Anvil or Hammer affiliated forces

Burning Empires General Questions
1

Yet another question from me, but this time about the Hammer/Anvil forces you can get from the Forged trait. I’m not sure if this is the right forum, but here goes.

My PC has the Forged trait and a 3D Hammer force alongside a 1D Anvil force. The big thing I’m slightly confused about at the moment is the actual size of these groups.

I assume that the Anvil are all in Ballistic Body Armour, with Assault Lasers, but how many of them are there? The main reason I ask this is to calculate the Outnumbered dispo bonuses. irl I know very, very little about military matters, so I’ve no idea if this means 5-10 men, something measured in the 10s or a much larger force.

Also, I plan on raising my Affiliation with this force (exp 3 just ain’t gonna cut it against those Vaylen scum). As far as I can tell, I do this by making a Resources test at Ob 4 (+ the dispo bonus the faction gives in the current phase; which would be zero for Royalists* in Infiltration?), which is presumably rp’d by giving a bribe to the appropropriate official who can redirct forces, or something similar. When this happens, the Anvil Lord trait goes from describing my force as ‘conscripts and Landwehr’ to ‘anvil trained soldiers and a smattering of Iron’. I assume that the orginal grunts stay at Exp 3 and their current gear, while the unit gets a very sizable influx of 80% anvil/20% iron with a mixture of Assault & Squad Support weapons.

If the previous waffle is correct, roughly how many men do I have now (again, operating on the same rough order of magnitude scale)? And if all my cunning** plans come to fruition, how large would a 3D anvil force be (I’d guess this would 1/3 Anvil, 1/3 Anvil Elite and 1/3 Iron?)?

Similarly, roughly how large is my 3D Hammer Force?

And to round up this latest bunch of questions, the lovely Forged trait lets my have people from the first few lifepaths in HAmmer and Anvil with me trivially. Does this mean that when my current conscript Anvil force goes into battle, I can declare they have a Hammer signals tech with them, who comes with Signals at 5 and the right tools etc?

Thanks very much for any answers that help me to get a better grip on exactly how my forces ‘look’ IC.

*The primary Govt. is commune, with a substantial Royalist faction that used to be in charge who still control the military (esp. the Hammer).

** For certain values of cunning; as measured in milliBaldricks.

2

Hi Kath,

The traits explain it this way: a 1D affiliation means a small or poorly kept force, a 2D affiliation means a sizable and well-trained force, and a 3D affiliation means a large and elite force. How exactly that breaks down into actual numbers is up to you and your group and what feels right for the world you’ve got.

As far as tech goes, check Contacts and Technology on page 350. They have tech appropriate to their station and index. The GM gets to decide what that means. To my mind, a 1D Anvil Force should be Assault Guns and Ballistic Armor, yeah. A 2D force could be large with Assault Guns and Anvil Armor, or a small force with Iron. A 3D force would be large and have Anvil and Iron.

The Outnumbering disposition modifiers are meant to scale to the conflict you’ve got. If you’ve got 1 guy against 8 guys, that would justify Outnumbered by a Staggering Amount. If you’ve got 500 guys against 600 guys, then it’s probably only worth the +1s bonus. If it’s 20 guys against 22 guys, there’s probably no bonus at all.

Note that just because you’ve got a 3D affiliation, it doesn’t automatically mean that you get the Outnumbering advantage. You might have a 3D Hammer force, but if I’ve lured one of your patrol ships into an ambush with my building scene, then my 1D Hammer force might very well get the Outnumbering bonus. It’s all about how you set up the situation in play.

You’re correct on the obstacle for advancing the affiliation (personally, I would be inclined to base it on the disposition bonus offered by your Predominant Military in this case, but you are correct by the book).

You can color it how you like. New recruits and retraining could account for it. Just raise everyone to exponent 4. The original grunts don’t stay at exponent 3.

As to your final question: The trait means that you can bring in Runners, Soldiers, Medics, Scouts and Signal Techs without having to roll Circles for them. You just say they’re in the scene and they’re there. They have the technology/tools appropriate to their lifepath and exponents determined by the level of your affiliation (at 1D they have exponent 3, at 2D they’ll have exponent 4).

Same deal with the Hammer, except you can access Yeomen, Shipfitters, Sensors Techs, Signals Techs, Turret Crews, Fire Control Techs, Cooks, and Coeptirs. Since your Hammer is 3D, they all have exponent 5.

3

I would try to avoid thinking too much about proportions and numbers of your entire fleet. If I were the GM, I’d rule that a higher affiliation likely has more troops to bring to a fight than someone with a smaller affiliation, but that can change if you test skills and manipulate the situation to your advantage.

It really comes down to the specific situation.

If you are fighting someone with the same scale affiliation, and all other things are more or less equal, then one way to handle it is to make a strategy or logistics Versus test against your opponent before the fight starts to see who has numerical advantage.

But there’s nothing stopping an outgunned side from manipulating the circumstances of a fight to their advantage. You may have the bigger and better fleet, but what matters is what is actually at the fight.

When it comes to the proportions, I’d simply come up with color you like. I’m not sure what sort of guidelines I would advise beyond that.

Edit: Thor wins. :wink:

4

Hi Thor,

Thanks for your comments - they’re helping me to clarify exactly what these traits mean, which is what I’m lacking right now. The example for scaling up the Anvil are something I’ll run past my GM, but they make sense to me.

OK, I guess that’s something to bring up with my group before the next sesssion. We’ve already established that there’s only 15 or so Hammer Cruisers in the system, so I’d probably go for my 3D representing about 5 or so of those (my char is not the primary Forged Lord of the system (who I know also has a 3D Hammer force), and other people have to have some ships under their command as well).

You’re correct on the obstacle for advancing the affiliation (personally, I would be inclined to base it on the disposition bonus offered by your Predominant Military in this case, but you are correct by the book).

I think I’ll go with your suggestion there - I’d forgotten that our military are also represented by Dominant Military as well as the Royalist faction. Still, OB6 resources doesn’t seem unreasonable for getting a significantly better force, and likewise for OB8 to get up to that desirous 3D. Especially as everyone goes up in exponent now :).

5

Five Hammer Cruisers is nothing to sneeze at. That’s some serious military might! Your force would also have Hammer Assault Shuttles, Hammer Patrol Craft, and probably cargo shuttles and shuttles too.

6

Oh, I didn’t mean to sneer at the 5 cruisers - I was more just thinking out loud :).