Can an Imperial Marine take on an M1A1(HA)?
The 2,400L DR of the front turret armor is more than proof against the 6dx5(2) burn ex 6dx12(2) burn ex from an FGMP-14 fired from a battlesuit.
The DR 240 of the battlesuit is not stopping an APFSDSDU round.
But that Crunchie in a Can isn't coming alone.
He's bringing a buddy with a 2.3 gigajoule heavy fusion cannon.
6dx650(2) burn ex.
That does an average of 13,650 points of damage...
It's going out the back of the Abrams too.
The tank that fusion gun is mounted on has 25,000L DR on the front quarter. Even a max damage roll of the 6dx48(2) pi++ M829A2 round isn't going penetrate. That won't even penetrate the roof of the cupola!
Even the Imperial Army has a decent chance of taking out an Abrams with their APC.
With just 1,100 DR on the front, it's vulnerable to the 120mm gun, but the 10 megajoule rapid fire fusion gun delivers 5dx50(2) burn ex. On average, no penetration, but its RoF is 8 shots a second! It's going to erode the armor off the tank in a few shots.
Back in the days of me having board games, I played "Squad Leader" vs "Starship Troopers," both games from Avalon Hill. It was much the same thing, individual suits could be taken out by hits from heavy artillery or AP rounds, somewhat, but everything else, the Mobile Infantry was King of the Field. Poor Germans and Russians just couldn't get a good solid hit most of the time, and hand-to-hand was just wrong when fighitng a mobile suit with a flamethrower.
ReplyDeleteBack to Traveller, well, there's a reason nobody wanted to piss off the Imperials enough to get noticed. The sector governors and/or the Navy could drop TL15 troops onto one's head pretty much without losing troops (up to TL10/11? in LBB terms) and if the tech difference wasn't much, could orbital bombard and then send in the troops. Of course, getting the Navy and the Marines to the battlefield was going to be a long process (usually) what with the slow speed of communication, decision to, assemble troops and travel.
Even the Zhods or Solomani, both TL14, had some issues fighting Imps on a one-to-one basis. Thus the Zhod with 1-4 FGMP-14 or PGMP-14 warbots to even up the score...