On Tue, 18 Mar 2014, Onno Meyer wrote:
Johannes wrote:
Sticking to procedures and complex tactics should not be neccessary.
Barbarian warriors against disciplined soldiers?
Propably the enemy has a psi power or weapon, that makes discipline break
down anyway. People who by default act with random violence in case of
stress are what the enemy handles worst.
I am aware that i am reaching for straws here. But then doing so, to make
a military or political model viable, that the author thinks is cool has
some tradition in sf. And my ideas for that are all in a brainstorming
phase, since making prison regiments in sf was not something i have
thought about before that thread.
Holding a position and not routing should not be neccessary.
What makes them advance into fire?
You obviously need a setup, where advancing into fire is not neccessary.
Hence my idea of spreading troops over a contested area, hoping that the
enemy attacks them. Drop a prison regiment far enough from a safe area,
and they can do little other then act as targets to draw out enemy
soldiers.
The first i could come up would be, that the enemy has superior comando
units, who do guerilla warfare. The enemy has few of them, but they are so
good, that the best human* commandos are not on their level. So the human
empire send in prison regiments to be slaughtered by them, hoping that if
they send so many more soldiers, eventually there will be enough losses
among the enemy commandos.
If the humans are defending something, would they want this kind
of troops near it?
Depends on what it is. If they are interested in mining rights, or if they
want the territory for strategic reasons, like they don't want the enemy
to be that close to really important places, then having the area infested
with prison regiments would not be so bad.
For me, the first question is the prison units are supposed to be
the most efficient way to accomplish a military objective, or the
most efficient way to accomplish some other social objective.
* A safety valve for aggressive people with no prospect of a good,
civilian job. Joining "the Legion" should be one step up from
joining a street gang, not one step down.
This goes in the direction of finding something for them to do, to keep
them busy, rather then having them do something for the greater good.
Which means it's harder to come up with missions where the players are
motivated to fulfill them. It can be done, but as you said, it is better
suited for a novel.
It also would be logical if the program would be extended to not only
cover already criminals, but also thoose with the appropriate
psycholigical makeup, before they commit actual crimes, moving it away
from actual prison regiments.
* Expendable troops for nasty little wars. Not many voters will
worry if they die in droves.
You need to come up with wars, where sending undisciplined hard to control
expendable troops is actually helping to get your objectives done. It
could be wars, where the goverment does not actually need to win, it's
just that surendering before a shot is fired is not politically feasable.
But to get into that situation often enough, to institutionalize prison
regiments requires some explaination.
* A way to threaten draftees into obedience without large-scale
death sentences or even court cases. Send 500 troublemakers to
a shock battalion, when they are down to 50 the survivors can
go into regular units to spread the tale.
That sounds not like an actual prison regiment. To threaten ordinary
draftees, they need to be afraid to be put into such a regiment, and if
going to prison is a prerequesite, that does not work that well.
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