The Expert Forum

[machievelli]

Hm, I'm a little confused by your wording.

I meant that there is no 'destroyer, support type' (With the exception of the destroyer escort class) because you sent what you had. The Destroyer escort was developed during WWII because it took only 3/4s as long to build one as it did to build a 'fleet' destroyer. Cruisers are broken down into Heavy and light, but except for people who don't know the difference, they are clearly diferentiated. In the period right before WWI they even broke them down into Scout Cruiser (Usually armed with guns of less than 6 inch caliber and almost no armor), Light, with 6 inch guns and slightly heavier armor (Difference between one inch of steel in a Scout, 2 inch to three belt armor in light cruisers) Heavy cruiser (Originally called Armored cruisers) with guns of less than 9 inch, and armor less than 5 inch, and Armored cruisers (Such as the Scharnhorst of the Graf Von Spee in WWI) with guns of about 9" and heavier armor.

 

By WWII they were finally broken down into only two classes, heavy and light, and guns standardized to 5.5-6" (The Hawkins class had 7") and 8" for heavies. The larger versions were now called Battlecruisers, and were ships of the line.

 

 

But what you are describing is unnecessary diferentation, calling it dd support, etc. That is what I was commenting on.

 

You see, of the seven 'destroyers' that protected Taffy 3 at the Battle off Samar, only three were 'destroyers' the other four were destroyer escorts

[vanir]

What I find interesting is the system described did seem to work very well for tabletop fleet combat and general RPG encounters. It was logical and explained combat capabilities among the different types of starships and cruisers of the Star Wars universe quite well.

 

I'm pretty familiar with much WW2 militaria in particular and still I find myself coming back to this simplistic tabletop system when writing SW fanfic or even sci-fi in general.

One element it describes is starship power systems and how weapons, sensors and shielding rely upon them. Bigger ships means more powerful weapons but not just due to the physical mass of the emplacements, but also the power generator requirements of a turbolaser as opposed to blaster cannon or simple lasers. How more powerful shields require much more powerful weapons to overcome.

It essentially breaks up ship to ship combat into comparisons of starship reactor capabilities.

There are speeder scale reactors.

Walker scale reactors.

Starfighter scale reactors.

Capital scale reactors.

Planetary scale reactors.

 

Therefore you can get crossovers within a type. A frigate with a starfighter scale reactor or a capital scale reactor. The shielding and energy weapon power will be scaled accordingly, so the lighter frigate can be easily assaulted by starfighters (though will still have a very sturdy hull structure and may require boarding actions or large vessels to completely eliminate). Whilst the heavier frigate is barely prone to starfighter attack (though individual systems are still vulnerable if the shields can be removed by other means), but is still small enough that it can only handle combat against something like a battlecruiser for only a very limited period alone, and probably couldn't survive a concentrated fire mission from it.

 

Within this system for example, the Imperial TIE fighter was really a walker scale vessel but it was equipped with no shields and given additional solar panels to produce starfighter class weapon and speed values. Its hull structure however is extremely fragile and hence they cannot use defensive tactics but are bound to offensive doctrine and otherwise rely upon numbers and pilot skill alone (which averages quite high).

 

Similarly capital scale weapons simply lack the power requirements to do any damage to planetary defences (including Death Star structure and shielding). Hence Vader's fleet could not bombard Hoth and all Rebel attacks on the Death Star involved chain reactions caused by internal subsystems.

 

The system also works in reverse. A capital scale weapon (turbolaser) will desintegrate a starfighter with one hit, shields and all. The only exception would be corvettes which are often starfighter scale in power outputs but have powerful enough shields to withstand a blast or two.

Some of the Millenium Falcon's modifications might be considered to include corvette class military shielding and weapons systems, and additional hull plating but this overloaded the stock light freighter reactor and required a wealth of avionics hacks and caused severe reliability issues. What this meant in game terms is that whilst the hull and shields of the Millenium Falcon were a smaller scale to the Imperial Star Destroyer turbolasers that hit it once in ESB (EpV), they had such high values that it could withstand one capital scale turbolaser blast at the cost of losing the shields on that quarter (rear facing).

 

A planetary scale weapon like the Superlaser can desintegrate any capital scale vessel similarly, with one blast at minimal power. The problem is that it is extremely difficult to target small scale vessels with larger scale weapons, as the sighting systems are designed to specifically combat equivalent scale threats. This is also why cruisers and capital ships require separate anti-starfighter screening weapons (powered by starfighter scale generators and mounted in light, fast moving emplacements), as well as their main weapon banks (powered directly by the vessels reactor core and mounted within the structure, requiring some manoeuvring for effective field targeting).

 

This element of reactor scales cannot be described with equivalence to real world sea going ships. I realise the air defence and main batteries of actual warships may represent the different scale of weapons well, but there is no equivalence to all the various scales ranging from speeders to planetary defences in the space operatic environment.

 

Hence I thought I'd add it as a possible expansion for fanfic writers whom wish to develop large scale, combined operations involving warships and vehicles of varying scales within battlefields in a simple, easy to understand system which the gameplay of WotC SW:RPG provided.

[vanir]

Shows how good my memory is...those Wizard of the Coast book references I gave are actually West End Games publications, put out some time before WotC took over StarWars RPG. Yep, gettin' old.

 

 

I thought I'd toss in something else which kinda started off in WW2 military formations. Types of troops.

 

There are infantry and shock troops.

There are light infantry, regular infantry, motorised infantry and armoured. Shock troops are usually but not always armoured (where available).

 

Light infantry can be deployed quickly. They are riflemen with machine gun companies, motorcycle companies, signals companies and mortar companies. Support firepower is light and mobile, such as recoiless guns and small anti-tank field weapons (eg. 3.7cm PaK). AA batteries are likely to be self propelled machine guns or small calibre automatic cannon. Heavy support may be in the form of armoured car battalions or in extreme cases (Soviet) scout/amphibious tanks.

Early SS formations were light infantry. Later SS-Polizei formations were light infantry (from camp guards to occupational troops). Luftwaffe infantry (fallschirmjäger) are also light infantry (being airborne). Pioneer battalions are highly specialised light infantry (engineers).

 

Regular infantry relies upon the local military doctrine. This is quite important, the military heirarchy does not expect infantry to win wars for them, they expect to do so with effective strategy and doctrine whilst it is the infantry which does the hard work to allow these things to win wars. They are the men in the trenches.

Classical doctrine is to rely upon artillery. An infantry division is based around the artillery regiment. Two opposing armies bring their artillery up and pound each other to oblivion, then when nobody knows what is going on any longer, the infantry charge. Last man standing wins.

Infantry are well equipped for extended actions. They have the full breadth of support equipment the Army has to offer, from heavy artillery to howitzers and field guns. Local support comes in the form of machine gun companies, mortar companies and field weapon batteries (ie. anti-tank guns and howitzers, 15cm calibre and smaller, typically 5cm-10.5cm). Scout companies have armoured cars and light tanks. An infantry division will usually have at least one tank battalion of MBTs (eg. T-34, Sherman or PzIII/IV). They are deployed in regions where air support is available, and air superiority is regarded as a necessary ingredient for successful surface actions so will often be fought bitterly over new battlefronts (a late realisation for the Allies in WW2).

The problem about infantry is with all their equipment and support required to function effectively, they're not the quickest deployment option around. It can take weeks to mobilise a number of infantry divisions, and years to prepare them.

 

Shock troops are an early forunner to modern special forces regiments (the other would be partisan action such as those undertaken by British SOE agents). Waffen-SS had this role early on, from Poland to the Summer Offensive of 1942 (at which time they were rotated out of action and upgraded to Panzer divisions). Soviets also used the shock troop doctrine.

Essentially shock troops are a fast deployment of soldiers equipped for close combat and limited independence. They get in fast, sow dissention and cause dissaray to allow the battlefield formations to get into a winning position. They're also used to break defensive hardpoints quickly with attrition. Morale is necessarily fanatical, in the case of the Waffen-SS via political extremism, whilst in the case of the Soviets many times convict battalions were used, forced to move forwards by "friendly fire" from behind.

Obviously the Wehrmacht appreciation of Waffen-SS was far, far different from the respect accorded them by later war American troops in Western Europe (idiots was a popular title in the early war, whilst brutal streetfights between Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS on leave in France were not uncommon...though my evidence for these assertions is anecdotal).

Shock troops are equipped with submachine guns, pistols and grenades. Support fire comes in the form of anti-tank rifles (typically 25mm penetration) and light mortar companies. Generally they're deployed into hot spots in armoured transports with heavy fire support from assault weapons (ie. SPGs like the StuG).

Hence SS Panzergrenadiers are shock troops, but not necessarily all armoured troops are used as shock troops. Wehrmacht panzergrenadiers are used to support tank warfare.

 

Motorised infantry are just regular infantry in trucks. Their (motorised) artillery is pulled by tractors (halftracks or trucks) instead of horses.

Contrary to popular impressions the vast majority of all infantry during WW2, German and otherwise was basically identical in deployment to WW1. They walked everywhere, some were on horseback and mules pulled big old howitzers on wood carriages.