Psionics Prevention Measures

Also, I want to point out that wafer knowledge, sleep learning, and other science fiction learning techniques are all fine, well, and good, but if you're gonna move three Army Corps from Corridor Sector to bolster the Regina front, those troops are gonna need several months of field exercises to turn the schooling into muscle memory. And you can't do that on a transport ship or in low berth in transit.
Which means all those ships are going to be noisy as hell from all the GROPOS yomping up and down the corridors in full marching kit, and the gravity always being turned up to 1.1 G 24/7 for everybody, whether or not they are Marines.
 
I would be more worried about psions in diplomacy and spy situations than combat. If I understand things correctly psions of any significant power make a small percentage of the overall Zhodani population.

Sure they could be used in direct confrontation but movies aside there is a reason elite forces such as SF, Marine Force Recon, and SAS are not frontline troops. Scouting, guerilla warfare, hit and run, and maybe sabotage but not conventional warfare.

Dropping an elite, very expensively trained, force into a ship might work in very specific circumstances but you would need the very specifically trained force in the right place on a ship that manages to match direction precisely enough to do the teleportation and then they would need to take out the ship then escape with them knowing the destination and still matching vector.

That is a lot of risk to highly expensive troops for marginal gain. Far better to use them for surgical, carefully planned strikes or intelligence gathering. Trained psions as a military force are truly a potential game changer, but they can fall to a grunt with 6 weeks of basic training and an automatic rifle like anyone else.
Your ship's CO would know when the Zhodani are preparing to send in teleporting shock troops, when the ship begins trying to close in to within a few kilometres and match your ship's exact vector. Usually, by then, your vessel's ability to run Evade might have been compromised somewhat by either weapons fire disabling your ship's M-drive and thrusters, or through hacking.

And if they've been trying to limit your ship's ability to manoeuvre already, you'll probably have guessed their intentions long before they begin matching course and speed. In which case, feel free to have the engineer set the grav plates in critical open areas ro 20G. Clairvoyance usually can't sense the gravity in an area, so unless you have loose objects that suddenly fall to the ground at incredible speed and flatten themselves out on impact, their spotters won't know what to expect.
 
Which means all those ships are going to be noisy as hell from all the GROPOS yomping up and down the corridors in full marching kit, and the gravity always being turned up to 1.1 G 24/7 for everybody, whether or not they are Marines.
One of my biggest complaints with Traveller ship design is how designers REALLY short the troops deployed on IN ships.
Where IN enlisted get double occupancy cabins with freshers, the troops are jammed into bunk-beds like they were on a Liberty Ship in War Two, and they only have one shower and one head for a whole bay. And this is for the troops that are actually assigned to the vessel! You know, the Marine battalion that's part of the ship's company, as opposed to the 'guests' who are just being transported to a deployment zone to be dropped off.

Aboard a ship that doesn't have a flight deck [like a USN LHP Marine Assault Ship], the troops require as much interior space to work, train, maintain equipment, and recreate as the spacehands do -- ESPECIALLY if the troops are deployed with vehicles or Battle Dress. This includes briefing /class rooms, proper hygiene facilities, workshop space, ranges, armories, etc.

What's more, I don't see much of a problem with IN enlisted being put in 4-to-a-stateroom standard bunking arrangement. Senior NCOs and junior officers getting double occupancy [that is, two per stateroom] and the XO and CO being single occupants with an office. Luxury staterooms are for flag officers to get lost in so they stay out of honest spacehands' way while their trying to work.
 
Which means all those ships are going to be noisy as hell from all the GROPOS yomping up and down the corridors in full marching kit, and the gravity always being turned up to 1.1 G 24/7 for everybody, whether or not they are Marines.
Thinking about your comment, the gravity settings would really depend on how fine a set of controls you have for your anti-grav inertial compensators. I would think that would depend on TL... say at TL 9 it's the whole ship, by TL 12 it's the compartment [the space between bulkheads and deck], and by TL 14 it's by individual area ['this stateroom' or 'just the flight bay'].

Remember, the grav settings effect everyone and the higher the gravity the slower the work and the greater chance of injury.

Going back to my initial post about being in the US Army when NBC training was the focus, that training wasn't just getting the gear on in time but also WORKING with that gear on. Turning wrenches, cleaning your rifle, having to mess with optics that weren't designed to accommodate a plastic shield an inch away from your eyes, etc. Official estimates were that in a chemical environment troop efficiency was reduces by as much as 50 percent... meaning more misses at the gunnery range, longer work times, more mistakes generally. But in that environment it effects everyone equally, both us and them. Like Psionic Protection Measures, I mentally equate a High G Training Environment as that 'lower efficiency' situation. It's reasonable to presume that everyone in the Imperial services can cope with gravity in the 0.8 to 1.1 G range [aka 'Normal Grav' by the rulebook] but low-G is included in the Vacc Suit skill but high-G requires higher levels of that skill.
 
Back
Top