Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Esna Pitoojee]

Esna's gone trough Imperial Navy basic training (or the equivalent thereof) before he got noticed for capsuleering, and I assumed that as part of the long traditions of the Navy he'd have gone through at least basic hand-to-hand and small arms training - even if the average crewman aboard a starfaring warship is unlikely to ever even see his enemy, let alone fight him face-to-face.

Since becoming a capsuleer, he's grown increasingly fond of being crazy prepared and as such now carries two sidearms when outside of a secured area: A standard Amarrian laser pistol (probably a scrambler pistol, although the weapon didn't exist when I first laid this out) and a projectile pistol with no electronic components as a backup after an incident in which someone used an EMP to disable his (at that time only) laser pistol.

He still recognizes guards are his best defense, but also feels that as someone who will be likely targeted for various reasons, there is no excuse for not being ready for a situation in which he would have to fight... not to mention he has these silly ideas about certain things that must be done in person.

[kalaratiri]

Kala lives in her bedroom. All that silly socialising stuff can be done quite easily through computers.

Kat may remember a certain incident in that vein 

What that actually means is that she is terrible at all forms of hand to hand or ballistic combat. People don't have to godmod beating her, because I'll be happily having her lose in dramatic fashion. She can't even hold a gun properly, never mind shoot it. On the other hand, she excels in ship-to-ship combat.

I've always considered Eve a game where your primary actions are space based, so why even bother making your character some ninja badass? It's not like anyone can see them.

[orange]

I have not read the entirety of the article so pardon me if I say something wrong here but I read :

To educate soldiers on how to protect themselves against threats without using their firearms
To provide a non-lethal response to situations on the battlefield
To instill the 'warrior instinct' to provide the necessary aggression to meet the enemy unflinchingly

Which to me is barely applicable to capsuleers... Except maybe the last point. Which kind of joins the only point I find really worth it : that it's more mental discipline before everything else.

It was more a response to the idea that close-quarters fighting is no longer taught in modern military training.

If someone claims to have been a soldier in their pre-capsuleer life, they may very well have hand-to-hand combat training.

[Silas Vitalia]

I should split my post up a bit:

Just because something isn't practical or realistic doesn't mean it's not good for storytelling purposes.

A crazy Khanid Cyberknight Ghost-in-the-shelling through a group of armed bodyguards with a blade and super-punches might read a lot cooler than them all just being shot with precision from 100 ft away.  Depends how these things are used for our purposes.

In a world where some expensive modified people have personal shielding and crazy weapons, you can easily find thematic leeway for more up close and personal confrontations of that variety now and then.   

I see this stuff as the exception and not the rule though.


Of course people in the military and security forces sometimes get into hand-to-hand situations. It's the exception and not the rule depending on the sort of work they are doing.   Going in and clearing a place out without the intention of using lethal force on everyone in a mile radius means things will be much more difficult.

Going in knowing you are going to kill anything that moves makes it much more unlikely.

Plenty of Japanese soldiers had swords on them in the Pacific; they worked fine on the occasional Banzai charge against Chinese bolt-action rifles, but they were less than successful facing a wall of automatic US rifles.


My point being we can probably make room to separate the 'what -would- happen' from 'what might be a little cooler if it happened' in our own mythmaking.


But yea too many special kung-fu super capsuleers out there.

[Silas Vitalia]

I have not read the entirety of the article so pardon me if I say something wrong here but I read :

To educate soldiers on how to protect themselves against threats without using their firearms
To provide a non-lethal response to situations on the battlefield
To instill the 'warrior instinct' to provide the necessary aggression to meet the enemy unflinchingly

Which to me is barely applicable to capsuleers... Except maybe the last point. Which kind of joins the only point I find really worth it : that it's more mental discipline before everything else.

It was more a response to the idea that close-quarters fighting is no longer taught in modern military training.

If someone claims to have been a soldier in their pre-capsuleer life, they may very well have hand-to-hand combat training.

I agree with you that any pre-capsuleer military types would almost certainly have gone through basic hand to hand, I just severely doubt in an age of laser rifles and wtfbbq weaponry they would use it much.

[Esna Pitoojee]

For military training of starship crews, the hand-to-hand training may have much less to do with fighting a member of an opposing force than with restraining a mutinous/tripping-the-hell-out/berserk/going-through-an-emotional-breakdown crewmate before he damages something (unintentionally or deliberately) critical to your continued survival.

Imagine: You're in the middle of combat, and all of a sudden something fails; lights fail and toxic gas slowly starts filling the compartment you are in. Your crewmate snaps under the pressure of it all, abandons his post, and starts running to the nearest bulkhead door to escape (highlighted by handy glow-in-the-dark strips). A quick glance at the door's access panel, though, tells you that it must have taken a direct hit and has been opened to the vacuum of space. In this situation, knowing how to quickly get your buddy pinned to the floor and/or incapacitated safely might mean the difference between living to don a rebreather and getting sucked out into the vacuum.

[Elmund Egivand]

Hand-to-hand is also pretty useful because, you know, ships hallways are pretty cramped and you could easily be staring at the boarder's nostril hair as you turn around the corner.

[Vic Van Meter]

Hand-to-hand is also pretty useful because, you know, ships hallways are pretty cramped and you could easily be staring at the boarder's nostril hair as you turn around the corner.

I have a pair of brothers in the USAF, one Air Force and one Navy.  The first brother was instructed in hand-to-hand and KEBAR combat, but only in basic and as prerequisite training.  The latter brother was a sonar tech and was thus on an actual ship.  From what he describes and has demonstrated, they didn't just teach him hand-to-hand combat, they made sure he practiced it weekly.

The problem with the tight confines of hallways, whether it's in a hotel, missile cruiser, or a starship, is that the idea of being able to sit somewhere and trade fire is a luxury, not the norm.  While your common Army grunt probably will never use their combat knife for actual combat, that doesn't hold true for other services, especially ones who will need to be handling that kind of pressure in two scenarios:

-CQB applications where there is a chance you will walk through a door and have a second or two to react to someone who might be quite close and that you might not be able to shoot at that moment...

-MPs and other "law-enforcement" whose job it is to disarm and disable, not shoot, their targets.

Given that both of those are very possible for both Naval personnel and law-enforcement, it stands to reason that not only is it still taught, but it's probably still checked for competency.  If you duck under a duct and come face to face with your enemy, you're taught to attack instead of retreating to fire your weapon.  Generally that means that modern military combat styles (Sambo, Krav Maga, etc.) tend to emphasize quick neutralization.

In essence, they're not kung-fu.  They aren't meant to be flashy, acrobatic, or even meant for fitness.  Most of those styles are practical hybrid styles that serve a series of functions that may never cease to be pertinent.  It isn't as much butt-stroking someone in a pinch; as disarming and punching someone in the throat can be done almost instantaneously.  More important is that you may not want to kill every single person you get into a fight with.  It might never cease to be useful to be able to hammerlock and pin someone that you need to neutralize but not kill.

Of course, a lot of capsuleers who never leave the capsule might think it's all kind of visceral and personal, and that you've done something wrong if you're in a situation where you use it.  But not every capsuleer is like that.  While many capsuleers may have had the training and may keep up on it to some degree, you'll probably see more of it used practically by capsuleers who aren't afraid to mix it up outside of the capsule.

[V. Gesakaarin]

I don't see most RP martial arts as being described as modern military CQB/CQC techniques, or even things like point shooting with a sidearm/smg. A lot of it just seems to forget the "martial" aspect of martial arts, as in, you know fucking up another guy in the most practical and efficient means given the weapons and battlefields you have and the enemy has. It just comes off like some really over-romanticized stuff or something out of a John Woo flick.

[Vic Van Meter]

I don't see most RP martial arts as being described as modern military CQB/CQC techniques, or even things like point shooting with a sidearm/smg. A lot of it just seems to forget the "martial" aspect of martial arts, as in, you know fucking up another guy in the most practical and efficient means given the weapons and battlefields you have and the enemy has. It just comes off like some really over-romanticized stuff or something out of a John Woo flick.

You mean like this?

[V. Gesakaarin]

I don't see most RP martial arts as being described as modern military CQB/CQC techniques, or even things like point shooting with a sidearm/smg. A lot of it just seems to forget the "martial" aspect of martial arts, as in, you know fucking up another guy in the most practical and efficient means given the weapons and battlefields you have and the enemy has. It just comes off like some really over-romanticized stuff or something out of a John Woo flick.

You mean like this?

Mastering the Fascist Gun Katas is required training for all Caldari, obviously.

[Elmund Egivand]

Hand-to-hand is also pretty useful because, you know, ships hallways are pretty cramped and you could easily be staring at the boarder's nostril hair as you turn around the corner.

I have a pair of brothers in the USAF, one Air Force and one Navy.  The first brother was instructed in hand-to-hand and KEBAR combat, but only in basic and as prerequisite training.  The latter brother was a sonar tech and was thus on an actual ship.  From what he describes and has demonstrated, they didn't just teach him hand-to-hand combat, they made sure he practiced it weekly.

The problem with the tight confines of hallways, whether it's in a hotel, missile cruiser, or a starship, is that the idea of being able to sit somewhere and trade fire is a luxury, not the norm.  While your common Army grunt probably will never use their combat knife for actual combat, that doesn't hold true for other services, especially ones who will need to be handling that kind of pressure in two scenarios:

-CQB applications where there is a chance you will walk through a door and have a second or two to react to someone who might be quite close and that you might not be able to shoot at that moment...

-MPs and other "law-enforcement" whose job it is to disarm and disable, not shoot, their targets.

Given that both of those are very possible for both Naval personnel and law-enforcement, it stands to reason that not only is it still taught, but it's probably still checked for competency.  If you duck under a duct and come face to face with your enemy, you're taught to attack instead of retreating to fire your weapon.  Generally that means that modern military combat styles (Sambo, Krav Maga, etc.) tend to emphasize quick neutralization.

In essence, they're not kung-fu.  They aren't meant to be flashy, acrobatic, or even meant for fitness.  Most of those styles are practical hybrid styles that serve a series of functions that may never cease to be pertinent.  It isn't as much butt-stroking someone in a pinch; as disarming and punching someone in the throat can be done almost instantaneously.  More important is that you may not want to kill every single person you get into a fight with.  It might never cease to be useful to be able to hammerlock and pin someone that you need to neutralize but not kill.

Of course, a lot of capsuleers who never leave the capsule might think it's all kind of visceral and personal, and that you've done something wrong if you're in a situation where you use it.  But not every capsuleer is like that.  While many capsuleers may have had the training and may keep up on it to some degree, you'll probably see more of it used practically by capsuleers who aren't afraid to mix it up outside of the capsule.

That was exactly what I had in mind when I crafted Elmund's military career. He was trained as a Marine (Engineer) prior to his screening (and subsequent drafting into the Capsuleer Programme), therefore it's a given that he is competent in CQC. He also favors the SMG because, really, that's exactly what you would be using in tight corridors anyway.

[orange]

I have a pair of brothers in the USAF, one Air Force and one Navy.

Small nit - I stumble over reading this sentence because rarely do I see some refer to the US Armed Services as the US Armed Forces and then turn it into an acronym more commonly used for the US Air Force (USAF) (as in it is written on the sides of the Air Force aircraft, while NAVY and MARINE are on the sides of theirs).

Edit: for spelling

[Vic Van Meter]

I have a pair of brothers in the USAF, one Air Force and one Navy.

Small nit - I stumble over reading this sentence because rarely do I see some referr to the US Armed Services as the US Armed Forces and then turn it into an acronym more commonly used for the US Air Force (USAF) (as in it is written on the sides of the Air Force aircraft, while NAVY and MARINE are on the sides of theirs).

It's a bit more common if you're in the armed forces, I suspect.  They're colloquially known through the rest of the service as the "chair force" because so few of their people are actually engaged in combat operations.  My brother certainly isn't; he's about an hour away in Dayton.

Come to think of it, I almost never see the Air Force's name acronymized at all.  I texted my brother to see why that was.  He says that if you're in the Air Force, they took the time to teach you to spell the words.

Inter-service ribbing is fun!

[purple]

It feels almost special snowflaky to play someone who is not trained in martial arts...

I've always imagined that after receive the SOCT learning skills* and attribute implants is an experience very similar to the main character's in limitless.   In the scene bellow, the character finds out that dormant in his brain was all the info he needed to kick some serious ass. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swOuQBjbiLU

*I know they aren't in game any longer, but maybe we get them before graduation or something.