Unit designation/lettering in SW.

[MKSheppard]

This was a little bit of minutuae that struck me as I was pondering it for a fanfic.

Now, while it might be realistic to have the 523412st Army Battlegroup; it would be a damn nightmare from a book keeping standpoint, much less the possibility of typoes causing entire units to disappear...

I came up with a semi-cohesive system:

Units are only counted at Division/Battlegroup/Legion level minimal. Smaller sublevels, like Regiments wouldn't even be named, they'd exist as a subgroup of the larger unit, like IV/212st Legion or so.

Divisional level units would be numbered and organized by a three digit alphabetic code at the beginning or ending of their number.

Like so: XYZ.

This organization would occur at the Sector Group level; Three digits in Aurabesh (26 letters) gives you 17,576 possible sectors; only about 3,000 or so combos would be used though.

Then comes the four digit numerical code designating the unit. Four digits gives us 9,999 possible division-sized units and 120-150 million personnel, which is pretty much enough I'd imagine for an entire sector; considering that sectors can range widely in size from really large, sparsely populated sectors on the Outer Rim, to really small sectors consisting of a few dense highly populated industrialized planets in the Deep Core.

So a unit might be designated SZA-2123, which might mean, Braxtant Sector; 2123rd Division; which is a lot easier to remember than a eight or nine-digit long string of numbers.

This is also keeping in with official film canon, remember "TK-421, report in!" from the Death Star?

The system could even be only two alphas and three numeric digits if the planetary defense forces and Stormtrooper corps fall outside this system, and have their own naming/designation systems/lineages.

I'd imagine that outside of a few "special" units like Vader's Death Squadron, the units in one sector would tend to stay within their sector, lessening the possibility of SF-212st Division and UF-212st Division showing up in the same operation and causing confusion in transmissions. In fact, having no alpha lettering could be the sign of an elite, Imperial-wide roving unit like the 501st Stormtrooper Legion, "Vader's Fist".

EDIT: I just realized something about these designations; it makes shipping supplies to the units VASTLY easier. All you need to do is group the shipments together by alphanumeric number at the munitions depot or factory and then send them to each sector's respective depot; like all the stuff with SZA prefixes is crated up together, and sent to the Braxtant (SZA) sector depot, where they're broken up and shipped to individual units.

[Havok]

*AHEM* "Tk-421 why aren't you at your post? Tk-421 do you copy?"

Other than that it seems like a pretty good system. Especially the part about the elite units, very nifty thinking.

[Ace Pace]

Nice, I like the part about keeping forces segregated, planetary defense, sector forces and roving units.

[Wyrm]

There are 10,000 possible designations in a four-digit code. You forget that 0000 is a possible code. Only if you exclude that possibility is the number of designations 9,999.

Secondly, the Death Star "TK-421" is a soldier's individual designation, not a unit designation. Not that your division designations doesn't make sense, the only support the canon gives is that the Empire uses roman letters and arabic digits (or a system isomorphic to the same) in some of their military designations.

[MKSheppard]

There are 10,000 possible designations in a four-digit code. You forget that 0000 is a possible code. Only if you exclude that possibility is the number of designations 9,999.

Want to be part of Zero Division?

[Spanky The Dolphin]

Hey, a division like that has definately got to have some major balls, man.