MC NATO national army doctrine design question

[Taffy6]

The IDEA de jour is that where appropriate, Zapad 85 NATO heavy battalions will break down and recombine. About the only KG designated units will be the RECON forces in every army in both alliances. If this doesn't fly in testing, I will go back to using the KG as the basic NATO company designation and just accepting this as a limitation of this otherwise incredible game engine.

Ok. I can see some problems with this. The first is how to represent infantry in a tank company and vice versa. One solution would be to convert the infantry into an equivalent number of tanks and then simply add this number to the rest. But how many "M1 Abrams-equivalents" does an infantry platoon in M113s (or M2 Bradleys for that matter) constitute? The alternative would be to simply ad the extra number of vehicles to the ones in the tank company and then "average out" the values. The problem here is of course, that a company of MBTs becomes quite vulnerable, by having their defensive value "averaged out" with a bunch of APCs or IFVs, and are thus at a disadvantage. Which is probably not what you are trying to achieve. The same also goes for the infantry, but here each tank will need to be made into a number of "infantry equivalents" (but again, just how many infanry squads in M113s or M2s is an Abrams worth and under which tactical circumstances?) or just have the basic crew size added to the number of men already in the company (each tank thus adding 4 men typically). In addition,if using the latter method, the HA and SA of the infantry company will likely go up, thus ending up with the opposite outcome: the infantry gets additional HA and SA, without giving up much more than some men, thus becoming much stronger.

Very good points. I see the same issues. I am hoping to overcome them by analyzing the original DF85 vanilla combat values for US mixed M1-M3 armored cavalry units and then carrying that concept over mathmatically to create mixed tank-mech or mech-tank Coy "Teams".

If I cannot get it worked out in a way that doesn't skew the game, I will return to using the KG to represent all NATO Tank and Inf companies like Tazaaron's Bolt masterpiece. I might also then simply cross attach company-sized Mech Inf KG's and Tank KG's between US and UK Heavy Bn's (within their parent Brigades), and leave the rest of the NATO armies as they are. In this way at least the US and UK Heavy Bn's will have SOME combined arms make-up even if the company KG's within the Bn's remain "pure" for play balance.

Thanks again for your time JDR! I am much obliged.

Regards,

Taffy