Mercenary Second Edition Playtest - Force Organisation

[MongooseMatt]

Continuing with our release of playtest material for Mercenary Second Edition, Planet Mongoose presents the rules for organising your new recruits into a cohesive force!

http://blog.mongoosepublishing.co.uk/?p=721

Again, all comments welcomed.

 

[phavoc]

Standard Organization

* You might want to flesh this out a bit, stating why you have larger platoons than say the standard 2 five-man sections and two NCO's. Provide a few examples of say why a special weapons platoon of 3 crew-served VRF Gauss guns is 17 men (3 five-man squads, 2 NCO's). On the surface that makes sense because it's basic math. But sometimes squads are designed to be over-manned on the surface for a reason. Explaining why to those that have never served in the military or don't have a functional background in them helps them understand better.

Units in Traveller

*MORALE - Money is always a good reason why people fight. But purely money-oriented people tend to cut and run when the price/performance ratio is exceeded. Granted we are talking about a merc outfit to begin with, but most soldiers (or anyone who risks their life alongside someone else) will tell you that a lot of it has to deal with the people you are risking your life with. Elite units tend to get elite because people are willing to fight alongside one another and willingly risk their life for the next guy because there is the expectation they will do the same. So the longer a unit has been together they should get a morale bump. Same goes for experience. Morale should be based on more than money.

* ENDURANCE - Should not be based on a 1 for 1 ratio. Taking 6 casualties with a unit of 12 (12 Endurance) should more than halve the combat effectiveness of a unit. A wounded person requires assistance. Assuming medical help is not always immediately available, someone else has to provide help. That's an immediate endurance hit during combat. Then you have the mental aspects of a unit taking 50% casualties. People won't necessarily be fighting at peak efficiency. I was scanning my How to Make War (by James Dunigan... I HIGHLY recommend you have a copy for things like this!) to see what was listed for attrition. It is probably more detailed than you want here, but simple tables might suffice. He cites an example of a Russian armored division, with 72% of it's combat power in tanks. Taking 30% personnel loses equates to over 60% combat strength loss. It's different for American division (52% tank heavy, same 30% personnel loss equals 42-50% combat strength loss). Not sure how detailed you want to get, but a 1-1 ratio is pretty easy for players to keep track of. So maybe as optional side-chart?

* LEADERSHIP - It's not explicitly covered anywhere, but HOW a unit is composed might be important for small-unit tactics. Taking out command/control units will negatively impact a unit. Some units may have very strong leadership levels (3-4 enlisted, 1 junior non-com, 1 senior non-com per section) that allow it to take casualties and not harshly impact capabilities. Course that will cost more to for unit upkeep. Cheaper units might have one non-com per 10 man section. Cheaper to maintain, but also if the non-com gets taken out they might not have a clear command structure and they would cease to be operationally effective (but still defend if get shot at, they just won't do anything on their own). This also scales up, so units that try to go too cheap with leaders find their effectiveness takes even more hits when they get casualties. You'd have to come up with some sort of chart to cover this (say three levels, elite, standard, low), and a rating (5% / 10% / 20%) for decrease in power/effectiveness as units take damage. Again, maybe too much detail for some, so make it optional.

 

[locarno24]

Looks interesting.

Just a comment:

Note that if Rawshack’s Regulars were to add a different type of squad, perhaps a heavy weapons squad, it would need its own unit roster and could not be combined into the platoon as it would have different skills and weapons.

Surely (if I'm understanding the following section right) a heavy weapons squad gets combined into the platoon via traits?

A putative fourth, half-sized squad, Sanai's Sharpshooters, has 6 members and all are sniper archetype troopers (off the table in the previous entry). Bundled up into Rawshack's Regulars, that would bump the unit's endurance to 42 and give them Marksman 2D (one sniper per 7 troopers)


Morale - Agreed that morale will be increased for other reasons - experience or desperation (facing enemies noted for not taking prisoners, militia defending home and - especially - family, etc).

Endurance - whilst I agree that casualties do disrupt a unit on a vastly more than linear scale (which is why snipers are so damn effective at pinning a unit down, even if they can't wipe it out), until we see how large-scale combat works in the next preview, there's no garuantee that damage inflicted does impede a unit on a linear one-for-one basis. Taking injury to a person using traveller mechanics, all but wiping out a PCs END score - dropping it from an average 7 to a flatline 0 - only applies a DM-2 to END-related checks.

Standard organisation is fine when explaining basic structure - this only works for 'generic rifle units', obviously; I don't know if armoured merc units are in scope but a quick statement as to what is considered an equivalent unit (so a tank is a 'squad', a squadron a 'platoon' and above more or less matches) might be worth it.

One other comment worth mentioning is the headquarters unit - a squad generally has a squad leader who exists within its numbers, but a platoon commander is usually external to any of the squads he commands, and sometimes has a short section with him, and unlike regimental support assets, this is a front-line combat unit.

For that matter, company or regiments often have a 'headquarters unit' of platoon or larger size.

 

[Condottiere]

1. Besides the usual formal and field organizations, mercenary organizations are likely to have their subunits in a streamlined and pragmatic organization, especially the smaller ones.

2. Payment can be a lump sum or by how many men you can muster.

3. If the paymaster is liable for wages, it's interesting from when that starts. If on signing of the contract, then he'd be impatient for them to deploy and complete their mission ASAP. If on arrival, the unit might be impatient to get there ASAP.

 

[Condottiere]

One interesting addition to the Laws of War, which explains why sophonts have to be recruited is that mercenary units can't employ weaponized droids, drones and/or robots.