Re: [FT] Crew Professionalism and Ship Quality

On Wed, 5 Jan 2000, Laserlight wrote:

> As far as the minors go, I'd say New Israel will be decent (because
> they have incentive to practice) and Alarish is pretty good (because
> Alarishi are more familiar with operating in space than normal people,
> and because they know the navy is essentially their only line of
> defense)--a few crews from either nation might perhaps make it up to

Plus NI, has a strong tradition of a well trained and well motivated 
conscript army. 

> NSL level.  Most minor nations--despite the "we're small but we can
> whip anybody our size" syndrome--simply will not be up to Big Four
> standards because they won't have the funds to practice or the variety
> of institutional combat experience.	Well, maybe up to ESU standards.

One thing I should note here. Any nation that has split off of a larger 
nation state, should have similar if not better assets than that nation.

(depending on the wealth of that smaller nation state). Take the US
after 
the break off from the UK. We had a small navy, but we were excellent
and 
better fitted out than the average RN vessel. They had to spread
manpower 
(always in short supply) across many ships. The US on the other hand had

12 frigates with a full compliment of hand picked crews and the best 
officers (trained by RN service in several cases). The RN could beat us 
if they got us outnumbered, but pinning down a well crewed USN frigate
in 
the Carribean when most of their assets were busy with france and other 
wars was a nightmare. This is underlined quite significantly in the 
Captain from Conneticut by C.S. Forester. 

I can See Free Cal Tex having fewer men of war, but with an appreceably 
higher grade as they have training already and a viable source of 
knowledge already. They would have better ships than the 

> On the other hand, the NAC probably doesn't have the best admirals.
> Just a lot of them.

But with a lot, there are probably a great number of good, if not 
excellent admirals. A strong tradition will also have a strong ability
to 
produce excellent admirals. 

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- Ryan Montieth Gill	  NRA / DoD# 0780 (Smug #1) / AMA / SOHC -
- ryan.gill@turner.com	    I speak not for CNN, nor they for me -
- rmgill@mindspring.com 	     www.mindspring.com/~rmgill/ -
- '85 Honda CB700S  -  '72 Honda CB750K  - '76 Chevy MonteCarlo  -
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