So, MCDF discipline and conduct is modeled fairly closely on the Terran Federation Marines from Heinlein's Starship Troopers, aside from being able to vote (and there you've used the modern US military model, where you're apolitical outside the voting booth, and appearing to favor a particular candidate or proposition to the press while in uniform is strictly verboten).
That's true to a point, @jonsills. But there's a few problems.
The MCDF has quite a few similarities to the Bajoran Militia (formally the Militia of the Republic of Bajor), which despite the name really is a professional volunteer military rather than "as-needed" civilian and reserve call-ups (Admiral Alcott helped set up several of the latter in the border planets during the Hromi-Archanis War, my in-universe name for the Federation-Klingon War, initially under the martial law declaration but later legitimized by CARA). They both have their roots in an "everything and the kitchen sink" ragtag resistance philosophy, and both are more willing to use tactics normally considered too brutal for Starfleet, but like Starfleet the Militia's role is ultimately defensive: they're a response force and a deterrent to attack, albeit they're more militarized than Starfleet and freer to conduct reprisals (with the caveat that they decommissioned their space fleet for about fourteen years until the Iconian War forced them to bring it back).
The legacy of Son Tay, as the authors of Three Decades of War noted at the end of Spiked, is that the MCDF became focused on high-risk, high-reward strike missions, which meant casualty rates their elite but small force and population base couldn't sustain: Bajor's capital province alone, an area roughly the size of France and Germany together, has more citizens than the entire Moab Confederacy at the time of this story, and they have a couple of dozen offworld colonies besides. The legacy of the Occupation is that the Bajoran Militia concentrated on defense in depth, conservation of manpower, and maneuver warfare at the squad and platoon level, since, while artillery and air/orbital support are nice to have, light infantry and Humvee-equivalents are more likely to be able to escape and hide if the worst happens.
The Bajorans also had a lot less to prove than the Moab Confederacy politically. They basically made their point when they drove the Cardassians off Bajor without any overt Federation assistance (tribble you very much, Prime Directive) -- only then inviting the Federation in to help with reconstruction -- whereas the MC started and remains in a precarious political position. They went out of their way to antagonize the Federation as much as they could without actually attacking them militarily (notwithstanding springing Janey Qua in Spiked, which officially never happened), but their primary ally considers them about as inconvenient as, if you'll pardon a possibly touchy real life comparison, many in the US consider Israel or Saudi Arabia. IOW there's a significant faction of the Empire's political elite that wants to either cut the Moabites loose or fully annex them, for various reasons. So the political objectives came to overshadow military practicality, with the MCDF being thrown into basically every little brushfire spat the Empire found just to maintain the status quo. Which means outsize casualty and PTSD rates per capita. The "deal with it or leave" attitude Patrick mentioned would, if anything, only exacerbate the problem.
So, ship for ship and man for man, MCDF troops may be better fighters (allowing for the fact that their ships are mostly Klingon and Gorn hand-me-downs), but Starfleet has a better organization.
The Romulan Republic could have gone that way, but D'Tan had a much better sense than Elizabeth Tran or her immediate successors of what his galae (properly translated as 'aerospace fleet', not 'navy') was actually capable of and chose to play the Empire and the Federation off against each other instead, which as a side effect helped bring about the end of the war. This gave him the breathing room to actually set up a properly functioning state, much as the Federation provided for Bajor in DS9. (Granted, D'Tan had a positional advantage Tran didn't, that being coming in from outside as a neutral party instead of having to secede from one side first.)
On an unrelated note, Bajor's political leverage comes mostly from the wormhole, which may not continue to hold as quantum slipstream drive advances (if it were more reliable and longer-lasting, the speeds demonstrated in VOY: "Hope and Fear" could get you from one side of the galaxy to the other in two weeks). That's a big part of why First Minister Kalin took the actions she did: Bajor's an important world now, and she wants it to stay that way, so she's building political alliances ahead of time.
By comparison, Federation and even Klingon units tend to be more 'morally restricted' (or to use modern terms of the 21st century, "Politically correct") But then, the UFP doesn't have corporal punishments or execution as part of the standard menu of disciplinary items, and Klingons have to keep political matters firmly in mind even at the level of a Bekk, while MCDF personnel are expressly forbidden to interfere with politics and are expected to be Apolitical in their duties (though they are permitted to cast their votes as full citizens, they are NOT permitted to participate in organized political activity, including party memberships or contributing financially to political campaigns, attendance at rallies, etc.)
as mentioned in "Come the Fall" MCDF personnel are also expressly forbidden to deploy as civilian law enforcement on home territory-they're literally forbidden by law, constitutional and charter, to assist in quelling riots or insurrections outside of a declared state of civil war.
This, also, is a factor in the tendency to have a bit of an 'ego' when comparing themselves to other nation's services.
by contrast, the "Homeland Security Force" raised by the Odelaw government during the recent civil war does not maintain either the harsh discipline system, nor harsh restrictions on political activities and political membership, and does NOT permit 'at will' resignation outside of combat for enlisted, maintaining instead a fixed period of enlistment for enlisted, and an 'at will' resignation system for officers above pay grade O-2. (Paygrade O-1s have a fixed six year term upon commissioning, and it's 'up or out', with a 4 year window for promotion to O-2, Six for O-3, and eight for O-4, with eight years added for each paygrade.) HSF models their disciplinary system on Starfleet's uniform code. Notably, the HSF has a more 'top down' approach with regards to initiative and obedience, in spite of a less brutal penalty system for breaches of discipline.
I would also point out that, unlike the MCDF, Starfleet (as well as the Bajoran Militia) is an internal police force just as much as an external defense force, which goes back to the Horatio Hornblower IN SPACE! ancestry of space opera: Starfleet has to be the law where no other law exists. In some ways they're also less restricted: there are things you can't do under the SCMJ, e.g. endorsing political candidates or attending rallies and the like in uniform, as we saw with Ben Sisko when Kai Winn was running for First Minister in "Shakaar". But if you're not in uniform and it isn't "damaging to Starfleet operations" (bigoted jokes would fall here, or ought to if the officers are enforcing the rules properly: some things get more of a blind eye turned to them than others), you're probably covered under Federation Article I, Section 1 (equivalent to the Bill of Rights). That having been said, Starfleet personnel tend to be a better-behaved bunch in general, which is partly due to recruiting older, better-educated personnel and having enough officers to supervise them properly, plus the fact they have significantly better mental healthcare (ship's counselor isn't a senior staff position for nothing).
Other "soldiers' vices" tend to be monitored but tolerated, fraternization most of all: what happened in Star Trek: Nemesis and Star Trek: Titan with Will Riker captaining the same ship his wife is stationed on (or here, with Eleya sharing a bed with her flag captain, regardless of the fact they're engaged) would almost certainly never happen in the MCDF, never mind a real life military force.
"Great War! / And I cannot take more! / Great tour! / I keep on marching on / I play the great score / There will be no encore / Great War! / The War to End All Wars"
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Very dense, and intense, writing style. First Person is a difficult mode for me to read because I keep identifying with the characters; however, they are many and in my head they all kind of blend into a single voice. It also personalizes things to the point where I really care about them.
Exceptionally well done, and I'm getting better a separating characters. Nung's very distinct voice tends to stand out the most, in my mind.
Very dense, and intense, writing style. First Person is a difficult mode for me to read because I keep identifying with the characters; however, they are many and in my head they all kind of blend into a single voice. It also personalizes things to the point where I really care about them.
Exceptionally well done, and I'm getting better a separating characters. Nung's very distinct voice tends to stand out the most, in my mind.
Yeah, I was a little hesitant to do it that way: usually I only write Eleya in first person, which had a specific thematic reason for it when I created her. She's meant to be passionate and a little (okay, a lot) impulsive, doesn't always think ahead, and writing her in first person present tense made it easier to bring in a stream-of-consciousness feel to it. To contrast, I tend to write my Romulan character Morgan t'Thavrau in third person past tense, with generally more flowery prose, as a subtle way to get across her opinion of herself and her culture (she's an aristocrat by birth and Romulans are often pretty prideful to begin with).
Generally in this story, the primary characters are Eleya, Sheri, Peri, and Nung, who are similar in a lot of ways. We've tried to make the transitions obvious with the headers, at least, although it's difficult making the characters "voices" distinct enough. Eleya, who is 35 now and has been in uniform in one capacity or another for close to 17 years, is kind of the Team Mom, her passions and "need to be a hero" moderated by experience. Nung on the other hand is a lot like Eleya was in her youth: coarser, more headstrong, takes too much on herself (and serving nicely as a proxy for the Moab Confederacy itself).
"Great War! / And I cannot take more! / Great tour! / I keep on marching on / I play the great score / There will be no encore / Great War! / The War to End All Wars"
— Sabaton, "Great War"
I rather like the effect. It's not the easiest mode to write in, and that impresses me. It's also a personal issue I have with identifying with the characters that makes it difficult for me to separate who's doing what sometimes, but I am growing into the characters and they are getting more distinct. That part is not a criticism of your style, but of my inability to shift gears and keep up. I'll get there!
My biggest problem is that the characters are easy to empathize with, and easy to like. They aren't perfect superheroes, nor are they villains. They are our friends, co-workers, our brothers, (sisters,) in arms, and I find them too easy to love, character flaws and all. I'm going to hate you when one of them takes one for the team.
But the story is well crafted, and intense, and I am loving it so far. Keep up the good work, and I'll do my best to keep up too!
About the only species I can think of that could work comfortably aboard a Karrank]['p themselves, would be Horta. Are Horta considered a sapient species in the Masterverse?
The Ssn'pth are clearly inspired by the fithp in Niven and Pournelle's Footfall, although with a lot less semi-mystical baggage and ancestor worship (well, that and the fithp, while respecting their females, tend to keep them protected at all costs, being unwilling to risk the potential reproductive future of the Herd against the dangers of space and aliens).
<slaps head> Of course the Karrank]['p are reimagined karrank%. My excuse for not noting that is that there are so very *many* sophonts in the Five Galaxies, and they're not as physically weird as the g'Kek or the Jophur (or the poor traeki, who the Jophur used to be before Uplift).
Comments
There are certainly worse models to use...
The MCDF has quite a few similarities to the Bajoran Militia (formally the Militia of the Republic of Bajor), which despite the name really is a professional volunteer military rather than "as-needed" civilian and reserve call-ups (Admiral Alcott helped set up several of the latter in the border planets during the Hromi-Archanis War, my in-universe name for the Federation-Klingon War, initially under the martial law declaration but later legitimized by CARA). They both have their roots in an "everything and the kitchen sink" ragtag resistance philosophy, and both are more willing to use tactics normally considered too brutal for Starfleet, but like Starfleet the Militia's role is ultimately defensive: they're a response force and a deterrent to attack, albeit they're more militarized than Starfleet and freer to conduct reprisals (with the caveat that they decommissioned their space fleet for about fourteen years until the Iconian War forced them to bring it back).
The legacy of Son Tay, as the authors of Three Decades of War noted at the end of Spiked, is that the MCDF became focused on high-risk, high-reward strike missions, which meant casualty rates their elite but small force and population base couldn't sustain: Bajor's capital province alone, an area roughly the size of France and Germany together, has more citizens than the entire Moab Confederacy at the time of this story, and they have a couple of dozen offworld colonies besides. The legacy of the Occupation is that the Bajoran Militia concentrated on defense in depth, conservation of manpower, and maneuver warfare at the squad and platoon level, since, while artillery and air/orbital support are nice to have, light infantry and Humvee-equivalents are more likely to be able to escape and hide if the worst happens.
The Bajorans also had a lot less to prove than the Moab Confederacy politically. They basically made their point when they drove the Cardassians off Bajor without any overt Federation assistance (tribble you very much, Prime Directive) -- only then inviting the Federation in to help with reconstruction -- whereas the MC started and remains in a precarious political position. They went out of their way to antagonize the Federation as much as they could without actually attacking them militarily (notwithstanding springing Janey Qua in Spiked, which officially never happened), but their primary ally considers them about as inconvenient as, if you'll pardon a possibly touchy real life comparison, many in the US consider Israel or Saudi Arabia. IOW there's a significant faction of the Empire's political elite that wants to either cut the Moabites loose or fully annex them, for various reasons. So the political objectives came to overshadow military practicality, with the MCDF being thrown into basically every little brushfire spat the Empire found just to maintain the status quo. Which means outsize casualty and PTSD rates per capita. The "deal with it or leave" attitude Patrick mentioned would, if anything, only exacerbate the problem.
So, ship for ship and man for man, MCDF troops may be better fighters (allowing for the fact that their ships are mostly Klingon and Gorn hand-me-downs), but Starfleet has a better organization.
The Romulan Republic could have gone that way, but D'Tan had a much better sense than Elizabeth Tran or her immediate successors of what his galae (properly translated as 'aerospace fleet', not 'navy') was actually capable of and chose to play the Empire and the Federation off against each other instead, which as a side effect helped bring about the end of the war. This gave him the breathing room to actually set up a properly functioning state, much as the Federation provided for Bajor in DS9. (Granted, D'Tan had a positional advantage Tran didn't, that being coming in from outside as a neutral party instead of having to secede from one side first.)
On an unrelated note, Bajor's political leverage comes mostly from the wormhole, which may not continue to hold as quantum slipstream drive advances (if it were more reliable and longer-lasting, the speeds demonstrated in VOY: "Hope and Fear" could get you from one side of the galaxy to the other in two weeks). That's a big part of why First Minister Kalin took the actions she did: Bajor's an important world now, and she wants it to stay that way, so she's building political alliances ahead of time.
I would also point out that, unlike the MCDF, Starfleet (as well as the Bajoran Militia) is an internal police force just as much as an external defense force, which goes back to the Horatio Hornblower IN SPACE! ancestry of space opera: Starfleet has to be the law where no other law exists. In some ways they're also less restricted: there are things you can't do under the SCMJ, e.g. endorsing political candidates or attending rallies and the like in uniform, as we saw with Ben Sisko when Kai Winn was running for First Minister in "Shakaar". But if you're not in uniform and it isn't "damaging to Starfleet operations" (bigoted jokes would fall here, or ought to if the officers are enforcing the rules properly: some things get more of a blind eye turned to them than others), you're probably covered under Federation Article I, Section 1 (equivalent to the Bill of Rights). That having been said, Starfleet personnel tend to be a better-behaved bunch in general, which is partly due to recruiting older, better-educated personnel and having enough officers to supervise them properly, plus the fact they have significantly better mental healthcare (ship's counselor isn't a senior staff position for nothing).
Other "soldiers' vices" tend to be monitored but tolerated, fraternization most of all: what happened in Star Trek: Nemesis and Star Trek: Titan with Will Riker captaining the same ship his wife is stationed on (or here, with Eleya sharing a bed with her flag captain, regardless of the fact they're engaged) would almost certainly never happen in the MCDF, never mind a real life military force.
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
Exceptionally well done, and I'm getting better a separating characters. Nung's very distinct voice tends to stand out the most, in my mind.
Yeah, I was a little hesitant to do it that way: usually I only write Eleya in first person, which had a specific thematic reason for it when I created her. She's meant to be passionate and a little (okay, a lot) impulsive, doesn't always think ahead, and writing her in first person present tense made it easier to bring in a stream-of-consciousness feel to it. To contrast, I tend to write my Romulan character Morgan t'Thavrau in third person past tense, with generally more flowery prose, as a subtle way to get across her opinion of herself and her culture (she's an aristocrat by birth and Romulans are often pretty prideful to begin with).
Generally in this story, the primary characters are Eleya, Sheri, Peri, and Nung, who are similar in a lot of ways. We've tried to make the transitions obvious with the headers, at least, although it's difficult making the characters "voices" distinct enough. Eleya, who is 35 now and has been in uniform in one capacity or another for close to 17 years, is kind of the Team Mom, her passions and "need to be a hero" moderated by experience. Nung on the other hand is a lot like Eleya was in her youth: coarser, more headstrong, takes too much on herself (and serving nicely as a proxy for the Moab Confederacy itself).
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
My biggest problem is that the characters are easy to empathize with, and easy to like. They aren't perfect superheroes, nor are they villains. They are our friends, co-workers, our brothers, (sisters,) in arms, and I find them too easy to love, character flaws and all. I'm going to hate you when one of them takes one for the team.
But the story is well crafted, and intense, and I am loving it so far. Keep up the good work, and I'll do my best to keep up too!
The Ssn'pth are clearly inspired by the fithp in Niven and Pournelle's Footfall, although with a lot less semi-mystical baggage and ancestor worship (well, that and the fithp, while respecting their females, tend to keep them protected at all costs, being unwilling to risk the potential reproductive future of the Herd against the dangers of space and aliens).