The Scouts role

[McPerth]

NOTE: with the loss of 3 days that we had due to the failed upgrade, we have lost a thread about the IISS role in the Third Imperium. As i found it interesting, I'll give here the answer I was preparing for it:

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Well, I see here two questions (based on the references the OP gives us).

• Why the scouts have so high survival roll, once their usual missions are seen?
• What’s their current role?

About the first question, I just think (a metagame answer, I know) that the fact is the CharGen tables were done before the Imperium (and so the IISS as part of it) was described, and were assumed to engage in dangerous missions not reflected on IISS description.

About the second question, this is how I see them in my adaptation of the OTU (so consider it as IMTU, though I guess compatible with OTU):

Once the Third Imperium reached their intended size (so, the one prior to Solomani War) it felt no more need to explore beyond its borders, as most of it was already settled and maps were easy to obtain, This left the IISS closing obsolescence, and forced it to look for new roles or disappear outright. In this look for new roles, they ended up becoming a kind of jack of all trades and master of none agency, auxiliary of most Imperial agencies, but independent from them all and responding only to the Emperor himself, and in some cases even coordinating them.

Their main roles became defined in four Imperial Mandates:

• First: Keep updated stellar maps and data (hazards, best routes, etc), mostly assumed by the exploration and Grand Survey branch.
• Second: Keep the communications, mostly kept by the communications branch
• Third: Foreign intelligence and contacts, in coordination with many other agencies.
• Fourth: Help in Imperial development and security. This affects many branches, mostly in coordination with other services too.

The first two ones are quite straightforward, though I should also explicit that the Grand Survey branch is the responsible to keep actualized the Imperial Census, an important but often skipped mission when they are told about.

On the foreign intelligence part, the Scouts mostly devote themselves to open intelligence (obtaining maps, assigning UWPs, etc). On the contact (diplomatic) mission, they use to assume missions of showing the flag and similar actions where the In cannot do them for political reasons (e.g. the mission of the Vermillion Stance as described in Incident II on the game AHL). Of course, this is always in coordination with the Imperial Diplomatic Corps. Also in this role (and as part of the Second Mandate) they keep the communications with the Imperial Embassies outside Imperial Space.

Their true main role, though, is in the loosely defined Fourth Mandate. This has come to include many and very varied missions:

Health:

I’ve never read about an Imperial Health Ministry. So I assume there is none (the health needs are quite varied along the Imperium), leaving mostly to local authorities. Nonetheless, some coordination is needed, and the IISS, due to their knowledge about planetary hazards (including illnesses) and xenology, has assumed this role. In this sense, they keep a large registry of known and newly appearing diseases, and help to develop cures when possible (akin of CDC). In this sense they have the power to establish quarantines if needed.

They also become a kind of emergency response service, having emergency supplies in most their bases and way stations (quite numerous along the Imperium) ready to respond on any such situations, and use to be the first ones to respond.

Another service they offer in this sense (and one less told about, though by no means secret) is to keep sperm banks and to help in fostering children from other worlds to infertile couples. This is mostly done from HiPop planets to LowPop ones, and has the double goal to help those couples and to increase the gene pool, and so avoiding endogamy, of those LowPop planets without involving large migrations that could affect their cultures.

Internal Intelligence and Security:

This includes mostly cooperation with Imperial (and lesser) Navies and MoJ, and goes from locating pirate bases to help the MoJ agents to move around, as well as providing them cultural hints on the planets they have to act. They also have quick response teams able o handle small pirate threats.

Also as being in this field is seen the registry and certificate of ships, transponders and licenses for starships and their crews. This is done in coordination with the Ministry of Trade and the various SPAs across the Imperium. The IISS is the responsible for those registries above Starport/system level and for license certificates for key ship positions, as ship’s pilots or navigators. See that this also allows the Communications office to know which ships are armed and well reputed to assign the mail contracts…

Finally in this section is the (comparatively) very small but prestigious Scout Service Imperial Protection Detail (told about in TD issue #9).

Key in this intelligence (as well as in external one, as described in mandate 3) and security role are the Detached Duty Scout ships, as all of them have recorders for their sensors. Anything seen as too anomalous is automatically unloaded in the first IISS base or way station the ship arrives, while the full records are unloaded each time the yearly maintenance is done in such a base. Those records are analyzed in search of any anomaly (e.g. two different ships detecting the same transponder in different places, etc.), so becoming the eyes and ears of the IISS (and hence the Emperor) across the Imperium and beyond.

Development and conservation:

The IISS also collaborates with the various agencies in developing new colonies and expanding existing ones. This goes from surveys to environmental control or control of technologies available (including interdicting some worlds to allow local cultures to develop) or to train would be colonists for alien (for them) environs.

This also includes the various reserve worlds or places where they keep examples of various planets’ flora and fauna.

An example of those facilities and missions can be seen in the description of Glisten Institute of Planetological Studies (GLIPS), specified as depending on the IISS, found in TD issue #15, page28.

 

[MThompson016]

Survey is a constantly ongoing process in the real world. Not only is there the NOAA Commissioned Corps in the United States, there are four ships in the Royal Navy dedicated to ocean surveys.

It's enough work in the Imperium to keep a vast number of people employed in survey for internal purposes. Not only for the systems themselves, but planet bound features of interest to the Imperium, like the terrain around major starports, and the military geography of various worlds.

 

[Enoki]

On surveying:

I still think the IISS would rely on local contractors and surveying firms wherever possible. They'd just have some bureaucrat or three collecting the data from these worlds.

Where you have to send actual scouts to do the work would be systems that are too low tech to do it themselves (say TL7 or less) because they lack the accuracy in the equipment locally available to do it right. The other two cases would be:

A system with low population. It's unlikely a system with say a few thousand people in it would have the specialization of trades to do the work.

A system that is the "Wild West." That is it's got zip for government, or the government is thoroughly corrupt or vicious, and / or law enforcement is either nonexistent (LL = 0 to 2 or so) or so onerous as to make physically being on the main world dangerous in and of itself (LL = B+)

These last two make for dangerous work. In the first case you are surveying a system where if anything happens to your tiny crew and ship nobody's going to know about it for months, years maybe.

The second case is self-evident. There's a very good chance you might get shot, robbed, or whatever, or run afoul of the local dictator and his goon squad.

Either way, there's a reasonable possibility you won't survive doing your mission.

 

[McPerth]

A system that is the "Wild West." That is it's got zip for government, or the government is thoroughly corrupt or vicious, and / or law enforcement is either nonexistent (LL = 0 to 2 or so) or so onerous as to make physically being on the main world dangerous in and of itself (LL = B+)

These last two make for dangerous work. In the first case you are surveying a system where if anything happens to your tiny crew and ship nobody's going to know about it for months, years maybe.

The second case is self-evident. There's a very good chance you might get shot, robbed, or whatever, or run afoul of the local dictator and his goon squad.

Either way, there's a reasonable possibility you won't survive doing your mission.

I guess even in those planets you talk about, the Imperial agents, be them MoJ, Scouts or whatever, are rarely attacked, out of fear to provoke Imperial attention. Even a small survey team is likely to have some regular communication with its base, and if they are lost there is a good probability there's an investigation by the Imperial authorities.

And in any case, would those missions be more risky than army or marines, who are expected to participate regularly in some combat?

 

[khadaji2002]

I was sad to see this thread get lost, and am happy it's being resurrected. There appears to be a lot of room for discussion on the apparent lethality of Scout missions. Here are some of my thoughts:

1) IIRC, one of the posts in the lost thread mentioned having Scouts doing surveys within Imperial space as a means of detecting anti-Imperium activity. If no one is checking a given system on a regular basis it would seem tempting to start building a base and /or shipyard to construct warships entirely 'off the books'. If the Scouts routinely run surveys of known systems this route becomes much dicier (not to mention a storyline I might use in the future).

2) Communication speed and communication security are two absolutely vital resources needed to maintain a stable government. I could easily see the Scouts taking on these roles as their primary mission grows obsolete. They should already be involved in the speedy transit of information given the risk of running into a major threat in unknown space. That would also likely involve keeping such information well-secured via code and comms security.

3) The Scouts appear to enjoy a reputation similar to the cowboys and military of the US's wild west. Rugged risk-takers expanding our knowledge while increasing our safety. Such a reputation fades slowly, and even now I'd believe many youngsters look at the night sky and dream of finding new worlds. There would still be a number of sophonts eager to join the Scouts, and those numbers would grant the Scouts political clout beyond their size. It's not a huge leap from there to the idea that the upper leadership of the Scouts maneuvered the agency into its current position using every scrap of power they had.

My only concern with all of the above is this. How many sophonts joining the Scouts become disillusioned with their careers? Even at the height of the exploration era many joining the Scouts would never see a world entirely unknown to the Imperium. Today even fewer will. How does that affect internal morale?

 

[Enoki]

I guess even in those planets you talk about, the Imperial agents, be them MoJ, Scouts or whatever, are rarely attacked, out of fear to provoke Imperial attention. Even a small survey team is likely to have some regular communication with its base, and if they are lost there is a good probability there's an investigation by the Imperial authorities.

And in any case, would those missions be more risky than army or marines, who are expected to participate regularly in some combat?

I'd think the opposite. I'd think pretty much everybody knows that at a minimum they have a week or more before anyone outside the system would even become a little concerned.
If the scouts were to be there for weeks or months to do the job, that timeframe expands greatly. Plenty of time to hide the bodies where they never be found, and chop shop the ship or whatever they're going to do.
When the next batch of scouts or a search party shows up the locals shrug and say they have no idea what you're talking about. "Never seen 'em."

On onerous worlds with dictators and vicious laws, the government simply says they broke the law and it was off to the gulag / labor camp /prison, whatever with them. Any local nobility would have to be complicit in that as they're the ones allowing such worlds to exist to begin with...

The Imperial authorities are likely not to want to spend megacredits on sending some warship and a bunch of investigators to some backwater world to look for a few scouts that went missing in any case. Routine investigation, close out the file, replace the missing crew with a fresh one. Maybe the next crew will be more cautious...

It only becomes a problem if every crew went missing there. Then it's move in and stomp on the locals...

 

[welsh]

I'll try to reiterate (& expand) my ideas from the original thread....

The role of the Scout service has changed from the proto-Traveller role of exploration. The service has sustained itself & expanded by absorbing other services & taking on new roles, all surrounding information: collecting, analyzing, and reporting. It is essentially an intelligence organization, though not all of its intelligence is secret.

Per Book 6, the Sylean Federation Scout Service begat the IISS, which absorbed the Imperial Grand Survey. As exploration & survey declined in importance, the IISS took over the X-Boat service, which provides an ongoing raison d'etre & also fits the information mandate.

The field operations of the IISS now break down as follows:

Communications Office: this includes both the X-Boat Branch and Courier branch. In addition to carrying the mail, they're crunching data to identify communication patterns of intelligence value, and eavesdropping on people of interest. The sheer numbers of worlds on the X-Boat network, the demands of running all those boats, dictate this is the largest field office.

Survey Office: this breaks down into Internal Survey and External Survey. Internal Survey work entails resurveying systems within the Imperium both to update information and to answer questions not addressed in previous surveys (needs change). Surveying an entire system is a huge undertaking. How long to survey an asteroid belt? Given the number of worlds to be covered, there is always work to do.

External survey entails sneaking into systems controlled by other empires and also the no man's land systems that lie between. Nobody is just giving this data to the Imperium, so someone has to go and get it. You would no more subcontract this work than The US would subcontract spy planes over the Soviet Union in 1980. The external survey branch is larger than the internal.

Exploration Office: this includes an Exploration Branch, which has shrunk over time, and a Contact & Liaison Branch, which is second in size only to the Communications Office. The original role of C&L was not just to contact alien species and to recontact former Imperial worlds, but also to bring worlds into the Imperial fold by convincing them to voluntarily join the Imperium ... which meant by destabilizing governments that want to remain independent. That role remains important. Propaganda is the stock in trade of C&L - a long way from the white hat image of Scouts contacting alien civilizations.

In short: field operations may be mostly consumed by routine X-Boat operations, but also include signals intelligence, reconnaissance, and agitprop.

And this is before we get to Detached Duty Intelligence....

 

[welsh]

They also have quick response teams able o handle small pirate threats.

My Scouts wouldn't squish the pirates. That's the kind of dumb move Imperial Naval Intelligence would make.

The IISS Intelligence Branch plays a long game. Pirates are an ongoing problem and they aren't interested in playing whack-a-mole with them. The Navy, on locating a pirate base of operations, would move in and stomp on it. The IISS, recognizing that pirates usually have powerful sponsors, would watch and wait. And on identifying that sponsor -- say, Lord Blowhard, 2nd Earl Someworld -- the IISS would not do what Imperial Secret Intelligence would do, which would be to rat him out.

No. The IISS would have an intelligence officer sit down with Lord Blowhard, with the end result that Lord Blowhard ends up working for the IISS ... though he thinks he's being blackmailed by cheapjack mobsters.

"Information is power" is the unofficial Scout motto ... and power is no good if you just give it away.

 

[khadaji2002]

My Scouts wouldn't squish the pirates. That's the kind of dumb move Imperial Naval Intelligence would make.

The IISS Intelligence Branch plays a long game. Pirates are an ongoing problem and they aren't interested in playing whack-a-mole with them. The Navy, on locating a pirate base of operations, would move in and stomp on it. The IISS, recognizing that pirates usually have powerful sponsors, would watch and wait. And on identifying that sponsor -- say, Lord Blowhard, 2nd Earl Someworld -- the IISS would not do what Imperial Secret Intelligence would do, which would be to rat him out.

No. The IISS would have an intelligence officer sit down with Lord Blowhard, with the end result that Lord Blowhard ends up working for the IISS ... though he thinks he's being blackmailed by cheapjack mobsters.

"Information is power" is the unofficial Scout motto ... and power is no good if you just give it away.

I like this idea, with the caveat that IISS would also put information into place that if Lord Blowhard gets balky a packet gets sent to draw the Emperor's attention to Lord Blowhard's wonky financial information pointing to his backing known pirates in his system. Keep him clueless, keep him in the dark, keep him talking, and keep him under the Damoclean sword he's not ever aware of.

 

[McPerth]

I'd think the opposite. I'd think pretty much everybody knows that at a minimum they have a week or more before anyone outside the system would even become a little concerned.
If the scouts were to be there for weeks or months to do the job, that timeframe expands greatly. Plenty of time to hide the bodies where they never be found, and chop shop the ship or whatever they're going to do.
When the next batch of scouts or a search party shows up the locals shrug and say they have no idea what you're talking about. "Never seen 'em."

On onerous worlds with dictators and vicious laws, the government simply says they broke the law and it was off to the gulag / labor camp /prison, whatever with them. Any local nobility would have to be complicit in that as they're the ones allowing such worlds to exist to begin with...

The Imperial authorities are likely not to want to spend megacredits on sending some warship and a bunch of investigators to some backwater world to look for a few scouts that went missing in any case. Routine investigation, close out the file, replace the missing crew with a fresh one. Maybe the next crew will be more cautious...

It only becomes a problem if every crew went missing there. Then it's move in and stomp on the locals...

I see we fully disagree on this. As I see it, alowing this would sap the Imperial Authority, if any backwater planet could challeng it or make its representatives disappear.

And precisely for this reason, I'd expect any such disappearing team to produce a through investigation, not just a formal one to be son closed, just to asert who is in full command.

And for the same reasons, I don't expect those teams to be sent without any support, but with regular and (relatively) often contact, just to avoid the situation you tell about.

My Scouts wouldn't squish the pirates. That's the kind of dumb move Imperial Naval Intelligence would make.

The IISS Intelligence Branch plays a long game. Pirates are an ongoing problem and they aren't interested in playing whack-a-mole with them. The Navy, on locating a pirate base of operations, would move in and stomp on it. The IISS, recognizing that pirates usually have powerful sponsors, would watch and wait. And on identifying that sponsor -- say, Lord Blowhard, 2nd Earl Someworld -- the IISS would not do what Imperial Secret Intelligence would do, which would be to rat him out.

No. The IISS would have an intelligence officer sit down with Lord Blowhard, with the end result that Lord Blowhard ends up working for the IISS ... though he thinks he's being blackmailed by cheapjack mobsters.

"Information is power" is the unofficial Scout motto ... and power is no good if you just give it away.

Well, ITTR an adventure where the plyers locate some pirate base and their best option is jut to ewarn the IISS (being closer than IN) and thelp them to raid it, but I'm afraid I cannot give you exact reference.

As I see it, IN is only sent for strong threats, as it is an officially military action, and so politically dangerous, while the scouts, bein in this sense closer to the French Gendarmery of Spanish Guardia Civil, while being (at least) partially military or militarized, are not seen as the use of military units (and so martial law, be it de facto or the jure), but, as a police action (not in the sense Mercenary says, but in the sens they are more close to police than army in this actions).

 

[Blue Ghost]

As per my previous post before the update, to me Scouts are like park rangers here in California. State, Federal, and county. Some are law enforcement, others are strictly public relations, but all have some degree of science training.

 

[Condottiere]

I'm probably repeating myself.

Communications is the Pony Express, but empires without a communications network implode anyway, whether it's the Inca or Athenian long distance runner, or ships crisscrossing the Roman Sea or Ruling The Waves.

Than you must have had the influence of the original Star Trek, which retconly looks more like the Confederation Navy since they're tasked with both defence of the realm and exploration.

And last but not least, Yankee rugged individualism that's often expressed in pulp science fiction pre Vietnam, which I feel is different from the Ayn Randian ideal, in that altruism is not a vice.

 

[welsh]

I still think the IISS would rely on local contractors and surveying firms wherever possible. They'd just have some bureaucrat or three collecting the data from these worlds.

Reiterating the original thread, 4 problems with that:
1. Imperial Grand Survey already exists. No big organization ever disbanded itself; instead they invent new roles (and Book 6 says this is a criticism of the IISS);
2. The 3I has no budget crunch to force the IISS to subcontract;
3. Subcontracting is just as expensive anyway; the survey firms need to finance their ships;
4. You don't subcontract secret stuff, and we can't assume that everything that survey ship is doing is routine.

Finally, the existence & role of Internal Survey in the OTU is in Book 6 ... so YTU may vary but as far as the OTU is concerned, the Scouts do this.

1) IIRC, one of the posts in the lost thread mentioned having Scouts doing surveys within Imperial space as a means of detecting anti-Imperium activity.

For me this was less a matter of anti-Imperial activity and more a matter of keeping world governments honest. Depends in part on how Imperial taxation is supposed to work ... but if the third moon of your gas giant is not supposed to be open to mining, I might want to check on it once every few years....

I like this idea, with the caveat that IISS would also put information into place that if Lord Blowhard gets balky a packet gets sent to draw the Emperor's attention to Lord Blowhard's wonky financial information pointing to his backing known pirates in his system. Keep him clueless, keep him in the dark, keep him talking, and keep him under the Damoclean sword he's not ever aware of.

This also applies to player parties ... that patron might be a detached duty Intel officer giving you just enough rope to hang yourself....

 

[welsh]

As I see it, alowing this would sap the Imperial Authority, if any backwater planet could challeng it or make its representatives disappear.

I agree ... nobody, with the exception of anti-Imperial terrorists/guerillas, is going to mess with Scouts, Marines, etc. inside Imperial space. The consequences are too dire.

You kill 10 scouts and chop up their MCr.211 survey scout for parts, and the Duke of Earl may just respond by interdicting your backwater LL 0, Pop 3 armpit of a world and using it as a naval gunnery range. Your world means squat to the 3I.

And if you're the dictator of a high-pop, high law world, you face being removed by a tactical team from the IISS Ops Office, who will make it look like someone else did it, and then sic the Navy on that someone else just because they can.

 

[Enoki]

Reiterating the original thread, 4 problems with that:
1. Imperial Grand Survey already exists. No big organization ever disbanded itself; instead they invent new roles (and Book 6 says this is a criticism of the IISS);

Bureaucracies grow top down, not bottom up, as Northcote Parkenson pointed out so well in Parkenson's Law. That is, the Imperial Navy has more admirals and captains than it can use. There are Generals doing what majors did a century earlier... That sort of thing.
Bureaucrats also love control. What better to show your power off than a building full of worker bees you control going at something. Sending people off on their own is risking their leaving your circle of micromanagement.

2. The 3I has no budget crunch to force the IISS to subcontract;

That would be a first in the history of the universe!

3. Subcontracting is just as expensive anyway; the survey firms need to finance their ships;

Then why is it the norm for so many things throughout history? Subcontractors are usually cheaper.

4. You don't subcontract secret stuff, and we can't assume that everything that survey ship is doing is routine.

What could possibly be secret about the geophysical and political characteristics of a system when even ship's sensors can pick out most of the major characteristics from over a parsec away?

Aside from that, I'd think that doing something in secrecy is a small exception to the norm, rather than the norm. I'd also think the IISS has the least reason to be doing that, compared to other branches, and if it were really secret, that branch or the ones involved wouldn't want other branches to know about it either.

Finally, the existence & role of Internal Survey in the OTU is in Book 6 ... so YTU may vary but as far as the OTU is concerned, the Scouts do this.

Well, my MTU the IISS is mostly bureaucrats and mundane types. The dangerous stuff if more limited, but really dangerous because they can't outsource it because nobody in their right mind would be doing it. The IISS is underfunded, overworked, and bureaucratically onerous internally... You mister Scout character are expendable.

 

[Condottiere]

The Scout Service is a lean mean machine, and I suspect that the bureaucracy isn't allowed to expand and swallow it whole, probably being much smaller than the field division.

 

[welsh]

Subcontractors are usually cheaper.

Not per hour, which makes them more expensive when used on a full-time basis.

What could possibly be secret about the geophysical and political characteristics of a system when even ship's sensors can pick out most of the major characteristics from over a parsec away?

Clearly, the fundamental disagreement here is the basic nature of a survey: you think it is superficial, and I think it is detailed.

As to what could be secret, the subject of the survey itself could include politically sensitive areas. Also, a survey can be used as cover for other work.

My point was not that every survey is sensitive, to forestall the straw man. My point is that by subcontracting that work, you would abandon your above-board, white-hat excuse for snooping around when you need to.

... also think the IISS has the least reason to be doing that, compared to other branches

The IISS is the only branch whose canonical roles include involving itself in local politics (contact & liaison) or running extensive intelligence networks (detached duty). Its original role was to do reconnaissance for the Emperor. But other services are more likely to be snooping?

This is the red-headed stepchild problem: a lot of people just don't see what these roles imply, so the Scouts become bureaucrats and cultural attachés.

The Scout Service is a lean mean machine, and I suspect that the bureaucracy isn't allowed to expand and swallow it whole, probably being much smaller than the field division.

The Communications Office, which is a field office, dwarfs everything. Each line on that X-Boat route requires two pilots and two boats per day. Add tender crews, couriers, spare crews to cover downtime, courses, and leave.

The Contact & Liaison branch is next largest, if you're in a border director.

The biggest piece of the bureaucracy will be the maintenance crews required to keep all those X-Boats & couriers moving ... because contrary to what the name implies, most of the bureaucracy are not actually bureaucrats.

 

[Barrel]

Bureaucrats also love control. What better to show your power off than a building full of worker bees you control going at something. Sending people off on their own is risking their leaving your circle of micromanagement.

People will still be sent on "far away" missions on their own when the powers that be see them as annoyances, malcontents, misfits to the organizational culture, or up-and-coming threats to those entrenched powers-that-be. It may be hoped they won't return from a dangerous field mission, or they may be away from "court politics" long enough for them to be out manuevered.

Something like the last part happened to my father years ago, at least as he saw it. On track to become president of the corporation he worked for, he was promoted to regional vice-president of a region far from the company headquarters. He focused on increasing his region's sales, but was out of day-to-day touch with the HQ. A few years later the company reorganized it's departments, Dad's position was absorbed into another, and he was let go.

 

[Blue Ghost]

You might also think of the Scouts as the US Postal police, since part of their function is to "deliver mail" and spread news.