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SAoY MOS Expansion Discussion

Andrew

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I think because we have pending in the NTSE :

We've come to a standstill, and as the reviewer, I feel this isn't a choice I can singularly make. So I think Yamatai's FMS, especially @Wes , @Yuuki , myself, and the submitter @Ethereal, and the rest of the community should discuss this here.

Personally, I feel that a lot of the new MOS are bloated, they are just qualifiers that could be worked into existing MOS. That some kind of compromise should be reached. Most importantly are these MOS that will be played? Perhaps I should have pumped the brakes before approving some of the others that proceeded with these, but the issue became more apparent as we rolled on. So I put this up for discussion, especially @Wes in terms of what he wants for the Star Army.
 
I think it was a natural conclusion given how condensed the Rangers are. Part of the reason I axed the Giretsu. Perhaps instead of an occupation it is just an expansion/rework of the Ranger Regiments that had paper thin descriptions in the past.

Or the Rangers can be purged too, replaced with qualification courses for infantry.
 
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Kinda curious because It looks like Ship ops got split up at some point. And I've been considering doing something similar to EMS because it's already 18P 18F and 18S who are different enough that they might as well be separate pages
 
For me, the dividing line between an MOS /Qualification/Unit is 'do you sit around doing this all day' / 'this is Top Gun' / 'You are a specific group of people that do something'. The more you sit around doing a thing all day, the more likely it is to be a MOS. The more you just go to a training camp and it's more or less over, the more it's a qualification. The more it's a specific group of people (especially if those people have different specialties), the more it's a unit. So let's discuss.

Rikugun Rangers: reading the article quickly, my gut feeling was that this was a elite unit rather than a MOS.

Border Guards: This to me seems like a half unit/half MOS. The MOS aspect is that 'border guard' feels like a job, while "we've got a whole ship of different specialties that goes on patrol' is 100% unit. I think that if something is a MOS it should be something that shows up in multiple fleets.

Fleet Scout: I really didn't get this one. It feels the most like a MOS, but it also feels very redundant with intelligence. That said, there seems to be friction with the intelligence community right now. so shrugs.

TLDR; Rangers seem actually like a unit. Border Guards seem more like a unit. Fleet Scout feels redundant in a properly working army.
 
I saw the redundancy too but I don't really want to stifle the creative fire Ethereal's lit under himself so it's a balance. I'm the Intelligence manager and last Ethereal (creator of these pages) and I spoke, he gets me and I get him. If anyone notes something Intel specific, don't hesitate to tap me. I've worked very hard to have transparent lines of communication opened as I alone manage Intelligence and I won't have that hard work discounted >,~ So uuuuuh don't speak about friction when I am fighting the good fight over here, respect what I am overcoming please!

That aside, Locked_Out- check starship ops MOS pages: you can't. There is only one page and it includes all 3 codes. I think the Rangers page could do the same by having one page with the codes rather than making the process of disseminating jobs (something a new player should not find taxing) taxing. On that page, starship ops was expanded to include the historical, and thus necessary, positions while some of the new MOS can feel unnecessary in the larger schema.

And that's my two cents, some of them feel unnecessary and like they create difficulty for slotting into a generalized plotship.
 
That aside, Locked_Out- check starship ops MOS pages: you can't. There is only one page and it includes all 3 codes. I think the Rangers page could do the same by having one page with the codes rather than making the process of disseminating jobs (something a new player should not find taxing) taxing. On that page, starship ops was expanded to include the historical, and thus necessary, positions while some of the new MOS can feel unnecessary in the larger schema.
I mean fair enough, you were the one to write those up. (Edit) Looking back at the Occupations page, there are separate pages for stuff like Nav and Safety ops. As well as their entry on the general 09 page.
I do think there might be a way to find a happy medium. I'm still looking at Star Ship Ops and EMS. Places where there are already secondary letter designations. Instead of making pages that lead back to the main MOS page as "Separate" MOSes, Keep the basic description on the main MOS page and have "Further reading" page that can outline specific training, skills, RP examples, etc etc for those more specialized sub fields.
 
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Hi all, I'd like to preface by saying I get why people are thinking that this is better being one MOS, and such.

Just to remind people, that's exactly what the Rangers have been for quite a long time. You went through standard recon training, then got specialised training based on your Regiment.

The difficulty was that I always felt a lot of the skills were pretty non transferable, and the Rangers were doing so many things it was hard for players to understand intuitively:

Rikugun Rangers - Doing lots of raiding, terrestrial combat behind enemy lines, survival training. Could be a qualification but it takes a few months of training to acquire these skills and currently there's a bunch at Area Army level who have professional readiness for when they're needed. They're very much insert, blow up infrastructure or bases from behind, then disappear and extract. You're expected to fight stronger forces with your lighter equipment in fairly head-on engagements until you're able to withdraw.

Rikugun Scouts (page yet to be submitted) - JTAC types. Sit on the frontline with high powered scopes, but a lot of the time skulk around behind enemy lines in small groups but avoid enemy contact. Expected to call in fire support from unseen areas. They use very minimal, lightweight equipment with no resupplies. Lots of snipers. Special Observers. Not sure if this could be a qualification, given it's something they should be constantly deployed doing during conflict. We can chat about how this works with SAINT but I imagine they work closely together. Difference being they're not doing intelligence work explicitly, it's as much giving regular platoons supporting fire or sitting on hills without moving for days.

Fleet Scouts - Basically people who dive off the edges of Fleets and scout ahead or around for X many km or LY. They do so to spot any hazards, points of interest or enemies. They feed these back but their primary usage is to last-stand, delay tactics or such to buy the Fleet time to position once they find something dangerous. They get trained especially on how to do this. They also learn space survival, which is very different to planetary survival. Given this is pretty much a full time role, I don't know if there's any question of it being an MOS. We can chat further about how this works with SAINT.

Border Guards - System Garrisons. The submarine service in a lot of ways. Basically put in border systems with old, almost obsolete starships because they're not expected to see much combat. Have extra skills to cope with bits of their ships breaking down and things. Expected to do similar delay tactics to Fleet Scouts but fighting from a ship is probably quite different to unsupported in a scout PA? Maybe I can merge this with Fleet Scouts.

Star Army Insurgents (yet to be submitted) - Deploy to enemy-occupied planets to organise, train and arm resistance movements in readiness for a Star Army invasion force.

I'm hoping that all of these can be shown in setting, although certain ones like Insurgents will need a plot focused around planetary recovery (like Essia or Hanako's World) for players to really want to make one.

I'm pretty open to suggestions on how to handle this, but I tried having it all under Rangers and it just served to confuse people about what exactly Rangers *did*, because they have these 4 different roles inside.

P.S. The only one of these MOS' I expect to see on naval plotships is Fleet Scouts. The rest are for Rikugun, 4th Fleet type or Hanako's World type plots.
 
I understand there are a lot of different opinions on this and understand I didn't start this thread to shut anything down. What's more, there were three separate threads in the NTSE with an obvious sign of more to come.

What has me thinking is:

  1. What do Yamatai's FMs (other than me, I already stated my opinion), like @Yuuki and @Wes think about the MOS listings, and what the vision is for their future of them?
  2. Do these MOS make sense to the players? It feels like some of these MOS may never see screen time, and sure we have a few like that already but I also question them.
  3. Can we find a common direction with all of this? - Mainly to help me and other submissions reviewers handle how we're reviewing these going forward.
@Ethereal I have absolutely no doubt each of these professions is doable in the setting, and I'm not knocking your hard work by any means. Just trying to get a feel for how to handle these and the ones coming in the future.
 
I mean there are already some MOSs that are more likely to be NPCs than PCs but a lot of players seem to make them work. And even then If it's more of an NPC mos the fact that it exists still fleshes out the world. Kinda the same way named brands and pop culture does
 
Rikugun Rangers - When I read your description, I think 'ok this is a special forces unit'.

Rikugun Scouts - Snipers, very possibly a MOS.

Fleet Scouts - This seems more like a ship role or a qualification (perhaps for a intel person), rather than a MOS.

Border Guards - It feels like a unit/MOS mash up like I said earlier. People who do border stuff (inspections, counter-smuggling, ect) seems like a MOS, but a ship going on a routine patrol is a lot of MOSes working together and so is a unit.

Star Army Insurgents - Sounds like a qualification.
 
Fleet scouts basically seem to fill a role similar to Air Force Special Recon running the similar role of the Rikugun Rangers but for fleets. Idk I think specifying the skills a bit more for the different Ranger variants would help.
Ranger as the catch all, but the different MOSs are a factor of what they spend most of their time doing/what their strengths and weaknesses are.
 
I have already changed up the "skills" sections of each of the MOS pages from what it was on the old Ranger page. They look the same but they aren't. However, the "skills" section is mostly fluff for most articles or absent entirely. I've already detailed their skills above, and in the meat of the articles.

I'd say that insurgency organisation probably isn't just a qualification - you have to embed pretty unsupported on a hostile planet, somehow arrange shipments of arms and training, without being detected, etc. I don't think that's something you can take on from a course without running lots of simulations and exercises throughout the year to keep up on it.
 
Alright, since more MOS are being submitted. I guess I'm wondering if we've come to some kind of a conclusion. I'd like to see what @Wes has to say on this so that I can get the reviews done on these pending submissions. Sorry if this makes things more complicated, I just feel like knowing the direction the boss man has on this will help me in answering the big old question, "Is this good for SARP?" so I can get a checklist up.
 
Given I haven't mentioned the Kamirakurai yet (because they're not even Ranger-based, they're something entirely unique), Kamirakurai are shock troopers / breakthrough armour and are kind of like battlefield demons. They use really heavy gear and shock tactics to break lines and that's their specialty. Operational longevity doesn't matter (if their equipment breaks down after an hour that's fine, because they're redeployed after each engagement).
 
Just waiting on @Wes to speak his mind on this, then I will post my reviews.
 
Sorry for taking so long to respond. I've just been extremely busy lately and I'm trying to prioritize in-character RP over OOC discussions so it's been taking me longer to get to some of these where I need to think it out.
 
Sorry for taking so long to respond. I've just been extremely busy lately and I'm trying to prioritize in-character RP over OOC discussions so it's been taking me longer to get to some of these where I need to think it out.
No problem, I just know @Ethereal is waiting on this. Once you think about this and make up your mind I will review the few that are sitting in the NTSE and put checklists on them.
 
Having some movement would be nice before we end up at the Christmas period and nobody has any time at all. But this topic really isn't of much import beyond setting the standard for whether we have more Pharmacist style MOS' or move to certifications.

My main concern with moving lots of things to certifications is that you can write your character as having a whole bunch and perhaps get to that mary-sue territory where your character is a "one man army", which would be silly.
 
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