On Sat, Dec 4, 2010 at 9:19 PM, Roger Burton West <[email protected]> wrote: > On Thu, Dec 02, 2010 at 12:55:08PM -0500, David Scheidt wrote: > >>Unless you're in a particular historical period, just pick a name. > > The standard Mil-SF convention for ship classes seems to be "Jutland, > with excursions into 1980s USN and Napoleonic RN"... > > For my last SF setting (http://tekeli.li/temptnot/) I deliberately got > away from the "space navy" feel and named the broad ship classes > "pickets", "intruders", "intruder leaders" and "walls". This seemed to > work reasonable well...
I don't really like the spacey navy trope. It makes no sense, particularly in my setting, where humans have been in space for 3000 years. Most places with a space force don't have a water navy, because they don't have any oceans; many have no populated planets. The places with oceans have a single world government (or something close enough, if you squint) and so if they've got a water force it's law enforcement and search and rescue. Why they'd think of space craft forces as "naval" is a little puzzling. I've tried not using it, but players get stuck on it, and I dont' care to get it in the way of the game. Most of the forces that are capable of projecting force onto planets have a unified military structure. (Again, at least to outsiders. There's generally internal specialization.) I do have one force that uses a rank hierarchy that isn't based on a modern (or historical) system. (It's based on the name of the task the person is nominally supposed to do, with degrees. So a green space crew member is "Crew", sometimes something like "Maintenance Crew". Next higher rank is "Crew, first degree". Officer ranks are "Crew, Command", again with degrees. They get combined in ways outsiders find very odd, and people sometimes get a temporary command degree to fit their spot on an org chart. When they're transfered, it'll change, and it's not always considered a slight to go from something like "Surgeon, Command, Second degree" (the officer running a medical facility) to Surgeon Fourth degree (an experienced Surgeon not in a command position (outside of his operating room)) when that person is transferred to a different facility. ) -- David Scheidt [email protected] _______________________________________________ GurpsNet-L mailing list <[email protected]> http://mail.sjgames.com/mailman/listinfo/gurpsnet-l
