Space equivalent term for amphibious/airborne

[L0ckAndL0ad]

For ships: Landing Platform/Dock (LPD) works for me. Or coming up with something like Landing Platform, Assault (LPA), or, indeed, use Aerospace instead. Older Attack transports (AP/APA) concepts are still relevant as well, IMO. There were/are Landing Craft also, but these are smaller, shorter ranged shuttles, usually.

For infantry, Mobile Infantry is already there, along side Assault and Heavy Assault units. At the same time, Aurora 4x features Marines, so naval theme works for everything by default.

[Arwyn]

I have used a couple of different designations in my games;

Marines
Orbital Landing Force
Drop Troops/Drop Infantry
Mobile Infantry
Bounce Infantry (Old School Renegade Legion!)
Assault Legion

I think it kind of boils down to how you see these formations working. If its an amphibious analog, they tend to be based around Marine formations. So, heavy infantry and infantry support components, but light on tanks/vehicles. For that matter, if you filed them as armored infantry, you have instant Mobile Infantry/Space Marines.

If you see them more as planetary assault troops, i.e. large formations of tanks, support, and troops, then you could argue they are more like army formations. The old FASA board game postulated that when the tanks themselves could drop independently from orbit, Marines become superfluous and go back to being shipboard formations.

I think of lot of this just comes down to how you see the "lore" of your space empire working out.

[hubgbf]

Paratroopers are named after their special equipment, aka parachute.
In german, it is fallschirmjäger, based on fallschirm, i.e. parachute.

As in aurora space invasion are done with drop pod, it is logical to name them droptrooper, or podtrooper, isn't it ?

[Father Tim]

Paratroopers are named after their special equipment, aka parachute.
In german, it is fallschirmjäger, based on fallschirm, i.e. parachute.

As in aurora space invasion are done with drop pod, it is logical to name them droptrooper, or podtrooper, isn't it ?

I expect I'll be going with 'cap troopers' after the drop CAPsules my ground units will use.

[bugkill]

With ground invasions becoming more common place in C# as well as more complicated, I'm thinking we're going to need a new term to describe that space-to-planet invasion/landing and the units meant for it. In current military, we have amphibious invasions/operations and forces/units for sea->land stuff and airborne for air->land stuff. So amphibious ships and airborne rangers and so on, you get what I mean.

But I have no idea what term to use for space and I feel like it would be cumbersome to use amphibious. Maybe spaceborne? Vacuumphibious? Any linguists here? 

Well, you have a couple of choices. You can use those terms as they are since units will still carry out those operations on planets, but you can also use new terms to describe specialized units. For instance, you can forego using terms to describe space-to-planet invasion/landing and focus the term on the specialty of the unit. You have to think that all combat forces are capable of being deployed from ships in space to land on planets, so it isn't really a specialty. However, if you have a unit that specializes in "airborne" or "ranger" type of operations, you could simply designate them under "Special Warfare".

There really is no need to name them "rangers" or "marines". A combat landing unit could simply be called "13th Assault Regiment" since their main function is to carry out large scale assaults. A force that can use specialized infiltration methods like drop pods or use vacuum suits to infiltrate ships in space could be called "44th Special Warfare Company" with the designation of Special Warfare. You don't have to name them spaceborne or anything like that. You build up your unit types and form the names based on what they do. You can still maintain what we have today (paratroopers, marines, rangers, etc.) for the ground units that conduct invasions because they can still carry out those operations on planets. But I would go with the unit designation and keep it simple.