RE: [GZG] "Realistic" Mercenary TO&E

[John K Lerchey <lerchey@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Yes, but in some settings, you might have a battalion or a division, but 
only field a company to a contract.  If you're doing work on a world with 
a small mining colony, and you job is to be a show of force, you might 
only be sending in a company (not that I would take such an assignment!).

So replacements may be available, but they may not be *readily* available.

In the Slammers books, they often recruited locally to replace losses. 
Doesn't help in during the contract period, necessarily, but it did allow 
them to sustain their force long-term.

Just some thoughts.

J

John K. Lerchey
Assistant Director for Incident Response
Information Security Office
Carnegie Mellon University

On Wed, 18 Oct 2006, Michael Brown wrote:

> I think that Company size Merc units are too fragile.  To be sustainable
> they need to be at least a Battalion (+), especially for more mechanized
> units.  Using a rule of 40% loss makes a unit combat ineffective; a company
> can only have @ 30 casualties or 4 vehicle losses before they are out of the
> fight.  A Battalion can at least rotate a company in and out of the line.
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> Michael Brown
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> mwsaber6@xxxxxxx
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>  _____
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> From: gzg-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> [mailto:gzg-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Eli Arndt
> Sent: Wednesday, October 18, 2006 12:48 PM
> To: gzg-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: [GZG] "Realistic" Mercenary TO&E
>
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>
> Some recent comments made in a reply to the new 15mm Vehicle announcement
> have got me to thinking, “What is a –realistic- way to do sci-fi mercs”  The
> usual tendency seems to be to try to recreate one of the great merc units
> from books and other games – Hammer’s Slammers, Wolf’s Dragoons, etc.  But
> are these units representative of what we think merc units would be?  Is
> there a way to build less amazing, but still effective mercenary units?  Is
> so, what are people’s thoughts on them?
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> Some ideas I have had are –
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> 1) An all infantry force with no armor but a good number of man-portable
> anti-tank weapons.
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> 2) Conventional mobile infantry force with mid-tech resources.
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> 3) Small, but elite and hi-tech unit of combat walkers.
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> These are just off the top of my head.
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> Thanks,
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> Eli
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