That's not really an issue BT's force creation rules have ever addressed. Ranks and organization of the force are addressed in prior publications like Total Warfare (which provides standard force sizes) and A Time of War, which discusses ranks in section on traits (pg124 has a nice table that, once you have your force organized into lances, companies, clusters, or whatever, should tell you which personnel have what ranks.)
Fair enough. The inner personnel manager in me was curious.
Sure, new availability numbers are welcome. How would you recommend altering the formulas presented in the draft to make large spacecraft less available?
New cash numbers are welcome, too. How would you suggest altering the basic budget table?
First thing's first, if it's at all possible, I'd add more than one cash table for different sizes of unit, and have a modifier for large spacecraft on that basis. After all, if you're only trying to make a single company, and you roll on the table and get 360,000,000 (!!!) CB to start, it's going to be pretty hard to spend it all without coming up with just exorbitant amounts of leftover, and that's if you're trying to make it as expensive as possible. In 3025 terms, a full company of Atlases would leave over 247,000,000 CB left unspent, which is just ridiculous (and entirely possible to get!).
At any rate, I'll fiddle around a little bit with one table for figuring out the size of a randomly generated force (after all, if you know how big it should be, you can roll for cash right away on the appropriate table), and then a series of results based on the size of the force. At the outset, I'm thinking of dividing the "tables" (can use one table, if space is a premium, with more columns and perhaps smaller print) into "Lance/Star", "Company/Binary", "Battalion/Trinary", "Regiment/Cluster", and "RCT/Galaxy" for size purposes. Still using the same 2d6 to determine results to keep it simple-ish. More testing required to find exact values throughout.
For the modifier for large spacecraft, I'd go the conservative route and say that a RCT/Galaxy has by far the easiest time finding large craft for transport relative to everything else, and give them a flat no-bonus/no-penalty modifier other than what's already there. Regiment/Cluster sized units probably the same (so, Regiment/Cluster and up no penalty/bonus).
For Battalion/Trinary sized units, it'd be more difficult to find dedicated jumpships for the unit than Regiments, but it would be far from impossible. A simple +0 to dropships and +1 to jumpships (in the current iteration, it's easier to get jumpships than it is dropships! The example in the text even shows this, with the dropship requiring a 9, and the jumpship with all the same modifiers requiring just a 8 with a veteran crew attached).
Companies/Binaries can still conceivably have their own dropships and jumpships, though dropships are significantly more common at this level of force organization. Dropships get a +1, and jumpships a +2. Do note that for government units that this means that they have functionally the same chance of getting a jumpship as a Regiment sized mercenary or unaffiliated command.
Lances/Stars are very unlikely to have their own transports unless it's the Star League's heyday (or the Clans in general), so dropships are a +2 and jumpships a +3. Also note that a government unit being granted a Leopard or other small, single-lance dropship is as likely here as it is for a battalion size mercenary unit, which sounds just about right to me.
Numbers are all obviously pulled out of nowhere with little to no testing as of right this second, but it passes the eye test from here. Any problems I'm missing at first glance?
That's a good thought to capture when describing how to determine operating costs. "Keep an eye on your remaining cash versus costs."
While this is true, I'm more concerned about new players or players new to this kind of construction method falling into the trap of just plain not knowing how expensive operating costs are until it's already too late.
Hmm. In the force creation rules, I was looking at techs and astechs as equal, just personnel slots to be filled. Even the StratOps maintenance rules don't really utilize the difference between techs and astechs other than to set that high "1 tech and 6 astechs per vehicle" rule.
Honestly, I'd say, related to my Option 2 in my previous post, that full on Techs could be used as potential admin-slot fillers much like combat personnel.
Maybe the word "administrator" is misleading - it suggests someone with authority. When I borrowed it from FM:Mercs, I was thinking of everything from low level file clerks, medic bedpan cleaners, and batmen (not the Dark Knight types) up through quartermasters, chief medical officers, and lawyers. Communications and intelligence tasks can easily require multiple personnel.
True, and while that may be entirely necessary for battalion and regimental level staff positions, it still seems overkill for smaller commands. Honestly, the smallest command that I'd expect to be independently dropped places (and then mostly as mercenaries) is a 'Mech company, and it requires almost as much administrators as fighting personnel, beyond even techs!
I'd argue that a bedpan cleaner doesn't really have any authority, but then I'd be nitpicking. But then again, honestly, I probably wouldn't have a problem with distinct medical personnel instead of lumping everything that isn't combat or technical personnel into the "administrator" grouping. It's just something that irritates me, and I admit isn't necessarily a problem with balance.