Another random observation: the number of administrators seems a bit... very very high. For infantry, I can understand, since the large number of bodies in an infantry platoon/company means you can handle most of the tech/admin support with people from the unit without very much fuss (much like real life), but for 'Mechs it starts to get silly quickly.
Take, for example, one company of BattleMechs of any kind. Twelve 'MechWarriors, to start off, means two Admins. Okay, that makes sense, and would probably be up to running a company or so as... call them "Intel" and "Supply" Admins, with the company CO making tactical and mission-planning decisions, and the XO handling recruitment and the like, and all four of them teaming up for contracts. It's even technically possible to have the company come together and divvy up one of those admin slots among themselves while in combat, so you'd only technically need one Admin (probably filling the Intel slot) to make a company float. This amount of admins makes sense for a small unit like this.
...That is, if your company consisted of 12 MechWarriors, 12 'Mechs, and exactly zero techs. Twelve 'Mechs means 12 tech teams, each consisting of one tech and six astechs, for a total of seven additional personnel, and a total of eight personnel per 'Mech in service. That's a total of 96 non-Admin personnel to run a company of 'Mechs, just by itself. That many MechWarriors can handle, at best, one and a half admin/tech slots, or more realistically one admin/tech slot between them in combat situations, for a total of 95 personnel to run the company without running into problems.
That means that the company requires
ten extra admins tacked onto the TO&E that do... what exactly? I could buy (and get right behind) admins for Personnel, Intelligence, Operations, Logistics, Planning/Strategy, Communications, and Training (in case anybody was wondering, that's the seven "S"s used by the military), but that's still a grand total of seven admins, leaving at least three to twiddle their thumbs and get paid for doing little of consequence. Not to mention that the company CO, XO, and all of the head techs would be performing their own administrative functions regardless of who actually holds the "admin" title, so the number of admins you'd actually need to have a fully functioning 'Mech company is closer to something like four or five than it is to ten.
My suggestions:
- Instead of one admin per ten personnel of any kind, rounded up, have one admin per twenty personnel of any kind, rounded up.
- Alternately, allow non-combatants like Techs and Astechs to fulfill administrative duties as well as combatants. If anything they'd be more effective at it, but that's not really necessary to change.
Option 1 makes a 'Mech company with five admin that can fulfill the basics of Intel, Logistics, Communications, Training, and Personnel easily, of which exactly one admin slot may be taken care of by presumably the officers of the unit.
Option 2, using the 25% rule, allows up to 24 MechWarriors, Techs, and Astechs to take over some of the administrative duties, meaning that up to eight of the hypothetical ten slots could be filled by personnel already integral to the unit (seven of ten if the MechWarriors group up to take on one of the Astech jobs) in a combat situation, and there would actually be a surplus when in a non-combat situation. This could make a lot of sense, as the last two or three admins would occupy the slots of Personnel, Operations, and Planning/Strategy with barely a hitch. Or, perhaps, First Aid/Medical duties, with Operations and Planning/Strategy rolled into one.
Interestingly, this problem doesn't exist at all with conventional infantry; they've got enough personnel to handle the tech/admin duties from within the unit. Conversely, vehicle and battle armor companies get slammed with this
hard. Assuming the average 12 vehicle company, and the vehicles average 50 tons, that's 48 vehicle crew (plus or minus four or so crew) and 84 Techs/Astechs, for a total of around 132 personnel. With the vehicle crew all trying to help out with administrative duties, you'd still need, at minimum, another
nine admins on top of the four the crews can take care of, and to do what? The battle armor is perhaps the most amusing example. A company of battle armor is (for the purposes of this example) 64 suits split into 4 platoons of 4 squads of 4 suits each. They require 13 tech teams of seven personnel each to function at full technical support, for a total of 155 personnel. Up to five admin/tech slots can be filled by the troopers themsevles, which leaves, at the minimum, 15 different admins attached to the unit (and that's if all five slots the troopers can fill without worry are tech slots!). If the troopers save everything for the admin duties, that's still 11 different admins attached to the unit that I honestly can't find a use for after the first six or seven.
tl;dr Admins are weird and could probably use some tweaking. My "official" recommendation with this post is for Option #2.
Of course, this is all assuming that the admins aren't tackling medical duties. If they were doing that, then there wouldn't be such a huge disconnect with the number of admins needed. But then, by not denoting doctors and medics... who exactly does that job? Is it a random admin? There would be a
lot of my gripes answered if, instead of just slapping "admin" (seriously, that word really sticks sideways. A surgeon/doctor shouldn't have a quartet of "administrators" helping him out on the operation table; they're orderlies and nurses) on it, one Doctor/Medic and four-man team were required per 50 personnel. That's the same number of additional personnel, but they're clearly defined and not so... out of place.
