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Thread: Company or Platoon? Platoon or Squad? Navy or Marines? Do these ranks make any sense?

  1. #1
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    Question Company or Platoon? Platoon or Squad? Navy or Marines? Do these ranks make any sense?

    Now Colonial Marines is as we all know a game about a "platoon" of marines on board the USS Alamayer generally sent to investigate a distress signal in the Tycho Sector.

    However, the in-game "platoon" generally balloons to company size with a close to a 100 or more combat marines being relatively common. This generally means squad sizes balloon to platoon size Delta being a particularly egregious example. I've seen games where Delta manages to top 50 marines nominally in the squad even if half of them are generally dead an hour in.

    (For those who don't know squads generally a number between 8-13 men and platoons hovering somewhere between 30-50 for line units)

    Is there any particular Watsonian explanation for why platoons have ballooned to company size and why Lieutenants are overwatching "squads" or are we just supposed to roll with it?

    Furthermore, the rank system onboard the USS Alamayer and by extension the USCM seems all kinds of messed up. Captain in the modern-day USMC, USAF, and US Army has a paygrade of 0-3 commanding company-sized formations. In the USN and USCG however, the Captain's paygrade is that of 0-6 equivalent to that of a Colonel in the other US service branches.

    So it seems that in the late 22nd century either the Marine Corps has decided to switch over to the Navies ranking system for commissioned officers or alternatively the Alamayer's crew and command staff is Navy and are simply carrying a bunch of enlisted marines

    But, wait it's not even that simple because in-game the captain's rank boards give him a paygrade of... 0-5 05.png and by extension the XO a commander has a rank of 0-4 which is the actually the 0-5 rank in the USN and the USCG and effectively get rid of the 0-2 Junior Lieutenant which instead goes directly to Lieutenant. The only rank which actually remains the same is that of the ENS which is the same 0-1 paygrade both in actual Navy and in CM.

    So what is it CM? The enlisted ranks seem to match up with their RL counterparts in the USMC but the commissioned officer ranks seem to either indicate the Marines have wholly changed how they rank officers or imply that they are a bunch of squids.
    Last edited by GDIS Pathe; 02-25-2020 at 09:26 PM.

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    It only a game bro

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    Mentor Memesky's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Pigeon View Post
    It only a game bro
    Pigeon speaks the truth doe

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    So, to the OP's point, i think that the Rank structure in the movie never went above Lt. Gorman, and for the most part, the ship was automated. As such, there is no distinction between what "I" call the Navy, and the USCMC illustrated in the movie. Personally, I end up calling the "Naval" element of the USS Almayer a part of the USCN (United States Colonial Navy) and treat the IO's, PO's, CE, RO, XO and CO as Navy types; while the SO's would be actual USCMC officers, and likely 1st Lieutenants (as butter bar 2nd lieutenants shouldn't be performing overwatch on squads - they would be in the field, having absolute PISS kicked out of them by the NCO's who really runs the platoon).


    but... like the man said, it's just a game.


    (I still get pissed IC whenever some PFC or PVT calls me "Sir" when im a SL - "I'm a God-Damned SERGEANT, not a fuckin' OFFICER!")

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    Those ranks make sense. Basically the current rank structure comes both from the Aliens lore while keeping the chain of command from the basic SS13. So we have department heads -> XO -> CO. Since we're dealing with a vessel it makes sense to have CO be CPT, XO be CDR and heads LCDRs. And then we keep LTs overwatching squads as per the movie. LT Jr. is just kinda of an awkward rank in reality, so there's no reason to keep it.

    As for what the force is, the wiki both calls marines a platoon and a battalion. So it seems that we have a battalion containing one company-sized marine platoon. This picture leads to somewhat more confusion, so if we have one 100 men platoon and there's at least two, means that USCM companies are at least 200 strong.

    If we be more realistic Almayer would carry an independent company of marines with support personnel, led by a Major\LCDR, but this would not give us enough rank verticality.
    Roman 'Fire' Kacew

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    Senior Member SirMandrake's Avatar
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    Penal battalion
    Goosen Dagen-casual marine

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    Considering the Marines are an auxiliary of the Navy, I wouldn't suppose it's a stretch of the imagination to suggest that the identity of the USMC became more and more consumed as space (in this case, the Navy's/USAF's domain of combat) warfare became more and more prevalent.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Pigeon View Post
    It only a game bro
    I know it's why I put Pednatic, Bored and Why did I bother as the tags

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    To go deeper...

    Yea I dont think the devs are going to put that much effort to ensure a totally proper rank system is in place and ensure the ship is 100% realistic considering the amount of support staff a ship like this would need, we need most people dying on the front line not 5 chefs making everyone meals. The game does not need to mirror real life perfectly just close enough to feel MilSimy enough. I mean we can make proper rank system and support staff but even now SOs are rarely filled up much less engineering or cargo so I am not sure how you going to fill all the ranks.

    Actually might gitlab that chef thing though, going to bring Charlie Breakfest back in style by adding a glorified SS13 Chef.

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    We're actually in trump's space force stop trying to apply logic

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