ViDe: Great War, Some Preliminary Observations

[Frank Frey]

Greetings,
Before I launch into the actual nuts and bolts of creating Great War units for ViDe, I would like to make some preliminary observations. 
First of all, my primary interest in the Great War is the Early War period in Europe and the East African theatre. All of my figure collections in this period reflect this so I thought I would just be up front about it. I have no objections to the later war period in Europe; I just simply haven't gotten there yet.
One of the first things that most gamers that are new to this period notice is just how large the platoons and squads are. This is pretty much due to the fact that automatic weapons such as SMG's had not been invented yet and MG's were still considered Heavy Support Weapons that were usually held at the battalion level. The main source of infantry firepower was the bolt action rifle. In the case of the Imperial German Army, it was also the influence of the Prussian Junkers and their determination to keep the "lower class officers" i.e. the Middle Class out of the Combat Arms(Infantry and Cavalry).
The size of the platoons was as follows:
Imperial German Army: 80 men/ 8 squads with 1x NCO + 8 Pvts each and an HQ Unit
French Army: 60 men /4 squads with 1 x NCO + 13 Pvts each and an HQ Unit
British Army: 50 men /4 squads with 1 x NCO +11 Pvts each and an HQ Unit.
Note: The above figures are "book strength".
As you can see, Command and Control could be quite daunting.
As for artillery, the ViDe rules about it work quite well. Most of the light artillery support (French 75's, German 77's, and the British 18lber) were used in the direct fire role at ranges that would effectively put them off the board.
Finally, the one area that I really could use some help with is how many points would these soldiers be worth? I really don't use point systems that much but rather just build historically based scenarios.
Looking forward to everyone's comments.
Frank Frey

[Rick]

Also you might want to look at the way the platoons were fielded - I know from researching the British platoons that in most cases the squads were run by corporals and lance-corporals, then the platoon itself was often split into 2 sections - 1 commanded by an officer (or senior NCO when officers became scarce), the other by the senior NCO, each with 2 squads. Given that a 12 man squad is about what the ww2 german army was fielding, I think it's still a very tactically flexible organisation - each squad could be split into 2 'half-squads' - each of 6 men; 1 commanded by a corporal, 1 by a lance-corporal. The fiddly bit might be getting the command squad split into 2 units, with the senior NCO having the option of the command ability to enable him to take command of the half platoon?

I think one of the biggest differences between the 2 wars is the way support was allocated - rather than being allocated in little "penny packet" units, they were allocated as a platoon or company to support a battalion - it's only when the battalions got their own integral support company that each platoon could have individual support weapons.

[Agis]

Interesting project, keep us posted! 
@Points: Well I have some guidelines to keep the points consistent, but at the end it all boils down to playtesting, arguing, readjusting etc.
Starting point is our humble Infantryman w. Rifle or SMG with Ld4   - 10 Points.