Starfleet ground forces

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Mikey
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Re: Starfleet ground forces

Post by Mikey »

I was born a grumpy old man.

OK, so here's how it is, Mr. Meste - you know that most of the place names, etc., in Star Trek are made-up shit with an occasional real star or something thrown in for flavor, right? There is a planet in TNG called "Deinonychus VII," for Baphomet's sake... "deinonychus" being the name of a single-species genus of early-Cretaceous pack-hunting raptor dinosaurs.

The takeaway is this: to paraphrase and scale down the great Douglas Adams, the galaxy is big... really, really big. Since you're already making up the very existence of this supposed Starfleet SOF, then make up the rest! Invent a name and location for a training camp; figure out some pretend conflict (or even better, some unnamed shadow war!) and make up some locations in which this 24th-century Ranger or GB might have served. Hell, make up some bizarre rules of engagement* to add twists to your plot. I have found that more than half the fun of creating a story or such is building the world - the "show bible," if you will. I also like to use place names, labels of time periods, etc., to interject subtle double entendres - YMMV.

* For example, my father-in-law was a USMC tanker. On the first or second time I ever encountered the man, he told me about the time that he had drawn embassy duty in the 1950's in Beirut (every Marine a rifleman, and all that,) and how on that assignment was the first time he ever had to kill a man.... except he wasn't allowed to use a firearm because of the particular rules involving that embassy guard posting. Could you use some twist like that? Hell yes you could!
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Meste17
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Re: Starfleet ground forces

Post by Meste17 »

Mikey wrote:I was born a grumpy old man.

OK, so here's how it is, Mr. Meste - you know that most of the place names, etc., in Star Trek are made-up shit with an occasional real star or something thrown in for flavor, right? There is a planet in TNG called "Deinonychus VII," for Baphomet's sake... "deinonychus" being the name of a single-species genus of early-Cretaceous pack-hunting raptor dinosaurs.

The takeaway is this: to paraphrase and scale down the great Douglas Adams, the galaxy is big... really, really big. Since you're already making up the very existence of this supposed Starfleet SOF, then make up the rest! Invent a name and location for a training camp; figure out some pretend conflict (or even better, some unnamed shadow war!) and make up some locations in which this 24th-century Ranger or GB might have served. Hell, make up some bizarre rules of engagement* to add twists to your plot. I have found that more than half the fun of creating a story or such is building the world - the "show bible," if you will. I also like to use place names, labels of time periods, etc., to interject subtle double entendres - YMMV.

* For example, my father-in-law was a USMC tanker. On the first or second time I ever encountered the man, he told me about the time that he had drawn embassy duty in the 1950's in Beirut (every Marine a rifleman, and all that,) and how on that assignment was the first time he ever had to kill a man.... except he wasn't allowed to use a firearm because of the particular rules involving that embassy guard posting. Could you use some twist like that? Hell yes you could!
Well that's the thing. If I'm to "make up the existence" of Starfleet's SOF, then I would only want to make up locations that would at the very least be plausible you know? And not have people go, "oh there's no way. That will never happen."
Mikey
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Re: Starfleet ground forces

Post by Mikey »

How could a nay-sayer say "nay" to a location you just made up and placed properly within your milieu?
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Talondor
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Re: Starfleet ground forces

Post by Talondor »

I do not know much about special forces, but I would imagine they would be used in other things besides wars. One obvious thing would be against pirates or raiders. Normally this would only involve ship-to-ship combat, but a scenario could involve renegade klingons or breen using a abandoned asteroid mining complex as a base. Or instead of pirates it could be Orion Syndicate smugglers using the asteroid base. Perhaps they could even do the Cardassians a favor and take out a Marquis base or two.
Mikey
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Re: Starfleet ground forces

Post by Mikey »

Talondor wrote:I do not know much about special forces, but I would imagine they would be used in other things besides wars. One obvious thing would be against pirates or raiders. Normally this would only involve ship-to-ship combat, but a scenario could involve renegade klingons or breen using a abandoned asteroid mining complex as a base. Or instead of pirates it could be Orion Syndicate smugglers using the asteroid base. Perhaps they could even do the Cardassians a favor and take out a Marquis base or two.
Special forces - or more properly in the U.S. in this sense, "special operations forces" - are generally instruments of asymmetric warfare. That is, attacks against enemy war-waging infrastructure, high-value targets, "wetwork," etc., usually outside the bounds of a typical battlefield and typically in a covert manner. Think USN SEALs, Army Rangers, British SAS and SBS, USMC Force Recon, the German KSK, the IDF Sayeret, and Israeli police Shin-Bet, USJSOC Delta Force. That said, we haven't even seen a regular army - outside of Starfleet ships' personnel with long guns - for there to be irregulars to adjunct, so for a prospective author the sky's the limit.

As far as asymmetric or clandestine operations against Orion syndicates, DS9 showed us regular personnel pressed into such ops by Starfleet Intelligence. One would think, although by no means be positive, that such below-board usage by SI means that there aren't any standing forces for such use available. Any such standing agents would be more akin to CIA or MI-6 than to special ops anyway.

Finally, it would make sense to assume (though I'm going off-book here) that a super-black agency such as Section 31 would have its own black-ops specialists.
I can't stand nothing dull
I got the high gloss luster
I'll massacre your ass as fast
as Bull offed Custer
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