Sigs wrote:Vince wrote:Except that the primary purpose of deploying the LACs and their crews was to defend the individual systems of the Talbott Quadrant that had joined the Star Empire, as well as freeing up the hyper-capable units of the RMN to be able to act as necessary instead dispersing them in penny-packet deployments tied down to defend the individual systems.
The RMN mission to defend the individual systems of the Talbott Quadrant is not going to go away, so you might as well get double duty out of the units, LACs in this case (the opportunity hands on training), their crews (instructors), and the supporting equipment (including simulators) you have to deploy to defend the systems anyway.
To me the defence of the system and the training of naval personnel should not mix in anything but the most limited of scales. If you have to tie down a significant portion of your LAC strength to the training function you lose them when they are needed to defend the system. And besides, how many people can you train aboard a LAC? Are you going to train them 1 person at a time? You have a crew of 10-12 on board a LAC, so how many people can you run through the simulators? And how much experience hands on can they have?
And I suspect that the roles are not as rigid as you think. A LAC commander will still be responsible for his LAC and crew in working with other units (specializing working with LACs as part of a squadron or wing, but also supporting hyper-capable units), just like his hyper-capble unit commander counterpart. An engineer still will be an engineer (with a specialty in fission reactors). A tac officer will still be a tac officer (with a specialty in LAC tactics). An ECM officer will still be an ECM officer (with a specialty in LAC ECM systems). Etc, etc.
Each person will be trained in their role and only their role since they start of behind education wise. So this to me means that the crew's will be trained in specific roles that would not allow them to deviate significantly from those roles since they will rapidly lose competency when you move away from their specific role.
If the roles were as rigid as you seem to think they were, it would have taken several times longer for the RMN to work up their very first LAC wing (HMS Minotaur's) in Echoes of Honor.
They will be rigid BECAUSE the Talbott crew's are behind education wise not because the roles themselves are rigid. The RMN crew's have a general background of well rounded basic education plus whatever training the RMN gave them, while the Talbott crew's will be starting behind the SKM's education and the naval training would be very different from system to system which means that the LAC crew's would have to train the Talbott crew's for their specific task and nothing else.
If you spend 6 intensive months training someone to be a navigator of a LAC they may be a great navigator but since their education is lower to begin with they will not be able to do anything else on board with any degree of competence. And a LAC has such a small crew that there would not be enough people to 1) help train him/her and 2)take up the slack in the meantime.
There is one other reason why the Talbott Quadrant system defense force personnel training is being carried out with the personnel receiving remedial advanced education and eventual on-job-training integration with the LACs. And it is a reason that trumps both considerations of efficiency in training and effectiveness in defense. That reason is political.
The Star Empire has made a policy decision that the Talbott Quadrant systems will
NOT be second class citizens, and that the RMN will
NOT have a second class tier navy in the Talbott Quadrant in addition to the existing first tier RMN. And the current deployment on LACs, instructors, simulators and other support equipment for the LACs is intended to support this policy by providing system defenses that will free up hyper-capable RMN assets, integrate the existing Talbott Quadrant forces into the RMN, and bring the education levels of those forces up to the level of the Star Empire.
