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Post by ET (Kerberos) on Jul 28, 2018 8:15:50 GMT
[T25]First meeting on of the Umbrian commission on military reform.
Allain, Maerel and a few craftsmen led by an elf called Luirlan are gathered in a room, before them is a leather armour such as is worn by Carleon outriders. It is in fact such an armour as testified by the emplem displayed by the armour on the left side over the heart. Also lying on the table is a light chainmail such as worn by Aelven cavalry.
Maerel: Where did you get that, pointing to the Carleon armour.
Allain: I asked their Sergent for it, said we were trying to improve our equibment and doctrine and wanted to compare. He’s recovering, said he expected it back when he was well enough to ride.
Maerel: I don’t see much to improve based on this thoug, it’s clearly inferior to what our cavalry wears.
Allain: It’s a cost issue Maerel. The chainmail is somewhat more expensive and more importantly it requires far more maintenance.
Maerel: So we need to change the armour then?
Allain: We could just buy the armour the humans. I’m sure we could get some bulk orders from the NT for a reasonable price.
Maerel: Allain! We can’t equip our army with inferior human products!
Allain: Why not? Sure it offers less protection, but we’re not making a main combat line unit here, the scouts won’t often engage in direct combat.
Maerel: Yeah, but still, Besides what does it say to our craftmen if we buy human good for this! *Maerel gestures to the craftsmen who do in fact look rather disapproving at the notion.
Luirlan: *sniffs disapprovingly*. It’s not just a matter of pride. This is inferior work, something I’d expect from an apprentice with no more than a a few years of experience, perhaps a decade or decade, which is unsurprising, since after all that’s what it is. It’s clumsy and constrictive.
Allain: I’ve tried it on, it’s no more constrictive than the chainmail our cavalry wear.
Luirlan: Sure, it’s no more constrictive than the chainmail, but the chainmail offers better protection. It’s the balance between the two that is the issue, this is less protective for no greater mobility. It is simply inferior. If we used this we’d be giving up a key advantage our cavalry should have over the humans.
Allain: It is cheaper though, and require less maintenance.
Luirlan: We could make it cheaper and requiring less maintenance and still afford more mobility if we use leather. It will be less protective, but no worse than this.
Maerel: Why don’t we just use the armour our archers and infantry uses, that’s leather, decently protective and lighter than this.
Allain: Those are meant for infantry. Cavalry have different need, the stiff breast portion constricts movement on a horse, We need to soften or shorten that part. Possibly both.
Luirlan: We can do those things.
Allain: Good, when can we expect to have workable prototypes?
Luirlan: A month or so for the first, we’re probably going to spend another month or two doing refinements.
Allain looks at Maerel who nods.
Allain: Repport to us as the work progresses then, I’ll have Zaori allocate funds for materials and time.
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Post by ET (Kerberos) on Jul 28, 2018 16:39:34 GMT
[T25]After the craftsmen leave.
Maerel: I’m not comfortable with this. We’re downgrading the armour of our troops to save money, we’re trading blood for gold.
Allain: I get that, but I think you’re being to straightforward when you’re thinking of protection. Armour is not the only armour. Speed is armour as well. AS long as we don’t deploy them in battle it will be almost impossible for undead to close on them. Their speed will shield them better than metal. And that’s not all knowledge is armour as well. The reason we took so few casualties in that first battle, and despite the sacrifice of the Mercians that battle wen’t better than I dared hope is that we knew what the undead were doing. Light troops will do this for us. I few insist on armouring every soldier to the best of our ability we’re slowing them down. We’re denying ourselves flexibility. These troops don’t need armour because they are armour, they’re the shield that will protect out main army from being outflanked and cut down by surprise, or the sword that will allow us to do that to our enemy.
Maerel: I suppose that makes sense.
Allain: I wouldn’t propose this if I didn’t think it was the best way to protect our soldiers and our people. We need to specialize our troops more. Light troops for scouting and heavier troops for melee. Once we’ve done this we might consider adding more armour for our front line troops.
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Post by ET (Kerberos) on Aug 10, 2018 7:48:25 GMT
Allain, Maerel and Allains cousin Tannyll are out inspecting the horse stock in one of North Umbrias leading horse breeders Araevin. The three elves ride a number of the horses, in some cases raising against each other, but also jumping obstacles and doing various fine maneuvers on the horses. Allain generally shows himself to be the better horseman (horseelf?).
Araevin: so, what are you looking for? Those are excellent stock, but they’re not warhorses. They’re not trained to charge into an enemy battle line, and even if they were they’re a lighter stock, they don’t have the mass to break through the line with the same effect as a heavier horse. Particularly if they’re going to be fighting undead who will not shy away from a charge.
Allain: We’re primarily looking for horses for scouts not for batlle. We need endurance and agility more than we need mass and top speed. They will need to be trained to fight of cause the scouts still need to be able to skirmish and in some cases harass the enemy flanks during battle. Will that be an issue?
Araevin: With some of the older horses yes, but the younger ones can be trained with little issue.
Tannyll: Should we take a look at the horses the humans use, we could attempt to crossbreed them if they have some advantage?
Allain: No point, human horses are of a broadly inferior stock. They’re slower than Aelven horses and on top of that they’re less nimble which makes it harder for them to navigate in difficult terrain.
Tannyl: So they’re less suited for mountains, hills and forest which is what we’re using them for?
Allain: Not they’re less suited for Mountain, hills, forests and plains, the gap is simply smaller when on level ground.
Araevin: so you want horses selected for the greatest nimbleness, ability to navigate difficult terrain, and they need to be battle trained, but their ability as warhorses is secondary to their those prior traits? How many will you need?
Allain: Not quite sure, we’ll definitely need at least 50 within the season. In half a year to a year we’ll need more, several hundreds at least, perhaps a thousand. Can you get us that?
Araevin: The 50 won’t be a problem, I can train that quickly enough, for hundreds or a thousand that’s going to be tough, I have several thousand horses, but only a minority will match those criteria. I can get you more, but I’ll have to reach out to other breeders. Is this going to be a major demand in the future
Maerel: We’re likely to use more these than regular warhorses, there’ll probably still be some demand for regular warhorses, but less than these.
Araevin: I’ll institute changes to my breeding program and pass the word to others who breed for the military as well.
Allain: Excellent. We’ll take these *he points out ten horses* for our initial need.
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Post by ET (Kerberos) on Aug 28, 2018 18:55:51 GMT
[T26] Third meeting of the Umbrian commission for military reform
With horses and equibment procured the group gathers again, this time joined by King Maevïel Caern. Tnnyll has been appointed to captain of the gathered unit of 50 horsemen who are training below with 5 Leitenant below him.
Allain: So Maevïel I think that the individual soldiers are working fine. But I have concerns about the organization. 5 lieutenant is fine for the fifty men, but the regular order of 40 men per lieutenant are well suited for combat teams but I think this gives us to large groups for scouting, we can cover more land with smaller groups. I think we might want to have more for the full seized units. 10 perhaps.
Maevïel: It’s still a rather large group for scouting I’d say.
Allain: we can break them them up into smaller group without officers if needed.
Maevïel: That will make them less effective if they have to skirmish with enemy scouts or raid a sypply line lacking a clear command structure.
Allain: We could create more officers than 10, 20 perhaps?
Maerel: That gives us a very small unit for combat operations, I realize this isn’t the primary purpose but we’d be sacrificing flexibility.
Maevïel: I think we need to take some more inspiration from the humans. A number of them use something they call under officers. So a lieutenant would have a number of these sergeants under them. Perhaps 4 so we maintain the 10 man units,
Tannyll: I actually think 10 man might even be more than we ned for many scouting mission, perhaps we’ll want to go with 5 man subunits?
Maevïel: Perhaps we should introduce another layer of command under the sergent. 2 more subofficers, I think the humans call them corperals per sergent. That gives us unit seizes of 200, 40, 10 or 5.
Allain: I think that is an excellent idea. We’ll also recommend that ad hoc unit seizes be organized so if you need 20 men for the task you assign 2 sergent and put one in overall command, the lieutenant can make the decision when the task force is formed.
Maevïel: That sounds excellent, likewise with 2 lieutenants forming a 80 man unit. It allows us greater flexibility and effective command for both scouting expeditions and actual combat.
Tannyl: I think I could find some candidates to promote, people who make good decisions under stress. I’ll ask my lieutenants and those I’ve already got in mind to keep an eye out for additional candidates for subofficer positions.
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Post by ET (Kerberos) on Sept 2, 2018 16:38:45 GMT
[T26] Fourth meeting of the Umbrian Commision for Military reform
The horsemen continue to train, now a hundred strong and with new subunit commanders. Despite the focus on scouting some wargames are held with the light Aelven cavalry fighting units of Infantry, archers or traditional Aelven cavalry. The new unit predictably comes of worse in most encounters against equal numbers due to their lighter equipment and focus on mobility over pure combat ability.
Tanyll: This is a bit depressing, I know they’re meant as scouts first and foremost, but they do poorly in skirmished. This will limit their ability to scout against opposition.
Maerel: Yeah, I wonder if perhaps we should train some subunits with a higher degree of focus on combat, give us some flexibility.
Allain: I don’t think that would work, that presupposed that we’ll be able to tell which subunit will encounter opposition, and which don’t.
Maerel: ok, but what if we give them bows, Their main advantage is speed, a bow let’s them use that to their advantage keeping out of range and most elves already know how to use a bow.
Tannyl: Most elves know how to use a bow standing, from horseback is different and rather more difficult. Training them for that would take more effort than more extensive combat training for everyone.
Allain: The idea is interesting though.
Tannyl: sure, we could consider training a separate unit of horsearcher, but that will be a rather more elite unit. I don’t think it help our problem here.
Allain: What about javelins. They don’t have the same range as a bow, but they’re considerably easier to use from horseback. It’s going to be very effective against any enemy already engaged from the front. They can ride up and throw the javelins at close range without getting tangled up in melee against more heavily armoured enemies.
Maerel: Will it work in skirmishes to?
Tannyl: I think so. Our riders will be faster than any undeads or Bayardian cavalry they encounter. It might still be difficult to use while being pursued, but a unit can split up. If the enemy pursue one set of rider the other can ride up beside them and throw javelins, if they split up as well We can use superior speed to converge on one set of pursuer and pepper them with Javelins or engage them in melee,
Allain: Ok let’s try it out, we’ll train 50 of the rider with Javelins and see how they test out.
Maerel: Just Javelins?
Alllain: No the men already know how to use sword from militia training and having the ability to fight in melee is useful, we might let them use shortword instead of longsword to keep the equipment load down with the added javelins
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