Yes, but the simplest approximation of that skill IRL is a pre-briefed "Here's what the plan is, here's who is responsible for each part, and if X person goes down, Y takes over." I just think that only modern special ops teams work together so much that if someone goes down someone else takes over in 3-5 seconds. The "My name is [ Section9 ] and I am the Man In Charge" version really takes about 15-30 seconds (a full Infinity turn or so), mostly for the "who the hell is higher rank than me?" assessment. [ edit ]: make that the "who the hell is higher rank than me? Please? Fucking seriously? Nobody higher rank than me? How the fuck did we let that happen?!?" assessment/inner monologue...
I wonder if CoC is indicative of the trooper in question having an authority which means that if they give you an order, rather than checking if the LT is dead and command has passed to them, you just follow it, even if it's beyond the authority of their nominal rank. So like, when the Farzan gets on the horn to the Fiday and says "alright son, don't kill that sniper, sneak down the ladder and kill those line troopers at the back" he doesn't say "well Lt Muyib said I was to kill the Sniper pal, so who is in charge now? Is he dead? Is it you?" and then clarify the chain of command. He just says "righto" because he knows that either way, he can follow the order from Lt. Muyib or Sgt. Farzan and know he's in the clear, he's following the correct orders regardless of who passes them, he doesn't have to check. But if a Ghulam takes over and does the same, he does have to check. Especially in a world of information warfare like Infinity! He needs to make sure these are legit orders from the legit mission commander, rather than his Comms being haxxed by those sneaky Nomad infidels and impersonating someone he maybe doesn't know well at all. And everyone else does too. And that's the LoL turn. And with a Kempei it's maybe "I'm going to do what he says and not check the orders because I don't want to be arrested" etc etc. But with CoC, it's seamless. And I'd argue considerably more unusual and difficult to do, essentially you have people in the force who can order the force around with the same authority as the commander without question. So how does this avoid problems like a clash of orders? Because CoC is clearly indicative of someone with the skill and experience to be entrusted with the authority, but not use it unless they have to, not cause problems, operate seamlessly from the actual commander etc. And perhaps that's actually quite a rare thing to train into an actual corps of troops whose job it is to do that.
There also may be a cultural factor. Most CoC exists in a culture of rigid, sometimes cult-like structure. Tohaa, JSA, Phalanx, ISS, Hassassin. An Observance sectorial would probably have it but other Nomads soldiers aren't part of that culture while Haqq (state religion) and Yu Jing (Confucianism) are. Phalanx is a bit odd because the rest of ALEPH isn't part of the cult but that's why it costs 1 SWC I guess.
Yeah I quite like that idea: just have Slack linked to your comlog and vitals and as soon as the Lt. is out it switches seemlessly to the next one and everybody on the field instantly knows who's in charge. I guess it would also explain rather well that EM Isolation fucks a lot with the active command structure, because it creates uncertainty, you see the Lt. Is still alive but Slack switched over to the new one.
Within the Steel Phalanx I think it makes sense, they're supposed to have an almost superhuman level of cult-like efficiency. They're not a traditional military, they are born, live and day within the heroic culture of the Phalanx
I want to add that not all militaries are so rigid in their COC sequence. In the australian army a section (10 guys) broken into a rifle group and a machine gun group (5 each). Everyone is breified on the plan, section 2ic controls the mg group while the IC controls the rifle group/ co-ordinates the mg group. Often it comes down to the informal heirachy that comes about from just the day to day interactions with each other. 'boss is down, ill keep on with personal contact drills until the next experianced lad tells me where to go' is not uncommon. It would be extremely rare for a unit to be thrown together and not have spent time knowing who is who in the unit. Edit: To further this, officers REALLY have to earn the respect of the men, rank holds minimal meaning and pissing the lads off with the wrong attitude will land you in the hospital after anonymous people attacked you in the bar on Friday night. Also 'boss' is a term of endearment you bestow on the leaders you do respect, everyone else just gets called sir/maam
I think it's more accurate to describe them as violent psychotics on meds that violent psychotics should not be given ( a bit unrelated and OT, probably better for the wtf? thread, but I remember an experiment that happened in the 70s where they tried to raise a dolphin as a human, but had to pull the plug when the dolphin hit puberty and wanted a mate more than a mommy) As for politics on the ships, I've always imagined Tunguska as anarcho-capitalists, literally the only thing that talks is money and legal matters are settled in private courts and 99% of everything is based on who can hire the better XYZ. Bakunin has always struck me as being fairly anarcho-collectivist in it's nature, people group together to do what they do best and the 'social energy' is analogous to the consensus-based approach to governance. There is of course the absolute right of the individual to do whatever the heck they want, but one needs to remember that every other citizen has the absolute right to pop their cube with a grapefruit knife and bung it out the nearest airlock if they think you're being a knob...
Im not super up on the lore, but do we know that? add hoc formations doesnt have to mean unaquanted. Today I have sniper jimmy, tomorrow its engineer tom, doesnt mean I dont know jimmy or tom
It would depend on the scenario and background of your force, but forces are formed for specific missions in Infinity and they may not be that familiar with each other. To the exact degree it would depend on the army and frankly the background you imagine for them. But having worked or trained together before isn't the default, they could have met for the first time to do one mission.
And voice of experience here, it takes a couple exercises to get everyone back on the same page. Hell, it took us a week of Refresher Training with a bunch of assholes from Squadron and then a week of Initial Response drills before we were back up to speed, and that's even though we had all been through multiple different trainings in the 3 months the other guys had the boat.
It kinda is the default on Corregidor though. Since it's such a small force with a community focus you at least should know through friends or cousins and you're all on the same "boat" anyways. ;)
I'm really interested to see what Securitate are going to be like, on a slightly different topic. They are our third line trooper, theoretically one of the original Nomad troops. We know that they will have plenty of profiles due to the variety of weapon options, but other than that, I wonder how vanilla they'll be. Could we see an Order Sergeant type situation, with different profiles getting visors, TO Camo etc?
You'd be surprised. Guys on carriers, where you have ~2000 people in the crew (plus the air wing), rarely know people outside their specialty. Particularly since the different specialties tend to bunk together.
