warships and troop transports disguised as grapeships

[m.ellis]

Of course, the invaders presumably know about this possibility and can take steps to combat it (they have access to the same tech presumably), but it isn't necessarily going to be a simple matter of 'soldiers overwhelm civilians'.

I copied your post to a word document -- very useful information. Thanks.

I recalculated the grapeship capacity based on OA info and picture: 2400 meter in length with 16 shuttle pods. w/o going into all the details, I estimated that a grapeship can carry over 2 million troops and support personnel, and 3200 ships can transport over 50 billion. My numbers might be way off.

The other thing that occurred to me today is that the story doesn't mention the size of the invading force. Everything the protagonist knows is from street rumor and propaganda bulletins (once the Net is up and running). But I like to have a detailed foundation for what I write. Trick is not to get too caught up in unnecessary details.