US Army Platoon Battle Buddy Organization

[shahadi]

US Army Platoon Battle Buddy Organization

In an attempt to simulate a United States army rifle company, I have created a formation composed of battle buddies or buddy teams within a standard rifle fire team. This formation simulates the lethal firepower and maneuverability of a rifle company within WinSPMBT.

Composition

Each nine man squad is divided into four buddy teams with the lead team holding the squad leader. The organization is given as follows: SL, TL, AR, GRN, RFLM is one squad fire team. This team is further divided into buddies as follows: SL, TL,ARN is one buddy team, followed by the GRN and RFLM as the second buddy team. The second fire team is divided as TL, AR as the third buddy team, with the fourth buddy team consisting of the GRN and the RFLM.

A Rifle Squad
Fire Team
1 Buddy Team: SL, TL, AR
2 Buddy Team: GRN, RFLM
3 Buddy Team: TL, AR
4 Buddy Team: GRN, RFLM


A Rifle Platoon
PLT HQ
3xSQD
1xWPN SQ

A Rifle Company
CO HDQ
3XPLT HQ
9XSQD
3XWPN SQD

Unit Identifiers

The unit ID convention I used departs slightly from standard army unit identifiers as follows:

Buddy Team/SQD/PLT/Alpha

Thus, 3/1/2/Alpha identifies the GRN/RFLM Buddy Team, of the 1st SQD, of the 2nd PLT, of Alpha Company.

The crewed weapons are simply identified as for example: M240/1/Alpha. Meaning 7.62 M240 MG attached to 1 PLT of Alpha Company.

Construction

I created three formations in Mobhack above slot 900 to build the platoon as follows:

A Buddy TM Sqd, a WPN SQD, and a FT Plt as shown below.

MOBHack Formations

Now that the formations are built, platoons maybe purchased in the Editor to complete the critical work of building buddy teams, fire teams, squads, and platoons in the Editor and ScenHack. We'll review building the teams in a subsequent post.

Alpha CO Roster

[Karagin]

How does it play out in the game?

[shahadi]

Originally Posted by Karagin

How does it play out in the game?

Although, I suspect there maybe a few issues with sustaining hits (only two guys as battle buddies) the formation will require extreme care (movement and fire planning) in advance and attack scenarios. The fire teams, squads, and platoons must work together (in close proximity) in the game as is required in real life, else you die.

In general, the mod will extend the formation's field of fire causing I suspect (hope) great damage.

Short answer, I have yet to test the mod in various scenarios.

I have completed the Editor build.

Platoon with Wpns

[Suhiir]

I use the Fire Team (4-man) formation in the USMC OOB fairly often. Works pretty well when you need to cover a wide frontage.

Keep in mind those 2-man buddy teams should be size 0, makes them pretty hard to hit. The exception being ATGM teams (size 1 due to backblast) and you might consider making the MMG teams size 1 as well.

[shahadi]

Originally Posted by Suhiir

I use the Fire Team (4-man) formation in the USMC OOB fairly often. Works pretty well when you need to cover a wide frontage.

Keep in mind those 2-man buddy teams should be size 0, makes them pretty hard to hit. The exception being ATGM teams (size 1 due to backblast) and you might consider making the MMG teams size 1 as well.

Yep, you're right the smaller buddies are size =0.

I am still researching Radio. Initially, I was thinking radio simply meant communication between the unit and its command. But, if it means something else, actual comms, then I would want to set radio = 0 for all units except the Plt Hdq, and CO Hdq.

Thanks suhiir.

[Karagin]

Originally Posted by shahadi

Yep, you're right the smaller buddies are size =0.

I am still researching Radio. Initially, I was thinking radio simply meant communication between the unit and its command. But, if it means something else, actual comms, then I would want to set radio = 0 for all units except the Plt Hdq, and CO Hdq.

Thanks suhiir.

Radio is for how the AI picks units.

[Mobhack]

Radio is is for both radio and AI selection, read up the radio code in mobhack help.

Also, remember to run your new OOB through the points calculator as well.

[Suhiir]

Originally Posted by Karagin

Radio is for how the AI picks units.

Radio is used for two things.
The first digit is for comm, the second is unit rarity.
For example 90 is pretty much default for tanks, they almost always have a radio and are the standard unit. But say your have two types of tanks in your military, one very common, one very rare, then 92 for the 1st and 91 for the second.

The first digit is the chance to have a radio, 0 to 90% the second is used for unit rarity, 0=average, 1=rare, 2=common, 3=NEVER picked by the AI but players can purchase.

Units without a radio (the 1st digit) can still communicate with nearby units BUT can't report what they see (or hear reports by other units) to the rest of your units. Up till recently squads and teams rarely had radios so needed to stay in visual range of their parent platoon HQ to stay informed.