Small Craft and Marines

[Sigtrygg]

The quote from the wiki is largely a summation of the info in GT: Ground Forces.

Yes, and I don't agree with GT GF.

The Imperial Army is equal in status to the Imperial Navy and is classed as one of the three major services of the Imperium.

 

[Sigtrygg]

From the History of Traveller:

The Travellers’ Digest #8 (1987), published in February 1987,
featured the first hint that changes were coming to the well-loved
Traveller RPG. In that issue’s editorial Joe D. Fugate Sr. and Gary
L. Thomas revealed that DGP had received a commission to produce
a new edition of the game, focused on ‘reordering material to make
it easier … to use’, bringing together ‘more than 10 years of rules
and adventures’. Only the promise of ‘significant new material’
hinted that the new edition, which would eventually be released as
‘MegaTraveller’, would be more than just a repackaging.

While DGP was working on a new set of rules, GDW

GDW had designed this new ‘Rebellion’ era for the Third Imperium
in order to create a setting that had more room for adventure

entirety of the MegaTraveller rules had to be retyped after DGP
submitted them to GDW.

DGP wrote the three MT core rule books, Rebellion is a follow up book, as are Referee's Companion and COACC

GDW sought help from other organisations. Rebellion Sourcebook was supported
by HIWG (a major fandom organisation that we will soon meet) and
Referee’s Companion by DGP. Finally, COACC was largely the work
of freelancer Terry McInnes,

 

[Sigtrygg]

Actually the Rebellion Source Book is core MegaTraveller book and despite the rumors the core books were not written by DGP.

As my post above shows, this is just wrong.
DGP wrote the three core rule books, while the Rebellion Source Book came along much later and was never included in the boxed set.

 

[tytalan]

From the History of Traveller:








DGP wrote the three MT core rule books, Rebellion is a follow up book, as are Referee's Companion and COACC

From Marc Miller Wikipedia
“
While at GDW, Miller designed a total of 74 games and products, with an average of one every four months, including Imperium; and, co-designed MegaTraveller and 2300 AD.[citation needed]

Miller wrote a letter to the company Digest Group Publications (DGP), in 1987 asking them to help GDW make the large amount of published material for Traveller more accessible, which resulted in the second edition of the game known as MegaTraveller.[1]: 204  DGP produced considerable work that went unused, and since 1996, Miller has forbidden his licensees from referencing the unpublished DGP material because of his concerns over copyright issues”
Funny Marc is listed as co-designer and that’s according to Marc or are you calling him a liar? Also Credits Rebellion Source Design Marc W Miller and Marc has Always made sure that he didn’t take credit for others work. I’m sure you know better than Marc who wrote what

 

[tytalan]

Rebellion Source Book “The History of the Imperium Working Group (HIWG) is a support organization dedicated to exploring the future history of the Imperium and ramifications of the Rebellion on that history. SOME OF THE INFORMATION IN THIS SOURCEBOOK IS BASED ON HIWG’s WORK. Special thanks are due to Ed Edward’s, Mike Mike’s, Gregg Giles and Jefferson Swycaffer.” Some of the information is not the same as writing it.

 

[tytalan]

The DGP book all have their label on the in addition to or replacing GDWs. The Core books and the Rebellion Sourcebook have only GDWs label on them. Also considering the Traveller Digest was actually written by DGP it’s not exactly a reliable source for this since it was in their best interest to make their contribution as great as they could. So your source is hardly reliable.

 

[Sigtrygg]

I take it you haven't read The History of Traveller from which I took the quotes.

You are wrong and the wikipedia entry is incorrect.

DGP wrote the three MT core rulebooks. They sent then to GDW who copied they to their computers and published them.

Don't have to take my word for it, the official history is available, which I quoted.

 

[tytalan]

I take it you haven't read The History of Traveller from which I took the quotes.

You are wrong and the wikipedia entry is incorrect.

DGP wrote the three MT core rulebooks. They sent then to GDW who copied they to their computers and published them.

Don't have to take my word for it, the official history is available, which I quoted.

You quoted a article in a magazine produced by DGP that’s not exactly a reliable come up with a source more reliable than Marc

 

[Sigtrygg]

I quoted what is printed in this:

This is Free Trader Beowulf

This is Free Trader Beowulf, calling anyone … Mayday, Mayday. A box emblazoned with those words went on sale for the first time on July 22, 1977, at the Origins III Game Fair, heralding the advent of the Traveller roleplaying game from GDW. It wasn’t the first science-fiction roleplaying game...

www.mongoosepublishing.com

Marc didn't write his wikipedia entry. Someone really needs to go back and edit it to correct the mistakes.

 

[tytalan]

Back to the original topic. The venter 2000 dt class assault ship is probably the best example of a marine landing craft. Designed to carry 4 platoons of troops and having good support weapons but lacks jump drive it’s a battle raider landing craft.

 

[Sigtrygg]

A1 Kinunir - pdf now available on the Mongoose website - has an Imperial Star Marine platoons onboard. It is broken down into squads:

The Marine contingent aboard a battle cruiser performs several functions, from
interior security troops and the ship's land battle forces, to manning of at least one
turret in space combat.

Command Section: This section contains the force commander and unit senior
NCO, plus two troopers. In on-planet operations, this section is assigned the air/raft

An air/raft - nope that needs to be updated.

First Squad- Boarding Party: This 10-man section is tactically oriented to deep
space and vacuum work. It can man the ship's pinnace (with a boarding party, plus
provide a pilot and gunner), but generally provides interior security for the ship.
Of those individuals marked with asterisks for duty or battle station, two will
always be standing guard at the vertical shafts leading to the bridge
All individuals have skills of Combat Rifleman-I, Zero-G-Combat-l , and Vacc-1
in addition to their other skills

Here we see the bread and butter of Marines as ship's troops.

Second Squad- Jump Troopers: This 10 man squad is intended for free-fall
(from orbit) assault of planetary surfaces using individual reentry capsules.
All individuals in this unit have skills of Combat Rifleman-1, Battle Dress-1,
and High Energy Weapon-1

Starship Troo[pers has a lot to answer for...

Third Squad- Grav Troops: This unit is ordinary mechanized marine infantry,
transported in a grav armored personnel carrier (APC).

This lot may as well be in the Imperial Army

 

[collins355]

Back to the original topic. The venter 2000 dt class assault ship is probably the best example of a marine landing craft. Designed to carry 4 platoons of troops and having good support weapons but lacks jump drive it’s a battle raider landing craft.

Which book gives this detail, please?
Four platoons would be a non-standard size for an Imperial Marine company.
Venter is the name of the illustrator of CT/SMC cover as far as I know.

 

[Condottiere]

Combined arms.

Though massive firepower, at the expense of sufficient gorillas, is sometimes a bad thing, despite how good it looks on paper.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

Which book gives this detail, please?

https://wiki.travellerrpg.com/Venters_class_Assault_Ship

 

[collins355]

https://wiki.travellerrpg.com/Venters_class_Assault_Ship

Oh right, so it is fanmade. I do recall the long debate we had on the TML regarding that vessel on the cover of SMC. Some argued it was a pinnace or gig given the size of the door and the turret.

 

[tytalan]

Oh right, so it is fanmade. I do recall the long debate we had on the TML regarding that vessel on the cover of SMC. Some argued it was a pinnace or gig given the size of the door and the turret.

Actually it’s on the cover of the Spinward marches Campaign and the unit size is the size of is the size of the 4518th Lift Infantry Regiment so not Fanmade or at least only partly fanmade the art was specifically on a Traveller cover and the unit size was from inside the book. Also the authors are respected members and contributors to the wiki. Details like the fact it doesn’t have jump are from SMC

 

[tytalan]

So as I was saying the venters is probably a good baseline to work with. With that in mind a marine lift company (probably the most common) consists of 4 platoons and each platoon consists of 6 sections each Section consisting of 10 Trooper a Grav APC with Driver and Gunner. If you want to break it down more a section consists of two fire teams each lead by a Lance Corporal/Corporal. This translates to 12x6x4 288 troopers a Captain and a Sargent (the platoons would have a Lieutenant and a Lance Sargent/Corporal which would replace the Lance Corporals/Corporals in one section) and 24 APCs. So any assault ship is going to probably be built around carrying and supporting this. Also since a Armored Company also consists of 24 Tanks the Assault ship would probably also be designed to carry a Armored Company with the extra space which would normally be troop barracks being changed to maintenance and armored support (probably designed to be easily converted). So we are easily looking at 3000 to 4000 dt without jump drive (The battle Raider concept makes sense for these)

 

[Condottiere]

At the high end, you could assume that a Marine regiment is a reinforced brigade, run by a full bird colonel.