Military career ranks

[mavikfelna]

I'm curious why no enlisted ranks and no roll for commission in the Military career? When I did my first test character I found it disconcerting to not have the option to advance as an enlisted man instead of as an officer, as being an officer didn't make sense for the character concept I had.

 

[CordwainerFish]

I'm curious why no enlisted ranks and no roll for commission in the Military career? When I did my first test character I found it disconcerting to not have the option to advance as an enlisted man instead of as an officer, as being an officer didn't make sense for the character concept I had.

Perhaps the government space programs are still in the mindset of "you don't get to be an astronaut unless you're a test pilot and you don't get to be a test pilot unless you're an officer".

 

[rinku]

At the moment I'd guess might also be to do with the cut down nature of the preview. Even the full rulebook is unfinalised.

Since characters can definitely come in from pure technical streams, I'm not sure the test pilot thing does apply. One character could be a totally civilian engineer or technician with the same skill set as a Military Support one. Both characters could get into space through the same commercial or mission specialist paths, despite the military one never having been commisioned.

Having said all that... Rank 0 could be any noncommissioned rank, I guess. And the event table has the standard Traveller automatic commission or promotion text, despite there not being any other mention of commissions in the preview. So I do suspect the full rules are more like standard Traveller.

 

[WHULorigan]

At the moment I'd guess might also be to do with the cut down nature of the preview. Even the full rulebook is unfinalised.

Since characters can definitely come in from pure technical streams, I'm not sure the test pilot thing does apply. One character could be a totally civilian engineer or technician with the same skill set as a Military Support one. Both characters could get into space through the same commercial or mission specialist paths, despite the military one never having been commisioned.

Having said all that... Rank 0 could be any noncommissioned rank, I guess. And the event table has the standard Traveller automatic commission or promotion text, despite there not being any other mention of commissions in the preview. So I do suspect the full rules are more like standard Traveller.

Rank-0 could default to any Technical Sergeant, Chief-Technician, or Warrant Officer Rank (or be a part of a separate technical specialist promotion track along that direction for "rising thru the ranks", especially if Warrant Officers are US Commissioned Warrant Officers/Chief Warrant Officers/Master Warrant Officer ^* ).

^* Master Warrant Officer (Warrant Officer-6) was put up for authorization by Congress decades ago, but unlike grades 3-4 and later 5, was never endorsed, though it is still technically "pending". Warrant Officer (WO-1) is not commissioned, Chief Warrant Officer grade 2-5 are commissioned, but still junior to Rank O1. As noted, Master Warrant Officer (grade-6) is still only notional. ​