Limits to skill (pet MilSciFi peeve)

[Zixinus]

Just to note, there is another use in wilderness training: squads moving behind enemy lines. If the territory they are moving in is wilderness, then wilderness survival may be useful for both moving around and still being alive if they lose their sandwiches (or rations or whatever).

EDIT: Just a thought on the Astertes/Space Marines: these guys and their training and everything are so ridiculous that they end up in the other end of the spectrum. In-universe they're awesome and all, but anybody who knows how militaries work will groan when they read about them. Their procedures and everything only really make sense in their own universe and definitely not our own.

[Black Admiral]

Plenty of Sci-Fi elite-troops do get extensive life-combat training though. 40K-Space Marines are put through genuine life-or-death survival and combat training.

No, they're not, at least with the exception of some rather stupid Chapters. Once they're actually being trained (as opposed to being selected as aspirants - and even then, not all or even most Astartes Chapters have insanely wasteful recruitment practices like the Blood Ravens and Doom Eagles do), the majority of Chapters will try and avoid getting any killed where practical, since viable candidates for geneseed implantation aren't common enough that they can be casually discarded.

Even in chapters that try not to waste viable candidates, some of the training exercises are dangerous enough that there's an appreciable attrition rate- Space Wolves come to mind, from the first 40k novel of that series.

Actually, the Wolves make their training more dangerous than strictly speaking it needs to be for certain philosophic reasons. That's the same reason why Spoiler

they've never tried to replicate Wolf Priest Wyrmblade's efforts to engineer the Wulfen effect, and the underlying nature of the geneseed that causes it, out of the Vlka Fenryka's geneseed since Magnus destroyed the original work during the Thousand Sons' attack on the Fang in M32. Bjorn even states outright that if he'd known what Wyrmblade was trying to do, he'd have destroyed it himself.

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

Gunhead has a point; there is a puzzle to combat and there is a magic piece that sorts it all out- you know exactly which one it is too, it's the one that leaves sodding great huge mushroom clouds all over the place.

Pre-atomic special forces are a different topic, get back to them in a moment, but essentially all this, the fiction and the reality it draws from and is pitched to people who live in, takes place after conventional large scale warfare between advanced nations has been rendered pointless and the first step to mutual destruction.

Small wars may go on as normal- "small" referring to economic impact rather than body count unfortunately- wars between countries that are not superpowers may go on more or less as normal most of the time, there may be the occasional outbreak of superpower adventurism and proxy combat, but (to use a typically British sporting metaphor) the big game is essentially over, called on account of uranium rain.


And here, considering what is left to do and what can be made to happen, is where pre- Atomic special forces come in, and how they perpetuate themselves into a world where conventional forces start to look like aiming points, and how that serves fiction.

I've brought up the Royal Corps of Tree Climbers before, but the more I read of and around him, the more I think Slim's comments have to be taken in context of the frankly nineteenth- century attitude he had in general to the laws of war; he believed it was possible, if not essential, to be a moral civilised man and a warrior- takes against special forces in another earlier chapter of his memoirs on the grounds that they cannot possibly operate in accordance with the Geneva Conventions, and such operations are probably best left to the Intelligence services, much more used to illegal and dirty tricks.

His stance may be admirable, but on reflection I do not think the world is of such a shape as to permit him to be correct on this. Or to put it another way, listen carefully between the lines and you should be able to hear the sound of Georgi Zhukov pissing himself with laughter.

The argument of detracting from the quality of the rank and file goes back at least another century before him- Wellington said much the same, in theory, although as ever prepared to deal on a pragmatical basis. Grenadiers and Voltigeurs- although what were objecting to then was not their formation, but their removal from their parent unit into special bodies of their own. Marshal Saxe, "whenever there are four cats to chase, the Grenadiers are sent for, and often get themselves killed to no good purpose as a result."


The post atomic environment, and the sci-fi environment thereby, are different because of the at least apparent (if not necessarily real) futility of large conventional operations. Special operations, consisting of picked men (and latterly women) acting for unconventional purpose, may be beneath the resolution of an act of war, and may therefore be a viable form of war when more straightforward and direct moves are not.

Pre-atomic special forces perpetuated themselves very successfully into this, I would argue; the idea at least, if not literally the units- Paras, Marines of all nations being the prime example. They became a disproportionate part of the armies they come from, and produced a disproportionate amount of the senior leadership down the line- of the British Army anyway.

The difficulty of large conventional ops means the quality of the line can cheerfully be sacrificed to allow and enable this, and mechanisms to pick the best and to maintain quality of who are left have evolved in the army's never-ending struggle with itself. In theory, anyway.

This attracts media attention, and public interset, and eventually the fictioneers follow, in sci- fi as in mundane thrillers.


There is also an argument that can be made about how basically impossible it is to ship enough troops to conquer a settled world with anything resembling even vaguely difficult interstellar travel, and the invading force is going to need a massive qualitative edge to make it in-universe possible to consider launching such an action.

Defeating super- soldiers is done easily, with mass and kit. Compared to an ordinary squaddie, a man in a tank is a super-soldier; faster, tougher, much better armed. Compared to a man in a tank, a man in a fighter is a super-soldier; as long as he has missiles to use, anyway. In Sci-Fi, the man with the orbital doom laser has the edge on them all.

[Gunhead]

@Gunhead
I have to argue against you now, nothing personal. This said, my arguments go for 40K and ONLY 40K. They do not apply to any other setting. I believe that your assessment there about the spikesquirrels is wrong in this particular case. This is for two reasons.
1) Considering this is 40K we are talking about luck may be more than just the random chance we have here. For all we know...
2) Future Space Marines/Elite Troops are going to be expected to face off much scarier and nastier things than just spikesquirrels. And exposing them to a madness inducing experience like this early on in training would work rather well to weed out those who would crack at the sight of a newer ending green wave of orks or a horde of chaos demons advancing on his position.

But as said, these only count for 40K because the place is as messed up as it is.

Both of these arguments basically dwell into the metaphysics of the 40K universe and I know you can basically find stuff to support or discredit almost any claim made. And this is roughly the extent which I willing to go on this matter since 40K warp/magic is just as much shit as it's counterparts found in any other scifi verse. Besides there's a huge difference between a horde of orks and a horde of chaos demons. The former is by definition a mundane threat and regular guardsmen fight them on daily basis. The other is an unnatural threat in it's respective universe and you can basically lay on any wonky powers you like on it.


-Gunhead

[Simon_Jester]

ECR, good to see you in here, wish I could think of anything specific to say in reply. [waves]

Space Marine attrition is more about the psychological/indoctrination side.. they only want "worthy" recruits who fit their (in many cases fucked up, IMHO) physical and psychological profiles (the extremes being the aforemntioned doom eagles.) there's also the attrition rate as a byproduct of the creation process (the need for a certain age range and profile.) Still can be pretty retarded, but they don't actually "learn" many useful military skills (at least not useful to an actual Marine) until they are made into marines.

The average life expectancy of a Space Marine not in combat is measured in centuries. It doesn't really affect the rate at which new Marines come out of the training pipeline if you "waste" a year or two making sure your recruits are the Best of the Best of the Best of the Best before you start giving them real basic training, not in the long run... because they're going to be training intensively for years anyway.

The available recruit population is not, or is strongly implied not to be, the limiting factor on the creation of Space Marines. The limits have more to do with infrastructure (nobody has the facilities to give ten thousand men the transition from baseline human to Astartes at once) and biology (the way progenoid glands work). A group of Astartes can only make new Astartes at a limited rate defined by the way progenoid glands work, and capped by their medical infrastructure, no matter how many candidates they find who are biologically compatible with the geneseed (or thought to be).

Suppose your chapter can only produce, say, 100 new Astartes per year anyway. As long as you get 100 biocompatible recruits a year, it doesn't really matter whether you started with 110, 150, or 1000, assuming you can make those 100 biocompatible recruits into useful Astartes by your chapter's definition.

It also doesn't really matter whether in the year of initial training, because an Astartes isn't considered "trained" until they've been practicing for about five to ten years anyway.* When you add the year of recruit 'training' which teaches them no useful military skills, 5-10 becomes 6-11... and you still get 100 Astartes per year. No more, no less, unless you manage to build up your numbers so you can produce more working progenoid glands per year (which is illegal).

*Something like that.

Don't forget the psychological impact that elite troops have.

Combat is terrifying enough for your average mook when he's just facing the other side's poor dumb mooks. Throw some Immortal Sardaukar Space Marines into the mix and the better part of valor starts to look a lot more attractive. The mook will eventually see that the elites bleed like everyone else, but that leaves a weakness for the enemy to exploit. Of course, a smart commander will use the elites sparingly and build their reputation through high profile victories.

That's how it works in the Super Soldier fiction I'm familiar with. The elites either have such a fearsome reputation that they don't usually face serious resistance or are only used to strike decisive blows once the enemy has been weakened by regular troops. Raw skill isn't the deciding factor.

Both of these are, frankly, stupid.

If the elites have a fearsome reputation and rely on no one actually standing up to them, it only lasts until they encounter someone with the balls or desperation to stand up to them. Suddenly they're at almost as much risk of losing the battle as anyone else, maybe more if they're used to walkovers.

If the elites are used to wreck an army that has already been "softened up" by the rest of the army, then you have two problems. For one, this crushes the morale of the rest of the army, making them man-for-man less effective than they should be, because they know that after they've done all the bleeding the Imperial Praetorians will come swooping down from the sky to take all the glory. For another, you could just as well do this by picking a random combat unit and just holding them in reserve until the battle is decided in your favor.

Both these roles have obvious flaws, and (this is damning) neither of them actually requires elite troops. You don't need elite troops to look scary and make people run away, not if you put so much effort into building their reputation. And you don't need elite troops to sit around doing nothing until the rest of the army has almost beaten the enemy, then swoop in to be in at the death.

It makes so much more sense to use elites for roles that are defined by a specific mission, not a strategy like "use them when the enemy has almost broken." Elites whose job is to infiltrate, or to fight in unusual terrain, or to be extremely effective close quarter shock troops... all those things make sense. Elites whose job is to be the Designated Mopup Team don't.

[Zixinus]

Using an elite troops' reputation has also one massive flaw that contains a multitude of more flaws: what if they the enemy doesn't believe that reputation? Or even know it? Or just dismiss it as propaganda? Or if your fearsome troops accidentally lose a big damn fight and the word of that gets around?

Reserving your elite troops just for their reputation is like conserving ammunition when you have enemy soldiers breathing down your neck. Or rather, it's pointless because you have spent considerably more resources making those elite troops to not use them at all.

[Ahriman238]

Usually when speaking of an 'elite' unit in a modern context, and when not referring to Special Forces, people are referring to a veteran unit. A unit made up of men with much combat experience, who've lost people but tend to makes less mistakes will always seem like supermen to raw troopers.

Superior training, morale, experience and even sometimes physical conditioning can still have an effect on a modern battlefield. Is it more limited than it once was? Yes. Because no matter how fast or long a man can run, a truck can go further and faster with a full squad in the back. But while technology is a huge factor, and a nice advantage to the people who have it, it still matters that the people operating the eqipment are well-trained, disciplined, experienced and motivated, and I cannot forsee any future where this is not true.

That said, there are some rather sharp limits to how much you can invest in quality over quantity. Fifty men could not storm the beaches of Normandy, even if every one of them was an Astartes with all the wank implied. In general, if something can't be taught within a fortnight to enlisted or a year to officers, they'll have to learn on the job.

Now, if there's some planet that produces nothing but badass fighting men who wrestle bears and can kill you with a hard look, feel free to call bullshit. A tough enviroment can encourage abilities or attitudes useful to a soldier, but geography and culture are not the same as destiny and will not make everyone perfectly suited to every aspect of military life.

Feel free to call bullshit twice over if the above planet also has a rich military history, a metal not found anywhere else in the galaxy that makes useful armor, and sounds suspiciously like Rand-A-More

[Gunhead]

Using an elite troops' reputation has also one massive flaw that contains a multitude of more flaws: what if they the enemy doesn't believe that reputation? Or even know it? Or just dismiss it as propaganda? Or if your fearsome troops accidentally lose a big damn fight and the word of that gets around?

Reserving your elite troops just for their reputation is like conserving ammunition when you have enemy soldiers breathing down your neck. Or rather, it's pointless because you have spent considerably more resources making those elite troops to not use them at all.

This also flies in the fact that every soldier that has ever lived knows, or atleast should know is this: In the face of it, you're expendable.
If you make a soldier that isn't, you're doing it wrong. This I believe is one of the main reasons why I allways cringe when I start reading about some uber soldiers who spend years perfecting every aspect of warfare and can shit concrete to build bunkers out of if needed.
They're just too hard to replace and you're still stuck with a handfull of them in the first place. The second is that most Scifi battlefields are so lethal that no matter how uber these uber troops are, they can still be made into a casualty with commonly available weapons and each casualty takes away a huge chunk out of the total number.

-Gunhead

[Korto]

Would all this mean that if you did have some kind of elite warrior race (and no reason why there couldn't be a race that, in comparison to another race ranks as "elite by birthright". I mean, some species run faster, some fly further, some can smell a gram of cocaine in an airport-full of luggage. No reason I see one couldn't soldier better), allied with a presumably more numerous "lesser" race, the best use for that elite group would be to break them up and scatter them through the lesser troops? The reverse of the idea of taking out the best to make an elite group. Assuming any cultural objections could be overcome and they can be properly integrated.
Indeed, the overcoming of the prejudice and cultural problems, along with language and any other problems would make a damn fine story in itself.
Oh god, I'm suggesting Top Gun. Shoot me now.

[Simon_Jester]

In my opinion, the most likely reasons for someone to end up a 'superior warrior race' mostly involve genetic engineering.

But, in that situation, you might want to do both. For specialist applications you want all-elite units. For some, missions even a small margin of qualitative difference can make the difference between success and failure for your ten-man team... and you can't send a twelve-man team, transportation won't allow and at some point numbers get in the way of stealth.

For more general applications, yeah, you see interspersing and scattering. Although a lot depends on the magnitude of the biological differences.

[Ahriman238]

Would all this mean that if you did have some kind of elite warrior race (and no reason why there couldn't be a race that, in comparison to another race ranks as "elite by birthright". I mean, some species run faster, some fly further, some can smell a gram of cocaine in an airport-full of luggage. No reason I see one couldn't soldier better), allied with a presumably more numerous "lesser" race, the best use for that elite group would be to break them up and scatter them through the lesser troops? The reverse of the idea of taking out the best to make an elite group. Assuming any cultural objections could be overcome and they can be properly integrated.
Indeed, the overcoming of the prejudice and cultural problems, along with language and any other problems would make a damn fine story in itself.
Oh god, I'm suggesting Top Gun. Shoot me now.

There are advantages and disadvantages to both keeping an elite unit or dispersing your best people. Generally, the dispersal will work better if whatever makes the uber-warriors special can be taught, so they act as a training cadre and spread their better training and motivation to the rest of the unit, or if they have some innate ability it is essential or greatly increases survival for the whole group, like if they can sense landmines.

[Simon_Jester]

Conversely, concentration works better when ordinary people can't fight effectively alongside supers (40k baseline humans with 40k Space Marines is a common example), when you're not too worried about replacing casualties (i.e. you can just draft more people from Planet Superbeings, within reason), or when you have specific things in mind that you can't throw unlimited manpower at (special forces, maybe certain shock-troop roles depending on just what your supersoldiers are good at).

[Korto]

In my opinion, the most likely reasons for someone to end up a 'superior warrior race' mostly involve genetic engineering.

I'm not quite so ready to abandon the thought of it being natural. If "Being a good soldier" is a combination of a number of factors (discipline, courage under fire, reaction speed, tactical thinking, etc), then just a modestly higher native ability of a number of them could multiply off each other to create someone substantially better in total. If the difference is racial (genetic), then you have a race of comparative "super soldiers". Well, if not super, certainly noticably better.

But for a situation that doesn't require the dorsai, you could have a small standing force of professional soldiers, and a hastily called-up and trained much larger militia

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

Again, points to Gunhead;

given the attrition of even vaguely serious war, from combat, non-combat psychological and physical stress- infantry work is physically extremely demanding, any unit is basically a sandcastle with the tide coming in, in a constant state of erosion.

This, I think, is historically one of the main reasons for forming elites in the first place- because the quality of the line has declined to the point where they can no longer get the job done, and it becomes necessary to cherry-pick to put together a force of those who can; everything said earlier about how this will cut the heart out of the regular forces and leave them in an even worse state is still true of course.

What if the battlefield is so lethal, the average human being more or less instantly shits themselves, curls up in a foetal ball and prays for death, and achieves zero fighting efficiency whatsoever? Remember the opening stages of Joe Haldeman's The Forever War- UNEF were chosen from championship athletes with a minimum IQ of 150, because the gear they needed to fight effectively and survive (very much in that order) was so complex and demanding there was no point sending anyone but the best.

This is a classic example of what the OP was on about, and although allegorical as all hell (sending our best and brightest against their wills to a futile foreign war while their homes change out of all recognition behind them, hmmm...), stands up well enough as a thing in itself to make the point- and I wonder if he wasn't on to something.

In space, on what we find in space, there are going to be a lot of wierd and highly deadly environments on which conventional war may be outright impossible; picture running a search-and-destroy for a hidden space pirate base buried beneath the surface of Corot-7b.

Terminator Armour starts to make a lot of sense in that context, really- what we think of as super, now, may in that far off reality be nothing more than entry level.

[Gunhead]

Again, points to Gunhead;

given the attrition of even vaguely serious war, from combat, non-combat psychological and physical stress- infantry work is physically extremely demanding, any unit is basically a sandcastle with the tide coming in, in a constant state of erosion.

This, I think, is historically one of the main reasons for forming elites in the first place- because the quality of the line has declined to the point where they can no longer get the job done, and it becomes necessary to cherry-pick to put together a force of those who can; everything said earlier about how this will cut the heart out of the regular forces and leave them in an even worse state is still true of course.

What's your point? We know that intensive combat turns people into emotionless husks with no desire to live. This isn't exactly a big revelation, but at the same most people are able to get on with their lives after. "Elite" formations are usually one of the following 1. Units who are better equipped and trained but still are basically regular fighting formations of their type infantry, mech inf, armor etc. 2. They are units who train to do a single task or tasks that normal fighting formations cannot do or are not good at them. What you're describing is what germans did on the east front when they created their "fire brigade" units to push back any russian breaches in their line. The success was a mixed bag and was done as they were allready losing and tried to make use of their dwindling resources.

What if the battlefield is so lethal, the average human being more or less instantly shits themselves, curls up in a foetal ball and prays for death, and achieves zero fighting efficiency whatsoever? Remember the opening stages of Joe Haldeman's The Forever War- UNEF were chosen from championship athletes with a minimum IQ of 150, because the gear they needed to fight effectively and survive (very much in that order) was so complex and demanding there was no point sending anyone but the best.

I have never read / heard off the Forever war. It doesn't matter really. Today's battlefield is a place where most people would be emotionally wrecked very quickly because they are completely unprepared for it. This is where training counts, it prepares you both physically and mentally for it. Of course no one really knows how they will react when the bullets start flying, but again this is something we know from the past and armies have for ages tried to remedy this. Never heard of UNEF and .. well it's kind of hard to comment on it, but it might make sense.. if they have the population and resources to actually do it. It does sound like silly ubermensch wank. Use and care of military equipment is a matter of training and experience.. and if you have to be an engineer to use it properly, well it sounds like it's badly designed.

This is a classic example of what the OP was on about, and although allegorical as all hell (sending our best and brightest against their wills to a futile foreign war while their homes change out of all recognition behind them, hmmm...), stands up well enough as a thing in itself to make the point- and I wonder if he wasn't on to something.

This is a common theme both in war fiction and stuff that is based on real events. WWI ground up millions of young men and so did WWII. Countries send their fittest young men to die and kill. In every war it's usually the "Best and the brightest" that pay the heaviest price.

In space, on what we find in space, there are going to be a lot of wierd and highly deadly environments on which conventional war may be outright impossible; picture running a search-and-destroy for a hidden space pirate base buried beneath the surface of Corot-7b.

Terminator Armour starts to make a lot of sense in that context, really- what we think of as super, now, may in that far off reality be nothing more than entry level.

This really depends on the setting and while I think conventional warfare in any sort of realistic setting would be non existent or very least extremely limited, this is scifi we are talking about and it pretty much allows any kind of scenarios to happen. That said, certain rules of thumb do apply when it comes to warfare and ignoring them or not making a plausible reason why they don't can make your story suck when it's read by someone who is familiar with all things military.

-Gunhead

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

I wouldn't actually go that far in the psychological sense; that extreme a definition approaches caricature. Somebody has to win, after all, and get to come home. Changed, yes, embittered and cynical, possibly, but always, automatically and totally? Not enough credit to the human animal here- and in your very next sentence you admit you're wrong, most people do get on with their lives after, to a degree.

In any case, wrong end of the stick. Look at it from the command point of view, from actually believing there is a point to fighting and a victory obtainable. And skipping over an entire category. Where would you place, say, the Old Guard of the Grande Armee? Go on, try to fit them into either category without doing violence to the truth.


Oh, do try not to ignore the bloody point. Joe Haldeman's soldiers were basically astronaut- warriors, with the same requirements, becuse that was the environment they were fighting in. Basic training was conducted on Pluto. This is tomorrow's battlefield; why did you miss that?

Drake (for instance) has most conflicts take place on habitable worlds, because that was how interstellar colonisation worked in the universe he wanted to write; deep space travel was good enough that it was easy to find garden worlds- the sort, as he points out, that any fool could survive on, and therefore most of them, lowest common denominator, were populated by fools; which situation generated material for him to write about.

Haldeman's stories take place in a universe where interstellar travel is significantly more difficult, the process involving basically ramming a black hole; most of the fighting takes place on the choke points of the system, the nearest lump of rock to one- usually on part of the accretion disc in fact. Totally alien environment. Population and resources are largely irrelevant to this except insofar as you need a broad base to produce the tiny handful of individuals it's worth training and equipping to fight in those circumstances.

You're fighting on the few solid bodies in the accretion disc of a black hole. Of course you're going to need ultra-sciency kit that you need to be an engineer to use properly; try to survive with anything less. (The book gets increasingly weird from there, another theme being how progress cancels itself out- that's later in the story.)

[PainRack]

I would like again to echo the point that "elite" units in the modern day context don't mean special forces only. They could easily refer to the RDF forces such as the MEF, 81st airborne or the equivalent.

There's also an interesting military strategy that revolves around the use of such units. Using elite units to secure or exploit breakthroughs, allowing follow up forces to then secure territory and build up defences. This means you can essentially segregrate your army by keeping the most fit, the best, in units that would face the most demanding tasks of modern day warfare while "lesser" tasks can be relegated to inferior units, which would normally be kept at a lower level of equipment readiness and etc. This is similar to what China is now attempting to do with its Fists divisions.

ECR, good to see you in here, wish I could think of anything specific to say in reply. [waves]

Space Marine attrition is more about the psychological/indoctrination side.. they only want "worthy" recruits who fit their (in many cases fucked up, IMHO) physical and psychological profiles (the extremes being the aforemntioned doom eagles.) there's also the attrition rate as a byproduct of the creation process (the need for a certain age range and profile.) Still can be pretty retarded, but they don't actually "learn" many useful military skills (at least not useful to an actual Marine) until they are made into marines.

The average life expectancy of a Space Marine not in combat is measured in centuries. It doesn't really affect the rate at which new Marines come out of the training pipeline if you "waste" a year or two making sure your recruits are the Best of the Best of the Best of the Best before you start giving them real basic training, not in the long run... because they're going to be training intensively for years anyway.

The available recruit population is not, or is strongly implied not to be, the limiting factor on the creation of Space Marines. The limits have more to do with infrastructure (nobody has the facilities to give ten thousand men the transition from baseline human to Astartes at once) and biology (the way progenoid glands work). A group of Astartes can only make new Astartes at a limited rate defined by the way progenoid glands work, and capped by their medical infrastructure, no matter how many candidates they find who are biologically compatible with the geneseed (or thought to be).

Suppose your chapter can only produce, say, 100 new Astartes per year anyway. As long as you get 100 biocompatible recruits a year, it doesn't really matter whether you started with 110, 150, or 1000, assuming you can make those 100 biocompatible recruits into useful Astartes by your chapter's definition.

It also doesn't really matter whether in the year of initial training, because an Astartes isn't considered "trained" until they've been practicing for about five to ten years anyway.* When you add the year of recruit 'training' which teaches them no useful military skills, 5-10 becomes 6-11... and you still get 100 Astartes per year. No more, no less, unless you manage to build up your numbers so you can produce more working progenoid glands per year (which is illegal).

This doesn't change the fact though that Marine training is extremely wasteful. Depending on the chapter, a significant number of aspirants perish or become mind wiped servitors, leaving behind only the core few who become battle brothers. Its just best to ascribe their recruiting methods as their attempt to actually select for bloodthirstiness fanaticism and just leave it at that.

Afterall, a 14 year old child soldier, much less semi-boosted child soldier is STILL useful to the Imperium. Yet, most marines would have no qualms with risking the lives of said aspirants in severe trials and conditions, this even though the progenoid glands won't have matured yet. If we consider the glands to be the limiting factor on the Chapter growth, a more conservative training method that retains as many aspirant lives as possible until the age of 18, when they undergo the Black Carapace might actually be more beneficial and stable. Again, given the fact that there are apparent scouts who have remained as neophytes for over a decade before being selected as a battle brother, simply delaying the mental and other fortitude tests to later in the recruit career won't be that detrimental. Its not as if Space Marines lack the food and other resources to house a large recruit force.

The Imperial Guard is another issue altogether though. At least Commissars make some sense given the Imperium technology and level of control.

[Gunhead]

I wouldn't actually go that far in the psychological sense; that extreme a definition approaches caricature. Somebody has to win, after all, and get to come home. Changed, yes, embittered and cynical, possibly, but always, automatically and totally? Not enough credit to the human animal here- and in your very next sentence you admit you're wrong, most people do get on with their lives after, to a degree.

And at the same time some people are turned into human wrecks who can no longer function as a part of society. I guess you missed when I said intensive combat and right after that I said most people come out as functioning individuals. Why you think I'm somehow admitting I'm wrong here I don't know. But I guess just to clarify: When I said "Turns people" I meant turns some people.

In any case, wrong end of the stick. Look at it from the command point of view, from actually believing there is a point to fighting and a victory obtainable. And skipping over an entire category. Where would you place, say, the Old Guard of the Grande Armee? Go on, try to fit them into either category without doing violence to the truth.

I said "usually" and I assumed people are smart enough to realize all by themselves that how and why special formation are formed depends a lot on the time period and what kind of tech there is available. Guess I was wrong. I also referenced Mech inf and tanks, which usually is a big clue I'm talking about WWII and onwards but I guess you missed that too. My knowledge of the armies of Napoleon is very limited, but if I had to place them in one of those two categories they'd be in the first. They're infantry with a defined role as breakthrough force which they are suited due to high morale and experience rather than training or equipment as such.

Today it's hard to say what constitutes as elite, as all fighting formations are getting geared and trained to fill a certain role so each would be elite in it's own field. This is due to armies getting smaller and our ability to combine elements from different fields of expertise to make up a force most suited to the threat. This is a broad generalization and results may wary from country to country.

Oh, do try not to ignore the bloody point. Joe Haldeman's soldiers were basically astronaut- warriors, with the same requirements, becuse that was the environment they were fighting in. Basic training was conducted on Pluto. This is tomorrow's battlefield; why did you miss that?

Because you just harped about some book about super IQ athletes and never told me what they do, even after I said I've never heard of his book or the universe? So they're astronauts / soldiers, I fail to see how this is not just really advanced training. Sure they pick people who are most suited to the task, but this is pretty much expected as not all people are made to be astronauts or training them would take too long so it's more cost effective to train those with the right qualities.

Drake (for instance) has most conflicts take place on habitable worlds, because that was how interstellar colonisation worked in the universe he wanted to write; deep space travel was good enough that it was easy to find garden worlds- the sort, as he points out, that any fool could survive on, and therefore most of them, lowest common denominator, were populated by fools; which situation generated material for him to write about.

Never read anything from him either but ok.

Haldeman's stories take place in a universe where interstellar travel is significantly more difficult, the process involving basically ramming a black hole; most of the fighting takes place on the choke points of the system, the nearest lump of rock to one- usually on part of the accretion disc in fact. Totally alien environment. Population and resources are largely irrelevant to this except insofar as you need a broad base to produce the tiny handful of individuals it's worth training and equipping to fight in those circumstances.

You're fighting on the few solid bodies in the accretion disc of a black hole. Of course you're going to need ultra-sciency kit that you need to be an engineer to use properly; try to survive with anything less. (The book gets increasingly weird from there, another theme being how progress cancels itself out- that's later in the story.)

How much all of this really makes any sense is really a question how it is written and presented so I leave it at that. But yeah you can have a situation where any type of fighting is such a niche role you need to carefully select people to do it.

-Gunhead

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

The question is, how many? What my gut (with some evidence) is suggesting is that as a very rough rule, the general support mechanism of society affects the proportion greatly- healing is more rapid and more complete for those returning from a just war, in their own society's eyes at least. If those around them think they did right, then more is more likely to be well. There are a million other factors of course, most importantly the being themselves.


Again, if we're talking about war in future and in fiction, that implies a very large possibility space which escapes the bounds you're thinking of. WWII is the moment, going back to something I said earlier, when large scale warfare stopped being practical for uranium related reasons and the cult of special operations that so much Mil-SF draws on (the subject of the OP after all) was born; I do think you're using the wrong mental model here.


The thing is, the Old Guard were virtually only a morale threat rather than a physical one. It was so very rarely committed to battle- the last reserve- that it was functionally a mobile retirement home for old-ish soldiers; promotion to it was used as a reward for the regular army, and it's actual function doesn't sit easily and conveniently in either category.

A self- made elite, through iron drill and discipline, were III corps, the unit that won the encounter battle of Auerstaedt at odds of twenty-six thousand against somewhere from sixty-six to seventy-six thousand depending on who you count. They were of higher than average quality because they were sweated into being so, and what I meant by that whole "command" thing was to consider where quality comes from, and why. Which is actually a good question anyway.

For another Napoleonic example, the French cavalry in general- their reputation as horsemen was not overly high, the blood stock France had available for them was mediocre, their equipment was uneven in individual quality and the extent of it they were actually issued, discipline was somewhat individual, but for a long time they were the best in Europe, simply because when the order to charge reached them, they kicked the spurs in and charged.


The bit I was objecting to was the fact that you seemed proud not to know; after dealing by proxy with that idiot in the SG calcs thread, I was a bit thin- skinned and may have gone a snark too far.

[Ægen]

The smartest guy I have ever met was a mortar man, he could do the trajectory calculation in his head easily. But at the same time, regular Marine infantry has basic jobs that you could not give to a raw recruit,such as the ability of an 0311 to call for fire (aircraft, arty and navy). There is a reason they call it 03-everything, any job that needs to get done and a specialized mos is not available, send in the grunts.

The gun is the great equalizer, however, if both parties has a gun it is then predicated on how they use it.

As far as reputations go, in the so called third world (I know the idea of a 1st, 2nd, and 3rd world is highly flawed, using it for simplicity sake) the white sleeves are feared, the army not so much.

[Connor MacLeod]

When it comes to Space Marines I don't think all the grimdark shit that aspirants are put to have any purpose other than weeding out "undesirables" and ensuring that only the toughtest individuals survive. With the hypno-indcotrination and education processes they use along with the genetic and biomechanical enhancement procedures which push them to clearly superhuman levels, being the strongest or fastest 14 year old really isn't a crucial factor (bearing in mind we don't know the exact corrleations between pre-implant physical capabilities and after, but Space Marine capabilities seem to be largely standardized after the process, with extreme variation being atypical.)

Also, considering that the current era implantation process to create space Marines has a mortality rate and is exceedingly painful, and they are paranoid about another Horus Heresy happening, this makes sense from their POV. It's still a horribly brutal, grimdark and morally atroicous idea, but HEY THAT'S JSUT 40k. It also isn't 'efficient' in terms of pragmatism or effectiveness, but then again that's not always the driving goal for humans.

[Shroom Man 777]

Making people do grimdark stuff might not make them better warriors, but maybe turning them into deranged psychopaths may make them harder to corrupt or shit. A professional soldier who has had normal sane training may be more susceptible to crazy Chaos shit, while a Space Marine who has already had to eat his fellow initiates during their grueling training in some death world might not be so easily corrupted by Chaos shit cause for normal mortals, the day they were forced to eat babies might have been the worst day of their lives, but for an Astartes Initiate it would be Tuesday or some shit.

[PainRack]

When it comes to Space Marines I don't think all the grimdark shit that aspirants are put to have any purpose other than weeding out "undesirables" and ensuring that only the toughtest individuals survive. With the hypno-indcotrination and education processes they use along with the genetic and biomechanical enhancement procedures which push them to clearly superhuman levels, being the strongest or fastest 14 year old really isn't a crucial factor (bearing in mind we don't know the exact corrleations between pre-implant physical capabilities and after, but Space Marine capabilities seem to be largely standardized after the process, with extreme variation being atypical.)

Also, considering that the current era implantation process to create space Marines has a mortality rate and is exceedingly painful, and they are paranoid about another Horus Heresy happening, this makes sense from their POV. It's still a horribly brutal, grimdark and morally atroicous idea, but HEY THAT'S JSUT 40k. It also isn't 'efficient' in terms of pragmatism or effectiveness, but then again that's not always the driving goal for humans.

I would argue that one of the other criteria is not just mental/physical toughness but pure pyschopaths. Its already been mentioned how hive gangs are ideal recruits because of the nature of such recruits, trained to kill and survive from young. In other words, sociopaths/pyschopaths.

[Purple]

I said it before and I will say it again. The only way to be sure your space marines won't turn insane when faced with chaos, dark eldar, hordes of space robot undead or the newer ending tides of space locusts and space orks is to make sure they are insane to begin with.