90%, give or take, of space fiction tends to have space-based militaries use naval ranks. They also tend to use naval terminology (port/starboard, bridge, fleets, etc.). The handful that don't will tend to use army ranks and terminology. So, I thought it would be a neat exercise to come up with a space-based terminology that is original. Unfortunately, other than officers being various gradations of Cosmonaut, Astronaut, and Taikonaut, I've got nothing. Any thoughts?
New terminology would be based on the technology of the setting and the jobs that tech needs to operate. Anything we could come up with without knowing the setting would be just replacing stuff you don't like with meaningless stuff we made up. I kind of like using traditional tags, it gives the setting depth.
Space may not be an ocean, but (depending on your technology), it's awfully close. Which branch of the military regularly handles large mobile structures with hundreds (thousands?) of crew that needs to be able to operate for extended periods of time without resupply? Oh, the navy? Now, which branch of the military will become more or less obsolete when space technology is mature enough to need armed forces specifically to fight in space? Oh, the navy? As long as the space craft in question have defined fronts and backs (towards and away from the direction of travel, specifically) then fore and aft would make the most sense to describe them. Similarly, if the interior of the ship is laid out horizontally to the direction of travel, the dorsal, ventral, port and starboard also have meaning. (they also have meaning if the ship is 'stacked' on top of the drive, but only if the designers made it so). Meaning that is separate from, and more precise than front, back, top, bottom, left and right, at least when referring to things in relation to the ship (such as where enemies are, for example) Would it make sense to describe directions for the Death Star in those terms? No. But a Star Destroyer? Absolutely. Personally, though, I think Space Marines should be replaced by Space Paratroopers.
Why NOT use naval or army ranks? They're easily recognizable and even in the real world, rank does not automatically confer position. A Colonel that's a brigade CO has a very different amount of authority than a Colonel that's on some General's staff. And in any case, a rank name is simply a label anyway, and the real world has had to deal with the issue of different militaries using different naming schemes, so a method of ranking has been devised to clear things up: If you're an Officer, you're on the O list. If you're Enlisted, you're on the E list. Your rank is denoted by a number, and the higher the number, the hliigher your rank. So a Naval Captain is an O-6 and would outrank an Army Captain which is an O-3, but be the same rank as an Army Colonel which is also an O-6. If you really want the details, just look it up on Wikipedia and they have charts that show equivalent rankings between services and even between national militaries. And frankly, the reason a space service would use army and/or naval ranks is because their personnel would originally be drawn from the army or navy when the service was first created. Using traditional rank labels is just easier to remember than inventing new ones. OTOH, there's the US Air Force. Despite being spawned from the US Army, the USAF uses a very different Enlisted rank naming scheme than the Army despite the USAF Officer rank labels being near identical.
Well, Crest of the Stars/Banner of the Stars, has a manufactured language with original terminology. Translated, you get ranks like 'Deca-commander,' 'hecto-commander,' 'Front/Wing/Rear Flier,' etc.. Here's the page if you wanna check 'em out.
The way they did it in Andromeda sort of made sense - that is, "use what you have, but fix the inconsistencies". In this case, that means that the ground forces rank of "Captain" was removed to avoid confusion with the space forces rank - the key replacement was (IIRC) Signifier (which is the junior most commissioned rank for Lancers), which is an old roman name for standard bearer. Look it up for the details. Another point of terminology is the classification scheme of vessels, but there's a lot of variants on that out there, including plenty of popular ones which have very little at all to do with Naval traditions (beyond the old standard of classification by job, though the jobs are different). As for jargon... Well, just borrow relevant terms from astronautics, aeronautics and naval tradition liberally and try to apply them logically, and invent slang that makes sense (and work it through a couple of generations if you like, so that it doesn't make sense until you explain how you got there).
The most glaring example of problems caused by rank terminology is the rank name "Captain" used for both a relatively low ground forces rank and a relatively high naval rank; just to confuse matters even more, the word "Captain" is also used for commanders of naval vessels who may not have the rank of Captain. For small vessels, in fact, they probably don't. This necessitates workarounds such as giving ground forces captains a courtesy promotion while on board a naval vessel, and also leads to confusions caused by naval captains who aren't the vessel's commander, on board a ship. Confusions such as this can kill people in a battle, and probably have. The most logical solution to this would be removing the rank name "Captain" for all military services. As for the replacement name, well... As I understand it, the reason why the names "port" and "starboard" are retained is because "left" and "right" are actually less precise. If you are standing on a ship looking forward then port is on the left. If you are looking aft, then port is on the right. The plane in which "port" and "starboard" are defined would probably be the plane parallel to the decks - assuming, that is, that the decks are flat and I can't think of a good reason for them not to be. Even if the decks are cylindrical, the ship could and almost certainly would have an arbitrarily defined plane for this purpose.
Why not just rename the army rank to captain-lieutenant or lieutenant-captain, the navy rank to commodore and invent a new name for the first admiral rank such as flag admiral?
Well, one reason why not the second is simply that there is already a rank with such a name. "Sub-commodore" might work?
Easy way to do it is to pull the ranks from another language, or lift them from a historical military organisation which used different ones, such as the Roman Legions. Mix them up to taste and you've got a "unique" rank table.
One thing I've been wondering about is how to name different fleet units. Ground forces can go from squad to army group (what's after that? Theater?) but how would space units be named. If there can be over 100000 capital ships per side in a single battle then one probably needs more terms than task force, battle group and fleet.
Depends on the nation in Russia for example a large army group was a "Front" while in the US the Army Group was the largest formation because it was a group of armies. (If I remember my WW2 force chart correctly) Not really, a fleet is an administrative group not predefined by size of force and in many instances it's simply a regional command. For example a US navy Carrier can belong to 5th fleet for one deployment and 7th fleet in another as it is assigned based on operational theatre. NOW if you're nation has established permanent fleet formations (for example a reaction fleet or a permanent battle fleet) and they are NOT based on operational region but instead on the physical formation than a group of fleets working together could be a Fleet Combat Team, or a FleetGroup.
I guess that you could use the Mission Control model for the command of a spaceship and how a rank structure may be set up. Actually has become a personal favorite of mine since I read about it.
It always confuses me when people equate spaceships with naval vessels. I'd have thought terminology would be lifted from the airforce if anything, as they already have all the words appropriate for navigation in 3d. Although 'alititude' would be a bit awkward at times. Still, up and down don't make much of an appearance in naval terminology. Planes kind of mention it a few times.
Submarines are the ones with the closest operating environment, both internally and externally, I'd think.
No scifi rank commonly used is inherently related to the Ocean. You'd be right if there was a lot of talk about Seamen or something, but, for the most part naval ranks are pretty nondescript.
Well, in Sword of the Stars, the Green Laser is called a 'Grasslight' (from The Deacon's Tale)... for different military jargon.
And many a sci fi simply changes "Seaman" to "Spaceman" or something. But these guys are the lowest of the low, the junior enlisted. Who cares about them? The Air Force changed "Private" to "Airman", as if it made any real difference. One thing I liked about nBSG is that it used its own ranking system, mostly to explain how a "Commander" (Naval O-5) could be in charge of a Battlestar (what would be at least an O-6 position IRL), while having a "Colonel" (Army O-6) in the XO position (which would be one rank under the Battlestar CO). Everything underneath Colonel followed a more or less traditional Army rank system. Bit of dissonance still what with the civilian ship COs being referred to as "Captains", but the Battlestar CO never being referred to as such. So my recommendation, if the space service is some descendent of an Earthly military organization, it should use that organization's rank structure. If the service belongs to an alien culture, or is not immediately connected to and descendant from an Earthly military, then you can basically go hog wild with the rank naming. I'd still say you should keep the O and E level system just so you know what outranks what. Sample alien rank structure: O-1: Short Stinger O-2: Long Stinger O-3: Swarm Leader O-4: Swarm Mistress O-5: Vizier O-6: Princess O-7 and higher: <rank based adjective> Queen Take a guess what kind of alien race I'm describing.
Sorry the Royal Navy have been around for 600 odd years and have shed loads of traditions. The Raf have just knocked up a centuary and have a collection of nasty habits. Should really do a fic where The SGC have to deal with a Royal Navy starship. Proper uniforms not flight suits FFs. Alcohol of course. Royal marines etc etc.
Some basic thoughts: I'm thinking of a setting with ships that generally have a minimum three-man crew and top out at around 1,500, with plenty of in between. No fighters, but they do have armed shuttles and gunships. I know what I want the officer ranks to be, still not sure about the NCOs and enlisted. Suggestions on that, or comments on the below will be appreciated. Flag ranks are, from highest to lowest: -Cosmonaut Prime. -High Cosmonaut. -Cosmonaut. -Under-Cosmonaut. Field officers are: -Master Astronaut. -Astronaut Major. -Astronaut. -Astronaut Minor. Junior Officers are: -Senior Taikonaut. -Taikonaut. -Junior Taikonaut. -Sub-Taikonaut.
