Is the Star Army of Yamatai The Best Fictional Military In The World?

[Wes]

In terms of being interesting and being detailed, is the Star Army of Yamatai among the top imaginary military forces to exist in fiction?

If so, why is that? What makes us better than The Galactic Empire's Imperial Navy from Star Wars, Starfleet, or the space marines from 40K?

And if not, what would you do to make it better if you were me? More history? Better unit designs? More stories about it?

 

[raz]

That's largely a matter of taste, of course, but I do think it's one of the best. Which is why I've contributed some of the things that help with that and continue to do so. It's really hard to directly compare the Star Army to other wildly different settings such as Warhammer 40k because they do not share the same creative space. But as a basis for comparison, I think the Star Army does a similar (and oftentimes more than matched) job at interesting details as fiction like Star Wars or Star Trek do because we have unique units and histories created specifically for the universe which are inspired by but not always directly related to real world inspirations.

The Star Army has a clear vision of what it is that is easy to grasp after reading the main Star Army page plus the fleet pages on its wiki sidebar. It has a clear and theoretically functioning command structure the likes of which are often only headcanon in big commercial IPs. Our admirals aren't warlords who just do whatever simply because they're roleplayed characters written by different minds. We have a handful of units with great niches and histories developed through actual RP, giving them real fictional history rather than jarring retcons pulled from nowhere. The First Fleet (which contains within its lineage the old 1st XF), Second Fleet, Third Fleet, Fifth Expeditionary, and SAINT have grand histories made up of "lived" stories. And smaller units like Hanako's Eucharis and Sakura before it, the Kaiyōs, Legion 777, and Giretsu Century of the 75th Legion (RIP) have all been roleplayed and developed heavily. Just to name a few.

This is great because it's all development that has been shown from a foundational level rather than invented and inserted. Ultimately any player or GM can go grab a couple others and replicate such successes and maintain those well detailed, interesting units just like how real world units exist with cool histories.

Compared to Star Wars, the Star Army has detailed units that are just as cool if not more so than all of the neat stuff from every era of the Star Wars franchise. Like Star Trek, the Star Army has interesting command organs for characters to interact with as a backdrop for the adventures of its soldiers (played characters). The Star Army has military flavor, but not in the boring way like Halo does where it's just modern NATO in space. Even considering all that, just to finally address 40k here, plotships maintain some OOC autonomy to easily create new stories in a way available to the semi-feudal Space Marine chapters of the Imperium.

Very few sci-fi universes actually compare to the consistent detail The Star Army has, I think.

 

[Charmaylarg Dufrain]

To answer honestly, no. And not for anti-yamatai reasons or anything but more due to my preferences and aesthetics and entirely my isolated opinion.

I prefer less super-high tech and more grimdark and gritty settings like 40k and even in those settings I prefer groups like the imperial guard over astartes. Same for UNSC marines over covenant or spartans, etc. Yamatai has no struggle or overmuch adversity, no lack of resources, no major foil or anything to push it in a direction to make it more interesting towards my tastes; Its people have everything they could ever want and live in a pseudo-utopia of perfect, god-like immortal beings of perfect unquestionable beauty with too-advanced technology where they never really need to struggle or want for anything and even the occasional sector super war doesnt really change that.

Yamatai is interesting and is detailed tho, yes! But if you put it on a table with movies about yamatai and all its adventures next to star wars and 40k I would say I would prefer it over the past few starwars movies which were just nostalgia bait and pulling cliche tropes out of a hat but not over mandalorian stuff or whatever henry cavill has going on with his 40k project and amazon.

As for what >>>I<<< would do to improve it?

Spoiler

More adversity, more internal strife and empire bloat. Going forwards lean less into japan-korean anime aesthetics and develop more into the norse-viking stuff beyond the occasional neko with a nordic sounding name. Have problems that cant be fixed militarily to make their lives more interesting when there are problems you cant fix with a fleet or legion which yamatai has in abundance. Make neko-superiority flourish again with new fringe radical groups. Make planets rebel and fleet admirals go rouge or move on their own designs in a yamatai they feel is moving in the wrong direction. Make resources become scarce for once. Make an untraceable virus that makes ST corruption super likely in all but PCs where the average yamatain actually becomes scared for thier lives and safety.

Generally things that make yamatai less of the civilization/utopia in the comics or movies gets destroyed in exposition to show how uber-evil or dangerous the antagonist is. That is my opinion however. And it is based solely off the fact that I prefer those types of things in settings or prefer to make those kinds of things happen in perfect settings for inevitable collapses and desperate fights.

 

[Soban]

In terms of being detailed and interesting, I think there are others that are more so. However, overall, very few. We have something that the biggest and best do have, lots of accretions and different perspectives and stories told in the setting. Star Army has a LOT of potential for the future, a future I would like to help build.

That said, I agree with Charmaylarg Dufrain a lot here. Star Army is interesting and is detailed and is not under threat. We just don't have a lot of conflict going on. I think the encounter with the Mishhu and Kuvexian stuff on Hanako's world are steps in the right direction. I think the Mishhu should make a serious comeback and become our Klingons, someone else can be our Romulans, and so on. Conflict is the engine of story, and that engine feels stalled right now.

 

[Yoshiro Tanaka]

Yes it is. Not just because of the faction-based story lines and stuff but because of the people I have interacted with and how welcoming people have been. The Resurgence and the Aeon have had people both IC and OOC that welcomed me and believe me when I say you guys and gals are awesome people for that.

 

[Alex Hart]

Best is extremely subjective. I can name a lot of fictional militaries that I prefer to read or watch stories about, but that's kind of apples to oranges in terms of comparing consumptive media to participatory media. Star Army is special because it's a setting and a military in which I've played a part in creating the story through participating in roleplay, even if I don't often enjoy going back and reading much past roleplay, IE consuming it like other media.

 

[demibear]

Humans love garbage. shrugs

(Replied to a now deleted message about 40K and why people like it)

 

[Ametheliana]

Humans love garbage. shrugs

What do you mean?

 

[Wes]

What do you mean?

He was responding to a now self-deleted post about 40K being trash that someone made.

 

[Primitive Polygon]

Honestly, one of the biggest things that stop it feeling 'real' to me, is the lack of military stopgaps and boondoggles. I'm talking about failed prototypes that don't work properly, 'advanced' projects which turned out to have serious shortcomings or were awkward to use, rushed or corrupt developments resulting in products that 'made sense at the time'... You could argue that a faction has solved material concerns, but where are all the bad, imperfect decisions made by human minds?

A great example could have been a lower quality "Mindy II-SG" that had to be produced on masse due to supply line issues during the Kuvexian war, or perhaps even a "Space Daisy" with implicitly roughshod space modifications.

Examples in other universes include the Excelsior class in star trek- Which the Federation dumped loads of money into it, only for it to end up as a bland and temperamental ship of the line. Battletech has dozens upon dozens of examples where superior technology looses in the field because it's next to impossible to maintain, or at least is overpriced and extremely situational. Gundam has Zeon wasting precious resources on superweapons and gimmicky (but awesome) underwater suits.

In summary, a lot of militaries in fiction have something of the superman problem about them- Being too good at what they do rather robs them of relatable personality, and the very same thing goes for the technology that they use.

Look at it this way- It would give engineering characters a lot more to do other than repair battle damage, at the very least!

 

[raz]

I'm talking about failed prototypes that don't work properly, 'advanced' projects which turned out to have serious shortcomings or were awkward to use

Of all the factions, the Star Army probably has the most of these types of things (if not all of them among SARP's factions).

The Space Daisy was obsolete when it was made and has long since been discontinued from production (and mostly existed for aesthetic choice).

The Mindy 3 project was cancelled in favor of the superior Mindy 4.

Then there's the MCAS, which has never really been widely adopted because both Mindys and Daisys are better in their roles.

The Himiko-class Light Escort never made it into full production past the first two, with the first model specifically having power management issues. An advanced project that had serious shortcomings.

The Hayabusa SD variant is stripped down and lacks FTL so it can be operated by planetary defense forces. Literally designed to be cheaper for garrison forces.

A lot of Yamataian power armor accessories were purpose built for specific PA models and then are subsequently provided as a universal "stopgaps" to be used outside of their intended design.

There's way more, too, but I don't want to spend a whole post linking to every single piece of failed tech. Look at all of the weird Nekovalkyrja models from over the years (and others not on that list like NIWS, which was phased out for its operational shortcomings). And on top of technologies that have explicitly been made obsolete, didn't pan out properly, or were never particularly good in the first place, there have been plots based around development that utilized testbed technology like the LAMIA Kai or the Serendipity Class. Even great technologies, such as the Thought Armors that came from the LAMIA Kai's lineage, are sometimes underutilized because of misunderstandings on how they're meant to operate (which is a very human-side failing on the part of strategists/tacticians).

Technological development, including failures and half-successes of imperfect inventions, has always been an important part of Yamatai and the Star Army's story if you don't overlook it. It's one of the faction's central themes.

 

[Primitive Polygon]

Not to be argumentative, but Yamatai's 'failures' seem to be superior to other race's 'successes' if we are going by that level of criteria. A lot of it feels like retcons designed to cover up why things weren't used, post-facto. I'm talking about militaries being stuck on the front line with technology that isn't 100% the best it could be.

Origin Industries have a lot of overlap, and are actually a great example of what I am talking about, that said. Everything has pros and cons based on the limitations of the technology, sometimes weird bodge jobs just to test ideas out. But Kai knows I love his stuff.

Probably also worth noting that I did mainline the Daisy even in space when given the option with Tsuguka, hah... I do not remember the 'space daisy' being an actual thing when it was relevant, perhaps that was a later addition?