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ay I cleaned the flash off my GZG stuff, hoping that the nice weather will
hold so I can prime this week. But I realized that my lack of
real-world military experience and tendency to read histories written at
battalion-level or higher means I'm a tiny bit fuzzy on how I should be
organizing this stuff. When you add stuff like power armor, etc, I'm even more
confused. I'll just address one side of my two forces now, and maybe then I
can figure out the opfor myself. Here's what I'm working with:
40 'normal' infantry 6 Power armored infantry
2 Command Hover APCs 3 Hover APCs
2 Hover scout tanks/light APCs
4 Medium Hover tanks
2 Large Hover flatbed/logistics vehicles (thinking of adding a crane arm
to
one for a recovery/repair thing)
So what would be a good way to lay these guys out that made a modicum of
sense? The 4 medium hovertanks make a tank platoon I guess; and I was thinking
that one command HAPC plus the 3 regualr HAPCs could be a
mech/hover infantry platoon, with 32 of the 'regular' infantry. Then
the
last command HAPC and the 2 scout hovers/IFVs could maybe be some kind
of
elite/rapid response thing, with the 6 PA troopers in the HAPC and the 8
remaining troopers assigned, 4 each, to the IFVs? Does this make any kind of
doctrinal sense? Or should the scout tanks be assigned to the Tank platoon,
and the second command HAPC attached to the logistics hovers to
make a recovery/engineering unit, shoehorning the PA infantry into the
platoon with the regular infantry? I guess this stuff doesn't matter too much,
but for scenario purposes I'd like to have an idea of what sort of
organization would make sense here, what would logically be sent out into
the field as a unit, etc. Any help - and the reasons behind your
suggestions - would be greatly appreciated!
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e mechanized platoon. If anything it's virtually text book numbers.
> --- On Sun, 4/19/09, Kenneth Coble <kmcoble@gmail.com> wrote:
From: Kenneth Coble <kmcoble@gmail.com>
Subject: [GZG] Some questions about organizational structure
To: gzg-l@vermouth.csua.berkeley.edu
Date: Sunday, April 19, 2009, 6:18 PM
Today I cleaned the flash off my GZG stuff, hoping that the nice weather will
hold so I can prime this week. But I realized that my lack of
real-world military experience and tendency to read histories written at
battalion-level or higher means I'm a tiny bit fuzzy on how I should be
organizing this stuff. When you add stuff like power armor, etc, I'm even
more confused. Â I'll just address one side of my two forces now, and maybe
then I can figure out the opfor myself. Here's what I'm working with:
40 'normal' infantry 6 Power armored infantry
2 Command Hover APCs 3 Hover APCs
2 Hover scout tanks/light APCs
4 Medium Hover tanks
2 Large Hover flatbed/logistics vehicles (thinking of adding a crane arm
to one for a recovery/repair thing)
So what would be a good way to lay these guys out that made a modicum of
sense? The 4 medium hovertanks make a tank platoon I guess; and I was
thinking that one command HAPC plus the 3 regualr HAPCs could be a
mech/hover infantry platoon, with 32 of the 'regular' infantry. Then
the last command HAPC and the 2 scout hovers/IFVs could maybe be some
kind of elite/rapid response thing, with the 6 PA troopers in the HAPC
and the 8 remaining troopers assigned, 4 each, to the IFVs? Does this make
any kind of doctrinal sense? Or should the scout tanks be assigned to the Tank
platoon, and the second command HAPC attached to the
logistics hovers to make a recovery/engineering unit, shoehorning the PA
infantry into the platoon with the regular infantry? I guess this stuff
doesn't matter too much, but for scenario purposes I'd like to have an idea of
what sort of organization would make sense here, what would logically be sent
out into the field as a unit,
etc. Any help - and the reasons behind your suggestions - would be
greatly appreciated!
> On Sun, Apr 19, 2009 at 7:36 PM, Charles Lee <xarcht@yahoo.com> wrote:
Thanks, I did a little searching around and found a site claiming (with what
accuracy I can't say) that a modern US Mech Infantry platoon is 32 men in 4
Bradleys, so I just translated that over. But
how about the weird little 'special detachment' guys - the PA dudes
with their command vehicle, and the 2 scout/IFVs with two half-teams?
Does grouping them together like that as a quasi-'special ops'
detachment make any sense? If not, what would be a better or more rational way
to incorporate those extra minis into the Tank and Mech Infantry Platoons?
I've been reading "Barbarossa" recently, and I keep seeing references to
Guderian commanding his tank group from a
command car - would the second command hover and the 2 scout
tanks/IFVs make a logical command element? Using the scouts for,
well, scouting, as well as some HQ security? If so, I might push the PA squad
into the Infantry platoon and just use regular trooper models to represent the
HQ security troops.
Frankly, this feels a little better anyway; it gives me a Tank platoon (4
tanks), a Reinforced Mech Infantry Platoon (3 squads regular troops, 1 squad
PA, all in HAPCs, one of which is command variant) and
a Headquarters unit (command HAPC, 2 scout tanks/IFVs. I've looked at
a couple of structural organization charts this afternoon working on this, and
while I'm not sure I could get a single org unit run up out of these models, I
think that by cutting them up into Tank
platoon/Mech Inf platoon/HQ unit I could fairly rationally call them
all elements of the same Battalion/Squadron, and then assume they were
detached together in the field.
This has run to a much longer post than I'd intended... Another way to phrase
these ramblings might be: are any of these ideas I'm throwing out LOTS worse
than the others? Gaming has sort of blunted my
sensibilites as to organizational reality - there's that sort of
'organic everything' doctrine that fiction and gaming seem to promulgate,
where your individual unit seems to have heavy
support/combat engineers/medics/psionic talents/whatever integrated
down to at least the platoon level, if not within individual squads!
Granted, the stuff I'm doing isn't going to be super-realistic anyway,
but I'd prefer for my fictional unit org charts to pass the laugh test. Is
there any single book or source out there that would really
help a layman grasp the concept of real-world military organization
and structure? Even if it just focused on one example armed force that would
be a big help...
Thanks again!
On Sun, Apr 19, 2009 at 7:33 PM, Kenneth Coble <kmcoble@gmail.com> wrote:
> how about the weird little 'special detachment' guys - the PA dudes
You can call them a recon element, or an "assault" element. It's all in what
you want them to DO. Personally, I'd use them as a sort of "assault platoon"
and use them as my task force reserve.
There's a bit of a personal pet peeve about gamer-driven
organizations. They tend to think in terms of "what do I want to call it"
rather than "how do I envision using them". Make your organizations (and
future purchases) be driven by the doctrine, not the other way around. You've
got that advantage, use it.
> Does grouping them together like that as a quasi-'special ops'
That's not a bad option either.
> Frankly, this feels a little better anyway; it gives me a Tank platoon
I could fight this organization too. I'm a huge fan of having recon assets in
any unit on the board. That's just me. I'd personally suggest buying another
armor platoon so that you can have three
maneuver elements--which is what you'd have if you put the PA in a PA
platoon. Three is always better than two as far as Maneuver BOS elements.
On Sun, Apr 19, 2009 at 9:38 PM, John Atkinson <johnmatkinson@gmail.com>
wrote:
[snipped good feedback!]
> There's a bit of a personal pet peeve about gamer-driven
This is a good point, and it's definitely a trap I sort of fell into here. In
my original draft I'd written the question as 'what should I
call this/model this after' but felt like it was too clumsy so I cut
it out - but I'm still thinking along those lines, and I thank you for
helping point it out to me. These guys are going to be for my 'Revolt
on Antares'-based campaign, and they're supposed to represent the
Rebel house who's goofy psi-power is basically superhuman morale. So
based on that, and your feedback, I'll start thinking of them as being a
fairly aggressive force, with a bias towards offense and assault. Based on
that, and their unit list in the original RoA game, they've
got more PA infantry than tanks/armor; would another Mech Infantry
platoon -and perhaps either more PA to fold into those 2 platoons, or
maybe even enough of them too make one platoon pure PA - work well as
another manuever element?
My other option is based on the off-world mercs mentioned in the
original RoA game - rather than expanding this single army any further
at the moment, I could either add another tank platoon or a pure PA mech
infantry platoon as mercs, and still fit the background stuff...
Whichever way I go with this, thanks for the feedback on my current
organizations (it sounds like they're rational enough for the time being), and
much thanks again for pointing out another 'gamist' blind spot in my
organizational thinking!