Project III/26

ISD's Devastators

I've used ISD or a variation of it as my nickname for a quarter of a century in different services and games, so it was going to be fine for this Mercenary outfit as well. The same company name I used already in Harebrained Schemes' BATTLETECH and the newer Mechwarrior 5: Mercenaries. The stupid joke's reference maybe went by many people, but it amused me.

Thoughts about the org

The military organizations, let it be real or imagined ones, was always something I had to triple check because the squads, battallions, regiments, platoons, divisions, regiments and whatnot just did not get stuck in my brain. I simply did not care. The only exception was the Clan's five-based chart, because it was simple and consistent enough even for me.

So the smallest practical BattleMech org unit was a Lance for four 'Mechs. Apparently that was close enough to be a 1:1 match to a platoon of foot soldiers, which translated to something like 20-40 people. Some very vague memories from Operation Flashpoint: Cold War Crisis' mission editor said that this was somehow connected to the amount of personell inside a tank squad/team/platoon. That was despite the fact that almost all 'Mechs had only one pilot inside. Maybe it included the support personell in this number?

A company then consisted of three Lances, sometimes with some more folks as support. The support could be scouts, indirect fire (yay!), or tanks or special Lances. Some outfits had a Command Lance on this level already. Then you could use three companies (12 'Mechs each if without a CL) to build a battallion and three to five of those would give you a regiment. Each additional step up in names piled more and more extra stuff and support gear to the noticeable pile of requirements and practical demands. At this point all this was just thinking out loud based on what I read, my named unit was going to be a company alone, meaning ~12 BattleMechs and an HQ truck.

First Lance

As a whole the Mercenaries box didn't entice me to use that 1:1 as the body of my merc unit. I got a stupid idea with a Devastator being the heaviest of the units, and another one of those hiding in one of the Legends boxes. Two Devastators - ISD's Devastators literally and figuratively, but it wasn't going to lead to a Cochraine's Goliaths 2.0. I also really liked Marauders, so I took both of mine to join the fun.