Capabilities of Culture ground troops?

[Darth Hoth]

What are the capabilities of the Culture's (Banks) ground troops? Preferably the "standard" military, if such a thing can be said to exist, but any ground capabilities will do. Primarily "hard" feats, rather than effectors (which I know they have).

Are "Knife missiles" (?) from Excession a high end, or are they just someone's paperweight (as usual)? How does ground combat generally work in terms of tactics, if description is available?

Interested potentially for fanfiction, and otherwise general curiosity. I cannot remember much ground combat in the books I read, but maybe there is more to be found in others?

My thanks in advance for any and all replies. I do have one additional request; namely, that people cite their sources for their information.

If anyone would be kind enough to take the trouble of typing out actual quotes from the novels, my gratitude will be multiplied six times and seven. But, as I said, any information is welcome.

[Marcus Aurelius]

There isn't enough ground combat in the novels to form any kind of comprehensive picture. The closest ones to actual Culture ground combat are some parts towards the end of Matter, but those amount to something like special operations instead of regular ground combat. In Consider Phlebas it is mentioned that the ground combat was mostly fought by drones on the Culture side, which is what one would expect, but there are no actual descriptions.

I think that there actually is not much wide scale ground combat. Most Culture and other High Level Involved civilizations citizens live on artificial constructs and there are apparently no rules forbidding nuking them as much as you want, unless they have some special artifact status like the shellworlds in Matter. So, apart from clandestine operations combat mostly occurs in space, because space superiority is always going to be decisive with the kind of weapons they have.

[CaptJodan]

To add to what Marcus said, you also have times such as in Surface Detail where you have the NR blasting parts of a city to kill off an avatar and a human from orbit, and using its effector to track them down/destroy their only weapon. The NR seem to have rough parody with the Culture (though I haven't quite finished yet with the book, but it seems reasonable. Seems like they'd be level 8s).

We also have a scene with same said female under attack earlier in the book, and knife missiles being displaced in to protect her and getting blasted one after another. So, again, we have drones doing most of the fighting when drones are available and ships are available to spawn them.

But yes, Matter's probably the best example of your typical SC combat suit, though again, I think Marcus is right that it's mainly for Special Forces/Circumstances work, not all out war. In any ground war, you'd probably choose the much faster thinking and moving drones over that of humans. Humans are just too fragile to be terribly effective, except in the backwaters of the war.

[folti78]

Are "Knife missiles" (?) from Excession a high end, or are they just someone's paperweight (as usual)?

They are more clandestine/bodyguard weapons, but they aren't really dangerous against higher tech combatants and can be tricked. They are intelligent, self propelled projectiles, with around human level intelligence. Mostly used when more advanced weapons would be more suspicious.

Some examples from memory:

• Consider Phlebas: Perosteck Balveda's bodyguard, dispatched by a squad of Idirian soldiers.
• Use of Weapons:
  • unnamed knife missile, sent to assassinate the protagonist, tricked into an industrial laser machine and killed by said protagonist.
  • Diziet Sma's bodyguard/sidekick the combat drone Skaffen-Amstikaw carries at least one and used it kill a group of bandits on a pre-industrial world.
• Inversions: the doctor's very sharp (by the world's standards) knife is disguised knife missile used as a bodyguard (and possibly in one assassination)
• a novel in The State of the Art anthology (maybe Descendant), they are used as forward scouts/guards around a military base on an uninhabited planet, under the command of a combat drone, who carried more of them as backup/reinforcements.

[folti78]

Ghetto edit:
In Matter's prologue, the combat drone Thurminder Xuss used a knife missile with two attached monofilament wires to slice the pikes and siege weapons of a pre-gunpowder army. Although it wasn't direct combat, but a Special Circumstances covert action to disable the army.

[Marcus Aurelius]

Are "Knife missiles" (?) from Excession a high end, or are they just someone's paperweight (as usual)?

They are more clandestine/bodyguard weapons, but they aren't really dangerous against higher tech combatants and can be tricked. They are intelligent, self propelled projectiles, with around human level intelligence. Mostly used when more advanced weapons would be more suspicious.

Some examples from memory:

• Consider Phlebas: Perosteck Balveda's bodyguard, dispatched by a squad of Idirian soldiers.
• Use of Weapons:
  • unnamed knife missile, sent to assassinate the protagonist, tricked into an industrial laser machine and killed by said protagonist.

If I remember corectly, the knife missile's objective in Use of Weapons was not to assassinate the protagonist (he would have had no chance), but to track his movements for the Culture. At that stage he wanted to be left alone, so he lured to the relatively stupid knife missile inside an MRI machine and the powerful magnetic field slowed it down enough that he could disable it with an industrial laser for some time, which allowed him to flee outside its sensor range. This showed his remarkable resourcefulness, because the SC had believed that there would be know way for him to shake the knife missile with the tech he had access to.

I think your general idea about knife missiles is correct. They are mostly sentry and recon units, which can perform some combat with minimal detectable emissions for clandestine purposes. Basically their combat role is exactly what is sounds like: they are very high tech daggers for "cloak and dagger" stuff

[Vendetta]

What are the capabilities of the Culture's (Banks) ground troops? Preferably the "standard" military, if such a thing can be said to exist, but any ground capabilities will do. Primarily "hard" feats, rather than effectors (which I know they have).

They don't have a standard military. They don't do ground combat, there's rarely anything on the ground anywhere that the Culture would be interested in fighting over. Besides which they much prefer dirty tricks, espionage, infiltration, and other things that keep the Minds amused.

[folti78]

If I remember corectly, the knife missile's objective in Use of Weapons was not to assassinate the protagonist (he would have had no chance), but to track his movements for the Culture. At that stage he wanted to be left alone, so he lured to the relatively stupid knife missile inside an MRI machine and the powerful magnetic field slowed it down enough that he could disable it with an industrial laser for some time, which allowed him to flee outside its sensor range. This showed his remarkable resourcefulness, because the SC had believed that there would be know way for him to shake the knife missile with the tech he had access to.

Quite possible, it was years ago, I mostly remember about it as large fuck you message to the SC. And Skaffen-Amstikaw was rather pissed, that the dumb meatbag were able to outsmart the knife missile.

Other than that, I have to echo everyone else, inhabited planets don't have anything the Culture needs, except stewarding less advanced races, but then, even a GCU's onboard weapons and drones will be overkill. Any other problem will be dealt with the Culture's bigger ships and if needed it's standing navy (post Idirian war).
Also, at the beginning of Excession you get a glimpse of what will be a combat drone's loadout if it'll need more firepower than high-tech daggers

[NecronLord]

They don't have a standard military. They don't do ground combat, there's rarely anything on the ground anywhere that the Culture would be interested in fighting over. Besides which they much prefer dirty tricks, espionage, infiltration, and other things that keep the Minds amused.

While they don't have a standard military, they do build specialist combat drones, we see an Elench version in Excession, it's the one that gets compromised and writes on the Affronter ship. As I recall, the only quantifiable bit on its capacities is that it's able to break the speed of sound while navigating the corridors of a ship.

[CaptJodan]

Really, saying "what does the Culture have for ground combat minus effectors" is kind of cutting out a rather large part of their general MO. Typically, the Culture is using effectors in such combat, even if only defensively. Offensively, they're even more a part of standard fare. You can't hardly separate the effector from the combat.

Take Look to Windward as a prime example. E-Dust (tiny micro (nano?) scopic machines that is the T-1000 of the Culture) was able to completely neutralize local defenses, and pretty much deactivate anything high tech. This was from a collection of small machines that didn't have to be interconnected to work, not a ship in orbit. Presumably, simple slug throwers would still work, and we know from the story that knifes still "work" (this also backed up in Surface Detail), but against E-Dust, it's a moot point.

The Culture typically doesn't need hyper advanced tech to kill something if you pull the rug out from underneath a technological civilization and reduce them to throwing rocks and knives at you, while they still hold lasers and CAMs. That's probably why Knife missiles are the go-to weapons. The Culture seems to work hard not to over-indulge (ie, they can make a planet, but why do that when an orbital would be so much more efficient?), and this is especially true with their weapons.

Against a civilization that has equal tech to the Culture, (ie, block their effectors or otherwise nullify effectors on drones or E-dust) you'd basically be relying on the standard fare of lasers, displacers and CAMs, especially on the combat drones themselves. But, as has been stated multiple times now, the Culture wouldn't really engage in a major ground conflict most likely. The only true ground combat hinted at is the after-action report by Banks at the end of CP, and it's too vague to get any real information from. There did seem to be some ground combat, but we can't really tell what that entailed.

[folti78]

The only true ground combat hinted at is the after-action report by Banks at the end of CP, and it's too vague to get any real information from. There did seem to be some ground combat, but we can't really tell what that entailed.

It's an overall report of losses/damage, doesn't go into detail who did what, which losses are caused by whom and to what targets?
Both sides used allied and client races to fight as proxies* and openly in the war** and Idirians occupied former culture clients at the first part of the war. So you can have a full spectrum from guerilla warfare against Idirian or allied occupying forces, to lower tech allies duking it out against each other in some low priority system, to one sided liberations after someone gained the upper hand in space, isolating ground forces from their supply lines and fleet support and using their own ships as orbital artillery.

* if you count the proxy wars before the "real" Idirian - Culture conflict
** like Homomdans as major Idirian allies, who dropped out after suffering heavy losses to the Culture.

[Marcus Aurelius]

Against a civilization that has equal tech to the Culture, (ie, block their effectors or otherwise nullify effectors on drones or E-dust) you'd basically be relying on the standard fare of lasers, displacers and CAMs, especially on the combat drones themselves. But, as has been stated multiple times now, the Culture wouldn't really engage in a major ground conflict most likely. The only true ground combat hinted at is the after-action report by Banks at the end of CP, and it's too vague to get any real information from. There did seem to be some ground combat, but we can't really tell what that entailed.

In fact the combat in Matter indicates that against an equitech enemy they favor mixed principle weaponry. CREWs, hypervelocity kinetic energy weapons and some kind of magitech plasma weapons (also seen in the short story A gift from the Culture and the ending of CB main plot). Small missiles called micromissiles are also used, probably with miniature CAM warheads. We don't see larger missiles, probably because displacing is more efficient and more difficult to defend against in ship vs. ship combat, but apparently small combat droids do not have the equipment necessary for displacement. Or possibly it wasn't used because it just didn't work inside the shellworld, but we don't know for sure. I would guess the former, because we only see ships doing displacements.

I think the the ground combat in Idiran-Culture war was somewhat of an anomaly caused by the unusual planetary oriented nature of the Idiran civilization. Normally high level involved civilizations are not very interested in planetary conquest and will have the overwhelming majority of their citizens living on artificial constructs. The Culture on the other hand does not want to screw up inhabited planets too badly, especially if they have native life forms, which precludes the use of large CAM weapons and such.