There's a lot to unpack lately, but one quick thought: Battle-armored infantry can ride around in trucks just as easily as anybody else. Score some stake-beds and put the rest of the money for transpo into proper AFVs and you can have the best of both worlds.
If I can get my hands on Clan ERMLs I can always use that Goblin IFV variant I posted over in Combat Vehicles as a BA carrier...I should probably post an IS ERML version for supply since I have IS ERMLs on the 'Mechs. I don't want to completely overshadow the 'mechs, though, since they're supposed to be the core of the fighting group hence only taking one company of Goblins as infantry transports.
Stake-beds? You mean something like BT's Flatbed Truck (ten tons, six tons armored cargo) or did you have something else in mind.
Doesn't BattleTech have rules for tank-desant? If not, why not?
As far as tank desant goes, I've never seen anything, though I suppose "external cargo" would apply in such a situation. IIRC you can drop cargo anytime, and it shouldn't be hard to houserule a squad (or hell, a whole platoon) as desant.
You've got enough personnel to need a Field Kitchen... add that to your overhead too... ???
Yeah a Field Kitchen is a great idea, it beats operating on rations the whole time you're deployed. One only weighs three tons, so I can put two of them on a single Flatbed Truck as deployable cargo. How many personnel would man such a kitchen, say for an estimated headcount of 600 troops (as that's the next big number I'm heading towards) - perhaps two "squads" of "infantry" to account for the cooks and support staff.
Also, don't forget that every combat vehicle adds another squad of infantry needed to maintain it. I use my infantry (at least those below Squad Leader) as AsTechs. Vehicle crew can help decrease those numbers, but will never eliminate it.
Alright, let me attack this. Each "tech squad" is one Tech and six AsTechs, the six of which can be infantry. My BattleMechs are precious and custom, so I want each to have a dedicated tech squad for each one. Fortunately there's only four, so that's four squads of pure Techs. Each vehicle needing its own tech team...I think I have (at the moment) fourteen Goblins (two of which are converted CEVs), thirteen Heavy APCs, ten Flatbed Trucks, one HBRV...no, at this rate I'd need so many AsTechs I'd be putting my entire infantry force to work doing maintenance that I wouldn't be able to send them off to do infantry things like site security. That means having dedicated techs. Add in twelve squads of BA and my maintenance requirements go even higher. That puts me at a requirement of 50 tech teams of seven men each if each "unit" has its own techs. That's twelve and a half "platoons" of troops if I go that route, which...is far more than my infantry but isn't all that much in the endgame of transportation. Supply on the other hand, that's an extra 350 mouths to feed. That does assume I don't make changes to my vehicle numbers.
I'm only using the 'Mechs as primary combatants, the Goblins are more of a defensive role and aren't intended to get into combat as often. Meanwhile the HAPCs and other vehicles aren't considered for combat at all as far as I intend to use them. With the way repair rules go, I'm thinking I can maybe get away with one full dedicated tech team for every four vehicles...but then there's the BA squads, and those are pretty high tech and will need dedicated repair teams as well. So four tech teams for the 'mechs, twelve for the BA, and nine for the vehicles assuming that doesn't go up much, that brings me to at least 25 squads (175 Techs and AsTechs) in total. The infantry can maintain their own equipment as astechs, they don't need any additional bodies...okay, maybe one Tech Team for the entire Foot Infantry company. Not to mention some more Flatbed Trucks for them as well to haul tools and whatnot to the site of a battle to help salvage things.
Life is cheap, BattleMechs aren't.
Also something I hadn't added in - medical support. While the infantry has their own medics per platoon, and can provide help, I'm still going to have enough personnel that I think I'll want a MASH setup somewhere and a dedicated medical team to handle more serious injuries. At the moment I'm adding up about 700-750 personnel, about a modern infantry battalion in size. How large is the medical staff attached to a battalion likely to be? Hm...that's going to need another lance of vehicles, one HAPC carrying a six ton MASH and three standard APCs as armored ambulances. Plus another tech team to handle that.
I thought about adding administrators and businesspeople to the mix, but they'd be off on Galatea negotiating contracts and doing businessythings, not deploying as part of the force, so they're extraneous to this whole organization.
Yeah, it's a lot to go through, but this is tickling my autism something fierce and I for one am really enjoying detailing out this force. At this point I'm going to call the 3150 version the Wieczorek Combat Group.
I should still be able to fit everything into a Triumph-class DropShip with plenty of cargo to spare, but once I pound out support troops I can recalculate just what kind of supply and field endurance I have to work with. I should make a note here too - my supply requirements are based on SO's 1 ton giving 20 man-days of life support based on the rule for parking everyone in bays instead of quarters. I'm going to need to handle space transportation time as well, so say...packing enough supplies for 14 days of sustained heavy combat is going to be a maximum outlay of 30 tons per day (fudging high to get a round number), so that totals out to 420 tons of munitions.
As far as fuel and POL goes, BattleTech doesn't track that directly, but looking at the numbers for Support Vehicle fuel tanks I can get figures for at least something. A 20 ton Tech D Support Vehicle gets 6667km per ton of fuel, a 45 ton half that. So each 100km of travel costs a 20 ton vehicle 1/67th of a ton, or about 15kg per 100km. Goblins would double that consumption. So to travel 100km for my Goblin force, hauling its infantry on a two and a half hour road march, would cost me 400kg of gas (with some extra time idling and doing things Other Than Driving, are we there yet?) My lighter vehicles...well, if I end up with fifty of them and assume the same amount of driving, that's 800kg of gas per day. So 1.2 tons of fuel per day being used, I'll round that up to 1.5 tons per day to account for things like using generators to recharge powerpacks. Say 30 days of in the field deployment is a requirement for 45 tons of fuel onboard.
That, at the moment, leaves me with about 2500 tons for life support and supplies, which 750 people (at a current estimate) consume 37.5 tons per day. That's enough supplies for two months, one month of which would be estimated to be in the field. So I can travel for a month in space on my own before I want a resupply from another DropShip, which is enough to get to a jump point, make a couple slow jumps, and get to a planet. This also doesn't count foraging and clearing out every SpaceWalMart within 100km of my LZ...
That'll get refined, however, once I get some better numbers on my support troops. I'll wait to go further until folks have had a chance to read the word vomit and help me nail things down.
EDIT: Headquarters & Headquarters Platoon. One Flatbed Truck converted into a mobile HQ with three tons of communications equipment. The other three tons holds a full foot platoon that's made up of command staff, clerks, and communications personnel. Sufficient, you think, for this force?
EDIT 2: As far as Battle Armor goes, what do you guys recommend as far as Medium-weight suits on the market for Mercenary availability? You've all got far more experience with them than I (I only ever played Elementals) so I'll look for recommendations.
