lyonheart
Fleet Admiral
Posts: 4853
Joined: Tue Sep 08, 2009 11:27 pm
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Hi Jeff Engel,
What I was trying to obliquely point out is that the ICA artillery is a huge, rather unnumbered fraction of the ICA: being between at minimum, a fourth and a third of its given front line strength that can't be reconciled by the numbers given in LaMA.
Remember the crew of a 3" mortar is 6 [plus another 6 in the support platoon's chain of command], so I expect the crew of an M97 4.5" mortar would be at least 7-8, while the field gun crews are at least 10 to 12.
DE had almost 5000 field guns and over 3000 mortars, Stohnar had 2600, Sahmyrsyt had over 2000, and while we don't know what BGV and Hanth had, I'd be surprised if it was less than a thousand each for over 14,600 guns and mortars just with the 7 main allied armies as abase figure, not counting those still involved internally or training up.
We don't know the detailed breakdown, except that mortars are probably the overall majority, possibly as much as 60-67%, so the mortar/gun crews alone total 125-135,000; with another 15-25,000 just in the artillery battalions, without all those at the brigade and higher chain of command plus all those involved in supplying ammunition and maintaining the guns etc; for a total figure easily in excess of 40% of the 350-400,000 ICA, before losses, in Siddarmark at the end of LaMA; a rather high ratio of artillery to infantry and dragoon.
Being an ex-artilleryman I'm very glad to have all of them, NTM more than willing to concede most could have come after the initial combat troops [assuming artillery aren't considered 'combat' troops for some reason] in HFQ's almost unmentioned convoys, which appeared to be mainly making up losses, since LaMA clearly stated that all but 20,000 combat troops had left Chisholm by the end of September 896.
If Clyntahn, among others, is ignoring or downplaying the size and number of the ICA and RSA artillery units despite their now known power in order to play the temple's greatly superior ratio of infantry and dragoons, they are only going to be very painfully reminded of what they tried to overlook in the near future.
L
[quote="JeffEngel"][quote="n7axw"]*quote="lyonheart"*Given the vast amount of allied artillery fielded since the end of LaMA that was featured in HFQ, delivery of lots more of the modern 4" and 6" guns/howitzers [NTM the M97 4.5" mortars] will go rather far in keeping the Go4 armies at bay.
Which brings up the size of the allied artillery wedge, ie the huge number of artillery troops needed to man them all compared to the regular infantry and dragoons they support.
And so it goes...
L
*quote*
On your last paragraph, true... All that artillery is a great equalizer, however. Heavily outnumbering your enemy doesn't do you a whole lot of good if you have to charge into the face of something like that.
Don
-[/quote] I think lyonheart's penultimate paragraph answers the worries he brings up in the ultimate one. If you've got fewer people but better manufacturing and technology than the other side, you [i]need[/i] the force multipliers to make each soldier as dangerous and as removed from harm as you can make him, and you're going to use that manufacturing to deliver it to him. (Or her, though Safehold isn't quite getting there yet. The women are getting employed doing that building and delivering though.)
Four guys operating a M97 mortar are a lot safer and a lot more dangerous - under standard, more-or-less creatable conditions - than four guys with rifles, on a horse or off it. And they're a lot easier to feed, transport, or hide than the latter, if a bit harder than the former.
Mind you, those standard conditions do depend on having some infantry, dragoons, scout-snipers, forward observers, and logistics train - more than a few, too. But it's fair to say that, by design, the ICA is an artillery/engineering force with what support by other arms the artillery and combat engineers need to do their jobs. And it works.[/quote]
Any snippet or post from RFC is good if not great!
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