Rank systems

[beccaelizabeth]

I started trying to turn a rather good dream into a story and I crunched right into needing to worldbuild before I can name my characters. I mean, in the dream, one of them was Lieutenant Malcolm Reed. So first, do I want the rank lieutenant in my science fiction future? Do I want to use made up words, or import from a different language?
If I use lieutenant... it's such a pain in the arse to spell, who needs that many vowels anyway? Actually the dictionary.com makes it make sense:
a person who holds an office, civil or military, in subordination to a superior for whom he or she acts: If he can't attend, he will send his lieutenant. From Old French, phrase lieu tenant, place-holding.
Huh. I did not know that.

BUT, if I use Lt, which system is it out of? Wiki reckons it's a military, naval, fire service, emergency medical services or police officer rank. It's one of the things that makes it useful, everywhere's got them, you can just say the word and move on. It means he's not in charge on his own but he's the boss of some other people. But obviously he's going to know with a great deal more precision where he stands, so I have to as well.

... not if I'm just writing the porn version, but if there's any plot at all.

... actually also if I write the porn version, because there's two of them.

The other guy in the dream was in Peacekeeper uniform, was a pilot, and had a back injury. Sort of a mash up of Crichton and Cam there, Lieutenant Colonel and Commander to choose from. Commander is another good one cause it does what it says on the tin.
Either way, say he's the boss of a lieutenant.

but how much by, if he's the direct boss or if there's layers in between, if they're even in the same branch of service with the same system so you could get there from here... all that I need to know if there's going to be anything above the most shallow sort of interaction. Even if they're just going to agree to ignore the ranks and screw, they're not in a life where you ignore rank, so that's a character making decision.


I can't use starfleet ranks cause they don't precisely make sense. I looked on Memory Alpha and there's a different system in every era. Plus, officers and enlisted, we know they both exist, but about our only evidence is O'Brien, so we don't know how they work.


And what's with the officer and enlisted thing anyway? I understand the kind of rank where you start on the first step and keep climbing up. That's simples. But why are there two sets of steps? I don't really get that. If I'm going to write pseudo military SF I kind of really need to get that, because even if I decide to ignore that and make it go away I need to know what I'm chucking out.

SF TV is a really bad guide to how ships logically should work. The Captain and the bridge crew does everything. It seems to me that since you only have the one of the Captain and the bridge needs crew on it to make the ship go there should be other people for the actual doing of things. But what do I know? Only what I read in RPG rulebooks.

Actually the GURPS RPG rulebooks do a lot of explaining of things. But I only have Cops, Covert Ops and Special Ops. No 'ships for beginners'. I wonder which one that would be.



I've been having more luck inventing the internal structure of Psi Corps, which possibly needs another name except we will all know it's the Psi Corps. For that I can just make stuff up. I'm good at that. Make it up, play it through, watch it crunch together and fall apart, it's all good story.

It's just when it's supposed to be a stable enduring structure that you kind of have to make good stuff up, or try and use best practice from elsewhere.


Also you get a lot of flavour out of tradition. Just using British names instead of the American ones would make a difference, even if only subconscious. Using ones from any other language anywhere would make a great big difference, and probably need translated.



I think if I'm writing it then Captain is unambiguously the guy in charge. Somewhere above him, in theory, there are Admirals and Prime Ministers and maybe Kings, but those people are relevant mostly to Captains. To everyone on the ship, the Captain is about one step away from God. Whether that step is down or up would have to do with the balance of secular and religious power around there.

So I don't want any other sorts of Captains running around being not very in charge at all. No army or marines Captains answering to Majors. Captains don't answer to people unless someone catches up to them.

And then the Captain is the boss of the Commander, who therefore doesn't command all everyone. This is logical only from certain angles.

Captain, Commander, Lieutenant. Useful ranks. Do there need to be more? How big is the ship and how many people are getting bossed around?



So I tried looking for tables of different ranks, and there are so so many. Wiki has a bazillion pages. Just for the military ones.


Use of religious hierarchy titles, or police, or for that matter high school, would really change the flavour.

... I need a branch of Psi Corps dedicated to education. It's of equivalent scary to Bureaus of Political Education. You do not want to get called to the Headmaster's office.
... and due to the pun I'm thinking I'll keep the head of that branch the Headmaster, making all the different offices, what, Houses?
... it all starts as a boarding school anyway, if you keep the Psi kicking in at puberty common trope.


Then you have the situation where you have to figure out rank equivalents between the military and the Education lot. How would the Admirals feel at being roughly equivalent to the Headmaster? Would they even know, or would it be a sneaky branch mostly in charge of Psionic individuals?


There's times you don't want to make too clear who is senior to whom. And there are times it would waste the reader's time to not know straight away. Familiar structure, familiar shorthand, but bringing much expectation about how stuff works.



You know, I think this is why I've previously given up on grand space fleet fiction and gone back to ship full of thieves stuff. It's a sight simpler running an anarchy. Well, when you're the Creator, anyways.

Comments

[raine]

There's a good answer re: difference between officer and enlisted here: http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20060828090854AAze2qD

Pre-WWI, officer corps usually meant you had money and connections, and some sort of social standing that implied you'd had an education rather than say, growing up on a farm and knowing how to milk cows (and maybe knowing how to count cows) but you couldn't write your name. To a certain degree, that's still true -- you can't get into an American military academy without an appointment from a senator or representative, or have the money to go to college and get a four-year degree.

That said: your world, your rules.

[beccaelizabeth]

Thanks, that's a good link.
So historically it was class based with the excuse of education, and now it's about education so it ends up being about class? Useful.

[philippos42]

Starfleet ranks tend to look like US Navy commissioned officer ranks. So a Captain is the had of a ship (but the head of a boat would be lower rank) & has five (more or less) officer ranks below him. There would be various flag ranks above as well.

This is based on the US system--Starfleet might use something similar:

- Flag ranks (i.e., mucketymucks--only a few of these, they oversee fleets)
Admiral
Vice Admiral
Rear Admiral or Counter Admiral
Commodore (sort of a super-captain)

- The more familiar crew officers:
Captain (head of a ship, roughly same as a Colonel on land)
Commander
Lt. Commander
Lieutenant
Lieutenant (junior grade) (This is what Geordi was first season of TNG)
Ensign (fresh outta school)

- Non-commissioned/enlisted crew (may have had technical training but not officer training as such). How this works in Starfleet is undefined, but in the USA at present there are 9 pay grades:
Master Chief Petty Officer
Senior Chief Petty Officer
Chief Petty Officer
Petty Officer First Class (same pay grade as a Marine Staff Sergeant)
Petty Officer Second Class (same pay grade as a Marine Sergeant)
Petty Officer Third Class (same pay grade as a Marine Corporal)
Seaman ("Crewman" in Starfleet)
Seaman Apprentice
Seaman Recruit (some kid still in indoctrination, not even on a ship)

Starfleet may have fewer "non-com" ranks due to a) title inflation, b) more reliance on extensive technical training.

Malcolm is probably 2-3 ranks below Cam.

[beccaelizabeth]

I been looking on Memory Alpha and it points out that NX01 had no evidence that Starfleet was using Lt Commanders yet, just Ensign-Lt-Commander-Captain. Also that Malcolm was the boss of a MACO Major, though that situation resulted in big crunching fights. So the equivalents aren't exactly the same.

[philippos42]

Ah. I've seen most of Enterprise, but I didn't realize they changed the ranks.

Personally, I'd like to see a writer just make up their own version that works rationally for the organization they want to describe. What uniformed services use today evolved over time through various ad hoc decisions.

[beccaelizabeth]

yeah, but if the writer sits down and tries rational, the in-world explanation has to be that giant organisations sat down and tried rational. at which point my suspension of disbelief goes boom.

[philippos42]

Fine. Never mind "rational," try "plausible."

[executrix.livejournal.com]

Historically, "commissioned" officers came from noble or otherwise prestigious families (and, often, had to pay a lot of money to buy a commission). However, "non-commissioned" officers like corporals and sergeants traditionally came from peasant or working-class families. So, for example, a brand-new 18-year-old lieutenant would outrank a 40-year-old Master Sergeant with 20 years' combat experience.

[beccaelizabeth]

I guess I get that, so my question is really, why are there still two sets? How does it actually make sense and help people survive? Tentative answer so far is 'more college education'.