Author Topic: a little help from former military members  (Read 3424 times)

beachhead1985

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Re: a little help from former military members
« Reply #30 on: 11 October 2019, 09:41:55 »
Sounds like a pretty solid program for the setting and subject, to me.
Epitaph on an Army of Mercenaries

These, in the day when heaven was falling,      Their shoulders held the sky suspended;
The hour when earth's foundations fled,         They stood, and earth's foundations stay;
Followed their mercenary calling,               What God abandoned, these defended,
And took their wages, and are dead.             And saved the sum of things for pay.
     
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Orin J.

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Re: a little help from former military members
« Reply #31 on: 12 October 2019, 13:42:34 »
Btw, one thing you did not address . . . are they all male?  only males serve? . . . I mean for some RP fun you could make females neo-Spartan females, cut the ratio and when they 'retire' they end up with a female of their species on that frontier (a little social engineering helps set up the matches, especially if the females hold the property) and any offspring end up in the creches.

Do they have their own NCOs?  Officers?

GuardianDaishi covered the gender question pretty well, but the NCOs for dogboys is pretty slim, standard procedure is that they serve under Psi-stalkers (a human mutant with psionics for hunting/consuming supernaturals) as handlers/officers and it's very rare for them to see promotions. Coalition doctrine strongly favors the view that dogboys are animal assets in their organizational system so the character we're dealing with is already a very exceptional case in that they're a specialist outside of the normal dogboy troops (seems to be a deep-insurgency paratrooper training of some kind to me, and they're usually support assets for the "real" forces without the sort of training/missions that would let them defect easily).

i'm very interested in how he's covering this, since i don't recall much about this army having paratroops.
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guardiandashi

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Re: a little help from former military members
« Reply #32 on: 12 October 2019, 17:48:30 »
the paratroops was mentioned in coalition war campaign (book 11) which also added some new skills that characters can potentially take, as well as some additional coalition OCC's
whats interesting is war campaign is a lower numbered book than lone star which means the dog boys should have access to the war campaign skills

where it matters in this case is:
RCC related skills pg 36 lone star: dog boy
communications any,
domestic any
electrical basic electronics only
espionage any
mechanical basic mechanics and automotive only
medical first aid only
military any
physical any except acrobatics and boxing
pilot motorcycle, hovercycle, jetpack, truck, and motorboat only
pilot related any
rogue none
science none
technical any except computer operation and programming
wp any
wilderness any

a dog boy gets 5 "other" skills and 8 secondary skills from the list except for the "none" areas

war campaign added (pg 60)
communications:
electronics countermeasures
espionage:
imitate voices/Impersonation
interrogation techniques
mechanical:
basic mechanics
Medical:
Field surgery
Military:
armorer
Camoflage
find contraband, weapons and cybernetics
military Ediquette
Military Fortification
Nuclear, Biological, & Chemical Warfare
Parachuting
Recognise weapon quality
Trap construction
Trap/Mine Detection
underwater Demolitions
Physical:
Hand to hand commando
swimming and fatigue note
plus a few more skills

so there was nothing stopping a dog boy from taking the skills if you chose to.
although IMO the dog boys likely should have a few extra skills added to their "core skills list"

which was:
speaks American and dragonese at 90%
intelligence +6%
radio basic +10%
pilot hovercraft +10%
read sensory equipment +10%
weapon systems +10%
Climbing +10%
Running
land Navigation +10%
wilderness survival +10%
WP energy pistol
WP Energy rifle
WP one of choice
Hand to Hand Martial arts

IMO adding Military Etiquette might make sense (until I reread the skill where it says all soldiers have it at base skill of 30% with no improvement)

of course the coalition war campaign references the rifts main book for the dog boy and they changed it a bit in the ultimate edition

Orin J.

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Re: a little help from former military members
« Reply #33 on: 13 October 2019, 15:16:30 »
part of it is the coalition actively chooses to give dog boys a limited skillset both to limit their ability to go AWOL and to recognize their primary value in regards to tactical considerations (not to mention dragonese is probably illegal outside of training for specific deep infiltration missions), so training as pilots is going to be limited for dog boys. the coalition is very restrictive with information of all sorts after all, they don't believe in training specialist skills to expendable troops "just in case".

parachuting itself is probably an acceptable training for dogboys though, i just wasn't sure they employed that tactic with their heavy use of flying power armor and low-altitude mechanized infantry. but if they did, it makes sense to use it on dogboys rather than training them on the sky-cycles or SAMAS.
The Grey Death Legion? Dead? Gotcha, wake me when it's back.....
--------------------------
Every once in a while things make sense.


Don't let these moments alarm you. They pass.

 

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