BattleTech - The Board Game of Armored Combat
Catalyst Game Labs => Ask the Writers => Topic started by: BrokenMnemonic on 30 September 2011, 02:57:00
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Historical: Reunification War provides an interesting description on the formation of the SLDF and the various Corps therein, and highlights that the basic unit formations that would still be in use at the end of the Star League were largely defined soon after the formation of the Star League, but that most wouldn't come into being in reality until after the Reunification War.
While Reunification War explains the SLDF definition of a Brigade and highlights the four Division types that were defined as the standards for Divisions, the Divisions described in the various theatres of the Reunification War are simply referred to with a number - 4th Division, 5th Division, etc. That makes sense given the contextual information that most Divisions were largely a mélange of combined-arms units during the war.
At the time of the Reunification War, the various Corps are all laid out in a consistent numerical order - I Corps contains the 1st Royal Division, 2nd Division and 3rd Division, II Corps the 4th - 6th Divisions, and so on. By 2764, all of the Divisions listed within the Star League sourcebook had specific types listed against them - such as the 4th Royal Infantry Division - and the seventy odd Corps of the Star League had a complete mix of divisional numbers within each Corps.
So, my long-winded question is: can the Divisions listed within the Star League sourcebook be traced back directly to those Divisions listed within Historial: Reunification War? Is it fair to assume that the 4th Division listed under II Corps in Historical: Reunification War went on to become the 4th Royal Infantry Division (The Gurkha Rifles) listed under LXIII Corps in the Star League sourcebook, for example?
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In general, yes.
Almost all of the "royal" divisions during the RW were also royals during the 2750+ period, and vice versa. There's a couple of discrepancies, but that's easily chocked up to reorganizations and redisgnations during the interim.
My personal view is that the RW corps became the basis for the later armies, so the correlation of corps, armies and army groups is different. (Likewise, the divisions were reorganized out of their original corps at some date after the RW.)
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That's great - just the answer I was hoping for! :) Thank you. It makes sense that the Divisions from the original Corps would be farmed out to other Corps over time - a couple of experienced Divisions would form a good basis to build a new Corps around. In general, would the Brigades that made up each Division in the Reunification War era have remained within those Divisions as the Divisions moved? My reasoning for saying that is if you fragment the Divisions by moving all of the Brigades around, then you effectively lose the Division identity... and as the Star League Sourcebooks makes almost no mention of individual Brigade names and designations, it wouldn't break anything I'm aware of if it worked that way.
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I'm sure that as the SLDF grew tremendously during the 27th century, there would have been a fair amount of brigades and regiments reassigned in order to form the core onew divisions (either with the moving of an entire unit AND designation, or simply the transfer of nearly a whole unit's complement into a newly formed unit to form a cadre to build from).
By the 28th century, the SLDF was probably wholly formed, with only a few units of any kind standing up, being redisgnated or stricken for generally administrative reasons.
Either way, I suspect these few sentences are more than we'll ever get around to writing on the subject. I mean, I *could* write 40k words on the subject, but then again I can write 40k words on just about anything. Just ask Randall. :)