Special Operations in Yamatai: A Guide & Discussion

So I was sitting around earlier this month and was thinking about special operations stuff in Yamatai and how I'll often see people unaware of the current status of specialized units within the Star Army. My initial idea was to simply make a thread and put the information there, but I realized that'd require me to reserve a bunch of posts after the opener and leave people hanging until I could write it and that's just no good. Instead, I decided to put it directly on the wiki so that the information can be easily referenced after the discussion dies off. Then that Orbital Drop Troops thread popped up, and I knew I had to finish as quickly as possible.

Here's what I came up with:
Special Operations Forces of the Star Army of Yamatai

This guide contains information either available on the wiki or in roleplay that's happened over the years, and is a summary of the special forces units that currently exist within the Star Army. Real world equivalents are linked to at the bottom of each summary. There's an easy-to-navigate table of contents stack. I didn't want to re-write all of the articles that are linked to, so did my best to paraphrase things (and admit that the "we do literally everything" Rangers were kind of hard to condense into something manageable and accurate).

As I said in that other thread,

raz said:

I can imagine the Rikugun having their own dedicated SOFT variant focusing on hardpoint assault and orbital operations (not necessarily with more training because all SOFTs are capable of "orbital drop operations") with a special name — just as I could see the Military Police having one for arresting fugitives, and Star Army Medical or Logistics having their own SOFTs for dedicated SAR duties beyond what SAINT's guys already do for the Star Army. But I could just as easily see all of these orgs being portrayed as simply using Star Army Command SOFTs under the standard three-number team designation. Star Army Command directs the entire Star Army, so it definitely makes sense for their elite teams to be sent on operations in concert with any part of the service.

Click to expand...

Basically, the Star Army is very well equipped when it comes to special operations. We've got a good doctrinal basis with SOFT, cool in-universe history, and room for expansion as our glorious FM Wes sees fit. Enjoy!

Looks great to me. The samurai should be moved to historical, though!

Wes said:

Looks great to me. The samurai should be moved to historical, though!

Click to expand...

I only put them there because you moved the 1XF Samurai Detachment to 1st Fleet after its recent destruction, which suggested to me that Yui still maintained ships of samurai who joined the Star Army when given the choice. Noted, though. I'll change it in a bit.