[GZG] 'Realistic' Mercenary TO&E [SEC=UNCLASSIFIED]

This is a good point.  There was a sci-fi story I read many, many years
ago focussing on mercenary navies on Venus after Earth nuked itself. One of
the mercenary canons is that ANY merc unit using a nuke gets
wiped out by the other mercenary units.  The tie-in to the comment below
is that the main mercenary unit actually subcontracts another unit because
they want an edge to offset some specific element that the mercs that they're
going to be facing have in their forces.

Thus, I could easily see (and this also ties into the question posed
about using multiple, different smaller merc forces side-by-side) a
planetary defense force or whatever being faced by a merc force and a couple
of specialized subcontracted merc forces to offset parts of the planety force.
Maybe the main merc force is mechanized infantry, but needs some mobile, hard
hitters. So they subcontract a company of fast, heavily armored grav tanks.
Since the defenders also have significant air assets, they also hire on a unit
which specializes in air defense.

Could make for some interesting games. Especially if there are conditions
placed on the subcontracted mercs. For example, if the tanks take more than
20% losses, they cancel their contract and leave because they can't afford to
lose many tanks. If the AA unit gets engaged by infantry they will attempt to
negotiate a surrender so that they don't get their gun crews wiped out.

:)

John

> Its unusual to actually game this out, as the more players, the slower