Alright, That's It

I'll give you that.

What? No seriously I can agree to that.

Most of my criticism of the asari military has been more relevant to the core clusters than the people who actually do the lion's share of the fighting and I'll freely admit to that. The asari model can be adapted and employed in a manner which is not stupid.

It's really just a shame that the women the Republics hold up as being the pinnacle of their armed capabilities, the cadres with the best gear, the most revered names, the largest budgets, and best representation, are almost entirely devoid of actual experience and couldn't military if their lives depended on it.

But Goddamn can they excuse it now can't they?
So that explains where the actual competent members of the Republics went: they got exiled to the border-worlds and everybody with power tries to ignore that they exist. I...hm. I don't disagree entirely here, I mean that system could and apparently does work more or less cohesively, my issue is more of that attaining the level of cooperation and organization necessary for that cohesion to take place frankly isn't one of the Republic's strong suits.

Though your following statements do shed some light on it.

In the interests of keeping what's actually proving to be a decidedly informative discussion going, here's another question: what's your personal stance on the integration and use of drones and autonomous craft for bolstering the Republic's projection of power? The SA and Union use them extensively to help augment doctrines that are already predicated around an assumption of mobility and blitzkrieg (particularly in the case of the SA) and I'm aware that the Republics have as well. Though, and if I may editorialize, personally here it seems to be employed as more of a crutch than anything else. A method by which the core worlds may stave off taking any actual action to reform while waving about their newest piece of military tech.

I suppose if I had to clarify: in your experience how have you seen drones effectively used, do you support the current use of drones as being advised by Thessia, and, if not, how basically would you do it on a macro scale?

Well, despite the risk of repeating myself, I'm going to have to say that it's a lot like cadre organization. Closer to the core you get, the more sloppy and shallow drone integration is. Further, and people actually use drones like they're meant to be used. Case in point, they're pretty much a mark that you've got it made in the more central areas. Fuck, I've seen more than one cadre that just had some riflewomen and the Tsunami mech operator in the barracks watching sports while the drones stood guard. Tsunamis, for the uninformed, are basically the asari answer to LOKI mechs but kinda less shitty in a lot of ways. For starters, they don't move like you shoved a broom up someone's asshole and used it to perform a week-long puppet show for the amusement of several cheery orphans. But the downside is that they're horribly overdesigned and accessorized crap from a marketing perspective, so you've got complete assholes who show off the latest ablative coating or the newest targetting software or the fact that it can poop grenades or whatever when they've never fired a single shot in a real engagement and probably never will.

In the kind of middle band you see the more generic kinds of drone, less humanoid and more 'hoverdollies with guns'. You got the armour-plated kinds that carry munitions like grenades and sinks, you got the kinds with shield generators and pretty much nothing else, and the ones that explode if you sneeze at them too hard in exchange for enough firepower to deal with hardened targets in a quick hit-and-run manner. They're usually paired up with a shieldy one or, in a pinch, a barrier-trained huntress to provide the cover needed to take a shot or two. Plus the Quartermasters - the hovering supply depots, yeah yeah, I think it's on-the-nose too - mean everyone can travel a little lighter, 'cause kit's heavy ;~;.

Out on the rim, the way they use drones is downright unfair. I mean, if there was some kind of VI Rights activist movement they'd have explosive aneurysms if they knew about it. They do everything - general fire support, baiting ambushes and traps, overwatch, recon, flushing, even suicide runs. You'd be surprised how a couple of drone gunners in the trees can make an ambushed force utterly shit themselves. Doesn't matter if a drone gunner is less efficient than a trained huntress - suddenly the enemy is focusing on the fact that they're getting shot at from everywhere simultaneously, and chances are good that if they triangulate and return fire they'll only hit a replacable hunk of metal and plastic rather than a huntress.

As to how I'd do it, well obviously I'd advocate doing it the 'outer rim way' everywhere, but no way that'd ever happen. All I can really say is that drones are augments, not crutches. You use them to support what your buddies are doing out there on the field, not send them out and kick back with a brewski.

So I have a question, about how asari military ranks and shit actually works. Because I've heard a lot about 'trust' and people called 'speakers'? And I've read a few galactpedia posts on it but what I really want to know is

How does that function in reality? Like, if I'm clearing a building, I need to know that I can give an order and have it followed, that I only have to give said order to three or four people to have the whole platoon doing what I need them to and that if I catch a bullet someone else will be able to take up the reins. That's pretty hard to do without a clear, structured chain of command.

So yeah, how does that work in the field?

Also I heard somewhere that officers get elected? How does that even work?

So I've got a lot of experience telling furheads and frogs and the like how shit works in the Republics, and this is the biggest question.

Which is stupid, because it's really not that hard.

The speaker's the speaker because everyone in that unit (ship, section, cadre, platoon, whatever) trusts them. They're the one person people know will get the job done (this links in with your next q, btw), whatever the risks or the danger. So if you're the Speaker, then the rest will follow your orders.

(I always thought the furhead tradition of in-person orders was kinda silly, tbh. In the age of instantaneous encrypted wireless communications tech, you guys really don't see the use for an 'all-unit' channel? The speaker can speak to everyone all at once, or just to the person they need to. It's not that hard.)

In the absence of a speaker, well, the cadres have a lot of practice working together. Like, literal centuries of training and actual on-site experience. After all that time, you know each other. Like, from back in my Ulee days, I know Melia had the best techspertise, that Vela would always go left when clearing and building and I'd always go right. If our Speaker fell, we'd be able to continue on either to extraction or to complete the mission, depending on the circumstances.

(You've got to remember that the cadres are a lot smaller than your furhead marine platoons or whatever - there's no way a team of ten needs five different leaders telling them what to do)


A speaker is elected speaker because everyone under her command feels that she's the best for the job. Not the killiest, not the most popular, but the best leader.

If you can honestly tell me that you've never resented having some no-nothing wet-behind-the-ears tides-damned moron put in command over you and yours just because they graduated from officer training school or whatever then you've got to be a turian or something.

We do use an all-unit channel, along with command channels for platoons, companies, etc etc. Like, it's a bit hard to hear people when their helmets are sealed for example. It's not the in-person thing, but rather that while I can talk to everyone in a platoon, I don't want to. Take a simple building clearing. My platoon leaders tells me what s/he wants done, I enact it by telling the squad and section leaders what to do with their guys, they give orders to their Marines to do specific tasks. I can't be micromanaging and giving individual orders to forty-odd people.



Well, I guess that makes more sense. The longest I spent with a unit was with the 1/10th and that was four years. Our units are bigger and you don't spend as much learning every single one of them.

Still, how does that work on ships or in large units? Like trust is all well and good, but someone needs to call the shots and not everyone is going to know each other that well.


It's the Arcturus Academy (or was). And of course, but that doesn't mean I trust my fellow Marines to elect the right guy for the job. There's a reason so many of our officers are mustangs (that's NCOs or enlisted shipped off to Officer Candidate School).

Precisely, it just doesn't work all that well. It would be a pity if it was byzantine levels of unnecessary complexity in addition to being hilariously ineffective. Much more efficient this way so I'll give you that.

You see this certainly sounds lovely in theory but falls somewhat short in practice given that the only way to really foster said trust and efficiency is through shared combat experiences (I know what you're going to say and no training is no substitute for actual experience, this is why campaign veterans tend to be trusted more in their judgements and decisions than boots)

in which survival and mission success is still dependent upon the "trust" model. At the risk of sounding crude it must sincerely suck cock to be fresh out of training in a Republics cadre. Or be a transfer in or grouped together in unit restructuring.

Fortunately there wasn't any of that going on during the Reaper War.
An amusing over-exaggeration but hyperbole nonetheless. And, frankly, I'd take it over the methodology you're proposing which actively inhibits any form of large scale organization or coordination.
Of course you do, but you trust the system behind them and so long as everyone abides by the chain of command and the military hierarchy something actually gets accomplished in spite of any lack on the part of said junior officer. Efficiency is preferable to chaos Major, and a structure capable of acting and reacting in a timely manner takes precedence over everyone's feelings.

Whoa, quote chain incoming.


I disagree on the sealed helmets thing (idk about Alliance stuff, obvs, but Republics helmets include the mic and throat-vox inside the helmet, along with audio-priority software to cut through), but I think I see where our wires are crossed.

A speaker isn't the be-all-and-end-all commander. Each unit has a speaker (I'm pretty sure I mentioned that in my last post in brackets somewhere, but eh).

So in the scenario you're referring to, or other high-number operations, the area speaker will give orders to the sub-cadre speakers, who will then follow them through. In smaller-scale situations, the level of command devolves down to the sub-cadre speaker or so on.


Each ship has a speaker (I think you guys call them Captains?) who answer to Fleet Command or High Command, depending on the size of the vessel. In ships larger than a frigate, the crew tends to be sub-divided down - Engines, Marines, Bridge, Gunnery, etc. It's the same principle in larger units, too, especially with those involving multiple Cadres.

I think the main difference is that we're a lot more laid back than you furheads or the Big H - a speaker's a speaker, not a Triarch or a Fourth Lieutenant Twice Removed or whatever. One of those cross-cultural things, I guess.


Eh, them's the breaks. After a while (like an asari while, not a human one), you just know who's good leadership material. I'd rather have someone I know and trust spending my life than a complete stranger.

---


Actual on-site experience. Combat experience, if you insist on the dry terminology. Tides. Reading comprehension.


Pretty much, but you've got to remember two things - our soldiers take much longer to train (ensuring that there are only a minimal number of fresh huntresses in any one cadre at any given time), and we live much longer than you mayflies (long term mindset = invest in the future = protect the newbies until they're ready).


...unless, y'know, you have speakers over other speakers (area speakers, cadre speakers, sub-cadre speakers - 'least, that's what we called them in Ulee, the terminology varies). I explained this while chatting to Nat higher up in my post, and I did glance over it in the first one.


Holy shit. The cognitive dissonance between you arguing in favour of a big, impersonal system here while simultaneously saying that each of Earth's shitbox republic-nations needs their own form of governance because Big Daddy SATAE just can't accomodate for everyone's feelings is insane. Like, if I believed two things that contradictory, I think my head would explode. Tides.

Nothing as big as High Command can react to situations on the ground as swiftly as the people, y'know, on the ground. If you'd rather call back to Arcturus to get your orders while you're being ambushed, that's your call, but fuck that for a lark.

(Hyperbole, I know, but hey, you started it - more cognitive dissonance, I guess)

And why I said "no that's frankly bullshit" in the paragraph you just quoted.
I frankly don't see how the fact that your military is apparently starved for recruits and incapable of even acknowledging the theoretical existence of the short term are points in your favor exactly.
Which is lovely except for the fact that their actions are, by your indication, largely ungoverned to the same extent as basically every other military. Which, again, poses a small problem when trying to coordinate anything larger than a particularly violent tea party.
I know right? It's almost like military and governments are run differently from each other and thus require different approaches.

Le gasp.

Swoon.

Catch me my dear 1Sgt I do believe I'm having the vapours.
Then you best break out the mop because this thread's apparently about to go to some dark places.
And I don't entirely disagree with you. With the caveat that this is on the micro scale since, you know, basic enlisted don't have a fraction of the information necessary to make the strategic macro scale decisions that High Command can and must make.

So basically all the officers are speakers. I honestly prefer our ranks, less confusing.


Yeah but the problem with that is that you guys are brittle. We lose a frontline grunt, we can replace them, crude and heartless as that sounds. The Reaper War created mass causalities, so how are you guys going to come back from that soon enough that you can defend yourselves again?


I guess it comes down to that the Alliance operates on a larger unit scale. I don't have to know or trust the General in charge of the operation I'm in.


Um, except there isn't any dissonance there? Civilians and the military are a different breed. The military needs structure, discipline, regiment, to ensure it can react quickly, effectively and with force. Civilians just get antsy if you try to do anything like that to them.


The job of High Command or JOC is to respond to things on a macro scale. A unit on the frontline gets directives from its parent unit. JOC just says where the large units go, so move this fleet here, or use this division to attack here. Responsibilities filter down the chain of command. It's basically my example on a much larger scale.

Hackett doesn't tell each ship where to go, he tells the Eighth or First where to go.

'Mayflies'.

'Mayflies'.

Check your privilege, Major D'Veyra. Or, to put it in words I much prefer;

fuck off.

Anyway, that headache aside, this is the down-low. I'm afraid I must pull out the big regional map again so please, turn your textbooks back to 'Auntie Celeste's Treatise On Why The Republics Are A Clusterfuck Of Anal Drippings Revision VII'.

I really, really hate to admit it, but asari chain of command is pretty much exactly as shitty as it sounds around the fluffy hugbox core. It verges close to militias or tribal shit in places, that's how bad it sometimes gets. Putting the 'small' in small-unit tactics, speakers are generally just 'elected' by brainless maidens who assume that older = wiser. And honestly, I'd take any REMF fresh out of officer training school over a core-world speaker.

Now, thankfully, shit's different the further you get from the safety of the azure hugbox. You do not fuck around with stupid-ass 'elections' out there, you don't practice this huggy-feely bullshit of just knowing your partner that well that you operate in sync, though that can sometimes help. What you do is you shut the fuck up and listen to the cadre speaker, even if she's a century younger than you, because she was put there by council of officers. Like I said, the general coalition around those parts does its best to weed out the shittier troops, and strain out the best officer material. Inspired by turian meritocracy overall.

(Pssst. That's what smart asari do. You take everything that our boytoy races have done right and you reapply it in your own way to solve your problems.)

Okay, Sandy? I answered each of your questions and now you're pulling some legalistic "but you didn't answer this" crap. So I hope you don't mind when I ignore you in favour of the people arguing in good faith, k?


Edit: Gah, sorry, left this blank =/ Tbh, I find it's easier to think of everyone giving orders as a speaker, instead of a this-officer or a that-officer.

How the frogs snuck that one into the Eclipse charter I've no idea.


I'd say that the cadres are a lot tougher than your average marine platoon - no offence or nothing, but combine the experience, the kit and the biotics, and each of our own are a lot harder to bring down than a marine.

It's why huntress doctrines favour ambushes, small strikes and hit-and-run tactics - each dead huntress takes a lot longer to replace. They're tactics that've served us well in the past, but after the Reapers...

Well, everyone got caught with their le'ku on the chopping block. The Alliance suffered 'cause of the strongpoint naval doctrine, the Unions couldn't do shit cause you can't infiltrate a husk swarm, the Big H lost millions of lives because they insisted on fighting a pointless ground war on their homeworld. Everyone's doctrines are having to change, and the Republics are no exception - it's just that we've always got one eye on the future, so it takes longer.

(Because pushing for full mobilisation or diluting the cadre training programs would help against the Return of the Revenge of the Reapers, but it wouldn't do shit against the krogan or the rachni.)


Yeah, it's one of those things, I guess. The Big H trains people to follow orders without question, the little H trained people to follow their caste, the Unions get trained to stop wars before they start, the elcor get told to engage over the horizon if possible. Different strokes for different folks, but it mightily pisses me off when people can't see that.


Eh. Give yourselves another few centuries in the galaxy, then we'll see. The military's just an outpost of government (or it is to asari, turians see it the other way round). Our military tends to be focused on trusting the person on the ground to do their job, instead of having a wave of people checking over them.

You guys order, we delegate.


Yeah, tbh, that example got away from me. But hey, if your buddy Sandy can say that the cadres all sit around getting in each other's way, I'm pretty sure I can say that you guys won't move a muscle 'less some high-up officer tells you to.


no u

(Seriously, how is 'mayflies' less offensive than retard? They're both not something you can control, which kinda lumps them together in the offensive scale)


You mean that individual republics train up their own cadres of local troops who are then posted elsewhere as required?

'Cause funny, that's true. It's also true for turians (Invictan Mutiny, anyone?), the Unions (by Clan), the krogan (ditto), so I'm not sure what your point is, aside from "be more human".

...are you sure you're a Matriarch?


Evidence provided = 0

(And if you're honestly saying you'd take a complete stranger you have no connection to ordering you around because they've got a fancy certificate, then I'll refer you to my previous point of are you sure you're a Matriarch?)


...you might have a point if that wasn't a complete and utter lie.

So for the rest of the people reading along at home, asari Cadres are trained and based locally, but dispatched around the galaxy to fight and to guard where they're needed most.

Much like our Fleets are sent to kill pirates wherever they are, you get all these fun little deployments where Commandos are sent to planets far away from their home Republic.

tl;dr? The Republics have no core world/border world divide, just like the Hierarchy, the Alliance and any other government you care to name. Military assets get sent where they are needed, not to stand guard over where they're from.

...are you sure you're a Matriarch?

Oh come now Major that's fallacious and you know it; and as eager as I am to be damned yet again as a xenophobe and by The Xenophobe no less (all praise her name) I would prefer that it didn't come at the price of near total evasion on your part.

Except where you're essentially talking around my point by addressing your counterarguments to another which, really, is a bit silly. Particularly since I am right here.
Except one's a valid point that has received no direct recourse and the other is a false equivalency.
Oh so extremely then, considering that every post of yours that references the shorter lived races (ie. virtually all of them) would, by your own reasoning, be akin to calling a mentally handicapped individual retard to their face with all the spirit of a slur.
God I sincerely hope so, it might mean the Republics might actually has a chance. Because, honestly is not conducive to an effective utilization of one's armed forces considering they it is an entirely different animal from government and/or "cultural exports".

Yeah but we have it all conveniently labelled so if you're some poor sod cut off from your unit, you jsut pick the nearest gal with a higher rank and do what they say.


Marine pride aside, I'll give you that. We train for six months and our careers are often shorter than your training, but we are good at what we do, when it comes to large scale blitzreig attacks and combined arms.

(On that note, I'd much rather be attacking than defending.)


Yeah, but everyone else is going to recover more quickly. The cadres are definitely good at what they do, but surely there's some kinda compromise where you can at least defend yourselves while rebuilding your special-ist of special forces.

It comes down to efficiency. The Alliance or Hierarchy can train literal armies in the time it takes for a single cadre to be ready for action.


Different species and all that shit.


Yeah no. Just 'cause I won't live as long as you doesn't mean that the human/turian/everyone else's mindset isn't legitimate.

The human military is distinct from the government and requires a different mindset from a civilian.

It hammers you into a coherent unit, takes away that instinctual reaction of 'why (do I have to go into that dark scary bunker)'. What works for Marines doesn't work for civilians and I wouldn't want civilians to be treated by their government the way we are. We signed up.

And we order, 'cause the battlefield is no place for a discussion. I tell someone to go into the dark scary bunker I need them to do it then and there and without hesitation.

And it's not like a wave of people looking over your every move. It's your direct superior who reports to the next person up who reports to the next person up etc etc.

Yes, so of course the units that are trained in conflict zones would be the most experienced and well trained. Which is what she was referring to. The 104th are based in a system where pirates are a persistent threat to their sovereignty, so of course they're going to be the best at handling that situation. Supporting units rotate out (like mine did after the mission I mentioned), but those based in the system of the theatre of operations don't really get that option.


See, that's the thing. The "home guard" cadres that get touted out as the great examples of what the huntresses are capable of have ridiculously hyped reputations that they realistically cannot deliver. Maybe at one point the Serrice Guard could have pulled off an op like their entry says they did, but now?

Now it's a celebrity position. You graduate in the top, say, 10% of your training class, or maybe sit on the casting couch for the head instructor or some shit like that and you're in. After that? You get cool toys and dick around until it's time to deploy and sustain that reputation. But it's not really a combat deployment, because you see, what if our dear celebrities sustain a defeat? Well that just won't do for the public eye, so they put them in advisory positions and leave the middling and garrison cadres to fight and die in the shit-and-piss filled streets. That's why they don't keep up any kind of quality control. They have no expectations of combat detail.

What the fuck are you talking about.

Of course the Alliance has border worlds. The Skyllian Verge. The Blitz, one of the largest conflicts the Alliance has faced in recent memory, happened on Elysium in the Verge, which is frequently attacked by pirates because it is a border world.

.... are you sure that you are a major in Elcipse?

Do you seriously not comprehend how arrogant that makes you sound? It's like you don't even know you're doing it. Every time you do you're basically saying 'oh why should I even listen to you, you only live a hundred years or so, you can't even hope to top my vast itellect and wisdom fnah fnah fnah'. It's making me want to gag.


That is... not what I said. Even a little bit.

Oh wait, hang on, lemme check my cup size.

Shit, still Bs, I must be a really fucking old Maiden.


Okay, I'll check again.

Nope, still Bs. I'm a terrible Matriarch.

Are you're flagrantly misrepresenting what I was saying. You're trying to tell me that everyone should, what, get a few 'practice run' combat zones so everyone's huggy and touchy-feely enough to act like fucking soldiers? No. I will take this 'complete stranger' with legitimate certifications because on the battlefield you need the certainty that comes with rank. Then again I suppose I shouldn't be surprised by a merc acting like she's the be-all and end-all of military knowledge when her most challenging deployment was probably deciding which whimpering slave to boot in the face to make an example for everyone else.


1) That article on the Serrice Guard is complete and total bullshit. I don't care how inept the Pack can be, five people can't inflict 100 casualties over nine days unless HMGs or bombs are involved.

2) I already said that cadres don't just sit on their pillowy blue asses at home and play with themselves. You'll notice I explicitly stated that everybody get shuffled around where they're needed. Remember? That was my defence for overspecialization?

3) Yeah, there is. There is a massive core/border divide because the closer to Thessia you get and the older you get the happier you get to stick your head in the sand and wait for the problem to fix itself. The military is so fucking sloppy there that Thessia was the easiest planet in the war for the Reapers to steamroll, and that's a little fucking embarrassing when every asari in the galaxy is born with the inherent power to be telekinetically bulletproof.


[Sigh].

I'll check one more time for you.

Curses, not even close to giant double-D milk-jugs! I'm a terrible Matriarch!