Mercenary Units and Tickets

[BetterThanLife]

Originally posted by Anthony:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by BetterThanLife:
I do know a bit about the Flying Tigers. (I even went as far as to read Boyington's book years ago.) Another example is the typical mission for a US Special Forces A-Team. I am not saying such units don't exist. However instead of hiring a unit full of raw recruits and waiting long periods of time, to get your Mercenary Boots on the ground, which recruiting for each ticket causes, you could simply train what you need locally faster.

Depends on the assets you have available for training; in general if you already have trainers, you're best off using them. Also depends on the time frame involved. If you need troops at some point in the fairly distant future, or at an indefinite point in the future, waiting six weeks for a merc trainer isn't that big a problem. </font>[/QUOTE]Boy this spun off in a new direction.

The point I was trying to make was that units that have to be recruited, instead of standing units, take too long to get organized to hire in a typical hire some mercenaries to handle the situation scenario.

 

[Anthony]

Originally posted by BetterThanLife:
The point I was trying to make was that units that have to be recruited, instead of standing units, take too long to get organized to hire in a typical hire some mercenaries to handle the situation scenario.

A point about which I basically agree; if the timeframe is such that recruiting and training a unit is practical, the employer will probably choose to recruit and train a unit. He may make use of mercenaries to handle his training, but he'll have his own unit, rather than having the mercs train a merc unit.

 

[alanb]

Originally posted by Anthony:
A point about which I basically agree; if the timeframe is such that recruiting and training a unit is practical, the employer will probably choose to recruit and train a unit. He may make use of mercenaries to handle his training, but he'll have his own unit, rather than having the mercs train a merc unit.

I agree also, with one caveat.

The employer may choose to form a unit from off-worlders (or from another nation on-world), rather than from his own citizens. This is quite common on Earth, both historically and at the moment. These are regular army units, however.

These units may or may not be commanded by mercenary officers, who may or may not be from the same world or nation as the troops they command.

In the OTU, I imagine Imperial military veterans are eagerly sought by planetary armed forces. That, incidentally, would suggest that the leaders of forces opposing mercs are likely to be as well trained, experienced and competent as the mercs themselves, even if their troops are inferior.

Being a merc in the OTU can be a very dangerous business, or a very comfortable and lucrative one.

 

[jatay3]

One thing I do is have mercenary brokers that specialize in selling packages of a number of units in temporary or semi-permanant alliance with one another. It does seem to be an oddity that a war small enough to be settled by 1000 or so additional combatants, no matter how well equiped and trained, would involve offworld support. Of course one can argue that there have been a number of small wars in the twentieth century that would in fact fit that paradigm. Still it does seem that there would be a possibility of a package deal.