Need a mercenary company?

[Leitz]

So far just the basics; rank, last name, and UPP. Suggestions?

http://beta.reuel.net/game/create_mercenary_unit.php

It uses weighted stats as I assume an active mercenary unit would weed out the physically challenged or mentally unreliable. Names include the most common 2300 or so terran names.

If you need more than a company just hit the link again.

 

[Travellerspud]

pretty cool...

Ideas?

I like to have each fire-team led by a lance-corporal or corporal...I think each Platoon should have a Platoon Sergeant and Medic (1 per 20 soldiers according to Striker or you get a morale drop - I assume the 2nd "platoon medic" is with a recovery small boat), and the Company should have a Company Sergeant plus a few Specialists (Fwd Obs, sensors/comms, etc).

but I like it!

 

[samuelvss]

Two things: Skills and Quality!

I have made up a few units, in the spirirt of self-stimulation, from automatically generated characters. One thing that becomes painfully obvious, is the availablibilty of skills is different than a recruiter might want.

If I am fitting out a light, light infantry unit in CES's and ACR's (low budget, baby), then what I need is much different than if I am putting together a unit in BD and grav APC's, festooned with FG's and PG's.

I generally allow the recruits to keep their ranks, if only as a honorary thing; that means there are a lot of 1LT and even CPT squad leaders in a quality unit, even with a some raw recruits.

To gold-plate this thing, having the ability to specify the number in a squad (NCO's and and Enlisted), the number of squads in a platoons, and platoons in a company. Also, how many in company headquarters. That's a lot! A Cr.05 solution is to make 4 platoons of 4 squads of 11, with 1 SSG and 2 SGT's; then I can take the output, and just lop off what I don't need.

Good work; thanks for this!

 

[samuelvss]

I like to have each fire-team led by a lance-corporal or corporal...I think each Platoon should have a Platoon Sergeant and Medic (1 per 20 soldiers according to Striker or you get a morale drop - I assume the 2nd "platoon medic" is with a recovery small boat), and the Company should have a Company Sergeant plus a few Specialists (Fwd Obs, sensors/comms, etc).

Like he said, too!

Commander, and probably Company Sergeant (I say "First Seregant"), each have a driver/radio operator.

 

[Leitz]

I've got the numbers set up so they can be easily changed. What I didn't have was an idea of how much information people wanted and what the big targets were for providing. For example, adding HQ staff is not too hard, but what are they? Adding basic skills night not be to hard, but you need terms of service and that assumes you have prior experience. Do mercenary companies hire non-prior service?

 

[Shonner]

That's cool! All programmed in PHP?

 

[Leitz]

That's cool! All programmed in PHP?

Yup. Besides the long list of names there's less than a hundred lines. No OOP sadly, as I'm not quite their yet. This was put together quickly as I needed a break from other, more formal, languages.

Addendum: While there are lots of great languages, PHP is good for putting stuff up on the web. No one has to download anything to run it.

 

[Shonner]

I'm doing Traveller stuff in Python. So of course Python is needed to run it. I'm not doing Oops either. My programs don't need it.

 

[Leitz]

I'm doing Traveller stuff in Python. So of course Python is needed to run it. I'm not doing Oops either. My programs don't need it.

I glanced at your YouTube page. With your Python skills you could probably pick up what I'm doing in PHP easily. Since folks have asked for skills I'd not mind the help.

Let me know if you want to take a look at the code.

 

[Shonner]

Oh, your program just does the character stats? Duh, 100 lines of code you said. Mine is a few thousand. I have not thought about how to do names randomly. For now, the player just fills in the blank on the character sheet. I know... very lo-tech.

I don't know PHP at all. But I may convert my Python to PHP since my web host supports that code. Just have to learn that language, I guess. Took me a couple weeks to learn Python. I'm taking out the stubs I have in my code now, and working on the character sheet format for the generated output. Just making an Excel file for the data. My code is all based on Mongoose CharGen rules.

 

[Leitz]

Oh, your program just does the character stats? Duh, 100 lines of code you said. Mine is a few thousand. I have not thought about how to do names randomly. For now, the player just fills in the blank on the character sheet. I know... very lo-tech.

I don't know PHP at all. But I may convert my Python to PHP since my web host supports that code. Just have to learn that language, I guess. Took me a couple weeks to learn Python. I'm taking out the stubs I have in my code now, and working on the character sheet format for the generated output. Just making an Excel file for the data. My code is all based on Mongoose CharGen rules.

Shonner, I glanced at your code in the Luke Skywalker window. It'll take you a day, two max, to get the basics of PHP. You could understand pretty much everything I wrote for this before the new year!

I've updated the page to add fire team leaders, SSgts and a medic for 1st squad, and an HQ Platoon. I need to write a rank array so we can adjust it easily, and find a way to generate skills easily. Actually, skills won't be too hard as long as we focus on relevant skills and not all of them.

 

[aramis]

Adding skills isn't that hard. Should be another 100 or so lines of code.

MT's got a great approximation - 1d6 + (Age/10) (Round Down) skill levels.
The first level for army is rifleman. The second is his specialty (Medic, Commo, BD, Recon, etc). Then just dump the rest into the tables. If Edu 8+, use all 4, if edu 7-, use just the first 3. Gets sensible NPC troops really quick.

Age should be pretty easily determined for line troops - 1d6+18
NCO's should add 1d6+1 years per grade above E3.

 

[Dragoner]

If one has the CT disk, there is also CT S13 Supplement 13 Veterans to use as an example for a format.

 

[Leitz]

Adding skills isn't that hard. Should be another 100 or so lines of code.

That sounds like a decent challenge.

MT's got a great approximation - 1d6 + (Age/10) (Round Down) skill levels.
The first level for army is rifleman. The second is his specialty (Medic, Commo, BD, Recon, etc). Then just dump the rest into the tables. If Edu 8+, use all 4, if edu 7-, use just the first 3. Gets sensible NPC troops really quick.

Age should be pretty easily determined for line troops - 1d6+18
NCO's should add 1d6+1 years per grade above E3.

Can I list the skills in a web script that will eventually become public?

 

[Leitz]

If one has the CT disk, there is also CT S13 Supplement 13 Veterans to use as an example for a format.

I'm thinking of something like:

Pvt Schmoe 777777 Male 20
Rifleman 1, Comms 1, Skill 2, NewSkill 1

Need more than that? This assumes prior Imperial (or otherwise) service is not tracked but assumed.

 

[Dragoner]

I'm thinking of something like:

Pvt Schmoe 777777 Male 20
Rifleman 1, Comms 1, Skill 2, NewSkill 1

Need more than that? This assumes prior Imperial (or otherwise) service is not tracked but assumed.

That looks good, maybe some awards and service branch also. I pulled a few npc's from the veterans pdf for my campaign, so I think what you are doing is great.

 

[aramis]

That sounds like a decent challenge.



Can I list the skills in a web script that will eventually become public?

The skills of the characters, yes. The PHP script itself isn't public - only its results are.

I'm used to doing stuff in basic, C++, or python, myself.

Trying to learn Java/Android.

 

[Leitz]

The skills of the characters, yes. The PHP script itself isn't public - only its results are.

I'm used to doing stuff in basic, C++, or python, myself.

Trying to learn Java/Android.

I'm working on C, Ruby, will have to get back to Python, and do fun stuff in PHP.

I think I can put the skills in an array and give a modifier for the character. That would let me share the code without any infringement on tables, etc.

Working on some of it now.

 

[Shonner]

Just for the heck of it, I went on YouTube and learned PHP just now. That was fast.

I'm joking. But I did write some quick code to test. So linking to a PHP file only results in receiving the output from it. Linking triggers its execution. Nice. So source code cannot be had, I'm guessing? I like that.

Just need a good PHP editor now.

 

[Leitz]

Just for the heck of it, I went on YouTube and learned PHP just now. That was fast.

I'm joking. But I did write some quick code to test. So linking to a PHP file only results in receiving the output from it. Linking triggers its execution. Nice. So source code cannot be had, I'm guessing? I like that.

Just need a good PHP editor now.

I use vi.

Some use Eclipse as an IDE. Whatever you're using for Python may have a PHP variant.