77 replies to this topic

[Johannes Falkner]

For the TL;DR crowd.

Mechs:
Com Guard:1235
Clans:3375

Vehicles:
Com Guard: 295
Clans:0

Infantry:
Com Guard:588
Clan Infantry:120
Clan Elementals: 920

Fighters:
Com Guard:1056
Clans:1660

Take technology into account and the clans have something like a 4:1 ratio in Mechs (including the vehicles, ~5:1 w/o vehicles or ~6:1 w/ Elementals), something like 10:1 in Infantry and 2:1 in Fighters. The staggered nature of the Clans' landings on Tukayyid (Diamond Sharks and Smoke Jaguars were on and off the field in a day, and the Wolves did not land for three) and superior tactics were all the Com Guards had in their favor.

*Edit: This is wrong, see Dihm's post below, Com Guards had more units*

Edited by Johannes Falkner, 12 April 2012 - 08:14 AM.

[Dirk Le Daring]

Thank you Johannes, that's fantastic information. It serves to further cement my desire to see this battle enacted. So HUUUGE

[Dihm]

Something about those numbers seems rather off. Pretty sure ComStar wasn't outnumbered.

It's Sarna, so probably not 100% accurate, but still, there's a HUGE discrepancy in numbers with what you have.

sarna.net said:

Twenty Five Galaxies from Seven Clans would face off against Twelve entire Armies of the Com Guards (equivalent to 144 regiments)

Each regiment has 108-180 units, assuming they are fully staffed. That's 15552 Points/Units, using the 3 Battalion per Regiment figure as the minimum.

Taking 25 Galaxies, and taking the highest possible number (5 Clusters per Galaxy, 5 Trinaries per Cluster), we end up with 9375 Points/Units.

With the "Points/Units", this covers mechs, aerospace, and vehicles. Infantry are not generally counted in this number. For the Clans, 2 aerospace units, 2 vehicles, or 5 Elementals, are equal to 1 Point/Unit, so replacing a mech with those inflates the numbers of "bodies" even higher.

We know the Clans didn't drop with their absolute maximum, and ComStar was most likely over their minimum.

Somewhere out there I tried to do a more accurate count... let me see if I can find it.

Edit: This is what I'd come up with, didn't spell out exact numbers

Dihm, on 05 January 2012 - 11:01 AM, said:

• 2 Jag Galaxies verses the ComGuard 5th Army
  
• 3 Nova Cat galaxies verses the 7th Army with support from green divisions of the 12th
  
• 2 front line and 1 second line Steel Viper galaxies verses the 6th Army + 2 extra divisions
  
• 2 front line and 1 second line Diamond Shark galaxies verses the 8th Army plus whatever was left of the 2nd
  
• 3 Ghost Bear Galaxies verses the 1st Army, support from the "green" 4th Army
  
• 3 Jade Falcon Galaxies verses the 11th and 3rd armies plus 3 more divisions
  
• 3 Wolf Galaxies verses the 9th and 10th armies, plus the elite 278th division

Info on the ComGuards:
From the 20 Year Update

Quote

As of 3049, Wolfnet estimated the Com Guards' BattleMech strength alone to represent the equivalent of more than fifty Regiments.

A ComGuard "Army" is "between 846 1296 elements"

I see where you got the "exact" numbers for the various Armies, but that is only the proportions for one DIVISION of the Army. Multiply those by 6 to get the actual numbers.

That gives us:
Com Guards

• 1st Army (Kappa) - 630 Mechs / 144 Vehicles / 288 Infantry (units) / 234 Fighters
  
• 2nd Army (Mu) - 558 Mechs / 168 Vehicles / 336 Infantry (units) / 234 Fighters
  
• 3rd Army (Lambda) - 594 Mechs / 156 Vehicles / 312 Infantry (units) / 234 Fighters
  
• 4th Army (Iota) - 672 Mechs / 132 Vehicles / 258 Infantry (units) / 234 Fighters
  
• 5th Army (Omicron) - 438 Mechs / 210 Vehicles / 414 Infantry (units) / 234 Fighters
  
• 6th Army (Kappa) - 630 Mechs / 144 Vehicles / 288 Infantry (units) / 234 Fighters
  
• 7th Army (Iota) - 672 Mechs / 132 Vehicles / 258 Infantry (units) / 234 Fighters
  
• 8th Army (Pi) - 402 Mechs / 222 Vehicles / 438 Infantry (units) / 234 Fighters
  
• 9th Army (Lambda) - 594 Mechs / 156 Vehicles / 312 Infantry (units) / 234 Fighters
  
• 10th Army (Nu) - 522 Mechs / 180 Vehicles / 240 Infantry (units) / 234 Fighters
  
• 11th Army (Eta) - 750 Mechs / 102 Vehicles / 210 Infantry (units) / 234 Fighters
  
• 12th Army (Beta) - 948 Mechs / 24 Vehicles / 36 Infantry (units) / 234 Fighters
  
• Total Com Guard Assets: 7410 Mechs / 1770 Vehicles (Disproportionately arty and scouts) / 3390 Infantry Units (mostly conventional) / 2808 Fighters

That puts us, for the Mechs, square in the "50 Regiments worth of mechs alone" area, with 148.2 mechs per regiment (right between the 108-180 units per regiment number).

If you thought it was big before, this is a whole other kind of scale.

Edited by Dihm, 12 April 2012 - 05:50 AM.

[Johannes Falkner]

@Dihm:
I thought the numbers were off. I remembered the clans as bidding under the Com Guards bid for the battle. Since they obviously weren't under bidding with the numbers I was getting, something was off. I was going to dust off some original sources tonight and do a little hardcore nerdage, but I think you found the point I had missed with the divisions per army math I missed.

Corrected Numbers:

Mechs:
Com Guards: 7410
Clans: 3375

Vehicles:
Com Guards: 1770
Clans: 0 (Should of brought the Hell's Horses...)

Infantry:
Com Guards: 3390
Clan Elementals: 920
Clan Conventional: 120

Aerospace:
Com Guards: 2808
Clans: 1660

Much better, ~2:1 Com Guards versus Clans by the numbers with that dropping to something like 1.25-1.5:1 when technology is considered.

[Dihm]

That looks way better.

That's a LOT of men and metal...

I'm trying to picture the supply chain/logistics needed for the ComGuards to pull this off.

Edited by Dihm, 12 April 2012 - 08:31 AM.

[Johannes Falkner]

Dihm, on 12 April 2012 - 08:31 AM, said:

That looks way better.

That's a LOT of men and metal...

I'm trying to picture the supply chain/logistics needed for the ComGuards to pull this off.

Now take into account that the maintenance people and other non-combat personnel are never included in a CBT TO&E...
How many maintenance techs, cooks, supply clerks, doctors, nurses, etc. are needed for these forces?
Our modern military units tend to run high ratios of non-combat personnel for vehicles. Tanks are something like a 15:1 proposition, aircraft run between ~20:1 and ~30:1 for support. Look at an aircraft carrier, over 2000 people associated with the air arm of ~80 aircraft (~25:1).
So figure mechs, aircraft and vehicles all at 20:1 and the PBIs at 2:1. That gives you a ~250,000 man Com Guard logistical tail in addition to the ~140,000 fighting men (PBI in 36 man platoons)

[Dihm]

For a mech it's 1 tech and 6 astechs for a "full team", I believe. But those can be spread about, not all mechs have a personal tech team.

Can't remember where it was but somewhere in one of the sourcebooks I saw a chart talking about manpower needed to maintain the various types of units, aero was the highest, vehicles in the middle, and mechs on the low end.

Don't forget all the Jumpship and Dropship crew needed too. Imagine how crowded those jump points were.

206 Overlords needed just for the ComGuard Mechs themselves. 35 Star Lords to transport them.

Edited by Dihm, 12 April 2012 - 08:56 AM.

[Johannes Falkner]

Dihm, on 12 April 2012 - 08:52 AM, said:

For a mech it's 1 tech and 6 astechs for a "full team", I believe. But those can be spread about, not all mechs have a personal tech team.

Can't remember where it was but somewhere in one of the sourcebooks I saw a chart talking about manpower needed to maintain the various types of units, aero was the highest, vehicles in the middle, and mechs on the low end.

Don't forget all the Jumpship and Dropship crew needed too. Imagine how crowded those jump points were.

206 Overlords needed just for the ComGuard Mechs themselves. 35 Star Lords to transport them.

I was just looking at the ground forces. I would note that a mech company would really be a batallion size force if all of their deployment needs were met. You would have the Mechs and pilots themselves, plus one tech team each. Then you would have the quartermaster and his supply clerks and trained monkeys to do the hauling and the cooks. You would have the hangar security detail. The communications crew, intelligence officer (probably the stupidest schlub on the planet....) and any liason officers. For the Com Guards, a lot of those people would have been left on their base planets while the mechs went away to play. But on a day to day basis your logistical tail is much larger than just the mechs and techs.

Edited by Johannes Falkner, 12 April 2012 - 09:03 AM.

[Dihm]

Well, we have from January to May of 2013 to move troops, maybe we should plan now because I don't think I could manage that in 5 months.

Edited by Dihm, 12 April 2012 - 09:05 AM.

[Johannes Falkner]

Why do you think the US Navy and Marine Corps keep prepositioned ships with full ordanance/vehicle/rations for a regimental action? Sure the parahostages can be there in 24-48 hours (with 3 days of supplies), but who backs them up? The US Army has typically taken a minimum of one month to deploy at the regimental level, push that to over two months for divisional level deployments. The limitation is usually available shipping assets and in theater docking facilities. Try unloading an Abrams without a proper dock...

[Dirk Le Daring]

Thanks to you too, Dihm.
Now we have to wait and see what the Devs think, if they have seen this, that is
And further support for the idea will not be a bad thing

[Name113472]

I would love to see this implemented in MWO, but I imagine the scale of having hundreds of players in one map/arena would be difficult. Maybe there should be sets of matches where a limited number of players can fight, IS vs Clans, or perhaps incorporate reenactments from the historical events and players can choose which side to take part of.

[Dirk Le Daring]

The more support, the greater the chances.

[Johannes Falkner]

Most of the battles were at the Trinary/Level III level for actual fighting, there were just a lot of them in relatively small areas. The best way to do it would be as a miniversion of the galactic map. Let everyone fight over battlefields on the planet just like they do for planets in the galaxy.

[Goldhawk]

I'd love to see this as well but there are a few problems with the composition of that historic battle.

1. Many of the mechwarriors signed up on the site have signed an allegience to a house, and several houses did not fight the clans until about 3058. So how would a person from the Capellian COnfederation get to fight against the clans? They would have to "break" their bond to their houses and be sworn in under the Comstar banner.

2. If they were mercenary forces, they would be more then likely to be put on some random planet and asked to guard the HPGs on a random planet. Do they get action???......Not really.

3. Comstar would have to be a Houses created force in the near future. Since "According to the Battletech: Warrior series that started in 3025", they have a large amount of mechs but don't get to use them until 3052.

4. Finally, Wouldn't they have to either have people joining the clans or have computer controlled players as the clanners? I have a feeling of seeing the future of players intentionally throwing themselves at the clans for a chance to get captured or to get clan tech. Problem with that was that the chance of becomeing a "bondsman" and later becoming a warrior again only depended upon the clan in which you were captured. I'd love to be a part of Comstar and lock horns with the Jade Falcons and other inbred clan trash, but I will wait until 3052 when it all comes to a head.

[Dirk Le Daring]

Goldhawk, on 16 April 2012 - 12:25 PM, said:

I'd love to see this as well but there are a few problems with the composition of that historic battle.

1. Many of the mechwarriors signed up on the site have signed an allegience to a house, and several houses did not fight the clans until about 3058. So how would a person from the Capellian COnfederation get to fight against the clans? They would have to "break" their bond to their houses and be sworn in under the Comstar banner.

2. If they were mercenary forces, they would be more then likely to be put on some random planet and asked to guard the HPGs on a random planet. Do they get action???......Not really.

3. Comstar would have to be a Houses created force in the near future. Since "According to the Battletech: Warrior series that started in 3025", they have a large amount of mechs but don't get to use them until 3052.

4. Finally, Wouldn't they have to either have people joining the clans or have computer controlled players as the clanners? I have a feeling of seeing the future of players intentionally throwing themselves at the clans for a chance to get captured or to get clan tech. Problem with that was that the chance of becomeing a "bondsman" and later becoming a warrior again only depended upon the clan in which you were captured. I'd love to be a part of Comstar and lock horns with the Jade Falcons and other inbred clan trash, but I will wait until 3052 when it all comes to a head.

You missed something....

1) Houses and and sub-unit faction links mean nothing for this battle.

2) Mercs will be able to fill ANY role. (they will be Clan or ComStar)

3) ComStar is the force for this battle, everyone not selected for clan duty will be with ComStar.

4) No A.I.

Hope that makes sense

Edited by Dirk Le Daring, 16 April 2012 - 02:23 PM.

[Johannes Falkner]

I think a lot of the really important decisions about alllegiances will need to be addressed long before this point is reached. When they introduce the clans they will need to make choices about how allegiances are made/changed. Those choices will impact how "teams" are chosen/made.

[Nik Van Rhijn]

There are a fairly large number of people here who will stay as IS when the Clans arrive. The big unknown is how many of the newcomers to the IP will shift over for the shiny new tech.

[Rear Admiral]

I cant speak to all the little details that have been put forth, but the idea of the major lore battles being special events we, as players, can participate in, is extremely appealing.

I would love to be on tukayyid/luthien/coventry/etc., even if the outcome is a foregone conclusion.

Count me in as a supporter.

[Dirk Le Daring]

Rear Admiral, on 17 April 2012 - 11:54 AM, said:

I cant speak to all the little details that have been put forth, but the idea of the major lore battles being special events we, as players, can participate in, is extremely appealing.

I would love to be on tukayyid/luthien/coventry/etc., even if the outcome is a foregone conclusion.

Count me in as a supporter.

This is exactly the support we need