Logistics for transporting a large army..

[Anonymous]

Okay,

So my characters are shipping out with this large mercenary army to Lencia. But i don't know how many ships to tell them that it takes. The king of Lencia hired the entire 2,600 man army! How many ships do you think it takes to transport that many people plus supplies plus equipment.

 

[Eternalknight]

Well, according to the rulebook, a warship can hold 160 soldiers. So that's around 17 ships.

 

[nunix]

Well, it depends on your needs; all of this is on pages 124 + 125.

the Galley is the largest transporter, but can't make it out to sea. It needs a crew of 200 and can carry up to an additional 250 soldiers. For your total, that'd be 11 ships. If you wanted to fake it, you could say that 140 of the crew are additional soldiers; those 140 would normally be rowers (70 oars on each side = 140 oars/rowers), but soldiers could probably do that if they were trained for it. That would bring your total down to 6 ships. However, this is only good for moving along the coast.

the Longship can make sea voyages, but can only take 120 soldiers (plus an additional 40 can take the place of rowers). Good for a couple of expeditionary forces, bad for an invasion. Also the cheapest at 10,000gc each (if that matters at all).

Warship stats are as above, plus you could squeeze in another 80 soldiers to take the place of rowers. Two things make this impractical for transport. One, it can't carry the supplies needed to support all those soldiers; and two, it's the slowest of the bunch. Plus, it cannot go out to sea.

So.. I'd say galleys, with at least some of the rowers on each ship replaced with soldiers.

 

[stormgod]

Bear in mind that any army is not solely composed of just the combatatants. There is also a lot of non-combat types that go with the army to keep the army functioning. Smiths, cooks, teamsters, porters, medics, the list goes on and on. At the bare minimum, i would say you would need one non-combat support personanel for every 4 soldiers.