Army Forces

While our Naval Fleet is set, due to the fact we have to pick everything beforehand, the Army Forces must be developed from scratch. Most Clans have done this already, but I'm not a fan of having these huge armies just standing around everywhere. I think everything should have a purpose. As such, I am proposing something a little different.

Standing Army
All other Clans more or less go this route with an entire Army big enough to go to war at anytime. Th numbers of these armies are massive, and I think wholly unrealistic for what we actually are. Each section of our Army has specific duties

- Stationed aboard Naval fleet for use in specific missions
- Guarding military and Clan assets on our various planets and systems

While we do have a lot of facilities and places to fully guard, that still doesn't give us a huge army when and if war does come to our doorsteps. So, where does the rest come in?

Enlisted Army
While our Standing Army will always have enlisted personnel within it, this is almost a secondary army for when we really need to rally together. But where does it come from? Well, the police forces throughout the Kr'Tal system. Taldryan prefers volunteers who are enlisted for x number of years. After their term of service they are given a choice, whether to continue on with the Standing Army or become a police officer. Only way to join the police is to go through a term in the army. Our police forces are well paid and lots of benefits, so it's a large incentive for people to join.

They are always a part of the military however, and must have regular training courses every x months. When it comes time for something extremely large scale they are then put into full service, with precincts becoming military units. Their enlisted ranks coincide with whatever rank they currently are in the police.

This way the "police" are always under the purview of the Clan, while keeping our entire military at peak efficiency as everyone always has duties to perform, on top of regular training.

This is just a brief overview of the idea. So, thoughts?

In terms of the size of the Army... I'd say maybe 1-2% of the total population of Taldryan-controlled territories. Could be a little more with the police force idea, but it seems reasonable to me.

Well, since Kir redid all the Military data, it seems like the clan has been set up to be modeled after Military Governments, like fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, etc. Not saying that we represent any of those things, it just seems thats what the military should look like. But instead of a huge standing army, why don't we go, using a real world analogy, the route of Isreal. A small, highly trained, heavily equipped force suited to domestic duty as well as offensive operations.

This would leave us with a suitable size force to deal with problems in system, small enough to not be ridiculous, and easily transported and adapted to any situation. Like the American military, you serve X number years enlisted, and Y number years on reserve. For us, the reserve would be the "police force" you both mentioned.

The descriptions I wrote for the military stuff are more organizational, so details like what Halc is talking about weren't really discussed. Literally in the army section I wrote:

"Taldryan's Army Service fills it's ranks with a combination of volunteers and conscripts. Volunteers are preferred, and they make up the majority of the army's active soldiers."

Which is precisely the balance Halc seems to be talking about here. Also I didn't really write the military pages to say that we run a military dictatorship - I tried to steer clear of talking about government at all and just stuck to the basics of the Army, Navy, Intelligence, and Logistics Services.

I'm not sure "enlisted army" would be the right term for what you're thinking though Halc, it seems more like an "active reserve". I'd also be careful to distinguish between soldiers and officers - for Taldryan to have been so dominant militarily for so long, we would have needed a highly trained and professional officer core - and that means long terms of active service, lots of career officers.

I should really read over the Prospectus a little more, but I've normally seen Taldryan function more like a Monarchy then any sort of dictatorship. I think we're a little more subtle than a dictatorship would normally be.

And yes, Reserve Army...that's what I was looking for. The police force would be the "Reserve Army" while our regular army consists of our officers, enlisted and special forces units. While I'm sure other Clans have reserve units as well, ours wouldn't technically be much better trained as they continue to be trained while still doing duties that are similar to the day-to-day duties of the regular military.

Well also on a realism note, active armies cost money and extraordinarily large armies would cost LOTS of money so having a sort of reserve would make more sense. A thing like the reserves or a selective service group to be called upon in a time of need would be practical instead of how the other clans do it with large armies essentially standing around with their thumbs up their asses doing nothing Now how much of a reserve do we really want/need? Are the sizes of other clans going to be taken into consideration when deciding that or are we just going to go with a number and call it good? How would we support our active army financially and equipment wise, and where/how will we get money and equipment for the reserve units should they be called upon?

Exactly (or even estimated) size is something I have always stayed far away from when it comes to the clan military. When I was DGM, Jac and I had a couple discussions about putting "limits" on what the clans could write, and I've had the same discussion with Sarin. When it comes to calculating the necessary numbers, and also keeping realism in play...it's just too difficult. Basically it would be like pulling a number out of a hat, because we don't know all the variables in play. So I'd stay away from any direct numerical accounts of the army.

Also the link to the Army wiki page is: http://www.darkjedibrotherhood.com/wiki/in...an_Army_Service.

I can understand staying away from exact figures. So is it going to be said as something like "Taldryan has equal parts active and reserve units" or some general form like that? I know for vehicles and droids we have those numbered out exactly, but wouldn't it make more sense to at least have a vague guestimate as for active and reserves?

I think the only numbers we have for vehicles and droids are the ones won during competitions or bought using the old SIT point system. I argued against both of these things for the same reason in the past - "Oh wow we won 5 AT-ATs...that's enough to...protect one small village, kinda." Everyone seems to seriously underestimate the numbers required.

As for the numbers of troops - Taldryan controls complete 2 systems. The Kr'Tal system is listed on the wiki as having a total system population of 28 million (which seems a bit low, doesn't it?). The Rybanloth system doesn't have details fleshed out yet, so we don't know what exactly we're dealing with there, but say it's less...like 15 million. That's about 45 million people we need to be able to keep under control. Now granted we're not the Empire, we don't rule solely on fear - we allow the local governments to keep the people happy, but you would still require a large security force just to police 45 million people - and those troops would be dedicated to our system, not available to go elsewhere and fight.

So how many troops for 45 million people? The US (population about 280 million) has an active army of 1.5 million and a reserve of 1.5 million - but that's not counting the *huge* number of police officers we have in every village, town, and city in the country. Using these numbers, we'd need at least 500,000 troops. Now throw all of that out the window, because we're in the SW universe and dealing with HUGE distances and different technology...oh ya, and we're Dark Jedi.

See how all this begins to make even basic estimates a pretty big waste of time? They're never realistic.


**Side Note: Someone should look into the populations of Taldryan's systems. I'm not saying we've got 4-5 Courescant's out here, but 45 million people over six planets is an extremely low number. Small countries on Earth have more people than that.**

**Side Note: Someone should look into the populations of Taldryan's systems.  I'm not saying we've got 4-5 Courescant's out here, but 45 million people over six planets is an extremely low number. Small countries on Earth have more people than that.**




I disagree. On the first point, we're supposed to be a relatively small and secluded part of the SW galaxy. That means if the population of even one Clan is relatively large...just multiply that by 6; we'll become fairly noticable (trade, resources, etc.). If there's one thing that I've learned from reading the 35ish SW books I own it's that very few planets have a huge population. Coruscant and Corellia are just some of them. Everyone's going about this like all the planets we have are as densely populated and urbanized as Earth.

Also...Montenegro is a country (I'm there now) and its population is under 700,000 people.

For 1.3 billion (or thereabouts) people, China's active army is just over 2 million. If we take into account that we have approximately 45 million people in Taldryan's systems, and that they're not all as densely populated as Earth, we'd need no more than about 500,- to 600,000 *active* military, plus maybe 200,000 support/reserve. That's on the outside.

I agree with no specific "numbers" in terms of military, although we can eye-ball things for unit sizes. Battalions, regiments, divisions, etc... have size-ranges, so we'll have very rough estimates, but they'd be designed around specific things. Our "reserves" would actually be a lot larger if we go this route, just because law enforcement is always a big thing.

In terms of population we'd have to look at each planet, their sizes and how they're designed and then come up with some guesstimates as to sizes. I mentioned in another topic but I don't see the Rybanloth system being all that populated, if at all. We'd have a large military presence due to ensuring everything we have there is properly guarded, but I don't see much in the way of a civilian population.