OBT Forum
General BattleTech => Alternate Universe => Age of Chaos => Topic started by: Knightmare on March 06, 2012, 04:09:17 PM
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What are your thoughts on the military organization of a micro-state or independent world? Do you think they'd attempt to replicate the standard SLDF-type regiment of 27 Lances, or something else entirely. Do you think size (of nation or amount of equipment) has any bearing on unit organization?
Interested in hearing your thoughts.
Thanks!
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Base 4 is always going to be appealing, since 'Mechs often are treated more like fighter craft than tanks. So you've got the whole wingman philosophy prevalent in Mechs as well. It even holds true with armor.
Outside of that? I don't think organization matters much. You group things based on your needs. Lots of territory and small army? Then smaller regimental and divisional sizes, to better split up the forces to cover all the territory. Huge army, small territory? Oversized regiments ahoy-hoy.
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I doubt there would be any standard, with so many cultural backgrounds and varied access to military assets.
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Also terrain is a factor. If let's say you are a Ice World like let's borrow from Star Wars and say planet Hoth. Then native animals play a bearing in your armed forces. You would use Tauntaun's for patrols and sneak attacks if the enemy did not know about them. A Desert World then Dune comes to mind and Sandworms. Once you break down everything by culture, types of military assests, terrain and native species then it leads down the path to your organizational structure. Seyla
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I think the SLDF organisation would be the Holy Grail but things are more likely to be different, depending on the circumstances, needs...
Just look at the Eridani Light Horses organisation. I know it is a mess but it shows you how an ideal organisation adapts itself.
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I don't think the Star League is built on a base unit of "27 lances". They're built on a base unit of "BattleMech Regiment" -- based on the fact that the individual BM regiment was the smallest sized unit we routinely see deployed on its own.
This is absolutely the wrong model for a micro-state, and very few of them really work with it. Looking at the Periphery states, we see that they're mid-sized between the Inner Sphere and the micro-states. And many of the Periphery nations work off a base unit of BattleMech battalions rather than regiments (in some ways, the 3025 Capellan Confederation did, as well, highlighting its runt-of-the-litter status). The Concordat, in particular, talks a lot about battalion deployments in place of regimental ones.
Think of it this way; if you're a five-world microstate with four battalions of 'mechs, you're probably not going to group them all together in a reinforced regiment, nor are you likely to have one three-battalion regiment deploying everywhere together, with the remaining fourth battalion doing its own thing. You're a lot more likely to use the battalion as your base unit, so you can cover four areas in relative strength (able to fend off anything but a full attack).
The four-unit Lance makes a lot of sense for the same reason essentially every air force in the world uses a four-plane flight: it can be broken down into two mutually-supporting pairs. While historically tanks have more frequently been fielded in platoons of three or five, and lighter vehicles such as scout/cavalry cars & APCs into platoons of 6+, these factors tend to deal more with the rank range of crew members or the troop-carrying capacity of the vehicles; the former is an administrative issue, the latter an ease-of-operation consideration. Which is a good, military-speak way of saying it all really boils down to personal preference on the part of the organization using them.
Is the four-unit lance perfect? No, but it's a lot better than the ridiculous 2-unit aerospace lance (or the entire idea of attaching aerospace assets directly to a line company). The four-unit lance makes for quick 4-on-4 BattleTech games, despite the fact that the idea of sending four units alone and unafraid to hopefully run into four units of the enemy violates 3500 years (by the 31st century) of military theory and practice. For my money, I think the battalion should be base (that is, individually deployable) unit, but only because the number of regiments in BT canon is ridiculously low for the population size & industrial strength of the states involved.
The four-unit lance gets the job done, is easy to combine with other lances, is reasonably capable of self-support and of achieving real combined-arms dilemmas, but should never be deployed without the other lances of its company being in range to provide support.
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Do you guys see small mixed formations more likely, or less likely? (Mixed like the ELH, ComGuard, etc.)
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Could go either way.
Frankly, I think that mixing unit types below the battalion level is counter-productive from a logistic standpoint; a "battalion" with one company of 'mechs, 2-3 companies of vehicles and 1-2 companies of infantry strikes me as an okay idea, because the companies can be mixed (detachments of this nature happen all the time in warfare), but logistically and administratively the units are homogenous as companies, simplifying maintenance, oversight, and the like. This would be better as homogenous unit-types (BMechs, Vehicles, etc) at the battalion level, because battalions have a lot more non-combat enablers than companies (maintenance platoons, comm detachments, medical personnel, chaplains, etc), but that could be altered by pushing more of those down to the company; it's just not traditional to do that in real-world militaries.
Having a lance of 'mechs, a lance of vehicles, and a platoon of infantry doesn't provide much. One lance/platoon of anything is pretty useless and unlikely to be able to exploit its unique abilities because it's tied too closely to the other units. But a company of 'mechs can exploit their mobility to attack an enemy flank, while the enemy is tied up by 2-3 companies of armor and 1-2 companies of infantry.
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My advice at this small level of detail is not to micro manage...yes I know I am the one saying this. Come up with some generic force generation rules for small factions/independent worlds and leave it there. You will sleep easier that way.
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My advice at this small level of detail is not to micro manage...yes I know I am the one saying this. Come up with some generic force generation rules for small factions/independent worlds and leave it there. You will sleep easier that way.
Honestly, I'm not asking for game design purposes, but I totally agree.
I'd really like your (comprehensive) thoughts on the subject. So give it another "go" if you would sir.
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Micromanagement is quite difficult unless you only have a couple of armies to describe.
Regarding the combined-arms level, what is the equivalent of a BattleMech lance in terms of infantry or vehicles?
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Micromanagement is quite difficult unless you only have a couple of armies to describe.
Regarding the combined-arms level, what is the equivalent of a BattleMech lance in terms of infantry or vehicles?
What do you think it is?
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This is always something I found difficult.
Vehicles are quite easy to convert but infantry...
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This is always something I found difficult.
Vehicles are quite easy to convert but infantry...
It might be easier to formulate an answer or opinion if you decide on the infantry kit. You could use BV values in determining a general size value.
An SRM-equipped infantry unit may only require X number of soldiers to equal a Lance of Vehicles, or BattleMechs, etc.
I'm interested in reading what you (or anyone) comes up with.
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I don't know why but without any BV calculation, I would say an Infantry Company is equivalent to a Lance (but I might be too confident in the PBI).
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This isn't a terribly fair comparison, as BT infantry are horribly, horribly nerfed (rifles only able to shoot 90 meters, and that has a nasty "long range" penalty? Get real). Worse, there is a huge difference between a lance of Stingers and a lance of BattleMasters, though both 3025 designs mount a pair of MGs for anti-infantry work.
Is it the infantry alone, or are they part of a combined arms unit? I'll gladly trade one lance of 'mechs for a company of inferno-SRM-armed infantry in a Battalion vs Battalion fight. I'd rather have 2 companies of 'mechs and a battalion of infantry than three companies of 'mechs, most of the time.
But unless I was guarding something they wanted, I'd pretty much never want to stack up a company of infantry vs a lance of 'mechs. And a properly-armed anti-infantry 'mech can, if the circumstances are wrong, wipe out an entire company of infantry in the course of a single round, which would point to a lance of 'mechs being "equivalent" to an entire battalion of infantry.
The FedSuns RCT setup of 1 'mech = 3 tanks = 5 infantry (platoons) strikes me as reasonable in 3025, if quite disdainful of tanks (give me a 3-on-1 ratio of tanks vs 'mechs on most maps and I'll gladly curb-stomp the 'mechs).
For similar-weight-class 'mechs and vehicles, I'd say 2:3. Infantry don't have weight classes, however, which makes them difficult to judge. It takes a lot of infantry to equal the BV of even a single 3025 Stinger or Vedette, so I don't think BV is a good measuring stick for the PBI.
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It was a suggestion to help him decide. Honestly, I'm really hoping to just hear some opinions. I have none on the subject. :)
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Is it the infantry alone, or are they part of a combined arms unit? I'll gladly trade one lance of 'mechs for a company of inferno-SRM-armed infantry in a Battalion vs Battalion fight. I'd rather have 2 companies of 'mechs and a battalion of infantry than three companies of 'mechs, most of the time.
But unless I was guarding something they wanted, I'd pretty much never want to stack up a company of infantry vs a lance of 'mechs. And a properly-armed anti-infantry 'mech can, if the circumstances are wrong, wipe out an entire company of infantry in the course of a single round, which would point to a lance of 'mechs being "equivalent" to an entire battalion of infantry.
The idea was to use it in a combined arms unit.
Using a pure infantry unit against a pure 'Mech one would be much more difficult and you would need to deploy much more infantry than a Company.
The 5 platoons to 1 'Mech could be another idea.