Lead Adventure Forum
Miniatures Adventure => Future Wars => Topic started by: frontal assault on October 30, 2011, 10:59:52 AM
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I'm working on a science-fiction novel, the planned end of which is a massive space battle and planetary invasion. I'm also trying to bring this off in miniature form, simply because it strikes me as being easier to write the battle, when you can visualise the events you're describing. So I'm wondering what would be in a planetary invasion force, in terms of the initial assault forces and the following waves of reinforcements. I've already decided on Paratrooper-style forces as part of the initital assault, but given that everything has to be carried aboard ships, would it be better to go with simple infantry supported by fighters and gunships, or are tanks and walkers appropriate?
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That's a hard question if you're looking to do something different. Is it humans invading a human world? What tech level are you using? Or are there aliens involved?
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WH40k has something on this topic, if this is interesting for you...
I've already decided on Paratrooper-style forces as part of the initital assault, but given that everything has to be carried aboard ships, would it be better to go with simple infantry supported by fighters and gunships, or are tanks and walkers appropriate?
Well, D-Day wasn't done just by paratroopers, they brought also in the heavy stuff. I'd guess that a planetary assault force has its means to get their tanks from the orbit to the surface :)
(http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-oSmA3KGjUZI/TWEsdozIXfI/AAAAAAAAFoY/pl_orcNlYKI/s640/aliens-apc.jpg)
(http://www.forgeworld.co.uk/Images/Product/DefaultFW/xlarge/thawktranslr.jpg)
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Heavy bombardment from space on the larger concentrations of troops, hit stategic targets, and use smaller striketeams (drop troopers and dropships) to secure orbital and ground based docking/space stations and supply routes, then secure the 'beachheads and move planetside with the heavy ground support, and support the ground pounders with air fleet.
That's what I'd do anyway... ;)
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Heavy bombardment from space on the larger concentrations of troops, hit stategic targets, and use smaller striketeams (drop troopers and dropships) to secure orbital and ground based docking/space stations and supply routes, then secure the 'beachheads and move planetside with the heavy ground support, and support the ground pounders with air fleet.
That's what I'd do anyway... ;)
Ditto. Bombard to keep the defensive forces heads down, strike teams to capture space ports to bring in the heavy support and then Chuck Norris to take on anything too nasty for the other stuff.
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Do some research on beach landings and airborne ops in our world, and I think a lot of the ideas would apply.
For example, some recon force, be it guys who infiltrate or robotic sensors getting set would be likely (like pathfinders or the UDT guys) to confirm soil conditions and enemy dispositions for a landing, as well as to emplace 'markers' to guide in the initial assault.
First wave will have the responsibilty of securing a site for the main landing. Depending on the threat and terrain that includes clearing away all enemy assets that can influence the drop site/landing site. They'll want to be mobile, strike hard, but won't be too heavy.
You'll likely need engineers or their equivelent early on to repair any damage done to the landing site, or make hasty improvements to allow whatever is going to bring in the main force to land their gear safely.
C2 assets must get in early to organize forces as they arrive, and communicate conditions on the ground to waiting forces. Kind of like the marine's 'beach masters'.
Obviously the 'security'must extend to the orbitals and the insertion point into system.
Just some quick thoughts...
Jake
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Starship Troopers, the book that is, would be a good source of ideas.
They include men shot out of cannon at the planet, along with decoys to stop them all being splattered by flak.
Also this.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBnf1V_eiDA
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Heavy bombardment from space on the larger concentrations of troops, hit stategic targets, and use smaller striketeams (drop troopers and dropships) to secure orbital and ground based docking/space stations and supply routes, then secure the 'beachheads and move planetside with the heavy ground support, and support the ground pounders with air fleet.
That's what I'd do anyway... ;)
This was my plan as well. Looks like I may need to secure my communications network! :o
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I think the important question needs to be asked; why are they invading the planet? What strategic or military resources does it hold?
What is the enemies composition, and what is the force doing the assault's background?
All of this would have serious impact on the type and make-up of the forces committed.
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Heavy bombardment from space on the larger concentrations of troops, hit stategic targets, and use smaller striketeams (drop troopers and dropships) to secure orbital and ground based docking/space stations and supply routes, then secure the 'beachheads and move planetside with the heavy ground support, and support the ground pounders with air fleet.
That's what I'd do anyway... ;)
Yep, that about sums it up.
The above would be a general, cover-all, planetary assault force with varying amounts of each component depending on situation.
Alternatively, if you take the A.I. approach you could drop in wave after wave of robotic troops in drop pods and let them do all the hard work. They could create all the beach heads, hold them against attack and clear the areas for landing ships etc. If there are aerial drones in the mix, you have your air support and anti armour weaponry.
Failing that...if it is invasion for resources that aren't affected by viral bombardment...
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Do you not need to land some big four legged walkers, supported by small two legged scout walkers, to take out the enemies force field generator.
Beware you need to watch out for the small speeders with harpoon :o :o :o guns, that may trip your walkers :D
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Goes without saying, hence the orbital bombardment and strike teams to bring down the main shield power generators silly!
;)
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GURPS Traveller Ground Forces goes into good detail about what goes in to an orbital envelopment/invasion.
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Some fantastic ideas here. When I originally thought of what a planetary invasion would look like it was primarily the Star Wars option, namely of armies duking it out for months on end over various strategic planets. However the more I thought about how an interstellar campaign might go, the more it made me think of the U.S. Navy's campaign against the Japanese in World War Two. Basically here the planets are like those islands, you need to take them quickly and move on. Of course the way to do that, massive naval bombardment, didn't always work out, as in the case of Tarawa. In addition I see each planet being heavily defended with orbital platforms supplementing ground-based systems and whatever naval forces are stationed in the area. Therefore attacking strategy would involve fleets blasting their way though these defences, so that assault ships (or something similar, I still haven't decided on this point yet) can deploy Marines by the tens of thousands in a kind of mass paratrooper assault (though Futurama style is an amusing prospect).
I noticed Revford mentioned Starship Troopers, which along with Peace and War remains one of the two best Military Science-Fiction books I've read. However in both books, infantry is the dominant unit with fleet providing support, and given the vulnerability tanks face in urban combat, I wasn't planning on using them (this point is again still to be decided on, but if I do go with armoured support it'll probably be some sort of walker). As Therepoman pointed out, I was a little vague on some of the specifics and the reason for this is because I haven't worked out the scale of the action to my satisifaction. By this I mean the size of forces, the numbers invovled and the dominant method of warfare in the book. However amongst the things definitely decided, they will be no large scale use of automated combat units, as I really want to emphasize the human factor in the fighting. For the moment I'll be considering the points you've all made and use them to help me work out the exact makeup for this big battle. Please feel free to continue contributing ideas though.
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Much as I hate to raise the grim spectre of realism here, if the planet has a population in the billions (ie it's not a young colony or a mineral-extraction op or something) your fleet needs to have incredible/implausible amounts of life support and orbital interface capacity to even attempt an actual invasion with organic troops. Raids are easy, and even landing a large force for a land grab isn't hard - planets are big places, and there will always be a backwater zone (probably continental in size) with no effective military defenses to oppose you. Landing enough troops, equipment, and logistics infrastructure to overpower literally millions of enemies and take the whole world is much less believable. You'd need to either scrub most of the defenders with mega-kill weapons from orbit (wrecking the planet's own infrastructure and civilian populace in the process) or bring about 3x as many troops as the defender to stand a chance of success.
A more plausible (but still somewhat silly) approach would be to raid the planet months or years in advance and seed the place with von Neumann machines programmed to hide and multiply themselves until your "real" invasion arrives, perhaps conducting limited offensives themselves if discovered or if their buildup goes unusually well. You could then bring much, much smaller numbers of organic troops and their gear, with the bulk of the fighting done by the robots who are already on the ground - most of them having been built there by their ancestors. Your starship troopers and orbital support fire would be used mostly to crack enemy strongpoints that the 'bots can't handle on their own, and to coordinate the robotic combat actions for better effect. After conquest is achieved, you'd also want to shut down the combots and account for them all - no one in their right mind wants to risk rogue von Neumann killbots on the loose.
Of course, the defender can probably deploy the same type of self-replicating bots. The political costs of doing so will probably restrain him from doing so till it's clear there's a threat, by which time he may be too late - geometric progressions are hard to play catch-up on. Civilians won't be at all happy about living on a planet full of killer robots, especially after a few accidentall deaths.
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Lot of orbital bombing but what about planetary defense systems ?
If you can mount an enormous gun on a spaceship, it's got to be even easier to build some on the surface of a planet, and equally hard or easy to build some defense sattelites or stations orbiting your planet to defend it.
In the end, the most important factors will still be : difference in tech level and availability of resources and ofcourse economics.
my 2 cts.
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If the invasion is planned well in advance, you could have sleeper agents or commandos in place ready to take out key defence, power or transport stations to cause a bit of havoc and give your invading troops a better chance.
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Much as I hate to raise the grim spectre of realism here, if the planet has a population in the billions (ie it's not a young colony or a mineral-extraction op or something) your fleet needs to have incredible/implausible amounts of life support and orbital interface capacity to even attempt an actual invasion with organic troops. Raids are easy, and even landing a large force for a land grab isn't hard - planets are big places, and there will always be a backwater zone (probably continental in size) with no effective military defenses to oppose you. Landing enough troops, equipment, and logistics infrastructure to overpower literally millions of enemies and take the whole world is much less believable. You'd need to either scrub most of the defenders with mega-kill weapons from orbit (wrecking the planet's own infrastructure and civilian populace in the process) or bring about 3x as many troops as the defender to stand a chance of success.
A more plausible (but still somewhat silly) approach would be to raid the planet months or years in advance and seed the place with von Neumann machines programmed to hide and multiply themselves until your "real" invasion arrives, perhaps conducting limited offensives themselves if discovered or if their buildup goes unusually well. You could then bring much, much smaller numbers of organic troops and their gear, with the bulk of the fighting done by the robots who are already on the ground - most of them having been built there by their ancestors. Your starship troopers and orbital support fire would be used mostly to crack enemy strongpoints that the 'bots can't handle on their own, and to coordinate the robotic combat actions for better effect. After conquest is achieved, you'd also want to shut down the combots and account for them all - no one in their right mind wants to risk rogue von Neumann killbots on the loose.
Of course, the defender can probably deploy the same type of self-replicating bots. The political costs of doing so will probably restrain him from doing so till it's clear there's a threat, by which time he may be too late - geometric progressions are hard to play catch-up on. Civilians won't be at all happy about living on a planet full of killer robots, especially after a few accidentall deaths.
Some interesting points here, though as I said last night, I'm still establishing the scale. If I do go for a much larger scale, and certainly vast armies fighting each other makes for a more epic story, then I don't see why I can't have a fleet large enough to contain millions of troops. Given that not all of a planet's populace would be involved in the fighting, it seems plausible that you might have troops going after specific objectives. Additionally this would be towards the end of any battle given what's going on in space. However I don't want robots, of any kind involved, simply because from the point of view of the story, it detracts from the human experience.
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I think though no what what level of engagement, you're likely to be talking about a war that lasts for years before the last pockets of resistance are taken out. Think about D-Day and how long that took. Then there's the obvious problem with future war stuff - weapons of mass destruction - Secured the space port, well unfortunately that was mined with a huge atomic warhead - bang went your advantage.
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I think though no what what level of engagement, you're likely to be talking about a war that lasts for years before the last pockets of resistance are taken out. Think about D-Day and how long that took. Then there's the obvious problem with future war stuff - weapons of mass destruction - Secured the space port, well unfortunately that was mined with a huge atomic warhead - bang went your advantage.
This is pretty much while I'm still in the 'working things out' stage of planning. I remember when I first saw the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica, complete with Baseships nuking Caprica and I thought that's how you assault a planet. Unfortunately nukes don't allow for some of the more sublime parts of the human drama where combat is concerned, namely the emotions you get from those engaged in close-quarters fighting. I want that in the novel, so the nuke element is going to have be a little muted. Of course from a realistic point of view, if you've got loads of nukes while attacking a planet, you're going to use them.
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If you want an alternative to raining nukes from the sky, you could do the collect asteroids and drive them towards the planet trick.
Rocks fall from the sky, with infantry landers following them in.
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If you want an alternative to raining nukes from the sky, you could do the collect asteroids and drive them towards the planet trick.
Rocks fall from the sky, with infantry landers following them in.
As tempting an idea at this is, what about all the fire and dust the impacts would throw into the atmosphere? It would fighting extremely difficult if not utterly impossible.
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If you want an alternative to raining nukes from the sky, you could do the collect asteroids and drive them towards the planet trick.
Rocks fall from the sky, with infantry landers following them in.
That depends largely on whether you're trying to take the planet more or less intact or just destroy the enemy forces (ie the planet doesn't matter all that much). I see nukes/asteroids being mainly used as last ditch strategies by the defenders (ie taking out that vital captured space port) or by the offensive for neutralising large areas of threat.
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Neutron bombs.
Microwave the ba%$#rd£ and then take over.
After that it wouldnt take much.
They exist today so why not in the future?
http://www.nuclearfiles.org/menu/key-issues/nuclear-weapons/basics/neutron-bomb.htm
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To make any sort of accurate response we'd need to know more about the planet you're planning to invade. :)
Basic steps:
1) Recce from space (ideally hidden/stealthy), listen to transmissions, photograph, like a submarine in the real world
2) Recce from atmosphere (ideally hidden/stealthy), taking closer photos, monitoring more transmissions (like radar frequencies), checking out the atmosphere, temepratures, etc.
3) Sneak in recce troops (boots on the ground), like UDT, Force Recon, Spec Forces, Rangers, LURP-Ds, and so on, living on the surface and getting a sense of the operating environment (biosphere, animals, natives, etc.)
4) Strike from space to destroy anti-space weapons and any anti-air weapons they can (like a T-LAM strike) so that the orbiting force is not in danger. Recall the bugs shooting down the starships in the starship troopers movies. Want to avoid that happening.
5) Strike from the atmosphere to destroy anti-air defenses and whatever threats could lurk in the landing zones. Hit a variety of areas to keep them guessing where you actually plan to land. Could also sew minefields (could be burrowing robots or diseases with a limited lifetime, whatever).
6) Land first troops and supplies (think opening sequence of Private Ryan, before they got the tanks on the beach). Could be troops dropped via drop tubes first, with lots of chaff and explosives landing, too. Their job is to knock out whatever defenses are remaining which could be a lot if defending troops are being mobilized after the first strikes.
7) Land second wave of troops, mostly support, everything from armor and artillery to food, field hospitals, airfields, repair stations, ELINT services, and some larger command and control. Make the landing area (beach head) nice and secure for supplies to land safely. Now you have a little island cut out and you can start making a defensible base. Expect a counter-attack so you're really digging in by now.
8) Run patrols out of bases to secure the surrounding area. Aircraft, wheeled/tracked/hover land vehicles, foot patrols, etc. Build smaller bases as satellites around the larger bases, run patrols out of them. Keep supply routes open between them. The enemy may hit one and you'll want to get more troops, ammo, medical out to them safely. Enemy may actually be going for the support routed to the attacked base so the attack may just be a feint. Lots of story material here....
9) Keep feeding the bases with more troops and supplies. From here establish or maintain communications with the local gov'ts, encouraging them to accept they've been taken over. Start using local resources for your troops (think warlords in Somalia).
Weapons could be radiation, High Freq, explosive, gas, bio, whatever you like.
I hope this helps. (I really need to cut down on the video games....)
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This is pretty much while I'm still in the 'working things out' stage of planning. I remember when I first saw the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica, complete with Baseships nuking Caprica and I thought that's how you assault a planet. Unfortunately nukes don't allow for some of the more sublime parts of the human drama where combat is concerned, namely the emotions you get from those engaged in close-quarters fighting. I want that in the novel, so the nuke element is going to have be a little muted. Of course from a realistic point of view, if you've got loads of nukes while attacking a planet, you're going to use them.
What I miss so far is one option. Did no one ever think that the defending world also has space craft? If you want the nuke thing in your story, maybe you should go with boarding actions for the "human drama and emotions" in close combat. If I had the resources I would fight the enemy far away from my home turf BEFORE the bas****ds can nuke my home.
Although maybe the boarding action might be a bit overused ...
Just my humble opinion ...
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Land, moon, asteroid, and space based interception missiles.
Remember the Machinekruger (SF3D) space-suits? Looked like guys for landing on and disabling (or hacking?) orbital defense platforms. That could be a really interesting scene to write out.
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Fleet based operations to take out any enemy ships or satillites, boarding actions on any space stations.
Use strike craft on ground targets while drop ships deploy ground forces, mass infantry and armor drops. Use special forces units to take out key targets, radars and the like.
If its a full planet wide invasion your probably going to need everything, including boats if there are oceans.
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There's a FASA boardgame that's now back in print called "Prefect" and it's focused around planetary invasions with full combined arms -- space support, dropship landings, etc. Might be worth looking at for some ideas:
http://www.renegadelegion.com/addlpages/prefectpack/prefectpack.html
Also consider that you don't always have to force the beach head like D-Day -- you can't get that kind of defenses planet wide, so an invading force may very well beachhead in a lightly or undefended area. Especially if they have grav vehicles, since that gives amazing mobility.
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Once an enemy system high ground is held, outlying bases, jump point defences and insystem enemy fleet elements all captured or neutralised, then pinpoint targeting of primary system orbital defences (defence stations, highports etc, PDC's, airbases etc) by HV kinetic projectile weapons would be critical. Since these are static, they can be neutralised with some degree of accuracy. Orbiting ships can avoid incoming KEP.
Once orbits are secured, then the real invasion begins. This would be with a combination of marine strike units and ground attack aerospace vehicles which could carve out a planetfall. Once that is done, then regular army can be used to carry the battle outward from a secured area of operations.
Marine strike units would also be reinforced by carrier based fighters and ground attack boats (later ground based once a secured dirtside base was established). There would be fire support armour, APC's and artillery as well landed as well.
I would imagine that any endeavour such as planetary invasion would be a costly exercise in both materiel and troops.
But once planetary orbit is controlled, fire support from orbit would be overwhelming to any regulary ground based defenses.
For some good books, apart from those mentioned earlier.
Lost Fleet series - Jack Campbell
13th Spaceborne - Rick Shelley
Starfist series - David Sherman and Dan Cragg
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Actually, on the overwhelming orbital bombardment issue, I'm not so sure.
You still have to gain superiority of force with that. There are lots of cases in history where naval vessels could not gain superiority over fixed defenses, so needed to land their troops away from those areas, to avoid being shot up/sunk. I imagine the same applies to orbital combat, and probably even more so if the planet has armed defense satellites protecting it.
For me, it's a mix of Grav Tanks, Drop Troops, Drop Ships, infantry and heavy vehicles landed by shuttles, dropships, and larger landing craft/ships, orbital bombardments, spacefighters with atmospheric capabilities, etc.
Whenever possible, troops and forces will be landed away from strongly defended areas, and then moved in overland to the attack, but in some cases, they may also need to land in hot zones, due to: the value of the target; urgency in completing an operation; chance of enemy reinforcements showing up from on the planet, in the solar system, or from nearby stellar regions; etc.
In some cases, the Grav Tanks and IFV's/APC's may drop in on the planet independently, from orbit (like swimming tanks and LVT's in WWII), and in other cases they will be brought down to the planet's surface for offloading there, by other vessels.