Stationing Troops on Warships

[IanD (OP)]

If I put a small or very small troop compartment on a warship do I need to add a shuttle bay to reload them on the ship if for instance I have dropped them on a colony to defend it or put down unrest that does not have a shuttle station?

[Jorgen_CAB]

If I put a small or very small troop compartment on a warship do I need to add a shuttle bay to reload them on the ship if for instance I have dropped them on a colony to defend it or put down unrest that does not have a shuttle station?

You need either a shuttle bay or a hangar with a drop capable fighter that can land and pick up the troops. This shuttle could also be used to board enemy ships as well so you should always have that, more or less.

[Vasious]

Unless you have a Spaceport in which case you can load up the troops.

For "Ships Security" this is sufficient

However a 150 ton boat bay will give you a shuttle of the size needed as you need 0 range

[IanD (OP)]

Thanks for your replies.

I wanted to replicate the situation where Royal Marines are an integrated part of the ships company. In the WW I & II era Royal Marines manned a turret on all capital ships as part of their duties. Before that they were present to protect the officers from the crew as well as taking part in boarding and cutting out operations. 

A 100 to 250 tons is not a great sacrifice in ship design, but a shuttle bay made it too much. In addition if the troops are on a shuttle/interface craft in a boat bay would they also be available to defend the ship should it be boarded? I am inclined to put a boarding equipped troop bay on my ships and see what happens.

Ian

[vorpal+5]

I would like very much to have troops aboard ships factored in case of boarding, but perhaps this is already working that way? Me too would fancy adding a marine company to important ships!

[SpaceMarine]

Thanks for your replies.

I wanted to replicate the situation where Royal Marines are an integrated part of the ships company. In the WW I & II era Royal Marines manned a turret on all capital ships as part of their duties. Before that they were present to protect the officers from the crew as well as taking part in boarding and cutting out operations. 

A 100 to 250 tons is not a great sacrifice in ship design, but a shuttle bay made it too much. In addition if the troops are on a shuttle/interface craft in a boat bay would they also be available to defend the ship should it be boarded? I am inclined to put a boarding equipped troop bay on my ships and see what happens.

Ian

I have all my designs in my AAR, I use marine complements in almost all my ships, i use drop pod capable troop transport bays, as it allows the deployment of troops if truly required and is smaller across the board, I also then have bigger ships with cargo shuttles that are designed to carry entire companies of marines for strike operations not just security, while in smaller vessels they are just for security purposes.  heres my naval forces and then below that is ground forces http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=11126.msg129402#msg129402

[Vasious]

In addition if the troops are on a shuttle/interface craft in a boat bay would they also be available to defend the ship should it be boarded? I am inclined to put a boarding equipped troop bay on my ships and see what happens.

Ian

Troops stationed on a shuttle will defend the mothership.
So if you wanted you could have your Lobsters on their shuttle without the need for an additional troop bay on the mothership

[Migi]

Thanks for your replies.

I wanted to replicate the situation where Royal Marines are an integrated part of the ships company. In the WW I & II era Royal Marines manned a turret on all capital ships as part of their duties. Before that they were present to protect the officers from the crew as well as taking part in boarding and cutting out operations. 

A 100 to 250 tons is not a great sacrifice in ship design, but a shuttle bay made it too much. In addition if the troops are on a shuttle/interface craft in a boat bay would they also be available to defend the ship should it be boarded? I am inclined to put a boarding equipped troop bay on my ships and see what happens.

Ian

The small troop transport section is 200 tons and carries 200 tons. If I recall correctly the boarding and drop pod variants are 210 and 220 although I don't recall which way round that is. They all provide 200 tons of transport.
I think you need power armour researched in order to research the variants.

The problem I see with the shuttle is that a 250T shuttle needs a 300T hanger, and if 200T of the shuttle is troop transport it probably has very little ability to do anything else.

200T is a fairly small formation, remember that the enemy can't board you with vehicles so you don't need anti-tank, but it might be useful to have high power weapons because the enemy boarders will probably be in power armour.

[xenoscepter]

The Small ones are 100 Tons for 100 Tons of capacity, while the Drop Capable ones are 120 Tons for 100 Tons of capacity.

[Vivalas]

I would like very much to have troops aboard ships factored in case of boarding, but perhaps this is already working that way? Me too would fancy adding a marine company to important ships!

Im pretty sure they're factored into boarding. Any troops on board fight alongside the crew.

[IanD (OP)]

Just for the record here are my units to be based on all ship of (1) ~15,000 tons and (2) Ships >20,000 tons.

Assault Team
Transport Size: 98 tons
Build Cost: 10.8 BP
1x Assault Infantry HQ
13x Assault Infantry
1x Armoured Infantry Logistics Small

Assault Platoon
Transport Size: 196 tons
Build Cost: 20.6 BP
16x Assault Infantry
1x Assault Logistics Small
1x Assault Infantry HQ
2x Assault Weapons Team

Or

Assault Platoon Light
Transport Size: 200 tons
Build Cost: 21 BP
1x Assault Infantry HQ
1x Assault Weapons Team
1x Assault Logistics
20x Assault Infantry


The Assault Infantry are in Heavy Powered Armour with improved personal weapons while the Weapons teams are in Heavy Powered Armour with a heavy crew served anti-personal weapon. All are boarding capable.

I am not really sure whether the Assault Team would achieve anything but its worth trying and they're cheap.

[skoormit]

If I put a small or very small troop compartment on a warship do I need to add a shuttle bay to reload them on the ship if for instance I have dropped them on a colony to defend it or put down unrest that does not have a shuttle station?

You need either a shuttle bay or a hangar with a drop capable fighter that can land and pick up the troops. This shuttle could also be used to board enemy ships as well so you should always have that, more or less.

Wait, what? My troop transports don't have any shuttles or drop ships, and I can load and unload ground units, to and from colonies with no installations, without any problems.

[Noble713]

I hope this is considered a related question and not a thread jack but:

How do you load troops from a troop bay on a mothership, onto a shuttle docked inside the mothership? I'm sure we could do this in VB6 but I'm not finding this exact functionality in C#. So far I've been detaching my assault shuttles from their fleet (which I suppose auto-launches them), grouping them into a new fleet, and then ordering them to load from their former mothership. This tends to take an entire hour per power-armored infantry platoon, during which the assault shuttles are theoretically exposed to enemy anti-ship fire, not to mention burning up their short deployment time.

As an aside, boarding actions by power-armored Marines are exactly as overwhelming and brutal as you'd expect. I usually only lose 1-2 Marines while capturing badly damaged (i.e. slow/stationary) NPR ships so far.

[JacenHan]

I don't think there are any morale penalties for troops in transports anymore, so you don't need to have troop bays on the mothership. Just load the shuttles with troops and dock them in the mothership when you first make them.

[Garfunkel]

Yes, that's correct. There is no longer any need to have a big mothership where the troops are comfortable and then moving to dropships. Both the drop capable module and the board capable module are bigger than the regular troop module to signify that.