Star League Organic Transport

[snewsom2997]

So lets say you have a Battlemech Division, 2 mech Brigades, 1 HQ/Support Brigade, 1 Armor Brigade, 1 Infantry Brigade, 1 Artillery regiment, and 1 Ground Aero Wing.

What Organic Interstellar transport assets would be included.

What % of forces would have a Dropship Cubicle, 30%, 50%, 100%?

Do you think 1 Mech Brigade would have transport, and be able to be hot dropped, but the other is cargo in a warship hold?
Or would you also expect to Hot Drop a % of Armor and Infantry as well.

The Star League had those handy dandy Lee and Fortress Class Droppers along with the Colossus.


Most everything else moved with Cargo Droppers?

[2ndAcr]

 I could see the SLDF having organic dropships to carry everything. I would expect the following:

 18 Overlords or Dictators (2 Mech Brigades)
 3 Union Dropships (Infantry Brigade Mech Battalion)
 3-4 Czar (carrying the Infantry)
 2-3 Colossus (Armor Reg, Artillery, support troops)
 3-4 Mules carrying supplies

 The Overlords, if used instead of Dictators, would carry 2 full Wings of Aerospace or 1 Wing Aerospace along with a LAM Battalion. One thing about the SLDF, they had overkill on everything.

 I would expect the Lee's to be assigned to Royal Divisions.............IMO anyway.
 
 

[Kasaga]

I could see the SLDF having organic dropships to carry everything. I would expect the following:

 18 Overlords or Dictators (2 Mech Brigades)
 3 Union Dropships (Infantry Brigade Mech Battalion)
 3-4 Czar (carrying the Infantry)
 2-3 Colossus (Armor Reg, Artillery, support troops)
 3-4 Mules carrying supplies

 The Overlords, if used instead of Dictators, would carry 2 full Wings of Aerospace or 1 Wing Aerospace along with a LAM Battalion. One thing about the SLDF, they had overkill on everything.

 I would expect the Lee's to be assigned to Royal Divisions.............IMO anyway.

First of all love your name? Are you a Dragoon?

Second I agree in some respects. But you need to push the number of Droppers up considerably.  3-4 Mules will not be enough to transport the required supplies for a Division in the field.  Granted there are most likely follow on support assets from Corps and Army but still would not be enough for first 30 days of operations.  I am about to work up a base minimum requirement of DropShips for movement of a Division.

Yes Lee would be my ideal but those were later in the history and wouldn’t have enough of them in service to justify making a list at this point.  The Overlord should have quite a few but again it was a later design. The Dictator and Colossus are for sure in the picture.  Give me twenty minutes and I will respond.

[Kasaga]

I made this a long time ago.  I hope this helps.

Just an example. 

[2ndAcr]

 Once upon a time long ago, I was in 2/2 ACR in Germany and Desert Storm. Greatest unit in the US Army, well, it was IMO, before they stripped all the tanks and brads from it.

[Kovax]

My take on it would be that the majority of a Star League invasion force would be carried by the warships.  There would also be enough droppers in the fleet to take and hold more than one LZ, with some extra redundancy beyond that.  That probably means initially landing a couple of smaller Leopards and Unions to scout and secure a LZ or two, then using a handful or more of Fortress, Overlord, and Triumph dropships to ferry the rest of the forces from orbit.  Those combat dropships would likely have their own forces already aboard, rather than pulling them from the warships' cargo holds.  Mammoths and other cargo haulers would then provide resupply, once the areas around the LZs were safe enough to keep the thinner skinned bulk cargo droppers from getting popped.

After the 1st Succession War, the number of warships is seriously reduced, and the Great Houses begin using the surviving Dropships as the primary transports, rather than mainly as shuttles from orbit to the surface after the initial landing.  The switch to using mainly commercial jumpships instead of warships for the bulk of the attack force then leads to subsequent unacceptable losses of commercial Jumpships, and eventually forces a de facto ban on attacking unarmed Jumpships, otherwise it would shut down interstellar transportation and trade completely.

[truetanker]

Your forgetting that the SLDF also used Confederate-class, Lion-class and Jumbo-class dropships.

Reason I state these is because not only were they there, they are also so many around that you could trip over them every other system you jumped into.

The Leopard replaced the Lion, the Union was a Confederate upgrade, and the Jumbo became a 2.0 aka Mule.

TT

Forgot the Aqueduct refueler, the Gazelle, the Condor and my favorite, DroST IIa.

[2ndAcr]

 I think you got that backwards, Leopard replaced Confederate, Union replaced Lion.

[truetanker]

Oops, yer right.

But I did mean well...

TT

[Kovax]

Your forgetting that the SLDF also used Confederate-class, Lion-class and Jumbo-class dropships.

I'm not forgetting them, I just didn't name those, the Fury, Seeker, or various other dropships because that's not the point.  The point is that the Star League could haul the bulk of its invasion force aboard a couple of warships, then use a relative handful of dropships to deliver all of that stuff to the planet's surface.  Of course, the dropships could, and inevitably did, hold additional units (no point in wasting the space), but the Star League wasn't LIMITED to just what the dropships could carry.  Once warships were all but annihilated in the early Succession Wars, the Successor States WERE limited to only as much as the dropships could hold.

[Kasaga]

Good point

[truetanker]

So your saying FIRST WAVE on board the droppers, SECOND WAVE on board Warships?

TT

[snewsom2997]

So your saying FIRST WAVE on board the droppers, SECOND WAVE on board Warships?

TT

That is my general take. Especially considering the size of SL Cargo Holds. Same way a WW2 higgens boats.

However you still end up needing massive numbers of collars for the more flexible smaller dropships, like the Confederate, Lion, and the Armor and Infantry Droppers, however it is the Star League

Maybe 18 Leopards/Confederates Transport 2 Battalions
Maybe 9 Unions/Lions/Fortress transport a regiment
Maybe 3 Overlords/Lee/Colossus transport a regiment
Another 6 Cargo Droppers

Figure 36 Droppers for the First Wave, mostly Mechs, get a little less than a Brigade on the ground.
2nd Wave is a Mix of Armor and Mechs, another Brigade on the Ground
3rd-Nth Wave is Armor, Infantry, and Support, the rest of the Division.

The problem I see with this is the time to unload battlemechs/vehicles as cargo, and the people on board the warships to do it, granted you have transit time, but if you are doing a high G burn you are not unpacking any cargo.

Unless you are putting several hundred cubicles in the Warship Hold. Soyals and Kyushus do this on a smaller scale, but neither are Star League ships, you are storing your extra equipment as cargo, mothballed basically.

[Kasaga]

Well think of it this way. It doesn’t have to be mothballed. How are BattleMechs and vehicles stored from Factory to Delivery at a Supply Depot. And from depot to unit garrison? Figured stored as cargo with cold reactors. Then once in the cubicle it begins the cold start procedure.  But then you have the problem of where to store the personnel from al that equipment they can’t live in the Cargo Bays.  And we all know there is not enough passenger berths on a warship to carry them. So Personnel Transport dropships are most likely required.

[truetanker]

So Personnel Transport dropships are most likely required.

So a Princess / Monarch and then there is that Lee Infantry transport that can carry " The transport variant had enough room to either carry brigade's support personnel, a Light Combat Vehicle formation, or a Regiment of Mechanized Infantry. "

TT

[R.Tempest]

 My only question would be if it is actually possible to move Mech's and vehicles from a Warship cargo bay into a dropship?
 I've always thought that the docking collar connection would allow for personnel movement and maybe a few dozen kgs. of cargo on wheeled pallets at a time. But I can't see Mech's or tanks. I don't recall anything saying that the loading doors on any dropship are connected to it's Jumpship (or Warship).
 Now, perhaps, a dropship could undock, maneuver on thrusters to a warship cargo hold door, dock to said door (clearly the artwork for the dropships doesn't show any sort of adaptable collar arrangement on the dropships so the equipment would have to be on the Warship), and have the Mech/Vee's load that way. Possibly on an extendible rail system with flatbed cars for the vehicles (for fun, imagine a Hovercraft under power in an enclosed space....in Zero-G :D), Mech's have some sort of magnetic system in their feet to allow them to walk aboard. The transferred units would then have to be secured (also in Zero-G) in the appropriate cradles, cocoon's or whatever.
 I suppose a large enough Warship might have enough internal volume to have an internal bay that could fit a dropship, like a Bastion space station.
 Overall, probably easier to have the equipment assigned to their own dropship's from the outset. An exception to this might be Mech's. No reason a Warship carrying Mech's couldn't do a combat drop from orbit, although getting the Mech's on board might be as problematic as transferring them to a Dropship.
 Now, I have been out of the loop for years and don't have all the latest books, so I may be way off base here and there may be rules that cover this I'm not aware of. Apologies to all if they are recquired.

[glitterboy2098]

hmm.. what would a typical Potemkin battlegroup include in terms of escort warships? because a  Potemkin has 25 collars..and we know the Potemkin was designed to carry the SLDF Division's around. while a Division would need more than 25 collars unless they're all packed onto some really massive dropships not yet statted, it might make sense that the ship would always have escorts, which would use their own collars towards the transport task as well.

[Liam's Ghost]

*snip*

Strategic operations page 43 specifically allows large units carried as cargo aboard one ship to be transfered to another ship that is docked with it.

[Kasaga]

Potemkin battlegroup as shown in the scenario The Void Stalkers

568th Armed Flotilla:
1x Black Lion-class CB
2x Aegis-class CA
4x Lola III-class DD
1x Potemkin-class CT

756th Transport Flotilla:
5x Monolith-class JS
18x Dictator-class DS
27x Union-class DS

Just an example.

[CVB]

Potemkin battlegroup as shown in the scenario The Void Stalkers

Where is this scenario from?

TIA!

[Kasaga]

The Void Stalkers. I’ve never know where exactly it came from. But I have the PDF.