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[QUOTE]Originally posted by Timo: [QB] Troop transports might need to be dedicated war machines in they had to offload without "ports" while civilian passenger ships rely on friendly orbital facilities. Of course, even a civilian ship might have shuttles or transporters that are capable enough to transfer the whole load planetside - but special shuttles and special transporters might be needed for combat applications, even when the planet is already secured and the landing is not opposed. That might call for a dedicated mothership type, too. And ships performing the initial opposed landing would have to be special beasts indeed. I like to think of e.g. the Steamrunners and Norways as planetary assault ships, due to their oddball construction: the form has to have some function, something different from your average multipurpose starship. I agree that a Galaxy *could* do the job, but like to think she wouldn't *have* to. The three Vulcan ships probably weren't optimized for performing such an assault, or even for carrying the troops to an unopposed landing. Instead, they were optimized for deception, which may mean they were highly atypical for troop transports. As for the Romulan intent, I see several alternatives to true planetary takeover by just a couple of thousand soldiers. a) Dieppe Raid. A small-scale show of aggression intended to remind everybody that the Romulans still were an enemy of the Federation, and thus a good ally for other UFP enemies. The troops would hold key points on Vulcan for a while, or destroy some key targets, and then retreat, or commit suicide. b) Children's Crusade. Romulans claimed the people on the ships were Romulan peaceniks coming to talk softly with Vulcans. Perhaps they *were*, and the idea was to slaughter them wholesale while making the Feds look bad? It would have been simple to lure in the peaceniks when the government showed them "Vulcan" ships... c) Devious Decoy. Perhaps in combination with b), the Romulans would send a couple of thousand "sacrificial offerings" whose true purpose was just to create enough "noise" (sensor-wise and intelligence-wise) to cover the approach of dozens of cloaked warbirds carrying hundreds of thousands of troops with vehicles. Incidentally, this means that a) would have been a modest failure (Romulan aggression *was* demonstrated, although not very impressively), b) an almost sparkling success (no peaceniks left, but the Feds didn't get blamed), and c) a promising failure (invasion failed, but nobody noticed that it did, so the concept was proven valid for a second try). Timo Saloniemi [/QB][/QUOTE]
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