Ground Combat in the 34th century

[Maggie_Oz]

I'm starting to write a new series.
This one will have a fair component of ground conflict, in particular the ground war for Emerald.
Does anyone have any thoughts they'd like to share on how that might look in ED?

Why does it come about when the control of space is the main determining factor?
Are there standing armies if ground combat is rare?
What is the nature of ground combat? Drones? Soldiers? Tanks? Aircraft?
Lasguns or projectile weapons?
Groups of combatants? or individual super soldiers with hyper suits like Heinlein's Starship troopers (the ones in the book not the movie)

 

[Sapyx]

As ED and all its precursors were spaceship-flying games, there really isn't a lot of lore concerning ground warfare, in terms of what it's like and how it's conducted. It presumably does actually happen, rather than all the wars beign fought up in space and the folks on the ground say "oh well, our side lost, guess we're just going to have to put up with enemy occupation now".

On the other hand, cities don't get bombed into oblivion, so ground warfare seems to be fairly limited. Nobody uses nukes or drops asteroids on enemy cities. An awful lot of potential weapons of mass destruction appear to be either outright illegal in the Superpower territories, and hgihly controlled by conventions and treaties in Indie space. Check out the commodity description for always-illegal hafnium-178:

This nuclear isomer has the potential to unleash enormous quantities of gamma radiation, making it an excellent ingredient for use in devastating weapons of mass destruction. As a result Hafnium 178 is a highly controlled substance that is universally illegal to own without special dispensation.

So, like A.I., there are some weapons (including biological weapons) which humanity as a whole has agreed to never actually use, no matter how desperate the situation becomes. It seems World War III (which almost wiped out humanity in the mid-21st century) left an indelible mark on the human race.

So I suspect that ground warfare would largely be "traditional" WWII-style combat: troops and remote-controlled combat vehicles (skimmers, Goliaths), and other combat vehicles (SRVs, hovertanks, etc), fighting over ground control and capturing strategic assets, while aerospace forces fought for superiority. Except for civil wars, "Invaders" will be landing from space in troop transports, with the primary goal of the defenders being to prevent the invasion from securing a foothold and capturing strategic ground assets until a friendly fleet can arrive and drive off the invading fleet in orbit.

Things we don't know:
- Are atmospheric military aircraft better at fighting air battles than our made-for-space spaceships? Could an atmospheric air force fight off an interstellar landing party by itself, or are our spaceships overwhelmingly OP compared to made-for-air-combat defence aircraft?