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[Louella Dougans]

I am a soldier of the Federation, the only true Democracy in New Eden.

The other members of my unit are terribly pretentious, even though they are my friends. My best friend has skin painted with a swoosh that goes in a different direction than the swoosh I have painted on my skin. I consider it terribly gauche, and have informed them of this numerous times. They laugh, as they take it in good humour, and tell me that they consider me to be the gauche one. Me ! Unthinkable !

We are in combat often. Sometimes we have specific orders to hold fire unless given a direct command. This is stressful. Most of the time though, we are given general orders to engage, and we are free to pick our targets. Of course, we are a democracy, so we vote on how to proceed. Democracy must prevail.

Occasionally, we are placed with other units, in mixed groups, or one or more of us are detached for special duties. Decision making takes longer. Sometimes there is a deadlock, we have to argue our point until someone changes their mind. It's simpler when there are an odd number of us, deadlock is impossible then.

[spoiler]Epilogue

Rookie Pilot > If i have four drones, and they are set to focus fire, they take ages to switch to new targets. If I have five, they respond much quicker. what gives?
Veteran Pilot > Drone AI has always been a bit weird. I've never been able to figure out why they'll go for one target over another.[/spoiler]

[Valadeus]

Heh.

A prime example of why military units, regardless of the government they fight on behalf of, never function as a democracy.

[orange]

Heh.

A prime example of why military units, regardless of the government they fight on behalf of, never function as a democracy.

[spoiler]The spoiler is important.  Drone AIs may actually be programmed to "vote" to make decisions and this is true today in some redundant computer systems - 3 different algorithms run the same data and then if one of them is far off the others, it's data is not used.[/spoiler]

Edit: Gave me a chuckle.

[Jikahr]

Apparently this was true during the early formative years of the United States as well. They were so enthralled with Democracy that they used to cast ballots to decide on important military strategies, such as whether to advance or retreat. The enlisted men voted for all their officers. Sergeants had to plead with their men to show up on the drill square to practice drill.