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DARKSTAR CAMPAIGN UPDATE: DUCHESS ANNABEL’S WAR IS OVER
Darkstar - Background and Setting (Sect 1.4)
This fourth part of the Darkstar background and setting material outlines “Naval Life,” what the navies and fleets are actually like – both in the future world of Darkstar and to a certain extent how they are in reality today. It includes the major divisions of a navy, how they are organized into fleets, task forces, and battlegroups, how one is inducted into either the enlisted, commissioned officer, or warrant officer ranks, how the rank structures are different for fleet, aerospace, and marine arms, what ranks and billets hold what levels of command, and even a sample of the rank insignia (although these would vary from nation to nation, of course.
Also includes the corporate “rank structure.” 😀
Sample page – full doc linked above.
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Another great read. Fascinating to see how well thought out the transition from modern naval organisation to science fiction extension is put together.
The table at the end is very convenient, and overall it’s a clear explanation of how all the different overlapping and named ranks function.
Got to love a CAG 🙂 It’s interesting the idea that the “air boss” supercedes a carriers captain when there are aerospace units in the air. Is that reflective of real carrier command in modern navies, or something invented for this? Apologies for my lack of knowledge on the subject!
— Some minor things I spotted —
Possible typo I think in the bit about officer ranks that reads “Only by qualifying for, attending, end excelling at OCS…” the “end” should be “and”.
Also “rather lose his life than is career” the “is” should be “his”
“He commands the scouts planes, cutters, yachts, and assault boats” I suspect it should be “scout planes” or “scouts, planes”
I couldn’t parse the bit in parentheses in this fragment unless you remove the “thousands” after the closing parenthesis.
“essentially carrier-type vessels built to house hundreds (or even thousands) thousands of marines and dozens of drop ships”
“command a company of own” I think their is a missing “their” between of and own. It might’ve gotten lost in the layout of the page, as the “own” is on the start of the next column under a picture.
Thanks again for the heads up on these points, @davehawes. Honestly I didn’t even think anyone was really going to read the documents! Glad to be proven wrong.
The “Air Boss” command thing is a little nebulous, it comes and goes depending on the era of naval operations, which navy you’re talking about, and how you define “aircraft in the air.” Modern aircraft carriers, after all, ALWAYS have at least a CAP flying overhead, regardless of darkness or weather.
Mostly this idea harkens back to the days of propeller-driven aircraft carrier ops, when aircraft carriers would always “turn into the wind” and go to flank speed to launch or recover aircraft. This put a little more wind over the deck, and would add perhaps 30-40 knots of wind speed to help these aircraft get enough lift for takeoff. During such times, the CAG would often determine the speed and course of the carrier (and thus the whole battlegroup) – making him temporarily in effect “master of the ship.”
Nowadays, with aircraft carriers launching via steam catapult (or the new superconductive magnets in the upcoming Gerald Ford class), and carriers ALWAYS having at least a few aircraft operating in a CP (combat air patrol) if nothing else, I think this tradition is a little more of a relic of the past.
@aras , @gladesrunner , and I just had a pretty serious carrier battle in Darkstar, with two light fleet carriers (light cruiser) and a light carrier (destroyer) engaged, many of their aerospace groups double-elite in status. It really brought home the importance of powerful aerospace strike groups, especailly if you h ave them upgraded to elite), yet the cruisers and destroyers also engaged in a simultaneous gunnery duel.
This is what we were going for in the game design, we wanted carriers and aerospace strike groups to be a major factor, but not the dominant factor that would render everything else obsolete as they did in real naval history.