Infantry Compartments vice Infantry Bays

[Revanche]

I'm posting here in order to get a reasonable answer quickly, rather than wait for an official one.

TechManual (pp. 239-240) describes the differences between compartments and bays. Essentially, compartments are simple affairs (ala military cattle trucks, with bench seats and space that can easily be re-purposed for cargo), while bays are extensive, designated support spaces for infantry, including such attributes like life support, internal communications, waste facilities (think modern APCs or the ground transport in Aliens).

The Turhan (http://www.sarna.net/wiki/Turhan) is a 50-ton urban combat vehicle with a 5-ton infantry compartment (per TRO3075), which suggests it only has a rudimentary bench seat to hold the supporting infantry. However, for the same weight cost (5 tons), it could have had an infantry bay that holds 28, a much more potent fighting force for urban warfare than an over-strength fire team.

I'm trying to understand how 5 tons of a simple affair only supports 5 infantry, but a dedicated bay, with equipment designed to support infantry can increase the available space to the actual soldier by a multiple of over 5.5. Am I just mis-understanding the updated table for infantry compartment on p. 239?

[Daryk]

A five ton compartment can hold five squads, not five troopers.

[Alexander Knight]

The 1 ton per trooper limit applies to battle armor, not conventional infantry.  The Turhan can either carry a 5-man battle armor squad/point or a 28-man motorized infantry platoon.

[Sartris]

Or 28 man rifle platoon and two tons of party favors

[Daryk]

Or five Taurian squads of 10 troopers each.

[Revanche]

You are all giving me the answer I like, but...can anyone provide a citation?
Much obliged.

[Vition2]

Total Warfare, page 223 and further referencing page 213.

[Siden Pryde]

Also, Tech Manual page 155.  Conventional infantry weight table.  The old "one ton per squad" bit can be seen as resulting from the usual Battletech rounding.  Can't have a 0.595 ton bay (7 man Foot squad), so it gets rounded up to 1.00 tons.  Where they get 3 tons for a platoon when it is only 85kg per trooper, I dunno.  28 Foot Infantry x 0.085 tons per infantryman = 2.38 tons.  I guess they are supposedly carrying enough extra gear to push it over the .5 ton mark and get rounded to 3 tons?

[Sartris]

Also probably for simplicity's sake. All of the standard platoons have whole ton weights

[pheonixstorm]

Also, Tech Manual page 155.  Conventional infantry weight table.  The old "one ton per squad" bit can be seen as resulting from the usual Battletech rounding.  Can't have a 0.595 ton bay (7 man Foot squad), so it gets rounded up to 1.00 tons.  Where they get 3 tons for a platoon when it is only 85kg per trooper, I dunno.  28 Foot Infantry x 0.085 tons per infantryman = 2.38 tons.  I guess they are supposedly carrying enough extra gear to push it over the .5 ton mark and get rounded to 3 tons?

Anti-Mech gear makes up the remaining 15kg per the updated rules (it was in the errata).

Unlike bays which have a set weight per platoon, compartments can be any weight and hold that much in infantry or BA.

There is also an option rule in TO which changes the weight of BA from 1 per ton to a variable number so a 1 ton infantry compartment could carry 1 Nighthawk or 4 using the optional rule.

There is also...
Compartment (top pic)
Bay (bottom pic)

[Revanche]

Total Warfare, page 223 and further referencing page 213.

Also, Tech Manual page 155. 

Thank you; this was very helpful. Turhan now can carry up to 50, rather than my presumed 5.

[boilerman]

And there's the difference between bench seating a la M113A and individual seats with 5 point harnesses of an MRAP.