ok,
when i say "regiment" i mean all of the above, as it would be the dropships that carry the solders. it has to have enough collars to carry whatever regiment it needs to, weather it be a all mech regiment, infantry, armor, mixed. ino the dropship numbers will be a little differint for each, but not overly much. as it seems that no matter wich version of regiment u carry the dropships are mostly centered around carrying a whole , company, battalion setups. with a few going larger, but for this discusion they doint exist.
when i say "short campaign" im using it as a "minimum" kind of thing, i would prefer to be able to run at least 15 -20 missions, or for a semi "campaign" on a single world.
it will have intigrated fighter support, in decent numbers, as i want all the collars to be mostly for the ground troops. and if there are extra then assault droppers or PWS
Well the Regiment needs a little more detail than that in order to spec the DS. I'm assuming you don't want to put them all on one DS. So their disposition matters. Here's an example.
I can get a Mixed Clan Galaxy onto a single 50k ton DS (5/8, 450/450/420, 72 ERPPCs).
9 Mech Stars
2 Fighters Stars
5 Elemental Stars
4 Stars Foot Infantry
3 Stars Jump Infantry
2 Stars Motorized Infantry
2 Stars Mechanized Infantry
2 Stars Light Vehicles
1 Star Heavy Vehicles
4000 tons Cargo
Now, that DS includes Bay Personnel Quarters at 7 tons each, 180 days rations for DS crew and Bay Personnel (in addition to the 4k ton Cargo), a MASH with 4 extra theaters and a Field Kitchen. But if you go for 10 Mech Stars, you need to lose all the Light Vehicles. So how you make up your Regiment or Cluster counts for a lot.
A Clan Galaxy of all OmniFighters would need many DS, with plenty of cargo room for the Omni-pods.
Once you know what the Regiment looks like, you can decide how many DS you will split it onto. You will be able to work out the tonnage for ammo based on your mission number. Simple maths at work. 15 missions for a unit that carries 4 tons of ammo means 60 tons of ammo. Add in tonnage for spare parts like armor, etc. and you have a need of 100 tons of cargo.
Using the DS as a base makes sense during a campaign. It is almost like a mobile fortress (72 ERPPCs :) ) and so once landed, it won't really be moving until the mission is over. That means resupply is going to come from other DS or SC. If you choose DS, remember that the exhaust from landing will cause damage to a large area. You will want to have it land far enough away so it doesn't cause damage, unload the cargo and then wait around whilst you move the cargo back to base. If it takes off before you move the cargo, you will burn up the cargo.
Moving cargo takes time, so CargoMechs to help with unloading and vehicles to move it are needed. Obviously you can go into detail or not. I prefer to work out all the detail ahead of time, and then you have the choice of using it or not. StratOps has the formulae for this, although I am still waiting to hear exactly what a Light/Heavy Cargo Platform is.
Getting the Cargo room right isn't overly important since you can use resupply drops as often as you like. But getting the bays right is the key to this. Speccing out the Regiment, Cluster, or whatever is the first step.
