Lieutenant Fusilier 2 (Abandoned, do not read)

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Interesting the way Dora and The French are almost talking past each other here - the perspectives are so different that they just don't understand why the other disagrees with them.

Also, I want her to talk Miles into joining her next time she visits. "He uses me as a distraction so he can avoid dealing with people; I'm just returning the favor."

Also also, I want to see Dora convince one of the French machine officers to come down to the regular mess one evening, to see the social stuff in action, and perhaps get some idea what Dora sees in it. And also to scandalize the Frenchmen present (they can hardly expect a British robot to behave in a civilized manor, after all; because they cannot expect the British in general to be civilized, but when one of their own joins in...)
 
It's surprising to me that we do have rotation and interplay between armies but the basic norms of the French versus the British armies are unknown to Dora? Is this just because the Concert is so absolutely huge a military machine can spend their whole life basically not having any contact with another nation's military forces? Is this something specific to Dora?
 
Dora is listening to her therapist! Yay!

Dora is going to get encouraged by all the French machines to hit on Diana! Maybe yay?
 
Autochton said:
I mean, the other languages use the singular form, so I'd say using it here makes sense.
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Hm. I may be misremembering my German, but I was recommending the -e ending to make the name feminine, not to make it plural. German uses some similar grammar for feminine-gendered nouns and pronouns and for plural, at least in some verb tenses, or that's my understanding/recollection.

Cetashwayo said:
It's surprising to me that we do have rotation and interplay between armies but the basic norms of the French versus the British armies are unknown to Dora? Is this just because the Concert is so absolutely huge a military machine can spend their whole life basically not having any contact with another nation's military forces? Is this something specific to Dora?
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There's lots of "exchange student" robots (though apparently not many between the British and the French for obvious reasons).

What there isn't, apparently, is lots of large scale field exercises between different Concert member nations. Probably because the armies are actually quite small compared to the territory being covered, and so there's rarely a good opportunity to have entire regiment-sized forces in the same place at the same time to practice against each other.

The senior officers of both nations' militaries are probably more aware of the differences in style, but Dora's been doing the equivalent of just pushing her fingers in her ears and humming a lot and not making small talk, I suspect. Because until recently she was so focused on becoming an officer that she spent no money and had no socialization.
 
Squishy said:
Of course it would be the French robots that have no problem with human/robot romance. :p
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It might be a different problem than no problem.

In Britain, the relationships are seen as improper in part because the attavhment and different ways of aging just result in heartbreak.

France seems to think that the gulf is insurmountable, so the relationship is fine. After all, it won't ever, can't ever,amount to more than a dalliance.
 
Simon_Jester said:
...I think I'm just flat out wrong and it should be the -in ending, not the -e ending.

Does that make more sense?
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German military designations are usually standard male, not designated female, though there are exceptions. I think "Füsilier" has no female version because the term fell out of general use before women joined infantry units. "Füsilierin" would be correct according to modern German grammar rules, but I've never heard the word. The modern German word for a footsolderi in a combat unit is "Infanterist".

Though if we think of the designations the machines use as family names, those would not be changed because the person using it is male or female. So I think Theda's full name would be "Theda Füsilier", without a plural or female designation.

EDIT: Hmm, turns out I was only partly correct. The Bundeswehr is using female versions for their occupations, like "Soldatin". So who knows what applies here!
 
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Fernandel said:
German military designations are usually standard male, not designated female, though there are exceptions. I think "Füsilier" has no female version because the term fell out of general use before women joined infantry units. "Füsilierin" would be correct according to modern German grammar rules, but I've never heard the word. The modern German word for a footsolderi in a combat unit is "Infanterist".

Though if we think of the designations the machines use as family names, those would not be changed because the person using it is male or female. So I think Theda's full name would be "Theda Füsilier", without a plural or female designation.
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This was my logic, yep.
 
Simon_Jester said:
The senior officers of both nations' militaries are probably more aware of the differences in style, but Dora's been doing the equivalent of just pushing her fingers in her ears and humming a lot and not making small talk, I suspect. Because until recently she was so focused on becoming an officer that she spent no money and had no socialization.
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"How come you don't know this Lieutenant Fusilier? You're like a sailor who claims to have neither seen nor smelt the sea!"

"I- I didn't socialize a lot in the time before I bought my commission."

"Cause you're a shut-in?"

"Cause I was BROKE! Broke as Hell! How else did you think I save up for it?"

"What does your financial status have to do with anything? I'm asking why you didn't know the Prussian TOE. Did your division library not have a copy of Jane's All the System's Fighting Units?"
 
Is it just me, or do the French human/machine relations kinda remind you of the Europan gender relations in the Gaya quests?

Anyways, it seems like the French machines are dealing with a whole other set of problems over there. Though, I would like to see how things would work in a hypothetical future where most officers are machines and the humans have to content themselves with the separate and nominally equal officer's mess.
 
10ebbor10 said:
It might be a different problem than no problem.

In Britain, the relationships are seen as improper in part because the attavhment and different ways of aging just result in heartbreak.

France seems to think that the gulf is insurmountable, so the relationship is fine. After all, it won't ever, can't ever,amount to more than a dalliance.
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Exactly. It's by definition a star-crossed romance. It's perfect.
 
Tricky to deal with that column attack. Might I suggest hugging the dirt, breaking up the formation into individual sub-platoons that operate semi-independently, and spreading out to cover as much ground as possible to out-skirmish their skirmishers? It might work!
 
Vehrec said:
Tricky to deal with that column attack. Might I suggest hugging the dirt, breaking up the formation into individual sub-platoons that operate semi-independently, and spreading out to cover as much ground as possible to out-skirmish their skirmishers? It might work!
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Don't lose artillery superiority, is the answer. If someone outguns you as badly as the British were outgunned there's really only so much that manoeuvre can do.
 
Gravitas Hunt said:
Most important question here: Celsius or Fahrenheit?
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Oh definitely Fahrenheit.

Vehrec said:
Tricky to deal with that column attack. Might I suggest hugging the dirt, breaking up the formation into individual sub-platoons that operate semi-independently, and spreading out to cover as much ground as possible to out-skirmish their skirmishers? It might work!
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Then the attack in column just slams right through your lines though...

Tiny_Dic said:
"How come you don't know this Lieutenant Fusilier? You're like a sailor who claims to have neither seen nor smelt the sea!"

"I- I didn't socialize a lot in the time before I bought my commission."

"Cause you're a shut-in?"

"Cause I was BROKE! Broke as Hell! How else did you think I save up for it?"

"What does your financial status have to do with anything? I'm asking why you didn't know the Prussian TOE. Did your division library not have a copy of Jane's All the System's Fighting Units?"
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Well, you also have to remember that in Fusie's army there are basically four kinds of people, in ascending order of rank:

1) Troops. Rank and file fusilier-bots. No need to know anything other than drill and take orders.

2) Noncoms. Slightly more promoted fusilier-bots. Slightly more need to know anything beyond 'drill and take orders,' but creative tactical decisionmaking and diplomacy with other Concert militaries and so on is not normally their job. Certainly it wasn't in the Napoleonic militaries they're modeled after, because of the class system.

3) Junior Officers. Normally expected in real militaries to be aggressively educated or educating themselves in the details of foreign militaries they may fight against, and probably also allied militaries (the French and Prussians are 'allies' in this frame of reference). Complication, though, in the British system in the Concert, there is an institutional expectation that officer cadets are practically dilettantes; they're showing up as ensigns at the age of seventeen, clearly not having passed any officer academy program and expected to learn on the job. As such, they cannot reasonably be expected to know the details of foreign militaries, due to sheer lack of experience.

4) Senior Officers. These are equivalent to field-grade and general officers in a real world military. They probably are expected to know a lot about prospective allied militaries. But, importantly, because of the lack of any equivalent of Space!Sandhurst, let alone a Space!JSCSC, they are expected to learn this information by study and socialization on the job.

...

Faulting Fusie for not learning the Prussian TO&E is, in essence, faulting her for not learning while in the role of (2) and aspiring to become (3), information that is normally learned on the job over a period of years in role (3) as part of a decades-long transition into role (4).
 
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Also, Dora saved up and jumped over the lowest officer rank, thus missing more time where she should have learned these things.

Which isn't great, but it is allowed, and it's what she did. So it goes.
 
Simon_Jester said:
Then the attack in column just slams right through your lines though...
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Not if you don't have any solid line for them to slam through! Now they're just a dumb block of infantry, wandering the battlefield, trying to BLAP anyone they see, while my units are far too small to be worth the artillery's time because everyone's in the dirt and probably the color of the dirt from crawling around. They can concentrate on any robots they see, but our own attached artillery can now start either counter-battery work or hopefully has been dragged into a flanking position where it can do really nasty work.
 
Vehrec said:
Not if you don't have any solid line for them to slam through! Now they're just a dumb block of infantry, wandering the battlefield, trying to BLAP anyone they see, while my units are far too small to be worth the artillery's time because everyone's in the dirt and probably the color of the dirt from crawling around. They can concentrate on any robots they see, but our own attached artillery can now start either counter-battery work or hopefully has been dragged into a flanking position where it can do really nasty work.
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You now lack the firepower density to stop the enemy while they walk into your rear areas, blow up your energy screens, and kidnap your Miriams.
 
open_sketch said:
You now lack the firepower density to stop the enemy while they walk into your rear areas, blow up your energy screens, and kidnap your Miriams.
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Just a matter of getting more firepower to the hands of the troopers! Gotta be machine portable, somewhat handy, maybe we could use a rapid-firing water-cooled laser? Or maybe Plasma throwers, or some kind of corrosive gas...And of course, there shouldn't be just one line between the enemy and the Miriams!
 
Vehrec said:
Just a matter of getting more firepower to the hands of the troopers! Gotta be machine portable, somewhat handy, maybe we could use a rapid-firing water-cooled laser? Or maybe Plasma throwers, or some kind of corrosive gas...And of course, there shouldn't be just one line between the enemy and the Miriams!
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The machines carry laser muskets which have, in the previous quest, achieved feats such as outright collapsing a cliff, which are noted to have a lethal blast radius of twenty feet or more from laser backscatter, and which weigh 40 kilograms. It's liquid cooled, and has a replaceable heat sink for when that isn't enough. And it was still taking multiple shots to kill stalkers.
 
open_sketch said:
The machines carry laser muskets which have, in the previous quest, achieved feats such as outright collapsing a cliff, which are noted to have a lethal blast radius of twenty feet or more from laser backscatter, and which weigh 40 kilograms. It's liquid cooled, and has a replaceable heat sink for when that isn't enough. And it was still taking multiple shots to kill stalkers.
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(Yeah, the joke's run out at this point, I'm just trying to go 'but what if we used WW1 tactics, HMMMMM?' and be a silly boy.)
 
open_sketch said:
You now lack the firepower density to stop the enemy while they walk into your rear areas, blow up your energy screens, and kidnap your Miriams.
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[nods]

Of course, letting the bloody frogbots through to abscond with your Miriams is the real problem here. After exposure to their Continental robo-wiles, they... might... not want to come back!

(gasps in horror).

Vehrec said:
(Yeah, the joke's run out at this point, I'm just trying to go 'but what if we used WW1 tactics, HMMMMM?' and be a silly boy.)
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Well, the short answer is "because nobody's figured out how to quadruple the firepower of a Fusilier-bot-portable energy weapon any time in the past few decades, sorry but there it is."

If anyone did figure that out, it'd probably invalidate a LOT of tactics, at least until armor and force field generator tech caught up.
 
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