ANM Schools: A few observations.

[Reban]

I decided to have a look at the ANM School tables on p.100 to see what they could tell me about how the military forces in T5 are trained and work. The schools teach knowledges to soldiers, sailors and marines that should be make the recipients useful to how the force conducts day to day activities and fights wars. What I’m looking at are clues like an army that trains a lot of bakers’ eats a lot of bread or a force that trains its drivers on tracked vehicle is, or wants to be, highly mechanized. Though the military careers are supposed to represent any type of military, from tribal to planetary to high-tech star empire, they can be said to represent the Imperial Navy, the Imperial Marine Corps and yes the semi-mythical Imperial Army.


So some of the interesting things I’ve noticed are:


1. Only the Army get the Knowledge: Legged. So I infer that only the Army operate Units from ArmorMaker. AT-STs and AT-ATs belong to the Army in T5.

2. The Navy get the Knowledge: Trainer. This is an odd one. Trainer is a Knowledge of the Animal Skill. So do the Navy have individuals who know how to train animals to do various tasks? Are Skip drives actually powered by hamsters trained to run in a wheel? Maybe it’s the other version of the trainer knowledge; Sophont Trainer, but this begs the question does the Navy recruit lots of sophonts with C5= Training that need specially trained instructors?

3. The Army and Marines get the Knowledge: Rider. I can’t picture Imperial Marines in Battledress on horseback but the Marine career represents elite soldiers and commandos that might need to know how to ride.

4. Both the Army and Navy get the Knowledge: Life Support. For Navy this is obvious but one could infer that the Army need Life Support in their bases on worlds with hostile environments. Life support is a Knowledge of the Engineer Skill and army Engineers are often tasked with providing potable water and sanitation to armies in the field so Life Support might be a natural progression.

5. Navy and Marines get the Knowledge: Ortillery. So the Army are not responsible for providing their own ortillery support. Army forward observers have to call the Navy and Marines if they want a strike from orbit.

6. Both the Navy and Army get the Knowledge: Screens. Screens are a Knowledge of the Gunner skill and covers protective or defensive devices installed on a ship (or ground installation). It’s reasonable that the army should have sandcasters and shields ground-side, the interesting thing is that the marines seem to have to depend on the Navy for such defensive systems.

7. Army and Marines get Knowledge: Tracked. Interesting I’d always thought of the Marines as a Lift force but maybe they have a Mechanized element?

8. Army, Marines and Navy get the Knowledge: Wheeled. So the Marines mechanized element has wheeled vehicles too, but the Navy learn how to drive wheeled vehicles? That’s interesting and a bit scary….. Moon buggy racing!

9. Army and Navy get the Knowledge: Winged. The Army COACC forces get winged flyers, fine, but what use are winged flyers to the Navy. These are not Grav Flyers, Winged Flyers can’t get to orbit or operate in vacuum. Could it assist them in landing starships and smallcraft in atmosphere or are there training programs that use sailplanes like Honor Harrington does?

10. The Army get the Knowledge: Turrets. Another one from the Gunner skill. Again turrets may be installed ground-side to defend army installations. This may also back up the idea I’ve had that you should be able to drop a Turret or Barbette into a VehiclMaker weapon mount.

11. Finally both the Army and Marines get the Knowledges: Ship and Smallcraft. Both would indicate that the Army and Marines operate their own Ships and Smallcraft and are not completely dependent on the Navy for transport.


Quick question: If you get an ANM School assignment can you pick a knowledge from a Skill you don't already have and get Skill-0 that way?

 

[agorski]

I guess if you are at TL 4, Rider skill makes more sense. At TL 5-8 Wheeled and Tracked are your options for vehicles.

 

[Reban]

I guess if you are at TL 4, Rider skill makes more sense. At TL 5-8 Wheeled and Tracked are your options for vehicles.

Possibly, but you still have access to these schools at TL10, TL13 or TL15+. There are of course many modern militaries that retain equitation schools and mounted units for sport, ceremonial and operational reasons.



The other thing I'm wondering about is Screens and Turrets for the Soldier career. Pre errata Soldier had access to Gunner as a term skill. Post errata it's been replaced by fighting but Soldiers still get to attend schools that teach Knowledges from Gunner. Hence my question above about learning a Knowledge at ANM School and gaining Skill-0 that the Knowledge belongs to.

 

[Midgardsormr]

I have been ruling that you receive only the Knowledge, not the associated Skill-0. In my imagination, this reflects rote training on specific equipment rather than any of the deeper theoretical knowledge. It still counts as the prerequisite for the Skill, though.

 

[Magnus von Thornwood]

Well, that is new.

I have been ruling that you receive only the Knowledge, not the associated Skill-0. In my imagination, this reflects rote training on specific equipment rather than any of the deeper theoretical knowledge. It still counts as the prerequisite for the Skill, though.

In the old drafts it stated that due to the nature of the program they did not count toward Pre-Reqs. Nice to know.

 

[Midgardsormr]

I have gone back and forth on that one a few times, trying to decide exactly how valuable I want the ANM Schools to be. Two ranks, plus the normal Skill for that year, is fairly powerful, particularly since you get to choose which Knowledge they'll go into. On the other hand, you'll never get the actual Skill that way, and you do have to make the Pass/Fail roll (p 72) for those ranks.

And I should emphasize that this is my houseruled interpretation. The RAW are vague about how the ANM School interacts with Skill acquisition. Page 144 implies that my rule is incorrect, but it doesn't say so definitively. I tend to err in favor of the players. I haven't dug too far into the old draft yet; I'm having a hard enough time sorting out the finaled rules!

 

[Reban]

Here's the thing I'm starting to wonder about. Should you have access to Knowledges without the Skill?

The old draft and the BBB say "ANM schools confer Knowledges (rather than Skills), but each year confers Knowledge-2."

What if the intent is that a character should have the associated Skill before being assigned to an ANM School? Most of the Knowledges are contained in Skills available to characters as term skills in their careers.

There are two exceptions to this that I can see; Animal Skill for the Knowledges Rider and Trainer is not a term skill, and Gunner Skill has been removed by errata from Soldier and Marine.

In researching this I've found the following under knowledges on p.144 "If a character receives a Knowledge directly (perhaps in an ANM School) he increases that Knowledge, but not the corresponding Skill." Which doesn't fully answer the concern I'm raising.

I'm refining my question to ask: Can you have orphan Knowledges without having thier associated Skill? Career Knowledge and World Knowledge would seem to say yes you can but they are special cases.