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Doesn't work like that with the Bays. The Bays are more specialized, so you wouldn't find 28+ beds and foot lockers in a Battle Armor Bay. Instead, you'd find a half dozen with small cubicles for the armor, and maybe some other specialized equipment for the repair and interstellar transport of the armor.

There's specialized, and then there's overspecialized. If DropShips can't reconfigure bays (without a shipyard) enough to go from 28 beds and foot lockers to 2.5 beds, foot lockers, and some machinery to remove or repair pieces of battle armor...that's pretty ridiculous, as it puts their tech at levels far below our own. I understand non-infantry bays not being modular. Not being able to reconfigure an infantry bay from foot to motorized? Or motorized to jump? That's far too hyper-specialized.

Now this devolves to a comparison between real life and BattleTech. Clearly BattleTech's rules lose to the common sense of real life. That said, the Bay Rules still work for game purposes and there are other rules for Bay changes. So exchanges are possible. Do they fit real world possibilities or designs? Probably not. On their own merits I think they fit campaign rules well.

Funny, I think they absolutely wreck campaign rules. Can you find a single DropShip that can transport motorized infantry? Or mechanized infantry? There's only a minor handful that transport jump infantry. BA carriers? Not very many, and they are all virtually faction-specific designs. That's the issue I have with non-modular infantry bays. Without serious changes or customizations, it absolutely kills a campaign on transport needs.

That entire issue of needing to reconfigure bays in a shipyard or even needing more DropShips created (or more updated DropShips) is easily resolved by one tiny fix. "So that Condor that has a Bay for 12 foot platoons? Okay, that's a 60 ton infantry bay. The crew can reconfigure it to handle any kind of infantry, up to a max of 60 tons. Use the rules for how much space infantry requires as found in StratOps." Done. How does that make less sense than requiring dozens of new DropShips or custom refits? Aerospace, particularly non-fighters or WarShips, is the red-headed stepchild of BT. This one tiny fix covers one of the massive gaps, without changing anything else for any other combat arm. It's not about reality versus Battletech, but simply an extension of a rule that already exists in the canon construction rules.

After reading your edit... 

Ah I see what you're saying.

You're talking about the conversion or modification of Infantry Bays already installed in the DropShip. Honestly, I think one of the reasons why they require a Shipyard is volume. While the weight of an Infantry Platoon may be 5 tons, and the weight of a Motorized Platoon is relatively close, the volume required to store a motorized platoon is very, very different. The space for all those ATVs, or Motor Bikes is probably a bit more than the bunks and foot lockers of a foot platoon.

Requiring a Shipyard to make structural changes to installed Bays is an easy way to account for abstract modification of a DropShip's interior arrangement to account for changes in bay volume. The rule doesn't affect the transport, only the deployment of different infantry types.

The logic isn't perfect: Cargo Bays for example are supposedly big open spaces for storage, but we determine total cargo strictly by weight without volume. So a 900 ton Cargo Bay could hold nine BattleMechs, but does not take into account the actual size of the bay or the DropShip.

I think you're right. There might be some wiggle room here, but I think I'm at the cusp of a discussion about relative or absolute sizes in construction, etc.   

Bother me? Nah. I found my solutions up above. I think it's a shame that it isn't addressed (or wasn't addressed when the TW ruleset was released), as it makes a lot more difficult on homebrew campaigns, especially since mercs seem to be very popular for that. Mercenary transport is terrible, especially when you consider that mercs may easily be stuck in horrible bay conditions for months, not weeks.

I have the same solution to this that I have to the absolutely horrible characterizations of various personalities found in the early BT novels (versus sourcebooks of the same era, which provide a much more detailed and interesting picture). I ignore the shit out of it.

I did some math on Wolf's Dragoon's Zeta battalion from 3028 a couple days ago.  Came to the conclusion for sustained operations, with an hour of combat a day, about 3300 tons of ammunition.  Logistics absolutely *destroys* most units in the game.  In fact, if I was to play a campaign, I would have absolutely NO units with ANY ammunition whatsoever, and all units would be fusion powered.

So assuming techs don't have to deal with ammo and such, my thoughts on a lance would be:

4 Mechs, 1 squad of technical personnel in 2-3 supply vehicles with parts (not little ones, at least 20+ tons each).
2 Fighters, 1 squad of technical personnel, 2-3 supply vehicles with parts, perhaps more with all the various bombs
12 Vehicles, 1 squad of technical personnel, crew members are all techs as well so less support is required.  At least a lance, if not far more for supply vehicles.  Also, if its artillery you can double or triple the support units.

Mech and fighter pilots don't have "security", but the vehicle company (at least 30+ personnel) will have at least 1 crewman per tank awake 24/7 "scanning" and monitoring higher command radio frequencies.  This is the way the modern militaries do it as well. 

If mechs are deployed and must "rest", they'd be provided with security, but most likely they'd return to a FOB or collection area for the night, perhaps company in size, so security could be provided as a vehicle company.  Worst case, 1 pilot in each lance will stay up all night (taking turns, perhaps 2 hour shifts) keeping an eye out.

BT never really mentions logistics.  I think mech bays don't have "supplies", but each has about 2 bunks for technical personnel.  Leopards, Unions, Overlords, and other mech-only dropships have very little cargo, as they carry mechs into combat and don't really support them after.

I would think every Union, or at least Overlord sized vessel carrying troops, has a Mule with supplies nearby, maybe even still in orbit shuttling down supplies as necessary.

The US Military has about 9 non-combat personnel per combat soldier.  Other countries have less than that, in some cases less than 1 per combat soldier. 

Also, those infantry platoons in all the dropships may not all be carrying weapons, but could be support personnel instead.

Quote from: Bad_Syntax on July 01, 2012, 09:00:14 PM

I did some math on Wolf's Dragoon's Zeta battalion from 3028 a couple days ago.  Came to the conclusion for sustained operations, with an hour of combat a day

That's some seriously sustained combat. For real world set-piece battles, maybe not. For BT? That's an eternity. With the incredibly short time per round, battles last minutes, if lucky. Even in larger conflicts post-4th SW, you see more a minute or two of intense fighting punctuated by strategic movement afterwards. In many cases, I'd imagine those forces just fall back to be replaced by others, if possible.

Yeah, in BattleTech game terms, however the 4th Succession War Atlas's (and other books) mention battles lasting hours.  I was overdoing it, but I'd rather have a ton of AC20 rot, than carry a 14 ton paperweight.

Many modern vehicles are even less, 6 TOWs in a Bradley, 43 120mm rounds in an M1, 16 hellfires on an Apache, etc.  Some are more however, 900 25mm rounds in a Bradley (one could say that is 45 bursts I guess tho, so it still kinda works). 

But take a mech with an AC20, it will pretty much go through at least 1 ton of ammo engaging 1 mech, if not 2.  Now, if you get in 5-6 fights your looking at 12 tons of ammo needed.  That is for 1 mech, 40 of them may easily use 500 tons a day, PLUS they have other ammo dependent weapons that are consuming too, so it isn't too far fetched or hard to wrap your head around.

Ammo dependency, if an option, should always be ruled out IMO, even if some versatility is lost.  Artillery being the one exception.

I put this spreadsheet together for Zeta Battalion, as it has all elements listed in the Wolf Dragoons source book.

You will see I made several assumptions as to what heavy replacemnt parts would be carried, based on what Mechs are deployed. I would be interested to see what others think of my assumptions, as I have never played a long table top campaign.

This spreadsheet is for an solid week of fighting.