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Is there a single book or page I can reference for how large a CS mechanized Platoon, Company, and Division are?

Specifically how many robots and power armor would be reasonable to be in one?

I am running a game and would like to stay as true as possible because one of my players actually cares about little details much more than I normally do.

CS war campaign.
It does cover general unit make up if I recall.
One of the death head transport says it transports a unit size and gives numbers.

While there may be general guide lines units size very even at the same level.

Unless he is out counting them just telling him there is a X size unit typically works.

Generally if I recall right there are generally 4 squads to a platoon 3-5 platoons to a company and 4 companies to a battalion. 4-6 battalions to a brigade 4-6 brigades to a division. corps and field armies are above division.
Note there is typically a headquarters part of any military unit for any unit company size or larger for logistic support(repairs; paper work ect).
A unit can have a detachment that is not part of it assigned to it for a mission/campaign. Such as a dog pack squad assigned to a platoon clearing a town.


Artillery calls companies batteries.
Equipment may very depending on units combat mission. So there would be know a unit this size always has XY and Z.

From the original Sourcebook 1:

Squad: 4-8 soldiers
Platoon: 16-32 soldiers (4 Squads)
Company: 96 soldiers (3 platoons), at least 1 Spider-Skull Walker, 2 APCs & 1 squad of SAMAS
Battalion: 288 soldiers (3 companies)
Division: 864 soldiers (3 battalions, 1 fully mechanized)

While not explicitly spelled out, Coalition War Campaign revises these values upward.

Squad: 6-10 soldiers
Platoon: 40 soldiers (4 squads)
Company: 160 soldiers (4 platoons)
Battalion: 640 soldiers (4 companies)
Brigade: 1,920 soldiers (3 battalions)
Division: 5,760 soldiers (3 brigades)
Field Army: 23,040 soldiers (4 divisions)

In most instances, power armor & robot formations are treated as equivalent to infantry, so a platoon of combat robots would be 40 robots.

Ndreare wrote:Is there a single book or page I can reference for how large a CS mechanized Platoon, Company, and Division are?

Specifically how many robots and power armor would be reasonable to be in one?

I am running a game and would like to stay as true as possible because one of my players actually cares about little details much more than I normally do.

For who gets what, platoon, company, and battalion levels are all going to depend on what unit they are. Armor units would have the robots and combat vehicles, infantry units would likely have the skelebots either in their units or tasked out to them. Infantry may also be where the power armor units go, but it's possible PA get assigned to the armor units instead. Support units wouldn't have any of that, though they would have support vehicles (supply trucks, fuel trucks, ect). Brigades would be composed of three battalions, and divisions are made up of several brigades. The easiest thing to do is to look up how the US Army command is organized and just use that as the base for how the CS military is organized.

The war on Tolkeen is the first time in a long time they've fielded actual homogeneous units. Usually it's a couple of platoons of skelebots, a platoon of grunts, an APC, a bot, and a couple of SAMAS that roll in and burn down an unarmed village.

Thanks for the answers guys.

Proseksword wrote:
In most instances, power armor & robot formations are treated as equivalent to infantry, so a platoon of combat robots would be 40 robots.

Is that a quote from the book? I find it hard to swallow that 40 2 man robots would be a platoon. It should be 20 robots 40 men, but skelebots would be 40.

Blue_Lion wrote:

Proseksword wrote:
In most instances, power armor & robot formations are treated as equivalent to infantry, so a platoon of combat robots would be 40 robots.

Is that a quote from the book? I find it hard to swallow that 40 2 man robots would be a platoon. It should be 20 robots 40 men, but skelebots would be 40.

Yep, Coalition War Campaign lists them that way in the transport unit complements. Utterly daft, but true.

Proseksword wrote:

Blue_Lion wrote:

Proseksword wrote:
In most instances, power armor & robot formations are treated as equivalent to infantry, so a platoon of combat robots would be 40 robots.

Is that a quote from the book? I find it hard to swallow that 40 2 man robots would be a platoon. It should be 20 robots 40 men, but skelebots would be 40.

Yep, Coalition War Campaign lists them that way in the transport unit complements. Utterly daft, but true.

I am sorry but can you be clear is "In most instances, power armor & robot formations are treated as equivalent to infantry, so a platoon of combat robots would be 40 robots." an exact quote from the book, or is that something you extrapolated.

Proseksword wrote:

Blue_Lion wrote:

Proseksword wrote:
In most instances, power armor & robot formations are treated as equivalent to infantry, so a platoon of combat robots would be 40 robots.

Is that a quote from the book? I find it hard to swallow that 40 2 man robots would be a platoon. It should be 20 robots 40 men, but skelebots would be 40.

Yep, Coalition War Campaign lists them that way in the transport unit complements. Utterly daft, but true.

Page ref on that? Couldn't find anything.

As simplified building blocks, I would go with something like the following.

A squad is composed of:
— 10-12 Infantry, or
— 4-6 Power Armor, or
— 1 Robot/Tank

A given unit is composed of 3 units of one size smaller plus 1 leadership unit that’s two sizes smaller. So a Company would contain 3 Platoons and 1 Leadership Squad. Likewise, a Platoon would contain 3 Squads and 1 Leadership Fire Team.

I’ve never seen a reason to make it much more complicated than that.

Blue_Lion wrote:

Proseksword wrote:

Blue_Lion wrote:

Proseksword wrote:
In most instances, power armor & robot formations are treated as equivalent to infantry, so a platoon of combat robots would be 40 robots.

Is that a quote from the book? I find it hard to swallow that 40 2 man robots would be a platoon. It should be 20 robots 40 men, but skelebots would be 40.

Yep, Coalition War Campaign lists them that way in the transport unit complements. Utterly daft, but true.

I am sorry but can you be clear is "In most instances, power armor & robot formations are treated as equivalent to infantry, so a platoon of combat robots would be 40 robots." an exact quote from the book, or is that something you extrapolated.

It's extrapolated from throughout CWC:

pg.146 on Scout Spider Skull Walkers - "They can be dispatched as lone individuals,
pairs, squads (4-10) or entire platoons."

pg.149 Scorpion Skull Walker - "Only 640 (one battalion) are currently operating in the field of combat."

pg.159 Fire Storm compliment - "
• One Squad (6) of Skull Smashers
• One Squad (6) of Spider-Skull Walkers.
• One Squad (10) of Glitter Boy Killers.
• One Platoon (40) of Scout Spider-Skull Walkers.
• One Platoon (40) of Hellraisers.
• One Platoon (40) of Hellfires or CS Cyborg Strike Troopers.
• One Platoon (40) of Terror Trooper Commandos or CS Juicers.
• One Platoon (40 troops) of Scout Rocket Cycles and/or Warbird
Rocket Cycle or other small aircraft.
• Two Platoons of Special Forces (80 troops: 60 in Striker
SAMAS and 20 in Terror Troopers or power armor of
choice).
• One Company of Light Assault SAMAS (160 troops; old or
new style).
• One Company of Super SAMAS (160 troops)
• One Company of Infantry Soldiers (160 troops; most support
crew)."

I understand your incredulity, I assure you, but this is RIFTs after all. We really shouldn't be surprised when stuff like this crops up....

The idea of a "armor" platoon of Walkers having the same number of units, but double the bodies makes no sense. I understand it is on the page, but it would be unwieldy on to be nice. Most real world armies don't deploy armor below platoons. Most platoons have something like 4 tanks, with 4 crewman each(with some variety by country or purpose). So a tank platoon of 4 tanks has 16 people. If the real world used the PB version a tank platoon would be 40 tanks, and include 160 crew, not counting any support units like mechanics etc.

RockJock wrote:The idea of a "armor" platoon of Walkers having the same number of units, but double the bodies makes no sense. I understand it is on the page, but it would be unwieldy on to be nice. Most real world armies don't deploy armor below platoons. Most platoons have something like 4 tanks, with 4 crewman each(with some variety by country or purpose). So a tank platoon of 4 tanks has 16 people. If the real world used the PB version a tank platoon would be 40 tanks, and include 160 crew, not counting any support units like mechanics etc.

Does it specify weather the number is the crew manning the robots or the robot units.

A platoon 40 of ranks could be personal available to man the tanks and not the number of tanks. It may seam stretch but it makes more sense.

It is a good stretch BL, but doesn't really fit. "One Platoon (40) of Hellfires or CS Cyborg Strike Troopers" is an example of the text. At least to me it makes the meaning of 40 Hellfire robots, not 20 robots manned by 40 deadboys.

That being said, I could use it as a reason to use more manageable platoons.

RockJock wrote:It is a good stretch BL, but doesn't really fit. "One Platoon (40) of Hellfires or CS Cyborg Strike Troopers" is an example of the text. At least to me it makes the meaning of 40 Hellfire robots, not 20 robots manned by 40 deadboys.

That being said, I could use it as a reason to use more manageable platoons.

I agree. The way it's worded makes it sound like Palladium's counting the robots as the platoon, not the soldiers.

It all depends upon your point of view and how you look at the robot vehicles and/or tanks.

a) one crew of X people required to operate = one robot vehicle (regardless if X is 2 or 10 or anywhere between)

40 robot vehicles equals one platoon

b) 40 people manning X number of robots = one platoon

Personally, I go with scenario a, but I also served in the Army and that scenario sounds more logical to me. In scenario a, I would break the vehicles down into 5 squads of 8.

Sir Dellis wrote:It all depends upon your point of view and how you look at the robot vehicles and/or tanks.

a) one crew of X people required to operate = one robot vehicle (regardless if X is 2 or 10 or anywhere between)

40 robot vehicles equals one platoon

b) 40 people manning X number of robots = one platoon

Personally, I go with scenario a, but I also served in the Army and that scenario sounds more logical to me. In scenario a, I would break the vehicles down into 5 squads of 8.

Even though a platoon is 4 tanks in US.mil?

We can not afford unlimited tanks. A typical tank company has 14 tanks, in addition to the dead quarters plaltoon with the mechanics and recovery vehicles. So that would be 56 people manning tanks +20 to 40 in the headquarters platoon, when you move away from tanks to other types of combat vehicles the numbers tend to normalize.

While the US military does have companies with fewer people than an infantry company, we do not normally have companies with more people than the standard infantry size of about 160.

Face it, none of the book numbers take into account any sort of support bodies. A battalion in the CS army is 640, all combat troops, or possible all combat vehicles with more troops to pilot them. Plus there are tons of irregularities that crop up. For example, page 37 of War Campaign says a CS Army company is 640 troops....while also referencing a 20th century Army division as being 5,760 troops. There are real world militaries with divisions that are that small, but it is hardly the norm.

RockJock wrote:Face it, none of the book numbers take into account any sort of support bodies. A battalion in the CS army is 640, all combat troops, or possible all combat vehicles with more troops to pilot them. Plus there are tons of irregularities that crop up. For example, page 37 of War Campaign says a CS Army company is 640 troops....while also referencing a 20th century Army division as being 5,760 troops. There are real world militaries with divisions that are that small, but it is hardly the norm.

Sounds like they are saying unit sizes have variable numbers. As they themselves give different numbers for the same size. So the numbers themselves are not set for unit size.

RockJock wrote:Face it, none of the book numbers take into account any sort of support bodies. A battalion in the CS army is 640, all combat troops....

Well, perhaps the people that established the CS military modeled it after the "everybody drops" philosophy of the Mobile Infantry in Starship Troopers.

Blue Lion,
I read it as a typo/mis write on the company number, but I have absolutely noway to prove that.

Drei,
Even the MI had support jobs, they were just filled by civilians, or fleet, or officers that were not in the MI. Plus things like a planning staff up the food chain was needed. They dropped, but their primary job wasn't to point a rifle. Starship Troopers talks about just that at the beginning of chapter 13. I guess I can buy only fighters to a point, especially if you make a big chuck of your troops Technical Officers of one kind or another to keep things rolling as well as to point a rifle.