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

[adrenalinetooth]

Yes sir!

*pain

[Moosetasm]

The answer to this will be known at the same time the answer to one of computer’s oldest military-hierarchy questions is answered:

In the original DOS XCOM, what kind of insane Military Commander fields twenty-four Colonels as the only combat-capable units?

[kooarbiter]

SEA is GySgt

maybe replace VC with master sergeant?

[Benbot16]

SEA is GySgt

maybe replace VC with master sergeant?

SEAs also become master(?) sergeants after 9 hours of playtime

[Jackson T. Murphy]

The SEAs become Sergeant(s) Major.

[CCRWasHere]

Nearly everyone in this thread thinking they know U.S military structure makes me cringe.

I feel the only one who knows a damn thing was this:

Of course it can't be realistic to a T, who'd want to be the company clerk (or the myriad of tedious billets) required by an independent line company? Try telling the Delta Spec that First Sergeant said they need to complete their annual training before they can be secured to liberty.

It's not like the movie did much to explore the USCM, but cakey explained with this:

They aren't directly tied to the navy nor the marines in real life.

and this: https://gitlab.com/cmdevs/ColonialMarines/-/issues/8602

that devs employ their own mental gymnastics more so than the perfectly fine system the U.S already has regarding rank structure.

[Snooper44]

I don't think the devs honestly care about the mechanics surrounding the RP titles for ranks. They are busy working on mechanics rather then immersion. I personally believe there should be a team to really work things like this out. The devs shouldn't have to busy themselves with something such as this.

[QuickLoad]

I've always wondered this too, especially when I was thinking about why marines would follow marine rankings like LCPL and then officers would be ranked like Ensign, Commander and stuff. I guess it makes sense though, cause the line officers on the Almayer run the ship itself and are likely part of the navy anyway.

on another note -- why are one of the roles for the vehicle crewman SFC (sergeant first class)?? that's an army rank only afaik... marine equivalent would be GySgt. just curious.

yop
that's pretty much it, marines are marines and navy are navy. IOs and POs are from da navy while SOs are from the marines (?)

Don't get too concrete with it cause obviously it's for your average unga to understand and differentiate(same reason with squad colors and easy squad names), but ye
as for SFCs it is again a differentiation of rank structure. but you are correct SFC is an army rank. you have to remember this is way in the future (for a couple reasons, one of them is to ease out any inaccuracies such as the convo we're having now)

Gunnery Sergeants were also reserved for the SEA role, SFCs are generally PSGs in an IRL US Army tank platoon but I'm assuming it's just implied that the Allmayer only has one barely operational tank left(it starts out in bad condition; and the allmayer has come out of an earlier engagement, same reason why the AA guns are broken)

tl/dr: its in the future so it can be as inaccurate as it wants, it's the lore of CM and not IRL

[AlbertBlackwell]

i shift clicked on a mateba and it said that it belonged to a major which means that theres majors now

[scsnv]

Essentially it's Marine enlisted ranks (with the exception of SFC for crewmen) with Navy officer ranks. Why? Because we said so.

I would save yourself the trouble and not hold the ranks of a fictional sci-fi military branch nearly two centuries into the future against the current rank structure of the US Armed Forces. Even currently there's bits and pieces of US military structure that really don't make sense (or are unnecessary). There's probably simplifications or adjustments that could be made, but that's in the dev's ballpark and it's not an especially urgent task.