Army First Glance

[miketr]

Does this confuse the hell out of people or not?

Design Notes: If you look at the base corps you see combat values of 200, 300, 400, etc.  This was done for easy of display over the old system of 2, 3, 4, etc.  Artillery rating is removed because it did nothing.  Otherwise when Division & Brigades values, plus bonus or penalties for grade and scale you would end up with fractions like 0.36 and the like.

So if you want to figure out combat strength of an army.  Two 1880 Professional Infantry Corps at 100% would have a rating of 330 * 2 = 660.

Army upkeep has been moved to a flat scale, more up to date corps cost more to buy but to maintain no real difference.  

There is NOT agreement on these from the mods, so I want to get some feed back from people.

Also specialist brigades I have no detail on because of so many other disagreements.  Two ways to deal with them, have them have reduced combat effectiveness like N3's light infantry.  So they would use the Cav stats or increased cost.  I lean towards having them use Cav combat stats but move like infantry except in their special terrain. 

Michael  

Army Stuff

Unit Types

Corps: Base Unit of the Game made up of 50,000 men.


Division:  Half of a Corps, made up of 25,000 men.  In addition to being half the size of a Corps a Division has a 10% penalty to combat effectiveness because of lack of synergy that a Corps would have.  So a Division that was of equal tech level to a Corps would only have 45% of its combat strength.


Brigade:  One tenth of a Corps, made up of 5,000. In addition to being one tenth the size of a Corps a Brigade has a 25% penalty to combat effectiveness because of lack of synergy that a Corps would have.  So a Brigade that was of equal tech level to a Corps would only have 7.5% of its combat strength.


Unit Types at start of the game


Infantry, Cavalry and Light Infantry (Arctic, Desert, Jungle and Mountain)


Infantry: Units trained to fight on foot vs. enemy units.  The most common army unit to be found in navalism.  Base movement of Infantry Corps is 2 Provinces per combat pulse.


Cavalry: Units trained to fight on horseback vs. enemy units.  While some say that the age of sword and sabers has passed by most nations still maintain Cavalry units.  Cavalry units speed if nothing else makes them attractive despite their weaker combat power when compared to Infantry. Base movement of Infantry Corps is 4 Provinces per combat pulse.


Light Infantry: Infantry units trained to fight in specific environmental conditions and allow them to ignore movement penalties when moving across such terrain.


Unit Grades


Regular:  Made up of Professionals and intended to stay active all the time.  Regular units receive a 10% Bonus to combat effectiveness because of their professionalism.

 
Conscript:  Most armies are made up of conscript infantry.  Every year hundreds of thousands of young men will begin to serve for 2 or 3 years.  After the men serve their 2 or 3 years of active service they go into the ready reserve.  In peace time conscript units are typically at half strength or less.  As a result they are much cheaper to maintain than regular units but fight at half strength till fully mobilized.  After mobilized men of the ready reserves are called to the colors and bring the conscript formations to their full war strength, this can take several weeks to complete.


Reserve:  After conscripts or professionals complete their terms of service or time in the ready reserves they are passed to the second line reserves.  Because reserve units are made up of older, less fit and less trained men they function at a penalty to combat.  Reserve units can not fight at all till fully mobilized because in peace time they are little more than an empty cadre formation.  


Specialist Brigades

A number of specialist units that lack direct combat purposes or as new unit types appear they appear as brigade sized formations.  Note Specialist Brigades already have their lack of synergy penalty applied.


Constable:  Used to keep order among civilian populations.  Such units receive special training in how to control people but are lightly armed.  As such Constable Brigades count as five times as large when calculating garrison requirements to keep order in a province.  Typically found in conquered territories and colonies.  Constable troops are adept at requisition supplies from civilian populations.  As such Constable Units will rarely be out of supply.    

Note: Constable Units lack heavy weapons and their combat rating reflects their lack of direct combat training and equipement.

Depot: Supply specialists to allow units to fight outside of a nation's normal supply network.  All units are assumed to be in supply within their home territory but need to establish a supply chain when fighting elsewhere.  To establish a supply chain a Depot Brigade must be in each province between your home nation and the location of your troops.  Each Depot Brigade can support Five Corps.  All Units are assumed to have depot function integral to them and can supply themselves in provinces directly adjacent to your home nation or in coastal provinces a line of supply via sea can be established.


Ex: You have 6 Brigades worth of troops 3 provinces inside of another nation.  To keep them in supply 4 Depots would be needed.  2 in each of the first 2 provinces and in the third the Corps can supply themselves.  


Note once Provinces are conquered and have been integrated into your empire Depot Units are not longer required to establish a supply chain through provinces.


Engineer:  When you wish to build something outside of your home nation such as a port, railroad or fortification an engineering brigade is needed to do the work.  One Brigade per project


Siege, Artillery: Specialist Artillery designed to reduce enemy fortifications.

[Sachmle]

I'm not a huge fan of decimal point combat values, but understand that avoiding them would be challenging at best.

Also, if I'm reading it correctly, shouldn't the value of a brigade of 1860 Reg Inf be 14.85 instead of 16.5? It says that a brigade operates at 75% strength of a division and the division is 99. With 5 brigades in a division you get:

99/5=19.8 base value
@75% strength= 19.8*0.75=14.85

Also, it looks like if you bump each level over 1, i.e. Make Regular the value for the Conscript column, make the Conscript column Reg-20, and the Reserve column Cons-40 (keeps same level drops) you can eliminate the decimal values in the corps and perhaps the brigade too, I'd have to do more math.

[TexanCowboy]

I sorta liked that system you were proposing once upon a time a while back, with the "empty shell" divisions and corps made up of individual brigades. How would that look, without the maintanance increases?

http://www.navalism.org/index.php?topic=4106.0

[Carthaginian]

Not too shabby- although an Engineering unit MUST have some kind of combat rating.
These might be guys that can do some of the calculus in their heads... but all that math that means that they are damn effective with a rifle, too. Engineers should have at least as much direct combat effectiveness as a Constabulary Unit of equal size, and perhaps as much as a Cavalry Unit of equal size- they can be mighty creative with that plastique and det-cord when called upon to do so.

Beyond that, I only have Sam's suggestion- if nothing else, round so that the decimals are lost.
We can handle a little imprecision in the name of simplicity... and I deal with too many decimals at work. ;)

[Korpen]

Beyond that, I only have Sam's suggestion- if nothing else, round so that the decimals are lost.
We can handle a little imprecision in the name of simplicity... and I deal with too many decimals at work. ;)

Unless I am very much mistaken, the commas really only matter when the unit is used, so it is not something that one as a player need to track.

[Nobody]

First impression: Why do they start with what interest me least?
Second thought: like it, though I would do a few things differently

Reserve
I agree that the elderly people these units might be composed of could be physically less fit, but they did receive a proper training once, might even have fought a war before! So maybe using them should have other drawbacks than a lower fighting power. I would think of lower mobility (unless transported by train) or a GNP reduction of x$ per reactivated reserve corp.
I also think that reserve units are better constables than conscripts. Just think who has more authority: the 16-year old boy or the graying former warrior?


Edit:
I forgot, these numbers might be nice to look at, but without knowing how much money a country will have, they mean nothing. The the "units per province" might provoke problems because they are all unequal. Just one reference though: Germany (with otl 1871 borders) has 102(!) provinces, not sure about other countries but Austria might have even more.

[Valles]

Works for me.

Overall costs per head seem to be higher than in the old system; is this a 'they were too cheap', an 'economic rules have also been revamped', or a 'V isn't very observant' effect?

[Korpen]

Constable:  Used to keep order among civilian populations.  Such units receive special training in how to control people but are lightly armed.  As such Constable Brigades count as five times as large when calculating garrison requirements to keep order in a province.  Typically found in conquered territories and colonies.  Constable troops are adept at requisition supplies from civilian populations.  As such Constable Units will rarely be out of supply.   

I guess that "contable troops" would cover all froms of Gendarmerie (and hence more a homeland then colonial force)?

[Nobody]

I have a question:
You list upkeep for regular, conscript and reserve units. For peacetime this is understandable, but what in case of war? Does their upkeep change to that of regular units, but the fighting value does not?

[Carthaginian]

Reserve
I agree that the elderly people these units might be composed of could be physically less fit, but they did receive a proper training once, might even have fought a war before! So maybe using them should have other drawbacks than a lower fighting power. I would think of lower mobility (unless transported by train) or a GNP reduction of x$ per reactivated reserve corp.
I also think that reserve units are better constables than conscripts. Just think who has more authority: the 16-year old boy or the graying former warrior?

And also don't forget that these reserve units will not necessarily be 'elderly.'
Many of the 'militia' units will have perfectly healthy young men who- though perhaps without formal military training- are both physically fit and well-trained by the veterans who make up the cadre of the reserve unit. Having been in BOTH roles, I think this is a really good point that Nobody brings up.

Conscripts aren't really good soldiers- that's why you generally have to have millions of them.

[snip]

The the "units per province" might provoke problems because they are all unequal. Just one reference though: Germany (with otl 1871 borders) has 102(!) provinces, not sure about other countries but Austria might have even more.

We might need to fiddle with all of the province boundaries after the boarders get finalized to make it fair. As of now, New Russia only has about 15-20 provinces. Now, land area of them is much bigger then the German ones, so sub-dividing them would not be a problem

[Nobody]

Conscripts aren't really good soldiers- that's why you generally have to have millions of them.

They aren't really cheap either. That is having an army of 100000 conscripts is more expansive than the same number of permanent soldiers, because training them (which you do constantly) is expansive (although this might be a rather modern problem). Their real advantage is that they produce reservist which can be drawn later.

[Carthaginian]

Conscripts aren't really good soldiers- that's why you generally have to have millions of them.

They aren't really cheap either. That is having an army of 100000 conscripts is more expansive than the same number of permanent soldiers, because training them (which you do constantly) is expansive (although this might be a rather modern problem). Their real advantage is that they produce reservist which can be drawn later.

The biggest advantage of a conscript army is that it swells the number of meatshields that your REAL soldiers have. :D

Conscripts are all about numbers, plain and simple. They aren't really even about producing reservists- generally, you aren't thinking about the utility of a discharged conscript because he has a fresh one who is replacing him as soon as he goes out. Your biggest concern with a conscript is simply that he is a warm body able to carry a rifle right now. When he returns to 'the world' he almost immediately forgets the training that he got in the military- generally, he tries very, very hard to forget it.

Producing cadre is something that you do almost exclusively through you volunteer forces- even among reserve units.

[Carthaginian]

Beyond that, I only have Sam's suggestion- if nothing else, round so that the decimals are lost.
We can handle a little imprecision in the name of simplicity... and I deal with too many decimals at work. ;)

Unless I am very much mistaken, the commas really only matter when the unit is used, so it is not something that one as a player need to track.

If I am conducting a strategic analysis of my units' combat abilities against my perceived opponent... well, I'm gonna be forced to use the damn decimals. Why not make it easier on ourselves AND the mods and simplify the math a bit?

[Desertfox]

Just round...

I don't like the decreased fighting strength for smaller units, especially for the special units that usually would not be fighting in Corp sizes. Warfare in the Southwest and Mexico tended to be by small units in huge expanses of territory. I don't recall a single battle (Mexican-American War, French Intervention, Mexican Revolution) that involved combat by even division sized forces. Most combat by was units at most of 10,000 men per side.

Also what about militia units? For example Pancho Villa's army was made up mainly of militia and was very effective, defeating regular forces.