You would still want/need infantry to protect your re-arm, DZ, and laager points and vehicles are better guarding your support echelons.
But this ask was not about assaulting a DZ, it was about organizing a beach-head force. A command designed to hold the choke point of your supply/support lines, have the right gear, personnel, experience & a established doctrine to establish that DZ
I think there’s no difference. If you have to “establish that DZ” or “beach-head”, then you have to assault it (or be prepared to) in the initial wave(s)
My point is about phasing — the initial wave(s) is/are fundamentally different from follow-on waves. Assaulting or establishing the initial dropzone or beachhead involves different operations and unit types than maintaining or expanding it. That initial assault will likely be the highest intensity combat and riskiest operation of the campaign. It is best undertaken by mechs (and probably the heavier ones). The rules favor mechs for this both in terms of sheer survivability and in terms of combat drops. Only land the more fragile and less drop-friendly vehicles and infantry in later waves. There’s no point bringing in units suited for maintaining “supply chokepoints”, “support echelons”, and stuff like security/patrols/garrisons until the initial DZ has been established.
My other point was that, as usual in BT, the design of the units don’t reflect the kind of operations that the rules actually dictate. Ground assault dropships like the Fortress don’t focus on the units necessary to establish a DZ. They just transport a little of everything and the kitchen sink.
Honestly, even for stuff like DZ security and patrols, you’re probably better off under the rules with a network of remote sensors run from the dropship C&C’s and a force of light/medium mechs that can rapidly respond to incursions and/or quickly sweep an area with their sensors than gobs of infantry and their transports. In an ideal assault, even later waves would probably still be all mech.
Because of their inherent fragility, lack of mobility across terrain types (vehicles), and lack of speed and weapons range (infantry) under the rules, infantry and vehicles are only superior to mechs in very narrow roles like carrying big artillery pieces, clearing buildings, and moving over riverine or really broken terrain. With interstellar/interplanetary transport capability limited or at a premium, I would fill it with mechs and mechwarriors before vehicles and infantry, which would be very small force multipliers or for handling really specific circumstances.
Again, all other things being equal. BV, C-Bill, or other constraints may dictate otherwise. Expeditionary RCTs/LCTs don’t make much sense under the rules, but if you have more transport capability than mechs, then RCTs/LCTs come into their own.
And of course this doesn’t mean that infantry or vehicles can’t outnumber and take down mechs, which is what you expect the defending garrisons and militia to do. But on-world defenders don’t suffer the limitations of an assault force’s dropship/jumpship capacities, which the assault commander naturally wants to stuff with quality and that means mechs.
So the SLDF Lee class pretty much.
Definitely a good "first wave" ship among the ground landers.
Yeah, agreed. It should be put back into production somewhere(s)for later eras. But given that the game favors small unit actions, I’d also like to see a smaller version of the Lee in the canon for deploying a reinforced company of mechs in the initial assaults on smaller/lower priority/less defended DZs. Or for putting fewer eggs for the assault wave all in the same basket.
