I don't disagree that IS Warship crews "at first glance" seem to lack experience since ZERO Warships were around a decade before the Jihad.
That said, I do think your forgetting something.
NONE of those Warship crews were actually green nubes fresh out of basic.
Somewhere in the fluff I've seen it written that all the early Warship Crews were made up of combinations of Dropship & Jumpship crews.
I don't have FM:FWL in front of me, but I have a vague memory of one of the FW Corvette captains being a "Veteran Avenger" captain from the FW Assault DS Navy group.
Essentially the best of DS & JS crews got moved to WS since they each had 1/3 of the "XP recipe".
For lack of a good definition the Recipe as I see it is (Thrust Based Maneuver Combat / IE DS, KF Drive / IE JS, & then Combo/Size/NavalGuns training to put it all together)
They got OTJ training as actual WS school classes were created, some eventually got those, as backfill training & eventually new graduates of DS/JS schools could then get WS training. But from what I recall a lot of it was OTJ/basic classes training for the veterans of the house navies that already had plenty of time as either KF-JumpShip or Assault DS groups.
The green nubes were then backfilling in for all those JS/DS crews that were half gutted to fill out the first WS crews.
It wasn't ideal to be sure, but I think your example of not knowing what Damage Control is, is a bit off, since they had people coming from combat DS branches.
Branches, that don't do damage control, and can't do some of the basics of damage mitigation, because they primarily exist to move soldiers from the jump point, to the surface, and you can't keep ground pounders wrapped in pressure suits so that you don't have your shipboard atmosphere transmitting fires and shockwaves.
Some dumb jackass always forgets a critical piece of gear, and it's questionable if there's even a suit available that a 'mechwarrior can WEAR in their cockpit.
Not with the standard being booty shorts and a cooling vest...and
that is the guy who's going to have the command authority to dictate your environmental settings, and your thrust curve on approach-because he's not strapped into an accel couch wearing a flight suit...and neither are his troopers, who likely left
something unsecured.
trip and fall at three gees and you're likely to need an ambulance if not the morgue van from broken bones and internal bleeding. Means dropships do a lot of their flight time not exceeding one gee, and not maneuvering too hard.
Jumpships top out at .01 gee to .1 gee for the really sporty models. "Maneuvering" means in a few hours you can get turned around and maybe do a soft-dock. These being INNER SPHERE jumpship crew, being "Shot at" is rare enough they'll need special classes and maybe counseling after the first time it happens to them...assuming they survive. (the whole "Jumpships are sacrosanct" thing for centuries would tend to build LOTS of bad habits and assumptions. bake them right into the base psychology.)
The number of bad habits that will get you killed in a warship
multiplies here, including the bad habit of not everyone understanding that hits do more than merely hull breaches-they create
massive fires and you're carrying lots of ammo-a hit that bad on a dropship and you don't have to worry about the crew-they're dead, as is their ship.
go through your older books, 'durable' on dropships (durable enough for damage control procedures to matter) didn't start happening until the Word of Blake started slapping protectoin and capital weapons on Mules in the 3060s.
Maybe even from lessons learned in Alain's Big Adventure.
The nearest equivalent (functionally) would be taking your local F&W patrol, some merchant seamen off big cargo boats, your local yacht club, and putting it under the command of a Naval Historian like Drachinifel-and giving them a barely-refurbished USS
Missouri, or
Iowa.
As long as they're not facing an actual navy crewed by regulars with professional standards, they'll do 'okay'-at least, avoid grounding themselves on a rock somewhere.
Thankfully, they were facing
Clanners whom are about on part with a 3rd year Annapolis Cadet in terms of actual experience (only, with an organizatoin that encourages the kind of shit behavior professional navies tried since the days of Nelson to beat out of their officers), but have all the awesome new toys.
For THIS exercise, the challenges for the FSN, is simply building up a professional, working Navy, rather than a collection of militaria in the hands of highly literate, but otherwise unprepared, amatuers.
If they did that, it wouldn't really matter
what kind of ships they have, because Navies only work if the crews and officers are good-in the modern day "Sailors who fight beat warriors who sometimes visit boats".
same thing here-the hypothetical FSN has to focus on developing a skills base and an institutional culture of professionalism that would look like inhumane nightmare fuel to the ground arm, with emphasis on mastering their environment and their survival equipment (their ships). such a Navy would
eat the collections of militaria used by someone else.
even with lower tech solutions and answers.
What tasks need to be mastered?
1. interception, and withdrawal in deep (non close orbital) space. This is the big one, because it's difficult enough to be rare. Working out how to catch pirates at the pirate point, or just outside it, instead of waiting for 'm to reach close orbit.
2. Mapping. Map the gravity wells, map their positions, map the systems you're defending, know where the pirate points ARE, and where they will
be. This isn't about in-system jumps, it's about being able to react to a probe before they're burning wal-mart to the ground.
3. Damage Mitigation. You are in a warship, you will be shot at, your enemies, will probably hit. Find ways to work your ship that make this NOT a fatal event for the entire crew.
4. RECON. Naval forces work best with information. Information is gathered passively, and actively, but you can't trust that Comstar is going to deliver the reports of your spies in time for them to be of use, nor can you trust them not to deliver those reports to the people you're spying on. A working navy needs to do recon, that target system? if you don't know the patrol periods, range, and composition of the enemy's militia and/or garrisons? you've failed, don't launch the mission. Launch a mission to spy on them instead, maybe using...
5. Duration Operation: why did the SLDF have such a huge cargo on their warships? well, the Zenith and Nadir are the closest
permanent and stable approaches (Pirate points are transitory-they appear and disappear periodically). you can enter from BEYOHND the jump limit at angles local defense
can't afford to look. but, this requires fuel and food, and spending LOTS of time in space. GET USED TO DOING THAT. also get used to using telescopes and radio antennas and coping with lightspeed delay and doppler effect so you can gather useful intel.
Humans are creatures of habit, observe one long enough, and you'll know how well he reacts, and how he reacts, and how to turn that against him.
6. Under Way Replenishment in support of Duration Ops. The less time your crew spends in port, the fewer chances they have to tell a bar-girl something that screws your whole strategic offensive. This also sharpens and develops your OWN ability to predict what YOUR forces can, and can't accomplish.
7. Communications!!! Navies in the age of sail carried critical messages because they were secure means of doing so. Ninety percent of your FSN (or other Great House Navy) needs to be carrying messages and critical info you're not stupid enough to trust to Comstar. A 'Command Circuit' should be
your normal, not something that strains your assets, you need to have couriers who only go from system a, to system b, and do so rapidly and regularly with alternates. This is like putting a supercharger on any warships you have, because they can actually
know where to go in time to be worth sending.
wall of battle and gun-power is tertiary to these-it's ridiculously easy to deny an enemy a battle he's prepped to wage for months, or to deny him the terms he intended when he started preparing.
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