor size, that carries a number of stealth drop pods with a crew of I think 2. The ship travels to a system and then deploys the pods at a distance. A friend of mine created one with a drone auto-pilot for return so the ship is a little more disposable.

Another great use for the disposable limited duration drives is as a delivery system for missile pods or attack drones. Think an interstellar ICBM.

one use or limited endurance CG drives would make sense for another role as well.. escape pods/lifeboats. so that if your ship goes down in deep space or in an unsettled out of the way system, the survivors can make a trip closer to rescue.

Especially in close-packed, well-charted space-lanes where the inhabited systems are fairly close together....like 5-10 light years apart...still far enough apart that a regular radio distress call would take YEARS to reach help, but well within the range for cheap, rapid-fatigue FTL system that could fit on a life pod. Star systems with a space version of the Coast Guard might even designate regions of space specifically for where preprogrammed life pods could drop into real space and be assured of getting immediate attention from the local space guard.

The problem is that like actual FTL drives we don't have great stats on FTL comms. I have always assumed that ships operating in busy, call it civilized for lack of better term, areas would probably not have FTL pods. Ships goes down the pods use sub-light to get away from the ship and you await pick up but yeah maybe it would be helpful if they could make the trip on their own.

Would drop pods be usefully in PW and for those that use them what kind of features do you give them?

It depends on the overall capabilities of the faction in question.

Those with magical capabilities (via spell, ritual, item, TW, etc) may not have as much need for them compared to one more heavily invested in tech given they would allow teleportation via "portal" (classic MOTU cartoon Travel Corridors) or "site-site" (Star Trek Transporter style) that even tech in the 3G/PW isn't up to duplicating. That said they likely do have escape capsule systems that could be pressed into service as drop pods. TW via Space Magic is also an option.

Now I'm imagining UWW "beachhead" pods that contain a TW portal device so you can deploy entire platoons direct from your ship using only one pod.

I think this would be an interesting idea but the cost in PPE would be enormous. A TW device that could create a limited portal from a mothership in orbit to a portal vehicle on the service.

Shades of a Harry Harrison short story('..Nor Battle's Sound') where the antagonists' strategy is to land a freighter on a planet with a large teleport terminus through which they can fire ICBMs, fly strategic bombers, roll entire divisions of armor...

This would be more a rift than a teleport and it would almost require a portable pyramid. I can definitely see this in a large landing ship, cruiser size or larger, but not in a drop pod.

Those with a heavy technology focus likely are going to base drop pods on their escape capsules IMHO, perhaps even stripped down versions of said systems and/or based around their shuttles. This would be geared more toward moving multiple people down (and equipment/supplies/facilities). Systems intended for Individuals alone might not need to go all the way toward elborate capsule systems, they might be something even more basic that works with their spacesuits (which EBA qualify as) that would allow them to function as "orbital skydivers" or something like NASA/USAF concepts* in the 60s for astronauts to return to Earth without the vehicle they launched in (spacesuit coupled with a bare bones re-entry shield). These have the advantage over the single person drop pod in that they are smaller in terms of storage which means you can carry a lot more of them, such a system would also be scalable to other robot/ground vehicles to be dropped.

I have been torn between the Halo ODST style completely pod that takes you from orbit to the ground or the Roughnecks style orbital shield and then you deploy with jet pack or parachute. I think both have their place depending on what you are doing and have stats for what amounts to an eggshell of stealth material that goes around EBA that just adds some life support endurance so an individual can drop onto a planet.

I think the biggest thing any pod would need is countermeasures against getting shot down. This would probably be done through stealth or decoys with some use of counter missiles and chaff but truthfully if you are using these instead of shuttles you are probably expecting some losses.

[Blue_Lion]

In my game grav sensors work best in areas without large natural gravity bodies so picking up a CG source in space easy but if you drop a pod to about 500 feet above a 1 G planet and flash it on for less than 1 second (remember the description says that a CG drive can stop instantly) you can probably safely drop a pod without being picked up.

I also figure that part of stealth is the ability to muffle a low level grav field from detection. If they didn't have this I would imagine that CG would be less common on military land vehicles than say advanced hover systems.

Funny you should say that, because one of the ideas I was considering was expendable CG-drives for drop pods...they burn themselves out(literally fuse to slag) in the act of both slowing the pod down and shielding the contents. Why expendable? Keeps the cost down and denies your enemy the use of a CG-drive if your attack goes bad. Want to extract your forces? Use follow-up shuttles or invest in more expensive pods that are essentially full-blown(but miniaturized) proper spacecraft.

But yeah, if you're actually on a masscon, deep in a gravity well, detecting CG fields isn't impossible, but just more difficult, like trying to detect aircraft flying NOE.

Also given their mission they kind of need to be disposable.
(just like parachutes in combat drops)
Reusable you have things like shuttles.
I see a few catagores.
With MDC material they probably could design completely unpowered stealth drop pods.
Also combat powered fast assault/heavy drop pods.
-If you go is to move in fast and hard you may not need to sneak in. IE if you are dropping an entire army as part of a invasion.
But if you are dropping a small force or comando team you need max stealth.

Size of drop pods could very allot as well, from 1 personal to whole tank or platoon.
You might also have supply drop pods to drop things needed.

Deployment could be from some sort of launch bay or stealth ones that can attach to a ship and release to fall to the planet.

There is also a use for non combat drop pods.
If a planet has a pandemic you could drop needed medical supplies with no risk of it getting off planet.
Or dropping food in a area that suffered a disaster.

[Blue_Lion]

Now I'm imagining UWW "beachhead" pods that contain a TW portal device so you can deploy entire platoons direct from your ship using only one pod.

Kind of not needed as I understand it most planets connected to space ley lines. A shifter could open a portal using one of those from orbit.

[taalismn]

Now I'm imagining UWW "beachhead" pods that contain a TW portal device so you can deploy entire platoons direct from your ship using only one pod.

Kind of not needed as I understand it most planets connected to space ley lines. A shifter could open a portal using one of those from orbit.

Provided your target planet's Ley line nexuses(where rifts are most likely to occur) haven't all been mapped out and the most likely to spawn gates monitored and maybe booby-trapped.

[Warshield73]

In my game grav sensors work best in areas without large natural gravity bodies so picking up a CG source in space easy but if you drop a pod to about 500 feet above a 1 G planet and flash it on for less than 1 second (remember the description says that a CG drive can stop instantly) you can probably safely drop a pod without being picked up.

I also figure that part of stealth is the ability to muffle a low level grav field from detection. If they didn't have this I would imagine that CG would be less common on military land vehicles than say advanced hover systems.

Funny you should say that, because one of the ideas I was considering was expendable CG-drives for drop pods...they burn themselves out(literally fuse to slag) in the act of both slowing the pod down and shielding the contents. Why expendable? Keeps the cost down and denies your enemy the use of a CG-drive if your attack goes bad. Want to extract your forces? Use follow-up shuttles or invest in more expensive pods that are essentially full-blown(but miniaturized) proper spacecraft.

But yeah, if you're actually on a masscon, deep in a gravity well, detecting CG fields isn't impossible, but just more difficult, like trying to detect aircraft flying NOE.

Also given their mission they kind of need to be disposable.
(just like parachutes in combat drops)
Reusable you have things like shuttles.

I largely agree with this and again look to Starship Troopers and Halo you drop in with pods and extraction is via shuttlecraft or some kind of teleportation.

I see a few catagores.
With MDC material they probably could design completely unpowered stealth drop pods.
Also combat powered fast assault/heavy drop pods.
-If you go is to move in fast and hard you may not need to sneak in. IE if you are dropping an entire army as part of a invasion.
But if you are dropping a small force or comando team you need max stealth.

Like I said I have the small stealth ones as well as heavily armored combat drop pods that have decoys and counter missiles. Right tool for the right job and all of that.

Size of drop pods could very allot as well, from 1 personal to whole tank or platoon.
You might also have supply drop pods to drop things needed.

In order the largest pod I have is for a 3 or 4 person fire team as it limits the fatalities when one is hit and spreads enemy fire around. When you want to deploy a platoon a shuttle is better.

As for tanks and IFVs most of them in CAF and TGE are CG. In my games that have a simple heat shield for entry that blasts away as soon as possible. Then they can use their weapons for defense while dropping and then activate the vehicles CG field when they get near the ground.

Supply drop pods I think would be common and I even have ones that can orbit, using stealth, and be called down to a general location. The use would probably be limited as they can easily fall into enemy hands.

Deployment could be from some sort of launch bay or stealth ones that can attach to a ship and release to fall to the planet.

For planetary invasion I ussually have these deployed by assault shuttles. For stealth insertion small stealth shuttles, corvettes or even destroyers could deploy at range.

There is also a use for non combat drop pods.
If a planet has a pandemic you could drop needed medical supplies with no risk of it getting off planet.
Or dropping food in a area that suffered a disaster.

To me this can simply be done by putting a parachute or drop thrusters onto a standard cargo can and dropping it out of a cargo ship. No risk of exposure, no need for expensive equipment.

Now I'm imagining UWW "beachhead" pods that contain a TW portal device so you can deploy entire platoons direct from your ship using only one pod.

Kind of not needed as I understand it most planets connected to space ley lines. A shifter could open a portal using one of those from orbit.

Provided your target planet's Ley line nexuses(where rifts are most likely to occur) haven't all been mapped out and the most likely to spawn gates monitored and maybe booby-trapped.

As poorly defined as travel by and creation of rifts is in Rifts this largely comes down to if the GM wants it to be an option.

[taalismn]

[
For planetary invasion I ussually have these deployed by assault shuttles. For stealth insertion small stealth shuttles, corvettes or even destroyers could deploy at range..

Or even fighters with underwing hard points if you're delivering one agent. Small enough drive signature, zip in, release the stealth pod, zip back out.

Of course, this has shades of 'stealth insertion by fighter-mech' from Robotech/Macross with the Female Power Armor playing agent taxi to the SDF-1.

[Warshield73]

For planetary invasion I ussually have these deployed by assault shuttles. For stealth insertion small stealth shuttles, corvettes or even destroyers could deploy at range..

Or even fighters with underwing hard points if you're delivering one agent. Small enough drive signature, zip in, release the stealth pod, zip back out.

Of course, this has shades of 'stealth insertion by fighter-mech' from Robotech/Macross with the Female Power Armor playing agent taxi to the SDF-1.

I forgot about that but yes. My rule was any ship that could carry a cruise missile can carry a pod but I tend to treat any ship with external ordinance as reducing its stealth capabilities. That is why ideal fighters for this are actual larger like the Proctor.

[taalismn]

"Remember; you're carrying a cruise missile and a drop pod on your racks. You fire the missile at the picket ship, you drop the pod on the planet. Remember that! You got it?"
"Got it!"

Later:
"...okay, was it fire the missile at the planet and drop the pod on the picket ship?"
(Agent in drop pod) "YOUUUUUSSStttuuuuppppppiiiidddsssooooddd...!"

[Blue_Lion]

Now I'm imagining UWW "beachhead" pods that contain a TW portal device so you can deploy entire platoons direct from your ship using only one pod.

Kind of not needed as I understand it most planets connected to space ley lines. A shifter could open a portal using one of those from orbit.

Provided your target planet's Ley line nexuses(where rifts are most likely to occur) haven't all been mapped out and the most likely to spawn gates monitored and maybe booby-trapped.

Read power 6 of the shifter they can open a portal to any point along a ley line or any connected ley lines. So it is not just nexus you would have to guard the entire ley line network. If the shifter can not get access to the space ley line leading the planet then it would be the nexus points but if he can access a ley line connected to the planet you have the whole network. Worse once the shifter is on your planet he can open portals to other worlds to allow more troops to come to your planet.


While random rifts are more likely on nexueses with power 6 any where along the line or any connected ley lines is a possible point of entry. PG 122 rue. I would think guarding every ley line nexus on a planet would stretch your resources thin. Typically only major or busy nexus will be heavily guarded. Heck Atlantis can't even stop people from rifting in to raid them and they have allot less than a planet to guard.

Basically the shifter access a space ley line and uses it to teleport to some where on the planet with a connected ley line the shifters choice of location. Potentially 100s of miles to guard. With multiple shifters you could be faced with multiple breach points to deal with.

While magic heavy nations might use pyramids to mitigate the risk non magic nations would, be very exposed. (Pyramids are a double edge sword opening up new risks.)

If i recall correctly at first the elves of the UWW where traveling between worlds without ships. This power would explain it, if the worlds shared connected ley lines.

Shifter mobility is really good in phase world setting. For magical invasions a key step is getting some one like a shifter on the planet or a connected ley line. Once a shifter is on the planet they can keep bringing fresh troops and supplies in, no need for a space ship.

[Blue_Lion]

[
For planetary invasion I ussually have these deployed by assault shuttles. For stealth insertion small stealth shuttles, corvettes or even destroyers could deploy at range..

Or even fighters with underwing hard points if you're delivering one agent. Small enough drive signature, zip in, release the stealth pod, zip back out.

Of course, this has shades of 'stealth insertion by fighter-mech' from Robotech/Macross with the Female Power Armor playing agent taxi to the SDF-1.

Using assault shuttles to for drop pods seams a waste of resources and time. When I think drop pods I think atmospheric entry, why load them on a shuttle to drop them from it. Just set up some sort of launcher and launch them off your large troop transport ship. (assault shuttles would are basically large reusable drop pods. Rigging the shuttle to drop multiple pods would be more resource and time heavy path.

The way I see it the transport has drop pods set for rapid deployment from gravity catapults. Launching its whole troop complement from orbit in less than a minute.

Or the pod could have stealth attached to a transport without their knowledge. Like how solo hid from the star destroyer by docking on it.

[taalismn]

Using assault shuttles to for drop pods seams a waste of resources and time. When I think drop pods I think atmospheric entry, why load them on a shuttle to drop them from it. Just set up some sort of launcher and launch them off your large troop transport ship. (assault shuttles would are basically large reusable drop pods. Rigging the shuttle to drop multiple pods would be more resource and time heavy path.

The way I see it the transport has drop pods set for rapid deployment from gravity catapults. Launching its whole troop complement from orbit in less than a minute.

Or the pod could have stealth attached to a transport without their knowledge. Like how solo hid from the star destroyer by docking on it.

Depends on your mission profile and how you handle stealth in your game.
If you're doing a large scale troop drop, then using a large transport makes sense for deploying 'sticks' of drop pods.
Alternatively, if you're using a large ship(s) to make a bombing run on a planet, it's possible to hide drop pods in among the ordnance, using the chaos of the bomb run to hide that troops(or drones) are being deployed to the surface.
For smaller and stealthier inserts, however, using smaller, less-easily detected craft might be better; it's like sending a Lysander to drop off an agent behind enemy lines rather than a C-47. The smaller craft might be able to evade detection or garner less attention(In the latter case if you've established that you've been sending smaller craft to recon or buzz a target planet).

[Blue_Lion]

Using assault shuttles to for drop pods seams a waste of resources and time. When I think drop pods I think atmospheric entry, why load them on a shuttle to drop them from it. Just set up some sort of launcher and launch them off your large troop transport ship. (assault shuttles would are basically large reusable drop pods. Rigging the shuttle to drop multiple pods would be more resource and time heavy path.

The way I see it the transport has drop pods set for rapid deployment from gravity catapults. Launching its whole troop complement from orbit in less than a minute.

Or the pod could have stealth attached to a transport without their knowledge. Like how solo hid from the star destroyer by docking on it.

Depends on your mission profile and how you handle stealth in your game.
If you're doing a large scale troop drop, then using a large transport makes sense for deploying 'sticks' of drop pods.
Alternatively, if you're using a large ship(s) to make a bombing run on a planet, it's possible to hide drop pods in among the ordnance, using the chaos of the bomb run to hide that troops(or drones) are being deployed to the surface.
For smaller and stealthier inserts, however, using smaller, less-easily detected craft might be better; it's like sending a Lysander to drop off an agent behind enemy lines rather than a C-47. The smaller craft might be able to evade detection or garner less attention(In the latter case if you've established that you've been sending smaller craft to recon or buzz a target planet).

I am not questioning the stealth shuttle approach. For small teams of SF.


It is placing the drop pods on a assault shuttle for a planetary invasion that I am questioning.
Assault shuttles are designed to enter atmosphere and deploy troops. They are effectively reusable drop pods. Adding hardware to drop drop pods and drop pods would reduce the troops they could deploy and/or fire power.
If you do not want to land your shuttle equip the troops with CG packs and have them jump out when the shuttle has entered the atmosphere.

Odds are if you are doing a planetary invasion you are delivering lots of troops, so it would likely require a dedicated transport ship. Loading the troops on a transport then having them transfer to drop pods on a shuttle to be deployed, seams like a waste of resources and time.

[glitterboy2098]

DB6 Three Galaxies has on pg 159 a number of standard cargo containers, and the Standard and giant size containers can mount CG thrusters to make them self-mobile. which made me realize that they'd be a good basis for troop landers* (and the "micro-can" would make a good drop pod for one person). even better, you could set up those "landing cans" to work as pre-fab bunkers once landed. as well as drop versions fitted out with the systems needed to make a pre-fab base for your troops. with the hover systems you could also relocate them as needed once the area is secure to give better fields of fire and set up the base.

micro-canister - 3.1ft x 9.5ft x 5ft dimensions, mass 100lbs empty, + up to 500lbs cargo. includes built in CG hover system.
Standard canister - 11ft x 20ft x 11ft dimensions, weight 500lbs + up to 12 tons cargo
Giant canister - 15ft x 60ft x 25ft, weight 6 tons, + up to 20 tons of cargo (said to be able to hold 10 standards)
all are MDC by default.

these would also allow the use of cargo ships like the merchantman as a type of improvised troopship.



*a style of lander seen a fair amount in The Expanse.. the OPA use literal cargo containers for boarding actions, while the UN and Martian navies use "landing skiffs" that are basically just boxes with thrusters.
https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/expan ... 1127165952
https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/expan ... 1127171011
https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/expan ... 0907212614

landing skiff: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2llPgSzh4BM
OPA boarding container: https://youtu.be/f1dARQGAzNA?t=120

[Warshield73]

Read power 6 of the shifter they can open a portal to any point along a ley line or any connected ley lines. So it is not just nexus you would have to guard the entire ley line network. If the shifter can not get access to the space ley line leading the planet then it would be the nexus points but if he can access a ley line connected to the planet you have the whole network. Worse once the shifter is on your planet he can open portals to other worlds to allow more troops to come to your planet.

While random rifts are more likely on nexueses with power 6 any where along the line or any connected ley lines is a possible point of entry. PG 122 rue. I would think guarding every ley line nexus on a planet would stretch your resources thin. Typically only major or busy nexus will be heavily guarded. Heck Atlantis can't even stop people from rifting in to raid them and they have allot less than a planet to guard.

Basically the shifter access a space ley line and uses it to teleport to some where on the planet with a connected ley line the shifters choice of location. Potentially 100s of miles to guard. With multiple shifters you could be faced with multiple breach points to deal with.

While magic heavy nations might use pyramids to mitigate the risk non magic nations would, be very exposed. (Pyramids are a double edge sword opening up new risks.)

Shifter mobility is really good in phase world setting. For magical invasions a key step is getting some one like a shifter on the planet or a connected ley line. Once a shifter is on the planet they can keep bringing fresh troops and supplies in, no need for a space ship.

First if I am reading the power correctly he can open a rift for half the normal PPE which I believe would mean 500 PPE each shot. That is a lot to move troops around. To me the powers of Shifters, and even more so Ley Line Walkers, are more suited for recon and special operations.

One of the things I have always wondered is who are the navigators on UWW ships with Rift drives? LLWs or Shifters or something else. The big problem for a lot of these OCCs in performing these kinds of tasks is a lack of military or espionage skills but they can probably get by without them.

If i recall correctly at first the elves of the UWW where traveling between worlds without ships. This power would explain it, if the worlds shared connected ley lines.

This was in the first Phase World book but I think it may have gotten changed in Anvil Galaxies or Fleets of the Three Galaxies. I know both books altered the history a little but not sure if this got changed.

For planetary invasion I ussually have these deployed by assault shuttles. For stealth insertion small stealth shuttles, corvettes or even destroyers could deploy at range..

Or even fighters with underwing hard points if you're delivering one agent. Small enough drive signature, zip in, release the stealth pod, zip back out.

Of course, this has shades of 'stealth insertion by fighter-mech' from Robotech/Macross with the Female Power Armor playing agent taxi to the SDF-1.

Using assault shuttles to for drop pods seams a waste of resources and time. When I think drop pods I think atmospheric entry, why load them on a shuttle to drop them from it. Just set up some sort of launcher and launch them off your large troop transport ship. (assault shuttles would are basically large reusable drop pods. Rigging the shuttle to drop multiple pods would be more resource and time heavy path.

I think you need to take two things into consideration:
1) Distance. CG FTL ships must drop from FTL at least 10,000 miles from the planet.
2) Speed. Sub light speeds for large carriers and transports are low meaning it can take them more than an hour to get from the limit to the planet and another hour to run away.

With these in mind a disposable pod is not likely to be able to make the trip on it's own without being blown apart. This is why have always assumed that somewhat faster assault shuttles or other vehicles would be dropping them, much the way a large transport like a C-17 carry paratroopers over a drop zone.

If you created a drop pod that could maneuver in a combat zone for this long then it is likely to be more of light troop shuttle and less of a disposable pod.

The way I see it the transport has drop pods set for rapid deployment from gravity catapults. Launching its whole troop complement from orbit in less than a minute.

I can definitely see this aboard some ships, I in fact have a dedicated marine transport that has a secondary function of providing space to ground fire support and I have always assumed that large carriers and battleships with marine compliments have some too, but it would still require them to slowly get to a drop zone to deploy the pods. The other problem with this is if something like a packmaster is approaching a planet it is going to be taking HEAVY fire from defenders. This means that any pod being deployed can be shot down almost as an afterthought. This is why I always felt that racks of pods could just be loaded into an assault shuttle so they can be rolled out the hatches in large numbers after the shuttles spread out to reduce the concentration of enemy fire.

To be honest I was also probably influenced by how the Roughnecks were depolyed in the animated series I cited above.

In my games I actually have a CAF tactic where a Protector BB will dive into a planets defense zone with its cruiser and destroyer escorts blasting away at the stations and planets. Behind it are dozens, sometimes hundreds, of assault shuttles with fighter escorts that spread out in all directions. this forces the planets defenses to make the choice of going after the shuttles or taking on the battleship.

Or the pod could have stealth attached to a transport without their knowledge. Like how solo hid from the star destroyer by docking on it.

I have always been iffy on this as ships should have decent hull sensors so it would be hard to get on there for long trips. Also, the pod would have to have a decent shielding for FTL and life support for long trips so it would need to be bigger. For all these reasons I assumed something like this would be uncommon to unlikely.

Using assault shuttles to for drop pods seams a waste of resources and time. - Snip-

Depends on your mission profile and how you handle stealth in your game.
If you're doing a large scale troop drop, then using a large transport makes sense for deploying 'sticks' of drop pods.
Alternatively, if you're using a large ship(s) to make a bombing run on a planet, it's possible to hide drop pods in among the ordnance, using the chaos of the bomb run to hide that troops(or drones) are being deployed to the surface.
For smaller and stealthier inserts, however, using smaller, less-easily detected craft might be better; it's like sending a Lysander to drop off an agent behind enemy lines rather than a C-47. The smaller craft might be able to evade detection or garner less attention(In the latter case if you've established that you've been sending smaller craft to recon or buzz a target planet).

Use of drop pods would, in a lot of ways, mirror the use of paratroopers but for my games I tend to break them into two broad categories and within those are several subcategories.

1 Is clandestine insertion: Straight up spook crap. This could use small stealth pods deployed by disguised freighter or stealth corvette. This would also be a situation where you might use a longer range pod deployed from hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of miles out and taking days to arrive. I even have a pod that requires a wizard to cast one of the stasis spells on the occupant so that it doesn't have to carry all the extra air, food and water.

2 Combat drops: You're being shot at while your pods deploy. But even here you have a blend of a fireteam recon group all the way up to company sized drops to establish a beachhead and clear air defenses to allow more vulnerable assault shuttles.

You also have to remember how big assault shuttles are and how much they can carry. A CAF Assault shuttle should be able to carry over a hundred drop pods depending on size.

It is placing the drop pods on a assault shuttle for a planetary invasion that I am questioning.
Assault shuttles are designed to enter atmosphere and deploy troops. They are effectively reusable drop pods.

Assault shuttles "can" enter an atmosphere. They don't have to. They are also used for boarding spacecraft/space stations and according to the books can even be used as a poor man's frigate. Entering an atmosphere slows a shuttle down and can even subject them to greater ground fire. If I have 100 troops with vehicles on an Assault Shuttle and ground fire brings it down that is a hell of a loss. But if it deploys a hundred or so separate pods 500 miles above the surface at least some of those pods are going to make it. and the assault shuttle has a good chance of getting back.

The description of both assault shuttles mention how vulnerable troops are when onboard.

Adding hardware to drop drop pods and drop pods would reduce the troops they could deploy and/or fire power.

My feeling is that, looking at the CAF shuttle, if it can go between power armor and tanks or just carry 300 refugees it probably wouldn't be that hard to pack in a bunch of pods and drop them out the rear hatch.

If you do not want to land your shuttle equip the troops with CG packs and have them jump out when the shuttle has entered the atmosphere.

I actually have shuttles do this, mainly when they are deploying armored vehicles. A tank or IFV with a CG system can be dropped from any height and just dive towards the ground and then break before it hits. But, it means making that assault shuttle vulnerable for that extra 500 miles of space and then fly, at reduced speed, into and out of the atmosphere where it can be shot at from all directions.

I have always viewed this as intermediary step between drop pods establishing a beachhead and assault shuttles landing and a secure landing zone.

Odds are if you are doing a planetary invasion you are delivering lots of troops, so it would likely require a dedicated transport ship. Loading the troops on a transport then having them transfer to drop pods on a shuttle to be deployed, seams like a waste of resources and time.

In the books the largest space to ground transport we have are the assault shuttles. Ships like a Packmaster can land on a planet but they would be so slow and vulnerable you would never bring one close to a planets atmosphere until you have space and air dominance, if not outright control of the planet. Now in my games I have large transports that bring in large numbers (4 to 10 times as much as an assault shuttle) but other people probably do it diffeently.

For me it is all about the right tool/method for the job. Placing pods on assault shuttles (which again are huge, nearly frigate sized vehicles) to carry pods from a mother ship through a combat zone to a drop area just makes sense. Like how amphibious warfare ships have LCACs for ferrying troops and vehicles to the beach instead of bringing the giant target right up to where the missile launchers are.

Bringing the carrier close to the combat zone risks the carrier.
Deploying the pods from an hour or so out requires a larger, more expensive pod and puts it at risk.
Landing an assault shuttle in an unsecured LZ risks all the troops onboard.
Deploying the pods from the AS just seems to fit the situation. Again just my opinion as very little about Phase World tech makes any sense.

[Warshield73]

DB6 Three Galaxies has on pg 159 a number of standard cargo containers, and the Standard and giant size containers can mount CG thrusters to make them self-mobile. which made me realize that they'd be a good basis for troop landers* (and the "micro-can" would make a good drop pod for one person). even better, you could set up those "landing cans" to work as pre-fab bunkers once landed. as well as drop versions fitted out with the systems needed to make a pre-fab base for your troops. with the hover systems you could also relocate them as needed once the area is secure to give better fields of fire and set up the base.

micro-canister - 3.1ft x 9.5ft x 5ft dimensions, mass 100lbs empty, + up to 500lbs cargo. includes built in CG hover system.
Standard canister - 11ft x 20ft x 11ft dimensions, weight 500lbs + up to 12 tons cargo
Giant canister - 15ft x 60ft x 25ft, weight 6 tons, + up to 20 tons of cargo (said to be able to hold 10 standards)
all are MDC by default.

these would also allow the use of cargo ships like the merchantman as a type of improvised troopship.



*a style of lander seen a fair amount in The Expanse.. the OPA use literal cargo containers for boarding actions, while the UN and Martian navies use "landing skiffs" that are basically just boxes with thrusters.
https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/expan ... 1127165952
https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/expan ... 1127171011
https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/expan ... 0907212614

landing skiff: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2llPgSzh4BM
OPA boarding container: https://youtu.be/f1dARQGAzNA?t=120

I think you would absolutely see things like this. IMO the Expanse OPA type stuff would be mainly seen for use in space or on airless moons and the like. Dropping troops on to planets with atmospheres would take more.

I think you would also see militaries requiring certain dimensions for vehicles so that they can fit in one of these cans or take up the same space as one or, in the case of starships, be able to fit them into their cargo hold.

If I remember correctly the comparative dimensions, for how many smaller cans can fit into a larger one, are a little off but they work great as a starting point.

As for using cans as the basis for bunkers I already talked about that in a post on Temporary or Portable Military Fortifications . I think you would see this not just for military operations but for planetary explorations and first stage colonization.

Imagine a prefab living space the size of a can, filled in every nook with supplies and then dropped by a colonization ship on a planets surface for colonists to live in while they build permanent facilities.

I have a few basic stats for cans that are preloaded for everything from disaster relief (food and survival gear) to planetary invasion (weapons, armor and such) and I figure ships like the packmaster would have hundreds of these already loaded onboard ready for use.

To be fair, I have done a lot more with the TGE having these than CAF but that is just because my players have destroyed so many of their ground bases.

[Blue_Lion]

Read power 6 of the shifter they can open a portal to any point along a ley line or any connected ley lines. So it is not just nexus you would have to guard the entire ley line network. If the shifter can not get access to the space ley line leading the planet then it would be the nexus points but if he can access a ley line connected to the planet you have the whole network. Worse once the shifter is on your planet he can open portals to other worlds to allow more troops to come to your planet.

While random rifts are more likely on nexueses with power 6 any where along the line or any connected ley lines is a possible point of entry. PG 122 rue. I would think guarding every ley line nexus on a planet would stretch your resources thin. Typically only major or busy nexus will be heavily guarded. Heck Atlantis can't even stop people from rifting in to raid them and they have allot less than a planet to guard.

Basically the shifter access a space ley line and uses it to teleport to some where on the planet with a connected ley line the shifters choice of location. Potentially 100s of miles to guard. With multiple shifters you could be faced with multiple breach points to deal with.

While magic heavy nations might use pyramids to mitigate the risk non magic nations would, be very exposed. (Pyramids are a double edge sword opening up new risks.)

Shifter mobility is really good in phase world setting. For magical invasions a key step is getting some one like a shifter on the planet or a connected ley line. Once a shifter is on the planet they can keep bringing fresh troops and supplies in, no need for a space ship.

First if I am reading the power correctly he can open a rift for half the normal PPE which I believe would mean 500 PPE each shot. That is a lot to move troops around. To me the powers of Shifters, and even more so Ley Line Walkers, are more suited for recon and special operations.

One of the things I have always wondered is who are the navigators on UWW ships with Rift drives? LLWs or Shifters or something else. The big problem for a lot of these OCCs in performing these kinds of tasks is a lack of military or espionage skills but they can probably get by without them.

If i recall correctly at first the elves of the UWW where traveling between worlds without ships. This power would explain it, if the worlds shared connected ley lines.

This was in the first Phase World book but I think it may have gotten changed in Anvil Galaxies or Fleets of the Three Galaxies. I know both books altered the history a little but not sure if this got changed.

For planetary invasion I ussually have these deployed by assault shuttles. For stealth insertion small stealth shuttles, corvettes or even destroyers could deploy at range..

Or even fighters with underwing hard points if you're delivering one agent. Small enough drive signature, zip in, release the stealth pod, zip back out.

Of course, this has shades of 'stealth insertion by fighter-mech' from Robotech/Macross with the Female Power Armor playing agent taxi to the SDF-1.

Using assault shuttles to for drop pods seams a waste of resources and time. When I think drop pods I think atmospheric entry, why load them on a shuttle to drop them from it. Just set up some sort of launcher and launch them off your large troop transport ship. (assault shuttles would are basically large reusable drop pods. Rigging the shuttle to drop multiple pods would be more resource and time heavy path.

I think you need to take two things into consideration:
1) Distance. CG FTL ships must drop from FTL at least 10,000 miles from the planet.
2) Speed. Sub light speeds for large carriers and transports are low meaning it can take them more than an hour to get from the limit to the planet and another hour to run away.

With these in mind a disposable pod is not likely to be able to make the trip on it's own without being blown apart. This is why have always assumed that somewhat faster assault shuttles or other vehicles would be dropping them, much the way a large transport like a C-17 carry paratroopers over a drop zone.

If you created a drop pod that could maneuver in a combat zone for this long then it is likely to be more of light troop shuttle and less of a disposable pod.

The way I see it the transport has drop pods set for rapid deployment from gravity catapults. Launching its whole troop complement from orbit in less than a minute.

I can definitely see this aboard some ships, I in fact have a dedicated marine transport that has a secondary function of providing space to ground fire support and I have always assumed that large carriers and battleships with marine compliments have some too, but it would still require them to slowly get to a drop zone to deploy the pods. The other problem with this is if something like a packmaster is approaching a planet it is going to be taking HEAVY fire from defenders. This means that any pod being deployed can be shot down almost as an afterthought. This is why I always felt that racks of pods could just be loaded into an assault shuttle so they can be rolled out the hatches in large numbers after the shuttles spread out to reduce the concentration of enemy fire.

To be honest I was also probably influenced by how the Roughnecks were depolyed in the animated series I cited above.

In my games I actually have a CAF tactic where a Protector BB will dive into a planets defense zone with its cruiser and destroyer escorts blasting away at the stations and planets. Behind it are dozens, sometimes hundreds, of assault shuttles with fighter escorts that spread out in all directions. this forces the planets defenses to make the choice of going after the shuttles or taking on the battleship.

Or the pod could have stealth attached to a transport without their knowledge. Like how solo hid from the star destroyer by docking on it.

I have always been iffy on this as ships should have decent hull sensors so it would be hard to get on there for long trips. Also, the pod would have to have a decent shielding for FTL and life support for long trips so it would need to be bigger. For all these reasons I assumed something like this would be uncommon to unlikely.

Using assault shuttles to for drop pods seams a waste of resources and time. - Snip-

Depends on your mission profile and how you handle stealth in your game.
If you're doing a large scale troop drop, then using a large transport makes sense for deploying 'sticks' of drop pods.
Alternatively, if you're using a large ship(s) to make a bombing run on a planet, it's possible to hide drop pods in among the ordnance, using the chaos of the bomb run to hide that troops(or drones) are being deployed to the surface.
For smaller and stealthier inserts, however, using smaller, less-easily detected craft might be better; it's like sending a Lysander to drop off an agent behind enemy lines rather than a C-47. The smaller craft might be able to evade detection or garner less attention(In the latter case if you've established that you've been sending smaller craft to recon or buzz a target planet).

Use of drop pods would, in a lot of ways, mirror the use of paratroopers but for my games I tend to break them into two broad categories and within those are several subcategories.

1 Is clandestine insertion: Straight up spook crap. This could use small stealth pods deployed by disguised freighter or stealth corvette. This would also be a situation where you might use a longer range pod deployed from hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of miles out and taking days to arrive. I even have a pod that requires a wizard to cast one of the stasis spells on the occupant so that it doesn't have to carry all the extra air, food and water.

2 Combat drops: You're being shot at while your pods deploy. But even here you have a blend of a fireteam recon group all the way up to company sized drops to establish a beachhead and clear air defenses to allow more vulnerable assault shuttles.

You also have to remember how big assault shuttles are and how much they can carry. A CAF Assault shuttle should be able to carry over a hundred drop pods depending on size.

It is placing the drop pods on a assault shuttle for a planetary invasion that I am questioning.
Assault shuttles are designed to enter atmosphere and deploy troops. They are effectively reusable drop pods.

Assault shuttles "can" enter an atmosphere. They don't have to. They are also used for boarding spacecraft/space stations and according to the books can even be used as a poor man's frigate. Entering an atmosphere slows a shuttle down and can even subject them to greater ground fire. If I have 100 troops with vehicles on an Assault Shuttle and ground fire brings it down that is a hell of a loss. But if it deploys a hundred or so separate pods 500 miles above the surface at least some of those pods are going to make it. and the assault shuttle has a good chance of getting back.

The description of both assault shuttles mention how vulnerable troops are when onboard.

Adding hardware to drop drop pods and drop pods would reduce the troops they could deploy and/or fire power.

My feeling is that, looking at the CAF shuttle, if it can go between power armor and tanks or just carry 300 refugees it probably wouldn't be that hard to pack in a bunch of pods and drop them out the rear hatch.

If you do not want to land your shuttle equip the troops with CG packs and have them jump out when the shuttle has entered the atmosphere.

I actually have shuttles do this, mainly when they are deploying armored vehicles. A tank or IFV with a CG system can be dropped from any height and just dive towards the ground and then break before it hits. But, it means making that assault shuttle vulnerable for that extra 500 miles of space and then fly, at reduced speed, into and out of the atmosphere where it can be shot at from all directions.

I have always viewed this as intermediary step between drop pods establishing a beachhead and assault shuttles landing and a secure landing zone.

Odds are if you are doing a planetary invasion you are delivering lots of troops, so it would likely require a dedicated transport ship. Loading the troops on a transport then having them transfer to drop pods on a shuttle to be deployed, seams like a waste of resources and time.

In the books the largest space to ground transport we have are the assault shuttles. Ships like a Packmaster can land on a planet but they would be so slow and vulnerable you would never bring one close to a planets atmosphere until you have space and air dominance, if not outright control of the planet. Now in my games I have large transports that bring in large numbers (4 to 10 times as much as an assault shuttle) but other people probably do it diffeently.

For me it is all about the right tool/method for the job. Placing pods on assault shuttles (which again are huge, nearly frigate sized vehicles) to carry pods from a mother ship through a combat zone to a drop area just makes sense. Like how amphibious warfare ships have LCACs for ferrying troops and vehicles to the beach instead of bringing the giant target right up to where the missile launchers are.

Bringing the carrier close to the combat zone risks the carrier.
Deploying the pods from an hour or so out requires a larger, more expensive pod and puts it at risk.
Landing an assault shuttle in an unsecured LZ risks all the troops onboard.
Deploying the pods from the AS just seems to fit the situation. Again just my opinion as very little about Phase World tech makes any sense.

500 would be the first rift fallow up rifts to the same location would be re-open rift so looking at 90 PPE for each successive wave for shorter time. The number of troops that can go through would be a bit subjective. Could be as slow as 5 per mellee round (based of the shifters other rifting powr) or as many that could run through a 10 wide door in 3 seconds. (so say for sake of a number 12 that would be 3 per action 4 actions) Time for 500 PPE is 30 seconds + 30 seconds per level so at an average level of 3-4 time open of 2 minutes or 8 melle rounds that gives you 40 to 96 troops per 500. The time for reopen would be 1 mellee per level so looking 15-36 people.

500 PPE seams like allot when your forget about two things the number of people involved and ley line.
Lets say you can get 96 people through a rift for 500 ppe then each of the deploying troops would need to give the shifter an average of 6 PPE to fund this.

Using the ley line a group of mages helping the sifter could pull all the PPE needed from the ley line so they would not need to tap into their PPE reserves.

A mage can pull in 10 PPE every mellee round so that would be 30 per mage to open a gate that cost 90 or 80 per mage for a gate that takes 500. So 3 mages to reopen, 6 for 500ppe.-I do not think coming up with 6 mages for per portal to move 100s of troop through will be that hard to come up with.

Teamwork makes the dream work.


Before trying to take a planet surface you first need to obtain space superiority.
Your assault ships move in and take out the defenders ships.
Next you take out enemy air force(unless you want there bombers taking out your troops.
Then you move in deploy ground forces.
Drop pods allow you to get most of your force on the ground quickly, so the enemy can not zerg your beach head.


If you deploy your ground forces before you have control of space you risk loosing all troops you deployed.
If you deploy troops before control the sky then the enemy aircraft will bomb them.

If you want to use shuttles and not land the shuttles have your troops use CG packs or parachute devices jumping out once the shuttle breaks atmosphere.

But loading drop pods on shuttles would reduce the number of troops you can deploy and increases the for the next wave to launch. That means defenders have a chance to over run your first wave before you can land the second.

You are not likely to be able to deploy troops so fast that defenders can not respond. They can detect your forces before you even reach the system most of the time. You can't just drop in drop 500,000 troops on a planet and take it before the defenders can do anything. You have to assume the defenders will fight back. Even with the speed of your shuttle the defender would deploy fighters to shoot them down.

Once you take control of space the time it takes you to move in range to deploy so you do not need to use shuttle.


The episodes of the clone wars that showed the taking of Ryloth, 1st Anikins forces took out the droid fleet, then the troop transports jumped in and deployed the invasion force. That is kind of how tactics would work.

Because loss of troop transport ships means you can't invade the planet the defenders would make destroying them a priority. Even if you are using shuttles if you loose the bulk of your troops on the transport your invasion would be likely to fail. So you would want to limit risk to transport ships by not bringing them in until you had control of the space around the planet.

[Warshield73]

500 would be the first rift fallow up rifts to the same location would be re-open rift so looking at 90 PPE for each successive wave for shorter time. The number of troops that can go through would be a bit subjective. Could be as slow as 5 per mellee round (based of the shifters other rifting powr) or as many that could run through a 10 wide door in 3 seconds. (so say for sake of a number 12 that would be 3 per action 4 actions) Time for 500 PPE is 30 seconds + 30 seconds per level so at an average level of 3-4 time open of 2 minutes or 8 melle rounds that gives you 40 to 96 troops per 500. The time for reopen would be 1 mellee per level so looking 15-36 people.

500 PPE seams like allot when your forget about two things the number of people involved and ley line.
Lets say you can get 96 people through a rift for 500 ppe then each of the deploying troops would need to give the shifter an average of 6 PPE to fund this.

Using the ley line a group of mages helping the sifter could pull all the PPE needed from the ley line so they would not need to tap into their PPE reserves.

A mage can pull in 10 PPE every mellee round so that would be 30 per mage to open a gate that cost 90 or 80 per mage for a gate that takes 500. So 3 mages to reopen, 6 for 500ppe.-I do not think coming up with 6 mages for per portal to move 100s of troop through will be that hard to come up with.

Teamwork makes the dream work.

Yes I agree that teams of Shifters or LLWs could move large formations around, wasn't saying they couldn't, and you would probably see massive "Avengers Assemble" movements of troops and vehicles. However, I believe the biggest use of this ability would be for spec ops and recon. It's a great way to move small numbers of troops around within a given area of operation that would be hard to detect and even harder to track.

Before trying to take a planet surface you first need to obtain space superiority.
Your assault ships move in and take out the defenders ships.
Next you take out enemy air force(unless you want there bombers taking out your troops.
Then you move in deploy ground forces.
Drop pods allow you to get most of your force on the ground quickly, so the enemy can not zerg your beach head.

If you deploy your ground forces before you have control of space you risk loosing all troops you deployed.
If you deploy troops before control the sky then the enemy aircraft will bomb them.

I think this all depends on the technology of a given setting and what's at stake. You can go back to D-Day to see a military force that dropped in paratroopers (the equivalent of drop pods for our purposes) long before air-superiority much less air dominance. If you are talking a war of survival like the minion war you might risk dropping troops were they are going to get bombed.

Also, in PW ground troops are not defenseless against air attacks. Lasers and guided missiles will often be part of the weapons package and if they are deployed with even light vehicles equipped AA lasers or missiles then a beachhead may be more dangerous for the aircraft.

Finally, it also depends on where you drop the pods. If your troops are dropped into populated areas, industrial zones, or hugging necessary planetary infrastructure then bombing and bombardment may kill the troops but you might also do so much damage that you accomplish there mission for them.

I actually did this to my players years ago where TGE troops were dropped into a city while a space battle was going on above. It forced the players to reallocate resources (in this case themselves) from the space battle to the streets. With the battle taking place next to an important facility that the players needed and the TGE wanted to destroy it really handcuffed the players in the way of using aerospace or orbital support.

If you look at the CAF (or the TGE) there ground troops have powerful war machines that can threaten most military assets. If you are an Admiral slamming your fleet against entrenched planetary defenses you may want to get those assets out where they can kill the enemy sooner rather than later.

If you want to use shuttles and not land the shuttles have your troops use CG packs or parachute devices jumping out once the shuttle breaks atmosphere.

But loading drop pods on shuttles would reduce the number of troops you can deploy and increases the for the next wave to launch. That means defenders have a chance to over run your first wave before you can land the second.

I think you are missing the point of what I am saying. Deploying pods from troop shuttles allows for a few things:
1-Cheaper, shorter range pods. Most pods that I designed have an engine burn time measured in minutes so the range from which they can be dropped is 'short' relative to planetary orbit. Long range pod equals more expensive and less disposable.
2-It keeps your giant, slow moving, poorly armed transport ships as far away from the action as possible. To me these are the assets that do not approach a gravity well until you have aerospace, orbital, and even interplanetary space dominance.

You do not want transports of hundreds of thousands of jarheads 3 hours inside the gravity well when a surprise attack force jumps in from a nearby gas giant and they have no means to escape. This takes all your attack assets and turns them into defensive units.

3-It keeps your slower, more vulnerable troop shuttles out of the atmosphere. I go back to my original inspiration of the Roughnecks and Halo's ODSTs. It's all about limiting risk as much as possible for bigger, more expensive assets with larger numbers of people.

Like I said I see phases of planetary assault so you would have troops, in my opinion especially those in CG vehicles and power armors, deployed in atmosphere but high altitude by shuttles that pop in and leave before they can take ground fire. A CG powered IFV like the Maniple can be dropped from any altitude inside the atmosphere and just drop until it is a few meters from the ground and then just hit the CG and float off on its mission. They would be vulnerable during the drop but they can shoot back.

You are not likely to be able to deploy troops so fast that defenders can not respond. They can detect your forces before you even reach the system most of the time. You can't just drop in drop 500,000 troops on a planet and take it before the defenders can do anything. You have to assume the defenders will fight back. Even with the speed of your shuttle the defender would deploy fighters to shoot them down.

Once you take control of space the time it takes you to move in range to deploy so you do not need to use shuttle.

Of course they are going to try and shoot them down, but that is what fighter escorts are for. But, they would have to shift focus from your fighters and assault units to your troop units.

Also, as the attacker you have the initiative. The other great thing about using shuttles or light transports to deploy pods is they can loiter outside the engagement zone, orbiting around waiting for an opening and giving one more, or actually several dozen to hundreds of more, thing to monitor in the battles space.

The episodes of the clone wars that showed the taking of Ryloth, 1st Anikins forces took out the droid fleet, then the troop transports jumped in and deployed the invasion force. That is kind of how tactics would work.

It might be how tactics would work in that situation but not in others. Look at the attack of the Donager in the Expanse or the invasion of Babylon 5 in 3-10 Severed Dreams or 5-4 A View from the Gallery. Troops boarding a ship or station can have a real impact on the battle. There are plenty of instances in Star Wars of battles on planet and ground including the first and second battles of Geonosis and of course Endor.

Because loss of troop transport ships means you can't invade the planet the defenders would make destroying them a priority. Even if you are using shuttles if you loose the bulk of your troops on the transport your invasion would be likely to fail. So you would want to limit risk to transport ships by not bringing them in until you had control of the space around the planet.

This is why I say you would use shuttles or light transports to drop pods but given the size of troop compliments on ships like the Protector (take 5 to 8 trips for all shuttles) or Packmaster (5 to 15 trips according to my calculations) or the Doombringer (20 or so trips) I have to imagine dedicated troop transports must have far larger numbers with dozens of trips needed.

I think what's important to remember is since this is a game we want there to be as many avenues for adventure as possible. Universes like Honor Harrington or even Star Trek don't have these for in universe reasons of technology but systems IPs like Babylon 5, the Expanse, Halo, and Roughnecks do.

When I add things to Phase World (races, ships, ground vehicles, ground based defenses, planetary shields) I try to make sure that I am opening up avenues of adventure without breaking the system. I mean more than it is already broken.

[Blue_Lion]

some of your points.

1 the cheaper short range pods.* No not really if you clear a path of attackers and shoot the drop pods at the planet with a gravity catapult they would require minimal propulsion and basic shields to take a hit or two. If you where launching from a shuttle you would need to spend money on drop pod launching system adding more to the cost of the shuttles that are easier to kill than your transport.

2 keeping your transports out of the danger zone - If gain space control before you bring them in this is not an issue. The risk of defenders jumping in ships would be greater to transports kept in the area they can jump in. New forces would start at the same safe zone and move in. Last time I checked the penalty was to jump in not out. (the risk is that if you aproach closer you can hit the planet) That means your transports could move inside the no entry zone and use translight to escape before the new force can attack them. Phase world book pg 152."CG-drives, like phase drives, have to be disengaged when approaching a planet." The risk is crashing into a planet. As long as you are not in a atmosphere you should not crash into it when you jump away. "If a P-drive is not disengaged before a ship is between 10 and 20 thousand miles ( 1 6,000 to 32,000 km) away from a planet, there is a 70% chance that the ship will plunge into the planet's atmosphere." Again it is addressing approaching a planet they never state a minimal distance to leave a planet.


3 -keep attack shuttles out of atmosphere -so wait your point is to not use attack shuttles as what they are? They are heavily armed and shielded to breach plantary defenses it is kind of their whole role.

Given that phase world has sensors that can detect incoming fleet, the attackers may not have initiative the defenders actually have more time to set up and prepare for the 1st action of combat. The defenders deploy smart missiles cruise missile systems at the area where the attackers ships should be dropping out of trans-light or approaching. Thus having weapons in place to attack as soon as you are in range. Basically the defenders are in a holding action until the attackers are in range. A planetary defense almost always would have spent more time preparing for an attack than the attacker spent planing it.

WWII paratrooper operations had high losses, they where almost suicide missions. Not something that works on its own.

Your part about admirals attacking entrenched planets, the admirls job is to control the space. It is the general of the marines/planetary that will take the planet. Dropping your troops peace mettle from shuttles while the first wave gets their quicker it could be wiped out before the shuttles can fly back 10,000 miles to pick up the next wave of troops and fly back. - Your best chance of success in establishing and holding a beach head is over whelming numbers in the 1st drop. For surgical strikes and commando raids smaller shuttles would be good but for your full on planetary invasion it would be to slow.

Taking out aircraft with lasers and gravity weapons would be hard, do to RUEs penalty to hit a moving target. Missiles do not appear to have the same penalty so you could use them but aircraft can have anti missile systems causing your early volies to miss. Depending things like terraine and equipment you might only get 1-2 shots at the attacking aircraft, and it at you. So who ever scores the first hit wins, and that favors the aircraft.

[glitterboy2098]

the primary mission of airborne assaults, whether via helicopters, gliders or parachutes, is to secure a deployment site for more conventional troops that follow. the same goes for amphibious landings.
even in WW2's D-day, the airborne troops were securing the road network so the amphibious assault could advance off the beaches and secure the region for the mobile docks to be set up and the main forces of the invasion unloaded.

in space combat, this works more or less the same. your first wave of troops are going to be specialists deployed quick and light to grab ground and secure landing sites for heavier forces. a planetary invasion would usually look like:
First landing - light troops/spec ops to secure landing sites.
2nd landing - heavier but highly mobile troops to expand and entrench those landing sites, or move to seize existing spaceport infrastructure.
the follow on landings will be the troop ships dropping the main forces that will do most of the fighting.

drop pods are only really useful for that first landing.. and even then, they'd be situational and mostly only needed when the opposing forces have very heavy air defense making landing shuttles too vulnerable. and then the first mission of those drop-pod troops would be to take out enough of the air defenses in a particular area to allow the shuttles with the 2nd wave troops to land.

if you opponent doesn't have heavy defenses, or those defenses are more geographically limited, it would be much better to drop your first waves troops in using shuttles landing outside the defenses, and have them proceed via ground mobility. or even to start landing the 2nd wave troops as soon as the 1st wave lands and sets up a perimeter, to conduct a conventional ground campaign.

[taalismn]

t
drop pods are only really useful for that first landing.. and even then, they'd be situational and mostly only needed when the opposing forces have very heavy air defense making landing shuttles too vulnerable. and then the first mission of those drop-pod troops would be to take out enough of the air defenses in a particular area to allow the shuttles with the 2nd wave troops to land..

Not to mention local communications and sensor facilities, anything that might alert other planetary forces where there's a foothold situation being developed. Of course, as this stuff tends to be heavily protected by defenses that prevent you from just zeking the stuff from the air, the net result's the same as if you were just targeting air defenses.....

[Warshield73]

I want to start with just a few points.

First, I agree almost entirely with glitterboy2098 and taalismn, I think all of these are great points and many of them were in line with my own when I started this thread.

Second, this kind of discussion you really have to look at the universe as it is set up and see how things might work. This is hard enough in our own world where military analysts are constantly getting it wrong in both doctrine and equipment. The best example of this is the War of the Admirals and the gutting of the US Navy before Korea. Actually The Templin Institute has a great video on Planetary Invasion and Orbital Bombardment , as well as vids on sci-fi space fleets and tank forces and other concepts that led to this thread.

In many sci-fi universes drop pods would be useless.

In Star Gate the use of ring platforms, Asgard beaming technology, and the gates themselves make something like this almost pointless except for maybe deploying ring transporters.

In Star Trek, with speed of light weapons fired over stellar distances with near perfect accuracy drop pods would be nothing more than induvial coffins even if the existence of transporters didn't make such things completely redundant.

In the Honnor Harrington Universe ground wars are almost completely non-existent. Planetary government and militaries, under what is called the Deneb Accords, are even expected to surrender when an enemy gains control of the orbital space around a planet to prevent mass casualty events on planetary population.

But Phase World is not like any of these settings. It is much more in line with settings like Star Wars, Roughnecks and Halo where such pods or other methods of planetary assault are, if not common, occurring enough to warrant large numbers of land vehicles and assault shuttles. In fact, if I had to place Phase World on a sci-fi spectrum I think I would put it right between Star Wars and Halo.

Since we have only the most shallow description of how technology works in Phase World so ultimately anything not directly in the books is just a matter of personal preference and as I said earlier my preference is for anything that opens up new paths for adventure.

1 the cheaper short range pods.* No not really if you clear a path of attackers and shoot the drop pods at the planet with a gravity catapult they would require minimal propulsion and basic shields to take a hit or two.

Any object moving in a near straight line can be easily hit in space, even at extreme range, any pod with enough sensors, shields, engines and especially life support to accomplish this is basically just a fighter.

If you clear a path so effectively that you can just put someone in a coffin and launch him at a planet from an hour or more away you might as well just use a shuttle.

If you where launching from a shuttle you would need to spend money on drop pod launching system adding more to the cost of the shuttles that are easier to kill than your transport.

It depends on how you think the shuttles are laid out. When I looked at modern military cargo aircraft I decided that most assault shuttles would have rails on the floor an ceiling that would lineup with standard cargo cans and sleds (a creation of mine that is the width and length of a can but is not enclosed and is mainly used for moving vehicles). The pods are loaded in racks of 4(? if I remember correctly).

Now this is based on a lot of assumptions. I assume large interstellar troop transports are lightly armed and meant to be at the rear. I do have what I refer to as "Marine Expeditionary Deployment & Support Ships" that are what you kind of describe. They are Cruiser to Battlecruiser in size, have enough defenses and shields to hang in the wall of battle (operating much like oversized frigates). These ships have banks of deployment tubes for drop pods and even have the oversized pods I mentioned for IFVs and other vehicles. They even have weapons specifically designed to provide orbital fire support for planet bound units. The problem is these are highly specialized units that are largely useless outside of major planetary assaults so I view the shuttle method as more common.

2 keeping your transports out of the danger zone - If gain space control before you bring them in this is not an issue. The risk of defenders jumping in ships would be greater to transports kept in the area they can jump in. New forces would start at the same safe zone and move in. Last time I checked the penalty was to jump in not out. (the risk is that if you aproach closer you can hit the planet) That means your transports could move inside the no entry zone and use translight to escape before the new force can attack them. Phase world book pg 152."CG-drives, like phase drives, have to be disengaged when approaching a planet." The risk is crashing into a planet. As long as you are not in a atmosphere you should not crash into it when you jump away. "If a P-drive is not disengaged before a ship is between 10 and 20 thousand miles ( 1 6,000 to 32,000 km) away from a planet, there is a 70% chance that the ship will plunge into the planet's atmosphere." Again it is addressing approaching a planet they never state a minimal distance to leave a planet.

This was unclear in the earlier books. I know many of the early authors assumed it but we know now it works coming and going.

Interdiction Field Generator: The true power of the Araneae class, and the thing that makes these ships among the most feared in the Galaxies, is the high-output Gravimetric Interdiction Field Generator. The Araneae can generate a mobile, super-heavy gravity field much like a planet’s gravity well.
The Interdiction Field prohibits the use of FTL drives within its area of effect, and can even pull an enemy ship out of FTL travel! With this field, an Araneae can “lock down” a fleet of sub-capital and capital ships in preparation for a strike from its fleet, or set ambushes for pirates or fleeing enemies.
The down side of the Interdiction Field is that it is extremely energy intensive, and draws power from all ship’s systems during times when it is operational.

Range: The Interdiction Field creates a 60 mile (96 km) sphere of influence, with the ship itself at the center. All FTL drive spacecraft within the 60 mile (96 km) diameter of influence cannot engage FTL drives.

However even in the original book the description of the actual CG drive was leaned heavily to the idea that an FTL drive simply couldn't work in a gravity well.

CG-drives, like phase drives, have to
be disengaged when approaching a planet. The safest distance a ship can travel at Faster Than Light (FTL) speeds is 10,000 miles ( 1 6,000 km) away from a planet (twice that is safer)

This would indicate that a gravity well simply prevents FTL in both directions (which is a common limitation in sci-fi) so any ship that travels down the well must travel up it to jump to FTL. Now I am making a lot of assumptions but the tactics here, just like you are, but I see no upside for large ships to move inside a gravity well under combat conditions unless they are a frontline combat ship or they absolutely have to.

Now you could assume one way or the other from the original book but now with Fleets it is clear that a gravity well prevents FTL travel in both directions.

3 -keep attack shuttles out of atmosphere -so wait your point is to not use attack shuttles as what they are? They are heavily armed and shielded to breach plantary defenses it is kind of their whole role.

No. I assume that like modern military aircraft, like the C-130 for instance, it can be used for a wide variety of roles. Landing in a hot zone sure. Boarding a space station sure. Deploying satellites, drones or mines, why not. Lifting troops to an established beachhead. And of course, dropping all varieties of paratroopers.

Given that phase world has sensors that can detect incoming fleet, the attackers may not have initiative the defenders actually have more time to set up and prepare for the 1st action of combat. The defenders deploy smart missiles cruise missile systems at the area where the attackers ships should be dropping out of trans-light or approaching. Thus having weapons in place to attack as soon as you are in range. Basically the defenders are in a holding action until the attackers are in range. A planetary defense almost always would have spent more time preparing for an attack than the attacker spent planing it.

Assuming a 10 light-year radius and let's say 3 light-years per hour for the fleet (which is generous I have most military vessels at 4 LPH minimum) attackers would have 3 hours and a few minutes from first detection to dropping out at the FTL limit of the planet.

If we assume an attack force drops out at minimum (10,000 miles) and moves at Mach 8, generous but we might assume that you want a consolidated force, call it 2 more hours. Also keep in mind that this starts out at a galactic scale so it's not like being on a planet where real-time satellite imagery will let you see an enemy loading his ships and steaming towards your shores.

This means you have 5 hours, at most, to scramble a reserve, recall troops on shore leave, cease reloading / refueling operations on ships in port and start deploying your defenses and this assumes that you hit the button the second you detect the fleet inbound without issuing a challenge and waiting for a response. Remember the books say specially that you can detect ships at FTL it does not say identify (which for systems like radar it clearly says range for both detection and identification) so unless you scramble the defenses every time a trading convoy approaches that is more likely to be 4 hours. We also have no idea how long it takes a ship in port to get under power and maneuver but generally speaking I would assume the larger the ship the longer it takes. 4 or 5 hours to counter an attack plan that had to be in prep for a month at least but more likely several months or maybe even years.

Now I actually agree with your basic assumption but in my games I assume a lot that is not in the books. I assume that planets use the gravity well as a defense with defense in-depth as far out as maybe 5,000 miles, orbital defense platforms and fighter bases, orbiting missile pods and weapon satellites, a ready force (size depends on population and wealth of the system), planet based orbit-denial weapons (generally giant cruiser to battleship grade lasers), and even planet based force fields to protect sensitive installations.

But, even with all those assumptions as the attacker how and where you deploy your forces is up to you.
- You can, of course, go hell bent for leather straight at the main planet to try and defeat the defenses before they are fully online. Killing ships and fighters as they are deployed hoping to prevent the defenders from consolidating and rushing the ready units into combat alone. May or may not work.

- You can leave your main force outside the gravity well of the main planet to pin the defending force there while you send a small force of battleships or battlecruisers or even just cruisers to wreck the system industrial infrastructure. If the defenders want to stop them they have to come out form any fixed defenses and take on the main force first and the attackers can disengage and leave anytime they want.

The aggressor's options are limited only by resources and imagination. The defender is limited by time, resources and a need to protect as much of the system as they can.

WWII paratrooper operations had high losses, they where almost suicide missions. Not something that works on its own.

In WWII so where bomber missions over Europe and navy and marine dive-bombers in the Pacific were in a similar situation. The simple fact is that every person in anything smaller that a cruiser is going to have a bad day in a major fleet action. Fighter pilots will be in the same hot water as Marines in drop pods, maybe worse as they are expected to attack, rearm, repeat. Marines just have to jump once.

Your part about admirals attacking entrenched planets, the admirls job is to control the space. It is the general of the marines/planetary that will take the planet.

I am going strictly by the description of ranks in Fleets (page 38). The Marine ranks stop at general which is the equivalent to a captain in the fleet. The fleet rank of Captain-General is described as having "ultimate authority" over fleet and marines on there ship. Since there are no marine ranks equal to admirals I am assuming that they have similar authority as it seems odd to get it at that rank and then loose it as you go up. The TGE, as well as the other powers, seem to have no separation of fleet and marines so it would certainly apply to them.

Now in my version of Phase World I do have a very distinct Fleet with admirals and Marines with generals of equivalent rank, but I am just going by the book.

Dropping your troops peace mettle from shuttles while the first wave gets their quicker it could be wiped out before the shuttles can fly back 10,000 miles to pick up the next wave of troops and fly back. - Your best chance of success in establishing and holding a beach head is over whelming numbers in the 1st drop. For surgical strikes and commando raids smaller shuttles would be good but for your full on planetary invasion it would be to slow.

I can see your point here, but this means waiting for the orbital area to be cleared enough for large transports to come in that goes back to how you view these ships and if you need to take facilities on the ground to aid in your space battle. I make that assumption, so this is why I have drop pods.

However, if you think about it, drop pods allow your shuttles to have a much faster turnaround. If your shuttles are all loaded with a first waive in drop pods (troops, power armor, even armored vehicels) and they deploy those pods outside the atmosphere they can avoid the time required to enter the atmosphere, fight through defenses, land, unload, return to orbit, and then fly back to the transport. If the shuttles fly out, drop pods, return, reload with standard forces and then go to the planet for a landing or even a low altitude drop this allows you to put a greater number of troops faster. Also, the closer the shuttles get to the planet the more you lose so you will have more hulls for the second round if you use the pods.

To me the real problem you hint at here is unit cohesion and effectiveness. Most military units lose effectiveness at around 10% loses from what I understand and it is easy to imagine that units coming in in pods could suffer 10% to total annihilation on entry with any survivors being scattered. To me this means that drop troops, like Halo's ODST's, have to masters of cobbling together units from whoever they encounter. This would require non-com and junior officers of these units to lean much more towards improvisation than most units but in a game setting like Phase World this would be more fun.

Taking out aircraft with lasers and gravity weapons would be hard, do to RUEs penalty to hit a moving target. Missiles do not appear to have the same penalty so you could use them but aircraft can have anti missile systems causing your early volies to miss. Depending things like terraine and equipment you might only get 1-2 shots at the attacking aircraft, and it at you. So who ever scores the first hit wins, and that favors the aircraft.

"Quantity has a quality all its own."

Much like ship based point defense systems planet based ones would simply have a low hit ratio but with unlimited ammo they will pick apart an atmospheric fighter group as just as fast (or slow) as there space based counterparts. Ground vehicles can also be more heavily armed, armored, and force fielded. It's a simple matter of weight. In our real word you are absolutely right but the technology of Phase World (and even Rifts generally) favors ground vehicles. Seriously, how frightening would an A-10 be if every tank had speed of light weapons and energy fields.

Like I said this is all a matter of conjecture because the tech is ill defined and we can't really see how it play out because it is a TTRPG but I really like what's been posted about this.

[Blue_Lion]

The show adromida was another show that had use of drop pods. They used unmanned drop pods to drop supplies from the capital ship to entrenched troops on the ground.


5 hours to deploy your first line of defense and deploy your QRF seams fine. How common are convoy of ships? Most legitmate transports will file flight plan in advance so legitimate convoys that are unsuspected may be quite rare.

10 light years from where the sensors are not from where you are. Near possibly hostile nations you likely have early warning sensors placed outside your systems. So that 10 light year could in theory be extended by a network of sensors out to 20-30 light years. Then you have MI using psi to detect major threats like an invasion make it hard to do a large scale assault by surprised. A planet could have dozens or hundreds of clairvont actively searching for threats. A major invasion by a hostile force they may see even if they are not looking. So the time the defenders have to prepare could be hours or days.

Looking at speeds the assault shuttles are not that fast in space around mach 4, example in fleets of the three galaxies has a max speed of 6 making it the fastest assault shuttle i have seen. Larger military craft not intended to enter atmosphere are often much faster heck dreadnaughts are faster than the assault shuttles in the book. Heck the Sylor is a transport that travels at mach 10 sublight. Looking the only fast assault shuttles I see are used by the splogorth that is a raider and Nurni-audit (that is called a shuttle/small cruise)r. So in the two books I checked (phase world and fleets of three galaxies) it apears shuttles are not faster over all than carriers that are used to transport troops. (Carriers I have seen look like they are mach 6+)

While their are multi-roll shuttles assault shuttles are heavly armed and armored to drop troops in a hot zone. It is more of a dedicated platform. Given its slow speed compared to the carriers used as tranport, It would make more sense for the carrier to use its fighters to clear a path for it to shoot drop pods where they need to be. Drop pods would likely be less pin point than a shuttle because they would have limited controls. (shuttles could be used for places drop pods would have a hard time getting just where the need to be, unless they are as maneuverable as a shuttle, (which would lead to the question why bother with the shuttle just armor the drop pods and send them in

Turn around would on a shuttle with a drop pod system in the cargo bay would include moving that system out of the way. You do carry more than just infantry in them. It would be faster for a carrier to fly to a open window and shoot the drop pods at the planet.

The way I see drop pods vs shuttles is the difference between airassault and airborne. Shuttles being air assault dropping troops right where they need to be. Drop pods being more like airborne getting the troops to the ground as quick as safely possible, but have limited control and may suffer from drift. Basically drop pods to get down close and fast and hit them in force, shuttles to land troops right where you need them to take a key location.

So while for small scale commondo raids dropping an elite team from small craft would be done, for a full scale planetary invasion it would be to slow. Planetary invasion may very well be on a clock. If you can not achieve control of the space around a planet in X hours the chances of winning drop. last thing you want is to face enemies attacking you from two sides. Planetary abilty to return fire would be limited to what 1,000 miles or less, so attackers can attack orbital assests from plantary based weapons range. So the planet has to launch things in to space to fight you. So that would be fighters and small ships, that are part of space. If you control the space they are launching ships into your kill zone allowing you to act as defenders shooting them before they get in range.

I generally assume most forces in phase world are not using poor tactics like world war ii in hopes of wining by numbers. Although the sploogy halve no issue sacrificing minions and slaves to win, other nations would be unlikely to fight like that.

[taalismn]

The way I see drop pods vs shuttles is the difference between airassault and airborne. Shuttles being air assault dropping troops right where they need to be. Drop pods being more like airborne getting the troops to the ground as quick as safely possible, but have limited control and may suffer from drift. Basically drop pods to get down close and fast and hit them in force, shuttles to land troops right where you need them to take a key location..

To invoke Normandy again, the paratroopers(drop pods) wound up landing all over the place due to their drop 'sticks' being dispersed by imprecise navigation and local conditions. The gliders(shuttles) had slightly more control, and in the case of the units assigned to seize the Pegasus Bridge, landed almost on top fo the position. If they'd had Ospreys or copters, they WOULD have landed in top of the position, after the assault shuttles had laid down suppressive fire on the LZ.

[Blue_Lion]

The way I see drop pods vs shuttles is the difference between airassault and airborne. Shuttles being air assault dropping troops right where they need to be. Drop pods being more like airborne getting the troops to the ground as quick as safely possible, but have limited control and may suffer from drift. Basically drop pods to get down close and fast and hit them in force, shuttles to land troops right where you need them to take a key location..

To invoke Normandy again, the paratroopers(drop pods) wound up landing all over the place due to their drop 'sticks' being dispersed by imprecise navigation and local conditions. The gliders(shuttles) had slightly more control, and in the case of the units assigned to seize the Pegasus Bridge, landed almost on top fo the position. If they'd had Ospreys or copters, they WOULD have landed in top of the position, after the assault shuttles had laid down suppressive fire on the LZ.

LOLO from helicopters and ospreys can be more accurate, but have their own risk. Airborne from normal aircraft are spread based on time it took them to jump out. Even with modern navigation the drop chalks from a normal plane are scattered as a result.

If you are getting the shuttles close to provide cover fire and stable launch platform above the target they really would not need drop pods. At that point you would use some sort of contra-grave pack, or other less bulky ways down. I am not arguing that assault shuttles do not have a role in planetary invasion but I do not think deploying drop pods from orbit is a practical use of them for a large scale invasion.


You do not want drop pods to come in right on top each other do to risk to the personnel (IE you do not want to have the drop pod or solder land on earlier drop pods soldiers. so would result in more scatted so troops would need to regroup and move out. A shuttle could land and the force moves out as a group from the start, or they could deploy a group with CG packs once they enter atmosphere and they could use the CS packs to control there landing. (the biggest issue with CG packs would be if they land under fire it would require a piloting check same as jet packs.)

(the games planet side and planet side 2 uses drop pods to deploy at times. You have limited control and it is coming down fast.)

[Warshield73]

The show adromida was another show that had use of drop pods. They used unmanned drop pods to drop supplies from the capital ship to entrenched troops on the ground.

Are you talking about Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda with the Hercules guy? I mention the Highguard drop pods in the first post and they could be manned or automated.

Otherwise I couldn't find what you were talking about.

5 hours to deploy your first line of defense and deploy your QRF seams fine. How common are convoy of ships? Most legitmate transports will file flight plan in advance so legitimate convoys that are unsuspected may be quite rare.

I agree with your timeframe, what I was saying is that an attack force has the initiative so they come in with all assets at 100% readiness. All personnel rested, fed, and ready to fight. The defenders would likely have greater assets but they can't get everything ready in that initial time. Again even active units you may have forces on maneuvers around another planet, civilian shipping in vulnerable areas that need to be cleared, ships in for repair/rearm, the list goes on.

I go back to Honno Harrington and even Deep Space 9. During the Dominion War Betazed was attacked directly because 2 fleets were in transit to there posting areas and another was on maneuvers. In Honor Harrington you constantly see planetary strikes that are effective by hitting vulnerable infrastructure like construction and manufacturing stations in orbit around planets. Military Units cannot maintain 100% readiness at all times even during a war.

The Expanse also has a great example of this. Earth was able to track all of Mars' stealth nuclear attack platforms with heavy rail guns. They were able to set the tempo for the oppening of the war by deciding when to take those out. Now that went poorly in the TV series but as the attacker they still had the advantage.

This all comes back to "the best defense is a good offense" or as an instructor of mine use to say "the only real defense is offense.

As for the convoys and arrival schedules that is all a matter of your, or my, assumptions about how the system would work. It is important to remember a few things:
- The best analogy for Phase World is the age of sail with the book even saying that travel is like the 17th and 18th centuries with it taking weeks or even months to go from place to place. This means that even if you have an arrival time it would likely have a large margin. I go back to Honor Harrington books because it has the best developed economy of any fictional world I have read and freighter arrival times are usual padded by as much as 20%. Even in the Expanse where the travel is just in system the ice hauler Canterbury had a 4 day window for on-time delivery.

- Convoys are not specifically mentioned but they would almost certainly happen and the larger a system the more likely and larger the convoys would be and regardless of how common they are if they happen at all you as the attacker can use that initiative to time the attack for that opening.

Now in my games I assume customs frigates, corvettes or cutters move to intercept and scan ships as they approach but that is not in the books

10 light years from where the sensors are not from where you are. Near possibly hostile nations you likely have early warning sensors placed outside your systems. So that 10 light year could in theory be extended by a network of sensors out to 20-30 light years. Then you have MI using psi to detect major threats like an invasion make it hard to do a large scale assault by surprised. A planet could have dozens or hundreds of clairvont actively searching for threats. A major invasion by a hostile force they may see even if they are not looking. So the time the defenders have to prepare could be hours or days.

Any sensor net you place is going to have two problems that both grow exponentially with the size of your sensor net.
- The first is cost. Someone smarter than me did the math but to cover a sphere that grows by 10 LY requires an exponential growth in number. That means for every 10 LY you push out you have platforms, personnel and maintenance. The bigger the planet the more they can afford but still an enormous investment.

- The second is information overload. If you are a big rich planet, which you would need to be to afford a net like this, then you are very likely in a busy area with lots of traffic. That means lots of information to triage and the more expensive that will get on the back end. Again, you have to decide if these CG sensor can ID a target at range but the book seems to specifically omit that so if you are thinking contact each target that is an enormous undertaking.

As for psychic detection Palladium psychics just don't seem to work that way. It is either immediate like sixth sense or vague like clairvoyance. So you have two warnings one is "your enemies mean to do you harm" or "they are about to fire a weapon from a few hundred feet away". The simple fact is that psionics will be like mundane intel, helpful but only if interpreted properly and we know forces with psychics can be surprised because it happens all the time in Rifts and Phase World.

Looking at speeds the assault shuttles are not that fast in space around mach 4, example in fleets of the three galaxies has a max speed of 6 making it the fastest assault shuttle i have seen. Larger military craft not intended to enter atmosphere are often much faster heck dreadnaughts are faster than the assault shuttles in the book. Heck the Sylor is a transport that travels at mach 10 sublight. Looking the only fast assault shuttles I see are used by the splogorth that is a raider and Nurni-audit (that is called a shuttle/small cruise)r. So in the two books I checked (phase world and fleets of three galaxies) it apears shuttles are not faster over all than carriers that are used to transport troops. (Carriers I have seen look like they are mach 6+)

Yeah the stats for speed and weapons ranges in Phase World are a joke but again the shuttles don't have to be faster than the transports there job is as a cutout to protect the transports. Assume a marine transport is close in size to a Packmaster but leans more towards troops and less to fighters. Killing a shuttle you lose less than a 100 men. Kill that transport or even just cripple it and you've killed the invasion.

Again two options:
1 - Deploy before orbital supremacy in which case the transport is a big juicy target that will draw ever attack the defense can muster because as you said take out the troops and invasion over. Shuttles work here because they can spread out the risk even if they fly as a group. Here you risk losing more troops but those troops can accomplish objectives like boarding orbital facilities or taking out planetary weapons positions (think how the Empire sent walkers to Hoth because of that shield and Ion cannon).

2 - Wait for orbital supremacy in which case you can deliver you troops on a school bus for all it matters because all they are going to do is clean up or if you lost just go home. They will be completely irrelevant to the battle you might as well have left them at home and summon them if the battle goes well.

While their are multi-roll shuttles assault shuttles are heavly armed and armored to drop troops in a hot zone. It is more of a dedicated platform. Given its slow speed compared to the carriers used as tranport, It would make more sense for the carrier to use its fighters to clear a path for it to shoot drop pods where they need to be. Drop pods would likely be less pin point than a shuttle because they would have limited controls. (shuttles could be used for places drop pods would have a hard time getting just where the need to be, unless they are as maneuverable as a shuttle, (which would lead to the question why bother with the shuttle just armor the drop pods and send them in

Again you are making a lot of assumptions here about the nature of the tech that I don't think is warranted. The pods I described are basically a CG pack with an armored shell around it. Control, like the pods of the Roughnecks or ODSTs, would likely be pretty good unless you have some sort of major incident that damages them.

As for the shuttles, they seem to be pretty versatile able to hold troops, power armor, refugees, or just cargo. If it helps think of the drop pods as just cargo they drop out the door into space.

Turn around would on a shuttle with a drop pod system in the cargo bay would include moving that system out of the way. You do carry more than just infantry in them. It would be faster for a carrier to fly to a open window and shoot the drop pods at the planet.

Again, your assumption on the shuttles are different than mine. I assume these vehicles are more advanced than modern real world aircraft not less. As for transport flying in or shooting the pods I've already covered that, again our assumptions are just different.

So while for small scale commondo raids dropping an elite team from small craft would be done, for a full scale planetary invasion it would be to slow. Planetary invasion may very well be on a clock. If you can not achieve control of the space around a planet in X hours the chances of winning drop. last thing you want is to face enemies attacking you from two sides. Planetary abilty to return fire would be limited to what 1,000 miles or less, so attackers can attack orbital assests from plantary based weapons range. So the planet has to launch things in to space to fight you. So that would be fighters and small ships, that are part of space. If you control the space they are launching ships into your kill zone allowing you to act as defenders shooting them before they get in range.

As I said I don't believe an entire invasion would be done with drop pods. I think they are likely as the opening move to seize key infrastructure and beachheads. ODSTs don't invade planets, they drop in and hit hard and fast for the regular marines to arrive with tanks, warthogs, and aircraft aboard pelican shuttles.

The more I think about this and the more I watch the Templin video and a few other sources the more I am convinced that major planetary assaults would likely go in phases. Start with individual drop pods, then go to heavy pods that carry a squad or dropped in a CG IFV, then to light or medium troop shuttles and finally the big shuttles for the final push.

Starting with your biggest, slowest, least shielded, juiciest target right down to the ground were it can't even maneuver just sounds like a recreation of the invasion of Klendathu from that horrible Starship Troopers movie.

I generally assume most forces in phase world are not using poor tactics like world war ii in hopes of wining by numbers. Although the sploogy halve no issue sacrificing minions and slaves to win, other nations would be unlikely to fight like that.

Both the Trans Galactic Empire and the Golgans are more than willing to sacrifice troops in large numbers but the tactics in WWII are not objectively bad, they succeeded after all. The tech of Phase World is designed for personal level combat so this means fighters, power armors and other more vulnerable individual vehicles. With that as part of the setting it means war is going to be messy.

The way I see drop pods vs shuttles is the difference between airassault and airborne. Shuttles being air assault dropping troops right where they need to be. Drop pods being more like airborne getting the troops to the ground as quick as safely possible, but have limited control and may suffer from drift. Basically drop pods to get down close and fast and hit them in force, shuttles to land troops right where you need them to take a key location..

To invoke Normandy again, the paratroopers(drop pods) wound up landing all over the place due to their drop 'sticks' being dispersed by imprecise navigation and local conditions. The gliders(shuttles) had slightly more control, and in the case of the units assigned to seize the Pegasus Bridge, landed almost on top fo the position. If they'd had Ospreys or copters, they WOULD have landed in top of the position, after the assault shuttles had laid down suppressive fire on the LZ.

I think it is important to point out that while the drop pod might be the spiritual successor to a paratrooper they have about as much in common as a biplane does to an F-22. True drop pods would be one way but they would be powered. Either with engines and thrusters on the pod or by shedding the pod inside the atmosphere to reveal marine with a jet or CG pack. Add to this a basic level of communications and navigation and the drop troops will mor likely then not land together if they land at all.

As for fire support, shuttles suck at this. Silverhawks (or other flying PA), IFV's, or giant robots like the Battleram would all be better options for fire support.

LOLO from helicopters and ospreys can be more accurate, but have their own risk. Airborne from normal aircraft are spread based on time it took them to jump out. Even with modern navigation the drop chalks from a normal plane are scattered as a result.

Drop Pods are not subject to the wind. Both examples I use have great control over where they land. The Roughnecks, unless they took damage coming in, always landed withing a few meters of each other. In Halo 2 the MC and ODSTs launched from the Amber onto Delta Halo landed right next to each other and they did exactly what I am talking about. Dropped in fast, took out anti-air positions, secured a beachhead, and were reinforced by Johnson arriving by Pelican with Warthogs and tanks.

A stealth insertion for recon or sabotage might use a stealth chute after atmospheric insertion but troops in the opening of an invasion are coming in noisy. And then they break out the rocket launcher. (If you didn't get that reference it is from the scene I just mention in Halo 2)

If you are getting the shuttles close to provide cover fire and stable launch platform above the target they really would not need drop pods. At that point you would use some sort of contra-grave pack, or other less bulky ways down.

I agree with this and as I said this might be my waive 2 or 3.

I am not arguing that assault shuttles do not have a role in planetary invasion but I do not think deploying drop pods from orbit is a practical use of them for a large scale invasion.

I understand that. I think our disagreement is more what the shuttles are capable of and when you would bring ground troops into the fight then drop pods in and of themselves.

You do not want drop pods to come in right on top each other do to risk to the personnel (IE you do not want to have the drop pod or solder land on earlier drop pods soldiers. so would result in more scatted so troops would need to regroup and move out. A shuttle could land and the force moves out as a group from the start, or they could deploy a group with CG packs once they enter atmosphere and they could use the CS packs to control there landing. (the biggest issue with CG packs would be if they land under fire it would require a piloting check same as jet packs.)

Covered above.

(the games planet side and planet side 2 uses drop pods to deploy at times. You have limited control and it is coming down fast.)

That is a part of that particular game. It just doesn't fit with PW CG tech. You can instantly stop with no effects on occupants so control should not be an issue.

[taalismn]

Of course, in actual practice, the abovce virtues and sins will all be brought up, the troops will be deployed with whatever's at hand, and there will be numerous catastrophes and a few shining successes, and a lot of 'well, that could have gone better, but as proportionatley the enbemy suffered more casualties than we did, we're calling it a win for our side"...and plenty of post-action analysis and blame-throwing.
Such is the nature of war.

[Blue_Lion]

be disengaged when approaching a planet. The safest distance a ship can travel at Faster Than Light (FTL) speeds is 10,000 miles ( 1 6,000 km) away from a planet (twice that is safer)

This would indicate that a gravity well simply prevents FTL in both directions (which is a common limitation in sci-fi) so any ship that travels down the well must travel up it to jump to FTL. Now I am making a lot of assumptions but the tactics here, just like you are, but I see no upside for large ships to move inside a gravity well under combat conditions unless they are a frontline combat ship or they absolutely have to.

Now you could assume one way or the other from the original book but now with Fleets it is clear that a gravity well prevents FTL travel in both directions.

This is a nice bit of chery picking.
The anti-FTL might have some grounds but, its range is fairly limited.

Now then look at the risk of using FTL while approaching a planet at less than minimal safe distance- oh you could crash into the atmosphere and be smashed to bits.

So a strong gravity well like a planet stops ships from using FTL within 60 miles of it. -That is fleets proves.
The main book state that the risk for using FTL while approaching a planet is that you crash into it. The range for the risk approaching is risk crashing into the planets atmosphere. (The distance of a gravity well from a planet would be less of hard number and more based off its gravity.) Ironically the minimal safe distance matches orbital distances from earth. Far orbit is about 20,000 miles.
The 10/20K mile range is for approaching a planet for risk of crashing into it, the only distance we know a gravity well stops travel is 60 miles.

The 10/20 does make me wonder about the accuracy of coming out of FTL.

Third, P-Drives cannot operate in an atmosphere, or even close to a planet 's atmosphere. If a P-drive is not disengaged before a ship is between 10 and 20 thousand miles ( 1 6,000 to 32,000 km) away from a planet, there is a 70% chance that the ship will plunge into the planet's atmosphere.

CG-drives, like phase drives, have to be disengaged when approaching a planet. The safest distance a
ship can travel at Faster Than Light (FTL) speeds is 10,000 miles ( 1 6,000 km) away from a planet (twice that is safer).

So the risk for the ship to crash into the atmosphere at 10,000 miles not gravity field and is written as with verbiage for approaching.
We do know that a planet like gravity field stops the use of FTL at range of 60 miles but the 10,000 mile range is for risk of crashing into a atmosphere. As their is a 70% chance it happens that is clear that the FTL can be used to approach within 10,000 miles. So it is not that FTL is does not work within 10,000 miles but if you do not turn it off before you get within 10,000 of a planet then their is a 70% you crash into the atmosphere.

Basically you could try to fly you ship FTL until you are within 60 miles of the atmosphere come out of FTL and have a 30% of surviving.

So their is no hard cap at 10,000 miles for use of FTL. A ship leaving would be hard to believe would travel backwards to crash into the atmosphere.

[Blue_Lion]

The show adromida was another show that had use of drop pods. They used unmanned drop pods to drop supplies from the capital ship to entrenched troops on the ground.

Are you talking about Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda with the Hercules guy? I mention the Highguard drop pods in the first post and they could be manned or automated.

Otherwise I couldn't find what you were talking about.

5 hours to deploy your first line of defense and deploy your QRF seams fine. How common are convoy of ships? Most legitmate transports will file flight plan in advance so legitimate convoys that are unsuspected may be quite rare.

I agree with your timeframe, what I was saying is that an attack force has the initiative so they come in with all assets at 100% readiness. All personnel rested, fed, and ready to fight. The defenders would likely have greater assets but they can't get everything ready in that initial time. Again even active units you may have forces on maneuvers around another planet, civilian shipping in vulnerable areas that need to be cleared, ships in for repair/rearm, the list goes on.

I go back to Honno Harrington and even Deep Space 9. During the Dominion War Betazed was attacked directly because 2 fleets were in transit to there posting areas and another was on maneuvers. In Honor Harrington you constantly see planetary strikes that are effective by hitting vulnerable infrastructure like construction and manufacturing stations in orbit around planets. Military Units cannot maintain 100% readiness at all times even during a war.

The Expanse also has a great example of this. Earth was able to track all of Mars' stealth nuclear attack platforms with heavy rail guns. They were able to set the tempo for the oppening of the war by deciding when to take those out. Now that went poorly in the TV series but as the attacker they still had the advantage.

This all comes back to "the best defense is a good offense" or as an instructor of mine use to say "the only real defense is offense.

As for the convoys and arrival schedules that is all a matter of your, or my, assumptions about how the system would work. It is important to remember a few things:
- The best analogy for Phase World is the age of sail with the book even saying that travel is like the 17th and 18th centuries with it taking weeks or even months to go from place to place. This means that even if you have an arrival time it would likely have a large margin. I go back to Honor Harrington books because it has the best developed economy of any fictional world I have read and freighter arrival times are usual padded by as much as 20%. Even in the Expanse where the travel is just in system the ice hauler Canterbury had a 4 day window for on-time delivery.

- Convoys are not specifically mentioned but they would almost certainly happen and the larger a system the more likely and larger the convoys would be and regardless of how common they are if they happen at all you as the attacker can use that initiative to time the attack for that opening.

Now in my games I assume customs frigates, corvettes or cutters move to intercept and scan ships as they approach but that is not in the books

10 light years from where the sensors are not from where you are. Near possibly hostile nations you likely have early warning sensors placed outside your systems. So that 10 light year could in theory be extended by a network of sensors out to 20-30 light years. Then you have MI using psi to detect major threats like an invasion make it hard to do a large scale assault by surprised. A planet could have dozens or hundreds of clairvont actively searching for threats. A major invasion by a hostile force they may see even if they are not looking. So the time the defenders have to prepare could be hours or days.

Any sensor net you place is going to have two problems that both grow exponentially with the size of your sensor net.
- The first is cost. Someone smarter than me did the math but to cover a sphere that grows by 10 LY requires an exponential growth in number. That means for every 10 LY you push out you have platforms, personnel and maintenance. The bigger the planet the more they can afford but still an enormous investment.

- The second is information overload. If you are a big rich planet, which you would need to be to afford a net like this, then you are very likely in a busy area with lots of traffic. That means lots of information to triage and the more expensive that will get on the back end. Again, you have to decide if these CG sensor can ID a target at range but the book seems to specifically omit that so if you are thinking contact each target that is an enormous undertaking.

As for psychic detection Palladium psychics just don't seem to work that way. It is either immediate like sixth sense or vague like clairvoyance. So you have two warnings one is "your enemies mean to do you harm" or "they are about to fire a weapon from a few hundred feet away". The simple fact is that psionics will be like mundane intel, helpful but only if interpreted properly and we know forces with psychics can be surprised because it happens all the time in Rifts and Phase World.

Looking at speeds the assault shuttles are not that fast in space around mach 4, example in fleets of the three galaxies has a max speed of 6 making it the fastest assault shuttle i have seen. Larger military craft not intended to enter atmosphere are often much faster heck dreadnaughts are faster than the assault shuttles in the book. Heck the Sylor is a transport that travels at mach 10 sublight. Looking the only fast assault shuttles I see are used by the splogorth that is a raider and Nurni-audit (that is called a shuttle/small cruise)r. So in the two books I checked (phase world and fleets of three galaxies) it apears shuttles are not faster over all than carriers that are used to transport troops. (Carriers I have seen look like they are mach 6+)

Yeah the stats for speed and weapons ranges in Phase World are a joke but again the shuttles don't have to be faster than the transports there job is as a cutout to protect the transports. Assume a marine transport is close in size to a Packmaster but leans more towards troops and less to fighters. Killing a shuttle you lose less than a 100 men. Kill that transport or even just cripple it and you've killed the invasion.

Again two options:
1 - Deploy before orbital supremacy in which case the transport is a big juicy target that will draw ever attack the defense can muster because as you said take out the troops and invasion over. Shuttles work here because they can spread out the risk even if they fly as a group. Here you risk losing more troops but those troops can accomplish objectives like boarding orbital facilities or taking out planetary weapons positions (think how the Empire sent walkers to Hoth because of that shield and Ion cannon).

2 - Wait for orbital supremacy in which case you can deliver you troops on a school bus for all it matters because all they are going to do is clean up or if you lost just go home. They will be completely irrelevant to the battle you might as well have left them at home and summon them if the battle goes well.

While their are multi-roll shuttles assault shuttles are heavly armed and armored to drop troops in a hot zone. It is more of a dedicated platform. Given its slow speed compared to the carriers used as tranport, It would make more sense for the carrier to use its fighters to clear a path for it to shoot drop pods where they need to be. Drop pods would likely be less pin point than a shuttle because they would have limited controls. (shuttles could be used for places drop pods would have a hard time getting just where the need to be, unless they are as maneuverable as a shuttle, (which would lead to the question why bother with the shuttle just armor the drop pods and send them in

Again you are making a lot of assumptions here about the nature of the tech that I don't think is warranted. The pods I described are basically a CG pack with an armored shell around it. Control, like the pods of the Roughnecks or ODSTs, would likely be pretty good unless you have some sort of major incident that damages them.

As for the shuttles, they seem to be pretty versatile able to hold troops, power armor, refugees, or just cargo. If it helps think of the drop pods as just cargo they drop out the door into space.

Turn around would on a shuttle with a drop pod system in the cargo bay would include moving that system out of the way. You do carry more than just infantry in them. It would be faster for a carrier to fly to a open window and shoot the drop pods at the planet.

Again, your assumption on the shuttles are different than mine. I assume these vehicles are more advanced than modern real world aircraft not less. As for transport flying in or shooting the pods I've already covered that, again our assumptions are just different.

So while for small scale commondo raids dropping an elite team from small craft would be done, for a full scale planetary invasion it would be to slow. Planetary invasion may very well be on a clock. If you can not achieve control of the space around a planet in X hours the chances of winning drop. last thing you want is to face enemies attacking you from two sides. Planetary abilty to return fire would be limited to what 1,000 miles or less, so attackers can attack orbital assests from plantary based weapons range. So the planet has to launch things in to space to fight you. So that would be fighters and small ships, that are part of space. If you control the space they are launching ships into your kill zone allowing you to act as defenders shooting them before they get in range.

As I said I don't believe an entire invasion would be done with drop pods. I think they are likely as the opening move to seize key infrastructure and beachheads. ODSTs don't invade planets, they drop in and hit hard and fast for the regular marines to arrive with tanks, warthogs, and aircraft aboard pelican shuttles.

The more I think about this and the more I watch the Templin video and a few other sources the more I am convinced that major planetary assaults would likely go in phases. Start with individual drop pods, then go to heavy pods that carry a squad or dropped in a CG IFV, then to light or medium troop shuttles and finally the big shuttles for the final push.

Starting with your biggest, slowest, least shielded, juiciest target right down to the ground were it can't even maneuver just sounds like a recreation of the invasion of Klendathu from that horrible Starship Troopers movie.

I generally assume most forces in phase world are not using poor tactics like world war ii in hopes of wining by numbers. Although the sploogy halve no issue sacrificing minions and slaves to win, other nations would be unlikely to fight like that.

Both the Trans Galactic Empire and the Golgans are more than willing to sacrifice troops in large numbers but the tactics in WWII are not objectively bad, they succeeded after all. The tech of Phase World is designed for personal level combat so this means fighters, power armors and other more vulnerable individual vehicles. With that as part of the setting it means war is going to be messy.

The way I see drop pods vs shuttles is the difference between airassault and airborne. Shuttles being air assault dropping troops right where they need to be. Drop pods being more like airborne getting the troops to the ground as quick as safely possible, but have limited control and may suffer from drift. Basically drop pods to get down close and fast and hit them in force, shuttles to land troops right where you need them to take a key location..

To invoke Normandy again, the paratroopers(drop pods) wound up landing all over the place due to their drop 'sticks' being dispersed by imprecise navigation and local conditions. The gliders(shuttles) had slightly more control, and in the case of the units assigned to seize the Pegasus Bridge, landed almost on top fo the position. If they'd had Ospreys or copters, they WOULD have landed in top of the position, after the assault shuttles had laid down suppressive fire on the LZ.

I think it is important to point out that while the drop pod might be the spiritual successor to a paratrooper they have about as much in common as a biplane does to an F-22. True drop pods would be one way but they would be powered. Either with engines and thrusters on the pod or by shedding the pod inside the atmosphere to reveal marine with a jet or CG pack. Add to this a basic level of communications and navigation and the drop troops will mor likely then not land together if they land at all.

As for fire support, shuttles suck at this. Silverhawks (or other flying PA), IFV's, or giant robots like the Battleram would all be better options for fire support.

LOLO from helicopters and ospreys can be more accurate, but have their own risk. Airborne from normal aircraft are spread based on time it took them to jump out. Even with modern navigation the drop chalks from a normal plane are scattered as a result.

Drop Pods are not subject to the wind. Both examples I use have great control over where they land. The Roughnecks, unless they took damage coming in, always landed withing a few meters of each other. In Halo 2 the MC and ODSTs launched from the Amber onto Delta Halo landed right next to each other and they did exactly what I am talking about. Dropped in fast, took out anti-air positions, secured a beachhead, and were reinforced by Johnson arriving by Pelican with Warthogs and tanks.

A stealth insertion for recon or sabotage might use a stealth chute after atmospheric insertion but troops in the opening of an invasion are coming in noisy. And then they break out the rocket launcher. (If you didn't get that reference it is from the scene I just mention in Halo 2)

If you are getting the shuttles close to provide cover fire and stable launch platform above the target they really would not need drop pods. At that point you would use some sort of contra-grave pack, or other less bulky ways down.

I agree with this and as I said this might be my waive 2 or 3.

I am not arguing that assault shuttles do not have a role in planetary invasion but I do not think deploying drop pods from orbit is a practical use of them for a large scale invasion.

I understand that. I think our disagreement is more what the shuttles are capable of and when you would bring ground troops into the fight then drop pods in and of themselves.

You do not want drop pods to come in right on top each other do to risk to the personnel (IE you do not want to have the drop pod or solder land on earlier drop pods soldiers. so would result in more scatted so troops would need to regroup and move out. A shuttle could land and the force moves out as a group from the start, or they could deploy a group with CG packs once they enter atmosphere and they could use the CS packs to control there landing. (the biggest issue with CG packs would be if they land under fire it would require a piloting check same as jet packs.)

Covered above.

(the games planet side and planet side 2 uses drop pods to deploy at times. You have limited control and it is coming down fast.)

That is a part of that particular game. It just doesn't fit with PW CG tech. You can instantly stop with no effects on occupants so control should not be an issue.

It is not a instant stop, it uses retro to slow the fall when it gets close to the ground(basically has brakes on it to land safely). But has minimal controls in directions. With CG tech to deal with the inertia of jumping to FTL I would think they could design something to reduce/deal with the force of a landing.

Sensor platforms do not have to be manned. Maintenance cost would be minimal. You can have a unmanned satellite in orbit for years scanning and sending in information on what it detects. Heck longest lasting satellite with our tech is 30 years. You could also shoot out unmanned probes drones that deploy themselves in a defense net. The idea that phase tech would not have unman sensor satellites seams beyond absurd. Given the resources of an entire empire the cost for setting up a long lasting unmanned sensor network would be trivial and key part in anti invasion defense plans with a hostile neighbor.

A 360 by 360 coverage may not be needed. Friendly systems behind you cover that way, the main thing you want early warning on is ships approaching from a known hostile empire. That would give you the coverage focus so it could be a wall of interlinking sensors along boarders.

[Warshield73]

Of course, in actual practice, the abovce virtues and sins will all be brought up, the troops will be deployed with whatever's at hand, and there will be numerous catastrophes and a few shining successes, and a lot of 'well, that could have gone better, but as proportionatley the enbemy suffered more casualties than we did, we're calling it a win for our side"...and plenty of post-action analysis and blame-throwing.
Such is the nature of war.

You invade a planet with the drop pods you have, not the drop pods you might wish for?

I think this is largely true but in a situation like the major powers of the Three Galaxies a lot of this is going to depend on the geography of the conflict. If you have all of your big troop ships deployed near the TGE border to prepare for a war but you have to invade a planet out on the fringe you might end up using a bunch of ships for troop transports that aren't intended for it.

This was unclear in the earlier books. I know many of the early authors assumed it but we know now it works coming and going.

Interdiction Field Generator: The true power of the Araneae class, and the thing that makes these ships among the most feared in the Galaxies, is the high-output Gravimetric Interdiction Field Generator. The Araneae can generate a mobile, super-heavy gravity field much like a planet’s gravity well.
The Interdiction Field prohibits the use of FTL drives within its area of effect, and can even pull an enemy ship out of FTL travel! With this field, an Araneae can “lock down” a fleet of sub-capital and capital ships in preparation for a strike from its fleet, or set ambushes for pirates or fleeing enemies.
The down side of the Interdiction Field is that it is extremely energy intensive, and draws power from all ship’s systems during times when it is operational.

Range: The Interdiction Field creates a 60 mile (96 km) sphere of influence, with the ship itself at the center. All FTL drive spacecraft within the 60 mile (96 km) diameter of influence cannot engage FTL drives.

However even in the original book the description of the actual CG drive was leaned heavily to the idea that an FTL drive simply couldn't work in a gravity well.

CG-drives, like phase drives, have to
be disengaged when approaching a planet. The safest distance a ship can travel at Faster Than Light (FTL) speeds is 10,000 miles ( 1 6,000 km) away from a planet (twice that is safer)

This would indicate that a gravity well simply prevents FTL in both directions (which is a common limitation in sci-fi) so any ship that travels down the well must travel up it to jump to FTL. Now I am making a lot of assumptions but the tactics here, just like you are, but I see no upside for large ships to move inside a gravity well under combat conditions unless they are a frontline combat ship or they absolutely have to.

be disengaged when approaching a planet. The safest distance a ship can travel at Faster Than Light (FTL) speeds is 10,000 miles ( 1 6,000 km) away from a planet (twice that is safer)

This would indicate that a gravity well simply prevents FTL in both directions (which is a common limitation in sci-fi) so any ship that travels down the well must travel up it to jump to FTL. Now I am making a lot of assumptions but the tactics here, just like you are, but I see no upside for large ships to move inside a gravity well under combat conditions unless they are a frontline combat ship or they absolutely have to.

Now you could assume one way or the other from the original book but now with Fleets it is clear that a gravity well prevents FTL travel in both directions.

This is a nice bit of chery picking.

I am not cherry picking. I gave all the facts, listed my assumptions but it is not perfectly clear in any of the books.

Now you did try to gut my quotes to eliminate some of those, I have restored them in the quote above

The anti-FTL might have some grounds but, its range is fairly limited.

Now then look at the risk of using FTL while approaching a planet at less than minimal safe distance- oh you could crash into the atmosphere and be smashed to bits.

So a strong gravity well like a planet stops ships from using FTL within 60 miles of it. -That is fleets proves.
The main book state that the risk for using FTL while approaching a planet is that you crash into it. The range for the risk approaching is risk crashing into the planets atmosphere. (The distance of a gravity well from a planet would be less of hard number and more based off its gravity.) Ironically the minimal safe distance matches orbital distances from earth. Far orbit is about 20,000 miles.
The 10/20K mile range is for approaching a planet for risk of crashing into it, the only distance we know a gravity well stops travel is 60 miles.

The 10/20 does make me wonder about the accuracy of coming out of FTL.

Third, P-Drives cannot operate in an atmosphere, or even close to a planet 's atmosphere. If a P-drive is not disengaged before a ship is between 10 and 20 thousand miles ( 1 6,000 to 32,000 km) away from a planet, there is a 70% chance that the ship will plunge into the planet's atmosphere.

CG-drives, like phase drives, have to be disengaged when approaching a planet. The safest distance a
ship can travel at Faster Than Light (FTL) speeds is 10,000 miles ( 1 6,000 km) away from a planet (twice that is safer).

So the risk for the ship to crash into the atmosphere at 10,000 miles not gravity field and is written as with verbiage for approaching.
We do know that a planet like gravity field stops the use of FTL at range of 60 miles but the 10,000 mile range is for risk of crashing into a atmosphere. As their is a 70% chance it happens that is clear that the FTL can be used to approach within 10,000 miles. So it is not that FTL is does not work within 10,000 miles but if you do not turn it off before you get within 10,000 of a planet then their is a 70% you crash into the atmosphere.

Basically you could try to fly you ship FTL until you are within 60 miles of the atmosphere come out of FTL and have a 30% of surviving.

So their is no hard cap at 10,000 miles for use of FTL. A ship leaving would be hard to believe would travel backwards to crash into the atmosphere.

The gravity well generator is described as far weaker than a planetary gravity well. Now I admit it is not perfectly clear but when you combine what is said in the original Phase World book along with what is in Fleets it is a more than fair assumption that FTL drives cannot function, coming or going, within a gravity well. The range is clearly disputable, I use the 10k miles as minimum but given the description in fleets it has to be far greater than 60 miles given how weak the gravity field is from the interdiction field is described and the relative size difference between a starship and a planet.

Crashing into an atmosphere is used in one description. If it is all about the atmosphere then the interdiction field wouldn't work. It would also mean that you could use FTL to inches away from the surface of a planetary body with no atmosphere.

Also, and I had forgotten about this because Fleets was organized by a drunken racoon on meth, but there is the following.

Similarly, the other common drive types in the Three Galaxies, Contra-Gravitonic, Phase Drive, and Rift Jump System are limited as to how close they can be to the gravity well of a planet. The average distance out is about 20,000 miles (32,000 km). So as much as an attacker might love to drop out of warp, nuke the enemy’s capital city, and speed off again, it is not going to happen.

This description says nothing about atmosphere, nothing about approaching it just says they cannot be closer than 20k miles.

I remembered altering my house rules on this based on something concrete but this is buried in fleet descriptions and not in a separate section on FTL.

It is not a instant stop, it uses retro to slow the fall when it gets close to the ground(basically has brakes on it to land safely). But has minimal controls in directions. With CG tech to deal with the inertia of jumping to FTL I would think they could design something to reduce/deal with the force of a landing.

I covered this earlier but the tech in the Three Galaxies is such that drop pods would not come in uncontrolled. They would either have limited internal control, like those pods used in Halo by ODSTs, or they would be shells that protect a marine with CG or jet pack until they are in the atmosphere at which time they.

I could see stealth recon missions that would use a stealth chute but even then a jet pack would probably be safer and more likely to evade detection.

Sensor platforms do not have to be manned. Maintenance cost would be minimal. You can have a unmanned satellite in orbit for years scanning and sending in information on what it detects. Heck longest lasting satellite with our tech is 30 years. You could also shoot out unmanned probes drones that deploy themselves in a defense net. The idea that phase tech would not have unman sensor satellites seams beyond absurd. Given the resources of an entire empire the cost for setting up a long lasting unmanned sensor network would be trivial and key part in anti invasion defense plans with a hostile neighbor.

I absolutely agree with you on this and in my home setting I have massive numbers of drones and unmanned sensor, defense, and attack platforms. But, according to Fleets there is an AI "phobia" that prevents most forces from using them.

A 360 by 360 coverage may not be needed. Friendly systems behind you cover that way, the main thing you want early warning on is ships approaching from a known hostile empire. That would give you the coverage focus so it could be a wall of interlinking sensors along boarders.

Systems that are within the 10 LY sensor limit would absolutely help with sensor coverage but even if you assume systems are as tightly packed as our local region that would likely cover as little as 10% of your arc to maybe as much as 50%. Given how systems are spread out at the least you will need to cover "above" and "below".

In my games I assume a region that has a system of 100 million plus population and the accompanying economic development would have lots of surveillance of the surrounding region even covering uninhabited systems to prevent the enemy from creating a fortified beachhead. For systems with fewer than a million, there is basically nothing and you could sneak a few demon planets right through. In between is, well in between. That said I agree with you on borders but the 3-D of space means that "above" and "below" of every system is a border.

The biggest problem with analyzing how space battles would proceed is we have no true order of battle for most and what we have for the CAF, Fleets pg. 37 is laughably small and that is described as the largest in galactic history.

38,000 capital and 386,000 sub-capital half of which is used by the Discovery Corp is a joke.

When I created an Order of Battle back in the '90's I used the U.S. Navy as a baseline. This seemed to fit with the first 3 books as the CAF seemed to have much the same politics as the US and had just come out of a war 20 years earlier.

If you do this you get a CAF (which includes support ships, discovery Corp, ready reserve and IDF's) of around 100,000 capital (I include large numbers of Battle Cruisers and CVE's in this number) and 600,000 sub-capital ships. I reduced these number in my game significantly to account for the expense (which when you compare the CAF warships are not much more expensive than "comparable" USN ships) and to include my own sub-light defense and assault ships but the fleet should still be much larger than what is listed in the book.

BTW the CCW is 23,333 times larger than the US so if you created a fleet 23,333 times larger than the US Navy it would have around 7.35 million hulls. I opted to compare number of systems to the USN.

A tax base of 7 TRILLION beings on over 5,000 planets would mean that a fleet, as described in Fleets of the Three Galaxies, would cost the average citizen around 10 credits a year. You would also need a fleet of at least a million to explore, patrol, and defend territory covering 3 galaxies but I think it is just hard to comprehend numbers this large.

[taalismn]

A tax base of 7 TRILLION beings on over 5,000 planets would mean that a fleet, as described in Fleets of the Three Galaxies, would cost the average citizen around 10 credits a year. You would also need a fleet of at least a million to explore, patrol, and defend territory covering 3 galaxies but I think it is just hard to comprehend numbers this large.

Minus those who will object to ANY of their money going to military spending, but balanced by those who think 'Hey, can I send MORE if it's going to buy guns and ships?!"(yes, I know it's rare in real life, but we're talking WARRIOR SPECIES in the CCW).

[Blue_Lion]

Of course, in actual practice, the abovce virtues and sins will all be brought up, the troops will be deployed with whatever's at hand, and there will be numerous catastrophes and a few shining successes, and a lot of 'well, that could have gone better, but as proportionatley the enbemy suffered more casualties than we did, we're calling it a win for our side"...and plenty of post-action analysis and blame-throwing.
Such is the nature of war.

You invade a planet with the drop pods you have, not the drop pods you might wish for?

I think this is largely true but in a situation like the major powers of the Three Galaxies a lot of this is going to depend on the geography of the conflict. If you have all of your big troop ships deployed near the TGE border to prepare for a war but you have to invade a planet out on the fringe you might end up using a bunch of ships for troop transports that aren't intended for it.

This was unclear in the earlier books. I know many of the early authors assumed it but we know now it works coming and going.

Interdiction Field Generator: The true power of the Araneae class, and the thing that makes these ships among the most feared in the Galaxies, is the high-output Gravimetric Interdiction Field Generator. The Araneae can generate a mobile, super-heavy gravity field much like a planet’s gravity well.
The Interdiction Field prohibits the use of FTL drives within its area of effect, and can even pull an enemy ship out of FTL travel! With this field, an Araneae can “lock down” a fleet of sub-capital and capital ships in preparation for a strike from its fleet, or set ambushes for pirates or fleeing enemies.
The down side of the Interdiction Field is that it is extremely energy intensive, and draws power from all ship’s systems during times when it is operational.

Range: The Interdiction Field creates a 60 mile (96 km) sphere of influence, with the ship itself at the center. All FTL drive spacecraft within the 60 mile (96 km) diameter of influence cannot engage FTL drives.

However even in the original book the description of the actual CG drive was leaned heavily to the idea that an FTL drive simply couldn't work in a gravity well.

CG-drives, like phase drives, have to
be disengaged when approaching a planet. The safest distance a ship can travel at Faster Than Light (FTL) speeds is 10,000 miles ( 1 6,000 km) away from a planet (twice that is safer)

This would indicate that a gravity well simply prevents FTL in both directions (which is a common limitation in sci-fi) so any ship that travels down the well must travel up it to jump to FTL. Now I am making a lot of assumptions but the tactics here, just like you are, but I see no upside for large ships to move inside a gravity well under combat conditions unless they are a frontline combat ship or they absolutely have to.

be disengaged when approaching a planet. The safest distance a ship can travel at Faster Than Light (FTL) speeds is 10,000 miles ( 1 6,000 km) away from a planet (twice that is safer)

This would indicate that a gravity well simply prevents FTL in both directions (which is a common limitation in sci-fi) so any ship that travels down the well must travel up it to jump to FTL. Now I am making a lot of assumptions but the tactics here, just like you are, but I see no upside for large ships to move inside a gravity well under combat conditions unless they are a frontline combat ship or they absolutely have to.

Now you could assume one way or the other from the original book but now with Fleets it is clear that a gravity well prevents FTL travel in both directions.

This is a nice bit of chery picking.

I am not cherry picking. I gave all the facts, listed my assumptions but it is not perfectly clear in any of the books.

Now you did try to gut my quotes to eliminate some of those, I have restored them in the quote above

The anti-FTL might have some grounds but, its range is fairly limited.

Now then look at the risk of using FTL while approaching a planet at less than minimal safe distance- oh you could crash into the atmosphere and be smashed to bits.

So a strong gravity well like a planet stops ships from using FTL within 60 miles of it. -That is fleets proves.
The main book state that the risk for using FTL while approaching a planet is that you crash into it. The range for the risk approaching is risk crashing into the planets atmosphere. (The distance of a gravity well from a planet would be less of hard number and more based off its gravity.) Ironically the minimal safe distance matches orbital distances from earth. Far orbit is about 20,000 miles.
The 10/20K mile range is for approaching a planet for risk of crashing into it, the only distance we know a gravity well stops travel is 60 miles.

The 10/20 does make me wonder about the accuracy of coming out of FTL.

Third, P-Drives cannot operate in an atmosphere, or even close to a planet 's atmosphere. If a P-drive is not disengaged before a ship is between 10 and 20 thousand miles ( 1 6,000 to 32,000 km) away from a planet, there is a 70% chance that the ship will plunge into the planet's atmosphere.

CG-drives, like phase drives, have to be disengaged when approaching a planet. The safest distance a
ship can travel at Faster Than Light (FTL) speeds is 10,000 miles ( 1 6,000 km) away from a planet (twice that is safer).

So the risk for the ship to crash into the atmosphere at 10,000 miles not gravity field and is written as with verbiage for approaching.
We do know that a planet like gravity field stops the use of FTL at range of 60 miles but the 10,000 mile range is for risk of crashing into a atmosphere. As their is a 70% chance it happens that is clear that the FTL can be used to approach within 10,000 miles. So it is not that FTL is does not work within 10,000 miles but if you do not turn it off before you get within 10,000 of a planet then their is a 70% you crash into the atmosphere.

Basically you could try to fly you ship FTL until you are within 60 miles of the atmosphere come out of FTL and have a 30% of surviving.

So their is no hard cap at 10,000 miles for use of FTL. A ship leaving would be hard to believe would travel backwards to crash into the atmosphere.

The gravity well generator is described as far weaker than a planetary gravity well. Now I admit it is not perfectly clear but when you combine what is said in the original Phase World book along with what is in Fleets it is a more than fair assumption that FTL drives cannot function, coming or going, within a gravity well. The range is clearly disputable, I use the 10k miles as minimum but given the description in fleets it has to be far greater than 60 miles given how weak the gravity field is from the interdiction field is described and the relative size difference between a starship and a planet.

Crashing into an atmosphere is used in one description. If it is all about the atmosphere then the interdiction field wouldn't work. It would also mean that you could use FTL to inches away from the surface of a planetary body with no atmosphere.

Also, and I had forgotten about this because Fleets was organized by a drunken racoon on meth, but there is the following.

Similarly, the other common drive types in the Three Galaxies, Contra-Gravitonic, Phase Drive, and Rift Jump System are limited as to how close they can be to the gravity well of a planet. The average distance out is about 20,000 miles (32,000 km). So as much as an attacker might love to drop out of warp, nuke the enemy’s capital city, and speed off again, it is not going to happen.

This description says nothing about atmosphere, nothing about approaching it just says they cannot be closer than 20k miles.

I remembered altering my house rules on this based on something concrete but this is buried in fleet descriptions and not in a separate section on FTL.

It is not a instant stop, it uses retro to slow the fall when it gets close to the ground(basically has brakes on it to land safely). But has minimal controls in directions. With CG tech to deal with the inertia of jumping to FTL I would think they could design something to reduce/deal with the force of a landing.

I covered this earlier but the tech in the Three Galaxies is such that drop pods would not come in uncontrolled. They would either have limited internal control, like those pods used in Halo by ODSTs, or they would be shells that protect a marine with CG or jet pack until they are in the atmosphere at which time they.

I could see stealth recon missions that would use a stealth chute but even then a jet pack would probably be safer and more likely to evade detection.

Sensor platforms do not have to be manned. Maintenance cost would be minimal. You can have a unmanned satellite in orbit for years scanning and sending in information on what it detects. Heck longest lasting satellite with our tech is 30 years. You could also shoot out unmanned probes drones that deploy themselves in a defense net. The idea that phase tech would not have unman sensor satellites seams beyond absurd. Given the resources of an entire empire the cost for setting up a long lasting unmanned sensor network would be trivial and key part in anti invasion defense plans with a hostile neighbor.

I absolutely agree with you on this and in my home setting I have massive numbers of drones and unmanned sensor, defense, and attack platforms. But, according to Fleets there is an AI "phobia" that prevents most forces from using them.

A 360 by 360 coverage may not be needed. Friendly systems behind you cover that way, the main thing you want early warning on is ships approaching from a known hostile empire. That would give you the coverage focus so it could be a wall of interlinking sensors along boarders.

Systems that are within the 10 LY sensor limit would absolutely help with sensor coverage but even if you assume systems are as tightly packed as our local region that would likely cover as little as 10% of your arc to maybe as much as 50%. Given how systems are spread out at the least you will need to cover "above" and "below".

In my games I assume a region that has a system of 100 million plus population and the accompanying economic development would have lots of surveillance of the surrounding region even covering uninhabited systems to prevent the enemy from creating a fortified beachhead. For systems with fewer than a million, there is basically nothing and you could sneak a few demon planets right through. In between is, well in between. That said I agree with you on borders but the 3-D of space means that "above" and "below" of every system is a border.

The biggest problem with analyzing how space battles would proceed is we have no true order of battle for most and what we have for the CAF, Fleets pg. 37 is laughably small and that is described as the largest in galactic history.

38,000 capital and 386,000 sub-capital half of which is used by the Discovery Corp is a joke.

When I created an Order of Battle back in the '90's I used the U.S. Navy as a baseline. This seemed to fit with the first 3 books as the CAF seemed to have much the same politics as the US and had just come out of a war 20 years earlier.

If you do this you get a CAF (which includes support ships, discovery Corp, ready reserve and IDF's) of around 100,000 capital (I include large numbers of Battle Cruisers and CVE's in this number) and 600,000 sub-capital ships. I reduced these number in my game significantly to account for the expense (which when you compare the CAF warships are not much more expensive than "comparable" USN ships) and to include my own sub-light defense and assault ships but the fleet should still be much larger than what is listed in the book.

BTW the CCW is 23,333 times larger than the US so if you created a fleet 23,333 times larger than the US Navy it would have around 7.35 million hulls. I opted to compare number of systems to the USN.

A tax base of 7 TRILLION beings on over 5,000 planets would mean that a fleet, as described in Fleets of the Three Galaxies, would cost the average citizen around 10 credits a year. You would also need a fleet of at least a million to explore, patrol, and defend territory covering 3 galaxies but I think it is just hard to comprehend numbers this large.

I am not disputing their is a range that FTL do not work but it is clear that is not what the 10,000 mile safety zone is. Am earth like atmosphere ends at some where around 6,000 miles, we have found that I am aware extendeds the atmosphere that out to 10,000 miles.

Simply the 10,000 mile safety limit and the disruption by gravity well are as written two separate things. Your reference to the 10,000 was for approach (sorry I missed your quote because honestly it was getting a bit unwieldy on the 20,000 range.)

The wording of the paragraph seams a little vague, does not say why the 20,000 mile range for the gravity well. I mean a literal reading could be the drive itself can not be within 20,000 miles of a planet.

We know from phase world that ships can come out of FTL at range less than 10,000 miles from a planet but 20,000 miles is the recommended safe distance.
We know that a device can stop FTL in a 60 mile range with gravity.
We do not know the details of the 20,000 mile restriction in fleets. -

Basically we know.
A-Gravity from a device can stop the use of FTL at a range of 60 miles.
B-Ships can come out of FTL at a range less than 10,000 miles of a planet. (was addressed in Phase world)
C-The recommended safe distance to come out from a planet is 20,000 miles.
D-Something with a gravity well applies at a range of 20,000 miles.



So B tells us that D can be that FTL does not work.
D and C match.
D does not actually say that FTL does not work within 20,000 miles just that their are some restrictions at that range.

So the rules never actually state that gravity stops FTL at a range of 20,000 miles but they do state that you can come out of FTL at a range less than 10,000 miles with 70% to crash and die.

The 20,000 miles in fleets has no set value beyond a general range. IE they do not say what restrictions are put on it at that range.

As gravity is the reason planets have atmosphere it could be they use the planets. It would be hard to detect atmosphere before you hit it at FTL speeds but gravity could be used to detect safe distance used to have a safety to shut off FTL they detect gravity equal to within 20,000 miles from a planet. A safety like that could be over ridden to allow an escape,(or fail) and would explain why they talk 20,000 mile restriction when we know ships can come out at less than 10,000 miles.

If all rules are true then the 20,000 mile is a safety restriction and not a hard limit.
If the 20,000 mile is a hard limit then the rule about crashing into a atmosphere when you approach withing 10,000 miles 70% of the time would not be possible as it allows 30% survival at less than 10,000 miles.

By not cherry picking one paragraph but looking at all rules to see what makes them all alighn with no conflict, it is clear that 20,000 miles is a safety restriction.

Basically the rule you are cherry picking because you are ignoring the context of the paragraph you are quoting focusing on the part that you think supports your argument. Context is talking about the defenders abilty to detect incoming fleets. -you quote mentions a restriction (that matches a defined rule we know is a safety restriction) - then says you cant just drop in nuke and run because the defenders will always have a good idea where you will drop out. IE it is not about setting a limit at range a planet stops FTL, but the difficulty of surprise attacks.

If we both agree that a drop pod has limited internal control (to reduce cost) why are you trying to make an argument about it?

The the way I see it drop pods do not have shuttle level controls and for safety come in fast then slow when close to the ground. (reduce time for defenders AA to shot them down.) So controls would be maneuvering thrusters and retro system. (given their nature I do not see people wasting resources on giving them full engines.)

[Warshield73]

A tax base of 7 TRILLION beings on over 5,000 planets would mean that a fleet, as described in Fleets of the Three Galaxies, would cost the average citizen around 10 credits a year. You would also need a fleet of at least a million to explore, patrol, and defend territory covering 3 galaxies but I think it is just hard to comprehend numbers this large.

Minus those who will object to ANY of their money going to military spending, but balanced by those who think 'Hey, can I send MORE if it's going to buy guns and ships?!"(yes, I know it's rare in real life, but we're talking WARRIOR SPECIES in the CCW).

The CCW is an alliance, as described in the books, of races and systems that were under threat from the TGE. Add to that a major war just 20 years in the past and we can assume that the politics is more of an argument between spending too much and wayyyyyyy too much on the military. That being said I think this would have a greater impact on the composition of Independent Defense Forces with less military minded races and systems going with lighter units and the more war like investing in heavier units.

I am not disputing their is a range that FTL do not work but it is clear that is not what the 10,000 mile safety zone is. Am earth like atmosphere ends at some where around 6,000 miles, we have found that I am aware extendeds the atmosphere that out to 10,000 miles.

I am not sure what you were getting at here, might want to check your wording. Yes technically the secondary layers of the atmosphere extend several thousand miles above the surface but since the ISS orbits at 250 miles and the old space shuttle never went above 330 miles you are not running into anything higher than about 100 miles. That being siad 10k miles much less 20k miles the atmosphere is not doing jack to a space ship regardless of speed.

Simply the 10,000 mile safety limit and the disruption by gravity well are as written two separate things. Your reference to the 10,000 was for approach (sorry I missed your quote because honestly it was getting a bit unwieldy on the 20,000 range.)

I agree so I am cutting everything out except the relevant passage.

The wording of the paragraph seams a little vague, does not say why the 20,000 mile range for the gravity well.

Now all the original references were highly ambiguous but this one from fleets is not at all.

Similarly, the other common drive types in the Three Galaxies, Contra-Gravitonic, Phase Drive, and Rift Jump System are limited as to how close they can be to the gravity well of a planet. The average distance out is about 20,000 miles (32,000 km). So as much as an attacker might love to drop out of warp, nuke the enemy’s capital city, and speed off again, it is not going to happen.

This quote says that it is the gravity well and that it is 20k miles out. It is clear as can be and when you combine it with the interdiction field is even clearer. Now do I wish that the author had taken the time to clearly list all the abilities and limitations of the different types of drives, yes I do. I mean prices of these drives are not even stated. If you look at the prices in DB 6 Three Galaxies pg. 132 you can put a 7 LYpH drive on a packmaster and only increase the price by 0.25%. I mean with those prices there is no reason, other then the drive being unavailable, to not put the best drive on any ship larger than a destroyer/frigate. So yes like most things in Phase world the FTL drives are poorly described and screwed up.

In this case though I think from the beginning they writers were trying to put a limit on the ability of FTL to get PCs out of trouble and as I said earlier the idea of gravity disrupting FTL is common especially for those systems that have ships traveling through realspace as opposed to hyperspace.

I mean a literal reading could be the drive itself can not be within 20,000 miles of a planet.

You could make this reference except that almost every FTL ship in the first two books can fly in an atmosphere at sub light so that interpretation doesn't pass a simple context review.

We know from phase world that ships can come out of FTL at range less than 10,000 miles from a planet but 20,000 miles is the recommended safe distance.
We know that a device can stop FTL in a 60 mile range with gravity.
We do not know the details of the 20,000 mile restriction in fleets. -

Basically we know.
A-Gravity from a device can stop the use of FTL at a range of 60 miles.
B-Ships can come out of FTL at a range less than 10,000 miles of a planet. (was addressed in Phase world)
C-The recommended safe distance to come out from a planet is 20,000 miles.
D-Something with a gravity well applies at a range of 20,000 miles.

So B tells us that D can be that FTL does not work.
D and C match.
D does not actually say that FTL does not work within 20,000 miles just that their are some restrictions at that range.

So the rules never actually state that gravity stops FTL at a range of 20,000 miles but they do state that you can come out of FTL at a range less than 10,000 miles with 70% to crash and die.

Again all other description could be considered the ambiguous but the above quote is clear.

The 20,000 miles in fleets has no set value beyond a general range. IE they do not say what restrictions are put on it at that range.

That is how game stats work. FTL has no set value beyond the speed it can travel, we have only the barest description of how it works and we know that gravity has a huge impact because when these drives leave the gravity of a galaxy they can travel at 5 times the listed speed

It has been determined that travel between galaxies is a lot faster than travel within a galaxy. It appears that the lack of massive objects in the "emptier" space between the galaxies reduces "gravity drag" and allows FTL systems to operate at 500% efficiency. An average ship can cover between 1 00 and 500 light years per day when traveling between galaxies.

What we have is a few references atmosphere that makes no sense. Why 10k miles when a ship can orbit at 200 miles. It makes no sense. On the other hand we have several mentions of how gravity effects FTL drives, the lack of it speeds them up and the presence of it stops them from working, so it seems clear this is the reason. 10k to 20k miles are arbitrary but so is most hand weapons having a range of 2,000 feet, just the value chosen.

As gravity is the reason planets have atmosphere it could be they use the planets. It would be hard to detect atmosphere before you hit it at FTL speeds but gravity could be used to detect safe distance used to have a safety to shut off FTL they detect gravity equal to within 20,000 miles from a planet. A safety like that could be over ridden to allow an escape,(or fail) and would explain why they talk 20,000 mile restriction when we know ships can come out at less than 10,000 miles.

Gravity is part of the reason planets have atmosphere, the other is a strong Van Allen belt or magnetic field. Mars has plenty of gravity to hold on to an atmosphere, it use to have a fairly thick one as near as we can tell, but its extremely weak magnetic field has allowed the solar wind to rip it away of the millennia.

Now I do agree that ships could try to FTL out sooner or try to get in closer, and in my games I actually have a chart for how deep in the well you are vs success, but that is not stated in the books. The books give a safe of 20k and drop dead limit of 10k

If all rules are true then the 20,000 mile is a safety restriction and not a hard limit.
If the 20,000 mile is a hard limit then the rule about crashing into a atmosphere when you approach withing 10,000 miles 70% of the time would not be possible as it allows 30% survival at less than 10,000 miles.

Except that is not what it says. It says 70% chance if still on at 10k miles. Does that increase with range and why would it crash into the atmosphere? I mean if I aim my ship to fly 200 miles above the planet but never in a straight line with it why would I crash? Also, it does not say that the ship is good the other 30% you are assuming it. Maybe for 20% the FTL shuts down, maybe another 10% the ship explodes before the atmosphere. You are making even more assumptions that I am about the nature of FTL in this system but you are directly contradicting at least 2 of the most clearly stated rules we have.

Also gravity is a recuring theme with FTL. It is even listed as a problem, along with ley lines, for Rift drives requiring a ship to be 5,000 to 50,000 miles away from a planet to use a rift drive.

By not cherry picking one paragraph but looking at all rules to see what makes them all alighn with no conflict, it is clear that 20,000 miles is a safety restriction.

I am not cherry picking, I am looking at every rule as written. You are the person discounting almost half of what is written on this subject.

I do believe that an atmosphere would be a problem for FTL but gravity seems to be the common limit to all of them and it is the one with the farthest exclusion range. By your reasoning an FTL ship should be able to travel to about 1 mile or less above an airless planetoid like Luna and that just doesn't seem to be the case.

Basically the rule you are cherry picking because you are ignoring the context of the paragraph you are quoting focusing on the part that you think supports your argument. Context is talking about the defenders abilty to detect incoming fleets. -you quote mentions a restriction (that matches a defined rule we know is a safety restriction) - then says you cant just drop in nuke and run because the defenders will always have a good idea where you will drop out. IE it is not about setting a limit at range a planet stops FTL, but the difficulty of surprise attacks.

It is now beyond ridiculous the way you are bending very clear paragraphs to suit your own ends.

Similarly, the other common drive types in the Three Galaxies, Contra-Gravitonic, Phase Drive, and Rift Jump System are limited as to how close they can be to the gravity well of a planet. The average distance out is about 20,000 miles (32,000 km). So as much as an attacker might love to drop out of warp, nuke the enemy’s capital city, and speed off again, it is not going to happen.

Yes the context is about dropping a nuke on a city, it is telling you why you can't do that from FTL. It even says gravity well.

If we both agree that a drop pod has limited internal control (to reduce cost) why are you trying to make an argument about it?

Some would others would not. No matter how it is set up they will have far better control than modern gliders and parachutes. Also cost would be reduced by limiting drive endurance/power systems, limiting weapons, no shields, etc. The actual controls wouldn't save much money in a setting with jet packs and CG packs.

The the way I see it drop pods do not have shuttle level controls and for safety come in fast then slow when close to the ground. (reduce time for defenders AA to shot them down.) So controls would be maneuvering thrusters and retro system. (given their nature I do not see people wasting resources on giving them full engines.)

I agree with this point, I am just saying that this, combined with advanced comm and nav systems, would give them much better accuracy than the WWII gliders and parachutes they were being compared to.

[Blue_Lion]

https://www.nationalgeographic.org/ency ... tmosphere/

So as you can see the last layer of the atmosphere for earth ends at about 6,200 miles, so earth like atmosphere would extend. Use of FTL at less than that is use of FTL in an atmosphere something that is we are told they can't do. An object can be in orbit and still inside the earths atmosphere. The atmosphere is made up of several layers, Troposphere (the layer we breath) extends up 10 miles, then stratosphere 11-31 miles, the metosphere 32-85 miles, Theorosphere (that has the Karman line that is considered the start of outer space) 86-327 miles, the last layer exosphere extends to a range of about 6,200 miles. Basically an object can be both in an atmosphere and outer-space at the same time.

What the 20K gravity restriction is, is not clear when you combine it with the rule for approaching a planet in the phase world book.

I am not bending paragraphs I am looking beyound a few lines at what is being talked about and looking at rules out side the paragraph instead of just focusing on the part that supports my stance while ignoring context. -Focusing on the part the supports your stance while ignoring context that undermines it, is cherry picking.



We have a rule that says ships can come out of FTL at range less than 10,000 miles.
A quote about 20,000 miles being safer.
A quote that mentions a restriction at at about 20,000 of a planet being restricted do to gravity well.
A quote that gravity stopping use of FTL at a range of 60 miles.


Basically - the rules never say that a FTL can not be used at a range of less than 20,000 miles do to gravity. The rules do clearly state that FTL can be used at a range of less than 10,000 miles but risk crashing into atmosphere. We are told they can not be used inside atmospheres.

Your theory that the restriction at 20,000 miles is FTL that it can not be used, conflicts wit existing rules. You never provided a clear quote that said FTL can not be used at less than 20,000 miles, just that it is restricted at less than 20,000 miles. A safety restriction at the recommended safe range for atmosphere meets the requirement for all rules to be consistent. Your theory requires a rule to be wrong.


I never compared the accuracy of drop pod to WWII parachutes, and never I talked about WWII gliders. I said the role of drop pods is like airborne, and the role of shuttles is like air assault. The only time I mentioned WWII(if I recall correct) was to point out their airborne missions where basically suicide missions because they did not first achieve control of the area. If I recall the it was your counter to that the brought in accuracy of parachutes and gliders. So it really does not address my point and seams kind of irreverent to me. Hence the reason I never addressed it.