Danish TO & E

[Palle]

While trying to reconstruct the 1. LOPESK as well as I can (to be modified when I get the proper intel from its sources), I ran into a problem. There core of 1. LOPESK (and any, 1st is merely stronger) consists of

-Cmdr in MOWAG Eagle IV
-SiC in GD G270 CDI
-1st Platoon in MOWAG Eagles
-2nd Platoon in GD G270 CDI
-3rd Platoon in MOWAG Eagles
-Additional units (those are the ones I have trouble pinning down what is except that they have a Piranha ambulance).

Each Platoon consists of a commander with two others in a vehicle and three groups each of two vehicles with 6 men/women (Anika Pedersen "Combat Barbie" was rather popular with the Brits in MQ) shared between them. They can function mounted or dismounted and the MGs can be disattached from the vehicles (especially the LSW and LMG of the GD G270 CDI are easy) to be put in emplacements (as in MQ) or carried on foot patrol.

This organisation seems to not be possible to dublicate in the SPMBT engine where a Grp/Sec can only be one unit, so when I try to create a Scout/Recon Platoon it cannot encompass the Sections as they are, for they have four subunits in them and if I work around that by making the Platoons = Company, I cannot create 1. LOPESK as a Cmp cannot be part of a Cmp.

What can be done about that?

And how to model the fact that the guys can work mounted, with two from each vehicle dismounted (securing the vehicles) or all three dismounted and with weapons disattached to be put in emplacements like at MQ?

[Mobhack]

1) Ambulances are entirely irrelevant for game purposes. Ditto any logistical vehicles - unless you want ammo carriers, but the AI does not use these, so your formation would then have to be human-only if it included them. Therefore - best to let the human decide to add an ammo section from misc section, should he desire one.

2) There is no way to model vehicle crew and weapons that are mountable/dis-mountable. The crew and attached weapons stay with the vehicle.
(Making sections 1 more - assuming the vehicle commander dismounts with the section, is allowed. e.g. vehicle crew is 'nominally' 3 and section is 5 - could be modelled with 2 crew APC and 6 man section).

You'll probably have to split the platoon into an A part and a B part. Part A will be a platoon (Officer commanding) and part B a section (Sgt Commanding) the other half-platoon.

Part A: (officers party)
Pl Cdr (if you have as a dismount) - Could be a 2 man FO team (use a unit type not used in the OOB)
Pl Cdr vehicle
3 x dismounts (4)
3 x vehicles

Part B: (Sgts party)
3 x dismounts (4)
3 x vehicles

Spare slots - if you want to break 4 man teams down further (sniper etc?)

If being creative - or your org allows it - a 4 man team may be an EOD specialist (engineer unit type). Useful in Afghanistan.

Company:

CHQ - vehicle (dismount too small to bother with?)
- #2 vehicle - AOP vehicle (a platoon formation so he can buzz about separately. So could be a vehicle (possibly FO vehicle) + foot FOO)
- Part A, #1 platoon
- Part B, #1 Platoon
- Part A, #2 Platoon
- Part B, #2 Platoon
- Part A, #3 platoon
- Part B, #3 Platoon

looks like 8 slots - 2 left for any attached support elements. (Or, leave that to individuals to buy and X-attach if desired, if not a regular pattern)

You could split each platoon into A(officer=pl, 3 veh + dismounts),B (sec of 2 veh + dismounts) , and C (sec of 2 veh + dismounts) parts if you restricted the coy HQ to just one vehicle (a FO vehicle say)? 9 slots for platoon parts, one for the CHQ veh. In this case - any attached support sections to the coy would have to be manually x-attached (no bad thing really - I don't always want, say the ATGM section an OOB designer adds onto his mixed formation).

NB - the advantage of splitting into officer and sgts part-platoons is that the officer/sgt each only have half the large number of small elements of a platoon to rally if things go pear shaped.. ! (and part platoons can operate over a larger frontage). Better Command and control than a single lump, anyway. The 3 separate little sections version is even better for spreading about the map, and rallying.

Andy