Sparta Command HQ

[Skanky Burns]

Our "pushups" in the mud also involve other people, but we don't need to pay them.

[Jamski]

Those of you who have german TV were able to watch a documentary about the French Forgien Legion last night. They were doing pressups in the jungle in a river (men and women) with the sergeant ocassionally standing on some poor lass's head

Great stuff.

-Jam

[Skanky Burns]

That wasn't quite what I had in mind.

[Jamski]

No?

You really missed out on true Spartan training video material

-Jam

[DeathByTheSword]

ok but what is the general spartan structure right now?...do we have any extra roleplaying thingies that can make it extra fun?

[Jamski]

Everyone should get a unit to command as a priority

And I call shotgun on the starting rover.

-Jam

[Kassiopeia]

Good point.

Above all, we need ranks. Lots of them. Also we need branches of the armed forces, a strict system of organising these forces (battalions, escadrons, fleets, flotillas, squadrons, and so on).

For instance, the leader could be the Commander in Chief, with the honourary title of Colonel (of course). All the other nodes of the spider web, who feed the information to the CiC, could be Generals of their possible different specialties (we could call these branches, like Intelligence, Military, Research, and so on). The actual armies and governors would be then under the direct control of the Commander in Chief. This web would be the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

When I think of the Spartan government, I really think of the fascistic system they had in the film version of Starship Troopers (probably the same was in the novel as well): only members of the armed forces and veterans are allowed to vote (and the vote will have pretty little effect on things), and the system is altogether pretty much meritistic, the merits being of course wartime achievements.

Of course one can rise in the hierarchy other ways as well, since if the only change is brought by war, the ones in power will shy away from fighting which would stagnate things.

Edit: Yes, and of course, when we get to fighting things, we'll be doing our administrative duties while with our units in the front lines. Some amount of active service in battle ought to be mandatory to keep the administrators from becoming wimpy pencil pushers.

[Maniac]

Does somebody know what the government members were called in eg the Argentinian Junta? Simply "ministers"?

[Kassiopeia]

http://www.yendor.com/vanished/junta.html

Chiefs, ministers and commanders.

Titles that are in Spanish, be they commanders, chiefs or ministers in English, would certainly be a nice touch, though. A nod towards our honoured Colonel Santiago.

[Drogue]

I'd go for Commander in Chief, then Major General for 2nd in command, and Generals for each department. Governors, if needed, could be Captains of their state

[DeathByTheSword]

hmz i dont think we should go above colenel...but they someone can come up with some nice names...i would like to see for RPG purpose that this system also has some affect on how we run the faction...ofcourse it is a demo game but maybe give some people 2 votes or something like that because they have a higher rank...this will increase the demand for high positions so that we will get more involved people...?

[Kassiopeia]

hmz i dont think we should go above colenel

I respectfully disagree. A faction of any size would have far too many levels of hierarchy in its military to have so few ranks. We'd have to place Colonel on the top of a standard hierarchy you have in real life, today. I'd prefer reserving it for the CiC and removing it from the lower rank status it has altogether, so that there will always be only one Colonel (with a capital C) at a given time in Sparta.

.i would like to see for RPG purpose that this system also has some affect on how we run the faction...ofcourse it is a demo game but maybe give some people 2 votes or something like that because they have a higher rank...this will increase the demand for high positions so that we will get more involved people...?

Of course, the RPG method of ruling and the real method of ruling need not be the same. However, I don't think that scaling votes between faction members based on RP rank is meaningful, since most RP ranks will probably be arbitrary if anything*. We could have veto powers or various other things granted to people of top rank, but I'd prefer to keep the one vote, one player policy in real polls.

Of course, we could have criteria like whether or not the player is a general, a governor, and if the player has no position in the government per se, the vote power could be determined by how long the player has been in the faction. But I don't think that would particularly attract new players.

I'm fond of a consensus system of sorts where we all just kind of agree to do things this and that way, but that's not too appliable especially should our faction grow rather big in players.

[Maniac]

Originally posted by Jamski
Everyone should get a unit to command as a priority

Originally posted by Kassiopeia
Above all, we need ranks. Lots of them. Also we need branches of the armed forces, a strict system of organising these forces (battalions, escadrons, fleets, flotillas, squadrons, and so on).

For ranks and rates I'd like to refer back to a post I made a while back in this thread:

http://www.apolyton.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=2903180#post2903180

It sounds a nice idea to let everyone have a unit they command. (Though do I assume correctly it would still be allowed for others to offer suggestions what to do with all those units and coordinate our efforts?)

As for army organization in battalions and squadrons etcetera, I'd like to refer to this site I found a while back:

http://usmilitary.about.com/library/milinfo/blarmychainofcommand.htm

I have also been thinking a bit about how many soldiers should be in one in-game unit, and how we should call such a unit. Based on the link above, I concluded calling our seperate units batallions, containing at minimum 300 soldiers and commanded by a Lieutenant-Colonel, would be most realist. I got to that number like this:
1> One pop in SMAC is 10000 people.
2> Even in the countries with the largest percentage of military of the total population, the percentage is "only" 2%. I assume that this can't be much different for the Spartans, at least in peace time. However let's assume we'll be at war most of the time and thus have a larger military all the time and let's also count police forces to the military, and thus say our military is 4% of our population.
3> Looking at the military sizes in the current ACDG, I'd say it would be a good estimate that we'll have one military unit per one to two pops.
=> 4% of 10000 = 400 military in one pop, and each pop supports between a half and one unit.
That way we about have the minimum size of a battalion (300) per unit and we can all call ourselves to the very least Lieutenant-Colonel if we command one. (Yeah, not such a steady argumentation, but it's better than nothing )

Originally posted by Kassiopeia
For instance, the leader could be the Commander in Chief, with the honourary title of Colonel (of course). All the other nodes of the spider web, who feed the information to the CiC, could be Generals of their possible different specialties (we could call these branches, like Intelligence, Military, Research, and so on).

Originally posted by Drogue
I'd go for Commander in Chief, then Major General for 2nd in command, and Generals for each department.

AFAIK a Major General is a lower rank than a General, so that would sound rather contradictory for a second in command.
I'll throw in an alternative proposal for discussion:

Commander in Chief
= turnplayer. Unlike the system we had in the Consciousness, IMHO the turnplayer doesn't necessarily have to be the "leader" of the faction though. Eg in the Hive Kody was for a long time the turnplayer AFAIK, while other people had the highest official positions of Chairman and Deputy Chairman etc.

President
= guardian of the consitution, takes care of nominations and elections, and fills in for absent officials. More or less the job description of the Alpha Talent and the Second Function in the previous ACDGs. The "President" wouldn't have powers such as presidents like in the USA or France though. I'd rather see it as a "President" such as in Italy or Israel, where IIRC it is more a ceremonial function. Likewise here it would mostly be a "meta-game" organizational function, and (unless officials are absent) thus without in-game powers. Therefore it seems fitting not to give this job a military title.

Ministers
= the Directors and XX Functions of the previous ACDGs. Kassiopeia and Drogue proposed to call them all Generals. However I was thinking: let's give all the government officials the title of 'Minister', but allow them besides that a military title of their choice. That way you don't force everyone to be a General, but everyone can besides 'minister' still pick a more personalized title of their liking, eg Colonel, Field Marshall, Admiral of the Fleet, etcetera.
Oh yeah, perhaps a title especially reserved for the 'Minister of Military Affairs' (and thus the supreme commander of the entire army, fleet and air force) could be 'Generalissimo'.

Originally posted by DeathByTheSword
hmz i dont think we should go above colenel...

Originally posted by Kassiopeia
I respectfully disagree. A faction of any size would have far too many levels of hierarchy in its military to have so few ranks. We'd have to place Colonel on the top of a standard hierarchy you have in real life, today. I'd prefer reserving it for the CiC and removing it from the lower rank status it has altogether, so that there will always be only one Colonel (with a capital C) at a given time in Sparta.

If I recall correctly I read once that Colonels have such a "special status" because they are the highest rank that still have soldiers directly under them and command them themselves from the field. All the higher ranks such as generals would more or less perform their job from behind their desk and make battle plans for the army from there, and thus hardly see soldiers directly.
So making Colonels the highest army official as DBTS proposes (and thus as a consequence give them the desk job the generals currently have) or making "Colonel" a title only reserved for the supreme Spartan leader as Kassiopeia proposes, would remove the exact reason why 'Colonel' is such a special title. I'd therefore say to leave them what they are: the highest ranking commander that is actually with their soldiers on the field, and therefore has greater respect from the common soldier.
If, such as Kassi proposes, you really want to give the supreme Spartan leader the title of Colonel, a work-around could be to name one of our elite units the "Factional Guard" (hint towards the 'Praetorian Guard'), keep it in Sparta Command at all times, and place it under direct command of the Spartan supreme leader. Since the leader would have direct control and always be with his soldiers "on the field" in Sparta Command, the title of "Colonel" would then be justified.

[Drogue]

I'd go with Maniac's system, but I think President is too weak in militaristic sense, and too strong in power. Also, it could cause confustion, since in the US, the President is the Commander in Chief, so some (peopel coming in later) may think the two are interchangable. I'd go for Major General personally, or Field Marshall (top rating in UK army, but not CiC).

Also, Minister is too weak and diplomatic, IMHO. I'd prefer General personally. General of Diplomacy, General of Internal Affairs, etc. kind of thing.

[Kassiopeia]

Instead of "President", we could call the more politically inclined leader the Second in Command or Secretary General or somesuch. Gives it a better ring, IMHO. He could be the acting CiC as well until a new CiC is chosen by/from the Joint Chiefs of Staff, should something happen to the CiC.

We could call the Ministers Directors too, though I'm with Drogue here in that I'd prefer Generals. The other factions will have Ministers anyway. We could call them Chiefs or maybe Heads (though that'll sound a bit silly on its own). I definitely like the idea of giving them the opportunity to come up with their own titles

Maniac's political leader idea is good though, a bivirate of sorts. I'm not too interested in the entire Colonel question so I'm fine with not keeping it as the Supreme Leader's honourary title.