Starship Troopers(R. A. Heinlein) vs Storm Troopers

[Dargos]

Ok... first things first these are the Terran Confederation Mobile Infantry as depicted in Mr. Heinleins novel Starship Troopers..not the pussy cannon fodder depicted in the crappy ass movie with the same name. How would a battle go between a platoon of M.I. (54 troopers) and a company of Storm Troopers (not sure how big a Company of ST would be but I'll guess at 120)

Battle is to be in an urban setting

ST have 3 AT-ST and standard weapons( i.e blaster rifles, E-web Auto, thermal det. etc)

M.I. have 2 Command suits, 12 Scout suits, and 40 Marauder suits and carry standard weapons as read in book i.e. flamers, grenades, missiles etc.


[color=red b]FIGHT ON!!![/ color b]

[Kuja]

please describe their weapons in greater detail. I've never read the books.

[Stormbringer]

The MI come out on top. Even Stormies won't survive a barrage of nuclear weapons. Plus even the MI have a whole lot heavier weapons than your average group of stormies. That sort weapons advantage combined with their superior mobility will let the crush the Stormtroopers desicively.

[Dargos]

Sorry...I forgot to say that the MI will not have nukes for this mission..only conventional munitions for this slug fest..

[Kuja]

In that case, they'd better get cooking with the rocket launchers, or the stormies'll eat 'em for breakfast

[Rubberanvil]

In the book only the sergeants had the tac nukes, so having no nukes wouldn't make much of a difference. Stormies still get pasted.

[Patrick Ogaard]

please describe their weapons in greater detail. I've never read the books.

Here are some quotes from the book:

"No need to describe what it looks like, since it has been pictured so often. Suited up, you look like a big steel gorilla, armed with gorilla-sized weapons.

...

But the suits are considerably stronger than a gorilla. If an M.I. in a suit swapped hugs with a gorilla, the gorilla would be dead, crushed; the M.I. and the suit wouldn't be mussed."

Now, some summaries:

According to the novel text, the full suit, complete with its underlying layers of pseudo-musculature, weighs in at about two thousand pounds with full kit. The wearer can walk, run, jump, handle fragile objects like eggs, and jump right over buildings through the use of an automatic three-axis jet system that kicks in when the wearer tries a really big jump. A low-power proximity system kicks in the jets at the end of the jump to cushion the landing. The wearer can also cut out the automatic landing system and have the suit fly extended distances. The suits have full life support and power for several hours of combat, and carrying extra power packs and giving troopers appropriate pre-combat conditioning can extend that period to 40 hours or more.

Suits come in three standard configurations: scout, marauder and command. All suits have full radio, stereo hearing, and selectable visual enhancement, radar and IR snoopers. Scout suits are ightly armed but extremely fast and long-ranged. Command suits have inertial tracking systems, extra power and mobility, and a triple load of commo and radar gear. Marauder suits are the standard combat models worn by regular troopers, with a standard speed of 40 miles per hour. The armor is designed to work in vacuum conditions, as well as hostile near-terrestrial environments and has considerable radiation resistance.

A standard platoon of Mobile Infantry consists of 53 troops in total, in powered armor, led by a lieutenant. A typical area of control for a platoon ranges from 100 to 680 square miles.

Standard weaponry consists of: grenades, a rocket launcher, a hand flamer or two, a heavy flamer, a Y-rack for bombs, some extra grenades, 10-second flame pills, regular bombs, and nerve gas bombs.

Grenades are conventional, but apparently oversized (and overpowered) so as not to waste the capabilities of the armor's musculature.

The rocket launcher fires individually loaded rockets to a range of several miles, though the rockets are actually smart missiles that home in on whatever target is set in the sights and reroute to a target of opportunity if the original target is missed or unavailable. If not used to fire conventional rounds, the rocket launcher can be loaded with 2-kiloton nukes, and a trooper can carry four or more such nukes (though newbies are not normally issued them). Rocket launchers are issued only to selected personnel in situations where there is a danger of friendly fire.

Hand flamers, which troopers in close combat can use one in each hand, John Woo style, are almost certainly short range plasma projectors. (Short range is not defined, but 300 yard spacing between troopers is considered "shoulder-to-shoulder." Hand flamers are primarily incendiary weapons, apparently firing a narrow incendiary beam. The beam is sufficiently powerful that power armored troops in close quarters can not use them for fear of frying each other despite their armor. Heavy flamers are simply a heavier version of the hand flamer.

The Y-rack is a bomb launcher mounted on the shoulders of the suit. It launches small high explosive (and presumably also other) bombs laterally, to ranges of several hundred yards to both flanks of the trooper. The Y-rack can be set to fire automatically, whether during a jump or when coming down from a jump. The launcher can be reloaded manually by the trooper in the field.

Ten-second flame plills are timed, scatterable incendiaries.

Regular bombs can be fitted with timers or various other features, such as a public address system that squawks loudly in the enemy language: "I am a 30-second bomb! 30, 29, 28 ..."

Nerve gas bombs are optimized against the target species, but are otherwise unremarkable.

The full load of expendable ordnance, such as rockets, grenades, bombs and flame pills, is supposed to mass more than an unarmored trooper, so that a reasonable estimate is that a marauder or command suit can carry at least 100 kilograms of expendable ordnance in addition to flamers and launchers.

Platoons can also have heavy weapons squads. Though not defined, their weapons are presumably considerably more powerful than those issued to normal troopers.

[Gil Hamilton]

Well, according to the book, Rico was down on Klendathu during Operation: Bughouse and was in combat for alot of it. At that point, they were running out of power and jumpjuice, and were cannablizing powercells from dead and wounded troopers before being recovered.
Also, an HE bomb in the first chapter blew up a warehouse and also nearly knocked Rico off his gyros when he was jumping over a river.

I'm sorry, but the Mobile Infantry completely outclass Stormtroopers. That's not to say that Stormies are bad, but MI are that good. 50 or so of them set the bulk of a Skinny city on fire over the course of an hour, and this was decent sized city. And that was just a intimidation raid to let the Skinnies know that they weren't safe from attack but even though they refrained from a bombardment.

[Master of Ossus]

Of course the MI win, if they're the ones from the book. They have better weapons and firepower. Stormtroopers, while excellent, simply do not have the firepower to compete with MI personnel, let alone the mobility or the protection.

Now, if it was all of SW vs. all of Starship Troopers, it would be another story, but the MI are just better than stormtroopers by all accounts.

[Dargos]

Now, if it was all of SW vs. all of Starship Troopers, it would be another story, but the MI are just better than stormtroopers by all accounts.

Of course not, I love the book, but I am not clinicaly insane, the Terran Confederation would be totaly out classed due to resourses, their ships are slow as snails (400C i.e. 400xlightspeed is considered fast) compared to SW Hyperspace.

Hell, a fleet that, through some major luck, manages to reach a planet to make an assault would most likely be totaly destroyed before the first trooper is dropped. That is,of course, if the said planet has at least more than light orbital/planatary to space defenses.

I have no data on TC Naval firpower but I think they would be completely outclassed, however I do think the Empire might lose (and I stress MIGHT) a few planets do to the Nova Bomb(a planet destroying bomb that was developed close to the end of the book).


Now, back to strictly land based combat, how large of a unit of ST would be necessary to take on a platoon of M.I. and what type of support would be needed to insure victory?

[Dargos]

A standard platoon of Mobile Infantry consists of 53 troops in total, in powered armor, led by a lieutenant. A typical area of control for a platoon ranges from 100 to 680 square miles.

Actually I think it would be 54 troopers for a platoon

1 Lieutenant
1 Platoon Sgt
2 Section Sgt
6 Squad Ldrs
6 Asst Sq ldr
38 Troopers

I think the number you quoted was not long after the LT "Bought the Farm", but of course I could be totaly wrong...

[NecronLord]

Prehaps it would be more interesting to compare them to Space Marines a la 40K?

[Smiling Bandit]

But the MI seem to be more of a combined arms in one type troop. Stormtroopers are designed for flexible shock assaults. And I noticed a lot of MI power seems to be dependant on what SW would consider a very light vehicle (the 1-ton power suits). I think a better comparison would be a larger troop from each side.

[Slartibartfast]

Regular bombs can be fitted with timers or various other features, such as a public address system that squawks loudly in the enemy language: "I am a 30-second bomb! 30, 29, 28 ..."

Gotta love those bombs

[Darth Wong]

Power suits don't make much sense, do they? They seem more like light armour than infantry. How are you supposed to engage in room-to-room combat or control territory with one of these damned things, since you would crash right through the floor the minute you tried to go into a building, and you wouldn't even fit through the door?

I must admit I never read the book, but did Heinlein really have such a poor sense of military tactics that he thought a combat infantry force composed exclusively of armour could work? It works in cheesy sterile situations (eg- when you're out to simply cause vast destruction), but suppose you don't want collateral damage, and you have to root an enemy out of a city? You can't move into the buildings in these damned things, you're stuck in the streets, you can't just blow up everything in sight, and you'll be taking anti-tank fire from the windows as you move around. How does this make sense?

[Vympel]

I definitely recommend the book- it's quite short and sweet and for a book written in the 50's (IIRC) it's spectacular-

regarding power armor the explicit statements of the book is that they are really agile- I mean like unbelievably so.

They are light armor in the sense that they won't be going into any buildings and couldn't even fit through a door- so there's not much flexibility- today's mechanized infantry dismounts from their vehicles and tadaaa, they're grunts with assault rifles again.

Anti-tank fire wouldn't be much of an issue- the combat armor is like I said agile- you're only about the size of a gorilla, so it's pretty much good luck trying to hit it with a conventional anti-tank weapon (say a futurisitic RPG, anti-tank gun, or guided ATGM) before you get toasted.

For the best blatant rip-off of the combat armor- see an old, classic game by the now defunct Looking Glass studios (makers of the classic System Shock, System Shock 2, Thief, Thief 2, and Flight Unlimited) called Terra Nova: Strike Force Centauri

The power armor in that game is an EXACT analog of those in Starship Troopers.

[Stormbringer]

I must admit I never read the book, but did Heinlein really have such a poor sense of military tactics that he thought a combat infantry force composed exclusively of armour could work? It works in cheesy sterile situations (eg- when you're out to simply cause vast destruction), but suppose you don't want collateral damage, and you have to root an enemy out of a city? You can't move into the buildings in these damned things, you're stuck in the streets, you can't just blow up everything in sight, and you'll be taking anti-tank fire from the windows as you move around. How does this make sense?

The suit it self isn't much bigger than a man. So any space a large operson can get through, a MI trooper will be able to.

The weight would seem to be a problem but then again they don't go crashing through floors and roofs. They probably have some sort of built in anit-grav or something.

And the idea is that you can take anything short of very heavy anti-tank weapons. Powered armor is pretty damn tough.

And there are Military Units besides the MI. In fact the MI are just one group within the army rather than the whole military.

[Darth Wong]

I definitely recommend the book- it's quite short and sweet and for a book written in the 50's (IIRC) it's spectacular-

regarding power armor the explicit statements of the book is that they are really agile- I mean like unbelievably so.

Then the book is either written by an idiot, or we are overzealously interpreting its descriptions. A 2000-lb combat vehicle cannot be too agile, or it will damage itself in movement, not to mention its pilot.

They are light armor in the sense that they won't be going into any buildings and couldn't even fit through a door- so there's not much flexibility- today's mechanized infantry dismounts from their vehicles and tadaaa, they're grunts with assault rifles again.

But these guys can't get out of their suits, can they? And if they can, there certainly aren't enough of them to control a city, given the small numbers you mention. Sounds to me like Heinlein had no concept of combined-arms warfare.

Anti-tank fire wouldn't be much of an issue- the combat armor is like I said agile- you're only about the size of a gorilla, so it's pretty much good luck trying to hit it with a conventional anti-tank weapon (say a futurisitic RPG, anti-tank gun, or guided ATGM) before you get toasted.

How are you going to "toast" enemies hiding in buildings which may house friendlies and civvies, in my scenario? You can't see them until they shoot, and your weapons seem too powerful to be fired indiscriminately at apartment buildings anyway.

Besides, if gorilla-sized combat suits were the norm, then anti-tank guns would be optimized to hit that type of target. Heinlein's power suits sound like adolecent techno-wanking to me; small wonder (I heard the book was deliberately written for teenagers).

[Darth Wong]

The suit it self isn't much bigger than a man. So any space a large operson can get through, a MI trooper will be able to.

From the description I heard earlier, it sounds bigger than that.

The weight would seem to be a problem but then again they don't go crashing through floors and roofs. They probably have some sort of built in anit-grav or something.

Or Heinlein simply wasn't thinking, which I consider more likely. The idea of a powersuit that small with the capabilities described betrays total ignorance of engineering. It's even less realistic than Star Wars.

[Stormbringer]

The suit it self isn't much bigger than a man. So any space a large operson can get through, a MI trooper will be able to.

From the description I heard earlier, it sounds bigger than that.

Somewhat bigger than a man but not greatly so.

The weight would seem to be a problem but then again they don't go crashing through floors and roofs. They probably have some sort of built in anit-grav or something.

Or Heinlein simply wasn't thinking, which I consider more likely. The idea of a powersuit that small with the capabilities described betrays total ignorance of engineering. It's even less realistic than Star Wars.

Supsension of disbelief. If it happened in the source it happened. It doesn't make much sense, I'll agree with you on that. But that's the way it is. <shrug>

[Vympel]

Then the book is either written by an idiot, or we are overzealously interpreting its descriptions. A 2000-lb combat vehicle cannot be too agile, or it will damage itself in movement, not to mention its pilot.

Technobabble? *shrugs* I can't remember if it's explained, I read the book a year ago ...

But these guys can't get out of their suits, can they? And if they can, there certainly aren't enough of them to control a city, given the small numbers you mention. Sounds to me like Heinlein had no concept of combined-arms warfare.

How are you going to "toast" enemies hiding in buildings which may house friendlies and civvies, in my scenario? You can't see them until they shoot, and your weapons seem too powerful to be fired indiscriminately at apartment buildings anyway.

Not only are you absolutely right, but this is canon- in the first chapters Rico blows a bunch of neutrals away with a HE purely because its not worth taking the risk

Like I said they're not very flexible- but for brute force- fwar.

Besides, if gorilla-sized combat suits were the norm, then anti-tank guns would be optimized to hit that type of target. Heinlein's power suits sound like adolecent techno-wanking to me; small wonder (I heard the book was deliberately written for teenagers).

Possibly- but what if it was like early WW2, where the only anti-tank guns you had were either virtually useless- anti-tank rifles and small guns that were too wimpy to achieve a frontal penetration (in respect of the former, an ATR waas pretty much only good for killing the commander in his cupola or getting an extreme close range rear shot) or effective but huge- the German 88mm AA gun that Rommel used to stop British tanks. Tanks had been around for 20 years at that time. Advances in tank-killing and tank-armor technology are pretty much continuous- luck of the draw as to when you're going to fight- when ATGMs can kill anything (1967 Arab Malyutka ATGMs or AT-3 Saggers were blowing Israeli tanks like nobody's business) or 1991 when the armor is so advanced good luck trying for a frontal penetration at anything but point blank.

The book was impressive not so much for the story which is quite simple- it's pretty much like a cheap cowboy paperback novel they sell at newsagents, almost, but this guy had quite an imagination. It's technowanking- but not throughout the whole book- he describes them (vaguely) and moves on.

[Dargos]

What do you think of the political system used by the TC.

You could not posses sovereign franchise (become a voteing citizen) unless you complete a term of service in the Federal Service. . Every voteing member and office holder have demonstrated through voluntary and difficult service that he/she places the welfare of the group ahead of personal advantage. Since sovereign franchise is perhaps the ultimate in human authority, they ensure that all who wield it accept the ultimate in social reponsiblity--they require each person who wishes to exert control over the state to wager their lives--and lose it, if need be-- to save the life of state. Thus maximum reponsibilty is equated to maximum authority.

If you read the book it parallels WWII in the Pacific a bit. Island hopping...ending with the A-bomb drops on Japan. He ends his book with the final invasion of the "Bug" home world... (there was a "master-plan" to invade the Japanese home islands but the A-bomb ended that plan"

Heinlin was a vet of WWII and had seen combat ( which is more than the mass majority on this board could say I think) and I will listen with respect to anyone who went through combat....except the Gulf War of 91...that wasnt a war...it was a field problem where the majority of our casualties were from FF and not from the Iraqis'

(I was in the Great Gulf Field Problem of '91 it got a little exciting but nothing to be "Proud About" the most exciteing/dangerouse thing I experianced was a mine field my LT managed to lead us into even though it was plainly marked on the map and he had a damn GPS system...after which he promptly got us all stuck in a dry lake bed...at least I think it was a lake bed..all 32 of our Hummers were up to the wheel wells in mud then about 60 Iraqi soldiers come up to use and surrender...I almost shit my pants...lol)

[Stormbringer]

What do you think of the political system used by the TC.

I've got questions about how stable it would be in the long term but it's certainly workable.

[Patrick Ogaard]

A standard platoon of Mobile Infantry consists of 53 troops in total, in powered armor, led by a lieutenant. A typical area of control for a platoon ranges from 100 to 680 square miles.

Actually I think it would be 54 troopers for a platoon

1 Lieutenant
1 Platoon Sgt
2 Section Sgt
6 Squad Ldrs
6 Asst Sq ldr
38 Troopers

I think the number you quoted was not long after the LT "Bought the Farm", but of course I could be totaly wrong...

No, I think you're right.

[Rubberanvil]

For anyone interested in what the artistic renditions of the suit.

http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Zone/5835/Troopers.html