Though I really like the basic rules for large-scale ground combat (from Battlefleet Koronus), I see some potential issues (if I didn't overlook anything - I just bought the book yesterday)

Especially bothering would be the following Scenario; please tell me, why it wouldn't work:

You have a Battle between 2 Forces A and B.

Force A consists of 1000 (=Unit Strength 100) Infantrymen - let's say they have Power 6 (through Techlevel).

Force B consists of a 100 (=Unit Strength 10) men strong Heavy-Artillery Unit. Power 12. (Range 40 km)

Let's say I split Force B into 10 Units of Strength 1.

Now Force A (which stays together) comes within range of 40 km.

Each Unit should be able to attack Force A and do the same damage as a unit of 100 or even 1000 Men would.

Or take a less extreme example for the same problem.

Lets say the minimum strength for a unit is 50 men (company) = Unit Strength 5.

This company now fights a Strength 100 unit of the same type (both have Power 7-> Armour 14, Attack 4d10+7).

So both units deal an average of (29 - 14) = 15 Damage. Only the smaller unit cannot take more than 5 points of damage, because it doesn't have that much unit strength.

So if all this works, it seems, that splitting your units in as many small pieces as possible (or as small as the GM allows) is in most cases the best approach, as it minimizes casualties and maximizes damage.

As far as I have seen, there is no minimum unit strength (well, propably 1 at least) and no connection between unit strength and attack.

It's not that this couldn't be fixed by houserules, but I cannot imagine that this is the way the rules were intended - so please someone tell me, what I'm missing.

The BFK ground combat rules are broken. try looking at a titan's stats and you'llsee that nothing can damage them,not even other titans...

Frozen reaches actually has a better system and is a decent one shot adventure, so it might be worth your while picking up. If you want a more in depth system, there is a post somewhere on the forum with a couple of variant mass combat rulessystems, so you could hunt those down.

I've looked around a bit in Frozen Reaches as well as the Forums and nothing really seems to work, but at least now I know that there are Mass Combat Rules in Rogue Trader (p.292). I think I'm going to expand them for larger unit sizes... maybe I'll post it in the House Rule section and continue hoping for an official revision. After all only the core mechanic of calculating the damage is really broken (of course that's pretty major), but that could still be fixed.

Call me crazy, but I think the rules in BFK should be taken more as 'guidelines', and have any large-scale combat like you describe being more thematic and less "X vs. Y = X dies". I would put a lot more focus on making tests using Scholastic Lore: Tactica Imperialis, Command, Deceive, Scrutiny, and so on. Kind of like starship combat, in a way.

To expand on your math, yes, more smaller units are more efficient than larger units, most of the time. When dealing with conscript armies (Russian WWII, for example), they were very IG (or is it the other way around) in that they believed Quantity was a Quality all of its own. So you would have relatively few NCOs or officers for a hundred troops, because the trained leaders were the scarce resource. In any modern army, however, NCO's typically command between 4 and 10 troops under them at any given time, and the rank structure builds up from there, because it limits confusion if the NCO is taken out (fewer troops looking for a new boss), it maximizes flexibility (I have 3 companies with 9 platoons, that's 6 objectives with an entire company still in reserve to back them up), and it encourages individual initiative (by keeping squads smaller, the troops are comrades-in-arms, not sheep in a herd.)

Things to keep in mind to keep combat thematic, not mathematic (these are semi-real-world examples, not necessarily reflected in the game rules):

Who controls the orbitals, controls satellite surveillance.

Artillery needs a spotter if they're shooting at targets out of their line of sight. (See Orbitals & Surveillance). Deny them the ability to see your enemies, artillery is just a big fat target for Special/Airborne Forces or airborne ground attack (modern examples: AH-64 Apache helicopter, A-10 Warthog, F/A-18 Hornet).

Infantry kill tanks and artillery by assaulting them in close terrain (forest, urban). Infantry in trenches hides from tanks, hides from artillery, and shoot other infantry, unless the infantry in the trench is assaulted by other sneaky infantry while they were hiding from the tanks and artillery. Infantry in trenches have trouble hiding from flamethrower tanks, which is partly why we all decided flamethrowers should be illegal after WWII.

Tanks kill infantry and artillery on open ground (heavy hitting, armored rapid shooting (compared to arty, at least), mobile).

Artillery tries to stay hidden from Airborne Ground Attack by hiding in close terrain, far away from the front-line infantry. This is why airborne infantry rocks - they can use the artillery's cover against them. Fantastic real world example in Band of Brothers - Carentan, I think?

Tanks are usually accompanied by mechanized infantry, to protect them when they are vulnerable (close terrain and while trench clearing) - Final battle to hold the bridge at the end of Saving Private Ryan - fictional, but strategically plausible.

Tanks drink fuel by the megagallon. Kill the fuel tanks, neutralize the tanks without having to kill them.

Air kills tanks, artillery, and other air. Air Defense Artillery 'might' kill Air, but really Air just tries to go over or around, instead of through.

Artillery can counter-battery if they have the range.

Friendly Fire Isn't.

Diplomacy is the art of saying 'Nice Doggy' until your sniper gets his scope dialled in.

Tanks and Artillery need roads and bridges to get around. Nothing stalls an advance across a river like blowing the only bridge for 40km in any direction. (When I say 'River', I mean 'River', not creek, stream, pond or swimmin hole.). For bridge-happy (sad, actually) city, see Vancouver. Bridges include the Port Mann, Patullo, Alex Fraser, Mission City, Golden Ears, Pitt River, Burrard St, Cambie St, Granville St, Oak St, Knight St, Iron Workers Memorial, Lions Gate, not to mention the Massey and Cassiar Tunnels. Sure there are a bunch, but to use electrical terms, they are mostly set 'in series', not 'in parallel' and so there are relatively few alternate routes, which in a game, could be used creatively from a strategic POV. If certain bridges are taken out, they need to use the so-called 'alternates' or the engineers need to set up their own bridges, which is extremely resource and time consuming and highly vulnerable to further attack.

All that to say, combined arms and terrain is vital to any strategic battle where you're trying to defeat the enemy but leave the planet intact. Otherwise, you may as well just nuke the site from orbit - it's the only way to be sure, after all.

OP

Orion Pax said:

Nice. Going in my word document of house rules for mass combat. I think WOTC in D&D 3.5 and in SWSE really had the best systems in that: Don't bother rolling anything for units. The GM decides how the battle will go with no player interference. Then they decide a few key flash points where the PCs can make a difference. The Frozen Reaches utilizes this method the most I think. BFK mentions this, but then has a broken land system for people who really want to roll something. So... yeah.