[Suhiir]

Originally Posted by marsorder

Thanks Suhiiir

Sorry I meant to say 250 slots. Which I believe is the maximum allowed (correct?) That is wonderful advise regarding paring down the AT and AA weapons (SMAW's, Javelins, Stingers, etc). as well as‘...do a section of the battle rather then the whole thing’ Another great idea, thanks, I guess I was caught up with the idea of doing the entire battle and lost sight (stubbornly) of the slot and time limitations of the game.

500 slots are allowed but I'd never use more then about 450 because you need some for bailed out crews etc. and for myself I always forget something essential when I do a scenario abd need a few slots to shoehorn them in

Originally Posted by marsorder

I think I can also eliminate the HMM-161 Marine Medium Helicopter Squadron (CH-46Es) units as the were primarily used for medivac purposes

Depends, CH-46's are the primary transport helo's for the USMC, UH-1's are more commonly used for medivac (being smaller they can usually land in places a CH-46 can't). If you don't need helo transport then you can certainly remove them from the OOB.

Originally Posted by marsorder

Iraqi Government Forces (2,100 strong) will need to be eliminated as well. This is not a large concern as 30% of the 2nd Battalion deserted enroute to the battle. And many others were ‘sympatric’ to the insurgents.

If it were me I'd try to keep at least some of the Iraqi forces that were there since the "fun" of dealing with 1st rate (USMC) and 2nd/3rd rate (Iraqi) troops in the same battle makes things interesting.

Originally Posted by marsorder

Thanks for taking the time to review this ORBAT as well as sharing your MEU ORBAT solution. I greatly appreciate your assistance.

I should be back soon with revisions to the US ORBAT as well as the first draft of the Insurgent ORBAT.

Cheers
marsorder

Another thing you can do is just ignore the Hv Machinegun platoon from the battalion weapons companies, while useful you'll have AAV's that have both .50 cal's and Mk 19's and are a lot more mobile. This will save you some slots too.
You can essentially cut the Bn Weapons Co down to just the 81mm mortars without too much loss of effectiveness. But you'll want/need those 81's.

For the Company Weapons Platoons you can use sections of 2 M60's/M 240's attached to each Infantry platoon - myself I've added a large (10 man) MMG section to represent the 2 3-man MG teams + the 4-man platoon HQ section to each infantry platoon when folks don't want a zillion 2, 3, 4 man teams in a scenario.
You can also use a 3 mortar 60mm section in one unit for the company mortars.

The biggest problem you'll have is fitting the units into the AAV's...I had to change their carry capacity to 21 to fit everything in and use a 4 vehicle AAV platoon when using the larger units vice the teams.

Another thing you can skimp on if you run short of slots is the infantry and LAV-AT's in the LAI platoons. Normally each LAV-25 carries a 4-man scout/infantry team...you can make it 2 6-man teams per 4 vehicle platoon and just ignore the LAV-AT.

Hope this helps.