Vehicle Numbering

Many of our USSR, NVA and Russian vehicles have numbers on the turret or chassis. These registration numbers indicate what unit the vehicle belongs to, making it easy to tell them apart from a distance.

This page contains a brief explanation of how to configure them, both how to do it and what numbers you should choose.

How to change the numbers

Not all vehicles support numbering, you cannot add them to a vehicle which was not set up for this. For example, BTR70.et does not have numbers while BTR70_USSR.et has them.

To edit numbers, search for the vehicles existing RHS_GroupMaterialController and change the Texture ID indices - these are usually the numbers in order, but some RHS vehicles have an additional index that maps to the higher units graphical symbol (search for labels.emat to see the textures).

Also make sure Randomize is disabled for these indices, otherwise the displayed numbers will be random instead.

What these numbers mean

As mentioned previously, these vehicle numbers uniquely identify a vehicle within the larger unit.

Most of our Soviet vehicle numbers feature 3 digits, while our NVA vehicles have either 4 or 3 digits. The numbering system works in the same way, it's just that with 3 digits, the largest unit is omitted.

Number	Digit 4	Digit 3	Digit 2	Digit 1
Explanation	RGT in DIV	BTN in RGT	COY in BTN	Vic in COY
Example 1	-	2	3	4
Meaning 1	RGT omitted	BTN 2	COY 2	PLT 2, Vic 1
Example 2	4	3	1	8
Meaning 2	RGT 4	BTN 3	COY 1	PLT 3, Vic 2
Example 3	4	7	0	0
Meaning 3	RGT 4	BTN 7 (COY)	COY HQ	-

In example 1, assuming the parent unit is a Motorized Rifle Regiment, the vehicle could e. g. be a BTR in a motorized infantry platoon as BTN 1-3 would probably be motorized rifle BTNs consisting of motorized rifle companies, while BTN 4 might be a tank BTN.

In that sense, if Example 2 is a Motorized Rifle Division, RGT 4 could be the tank regiment, 3 its third tank BTN and so on.

It follows that when choosing numbers for tank or motorized rifle units, you can (exceptions aside):

1. Decide whether the division is a tank or motor rifle one. Pick 1-3 if this matches your regiments type or 4 if it's the opposite. Skip this step if you only want 3 digits.
2. If the regiment type matches the battalion type, again pick 1-3, otherwise 4.
3. For company, freely pick 1-3 (as the battalion will usually only contain one type of main combat unit).
4. For vehicle, freely pick 0-9, where 0 is the Company HQ, and, 123 456 789 the three platoons.

Note that e. g. the BTN digit does not necessarily have to be a batallion - it could be any child unit of the regiment, which for combat units is just commonly a batallion. Example 3 is such a special case, where RGT 4 is a Motorized Rifle Divisions tank regiment, and BTN 7 the regiments reconnaissance company.

Note that while the general procedure is always similar, the system has its quirks and is not always applied in the same way. Even in the same army, sub units may assign numbers in slightly different ways.

However, this page should give you enough of an understanding to create believable numbering for combat vehicles.

If you want to learn more:

• This page contains more detailed information about how vehicles were numbered in the NVA, with many concrete examples.
• This link leads to a downloadable document ("Organigramme") containing divisional ORBATs of the NVA. You can also find ORBATs in other places online, like e. g. Wikipedia.

Combined Arms

When creating combined arms missions, consider what unit the vehicles would come from.

Consider the example of a motorized rifle company being supported by a tank platoon. The companies vehicles might be numbered 3210-3219. The tank platoon would probably come from the regiments tank battalion, so: 3 since it's the same regiment, 4 for regiments tank battalion, 1 2 or 3 for an arbitrary company and 1+2+3, 4+5+6 or 7+8+9 for the tanks.

Group Callsigns

We usually also use these numbers as callsigns for player groups. Note that this only applies to factions with Soviet-style callsigns.

To configure them, go into the groups PS_GroupCallsignAssigner component and enable it. Every group has one.

In there, you can set a Company, Platoon and Squad callsign index. In the case of Soviet-style callsign confiigs, these do not directly translate to the vehicle numbers or actual platoons though.

Instead, the Squad index sets the element in the company:

Squad Index	Callsign Part	Meaning
0	0	Coy HQ
1	1 HQ	1 Plt HQ
2	1	1 Plt 1 Sqd
3	2	1 Plt 2 Sqd
4	3	1 Plt 3 Sqd
5	4 HQ	2 Plt HQ
6	4	2 Plt 1 Sqd
7	5	2 Plt 2 Sqd
8	6	2 Plt 3 Sqd
9	7 HQ	3 Plt HQ
10	7	3 Plt 1 Sqd
11	8	3 Plt 2 Sqd
12	9	3 Plt 3 Sqd

The HQ versions of the callsigns exist because in motorized rifle units, the Plt HQ does not have its own vehicle, so it shares a callsign with the 1st Squad. The "HQ" denotes the difference between them.

The "Platoon" and "Company" indices translate more directly to company and battalion, with the exception that you need to decrease the index by 1 to get the intended number (e. g. index 3 becomes a 2), since there is no 0.