Star Destroyer Command Staff thoughts

[NecronLord]

An imperial military protocol question for those more in the know than I, for a roleplaying game and just for general curiosity.

What's the actual normal commanding officer of an Imperator class? The ISB claims they constitute a line, and as such would presumably rate a Line Captain, though in the movies we see Captain Needa as, presumably, a standard Captain. Could it be that Line Captains primarily command the vessels on detached service, but when functioning as part of a larger squadron they typically "only" rate a captain?

For a third question, does anyone know who commands the ground forces on an ISD? I understand they carry about nine thousand troops, so notionally that'd be a brigade or even a division, but presumably every ISD doesn't have a brigadier or major general aboard: could this be why they have the High Colonel rank, at the same level as the line captain who'd notionally command a ship of this class, rather than a general officer that would normally be assigned to near ten thousand troops?

An ISD carries a wing of fighters, and thus presumably has a wing commander (or Lt. Colonel) but also various other support craft, shuttles, etc? Is there ba group captain (or Colonel) in command of the entire small-craft complement?

Does every ship rate an ISB prescence? Presumably it does? Would it be a Colonel? As the senior ISB officer on the Death Star was a mere colonel, presumably not? Do we have any information there? Likewise with Imperial Intelligence and other arms?

[Mr Bean]

Question 1
Why do you drawn between a Line Captain and as a standard Captain on a single ship? If you have the rank of Line Captain and Standard Captain than the only reason for having Line Captain is to different an Admiral who commands multiple ships and has his flag on one ship VS a Captain who commands his ship plus multiple other ships.
Even Commanders can lead multiple smaller ship squadrons.

Question Two
A larger squadron typically has an Admiral above him somewhere so a Line Captain could remain a Line Captain or be degraded depending on Imperial Space Tradition which is of course... not detailed.

Question Three
An ISD has a full Brigade aboard it I believe? Then Colonel or 1-Star General, I'm leaning towards Colonel due to the detached nature of the duty.

[NecronLord]

Question 1
Why do you drawn between a Line Captain and as a standard Captain on a single ship? If you have the rank of Line Captain and Standard Captain than the only reason for having Line Captain is to different an Admiral who commands multiple ships and has his flag on one ship VS a Captain who commands his ship plus multiple other ships.

Because of ISB rating a single star destroyer as a "line" in and of itself, which obviously reflects their agenda of pushing individual ISDs as the biggest and best thing evar, but nonetheless is some sort of canon. The main reason though, is that notionally it seems bizzare to me that the high colonel/brigadier commanding a permanantly attached ground forces would be higher in grade than the captain of the ship itself.

Q3.

The supposed infantry complement of an ISD is around 9,700 (OT ICS) while the ISB gives the corresponding stormtrooper unit as a Legion of 9,192 composed of four regiments (each led by a Lt. Col) led by a High Colonel. Of course we know that colonel also exists as a rank, but it doesn't appear on that schema.

All the info I've got seems to indicate the organizational structure goes Regiment -> Battlegroup/Legion, with the Star Destroyer being closer to the latter (and indeed, they definately seem to carry Stormtroopers).

[RogueIce]

Choices of One gives us Senior Captain as well. Although it's Thrawn and he seems to command multiple ships at the time. IIRC the captain of the Chimaera is only referred to as Captain Drusan, which is probably his rank since Zahn does take the effort to denote Thrawn as a Senior Captain and Pellaeon as a Senior Commander but doesn't do the same for Drusan.

As far as the troops go, Stormtroopers are a whole seperate chain of command from the Army. So if the total complement is about battlegroup/division level it's going to be divided between the Army and Stormtrooper Corps, so a lower level of command for each. And there may not be an overall Ground Forces Commander if what I recall about the Stormies being all super independent is correct.

Also in Allegiance I think the ISB presence aboard the ISD Reprisal wasn't considered as normal but someone with the book could check me out on that.

[Zwinmar]

I only really know US navy and Marine ranks, that being said traditionally a Captain is the commander of the ship regardless of the actual rank he holds. Lt.s in charge of small vessels is the Captain for instance.

To the point that those who are not the actual Captian bit hold that rank when aboard are called by the next rank up (at least for 0-3's)

[The Duchess of Zeon]

There are a lot of ranks in that area in real life, muddying the waters, so that rationalisations aren't needed. Generally a billet can be filled in an exigency by someone from one rank up or down without much difficulty, which is how Captain Needa should be ascribed.

Some observations:

-- The historical Dutch rank of "Schoutbynacht" which literally means "Night watch" and referred to an officer whose job it was to tend the fleet while the Admiral was sleeping, who outranked Captains but generally not Commodores. It was used in Scandinavia and Russia also, in the later case as шаутбенахт.

-- European navies where the rank system runs "Korvettenkapitan, Fregattenkapitan, Kapitan-zur-See" in some kind of variation thereof depending on language. Each one is a Captain, but of a different sized vessel. The use of these ranks for lesser postings on one ship only followed the massive expansion of ships in the late 19th century; before then, Lieutenants ranked by seniority comprised the rest of the officers on a ship.

-- Vice Commodore is a sometimes, if little, used rank.

-- Commodore is either a rank or a title depending on the service.

-- There have been various short-lived ranks like "Commodore-Admiral" to fill rank table gaps around Rear Admiral. The Germans use Flottillenadmiral below Konteradmiral.

-- The rank of "Line Captain" has a direct precedence in the K.u.K. Kriegsmarine, which used the rank of Linienschiffskapitän.

-- The Portuguese used the rank of "capitão-mor" for commanders of "Great Shyppes" of the 17th century, which evolved into the rank of "capitão de mar e guerra", (Captain of the Sea and War) which is now equivalent to a full Captain in Brazil where it is still used, but before that had more of the connotations of a fleet commander.

-- "Port Admiral" used to be a title in Britain and the US, for a retired Captain managing a port given a courtesy promotion of Admiral because he was in charge of the supply arrangements of the entire fleet quartered there.

-- Admiral's staffs might have a flag captain for their flagship and a fleet captain who was essentially their chief of staff. Congruence with the position of fleet captain's role in the RN and the duties for the formal Dutch rank of Schoutbynacht are high, showing how two services can approach the problem differently.

-- And of course there are distinctions between Captains who have been given commands ("Post Captain") and those who hold the rank but are on staff.

[Patroklos]

DP again, damn!

[Patroklos]

I think you also need to keep in mind the last post with the fact that the Imperial Navy was expanding rapidly from inception to Endor, so the need to differentiate between those holding the same rank but functionally senior to each other due to responsibility or assignment was probably very necessary. Who knows how labrynthine the Imperial Navy's beaurocracy is but I am sure there are a lot of junior officers performing tasks ideally rated to someone higher ranking while waiting for the admin to catch up.

On a terrestrial ship with a couple hundred odd people it’s probably easy to just know that between the Captain/XO/Senior department head that may hold the same rank which one is senior without specific nomenclature. There is not that much more strata added to the Imperial rank structure over real world systems from the Captain level and below but a single ship now can hold 35,000 spacers plus troops. Sure the step up between a US cruiser and US carrier is from 320 to 5000 but while the captian is still an O6 the carrier now has 5-6 O6 department heads/an O6 CAG/probably an O6 CREDES Commodore/plus the Strike Group’s Admiral’s staff that probably has at least an O6 COS but probably a few others too. It gets very confusing even at that level so multiply that by at least seven times it would seem logical to have specifically identified “Senior” or “High” or “Line” designations even if they are just situational in character vice another official level on the overall military’s TO&E.

The organizations are far larger and much more spread out and dynamic as far as roving fleets and planetary/system/sector/region versions of everything as well so officers commanding a ship as their normal duty probably assume some of those roles too. A lot of those extra ship commands are probably held concurrently in a lot of quiet sectors, just to confuse things more.

I am sure there were all sorts of brevets and spot promotions and even in the real world once you are selected for a rank but don't actually wear it yet (in the US you can wait almost a year many times) people tend to call you by that new rank anyway. It appears even non military high ranking Imperial agents (ie Vader) had a lot of leeway in promoting/demoting military personnel, with either the hard power of being directly included in the chain of command or just having enough power in a system that takes soft influence so seriously that such decisions are rubber stamped.