Mustangs and General Burgoyne's revenge

[Adina]

Originally Posted by Brett

The figures are in fact more like 240 regiments and a 15-year rotation cycle (though I am thinking of shortening that).

Transport times probably figure into the timing of the rotation cycle. If it takes 3 months to retrain and redeploy a regiment then a 3-year tour puts them on-station for 11/12 of the tour (or 7/8 for a two year cycle). If it takes 18 months to redeploy then even a 6-year tour is on-station 3/4 of the tour.

Jeff

[Ed the Coastie]

Originally Posted by Brett

You were a mustang, weren't you Ed?

Kinda-sorta but not really. "Political expediency" had effectively ended my Coast Guard career, but I was at the time not exactly the kind of person that they could simply cut loose into the civilian world and expect to quietly disappear. The Army stepped in and offered to hide me within it's own ranks; they put me through officer training and then gave me assignments that kept me out of the political eye.

Do you think an all-mustang officer corps is compellingly plausible in the context? Do you think it is desirable from an RP point of view. Or would you advise me to keep a major of Rodneys with a handful of mustangs among them, for variety in backgrounds for PCs and in characters for NPCs?

There are potential advantages to both sides. My personal preference would be to flip it upside down...have a "mustang-based" system, but with a bit of "rot" within it. Basically, an increasing number of officer candidates are either politically connected or from "old nobility" families; they are groomed for their commissions by being sent to units with sympathetic commanders who not only arrange for them to "shine" but who also have them tutored so that they score high on the OCS entrance exams.

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by Ed the Coastie

Kinda-sorta but not really. "Political expediency" had effectively ended my Coast Guard career, but I was at the time not exactly the kind of person that they could simply cut loose into the civilian world and expect to quietly disappear. The Army stepped in and offered to hide me within it's own ranks; they put me through officer training and then gave me assignments that kept me out of the political eye.

It sounds intriguing. I suppose if you told me then you would have to kill me.

There are potential advantages to both sides. My personal preference would be to flip it upside down...have a "mustang-based" system, but with a bit of "rot" within it. Basically, an increasing number of officer candidates are either politically connected or from "old nobility" families; they are groomed for their commissions by being sent to units with sympathetic commanders who not only arrange for them to "shine" but who also have them tutored so that they score high on the OCS entrance exams.

That's an interesting point about a mustang-based system. People would of course try to game the system, and wealth and connections would presumably help them do it. There would be exclusive schools with pedagogies designed to optimise the pupils' development for maximum change of turning out as officer material. And to the extent the system was corrupt, connections would help too. It's a good idea, but I'm not going to use it because for thematic reasons I require that the Empire not be significantly corrupt.

[Ed the Coastie]

Originally Posted by Brett

It sounds intriguing. I suppose if you told me then you would have to kill me.

Pretty much everyone says that. I wish I knew what they meant about intriguing and exciting...much of what I remember of that period involved spending way too much time in airports/train stations/bus terminals, eating food of suspicious origin and being bitten by strange insects.

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by Ed the Coastie

Pretty much everyone says that. I wish I knew what they meant about intriguing and exciting...much of what I remember of that period involved spending way too much time in airports/train stations/bus terminals, eating food of suspicious origin and being bitten by strange insects.

Never having been coasties ourselves, we have no idea what a coastie could possibly do to become politically inexpedient. We imagine that you must have been running guns to the Contras or something like that. Not knowing intrigues us. If you told us, the mystery would of course be drained away, and the air of romance with it.

[sir_pudding]

"I like to think that you killed a man, but that's the romantic in me."

[jason taylor]

One problem is that if everyone starts at the bottom everyone will be dead or senile before they make high command especially in an intersteller army which must have billions of troops.

[Crakkerjakk]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

"I like to think that you killed a man, but that's the romantic in me."

"I don't know what it's called. I just know the noise it makes when it takes a man's life."

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by jmurrell

Transport times probably figure into the timing of the rotation cycle. If it takes 3 months to retrain and redeploy a regiment then a 3-year tour puts them on-station for 11/12 of the tour (or 7/8 for a two year cycle). If it takes 18 months to redeploy then even a 6-year tour is on-station 3/4 of the tour.

Good point. I figure that redeploying a regiment of Imperial Marines will involve an average of about three weeks of travel time. Throw in sixteen weeks of re-training, a bit of hurry-up-wait, and four weeks of furlough, and count on it being done in six months. Five-year rotations will have 90% of the Imperial Marines on station at any time. With 3-year postings it would mean 17% in training or transit or on furlough at any time, which is starting to get costly. But we could cut back to 12 weeks re-training.

Originally Posted by jason taylor

One problem is that if everyone starts at the bottom everyone will be dead or senile before they make high command especially in an intersteller army which must have billions of troops.

The Imperial Marines have fewer than half a million all ranks (the Empire isn't a very large or powerful interstellar state) and anti-agathic medicine which results in people being still fit for combat at the age of eighty. The result is that promotion is working out as rather slow. If you start as a Private (qualified) at twenty and take the slow route through Private (proficient) and Private (accomplished) before heading up through Lance-corporal to Chief Warrant Officer that is still only eight promotions in sixty years. If we went full mustang, with every officer serving as platoon sergeant before OCS, there would be effective ranks of private, lance-corporal, corporal, sergeant, sublieutenant, lieutenant, lieutenant-major, major, colonel, brigadier, major-general, vice general, general, and general-commandant: thirteen promotions in 60 years, one every four years or so.

[Kyle Aaron]

Serving at least one enlisted term before commission, and one promotion every four years... this sounds rather familiar to some of us old scifi gamers :)