On Mon, 6 Sep 2021 12:54:38 -0700, Jim Vassilakos
<xxxxxx@gmail.com> wrote:

>Thanks for all the responses on this. I'm inclined toward Jeff's solution
>(the Mongoose enlistees represent academy dropouts who didn't want to pay
>back their tuition and so are doing time until the Navy releases them from
>their contract),

Don't misinterpret here - my take on it is that you can enlist - and I do
mean enlist - in the Navy without attending the Academy, but if you _do_
get nominated to the academy and stick it through to commission, you get
the commission and serve as an officer. If you wash out, you do a contract
as an enlisted - but the enlisted corps is _not_ totally officer washouts.

>                 although Timothy also made a good point (the Imperium is
>big, and this is over 3,700 years in the future, so things may have
>changed). You especially have to consider how prestigious it must be to be
>in the Imperial Navy (I'm talking about the IN proper as opposed to
>colonial/subsector navies and planetary defense forces). I would imagine
>there's a waiting list.

There may not be; it depends on how the IN Academy System chooses its
candidates. As I understand it, for example, there's no real "waiting list"
for Annapolis (the United States Naval Academy) (or for any of the other
U.S. service academies); each member of Congress (both House of
Representatives and Senate) gets a certain number of nominations (per
Academy) per year, and if you're not one of the nominations, you're not
going, period. Of the nominations, each Academy only admits a percentage as
most likely to complete the course - and the USNA has a graduation rate of
90%, much higher than the typical four-year university. I haven't checked
the other service academies (United States Military Acadmy/West Point,
United States Air Force Academy/Colorado Springs, and United States
Merchant Marine Academy/King's Point), but I would expect that they have
similar rates. (The United States Marine Corps do not have a separate
academy; there is a Marine track at the United States Naval Academy.)

I would imagine that non-US national military service academies (e.g.,
Sandhurst in the UK) have analogous systems.

>                        So a variety of pre-enlistment academies might pop
>up, promising to help people get accepted in return for some percentage of
>their pay during their first term of service or whatever the contract
>stipulates. These places probably even hire former IN personnel, in order
>to lend themselves some credibility. Just a thought. YMMV.

If there's a nomination system like I described above, then there may not
be such an industry - but there may be local schools that "feed" the
"Colonial" forces. There may also be schools that will offer a
military-academy-style experience, without focussing on actually feeding
the armed forces (In the United States, the Virginia Military Institute is
one such). Also for "feeding" the "Colonial" forces, some non-military
schools may have programs analogous to the Reserve Officers' Training
Corps.

>Oh, since we're on the topic of military training and such, it recently
>came to my attention that there's no way to get the Steward skill in the
>Imperial Navy (which, obviously, makes one wonder about the quality of the
>chow). This is true in both Classic as well as Mongoose and in both basic
>as well as advanced character generation. It seems a bit odd, because
>wouldn't there be stewards on navy ships, or are gunners, engineers, and so
>forth assigned steward duties in order to reduce overhead? Dunno how
>believable this is, however, as I believe today's navies have cooks and
>even culinary schools (a friend's first wife got sent to one, if memory
>serves). Likewise, I should add, don't high ranking naval officers
>sometimes get assigned a personal
>steward/butler/batman/orderly/what-have-you?

This is an error, definitely - "fix" it if you're using basic CT chargen by
allowing Navy characters to also pick from the Service Skills table for
Merchants. If you're using High Guard (Classic), change the +1 Dext in
Shipboard Life to Steward.

For Mongoose I (Core), change Specialist:Crew Gun Combat(any) to Steward.
For High Guard, change Crewman/Personal Development +1 Social to Gun Combat
(any) and change Service Skills Gun Combat(any) to Steward

For Mongoose II (Core), change Personal Development +1 SOC to Athletics,
change Service Skills Athletics to Steward, and on the Ranks and Bonuses
table for Enlisted, award +1 SOC to achieving Master Chief Petty Officer.
There is no character generation in High Guard.

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