Fleet size right before Invasion

[Alan Grant]

Honestly I always saw the Scorpion warship fleet as one of the best organized of the Clan fleets. Which was always surprising to me as well.

In most Clans there's maybe 1-3 dedicated naval stars, assigned as needed. Or the fleet as a whole is assigned as needed with the exception of one or two flagships. Flexible sure but vague.

The Scorpion approach reminds me of the Snow Raven approach of permanently attaching warships to Galaxies. The front line galaxies get a Battle Group, approximating a warship star, typically made up of one larger combatant vessel (e.g. a McKenna, Nightlord or Cameron) with a slew of smaller cruiser and destroyer escorts. Or in the case of the Wild Hunt Battlegroup, a Nightlord and two escorts and then a Volga and Carrack, making it a hybrid warship/transport force.

Every second line galaxy has a Potemkin, which means every Scorpion Galaxy has a high degree ofinterstellar transportation, where in many other Clans second line units only get jumpships as needed. It's very possible that they are extremely reliant on those Potemkins for interstellar transport, with few to no jumpships allocated. The Potemkins might be needed to fill the role of supply ships as well. Maybe the heavy prevalence of Seeker culture sees a lot of Scorpion jumpships sent off on support of Seeker quests.

Rather than getting a seemingly random assortment of warships, the Scorpion Fleet feels surprisingly pre-planned and organized and standardized.

Then again their ground forces are extremely pre-planned as well, down to trinary level organization. So maybe its not that surprising.

I definitely feel the presence of powerful bureaucratic minds at work in the Scorpion touman.

EDIT: I would note I wouldn't expect to see a lot of Overlord-Cs in the Scorpion touman. Their forces just aren't organized that way with mixed trinaries being the norm. They'd almost be best off with a dropship fleet largely made up of Sassasids, Broadswords and carrier dropships. Then they can mix and match as needed to fit the trinary/cluster organization scheme. It also fits better with the Seeker culture, sending small units of warriors here and there.

[Weirdo]

I would expect to see a fair number of Hunters and other small JumpShips in the Scorpion fleet as well. Not a very large percentage, but higher than average compared to other Clans to support the Seekers.

[Colt Ward]

I definitely feel the presence of powerful bureaucratic minds at work in the Scorpion touman.

EDIT: I would note I wouldn't expect to see a lot of Overlord-Cs in the Scorpion touman. Their forces just aren't organized that way with mixed trinaries being the norm. They'd almost be best off with a dropship fleet largely made up of Sassasids, Broadswords and carrier dropships. Then they can mix and match as needed to fit the trinary/cluster organization scheme. It also fits better with the Seeker culture, sending small units of warriors here and there.

The Scorpions, if you read into it, are a very top-down type organization . . . it makes a interesting internal conflict, the Scorpion touman is big into conformity like 'follow the plan from the boss, or else' but . . . they have independent operators in the Seekers who follow their own wild path and the Clan warrior culture allows for challenging the boss but once defeated you have to conform.  I have to wonder if the Scorpions have less internal Trials of Refusal or Grievance than other Clans b/c their pressure for conformity.  FMWC covers a lot of this as the Khan feels the Clan's rigid conformity (kind of reminds me of Soviets & following The Plan) has cost them on the battlefield as they fail to adapt to changing circumstances.  Be interesting to see if it carries over to the Empire.

By fluff and even original SBs, we are supposed to have Overlord C & Union C that mimic the fluff about Overlords & Unions having non-standard builds or refits that are combined arms transports.  So you could have the occasional Overlord C with a trinary of mechs, trinary of vehicles (15 heavy & 15 light), and a trinary of Elementals along with a Star of fighters (or more, no HMA present) but it would not be as common as the pure mech carrier.

[Hellraiser]

Honestly I always saw the Scorpion warship fleet as one of the best organized of the Clan fleets.

The Scorpion approach reminds me of the Snow Raven approach of permanently attaching warships to Galaxies.

Every second line galaxy has a Potemkin, which means every Scorpion Galaxy has a high degree of interstellar transportation

Agreed Alan.

Their pattern was a big influence on me a decade or more ago when I was designing "Custom" Clans based of a figure of 5 clans per Pentagon attack fit better w/ the base 5 of the clans.

When creating my own non-canon clan I was limited to only 11 ships since I based it on my own mini's collection.

Each of the 6 Galaxy Commanders/Khans got a single Warship for their Keshik that could carry 2-6 dropships.   (Battleship, carrier, cruiser, frigate)

The remaining ships were the "Naval Reserve Star" that consisted of Corvettes, Destroyers, Carracks.
They were all in a single star but were mostly broken up escorting JS fleets for Merchants & Garrison troops.
Each Reserve Warship acted as the core for its own star of Jumpships.
All the Warships could call on an Aero cluster of Fighters/Elementals & their combat dropships to support it.

[Colt Ward]

I am not sure about 'previous' phonebook sources, but WCSB & JFSB was 'nice' in that it showed what JS and DS were assigned to each galaxy and even cluster at the time.  IMO it insinuated that the JS, and especially the DS, were assigned to those frontline formations the whole time- especially when the names matched up.  Details of that sort get dropped later on- b/c it led to things like my opinion the Warden Wolves should have been a merchant power-house in the LA/LC with JS after the Refusal War- because it caused FASAnomics problems in the most precious commodity in the BTU, drop collars.

FREX, look at the transport for the 5 clusters (4th WG, 16th WG, & 3) Phelan took to Morges, and the remains (13th WGs, 341st, 352nd, Green Keshik, 16th Battle) escaped Wotan were detailed in WCSB.  So you can figure Phelan had exactly what was listed for the transport of his clusters, or the equivalent, from WCSB.  Star Colonel Marco Hall brought the 13th Wolf Guard's transport and part of the 341st, 352nd, and maybe 37th Striker.  The Green Keshik survivors and what they salvaged from Gamma Clusters that were assigned to Ulric & Natasha's spearheads would bring some of Gamma's transport capability.  While Phelan's five clusters had fully loaded JS & DS with a fleet train, the Wotan survivors probably showed up with JS & DS that had empty space since what retreated were damaged units- so a half-loaded Overlord C might be docked to a Star Lord that only had 3 of the 5 collars occupied FREX.  And some of the Wotan tasked units would have had their dropships captured or surrender to the Falcons even if they were fighting still- like the 11th Wolf Guards (or Battle) that were a bunch of Wardens that become Vlad's bullet sponges until they shuffled off to form Omega.  Horses eventually absorbed them, but I always thought Phelan should have 'Harvest' those Wardens . . . but that could be the source of the Jihad Warden Wolf - Hell's Horses alliance.

Finally you have the Full Moon's convoy which arrived later; it transported 5 garrison clusters, a space station, portions of sibkos, supporting select lower castes, and enough parts & supplies to maintain a frontline Omni force.  So at least 25 large cargo dropships . . . if you do not figure they had any supporting escort or other JS.