Big Fights and Long Fights in GURPS

[Dunadin777]

So, in the never-ending quest of deepening under-the-hood rules, I have some more additions to my Big Fight guidelines. Don't worry, though, these should be simple by most people's standards.

Raise times

The default Raise times seem to work pretty well to represent modern training and mustering times, but they seem to fail when applied in certain low-tech situations--even the most elite of units can be raised from scratch in a couple months of time. This makes sense in terms of putting out a call for mercenaries or established units to your area, but not so much in terms of turning a farmboy into a warrior. So you can add the following rule to help adjust for this.

When raising a unit of completely green recruits, apply the following minimum training times. If a unit is in the process of being trained when it is attacked, the following times can be used to determine what level they would be at when attacked. Also, the number of battles can be used to determine the minimum number of battles it would take Inferior troops to reach that experience level, based on my experience rules posted previously. These rules come from the Intensive Training guidelines on B292 of the Characters book, so I include the CP values that could be trained in that time, assuming 50 hours of effective training a week.
Inferior(1 CP): 2 weeks
Raw(2 CP): 4 weeks, 2 battles
Average(4 CP): 8 weeks, 6 battles
Seasoned(8 CP): 16 weeks, 12 battles
Good(16 CP): 32 weeks, 20 battles
Veteran(24 CP): 48 weeks, 30 battles
Elite(32 CP): 64 weeks, 42 battles

Much of the reason why I developed the above guidelines are so I could start making some plug-and-play lenses to add to racial templates for GURPS and Mass Combat inter-play. So here are the rough initial estimates for Troop Quality lenses, based on the above training guidelines:

Inferior: 0-10 CP in Attributes, (1 CP in Offense skill), 1 CP in Soldier
Raw: 10-20 CP in Attributes, (1 CP in Offense skill), 1 CP in Defense skill, 1 CP in Soldier
Average: 20-40 CP in Attributes, (2 CP in Offense skill), 1 CP in Defense, 2 CP in Soldier
Seasoned: 40-60 CP in Attributes, 2 CP in Offense skill, 2 CP in Defense, 4 CP in Soldier
Good: 60-80 CP in Attributes, 4 CP in Offense skill, 4 CP in Defense, 8 CP in Soldier
Veteran: 80-100 CP in Attributes, 8 CP in Offense skill, 8 CP in Defense, 8 CP in Soldier
Elite: 100-120 CP in Attributes, 12 CP in Offense skill, 8 CP in Defense, 12 CP in Soldier

(Parenthetical values indicate that the average desirable conscript will have at least passing familiarity with the weapons of the time)

The above attribute suggestions represent selective recruitment, the culling nature of training, and incidental improvement of attributes related to the Intensive Training. So you can take a racial template, add one of the above Troop Quality lenses, modified by the unit type as shown below:

(Light Infantry) Offense skills: Bow, Sling, Crossbow, Throwing Weapon. Defense skills: melee weapon, shield, stealth.

Let's say in Mass Combat I have a unit of Seasoned Dwarf Light Infantry. That tells me some specific things for Mass Combat, and now that says some specific things in GURPS, too:

Seasoned (60cp Attributes, 2cp Offense, 2cp Defense, 4cp Soldier) Dwarf(ST -1, DX +1, IQ +1, HP +3) Light Infantry (focuses cp spending, as above)

So I can quickly whip this up:
Seasoned Dwarf Light Infantry [63 points, spent relative to racial template]
ST 12[30], HP 15
DX 12[20], Will 11[-5]
IQ 12[20], Per 11[-5]
HT 10, FP 10
Offense skill: Crossbow 13, DX+1 [2]
Defense skill: Stealth 12, DX [2]
Soldier 13, IQ+1 [4]

If, as GM, I wanted to say that this soldier has little in the way of battlefield experience, I'd say he came out of nearly 4 months(16 weeks) of training. If I wanted this to be an experienced grunt who worked his way up from conscript-level training, I'd say he'd been in at least a dozen battles before.

This way, with very little leg-work, I can start slapping together military templates that can be fleshed out for full-fledged NPCs or left as is for goon-types. Either way, this should save some hassle and make it easier to relate soldier characters to one another in meaningful, GURPS-mechanical ways