SDN World 3 Rules Discussion Thread

[Norseman]

It's just that divisions are supposedly 15000 men not 25000, indeed that seems to have been a standard division size for this era. Should we assume that the support element is within each division, or should we set aside 1/3rd of our starting military to be the support establishment?

[Slacker]

I sort of just expected they would be part of the manpower in each individual division, really, that 15K per division number just sort of represents the fighting troops and the guys who keep them going. It's not like the company cooks are organizationally in another division, are they?

[Norseman]

I sort of just expected they would be part of the manpower in each individual division, really, that 15K per division number just sort of represents the fighting troops and the guys who keep them going. It's not like the company cooks are organizationally in another division, are they?

Yeah that was my assumption too

[Steve]

I'd intended for that to represent fighting power, though IIRC in this era weren't a lot of support troops generally capable of combat too? You might have some specialist support troops who stay behind the lines, granted, but they're all generally armed and can be thrown into battle.

[Norseman]

I'd intended for that to represent fighting power, though IIRC in this era weren't a lot of support troops generally capable of combat too? You might have some specialist support troops who stay behind the lines, granted, but they're all generally armed and can be thrown into battle.

Can't we, for the sake of convenience, say that each division drawn from the reserves count as 25 000 in terms of manpower, but that existing support (e.g. army focus) is enough for the divisions and brigades we already have?

[Steve]

Hrm? You mean that standing army forces are exactly the manpower stated?

[Norseman]

I mean that future divisions cost 25 000 manpower for 15 000 actives, but *current* divisions only cost 15 000 manpower of our standing army number.

[Steve]

Ah, i see.

An interesting suggestion. I like it. Let's do it.

[Steve]

I've been informed that a ship, after launch, isn't returned to the construction slip for completion but is rather fitted out at a special fitting out pier with heavy cranes. In light of this I'm ruling that when a ship is launched (two-thirds of the way from laying to commissioning) the slipway it took up is open. This will only generally apply to capital ships, since we're not counting slips for lighter vessels.

Fitting out piers would be at least equal to construction slips. Though they may be universal not sure. Probably also used for altering deck-side stuff like secondary batteries.

Finally, I'm giving you the same number of capital scale drydocks as you get for construction slips, unless someone gives me a reason to reduce this, that are used for repair, reboilering, and other extensive modifications.

[CmdrWilkens]

I'd intended for that to represent fighting power, though IIRC in this era weren't a lot of support troops generally capable of combat too? You might have some specialist support troops who stay behind the lines, granted, but they're all generally armed and can be thrown into battle.

In a given Division you generally have:

1 Divisional headquarters Company
3 or 4 Regimental Headquarters Companies
16-20 Battalion Headquarters Companies
Several support battalions (quartermasters, stevedores, truck drivers for mechanized divisions, etc)

All of whom don't fight. Sure they have guns but put them on the line and your at the bottom of the bucket and probably a half dozen line troops could break through them. Anyway if you figured company size at a flat average of 100 (and that would be a damn small Division HQ and Service Coy) then you are looking at 2,500-3,000 troops out of say 15,000 who aren't going to fight...that doesn't count your longer logistic tail once they move out on campaign. There is a reason why the quartermaster corps has almost always held prominence second only to artillery as staff officers under most commanding generals.

Anyway even in this era before mechanization (and when you do that your combat troops per division goes down but your support costs go up) you are looking at about a minimum of 1 in 5 troops at the divisional level being non-combat. At the corps or army level when one gets in to strategic and operational planning you would be looking at approaching 1 in 2. As a very rough comparison at the beginning of 1864 with just over a million men on the rolls (though a full third may have been AWOL) the Union Army's maneuver element was less than half this (between the 150,000 on Grant/Meade's rolls and the 120,000 with Sherman you have lesser forces distributed to Banks, Butler, and Burnside). Again those are rough numbers but at the beginning of the railway warfare era you still have almost half of all available troops requisitioned for everything from quartermaster to commissary to MP to depot and garrison duties.

I don't know if there is a way to simplify but I'd state flat out that unless you are working with a stationary army at least 25% of all available troops should not be counted as direct combatants.

[Steve]

I don't think there is a way to simplify it and I'm tempted to just permit people to state active combat troops only. If someone's clearly fully mobilized and straining then I may look into if they're overstating combat troops.

[Norseman]

Honestly though I think that saying that our current forces already have a hidden logistics tail is good since it lets us keep our current OoBs. Mobilizing the reserves however or building new divisions eats 25 000 men for each division. That is simple, it means a minimum of new book-keeping, but at the same time lets us keep realism. So why not just do that?

[Steve]

So building new units, reserve or active, effectively comes to 25,000 per division? Will we keep it at a 66% extra manpower cost for armored recon battalions (1,000 men, raised to 1,700 say) and individual brigades (5,000, raised to 8,300?)?

You know, this would just uneven things. How about this? Just go with 25,000 men per division, and a general rate of 40% support troops extra per fighting unit. Yes, that lowers the amount of units you get and forces some OrBat recounting, but better to do it this way than some convoluted system where new units' support costs are ignored.

It's either that or support personnel are completely ignored in standing army numbers, and I'm not sure we should do that.

[Siege]

Whyever should we not do that? Why not just ignore the logistics tail? When and how could it ever possibly become a problem that we didn't account for every single last army barber, motorpool technician and chicken soup dispenser refiller?

[Beowulf]

So building new units, reserve or active, effectively comes to 25,000 per division? Will we keep it at a 66% extra manpower cost for armored recon battalions (1,000 men, raised to 1,700 say) and individual brigades (5,000, raised to 8,300?)?

You know, this would just uneven things. How about this? Just go with 25,000 men per division, and a general rate of 40% support troops extra per fighting unit. Yes, that lowers the amount of units you get and forces some OrBat recounting, but better to do it this way than some convoluted system where new units' support costs are ignored.

It's either that or support personnel are completely ignored in standing army numbers, and I'm not sure we should do that.

Decrease the standing army numbers. Probably by half.

[Norseman]

Decrease the standing army numbers. Probably by half.

At that point I wouldn't be able to man my coastal forts and maintain a ten division guard on my southern border.

[CmdrWilkens]

Whyever should we not do that? Why not just ignore the logistics tail?

Because logistics have decided more wars than tactics? The theater and nature of warfare has been defined by the limitations of the ability of troops to supply themselves with the neccessities of warfare whether that be simply food or the modern requirements of shells, fuel, and equipment.

Two quotes for you both from Keegan's "A History of Warfare" page 301 (softcover)

Combat may only be joined, however, if the combatants find the means to meet on a battlefield, and to supply them on their way to such a meeting has always presented difficulties second only to those of achieving success in combat itself.

Indeed, most warmaking on land, until the most recent times, was a shot-term and short-distance activity. For that there is the simplest explanation. When a body of men join together to perform a day's task, they will need at the very least to eat once between sunrise and sunset. If the task protracts beyond a single day, and the men move from the place where they keep their food, they will have to carry their meals with them. Since all but the most primitive operations of war entail protraction and movement, warriors necessarily burden themselves with rations as well as weapons. Experience, however, borne out by modern field trials, has established that a soldier's load cannot on average be made to exceed seventy pounds' weight - of which clothes, equipment, arms, and necessaries will form at least half; as a daily intake of food by a man doing heavy work weighs at least three pounds, it follows that a marching soldier cannot carry supplies for more than ten or eleven days, and of course the burden is only worth the effort if the food is provided in imperishable form. These figures have not varied over centuries:

He also quotes Wellington:

the success of military operations depends upon supplies; there is no difficulty in fighting, and in finding the means of beating your enemy either with or without loss; but to gain your objects you must feed

Put in a simpler term I will paraphrase another somewhat well known statement: the amateur talks of tactics the professional talks about logistics.


Now I don't think we need to get down in to the nitty gritty of support troop layouts (I don't care what the percentage of truck drivers to maintenance techs is) BUT some effort should be made to represent the enormous difficulty of campaigning without a sufficient supply base.

[Norseman]

Once more I think that the support elements for our starting army should be viewed as being part of our Army Focus. The 640 000 troops I have are *barely* sufficient to defend maintain a tripwire defence. If I have to do with less then I'll have to launch a partial mobilizaiton immediately just to have enough people to man the coastal forts and protect the southern border. In short it's convenient for everyone and it lets us avoid redoing our OoB, now for *future* units we can simply say that we need 25 000 men for each 15 000 division, and everything is settled. It's simple, it solves our problems, and we can just get on with the game.

[Siege]

Now I don't think we need to get down in to the nitty gritty of support troop layouts (I don't care what the percentage of truck drivers to maintenance techs is) BUT some effort should be made to represent the enormous difficulty of campaigning without a sufficient supply base.

Thanks for the lecture but I do not require the Duke of Wellington to figure that out. I do however question the necessity of knowing how many men make up the logistics support of our men-at-arms in order to roleplay the difficulties of campaigning over long distances with armies that are only in the first stages of motorization and mechanization.

Speaking for myself, I don't need to know if my glorious divisions each have 10 or 15 thousand support personnel tailing them to understand that if I wanted to conquer, oh let's say, the width and breadth of North Africa, I'd be encountering some serious logistical issues and I should therefore take this into account when attempting to RP "Return of the Umayyads". One does not need to be Stormin' Norman to figure this out; common sense is quite sufficient.

[Master_Baerne]

Once more I think that the support elements for our starting army should be viewed as being part of our Army Focus. The 640 000 troops I have are *barely* sufficient to defend maintain a tripwire defence. If I have to do with less then I'll have to launch a partial mobilizaiton immediately just to have enough people to man the coastal forts and protect the southern border. In short it's convenient for everyone and it lets us avoid redoing our OoB, now for *future* units we can simply say that we need 25 000 men for each 15 000 division, and everything is settled. It's simple, it solves our problems, and we can just get on with the game.

I happen to think this is an excellent solution; quite simply, anything more complicated would be a waste of time.

[CmdrWilkens]

Now I don't think we need to get down in to the nitty gritty of support troop layouts (I don't care what the percentage of truck drivers to maintenance techs is) BUT some effort should be made to represent the enormous difficulty of campaigning without a sufficient supply base.

Thanks for the lecture but I do not require the Duke of Wellington to figure that out. I do however question the necessity of knowing how many men make up the logistics support of our men-at-arms in order to roleplay the difficulties of campaigning over long distances with armies that are only in the first stages of motorization and mechanization.

Speaking for myself, I don't need to know if my glorious divisions each have 10 or 15 thousand support personnel tailing them to understand that if I wanted to conquer, oh let's say, the width and breadth of North Africa, I'd be encountering some serious logistical issues and I should therefore take this into account when attempting to RP "Return of the Umayyads". One does not need to be Stormin' Norman to figure this out; common sense is quite sufficient.

Will your common sense deduct the necessarry numbers from your mobilization pool and available troop reserves? Every man spent doing these tasks is one who can't be in a front line infantry unit. Simply put I think if there is no mechanism (and Noreseman's is fine by me in principal) to deduct manpower then folks will take their multi million person mobilization pools and in wartime claim them all as combat troops.

[Steve]

Well then Wilkens, that just leaves the onus on me (and Rogue, as nobody has opposed his co-modship) to tell them otherwise.

[K. A. Pital]

Couldn't we just accept that divisions come with a certain share of them devoted to support already? And then assign penalties to the forces of people who decide to operate without support (and explicitly claim such)?

[Steve]

So a division of 15,000 only actually has 9-10,000 or so combat troops with 5-6,000 support?

[Minister of Pigeonry]

So a division of 15,000 only actually has 9-10,000 or so combat troops with 5-6,000 support?

Honestly, this is how I had always suspected things worked. That the Divisions and such we get at the start were like little complete packages, combats troops and logistical support nicely bundled for simplicity and whatnot.