The Zerg Swarm of Harchong

Rawb wrote:Harchong's army is actually going to be a lot of effective infantry. Their problem will be their utter lack of effective artillery, which will let the Charisians shatter them in droves with mortars and fragmentation shells.

LAMA mentions some artillery from the Temple sent their way, and the snippets suggest... well, maybe something, although likely not in time for the spring campaign season. They're at least apparently much, much weaker in artillery than their infantry count or equipment would normally suggest.

Rawb wrote:Harchong's army is actually going to be a lot of effective infantry. Their problem will be their utter lack of effective artillery, which will let the Charisians shatter them in droves with mortars and fragmentation shells.

Hi Rawb,

Welcome to the forums. You are cordially invited to show up at the virtual bar for the virtual drink of your choice. It's on the house!

I pretty much agree with your thought with the qualification that the Temple has been working to improve their artillery. Their difficulty is that they never quite catch up because they are dealing with a dynamic situation as their opponents improve even faster.

That being said, they will be facing breech loading artillery as well as repeating rifles and all the other stuff that's already been introduced.

20 days until HFQ and counting down...We'll soon know!

Don

Jeff
The problem is it takes an awful lot of Cadre to train 640,000 riflemen over one winter. I've just never been able to see where the AOG could have got hold of enough non-coms and junior officers with the requisite experience of new weapons and especially tactics back that far behind the front at all, and certainly not early enough in the winter, to do a decent job of training that number of troops. We have so far seen one example of how it's supposed to work, but have no idea how it's taking across the whole army. Any of you guys with military experience like to hazard an educated guess how many instructors would be needed, and where they might have come from?

I can't see that many of these peasants would be excellent sneakers and poachers, for the simple reason that having any distance weapon other than a sling is a capital offense for a peasant back home. They don't have liberty to train with bows and are too dirt poor to afford an arbalest.

There won't be political problems back home just because lots of peasants are dying; that's their traditional function in a war. There may well be serious trouble about the number of men from mandarin and aristocratic families that are going to die.

I can't find the population figures tonight, but IIRC 1.3M is not a high proportion of the population of Harchong, so losing a lot of the peasant portion of it is not really going to wreck the economy or harvest that much. The landowners and bureaucracy can't know when the army is coming back even if they are totally victorious, so they will have contingency plans for getting the harvest in and the crops planted. No crops, no income, so it's in their own interest.

>There may well be serious trouble about the number of men from mandarin and aristocratic families that are going to die.

Unless it's convenient to get rid of younger sons honorably.

Randomiser wrote:Jeff
The problem is it takes an awful lot of Cadre to train 640,000 riflemen over one winter. I've just never been able to see where the AOG could have got hold of enough non-coms and junior officers with the requisite experience of new weapons and especially tactics back that far behind the front at all, and certainly not early enough in the winter, to do a decent job of training that number of troops. We have so far seen one example of how it's supposed to work, but have no idea how it's taking across the whole army. Any of you guys with military experience like to hazard an educated guess how many instructors would be needed, and where they might have come from?

I certainly have little to no idea, but from what informed sorts in the books have been saying, it sounds like they have had enough training cadre to do the work pretty well, judging by how worried they are about the Mighty Host being effective.

I'm curious how they've managed to get that effective training cadre there, but I'm going to take it as safe to assume given the reactions in-universe that they have.

I can't see that many of these peasants would be excellent sneakers and poachers, for the simple reason that having any distance weapon other than a sling is a capital offense for a peasant back home. They don't have liberty to train with bows and are too dirt poor to afford an arbalest.

Starving to death is a form of capital punishment nature - often with human assistance, but in Harchong, too many can count on that - will levy too, and having a bow and knowing how to use it may be the way a lot of those serfs have avoided it. And if you're going to have a bow there, you've got reason to be very good at sneaking to avoid the sight of the authorities even more than the dinner animals. I do take the point about the arbalests though.

It may be very hard for the Mighty Host to get the serfs with those sorts of skills to reveal them though, what with them being evidence of experience committing capital crimes back home....

Randomiser wrote:Jeff
The problem is it takes an awful lot of Cadre to train 640,000 riflemen over one winter. I've just never been able to see where the AOG could have got hold of enough non-coms and junior officers with the requisite experience of new weapons and especially tactics back that far behind the front at all, and certainly not early enough in the winter, to do a decent job of training that number of troops. We have so far seen one example of how it's supposed to work, but have no idea how it's taking across the whole army. Any of you guys with military experience like to hazard an educated guess how many instructors would be needed, and where they might have come from?

Although training groups are certainly much larger than groups of 10, typically you would have one instructor per every 6 - 10 trainees. If we work with the assumption of 10:1, you would need 6,400 instructors. However, you could get those instructors from initial training group of 6,400 with 640 instructors. Assuming it takes 6 weeks to bring your first group to a reasonable level of proficiency on the new rifle, then another 6 weeks for "train the trainer", an initial group of 640 instructors could become 640 course commanders, each with 10 instructors under them, and you would have the necessary manpower in place. Finding appropriate LAND close enough to winter quarters, and sufficient decent days for training would be the greater challenge.

Of course, 6 weeks only provides for basic familiarity with the new weapon. Ideally, you would want another 3 months for reasonable proficiency, plus a decent level of the basic tactics.

CdnGunner wrote:

Randomiser wrote:Jeff
The problem is it takes an awful lot of Cadre to train 640,000 riflemen over one winter. ... Any of you guys with military experience like to hazard an educated guess how many instructors would be needed, and where they might have come from?

Although training groups are certainly much larger than groups of 10, typically you would have one instructor per every 6 - 10 trainees. If we work with the assumption of 10:1, you would need 6,400 instructors. However, you could get those instructors from initial training group of 6,400 with 640 instructors.

I think you're working with peacetime numbers. Training under wartime pressures is greatly compressed -- three weeks max to familiarize a new weapon and impart basic tactics. Especially since all the other military basics are the same for pikes as it is for rifles -- "follow orders and work as a team," etc.

Given the wartime pressures, it could start with a single instructor and a first class of 16-24 senior officers and NCOs. That first class spreads out to train 16-24 trainers at each camp, and nine weeks (plus travel time) later, you've got enough instructors to cover the entire force with more in the pipeline.

That would be a worst case, more likely is an instructor for tactics and an instructor for weapon care and feeding sent to each of the Harchongese camps and six weeks (plus travel) you'll have training in full swing to counter the boredom of winter quarters.

Weird Harold wrote:
I think you're working with peacetime numbers. Training under wartime pressures is greatly compressed -- three weeks max to familiarize a new weapon and impart basic tactics. Especially since all the other military basics are the same for pikes as it is for rifles -- "follow orders and work as a team," etc.

<Snipped for brevity>

The trick is "Work as a team" and if you don't have the training - through drill, through training exercises, through mutual hatred of a shared enemy such as the D.I., if you just show them where the bullet goes in the gun, and how to point it in the right direction, you don't build teams, you build individuals who can point a gun in the right direction.

Keith_w wrote:The trick is "Work as a team" and if you don't have the training - through drill, ...

Modern drill is largely based on traditional Pike formations; the Harchongese army was a mostly Pike army when dispatched to the front -- they've been trained to work as a team, they just need the new weapon and a hint at the new tactics it makes possible.

I doubt that anyone expects to make the Harchongese into elite infantry, but they already know how to fight as a team. If they didn't, they'd not be using pikes; it is impossible to move without teamwork when everyone is carrying an eleven-foot spear.

Weird Harold wrote:

Keith_w wrote:The trick is "Work as a team" and if you don't have the training - through drill, ...

Modern drill is largely based on traditional Pike formations; the Harchongese army was a mostly Pike army when dispatched to the front -- they've been trained to work as a team, they just need the new weapon and a hint at the new tactics it makes possible.

I doubt that anyone expects to make the Harchongese into elite infantry, but they already know how to fight as a team. If they didn't, they'd not be using pikes; it is impossible to move without teamwork when everyone is carrying an eleven-foot spear.

If they use pike drill, they will attack in dense lines or dense columns, which will not be a career enhancing outcome.