SDN World 3 Commentary Thread I

[Steve]

I thought "Brigade" and "Regiment" were generally interchangeable?

I also wanted to leave organization of units up to the player mostly, since I figured everyone might want their own organizational structure.

Would it be easier, perhaps, to presume two Regiments per Brigade?

[Czechmate]

brigades are command and support elements for regiments and battallions. they're the...right-hand-man of the division, so to speak, so that there's a layer of control between DIV and REGT to delegate stuff to so the divisional staff aren't doing *everything* directly.

take a look at these to see where a brigade usually places in the chain:

'square' division - two brigades with two regiments each (this type was common through most of WW1 and some people kept it until WW2)
http://www.history.army.mil/books/linea ... s/c4f6.jpg

'triangular' division - one brigade with three regiments (concieved late WW1 because of manpower shortages, common in WW2)
http://www.history.army.mil/books/linea ... s/c5f9.jpg

EDIT: it may be better to simply change 'brigade' in the rules to 'regiment' and leave it at that.

[Minister of Pigeonry]

Half-assing things, going by Wiki and our Brigade = 5,000, Division = 15,000 I'm using a set up like this:

Corps: 30,000
-2x Divisions
-6x Brigades
-12x Regiments
-24x Battalions
-120x Companies
Division: 15,000
-3x Brigades
-6x Regiments
-12x Battalions
-60x Companies
Brigade: 5,000
-2x Regiments
-4x Battalions
-20x Companies
Regiment: 2,500
-2x Battalions
-10x Companies
Battalion: 1,250
-5x Companies
Company: 250

EDIT: There we go, now that's right.

[Steve]

Alternatively, we can say they're the same thing, people can pick whether the unit is called a regiment or a brigade in their nomenclature?

[Czechmate]

Alternatively, we can say they're the same thing, people can pick whether the unit is called a regiment or a brigade in their nomenclature?

I've been assuming that the 5000 men of a brigade is two regiments of 2000 combatants and 1000 support mooks.

Which, now that I think about it, makes my divisions hexagonal. ;D

[Steve]

Uh, MoP? A corps of 30,000 would be two divisions, not 3.

[Minister of Pigeonry]

Uh, MoP? A corps of 30,000 would be two divisions, not 3.

Indeed I knew it in my head, but seems I hit the wrong key there.

As for Support, I've just totaled my numbers up, skimmed off around 25% for support and logistics personnel then attached them at the Corps level in roughly 2-4 Brigades. Hopefully 25% is enough

[Coyote]

Brigades/Regiments are "interchangeable" in that they are two different ways of organizing soldiers at that particular level of military structure.

Tactical level:
Fire team, usually 2-5 guys, depending. Most US fire teams are supposed to be at minimum 3 guys.
Squad, usually 2-3 Fire Teams, so you can have anywhere from 4 guys for a very "short" squad to 15 guys.

Then you get into "section", which (in my experience) is typically 2 squads together. In my last Reserve unit, I technically commanded a "section" of about 16 guys, but were were referred to as a "squad". They're bunched together into a Section because they are intended to work together: you basically have 2 squads that will never be separated from one another. You don't always find "Sections", many units skip this level of organization altogether. You'll find them in Engineer units, for example, but rarely in Infantry.

Then, you have 4 Squads (or 2 sections, you can also have 1 Section and 2 Squads). This forms a Platoon. It can be from 10 to 40 guys; I've seen some Platoons as big as 60 but that's rare.

4 Platoons in the US will be used to make up a Company. Usually 3 of them will be mission-oriented and the 4th will be some sort of command and support element. Companies tend to end up being between 100-150 troops.


Get a bunch of Companies together into a Battalion and you enter the next phase of the hierarchy: Operational Level.
3-6 Companies together will form a Battalion, an done of these Companies will be a Headquarters company.

Battalions can be organized into --ready?-- Brigades or Regiments, or "Troops" for Cavalry (which includes air cavalry), and "Batteries" for Artillery.

Get enough Brigades/Regiments/Troops/Batteries/etc together and you have a Division, which puts us at the end of Operational level organization and into the beginning of Strategic level planning.

At least two or more Divisions forms a Corps; two or more Corps will form an Army. In war movies you might hear of things being organized into "Fronts" as well, but that's usually only if there is an actual war front to assign them too. I think, maybe, the Soviet Army had things organized into Fronts even in peacetime, but I may be wrong.

Much beyond that and you're not even in military planning anymore, but politics.


But all along the way, from fire team on up, different countries had different ways of organizing their forces. The Axis forces in WW2 (German and Japanese, at least, I don't know about the rest [Italy, Hungary, etc]) organized fairly large squads around their squad machineguns. The Germans especially say squaddies as just "dudes who support the MG" and carry more ammo. That's why they went to war with bolt-action rifles but really good machineguns-- the regular infantry guys weren't seen as that important, except for how they could support the MG. The US and other allied forces, OTOH, quickly switched to semi-automatic rifles and put more firepower in the hands of each squaddie, something the Germans tried to do in the end with the StG-44.

[Steve]

I believe the Front was the Soviet equivalent of an Army Group.

[Sea Skimmer]

Yeah a Front is a Soviet Army Group; however Fronts only existed in wartime. In peacetime the equivalent organization was a geographically defined Military District.

[Steve]

Okay, how about a compromise between the higher and lower? 150 tanks per armored brigade (or regiment - I've noted one can call the Brigades referred to in the rules as regiments if you desire, or can have both - I was considering regiments of about 2,500 personnel myself, 2 per brigade). That's final.

[K. A. Pital]

What about all the tanks which are attached in small units to Infantry Divisions like many armies did for a lack of specialized armored divisions and tactics of armor use? Or those that are simply resting in barracks in reserves in the middle of the nation?

This question was already raised. I don't care how many armored units I'm allowed to have par se; I want to know if tanks must correspond to their number.

[CmdrWilkens]

Steve,
It may work on the short term but maybe we should switch to a setup where 'X' IBPs gets

• 'A' number of Tanks
  'B' number of heavy guns
  'C' number of light guns
  'D' number of troops
  'E' number of trucks/half-tracks

Alternatively we could go with 1 brigade of Tanks = X Tanks plus support personnel.
1 Brigade of troops = X troops and support personnel
1 Brigade of Heavy Arty = X number of heavy guns and support personnel
1 Brigade of Arty = X number of medium/light guns and support personnel
etc

That way folks can either keep their brigades, divisions, gun sections whole OR if they want to do the math they can re-distribute them out on the company or battalion level but the cost for "purchase" remains the same.

[Norseman]

Another problem is that nomenklature varies a lot too as does unit size, I just assumed that 1 Division = 3 Brigades and 1 Brigade = 3 Batallions.

[Steve]

I understand the desire to quantify all this, but then we start venturing into heavier number-accounting and a lot of players are going against that. If it's left up to the individual player on whether to do this or not, then it comes down to a result of either A) players who don't or can't (due to time limit) getting a disadvantage or B) equality being presumed, which will undoubtedly irritate some of those who put in the hard work to determine how many actual guns and tanks they have.

And that's not getting into having to consider exact IBP costs for tanks, artillery guns, and trucks, as is being recommended.

I would really rather just stick with what we have, presume something like 150 tanks per armored brigade. Perhaps allow one to have three infantry-support tank battalions per actual armored brigade with game Start OrBat.

[K. A. Pital]

I presume we can just allow people being realistic with their tank forces.

I.e. some simple rules a-la Real Life:
0) all tanks which are not in armored units (the number of Armored Units being capped by the aforestated rules), are either in reserve or in infantry-support within Infantry/Rifle Divisions

1) one cannot have more than 100 ultra-heavy WWI tanks (see France, Char 2C, Germany K-Wagen and the like)

2) one can have X overall tanks, where X<=3000 in case the nation was involved in a major war post 1910.
3) one can have Y overall tanks, where Y<=1000 in case the nation was not involved in a war post 1910, or the post-1910 war was minor.
4) one can have Z overall tanks, where Z<=300 in case the nation had no wars in the period 1900-1925.

That seems to be realistic enough. There are really few nations with industry and Army Focus less than 3, so none of these rules would give disproportionate strength to anyone. They would also reflect reality.

Frankly, I never calculated shit about the Army, I just calculated it on the basis of realistic tank orders of the era. Perhaps uniting my entire 1000 of tanks into one huge amorphous Tank Unit was not exactly too realistic (although that's what the Soviet Union did IRL), so I can just reduce the number of tanks in my tank unit to what allowed by Industry/AF, and move the rest to reserve or Infantry Divisions.

It wouldn't make sense for Germany, after having a post-1910 war with Italy, for example, not to have at least some tanks. Same goes to others.

[Norade]

I based my numbers on the number of soldiers per division.

Tanks of the day were crew heavy so - going by a conservatively high number - if there are ten men per tank as crew and I have 250 tanks per brigade that is half the brigades manpower. The other half is mechanics and logistics.

It isn't as useful as our analysis of real life forces but that is how I got my numbers.

[loomer]

This is why I'm glad Afghanistan is just about 100% tank-less and navy-less. Things are a lot simpler when you have exactly three tanks and your only naval vessel is a converted 40 ton fishing ship with some mortars on it.

[Steve]

Stas, that means everyone's going to want to have had a war since 1910 to justify at least some tanks. And then we have to consider where the line of "major war" would be set.

If we're going to define one's actual numbers of tanks I'd much rather just fix it to Industry and Army Tech like actual Armored brigades were meant to be and then let players decide how many concentrated brigades they have versus infantry-support companies and battalions. Other nations would easily take notice of tank use in other major conflicts after all.

And now, good night.

[K. A. Pital]

Stas, that means everyone's going to want to have had a war since 1910 to justify at least some tanks.

Not if the consequences of major war (i.e. a-la WWI) would mean severe penalties to economy, like a long-lasting depression. Hello France - 3000+ tanks post-WWI and a lagging economy.

And then we have to consider where the line of "major war" would be set.

Perhaps we can do away with "major war" alltogether then, especially as it seems there were no such wars in the recent era. Just set a hard cap at 1000 (and hard cap at game start, I mean). And Industry will determine just what are those tanks like.

And since just about everyone seemed to have had a war in recent times, I'd say pretty much everyone could have tanks. And if not his own (say, Industry <3), then certainly foreign (Japan and many other nations did that IRL buying the post-war French/Italian designs).

And, certainly with such a ridiculous prevalence of fortifications where everyone and his dog magicks out defensive lines stronger than the Maginot line, having more emplacements than the Stalin line, on a border line smaller than either of those lines, tanks are going to be more prevalent. They are the natural answer to such developments.

So a person with AT 3 can have 2 Armored Brigades? Fine. One light AB, one heavy AB. I'm done. The rest of my tanks are hereby relegated to infantry divisions with IRL Soviet Tank regiments of 1920s, 20 tanks per each regiment. 35 of such regiments, with my total strength of ~95 more or less active divisions is fine enough I guess.

Total number of tanks in inventory is lowered by 100, from 1100 to 1000 (900 light Renault Russian, 100 heavy Mendeleev), and all tank regiments not currently assigned to active Infantry Divisions are presumed to be simply in reserve, assigned to reserve divisions, rusting in Moscow holds, and take months to activate.

Okay, so - the total number of tanks in infantry-accompanying regiments in the Far Eastern Army is 260. That is coupled with the 300 tanks brought from Moscow (tank flotilla). 400 tanks, including 100 heavy, will be attacking Beowulf from Mongolia, whereas 160 tanks will be supporting infantry divisions at the battles of the mouth of Shilka, according to the deployment plan. In total, 560 tanks acting in the entire operation. No tank reserves have been called from the Western front (Ukrain+Belorussia), for that is unreasonable considering the threats of SUPER POLAND and Germany. You were right that attacking with someone's entire tank park is not reasonable.

[Coyote]

Not sure of the status of the MG-15; apparantly it was devloped in 1915 but I can't find much history that it was used until it was upgraded into the MG-30 and became standard issue for Luftwaffe aircraft in the late 1930's and into the 40's.

I'm assuming it existed in some form back in 1915, so the Yishuv will seek to buy some, eventually.

[Steve]

Stas, looking at your border, I don't think you have much to worry about with German attack. Your border with them is... pretty small. And along the Dneister I think.

[Mr Bean]

Not sure of the status of the MG-15; apparantly it was devloped in 1915 but I can't find much history that it was used until it was upgraded into the MG-30 and became standard issue for Luftwaffe aircraft in the late 1930's and into the 40's.

I'm assuming it existed in some form back in 1915, so the Yishuv will seek to buy some, eventually.

German MG-15 the tail gunner weapon of choice?

You have the history the wrong way around by the way. The MG-30 was the precursor to the 15 not the other way around. The confusion comes from naming conventions to quote Wiki which quotes a WWI armorment book

The Bergmann MG15 was the World War I production version of a prototype machine gun designed in 1910, the brainchild of Theodor Bergmann and Louis Schmeisser. It should not be confused with the Rheinmetall MG-15, which was a completely different weapon, whose nomenclature is often confused with the Bergmann because of the naming conventions of the Weimar Republic. The two weapons are completely unrelated. The Bermann MG-15 fired from 250, 200, or 100 round disintegrating metal-linked belts, a first for a light machine gun. The crank-loaded "Kurbel drum" that held a 100-round linked belt could be fitted to the side of the weapon's receiver with a mounting bracket.

So Bermann MG-15 did exist in WWI. The MG-15 that the Nazi's came to use was first produced in 1936. As the MG-30(1930) went on to become the MG-34(1934) and MG-15(1935).

Hope that clears things up.

[Master_Baerne]

Question: Is there a map anywhere? With country names, preferably - I get a bit lost sometimes.

[Sea Skimmer]

Not sure of the status of the MG-15; apparantly it was devloped in 1915 but I can't find much history that it was used until it was upgraded into the MG-30 and became standard issue for Luftwaffe aircraft in the late 1930's and into the 40's.

The WW1 MG15nA is a completely different gun designed by Bergmann from the Rheinmetall MG15 used in WW2. The Rheinmetall MG15 and MG17 were aircraft variants of the MG30, which came first.