Battleplan Army Constructor Guide: Corps, Divisions, and Officers
Build a Battleplan army that can actually deploy: how the Army Constructor works, Requisition and Weight budgets, officer skills, and combined arms bonuses.
Every Battleplan campaign mission starts in the Army Constructor, and the decisions you make there are the ones you cannot undo once the shooting starts. This is where you assemble divisions, attach officers to them, and decide how much of your force is infantry, armor, artillery, or air support. Build it well and the orders you draw on the map have units capable of executing them. Build it carelessly and you will spend a two-week operation watching formations sit idle because nobody is in command.
This guide covers what the Army Constructor actually does, the two separate budgets that limit it, and the structure that holds up when your first plan meets the enemy's second line.
What the Army Constructor Actually Does
The name is the developer's own — Dev Diary #8 is titled "Army Constructor" — and it describes a force editor rather than a unit picker. You restructure a formation by dragging on the white connecting lines between unit nodes to disconnect and reconnect them, which means you can merge divisions into a corps or break a formation all the way down to its companies.
According to the official Battleplan Steam store page, each division is realistically modelled with headquarters, regiments, battalions, and companies. That hierarchy is what you are editing:
| Layer | What it holds | Why it decides battles |
|---|---|---|
| Corps | Two or more divisions plus a corps headquarters | The largest force a single mission budget usually allows |
| Division | Three infantry regiments in the default infantry division, plus divisional assets | The formation you actually draw orders for |
| Regiment | Battalions of one arm | Keeps combined arms bonuses where they matter |
| Battalion | Companies, shown as stacked squares | The level where companies are added or removed for Requisition |
| Company | The smallest deployable block, tracking its own supply | Ammo, fuel, and food are accounted for here |
In practice a default infantry division is not just riflemen. It fields infantry, anti-tank guns, artillery, engineers, anti-air guns, and several headquarters companies, which is what makes it a usable starting formation instead of a speed bump. The practical consequence: you are almost never choosing between "infantry" and "armor" — you are choosing how much of each goes into every regiment you intend to fight with.
Requisition and Weight Are Two Different Budgets
New commanders lose their first campaign to a single misunderstanding: the game limits your army in two unrelated ways.
Requisition is the currency. Dev Diary #8 states it plainly — Requisition is earned by completing missions, and it pays for adding and removing companies, recruiting formations, and hiring higher-level officers. It accumulates across the campaign, which makes it a long-term resource.
Weight is the deployment cap. Each mission specifies the total Weight you can field. The developer's own example: a mission might allow 450 Weight, which you can spend as three divisions of 150 Weight each, or as one large corps of 450 Weight.
| Budget | Set or earned by | Spent on | Failure mode |
|---|---|---|---|
| Requisition | Missions you complete | Companies, formations, higher-level officers | Empty roster with no depth to draw on later |
| Weight | The individual mission | Whatever you deploy into that mission | Overweight formations cannot deploy at all |
Read the mission's Weight allowance before you touch anything else, and treat Requisition as capital rather than income. Community players make the same point repeatedly: filling a missing role — a scout element, a spotter, an engineer — beats adding a fourth tank battalion to a formation that already has three.
Setting Up Your First Corps
The opening sequence of a campaign follows a fixed path, and it is worth knowing before you click through it.
- Create a fictional officer. The campaign starts with you, not with a preset commander.
- Choose a country. The Army Constructor offers the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada, and that choice determines your initial division.
- Create a fictional corps. Your officer and your first divisions are organized under a corps you name yourself.
- Accept the free starting infantry division. You receive your first infantry division at no cost before the first tutorial, so the campaign never begins with an empty order of battle.
- Restructure with the drag handles. Connecting and disconnecting the white lines is how structure changes. Do it before you deploy, not during an operation.
- Attach an officer to every formation you intend to use. This is not optional, and the next section explains why.
Once the campaign is running you can recruit from all three Allied nations, not only the one you started with, so an early American infantry core does not lock you out of British armor or Canadian infantry later.
Officers: The Slot You Cannot Skip
Dev Diary #6 is blunt about the rule: a formation cannot deploy without a headquarters company and an attached officer. A leaderless formation is not a weaker formation, it is an unavailable one.
Officers matter far beyond that gate. An officer passes all of their stat bonuses and penalties down to every unit beneath them, which makes the command slot the highest-leverage decision in the Army Constructor. Two identical battalions fight differently depending on who is standing at the top of the chain.
| Officer system | How it works | What it means for your build |
|---|---|---|
| Skill web | Branches for Infantry, Armour, Artillery and Support Gun, Air Support, plus generalist nodes | Specialists for specialist formations, not one generalist everywhere |
| Passive skills | Apply continuously | The safe backbone of a formation's power |
| Active skills | Triggered manually, mostly once per mission | Save them for the moment a plan has to succeed |
| Personality quirks | A random bonus paired with a penalty, with more gained through service | A quirk can define a formation's job, so check it before assigning |
| Recruitment cost | Low-level officers are free; higher-level officers cost Requisition by level | Experience compounds, so protect the officers you level |
Quirks are where officers stop being interchangeable. The developer's own example is a "Timid" officer who carries a 40% morale penalty alongside a 10% defence bonus — a leader you would put in a dug-in formation and never in a breakthrough.
Officers are also mortal. When a headquarters company takes casualties, its officer can be wounded (out for the next mission), captured, or killed permanently. An incapacitated officer paralyzes their entire formation for several hours. Since officers gain experience and additional quirks with service, losing a leveled commander costs you more than losing the units around them — which is an argument for the campaign's habit of letting a battered division rest and recuperate rather than feeding it straight back into the line.
Combined Arms Bonuses Are Local, Not Global
Battleplan rewards mixing unit types, and it does so with a mechanic that is easy to miss: units of different types within roughly one square kilometre grant bonuses to nearby friendlies. Two rules shape how you build around it. Bonuses do not stack, and a unit type does not buff its own type — a regiment of nothing but tanks gives its neighbours nothing.
| Unit type present | Bonus granted to nearby friendlies |
|---|---|
| Infantry, mechanized infantry, paratroopers | +20% defence, +30% morale |
| Light and medium tanks | +25% damage, +30% morale |
| Heavy tanks | +50% damage, +10% defence, +50% morale |
| Engineers | Minefield immunity, +50% fortification destruction, +50% entrenchment speed |
| Scouts | +50% movement |
| Anti-tank guns and artillery | +50% damage, +100% fortification destruction |
| Headquarters | +50% damage, +25% defence, +50% morale |
The design implication is structural: build mixed regiments rather than pure battalions. A regiment that carries infantry, a tank battalion, an artillery battery, and an engineer company hands every one of those bonuses to its neighbours, while a single-type regiment is a formation that only shoots.
Supply, Reserves, and Terrain
Three systems decide whether your order of battle keeps working after the first hour.
Supply is tracked per company, covering ammunition, fuel, and food. Low supply means penalties; no supply means attrition and surrender, and formations collapse far faster than their paper strength suggests. Supply flows from hubs into depots — you place only a limited number of depots, and placement is instant during deployment but slow once the mission has started. Site your depots near the fighting you intend to do, not near the map edge.
Reserves are part of the plan, not an improvisation. The Complex Attack planner normally holds one regiment in reserve so it can reinforce a unit that runs into trouble.
Terrain rewrites your build's value. Towns and forests boost defence and firepower, swamps and beaches penalize the units standing in them, and high ground adds sight, firepower, and defence bonuses. During deployment, units you place gain fortifications immediately, so a formation sited on the right ground starts the mission dug in.
In Battleplan, Composition Gates Your Orders
The Army Constructor and the map are the same system seen from two angles. Order menus are filtered by what a formation is physically equipped to do: no scouts means no aerial recon, no artillery battery means no barrage, no engineers means no mine laying or clearing.
That is the reason to build formations around the orders you intend to issue rather than the reverse. A perfectly balanced regiment of rifle infantry will never show you a specialist order, and a tank regiment that cannot see beyond its own hood cannot be given the reconnaissance that makes a breakthrough survivable.
Historical Divisions, and Playing the Other Side
The Army Constructor is fed by history rather than by an abstract tech tree. Each mission features historically accurate divisions for both the Axis and the Allies, each with its own set veterancy level and its historically accurate officers. After you complete a mission, the divisions and officers that actually took part in it become recruitable for the rest of your campaign.
Individual scenarios go further: once you have beaten a mission you can replay it as the Germans, with their own units and their own objectives. It is the cleanest way to learn what your usual opponent is working with.
The Campaign You Are Building For
Battleplan shipped with eleven historical missions running from D-Day to Operation Varsity, plus two tutorial missions — the store markets it as "10+ massive historical battles." Individual missions cover anywhere from a week to a month of simulated operations.
There is no skirmish mode and no multiplayer: the game is single-player, which is precisely why your army persists. You carry the consequences of your build decisions from one battle to the next, upgrading units, promoting officers, and resting divisions that have been mauled. An army that is merely adequate in mission three is a real problem by mission nine.
Common Army Constructor Mistakes
| Mistake | What it costs you | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| Deploying over the Weight allowance | The formation cannot deploy and the plan is dead before it starts | Check the mission Weight before building |
| Leaving a formation without an officer | The formation is unavailable, not merely weak | Recruit and assign — they are separate actions |
| Building single-type regiments | No combined arms bonuses for anyone nearby | Mix infantry, armor, artillery, and engineers within a regiment |
| Spending Requisition on prestige units | Role gaps that never get filled | Buy the scout, spotter, or engineer your roster lacks |
| Placing depots after the fighting starts | Slow placement exactly when you need supply | Site depots during deployment |
| Sending a wounded division straight back | Permanent attrition you never recover from | Let it rest and recuperate |
FAQ
What is the Army Constructor in Battleplan?
It is the force editor where you build and restructure your order of battle by dragging on the connecting lines between unit nodes. You can combine divisions into a corps or break a formation down to its companies, and it is the only place where structural changes to a formation happen.
What is the difference between Requisition and Weight in Battleplan?
Requisition is currency earned by completing missions and spent on companies, formations, and higher-level officers. Weight is the deployment cap for one specific mission. Requisition carries across the campaign; Weight resets with every mission.
Can I deploy a formation with no officer in Battleplan?
No. A formation needs a headquarters company with an attached officer before it can deploy. Because officers also pass all of their stat bonuses and penalties down to every unit below them, the command slot is the single most influential choice in your build.
Can I skip the Army Constructor entirely?
Yes. Turning on the "Use Historical Units" option drops you into the next mission with period-accurate formations already slotted, no officer management required. It is the fastest way to learn order drawing, and it is a legitimate way to play the whole campaign.
Final Thoughts
A Battleplan army is a chain of command before it is a list of units. Weight tells you how much you can field, Requisition tells you what you can afford to build, officers decide whether any of it functions, and combined arms bonuses decide whether it holds together under fire. Build the structure first, then the orders become the easy part.