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Old 09-15-2013, 02:59 PM   #91
combatmedic
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Default Re: Flat Black

I'd use spacer as the generic term for a person who works on a space vessel and spaceman as a specific rank (like 'seaman' or 'airman').


Astronaut doesn't seem right to me, in part for the reason that Ze gave.

YMMV
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Old 09-15-2013, 03:11 PM   #92
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Default Re: Flat Black

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Originally Posted by Ze'Manel Cunha View Post
Why would anyone run a comic book store in space?
Because they want to sell comic books? Insert whatever other proffesion you want instead.
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Besides, if they're born and live in space they aren't human, since atmospheres are a necessary thing.
Space stations?

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Not to mention that no one runs a comic book store at sea either.
I wouldn't be surprised if one of those big cruise ships had a comic book store.
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Old 09-15-2013, 03:29 PM   #93
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Originally Posted by sir_pudding View Post
Because they want to sell comic books? Insert whatever other proffesion you want instead.
Space stations?
Then they're likely callings themselves spacers and astronauts who are comic book dealers, or some other popular slang term which hasn't been invented yet for full-time spacers.

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I wouldn't be surprised if one of those big cruise ships had a comic book store.
People working on cruise ships generally think of themselves as sailors, seafarers or mariners as well as any other profession they may have.

Sort of like an American comic book dealer is American and a comic book dealer, and becoming a comic book dealer doesn't change the fact he's American.

Being a sailor or an astronaut isn't like an MOS/NEC, it's like being a sailor or a marine, your job rating is something else.
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Old 09-15-2013, 03:35 PM   #94
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Originally Posted by Ze'Manel Cunha View Post
Then they're likely callings themselves spacers and astronauts who are comic book dealers, or some other popular slang term which hasn't been invented yet for full-time spacers.
I'm suggesting that he's a spacer who's a comic book dealer, while his brother the starship engineer is a spacer who's an Astronaut.
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Old 09-15-2013, 03:56 PM   #95
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Originally Posted by sir_pudding View Post
I'm suggesting that he's a spacer who's a comic book dealer, while his brother the starship engineer is a spacer who's an Astronaut.
If he's a spacer who's a comic book dealer then his brother is a spacer who's an engineer.

Astronaut doesn't sound like a rating to me, YMMV.

Like a leg 68W is a soldier and a combat medic and might be an infantryman, if he was in space he'd be a spacer/astronaut and a combat medic and might be a spaceman.
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Old 09-15-2013, 04:03 PM   #96
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Default Re: Flat Black

I've just checked military pay scales for Australia and the USA.

In the Australian navy an E-2 rating who has been in the Navy for 2 years is paid A$45,035 per year base salary, with allowances that bring her pay up to A$69,937 per year while she serves at sea. Figuring the purchasing power of A$1 as US$0.91, that's about US$3,415 per month. In the US Navy an E-2 seaman who has been in the Navy for 2 years is paid US$1699.80 per month. Hostile fire or imminent danger allowance is available, but it's not more than US$225 per month. An RAN lieutenant with four years in the Navy and who serves at sea is paid A$95,769 per year, which is equivalent to US$7,262 per month. His USN counterpart gets US$4,692.90 per month plus allowances.

One reason that the US armed forces need warrant officers is that they don't pay enlisted members enough to retain anyone who has valuable skills. I don't know why Congress has decided to under-pay US service personnel by 50%; I suggest that you write to your congressman and ask him.

The Imperial Navy in FLAT BLACK is not like the USN and USCG. It has no jobs for semi-skilled hands, because robots and automatics do those; the only jobs it has are for professionals and highly-skilled tradesmen. It has no interest in building up a reserve of trained veterans in the general population for rapid mobilisation. It has no interest in producing a trained pool of semi-skilled workers for industry. The Imperial council has no political reason to want a lot of veterans in the civilian population and has no political fear of professional armed forces. It does not give its veterans GI benefits as an incentive to separate and it does not have an up-or-out policy.

That's the in-setting reason why I am not going to put US-style warrant officers into the Imperial Armed Forces.

I also have an out-of-setting reason, which is as follows.

I am Australian. Nearly all my face-to-face players are also Australian. To us, the kind of warrant officers that we have in the Australian, British, Canadian, Indian, Pakistani, South African, most Arabic, and Israeli armies seem like an inconspicuous international standard and they don't strike us as significant. But the kind of warrant officers that in all the world only the USA has seem distinctively American; we find them conspicuous; they would make FLAT BLACK give us an impression of "Yanks in space", which is not an impression that I want FLAT BLACK to give.


And that has to be my last word on the subject.
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Old 09-15-2013, 04:33 PM   #97
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Originally Posted by Agemegos View Post
And that has to be my last word on the subject.
FWIW, your warrant officers make sense.

OTOH, I'm less convinced that either Mayflower or the Empire would use crowns instead of a more symbolic emblem. What about using the emblem of the specific service here?
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Old 09-15-2013, 05:34 PM   #98
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Originally Posted by Ze'Manel Cunha View Post
Why would anyone run a comic book store in space?.
Because someone blew up their planet and they have nowhere else to go.
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Old 09-15-2013, 08:33 PM   #99
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FWIW, your warrant officers make sense.
The system functions satisfactorily in the armed forces of fifty-odd Commonwealth countries including Australia, Bangladesh, Canada, India, New Zealand, South Africa, and the UK. Also in Israel and most of the Arab states.

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OTOH, I'm less convinced that either Mayflower or the Empire would use crowns instead of a more symbolic emblem.
Well, Mayflower certainly wouldn't — it was a republic founded upon basically American lines, though actual Americans didn't overwhelmingly dominate amongst the origins of its colonists.

As for the Empire, the crown might have been adopted as a "retro" common symbol of authority by the early Senate and imposed on the Empire to replace Eichbergerist and Mayflowerite symbols, in the early days when the Senate thought it was taking over from the trustees of Eichberger's will. That's not a very satisfactory rationalisation, but the sad truth is that the same problem applies to the words "Empire" and "Imperial". I originally adopted them back in 1989 as a way of immediately conveying a satisfactory impression to players of what the Empire is, but that they are rather difficult to justify historically. I used to think of changing them in a revision, replacing "Empire" with "Commonwealth" or "Coalition", "Imperial Council" with "Board of Trustees", "Emperor" with "Chairman of the Board of Trustees", "Secretary-General" with "General Manager" and so forth. But the time to do that, if there was one, passed twenty years ago.

I sometimes suppose that there is a translation convention in place. Just as we do not actually play in the Spanish-Chinese-Hindi-and-Indonesian-influenced English-based creole that I suppose will have developed out of International Business English by 2959, I suppose sometimes that the actual terms in use are something derived from Mayflowerite business administration or the 24th-century successor of the UN, that would be jarring and perhaps misleading if used untranslated. It would give quite the wrong impression if the Senate (actually in continuous session using computer-mediated text debate) were called the "Annual General Meeting", the Imperial Council the "Board of Directors", the Emperor the "Chairman", and the Secretary-General the "Managing Director". Perhaps that is what is actually said in-setting, and we use "Empire" etc. because that is what is meant*. And sometimes I go further to suppose that there is an iconographic translation convention in place: that the symbol actually used is something that would be meaningless or inappropriate to us, and that it is here translated into something that conveys the correct sort of immediate impression. That's a stretch. I usually prefer to avoid talking about what the insignia and logos actually are.

But anyway, what other symbols do we have for imperial super-sovereign authority?
It could be nearly anything, an acorn slipped and leaved… I have sometimes thought that a phoenix arising out of flames of fire would be apt.

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What about using the emblem of the specific service here?
It's a good idea. I have often said that the specific service badge appeared in place of the "star" place-holder in the distinction lace illustrated, and on the buttons at the top of the probationers' tabs. The problem is that it does rather ask the question as to what the symbols of the services ought to be. The only one that I have ever definitely described is the service badge of the Independent Commission for Justice.


* This would be similar to the situation with Latin Imperator which originally meant "commander (of an army)", and was adopted to avoid making a claim to monarchy, but which developed because of that adoption to mean "king of kings".
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Old 09-15-2013, 09:34 PM   #100
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Right. Let's apply some thinkery. We want service badges for the following.
  • The Empire
  • The Imperial Council
  • The Senate and its staff
  • The Imperial Office
  • The Imperial Navy
  • The Imperial Corps of Marines
  • The Colonial Office
  • The Home Office
  • Imperial Spaceways
  • Universal Imports
  • The Eichberger Foundation
  • The Eichberger Realty Corporation
  • The Independent Commission for Justice

All I have so far is this:

The Independent Commission for Justice
In a wreath of oak leaves proper, the figure of Justice gowned in white and blindfolded in black, holding in her right hand, point up, a square-tipped sword red with blood, and in her left a golden pair of scales.
• in the insignia of investigators the badge a golden lion rampant as a supporter on either side
• in the insignia of bailiffs the badge has a red lion rampant as a supporter on either side.
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