Traveller Marine comparsions
Moderator: NecronLord
Traveller Marine comparsions
How does The assualt Marines of the Traveller universe compared to Stormtroopers/Clonetroopers, Space Marines of WH40K. The General impression I got was that overall was fairly close, but they are the only one in which tactical nukes are given to every soldier.
"a single death is a tragedy, a million deaths are a statistic"-Joseph Stalin
"No plan survives contact with the enemy"-Helmuth Von Moltke
"Women prefer stories about one person dying slowly. Men prefer stories of many people dying quickly."-Niles from Frasier.
"No plan survives contact with the enemy"-Helmuth Von Moltke
"Women prefer stories about one person dying slowly. Men prefer stories of many people dying quickly."-Niles from Frasier.
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Eleventh Century Remnant
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If you think making sense out of game mechanics is a futile exercise, consider the fun of trying to make sense out of something from a game that has been through five companies and seven major system revisions...
That said, we can run off the background and what that tells us.
In the Third Imperium, the Marines play a rather special and not directly comparable role. We are talking about a state with closed borders here, and that one that allows it's subcomponent states considerable autonomy, to the extent of declaring war on each other.
Mercenary activity is rife, technological development far from even across parts of the Imperium, so they can have the asymmetry they need to work well, and inter- company and interplanetary warfare provides a very fertile field for mercs.
The Marines are the hammer that the Imperium drops when things get out of hand.
They wear full sealed, armoured and artificial musculature assisted armour, whose performance relative and absolute has varied wildly- from "50% more effective than Kevlar" to "1500mm RHA Equivalent"- but the design intent was to resist all available small arms, and be crackable by anti-armour weapons only.
The powerplant states for this has also fluctuated from full scale 'hot' fusion through muon-catalysed to RTG to advanced batteries. T4 and GT, muon catalysed giving power to the motive system in the 0.1 to 0.5MW range, most of which is necessary to carry the armour. Contragrav flight packs exist, speeds in the 100-200km/h range.
One area they do score well in is sensor gear- again this varies from version to version, the depiction is not remotely consistent, but broad spectrum passive electromagnetic is there for most versions, with ranges spanning from not much beyond assault rifle range to tens of kilometres.
The other really big problem for comparison purposes is that Traveller made very heavy use of plasma weapons. It seemed to consider them as something close kin to a shaped charge jet that somehow could hold itself together over long distance, but it definitely considered them practical, and almost all direct fire vehicle and antivehicle weapons were plasma based.
(Apart from the Zhodani Z80 main battle tank, which had a starship-grade laser turret, and sensors with a range of clarity of approximately one percent of it's effective range in atmosphere. Who said it all made sense?)
Their performance has varied even more spectacularly from version to version than the armour's, but splitting the difference between TNE, T4 and GT, a standard Fusion Gun, Man-Portable (weight comparable to M2HB, recoil comparable to Pak 43) weighs in at a bolt-action like rate of fire, assault rifle range, and similar killing power to a modern day tank gun.
Raw firepower of basic infantry weapon, they win- but nothing like the saturation fire effect of Bolters or the horizon firing range of DC-15s.
Area suppression- well, that's what the nukes are for.
One of the standard support weapons at squad level is a 20-25mm cannon, fired from the hip. Yes, they can get away with that. Californium rounds in the ton to fifty-ton range. Missile launchers common, squad level rather than individual, kiloton range warheads, carry six to eight rounds per squad. Individuals with the old school gauss rifle- 4mm calibre, 25 gram, 6 kps dart- can and do carry 'blanks' to launch nuclear rifle grenades.
This is because they are not really war-fighting troops. They are war- ending troops, and the threat of having to come up against them is supposed to be an effective weapon in itself.
Support vehicles, Trepida/Intrepid MBT's, 2.3GW plasma cannon with range in the 40km bracket, contragrav in the 800kph range and capable of descending from orbit independently, frontal armour 15m RHA equivalent, marine-specific FSVs with a lighter version of the same cannon on a physically reinforced but not uparmoured APC chassis and a coaxial missile accelerator-launcher, multiple launch rocket systems with single large and micronuke bomblet warheads- oh, yes, fun.
In terms of skill, it's debatable how much action the Marines actually see, and how much combat experience they therefore have- but considering they belong to an organisation where nuclear release authority is assumed as a matter of course, they have an awful lot of complicated technology to look after and they are expected to fight in any environment where there's something solid enough to stand on, their minimum standards for intelligence and mental stability are pretty high.
In terms of vs, I'd say that it's close enough that it would be an interesting fight. Of course, the biggest single problem is that marines drop from starships, and in space the Third Imperium is completely screwed.
That said, we can run off the background and what that tells us.
In the Third Imperium, the Marines play a rather special and not directly comparable role. We are talking about a state with closed borders here, and that one that allows it's subcomponent states considerable autonomy, to the extent of declaring war on each other.
Mercenary activity is rife, technological development far from even across parts of the Imperium, so they can have the asymmetry they need to work well, and inter- company and interplanetary warfare provides a very fertile field for mercs.
The Marines are the hammer that the Imperium drops when things get out of hand.
They wear full sealed, armoured and artificial musculature assisted armour, whose performance relative and absolute has varied wildly- from "50% more effective than Kevlar" to "1500mm RHA Equivalent"- but the design intent was to resist all available small arms, and be crackable by anti-armour weapons only.
The powerplant states for this has also fluctuated from full scale 'hot' fusion through muon-catalysed to RTG to advanced batteries. T4 and GT, muon catalysed giving power to the motive system in the 0.1 to 0.5MW range, most of which is necessary to carry the armour. Contragrav flight packs exist, speeds in the 100-200km/h range.
One area they do score well in is sensor gear- again this varies from version to version, the depiction is not remotely consistent, but broad spectrum passive electromagnetic is there for most versions, with ranges spanning from not much beyond assault rifle range to tens of kilometres.
The other really big problem for comparison purposes is that Traveller made very heavy use of plasma weapons. It seemed to consider them as something close kin to a shaped charge jet that somehow could hold itself together over long distance, but it definitely considered them practical, and almost all direct fire vehicle and antivehicle weapons were plasma based.
(Apart from the Zhodani Z80 main battle tank, which had a starship-grade laser turret, and sensors with a range of clarity of approximately one percent of it's effective range in atmosphere. Who said it all made sense?)
Their performance has varied even more spectacularly from version to version than the armour's, but splitting the difference between TNE, T4 and GT, a standard Fusion Gun, Man-Portable (weight comparable to M2HB, recoil comparable to Pak 43) weighs in at a bolt-action like rate of fire, assault rifle range, and similar killing power to a modern day tank gun.
Raw firepower of basic infantry weapon, they win- but nothing like the saturation fire effect of Bolters or the horizon firing range of DC-15s.
Area suppression- well, that's what the nukes are for.
One of the standard support weapons at squad level is a 20-25mm cannon, fired from the hip. Yes, they can get away with that. Californium rounds in the ton to fifty-ton range. Missile launchers common, squad level rather than individual, kiloton range warheads, carry six to eight rounds per squad. Individuals with the old school gauss rifle- 4mm calibre, 25 gram, 6 kps dart- can and do carry 'blanks' to launch nuclear rifle grenades.
This is because they are not really war-fighting troops. They are war- ending troops, and the threat of having to come up against them is supposed to be an effective weapon in itself.
Support vehicles, Trepida/Intrepid MBT's, 2.3GW plasma cannon with range in the 40km bracket, contragrav in the 800kph range and capable of descending from orbit independently, frontal armour 15m RHA equivalent, marine-specific FSVs with a lighter version of the same cannon on a physically reinforced but not uparmoured APC chassis and a coaxial missile accelerator-launcher, multiple launch rocket systems with single large and micronuke bomblet warheads- oh, yes, fun.
In terms of skill, it's debatable how much action the Marines actually see, and how much combat experience they therefore have- but considering they belong to an organisation where nuclear release authority is assumed as a matter of course, they have an awful lot of complicated technology to look after and they are expected to fight in any environment where there's something solid enough to stand on, their minimum standards for intelligence and mental stability are pretty high.
In terms of vs, I'd say that it's close enough that it would be an interesting fight. Of course, the biggest single problem is that marines drop from starships, and in space the Third Imperium is completely screwed.