[Mass Combat] Estimating your Hero Units' TS?

[hal]

Originally Posted by Molokh

Sure, I can declare a certain level as 'elite' in the army, but then the level of 'elite' in my game world will not be the same as the 'Elite troop quality' in mass combat. Just like callous in my subjective understanding is not the same as Callous from a gamemech PoV, and selfish has nothing to do with Selfish.

As you point out, you can declare anything you desire as the GM <g>. I suspect however, that you really should treat the skill levels as guidelines for whether or not someone is of Elite status or Good status or even of Average status. Me? I'd require that Elite fighters have a skill level of at least 16's in both weapons and shield skills, as well as have combat reflexes to reflect their "veteran training". I'd also require that they have Soldier Skill at around 16 or so as well, with 14 being the lower limit. I'd also probably require that these fighters be Fit or Very Fit. Good fighters on the other hand, might have high skills but little in the way of combat reflexes, Fit, or Soldier skills above 12. That however, is just me - and others might disagree ;)

[hal]

Originally Posted by Icelander

A professional soldier should have skill 12 in those skills he absolutely needs for his role. That looks like it would be Good quality in the Mass Combat rules. I guess an Average quality unit would have skill 10-12 in the same skills.

Troop quality isn't just based on skill levels, but is also based upon leadership and overall training involved. If you reread the passage about quality types, it is possible that troops that otherwise qualify as Good troops, can drop to inferior troops due to poor leadership or due to known widespread corruption issues.

Average: The mass of ordinary soldiers. This can include
decently trained and led conscripts; long-service soldiers in a
force with indifferent leadership, training, or morale; and
enthusiastic and skilled part-time militia.

That to me means that poor leadership with good quality troops (ie skills around 14+) can lower a troop quality down one grade. In a way, it almost suggests that there are two components to a unit's value:

Leadership skills averaged with fighting skills

Good leadership with poor skills can still result in Average troops, while Good skills with poor leadership can result in Inferior troops. Only when you have good leadership with good skills will you have "Good Troops", and with Good leadership and Excellent skills or combat experience (ie Combat Reflexes) will you have elite troops. Just "Declaring" a unit to be "Elite" doesn't make it so - it requires that the unit have a history of elitism, as well as a high level of training and experience - otherwise, it is more likely to be a "Good" unit.

So, what constitutes indifferent leadership? At a guess, I'd suggest the following:

NCO level skills are less than professional level (ie 12)
Leader's leadership skills are less than professional level

Professional level skills for NCO's and Leaders should be 12+ while those who are opperating at default skill levels or with but a single point in the skill and are "political appointees" would qualify for badly led troops.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by hal

Troop quality isn't just based on skill levels, but is also based upon leadership and overall training involved.

Leadership and Teaching are both skills needed in some military roles. I don't see how your post contradicts what I said.

Troop quality is more a matter of Soldier skill than anything else, really. Weapon skills will usually tend to stay close to Soldier skill for realistic professional combatants, but may be much higher for irregular troops. The higher weapon skill levels alone aren't enough to qualify the troops as Elite or even Good.

Without good training and leadership, troops won't develop high Soldier skill. If Soldier skill level is uniformly high in a force, however, much less mid-ranking leadership is needed. A force of veterans can march, build camps and form battle lines even without much supervision.

[hal]

Originally Posted by Icelander

Leadership and Teaching are both skills needed in some military roles. I don't see how your post contradicts what I said.

My post was intended to ADD to yours, not contradict it ;)

[vicky_molokh]

I touched upon the subject before, in other threads, but this really comes back to finding a way to compare troop templates/lenses.

[cybersamurai]

This all leads me to wonder if "average quality" troops in mass combat actually only have a skill of 12 in soldier and everything else closer to defaults. One character in my gaming group is about to start raising troops. He has 7 former slaves that he rescued, one of which is a seasoned veteran soldier. He plans to use this one NPC as his sergeant to train the remaining 6 soldiers. He is planning on starting with 1 element of heavy infantry. Our group is ready to take a few months off of adventuring to train and we are preparing time use forms. If these 6 soldiers were to learn the style Hoplomachia from Martial arts, they would need a bare minimum of 5 points. They are all average stat NPCs (all 10s for attributes) so no intensive training for them. Learning at a rate of 200 hours for point, would be 1000 hours. If we trained them 50 hours a week, that would be 20 weeks, or 5 months. However, the rules to "raise" an army in mass combat says that "For every $10K the element costs to raise (as
given by its Raise statistic), it takes one week to recruit, build,
and train, with a minimum of 10 days regardless of cost." A unit of heavy infantry costs $40k to raise, therefore it should only take 4 weeks correct? So that leads me to wonder if the stats of average professional soldiers (at least using mass combat rules) are actually 12.

[Polydamas]

GURPS Martial Arts suggests that learning the 1st point in a skill can go quite quickly, and even IIRC suggests giving the benefits of Intensive Training to peaceful people learning their first martial art. And in many cases, the low-tech troops you recruit will already be trained and equipped and just need to train together, get organized, and acquire some items of kit. Greek hoplites, medieval knights, and archers in most cultures, for example, were expected to learn weapon skills on their own time. I don't have trouble envisioning Average Pikemen with Spear 10 and Soldier/TL 12 but I don't think lower weapon skills than Soldier skill would be universal.

[hal]

As ever, when you find yourself in either disagreement with what the RAW provide, or fail to provide that you feel you need, then it becomes a simple issue of making up your own houserules ;)

GURPS specifies that you need to have a HT of 12+ to avoid washing out of the intensive training rules. It doesn't give rules for what it is to roll against HT to avoid washing out per se - but that you need to have a HT of 12+ to avoid it. Note however, that it specifies that HT 11 plus FIT equates to a HT 12 in this instance.

What you might want to do is this:

Treat HT 12 individuals as automatically being able to complete intensive training without issue. Those whose HT are lower, need to roll both a HT saving roll and a Will saving roll at +2 to avoid washing out. Failure of either roll will result in "washing out". Succeeding at both rolls, means that the intensive training, while remembered as the time spent in hell, will have its desired effect.

Statistically? The odds of succeeding with a HT 10 at a HT+2 roll is 74%. The odds of a Will 10 individual succeeding at a Will+2 roll is again, 74%. The odds of succeeding at BOTH rolls however, is only .74 x .74 or 54%

So, figure out how many "students" have fit and HT 11+ for the body of students being trained. Of the remainder, assume that only 54% with strictly average stats, will succeed in their saving rolls.

Example:
100 men are being trained. Of them, you figure about half are all "Fit" as they were taken from the local farms (where you need to be fit to work long hours). Of those, half again have HT values of 11+, so only 25 men have the FIT + HT 11 stats required to "Breeze through basic training". Of the remainder, you have 25 farmboys with say, Will 10 and HT 10 and Fit. Their HT saving roll is going to be 13, while their will saving roll is going to be 12. That works out to .74 x .83 or 61%. So, of those 25 remaining farmboys, another 15 succeed.

That leaves you with 50 average joes with Will 10 and HT 10. Of those, only 25 will pass the time in hell avoiding washing out. Total washouts? 10 farmboys and 25 townspeople.

Part and parcel of the problem here, is that in real life, it doesn't take some 5 character points times 200 hours to earn the "Fit advantage". The question becomes one of "how long does it take to earn the "Fit" advantage in the military? And for that, you're pretty much on your own ;) Me? I use a period of about 3 weeks as being sufficient to do that. 2 hrs of PT every day, for 21 days, is roughly 42 hours worth of training. Is 42 hours even equal to 1 point of training under "intensive training?" Nope - at best, worth 82 hours, and that isn't 1 character point, let alone 5.

[hal]

In the above suggestion about rolling at HT+2 and Will+2, it occurs to me that you can further "customize" the rules to reflect the fact that the leadership of the trainers, the skills of the trainers, and the experience of the trainers could come into play as well. Perhaps the way to do this might be to have the trainers make a roll against their training skills, and for every 2 levels of "success" that they make their skill rolls by, their trainees gain a +1 bonus to HT and/or Will saving rolls.

Perhaps Successful Leadership rolls are required to motivate (ie Will saving rolls) while actual Soldier skills are required to help train for physical endurance (bonus for HT saving rolls).

Just a thought.