JeffEngel wrote:Somtaaw wrote:Think I'm starting to ramble, so in a nutshell, forts are too subordinate to waste on just best and brightest, but in the right place to babysit officers you can't necessarily trust fully with a ship, let alone entire squadrons. Only so much trouble even Elvis Santino can cause commanding a fortress, before someone slapped him down for failing to be ready.
Failure to be ready probably is the cardinal sin for a fortress commander. They're units that need to be ready, at any time, with no notice - at least during their active shifts. For years on end, day in and day out, ready at seconds' notice. That's demanding, but it's a different demand than hyper-capable warships have, where Honor reminds herself that there's always at least a little time to think and it's important to take it and use it.
The sort of personality and command style that would shine in one arena may do poorly at best in the other, in either direction. Captain No-Imagination, Cannot-Be-Bored, Hairtrigger-Accurate-Judgment is going to do very badly placed where a Harrington, Oversteegen, or Terekhov will shine and credit the Star Empire. Put one of them in command of a fortress and they are likely to leave Her Majesty's Navy in mental health self defense in months, if they don't make a very bad mistake first.
Well it occurs to me that there are forts and then there are forts. The kind of hair trigger perfect response does describe the job of Junction/Terminus forts, or any other forts hung out beyond a hyper limit.
But forts providing planetary defense are likely to have lots of time to watch an enemy attack roll down on them before the firing starts; even in the era of MDMs.
I'd think that you'd want your very best suited on the more exposed forts, even at the possible expense of forts deep inside the hyper limit.
