Re: [DS and SG] Regiments of the Crown

>i don't think you can say that rourke's drift was a situation of
'little
>risk'. many, many welshmen died that day.

And they all won a VC...  :)

>
>> I wasn't necessarily talking 10 to 1 difference, just say 
>> that a future company is maybe 10-15% lighter in manpower because it 
>> has a 50% tech edge. 
>
>
>erm ... future companies won't have a 50% tech edge, because they'll be
>fighting other future companies most of the time. tech edges are
relative.
>the only reasons for different-sized units would be either a major
rethink
>of field tactics (fairly unlikely without major changes in rifle vs
armour
>etc) or changes in c3i. if your lieutenant-with-a-PDA can control twice
as
>many men as a modern Lt, he may well have twice as many men: cuts down
on
>the need for Lts.
>

This comes back to what I said before about the ability to absorb
casualties.  If you have one LT running a platoon of 60 troopers with a
PDA, you had better have a set of other people in the platoon who can
take
over on little notice OR you protect the LT like crazy (Gorman from
Aliens...???  Nightmares arise!!).  We could hypothesize tech sufficient
that with good battle computers and commo tech, one officer and a good
AI
could control hundreds of troops.  Just hope he doesn't get whacked, or
the
troops are headless.  Special Operations units like the SAS can get away
with having smaller unit sizes because they are better than everybody
else,
and they do everything they can to avoid going toe-to-toe with full size
regular units.	They can kick ass well, but when a four man patrol takes
a
casualty, it has a much greater effect on the unit's effectiveness, no
matter how good they are, than when a 30-man platoon takes a casualty.
Unless the platoon loses it's officer and there's no capable leader
ready
to step into place....	I'm still not convinced that with higher tech
will
come much shrinkage in the combat elements of a force - the support
units
might decrease, and certainly the density of forces in a given area will
decrease as their lethality increases, but unless you are talking
Heinlein's Starship Troopers, you need bodies on the ground to absorb
casualties...