[willy_principal]

i wonder...........what's the weaponry the GTVA ground forces haves........

the use laser guns like in the space?....do they use Helios-like bombs to do their air to ground strikes???

what about the marine??? and the air force???

[Pilot Of The US]

very interesting. They probably have really advanced battletanks, artillary, small arms, etc.... (kinda like in Starship troopers), and atmospheric advance fighter and bomber craft.

They might also have special concentrated planetly bombardment ships in orbit. Like when the US carpet bombed japan in WW2. I think they called it "high intensity area bombardment".

[willy_principal]

in starship troopers marines use ballistic-based weapons and tactical nukes of the size of a grenade.....like in Halo (excepto of the pocket nuke thingy)

[Pilot Of The US]

oh i thought they used lazer weapons oh well, my bad. Still those tactical nukes were cool. ok then a bit like star wars, now i know they had lazer weapons.

[NGTM-1R]

Hallfight gives you a fairly good idea what GTA (and hence probably GTVA) marine forces use. Projectile chemical-reaction weaponry. Guns, in other words, but big honkin' guns of like 20mm or more that can be fired fully automatic, from the hip, without apparent recoil. Maybe they're gyrojet weaponry, I dunno.

It's also possible that due to the fact they were conducting a boarding action on a damaged ship, they may not have been carryiing their normal weaponry for fear of accidentally punching a hole in the hull, and their normal weapons may be more powerful.

Most GTVA space fighters appear to have been designed with at least some atmospheric flight considerations such as lift, so I imagine they are used for atmospheric fighting as well. Considering the power of Helios and Cyclops bombs, I doubt they're used in an air-to-ground role.

[willy_principal]

Yes, they had...I wonder why do the baddies of star wars weared that white metal-plastic like uniform...it had no protection against laser based weapons....and those were the only weapons available...(i think)

when does Halo and StarShip Troopers, happen (in time, what year)...notice that FS2 happens around 2360....i think those also happen around those dates....

entering enemy territorry (and unknown) with mediocre weapons.............i don't think so...............i would carry twenty men and really big guns...

[Pilot Of The US]

they could use a modified version of helios specifically for air to ground combat, eg, armor piercing, frag, etc...

[willy_principal]

hmmm...may be.....
and what about the marine, the sea fleet.....?

[Pilot Of The US]

hmmmm, naval. I really dont know. maybe battleships and dropped in by a specialized spacecraft, or a spacecraft actually lands in the water does a little transformation (opening up main battery, closing bottom weapondy, shutting down engines, deploying propellors, etc...) and becomes the battleship. and just reversed the transformation when it's time to leave or is towed onto land or into the sky/space so it can transforma back.

[Kosh]

They hardly use Helios bombs in space, where they would be more useful.

I seriously doubt the GTVA has a sea force. Their ships don't have the kind of range limitations that today's planes do.

[Akalabeth Angel]

They probably wouldn't use laser weapons on any planets. Laser weapons, or plasma weapons or whatever are a bad idea because of their interaction with the atmosphere.

    More likely they'd use some advanced slug-throwing weapons, like railguns or something.

[Pilot Of The US]

what about normal chemical balliastic weapons, or a "mass driver" which works like a normal gun, exept it uses an electromagnet field to propel the bullet.  (homeworld)

[NGTM-1R]

My personal vote is for gyrojet weaponry. (Rocket-propelled projectile. Neat little idea, actually, neglible recoil. They actually exsist, too, the US Army experimented with them in the 1960s or 1970s.)

Lasers are still a possiblity in atmosphere. The range at which they would be effective would be reduced greatly, though.

The Helios and Cyclops are too powerful for atmospheric use. If you accept that the Helios is more powerful then the Harbinger (and it is, 3200 damage versus 6800), and the Harbinger's equivalency to TNT is 5000 megatons, a Harbinger is vastly more powerful then any current nuclear weapon. 10 or 15 megatons is enough to destroy a fairly large city, so one can imagine that a Harbinger or a Helios is gonna leave one helluva crater. The Cyclops is about two-thirds as powerful as a Harbinger, which makes it only slightly more manageable.

[Kosh]

The Harbinger originally was used soley for planetary warfare. That was before The Ursa came out though.....

[Carl]

it was used for planetary bombardment, a.k.a. from space. you wouldn't use it on the surface. you would die.

[Pilot Of The US]

but couldnt you just load a harbinger onto an ICBM, then you wouldnt die. or launch it from a plane/atmospheric spacecraft.

[aldo_14]

IIRC the very first command briefing describes them landing troops on a colony to fight the NTF; but when you think of the numbers, it's not all that much for an entire planet (300,000 or something?).  

I think ground fighting, etc, is fairly rare for full scale wars; you can strangle and bombard a planet from space anyways.  With the NTF, because it was a rebellion, it was possibly more necessary to capture ground cities, etc, with minimal collateral damage than (for example) the TV war.

I don't think they would have any navy, though; I can't think of a need for it, as they'd have space based carriers and possibly atmospheric 'hover-carrier' type deals to fill the role of aircraft carriers.  I'd reckon 90% of combat was in the air / upper atmosphere when trying to capture a planet.

[karajorma]

600,000. The entire US military is around 2 million (unless I'm confusing it with their prison population!) so it's a fair few.

That's a lot of troops when you consider that Deneb was a contested system rather than one under complete NTF control.

[aldo_14]

Originally posted by karajorma
600,000. The entire US military is around 2 million (unless I'm confusing it with their prison population!) so it's a fair few.

That's a lot of troops when you consider that Deneb was a contested system rather than one under complete NTF control.

600,000 for an entire planet? I think that's quite a small number.

[SadisticSid]

It's not as if these planets would have 4 billion people on them. Even if you settled a million people on them, and each couple produced 4 children in their lifetime, it would take hundreds of years to reach that number. And if you don't have that big a population then you don't have many key cities/areas of resistance, so 600k soldiers is probably enough to sieze the important bits (starports, government buildings, military bases). And then of course consider that the NTF probably has fewer or less well-equipped troops to start with.