From: stxtnt@rs733.GSFC.NASA.Gov (Nigel Tzeng)
Subject: Re: BTECH:  On artillery
Organization: Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md, USA
	<1992Nov8.025929.5629@midway.uchicago.edu>
Date: Mon, 9 Nov 1992 23:23:09 GMT

In article <1992Nov8.025929.5629@midway.uchicago.edu> arp2@ellis.uchicago.edu (andrew robert polis) writes:

>(Phil ) writes:
>>
[arty rules the battlefield]

>>And you think that artillery isn't too powerful?!?!?!?!?!?!?

>Yes!  And if the above isn't enough let's try an example using a fairly 
>standard (3050 tech) combined arms company.: (against your artillery unit)

>The company includes:
>       3 light air lances (Trident's) , 400 pts of bomb per foghter= 120
>
>       2 artillery vehicles(Chapparal')  =                           100
>
>       2 recon vehicle lances (Beagle, 3Gabriels) =                   60
>
>       1 mediem mech lance ( Rifleman, Griffin, Hermes II, Snake)    200
>
>       1 medium mech lance (Hatchetman, Nightsky, Enforcer, Wolvrene)200
>
>       1 light mech lance (Raven. Sider, Hitman, Mongoose) =         120
>								     ----
> 								      800

>   Note that the tonnage is the same as your artillery unit, and it uses only
>   units from the Technical Readouts .  

Nice unit...but the unit posted by Phil is kind of a "straw man" unit.
Take a combined arms unit that is heavy on the arty vs your standard
mech unit (say from the merc handbook) and see how well the BTech unit
does facing a lot of heavy arty.

Perhaps a more potent 800 tons would be based on a highly mobile hover
tank force...use the Maxim hover tank as your general arty
platform...ie rip out all the troop and weapons and replace with
either Arrow IVs for long range firepower or SRMs for AA cover.  Use
Scimitar/Saracen/Saladin class hover tanks with 1 gauss rifle each for
firebase security.  The unit may look like this:

air lance (your choice)         120 tons 
2 arrow IV lance                400 tons (8 Arrow IVs)
2 SAM vehicles                  100 tons (2 Maxims loaded with SRM2 or your
                                          favorite AAW weapon)
2 spotter lances (your choice)   60 tons (either savannah masters w/TAG or
                                          VTOLs etc).
1 security lance                120 tons (3 Scimitars and 15 tons of APCs w/
                                          troops or ARROW IV reloads) 

Granted this isn't what I consider a "good" force (needs more Gauss
platforms and maybe troops) but it does cruise at 8 and flank at 12 (I
think) which means that only fighters and light mechs are going to
catch up.  Hopefully the air lance should force your bombers to scrub
the mission and any leakers might be taken out by the 2 AAW vehicles.

This leaves the question of will I run out of spotters before you run
out of mechs?  Probable...there are only a dozen and they aren't all
that hard to kill.  Assume that I target the heavies/mediums and let
the light mechs go through...you then have a match up of 3 35 ton
gauss rifle armed hover tanks and 2 50 ton SRM carriers (hover) to
face 4 light mechs.  Even up odds there...say those cancel out and
destory each other (as light units are wont to do).  

The remaining question is can the 12 spotters find and target your 8
mechs before they die?  I dunno...somebody can game it out if they
like.  But the odds are I'll kill a few mechs and you won't get my
Arrow IV vehicles...

The problem here is what good is this unit?  It can't hold ground on
it's own and it can't go on the offensive on it's own.  It really
lacks sufficient direct fire capability.  Perhaps with a few hundred
tons of more gauss rifle tanks, spotters and maybe a pair of 50 ton
hover LRM carriers it could hold against 2 or 3 to 1 odds (in mechs)
on defensive.  On the offense you'll replace 1 of the arty lances with
gauss tanks.  Let the ARROW IV soften up the opposition while slamming
them at range with Gauss shots...the biggest problem is with ammo
supply.

Then again...even if it simply nullifies an opposing mech force it is
extremely potent because it frees one of your mech units up...and with
the limitations on mech production this is a very important ability.

>   -Andrew Polis


--
Nigel Tzeng
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