PGMP, FGMP and Battledress

[Sevya]

I believe you are vastly overestimating the lasting effects of nuclear weapons in the Traveller Universe. Couple this with with underestimating the amount of damage that "conventional" weapons can cause.

And really what is the difference between a 1000 kilo conventional bomb and .001 kt clean nuke? Other than the nuke is 1% the size of the bomb.

Which is a force multiplier in the Marines favor.

This is getting off topic. The original question was what the standard squad support weapon for the Imperial Marines traditionally is. I just looked it up in CT Mercenary and it is no type of tac missile. Those begin to be phased out after TL 11. The Imperial Marines usually use FGMP-15's for squad support weapons.

On the topic of the general issue of nuclear weapons, I am willing to agree to disagree with you.

H. Beam Piper.

Thank you. I will look him up.

Sevya

 

[Infojunky]

I believe you are vastly overestimating the lasting effects of nuclear weapons in the Traveller Universe. Couple this with with underestimating the amount of damage that "conventional" weapons can cause.

And really what is the difference between a 1000 kilo conventional bomb and .001 kt clean nuke? Other than the nuke is 1% the size of the bomb.

Which is a force multiplier in the Marines favor.

This is getting off topic. The original question was what the standard squad support weapon for the Imperial Marines traditionally is. I just looked it up in CT Mercenary and it is no type of tac missile. Those begin to be phased out after TL 11. The Imperial Marines usually use FGMP-15's for squad support weapons.

This came out in later publications, starting with Striker.

H. Beam Piper.

Thank you. I will look him up.

Sevya

 

[Dave Chase]

Transport and mobile indirect fire.

No matter how much a Battlesuit can carry, it can never carry enough of the heavy fire power stuff.
The mobile indirect fire could also be overhead (airsupport or space support). It would only be used in limited amounts because if you are sending in Battlesuits it because you are wanting to keep the terrain not rearrange it.

Transport though not true fire support is important because of resupplying the suits, bringing in more personnel and taking out those wounded.
To include moving the suits faster to hot spots to keep the action going.

Dave Chase

 

[Stofsk]

My personal dislike for the massive weapons shift with battledress is the immediate reduction in the value of armor. Even TL 14 battledress might as well be cardboard when FGMPs start showing up. And forget cover--that thing will go right through your pansy concrete wall. It's a switch from something resembling Black Hawk Down with cool SFX to some anime show about giant robots and their plasma cannons.

Correction - anime shows will have giant robots fighting each other in hand to hand or with laser swords, because that's clearly the most superior way to fight wars.

Battledress is supposed to be the final word when it comes to fighting battles. Black Hawk Down was about a small group of modern special forces against ragtag militias who weren't as disciplined or as well-equipped.

Battledress can be defeated by TL6-9 rocket launchers btw. The higher TL will give a bigger chance. You can even use PGMPs without battledress, and that can make short work of them too.

It also hardens the line between military and non-military characters--non military characters simply can not compete with characters equipped to a military standard. TL 13 and below, they can compete (very badly, probably, but they still can), but at TL 14+, there simply isn't any way your players can blast their way through the stormtroopers to get to the Millennium Falcon, because the stormtroopers do 16d6 damage per shot and have protection 18 armor.

First of all, stormtroopers are wearing the equivalent of combat armour, not battledress. There is an equivalent to battledress in Star Wars, but those units were utilised as shock and awe units - not unlike what I think the intended role of battledress is supposed to be in Traveller.

Secondly you could try other methods of getting past them. As I said above, one good hit from a rocket launcher or PGMP will defeat Battledress.

In 90% of adventures, the PCs will PO someone important who happens to control battledress troops (mine will, anyway). Having it end in TPK by fusion fire is semi-fun exactly once. Even then, it's iffy.
The problem is making powered armor cool and useful without making it an instant death machine, if you ask me. My technique is simply to play in a lower TL traveller, where battledress is for shock troops and heavy infantry, and everyone else wears combat armor. This probably isn't going to be suitable for everyone, though.

Better limiting factor is expense. The highest TL combat armour costs just a bit over half a million credits. TL11 is 200K credits, TL12 is 300K credits, and TL 14 is 600K credits. All of these are well under what Battledress costs, which is between 2 million to 3.5 million.

It doesn't take a genius to figure out that you can arm and equip more marines in combat armour than you can with battledress. This reserves the battledress units to specialist roles and ships that are dedicated hard target assaults. Every other ship just has marines with combat armour and gauss rifles, and are more like the stormtroopers from Star Wars or marines from Aliens.

 

[StephenT]

Maybe they don't care about public opinion, but the Imperial government does care about economic damage, even if the marine on the ground does not.

The thing is, though - it's the Imperial Army that carries out the police actions and counter-insurgency ops and conventional campaigns, where avoiding collateral damage and civilian casualties is important.

The Imperial Marines are different. They're the Emperor's hammer. They only get called in when things are spiralling rapidly down the tube - and more often, they're not called in at all. A simple threat that they might get called in is often enough to force people to start negotiating. If they do have to engage, then the Marines come in full bore: battledress, FGMPs, tactical nukes and orbital bombardment and the most deadly weapon of all - recordings of bagpipe music played over the radio. :shock:

 

[Infojunky]

Maybe they don't care about public opinion, but the Imperial government does care about economic damage, even if the marine on the ground does not.

The thing is, though - it's the Imperial Army that carries out the police actions and counter-insurgency ops and conventional campaigns, where avoiding collateral damage and civilian casualties is important.

The Imperial Marines are different. They're the Emperor's hammer. They only get called in when things are spiralling rapidly down the tube - and more often, they're not called in at all. A simple threat that they might get called in is often enough to force people to start negotiating. If they do have to engage, then the Marines come in full bore: battledress, FGMPs, tactical nukes and orbital bombardment and the most deadly weapon of all - recordings of bagpipe music played over the radio. :shock:

That was a much better explanation than I could write. Thank you.

 

[The Chef]

Battledressed marines are the first in on a planetfall, outnumbered, surrounded, but with enough firepower to even the odds...

once a beachhead has been established they will succeed their role to followup units and act as a rapid reaction force for areas of stiff resistance.

They are not front line troops in the way modern marines are... they are the embodyment of shock and awe.

one thing bothers me though.. if combat armour is more common, why doesn't the army get vacc suit (unless its an event)???

 

[Vile]

One thing bothers me though.. if combat armour is more common, why doesn't the army get vacc suit (unless its an event)???

This is one thing I've had to house-rule in every iteration of the Traveller game. I wouldn't equip normal troops with combat armour, because it's an armoured vacc suit. There's no need for it unless they're in a vacuum environment. There should be a step between the combat environment suit (wait, do we still have that in MGT?) and combat armour, which is what army-types should be wearing. Top-of-the-line unpowered protection for atomic, bacteriological and chemical warfare - the ABC warrior! :wink:

 

[ShadowDrake]

Correction - anime shows will have giant robots fighting each other in hand to hand or with laser swords, because that's clearly the most superior way to fight wars.

Haha. True.

Battledress is supposed to be the final word when it comes to fighting battles. Black Hawk Down was about a small group of modern special forces against ragtag militias who weren't as disciplined or as well-equipped.

I was simply making a war movie example, the first thing that jumped to mind was BHD. What I meant was, fighting in combat armor is more like warfare as we know it today, with small arms being dangerous (though less so), cover being useful, etc, etc. For example, the plot of, say, We Were Soldiers could remain largely unchanged if the US troops had combat armor and flew around in dropships, while fighting enemies with lower but still lethal tech.

Battledress can be defeated by TL6-9 rocket launchers btw. The higher TL will give a bigger chance. You can even use PGMPs without battledress, and that can make short work of them too.

Oh, I know. And it pushes BD troops from "heavily armored infantry" to "light vehicle". Which is fine. My problem is simply the amount of battledress (which we'll address below)

First of all, stormtroopers are wearing the equivalent of combat armour, not battledress. There is an equivalent to battledress in Star Wars, but those units were utilised as shock and awe units - not unlike what I think the intended role of battledress is supposed to be in Traveller.

What I meant was, the players become useless against regular infantry unless they too are packing major heat, so to speak. But see below...

Better limiting factor is expense. The highest TL combat armour costs just a bit over half a million credits. TL11 is 200K credits, TL12 is 300K credits, and TL 14 is 600K credits. All of these are well under what Battledress costs, which is between 2 million to 3.5 million.

It doesn't take a genius to figure out that you can arm and equip more marines in combat armour than you can with battledress. This reserves the battledress units to specialist roles and ships that are dedicated hard target assaults. Every other ship just has marines with combat armour and gauss rifles, and are more like the stormtroopers from Star Wars or marines from Aliens.

Here we pretty much agree. Actually, I think we agree thoughout the post, just in a confusing and contradictory fashion. IMTU, a company of troops will have a squad of BD troops for heavy support. Special teams will be given light (commando?) BD for missions that require it. Most troops have combat armor and a gauss rifle.

 

[The Chef]

One thing bothers me though.. if combat armour is more common, why doesn't the army get vacc suit (unless its an event)???

This is one thing I've had to house-rule in every iteration of the Traveller game. I wouldn't equip normal troops with combat armour, because it's an armoured vacc suit. There's no need for it unless they're in a vacuum environment. There should be a step between the combat environment suit (wait, do we still have that in MGT?) and combat armour, which is what army-types should be wearing. Top-of-the-line unpowered protection for atomic, bacteriological and chemical warfare - the ABC warrior! :wink:

i thought that was what combat armour was... a full body sealed environment. and modern soldiers are trained on sealed environments now so it would make that in the future with tainted atmospheres, chemical/biological weapons the threat of nuclear strikes, space combat, all those energy weapons that give you rad dosage that the common grunt on the ground would have a full enclosed suit to stop their squishy bits from getting squished...

and besides no government could afford not to arm their troops with the best equipment possible.

 

[Vile]

What I mean is that the Army should rarely see space combat (unless they are stationed on a vacuum planet). So their armour, though sealed, need not be space-proof.

 

[Sevya]

Perhaps a boarding vacc suit or poly carapace armor, both in Mercenary and the Central Supply Catalogue, would come closer.

Sevya

 

[Sevya]

A question I have on this still is: What makes for an effective assault rifle against battle dress or combat armor?

Sevya

 

[dreamingbadger]

A question I have on this still is: What makes for an effective assault rifle against battle dress or combat armor?

Sevya

DSAP Ammo from CSC works quite well in the Heavy ACR (4d6) ignores 8points of Armour with DSAP rounds... and an average of 13 points of damage per round or HEAP 5d6 ignores 5 armour and averages 18.5 points of damager per round (practcally they are both about the same on the average, though the HEAP round has a larger damage potential).