Wargamer - Scenario Design Basics

Now that we have chosen and researched a battle, the next step for designing a scenario is developing an order of battle.
An order of battle is basically the roster for each side or nationality involved in the battle. Armies are comprised of men and weapons and since the time of the Greeks and Romans, have been arranged into combat sections easier to maneuver. For modern armies, the most basic unit is the squad. Modern armies are also organized roughly the same: several squads making up a platoon, 3 to 5 platoons a company, 2 to 5 companies a battalion, 2 to 3 battalions a regiment, 2 to 4 regiments a division, 2 to 4 divisions a corps, and several corps an army, and several armies an army group. There are also sections, batteries (for artillery), and brigades. Each nationality has variations along these lines. For instance the Soviets in WWII called their army groups fronts. In addition during combat often a task force (kampfgruppe), an ad hoc collection of units, is assigned to accomplish a mission.
The first step in making an order of battle is determining the scale of the game you will be using to design the scenario. Steel Panthers I uses the squad as its base element, with the max number of units being 49 for a side safely and up to 90 using tricks. This allows ideally a battalion for each side involved, but more likely you would want to look for small task forces or company level engagements to model. East Front and Steel Panthers III use a platoon as the smallest unit, while allowing you to operate from battalion up to corps level.
Now go back to your research and determine the units involved according to the scale you will be using. Most references to a battle detail the action from regiment level upwards. In order to narrow an engagement to the scale you wish to use you may need histories of the unit during the battle (e.g. for an Steel Panthers I Huertgen Forest scenario an excellent source would be Currey's Death of a Division).
Also, be aware that you may find discrepancies in reference material in regards to which units participated in a particular battle. Therefore, if you want to obtain a high level of accuracy you should use more than one source. Skimming the books or looking at other titles or other reviews of the books will give you a general idea of who is the greater authority when there is a conflict.
For example, in a scenario Rory was designing of Kursk, 2 sources (Carell's Scorched Earth and Cross' Citadel) mention the Soviet 1032nd Regiment at Ponyri, but a better source (Glantz) stated that it was the 1023rd. Checking with a friend who owned several books on the Russian OOB, he found out that the 1032nd wasn't even at Kursk while the 1023rd was part of the 307th Division which was at Ponyri.
It is highly recommended that you try and grab a set of order of battles for the armies involved.
When a question does arise that your unable to find the answer don't be afraid to email other designers with similar interest or post on a discussion group where people who either own the required reference or are very knowledgeable in the subject can help out.
Usually you won't have to hard of a time finding out which military units were involved, but determining the quantity of specific tanks or other equipment that actually participated in the engagement can be tricky. Possible sources of this kind of highly detailed information are order of battle books with tables of organization and equipment (TO&E), research papers, the military unit's historical records or memoirs (be careful, as memory is a tricky ability).
You can also run into discrepancies in reference material with regards to what equipment participated in a particular battle. For instance errors in battle reports from front line units are also not unusual. Allied units so feared the German 88mm that they commonly misidentified any tank as Tigers.
If you are set on portraying a battle that involved more units than your game can handle, let me suggest one option in overcoming this obstacle. Scale back the order of battle to fit the game. You should try to maintain the same ratio of units on each side. For instance if the attacker had twice the number of tanks than the defender then the final order of battle ratio of tanks should reflect this.
The second step is to purchase your units within the game's scenario editor. When setting up the scenario some games have you pick between a type of force like infantry or armor and the date of the engagement. These settings should be chosen carefully since they will often times limit you to the force pool that you will be able to pick from. Steel Panthers also makes you choose the skill level of the units, based on Green, Average, and Veteran. Your sources should give you a general idea of the opposing forces skill level. There is, according to historian Stephen Ambrose, a rough correlation between skill, morale, and experience. Green troops are generally less skilled but with higher morale than veteran troops. While veteran troops are more experienced but are less likely to risk their lives in suicidal charges.
If the game doesn't have the exact version of the hardware that you know participated in the engagement you will either have to substitute to the closest available model or as with the case of Steel Panthers the editor allows you to modify a unit's characteristics. This is a very power full tool in that new units can be brought into the game without having to modify any of the actual game files. This approach also assures that all players of the scenario will be able to enjoy the scenario as you intended without having to install some kind of a home brew patch.
You will find that all scenario editors have some kind of limitation. For instance while units can be easily added to East Front after the order of battle has been finalized Steel Panthers is another story. Adding units to Steel Panthers either has to be done via replacing an existing unit or else repurchasing the order of battle with the additional units included. For this reason it's suggested that you should purchase a few low value units when working with Steel Panthers to allow for replacing them if the need arises during play balancing. This will give you a little added flexibility.
If the battle that you picked was unbalanced due to the forces involved all hope is not lost. We will discuss ways of play balancing a slaughter in the scenario play balancing article.
If you are designing a scenario that isn't going to be strictly modeled after an engagement then here are some guidelines to keep in mind when purchasing units. Typically a game assigns points to all the units for victory purposes. Usually the higher the point value the better the unit.

Try to maintain some kind of ratio of purchase points between the two units depending upon the type of engagement.

Meeting: Both sides are equal.
Advance: 1.5 to 2:1 Ration with the defenders have a lightly prepared defence.
Assault: 2 to 3:1 Ratio with the defenders having a well prepared defence.

Note that these are rough values and adjustments will have to be made during play balancing.
When purchasing the units you will still want to maintain accurate force allocations for squads/platoons/companies/battalion/regiment/etc... depending on the scale of the game that you are playing and force nationality.
Units that are more experienced should cost more points. If your game doesn't take this into account and increase the cost for elite units then you will have to allocate less points for a more experienced force. Note that in East Front experience is rolled up into morale.

Of course you will have more flexibility with non-historically based scenarios but it is still a good idea to try and maintain the correct force allocations for the nations involved.
Suggested sources for orders of battle and tables of organizations and equipment are in the Wargamer Library. Books and Online Sources
Now that we have our force picked its time to create the map and deploy the units which we will deal with in our next article.
I would like to thank Greg Allen for correcting an oversite that I initially made in this article regarding unbalanced scenarios. Thanks Greg.

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Scenario Design Basics - Order of Battles