Alfred Harrington back to the colours?

saber964 wrote:

Somtaaw wrote:
That's one possibility anyways, to just fully equip all Marines, which are still the shocktroops of the Honorverse, who take and create 'secure' landing zones for the regular Army units that follow later. Unless something changed between the love-story of Alfred and Allison, and current (so what, approximately 30-50 T-years?) neural disrupters were absolutely lethal and no amount of medical attention will save you.

Just a little note, battle armor is too expensive to equip a large number of troops with them. They are the Honorverse version of a MBT without hauling around one. They usually make up about 25% of any marine unit. The RMA has MBT's but probably not that many of them.

You're quite right that large numbers of Marines could never be equipped with battle armor. Prior to Buttercup (and the automation introductions), battlecruisers like the Reliant had full companies of Marines embarked, minus the heavy weapons platoon that was for proper wallers. Of that entire company, I think they had a full platoon (which I believe is 1/3 of the entire force?) had battlearmor available. Light cruisers (such as the CL Fearless) only had 1 platoon (or about 3 squads I believe) and only 1 squad had battlearmor there too.


After the reductions brought about by the designs that made the buttercup offensive possible, and being the new standard of crew automation, Marines were heavily drawn down on most light units, and even battlecruisers (pre BCL Nike Class anyways) started only carrying a platoon I think, or a 66% reduction in crew, which works out exactly right to have the possibility for 100% battlearmor availability.


The marines on superdreadnoughts would see less combat than the Marines on lighter units, because wallers are always orbiting friendly planets/bases rather than off chasing pirates, and dealing with forest fire events. So waller Marines could be heavy on skinsuits, leaving the battlearmor for the lighter ships where it's more needed.

Somtaaw wrote:
You're quite right that large numbers of Marines could never be equipped with battle armor. Prior to Buttercup (and the automation introductions), battlecruisers like the Reliant had full companies of Marines embarked, minus the heavy weapons platoon that was for proper wallers. Of that entire company, I think they had a full platoon (which I believe is 1/3 of the entire force?) had battlearmor available. Light cruisers (such as the CL Fearless) only had 1 platoon (or about 3 squads I believe) and only 1 squad had battlearmor there too.


After the reductions brought about by the designs that made the buttercup offensive possible, and being the new standard of crew automation, Marines were heavily drawn down on most light units, and even battlecruisers (pre BCL Nike Class anyways) started only carrying a platoon I think, or a 66% reduction in crew, which works out exactly right to have the possibility for 100% battlearmor availability.


The marines on superdreadnoughts would see less combat than the Marines on lighter units, because wallers are always orbiting friendly planets/bases rather than off chasing pirates, and dealing with forest fire events. So waller Marines could be heavy on skinsuits, leaving the battlearmor for the lighter ships where it's more needed.

The flip side of that is that while any one sub-waller carries less Marines that same crew automation allows for additional DDs -BCs to be operated for the same budget. But on the gripping hand Rolands lost all their Marines. So I'm not sure if overall Marine Corp numbers have gone up or gone down thanks to automation.

If they've gone up, and the power armor comes out of the Marine Corp budget then they'd either need a significant budget upgrade or they'd have to spread roughly the same number of power armor suits across more hulls. (OTOH The Navy might be willing to pay the capital expense for a platoon worth of armor for each ship large enough to carry a Marine platoon as part of the ship construction and fitting out budget to give those Marines survivability and firepower to compensate for their now more limited numbers)

Jonathan_S wrote:

Somtaaw wrote:
You're quite right that large numbers of Marines could never be equipped with battle armor. Prior to Buttercup (and the automation introductions), battlecruisers like the Reliant had full companies of Marines embarked, minus the heavy weapons platoon that was for proper wallers. Of that entire company, I think they had a full platoon (which I believe is 1/3 of the entire force?) had battlearmor available. Light cruisers (such as the CL Fearless) only had 1 platoon (or about 3 squads I believe) and only 1 squad had battlearmor there too.


After the reductions brought about by the designs that made the buttercup offensive possible, and being the new standard of crew automation, Marines were heavily drawn down on most light units, and even battlecruisers (pre BCL Nike Class anyways) started only carrying a platoon I think, or a 66% reduction in crew, which works out exactly right to have the possibility for 100% battlearmor availability.


The marines on superdreadnoughts would see less combat than the Marines on lighter units, because wallers are always orbiting friendly planets/bases rather than off chasing pirates, and dealing with forest fire events. So waller Marines could be heavy on skinsuits, leaving the battlearmor for the lighter ships where it's more needed.

The flip side of that is that while any one sub-waller carries less Marines that same crew automation allows for additional DDs -BCs to be operated for the same budget. But on the gripping hand Rolands lost all their Marines. So I'm not sure if overall Marine Corp numbers have gone up or gone down thanks to automation.

If they've gone up, and the power armor comes out of the Marine Corp budget then they'd either need a significant budget upgrade or they'd have to spread roughly the same number of power armor suits across more hulls. (OTOH The Navy might be willing to pay the capital expense for a platoon worth of armor for each ship large enough to carry a Marine platoon as part of the ship construction and fitting out budget to give those Marines survivability and firepower to compensate for their now more limited numbers)

I don't think the main limitation on powered armor is cost - 90% of the jobs marines do don't require powered armor. Don't get me wrong, when it's needed, it's needed, and having a set for EVERY Marine still isn't enough. But for everyday tasks, you don't need the Armor.

Just like today's Army and Marines - The majority of the force is still foot soldiers, because most jobs don't require tanks. Does the Army's tank commander wish every army recruit was driving a tank - oh heck yes, but in reality, we need foot soldiers doing most jobs.

Somtaaw wrote:You're quite right that large numbers of Marines could never be equipped with battle armor. Prior to Buttercup (and the automation introductions), battlecruisers like the Reliant had full companies of Marines embarked, minus the heavy weapons platoon that was for proper wallers. Of that entire company, I think they had a full platoon (which I believe is 1/3 of the entire force?) had battlearmor available. Light cruisers (such as the CL Fearless) only had 1 platoon (or about 3 squads I believe) and only 1 squad had battlearmor there too.

Actually you're one unit size to small. Light Cruisers had a company of marines (four platoons) which had one platoon of power armor (as of OBS). Battlecruisers had a battalion minus the attached heavy weapons unit while DNs and SDs had a full battalion. I can't recall if there's textev for the number of suits of power armor carried on the larger ships but I would assume that it's enough for a single company at least.

Textev in Shadow of Saganami suggests that the newer heavy cruisers have at least three platoons (a short company?) which each have power armor for two out of three squads. So it looks like the newer classes have fewer marines but more power armor (both in absolute terms and as a percentage of their marine complement). This would make some sense, it's a way of reducing the manpower requirements of their marines without sacrificing as much firepower.

From OBS:

"Ma'am," Papadapolous said crisply, "I still have ninety-three Marines aboard ship. I have battle armor for a full platoon—thirty-five men and women—with pulse rifles and heavy weapons for the remainder of the company. We can handle any bunch of Stilties armed with flintlocks." He stopped, jaw clenched, and added another "Ma'am" almost as an afterthought.

"Next, there's the problem of getting our own available strength concentrated. The NPA only has about a five-company field strength, once we allow for essential detachments, and my own company is understrength just now. So, with your permission, Captain, I'd like to recall the Marines currently detached to the customs and inspection parties. I believe the traffic volume has dropped to a level which would permit us to reduce the number of inspection boats and consolidate Navy ratings to crew them, which would release our Marines for possible ground combat. If we can do that, I'd have four full-strength platoons to work with, not three partial ones."

From Shadow of Saganami:

"Lieutenant Hedges runs Third Platoon, Captain Jezic," Kaczmarczyk told him. "Lieutenant Kelso's borrowing one of his squads for the op; he and his other two squads are taking over base security while we're away. That," he pointed at the battle-armored Marines under the pinnaces' sharply swept wings, "is First Platoon's First and Second Squads. Each of our platoons has two squads worth of battle armor, and Lieutenant Kelso," he grinned at the platoon commander, "is a bit on the greedy side, so she kept the best toys for herself."