On Sun, 20 Oct 1996, Wayne H. Yin wrote:
> At 1:10 AM 96.10.18, Michael Renjie Tom wrote:
>
> > keeping track of names for a series like LOGH is like reading War and
> > Peace and then picking up the sequel every few months later when it
> > gets fan subbed.
> >
> yeah, i've gotten confused just reading tom clancy before! ;-) thank
> goodness that in the LoGH TV series they have those captions with the
> character names when they appear.
>
> > As for the titles, always lumped the admirals together and that was that.
> >
> well, that's pretty easy to do, yes. but while it is true that yang
> and reinhard spend most of their time talking to other general/flag
> officers, the implications of ranking systems *below* the rank of general
> or admiral shouldn't be overlooked. as i said before, whether they use an
> army/navy style ranking system strongly implies their military organization
> and command structure. that was my real interest.
>
> in a navy ranking system, there's really nothing in-between a ship
> captain and an admiral. however, there are lots of ranks below captain
> (everything else, in fact), and a captain's a pretty big-shot in a navy.
> in fact, on his ship, the captain has the powers of a king or god that even
> an admiral dare not contradict while he's aboard. so a captain of his
> ship's company is a big deal.
>
> in an army ranking system, there's a lot of intermediate grades between
> a captain and a general. a captain and his company is simply a cellular
> unit within the battalion, regiment, and brigade. he gets called on the
> carpet all the time by his bosses, who really call a lot of the shots on
> the battlefield. in the army (and the air force, especially), captains and
> company commanders are a dime a dozen.
>
> that was my real interest in the rankings within the alliace army and
> imperial fleet: how the command structures within their fleets are
> organized. as i said before, the sheer size of fleets makes me inclined to
> think that they use an army system of ranks.
>
> a highly simplified example:
> (recall that a commodore is the equivalent of a brigadier general and
> commands a fleet)
>
> * it doesn't make sense that 10,000 captains report directly to one
> admiral; even 100 captains to one commodore, and 100 commodores reporting
> to one rear admiral isn't plausible from a command/control/logistics
> perspective.
>
> * however, something like 10 captains/major, 10 majors/lt.colonel, 10
> lt.colonels/colonel, and then 10 colonels/brigadier general (or = 10,000
> captains under the command of a brigadier general) is far more plausible.
>
> of course, i've grossly oversimplified things here, but i hope that this
> example gets my point across.
>
> sorry for not making this clear before. :-)
>
> --
> Wayne H. Yin
> why@mail.utexas.edu
>
>
>