Regiment Structure

[Beaver]

Note before reading: This is merely a suggestion and all provided information and numbers are up for discussion.

Short guide:

Regimental Units (Numbers are for mostly for line so numbers may vary):
Platoon = 4-10 players               - Field strength: 4-10
Company = 2-4 platoons (12-25 players)         - Field strength: 12-20
Battalion = 1-3 companies (25 - 50 players)      - Field strength: 20-30
Regiment = 1-3 Battalions (25 - 100 players)      - Field strength: 20-50

'Multi-Regimental' Units:
Division = 2-3 Regiments            - Field strength: 30-50
(Corps = ? Divisions               - Field strength: ?)
Field Army = 2-4 Divisions             - Field strength: 60-110

Larger Units (Entierly for adminstrative purposes - if used at all):
Army Group = 2+ Field Armies (200+ players)      - Field strength: N/A (Not supposed to be a field unit)


Longer Explanation:

A regiment should consist of at least 1 company and have at least 25 members out of which it should be able to field 20
soldiers in a battle (lower limit for cavalry/artillery regiments).
Exactly how a clan wants to divide their regiment is probably up to them, but no more than 25 players per company.
The usage of Battalions and Platoons are entierly optional, but they're there for clans to be able to make further divisions
within their regiments. Generally a Platoon could be any number, but between 4 and 10 is recommended.

Regiments should be able to include up to, but no more than, 100 people, but the general field strength should try to be
kept at max 50 soldiers to avoid single regiments making up whole armies. This limit is just a guideline however and can
be changed freely in either direction by battle organisers.

Unlike the regiments which are clan controlled with permantent membership, the 'Multi-Regimental' Units are more of
a temporary character. They will change from battle to battle, and are created by the acting commander of the battle,
unless the battle organiser(s) state otherwise.

Divisons are groups of 2-3 regiments that works together during a battle. The field strength of a division will vary
between rougly 30-50 players depending on the number of regiments and regimental types included. This allows the commander
to use two or three division during a battle, more shouldn't be necessary with the current battle size. It should be mentioned
that the usage of divisions is entierly optional, and using divisions doesn't mean that all regiments have to be in one.
A commander could perfectly well have 3 line divisions and a free artillery regiment, for example.

The usage of corps seems completely unnecessary with the current battle size. I'm open for suggestions what to do with them,
if anything at all.

The Field Army is the largest field unit, and is simply referring to the army as a whole. Any battle is a clash of two
field armies. The strength of the field army shouldn't be less than 60 (hardly an army then, is it?), and no higher than
half of the max server capacity (currently 222 players). The Field Army is led by a General, and he is the highest ranking
officer on the battlefield.

The Army group is just what it sounds like: a group of armies. The unit is far too large to be present on a battlefield and
the practical use of such a unit could be debated. The only use I see is in a possible campaign.

[Bite Me]

Awesome work

[Jansay]

Great effort, Beaver. With those smaller units you inspire the captains to divide their regiments into smaller groups (cav-arty platoons etc). Just to use it when playing free, of course. And that would effect even the players who isn't a member of a regiment. We really need to add more tactical play to the game, you see.

I know, of course that's not what you're going for, I just wanted to throw an idea was all. Anyways, I think you should limit the reggies to 27 people, consequently you can squeeze 2 divisions (4 reggies) to the army (total: 108 people). There are a lotta regiments around here, think it'd be best if we embrace more regiments. Plus it'd be more fun and would be easier to split up the army for the Generals.

As for the greater units than division, screw 'em.


Long story short:
Platoon = 4 players (I suggest to use it when not playing event)
Regiment = 27 players max.
Division = 2 regiments (54 players max.)
Field Army= 2 divisions (108 players max.)


Voilà! Simple and more importantly, simple.

[Col. Argus]

Great effort, Beaver. With those smaller units you inspire the captains to divide their regiments into smaller groups (cav-arty platoons etc). Just to use it when playing free, of course. And that would effect even the players who isn't a member of a regiment. We really need to add more tactical play to the game, you see.

I know, of course that's not what you're going for, I just wanted to throw an idea was all. Anyways, I think you should limit the reggies to 27 people, consequently you can squeeze 2 divisions (4 reggies) to the army (total: 108 people). There are a lotta regiments around here, think it'd be best if we embrace more regiments. Plus it'd be more fun and would be easier to split up the army for the Generals.

As for the greater units than division, screw 'em.


Long story short:
Platoon = 4 players (I suggest to use it when not playing event)
Regiment = 27 players max.
Division = 2 regiments (54 players max.)
Field Army= 2 divisions (108 players max.)


Voilà! Simple and more importantly, simple.

I disagree wholeheartedly.

First of all, what we have are companies, not regiments. All of the MM community combined hardly forms even a few scaled down regiments or arimies. Let's look at the numbers:

20 = 10% of an actual company, which was about 200 men (for the sake of arguing)
A company was usually split into two platoons, of about half a company (10 men each, by our scale)
A battalion was comprised of several companies - at least two, and sometimes upwards of 4. This would mean 40-80 men.
A regiment consisted of at least two battalions, usually more. On the low end, this would be 80-160 men.
An army consisted of many regiments. So even with just two regiments, that would be 160-380 men (<- sounds about right, considering our events.)

Now, consider this: the best turnout you can probably expect at any event is 50-75%. That means you need to recruit a good deal over the amount of men that you wish to field at any given time. Therefore, we would need to recruit, on the absolute low end, 30 men for a given company. 60-100 men for a battalion.  200+ men for a true Regiment.

Right now, the largest division we have are battalions. These are basically multi-company units. Limiting them to 27 men is ludicrous.

[Beaver]

And here's the reason why I didn't just take a percentage of real numbers but rather picked some random numbers that would make sense in the actual gameplay. If we're going to get truly realistic battles we'll need a server (and community) capacity of a few hundred thousand... Just not going to happen. Sometimes gameplay > realism, sadly. I'd love to see a hundred thousand player battle, or even a thousand player one, but it's just not realistic. Thus we can't have 200 player regiments, no matter how cool it would be.

@Jansay: First off, thanks And then just a little comment on your idea. It's good in principle, but I think it is too precise. While simplicity is important, so is also flexibility, why I stressed a few times that in the end it's up to whoever is in charge. Limiting armies to two divisions for example would not be a good idea, as the whole point with dividing your fielded regiments/companies into divisions is to make commanding easier (and to make lines actually cooperate), not to limit the general's choices on the field.

[Col. Argus]

And here's the reason why I didn't just take a percentage of real numbers but rather picked some random numbers that would make sense in the actual gameplay. If we're going to get truly realistic battles we'll need a server (and community) capacity of a few hundred thousand... Just not going to happen. Sometimes gameplay > realism, sadly. I'd love to see a hundred thousand player battle, or even a thousand player one, but it's just not realistic. Thus we can't have 200 player regiments, no matter how cool it would be.

Hmm? But we do have enough players for this! In fact, we saw this in the last event.

Let's take the previous event, for example. There were how many? 120 on each side? At that time a full company was 16, therefore you could have about 8 companies on each side. Though it is a little bit of a stretch, we could consider two companies to make up a single battalion, and two battalions to make up a Regiment. This would leave us with 8/2 = 4/2 = 2 Regiments. That just qualifies as an "Army." I would say that is quite something. And, I only see the community growing from here.

[Beaver]

And here's the reason why I didn't just take a percentage of real numbers but rather picked some random numbers that would make sense in the actual gameplay. If we're going to get truly realistic battles we'll need a server (and community) capacity of a few hundred thousand... Just not going to happen. Sometimes gameplay > realism, sadly. I'd love to see a hundred thousand player battle, or even a thousand player one, but it's just not realistic. Thus we can't have 200 player regiments, no matter how cool it would be.

Hmm? But we do have enough players for this! In fact, we saw this in the last event.

Let's take the previous event, for example. There were how many? 120 on each side? At that time a full company was 16, therefore you could have about 8 companies on each side. Though it is a little bit of a stretch, we could consider two companies to make up a single battalion, and two battalions to make up a Regiment. This would leave us with 8/2 = 4/2 = 2 Regiments. That just qualifies as an "Army." I would say that is quite something. And, I only see the community growing from here.

Yes, of course. But that means only 4 regiments in a battle. And since regiments is like clans in this community that wouldn't be good. Only having a few really huge ones is not really where we want to go I don't think. But I might've misunderstood you. Perhaps you meant that we should call the groups in a battle regiments rather than say divisions? While I can see the reasoning behind that, it creates confusion as, again, clans roughly equals regiments as well to most people. So while it might seem a bit odd (and it does ) to call two or three companies a division in a battle, I still think it's for the best.

Finally, we have a server capacity problem. 8 companies per regiment and regiments per side just doesn't work out. With the new limit of 20 men per line company that's 20 men * 8 companies = 160 men * 2 sides in a battle = 320 men out of 222 server slots. Of course there's also other types of regiments, so with 16 men per regiment that's still (16*8*2) 256/222 players. Let's just do a reverse calculation. 222/2 / 8 = 13.875. So 13 men on average per regiment. A bit small?

So a server size of about 300 would probably be recommended. And then you need a server machine (and client machines) that can handle that. We may (or may not) have the players to do it, but we don't have the server capacity I don't think.

[Royal_Marine_Machine]

Don't all Regiments fight together though? Like as only one unit?

Which means each individual group could be called a Regiment or a Battalion. Companies did not fight seperatly, but Battalions did.

[Col. Argus]

Yes, of course. But that means only 4 regiments in a battle. And since regiments is like clans in this community that wouldn't be good. Only having a few really huge ones is not really where we want to go I don't think. But I might've misunderstood you. Perhaps you meant that we should call the groups in a battle regiments rather than say divisions? While I can see the reasoning behind that, it creates confusion as, again, clans roughly equals regiments as well to most people. So while it might seem a bit odd (and it does ) to call two or three companies a division in a battle, I still think it's for the best.

Finally, we have a server capacity problem. 8 companies per regiment and regiments per side just doesn't work out. With the new limit of 20 men per line company that's 20 men * 8 companies = 160 men * 2 sides in a battle = 320 men out of 222 server slots. Of course there's also other types of regiments, so with 16 men per regiment that's still (16*8*2) 256/222 players. Let's just do a reverse calculation. 222/2 / 8 = 13.875. So 13 men on average per regiment. A bit small?

So a server size of about 300 would probably be recommended. And then you need a server machine (and client machines) that can handle that. We may (or may not) have the players to do it, but we don't have the server capacity I don't think.

Well, my point was that what we call regiments are in fact companies. Terminology aside, I was arguing that we have pretty presentable little armies. If you scale down the number of soldiers within a company, it only seems logical to scale down the number involved on a company level, too. Therefore, 6-8 companies per side, creating 3-4 "battalions," seems perfectly acceptable for our miniature armies. Please realize that I am using proper terminology only in order to demonstrate that the scale is pretty close, even if our terminology and organization is a bit out there. As Herbiie said, Battalions were the basic tactical division on the battlefield, whereas companies were the building blocks, and "Regiments" were just a way of organizing companies. It also makes sense that each company (clan) should work with at least one other company, if not several, during an event.

[Jock]

I like the idea, it makes people take regiments more seriously. I hope that one day, we will have tactical plans and battles in the public server all the time.

[Jansay]

I like the idea, it makes people take regiments more seriously. I hope that one day, we will have tactical plans and battles in the public server all the time.

Seconded.

[HarbingerOfDoom]

I like the idea, it makes people take regiments more seriously. I hope that one day, we will have tactical plans and battles in the public server all the time.

Seconded.

Pretty unlikely without voice chat

[Lackay]

thanks beaver, i plan on using this to organize my regiment

[CabbageTits]

Coolio!