Welcome to Luzerne #3: Building the SLDF Invasion Force

Now that we have our sources assembled we can start to build our forces. This is long enough that I will have to do this over the course of a couple of posts.  In this post, I will do my best to reconstruct the SLDF combat commands as they arrived in the Luzerne system.

3rd Davion Guards Regimental Combat Team

There is a standard template for a Federated Suns Regimental Combat Team.  An AFFS RCT, per Sarna, consists of "The Armed Forces of the Federated Suns' version of an RCT is a large multiregimental formation that consists of a regiment of BattleMechs, three regiments of combat vehicles, five regiments of infantry, two aerospace fighter wings, and a battalion of artillery. Most will also include one or more battalions of engineer." This is further confirmed by looking at the default combat command for the Federated Suns in the Inner Sphere at War rules.

Because the Davion Combat Manual was cancelled, and the author of the Combat Manual Lite series has declined to release one (understandably!), we have very little information about the 3rd Davion Guards.  Probably the best way to do this is to work backwards.  Field Manual:  Federated Suns (pg 81) has an outline the 3rd as it existed after Luzerne (spoiler alert:  Its not good!).

The 3rd left Luzerne with:

• 2 Battlemech battalions (technically 17 under strength lances/5 and 1/2 companies)
• 2 Aerospace Squadrons
• 7 companies of combat vehicles (the Field Manual says that 2 armor regiments went into Luzerne and that they "suffered the most")
• 2 infantry regiments
• 1 battalion of mixed engineering and artillery assets

Scenario 6 in The Dragon Roars (pg 32) tells us that just south of Thun (a city on Luzerne) elements of the 3rd DGRCT and 208th Comguard Division had organized themselves into an "ad-hoc combined-arms force approximately two battalions strong."

The order of battle given for the scenario lists two 3rd Davion Guard lances, a Comguard lance (presumably reorganizing themselves into Davion military structure.  There is also a company of combat vehicles and a lance of infantry as well (including a platoon of battlearmor and some jump infantry).  This represents two companies of about 6 that would have made it to Thun.  Its not clear whether these are AFFS or Comguard infantry assets, but because they conform tightly to the units available in a stereotypical Davion Regimental Combat Team, I believe they belong to the Armed Forces of the Federated Suns.

That leaves aerospace fighters.  The Dragon Roars Scenario 4 lists a mix of medium and heavy Aerospace fighters, but it doesn't say whether they belong to the 3DGRCT, the SLDF naval escorts, or the 208th.  For our purposes though,  lets give the 3rd a mix of medium and heavy aerospace fighters, and presume they are full strength wings.

So, stitching these together we get:

• 1 Battlemech regiment
• Aerospace:
• 134th Tsamma Air wing
• 51st Crucis Interceptor wing
• Armor regiments:
• 22nd St Robert Armor Regiment
• Unnamed hover regiment
• Unnamed artillery battalion
  
• Infantry:
• 45th Cerulean Mountaineers
  
• 35th Federated Suns Mechanized Rifles
• Unnamed jump infantry regiment
• Unnamed battle armor battalion
• Unnamed engineering battalion[1]
  

Of course, only half of those made it to the surface.

As a Federated Suns Regimental Combat Team, the mech regiment probably consisted of medium mechs, with a command company made of heavy mechs.  In fact, the fiction at the start of Historical Turning Points:  Luzerne confirms exactly this.  Allen's Animals is probably made up of heavy mechs as well.  They probably have between 1 lance and 1 company of light mechs for recon purposes too.

The 3rd took combat losses during the Skye Crisis, but without reading the fiction (which I do not have the time to do) I could not find any information about those losses.  I'm just assuming they somehow got some replacements.

208th Comguard Division

The 208th is a bit easier to reconstruct.  The Comguard Combat Manual Lite lists it as an Eta type Level IV with the Steady Special Command Ability.  That means that it has:

• 125 battlemechs
• 17 vehicles
• 35 infantry platoons
• 39 aerospace fighters

That's a total of 216 units.  It's not really easy to build an Abstract Combat System force for Comstar directly from this information, so it is probably necessary to build Strategic Battleforce formations and "uplevel" it with the conversion rules in Interstellar Operations.

We have samples of some of these units in The Dragon Roars.  The "lance" listed there (it is five mechs, probably a Level II that has suffered a causality) is one light mech and 4 assault mechs.  The Davion Guards are mostly Medium mechs, so if the 208th was more of a heavy unit in order to balance them out that might make sense.  We also see some light tanks, hovercraft, and VTOLs that seem out of place in the Davion Guards so lets impute those to the 208th.  Finally, on pg 13 of Historical Turning Points:  Luzerne that the Comguards were able to bring at least 6 J-27 trucks.[2]

It is hard to say how to turn this into a proper force, but we have a closer look at Comguard Divisions in the Tukkayid Supplemental.  The Supplemental rules note that "To build a ComStar Division, also known as a Level IV, pairs of Level IIs must be collected into Strategic BattleForce Formations (IIIa, IIIb, IIIc). ComStar does not actually use this organizational scheme, but it is used here to meet the Strategic BattleForce standards for a Formation size and how many Units can deploy in an area."  I did a quick number crunch of the Strategic Battleforce formations listed in the Tukkayid Supplemental, and here is what I found.

 

As you can see here, Comguard Mech deployments involve a large number of battle Level IIs, some number of Recon Level IIs, and a few fire and Assault assets.  Beyond that a quick skim shows, as a tendency, two or less artillery Level IIs per division.

We know from The Dragon Roars that there is an Assualt Level II at Thun, in addition to some light tanks and vtols.  So just from that scenario we can assert that we have 

• 6 Assault Mechs (1 Level II):  Leaving 119 Battlemechs
• 6 Light tanks (1 Level II):  Leaving 11 vehicles
  
• 6 vtols (1 Level II):  Leaving 5 vehicles
• 5 Light Artillery pieces, maybe with a dedicated spotter infantry level I (leaving no remaining vehicles, and 34 infantry platoons/5 infantry level IIs/1224 soldiers)[3]

So lets start to interpret the rest of the 208th.  The CO of the division is an aerospace pilot, so it is unlikely that there are any command mech Level IIs.  But this is a mech heavy division (we have 20 more Level II's to flesh out!), so lets add another Assault Level II to the mix.  From the Tukkayid Supplemental we know the Comguards have a bias towards Striker Level IIs, so lets give the 208th 6 of them.

14 Mech Level IIs to go!  Let's give them a good number of Recon assets, 4 Recon Mech Level IIs.  The presence of Assault Mechs, and the possible need to offset the medium nature of the 3rd Davion Guards, suggests the 208th probably has an oversized amount of heavier mechs.  So 5 Level IIs of Battle Mechs.

We have 5 Level IIs left, but the Comguards really shy away from fire mechs, so lets bump up our number of striker and battle mechs by one Level II each, and assign the 208th 3 Level IIs of Fire Mechs.

That leaves aerospace fighters.  The Dragon Roars Scenario 4 lists a mix of medium and heavy Aerospace fighters, but it doesn't say whether they belong to the 3DGRCT or the 208th.  For our purposes though, we'll just assume that the 208th does not have light aerospace assets, and that they are evenly split between medium and heavy fighters.

Even though it is easier to reconstruct the 208th than the 3DGRCT, we have far less information about the unit.  It doesn't even get mentioned that much of a mention in the Tukkayid books, so I have lower confidence in this reconstruction.  At the end of the day, I only have the information that's in front of me.

SLDF Navy 

We have a detailed look at the 3rd and 208th's transport and escort assets in The Dragon Roars (pg 26) Scenario 4, which covers the failed approach to Luzerne.  The SLDF had and several assault dropships with their own fighters.[4] 

The real gem of this section is the accounting of the troop transports carrying ground forces however.  These ships are an Overlord, 2 Unions, an Excalibur, a Gazelle, and a Condor.  Some of you may notice that this is not enough to transport the 3rd, let alone the 208th division.

When we total up the assets the SLDF has to transport are:

• 233 battlemechs
• 75 aerospace fighters
• 269 vehicles
• 167 infantry platoons
• Some amount of cargo/supply transports
  

I will assume that Comstar favors transport elements that carry more than one unit type, given how important combined arms is to them.  I will also assume that, for the most part, the transport flotilla mostly use the dropship classes listed in The Dragon Roars.  Just using what is listed there we can move:

• 72 battlemechs
• 22 aerospace fighters
• 130 vehicles
• 12 infantry platoons
  

So we still have to move:

• 161 battlemechs
• 52 aerospace fighters
• 139 vehicles
• 155 infantry
• Cargo transports

 That's really daunting, especially the number of infantry platoons that have to (borrowing an expression here) "touch grass."  But lets start with what we have.  Let's take the 1 Overlord, 1 Excalibur and 2 unions and double them.  We then still have to transport:

• 89 battlemechs
• 30 aerospace fighters
• 9 vehicles
• 143 infantry
• Cargo transports

Now, lets add some of our own spin for the remaining dropships.  I want to change one of the Overlord's to the "command" variant instead, meaning I have four additional mechs to transport instead.  I'd also like to, in order to reflect the Comguard's commitment to combined arms lets add a Fortress.  I'll add two more Overlords and another Fortress.  So now we have to transport:

• -3 battlemechs
• -6 aerospace fighters
• -15 vehicles
• 131 infantry
• Cargo Transports

That just leaves infantry.  Tons and tons of infantry.  As much as I would like to load them up in fewer vessles, I think I will have to add 11 Gazelles.  I tried to research this as best I could on sarna, but I don't see a better way to do this.  If anyone knows of larger troop transport available at this time, please let me know!  Also, I'll thrown in some Mules for cargo.  The negative number of units I will leave to account for various support vehicles.  So that gives us:

• 3 Overlords
• 1 Command Overlord
  
• 4 Unions
• 1 Excalibur
• 2 Fortresses
• 1 Gazelle
• 12 Condors
• 5 Mules
  

With a ton of space left over for light vehicles.  That is 28 transports total.  31 with the assault dropships carried by the CSV Harmonious Thought.  The Harmonious Thought 

In addition to the warship, this would take 7 jumpships.  I will include 2 Monoliths because they are specific to Comstar.

• Sovetskii Soyuz (5 collars)
  
• 2 Monoliths (18 collars)
  
• 1 Star Lord (6 collars)
  
• 1 Merchant (2 collars)
  

That leaves one  collar, so I will add an additional Mule (already reflected up above).

But what about the record sheets?

I have sheets for everything except the transport flotilla 90% done.  I have to add the transport move figures and the special abilities to those.  Wading through the conversion and Large Aerospace rules took a lot of time (I will write about that at some point).

Edited to Add:  I didn't account for different vehicle weights in the dropship calculations or the support vehicles.  I had to draw the line somewhere, even though I would love to do a campaign sometime that surrounds the operations of support units.

[1] I really dug into creating this in Strategic Battleforce and scaling it up to ACS.  It has some Royal Engineers, some Engineering vehicls and Minesweeping, and also a pool of 12 industrial mechs
[2] The fan created resource on support assets in Battletech would slot these under the "hidden" Zeta support Level III available to the unit.
[3] Technically, 5.6.
[4] It looks like some crew members of the Alacrity survived.