Ranking Up.

Quite simply, the method of getting a promotion is kind of like getting a handshake for playing at a baseball game.

Generally speaking I've seen a lot of the times when people get promoted, it's because someone remembered their name at the end of an event and they did an alright job, so why not give them Lance Corporal? I mean he's probably qualified since we saw him do that one event, lets make him a LEADER. YEAH. GREAT IDEA!

No it's not, it's a terrible idea and no matter how much you defend it, people have been promoted for almost nothing on occasion and other times they were promoted for something that barely qualifies as exceptional.

So this is how you should promote and I know this will work because I've had it done before on a few Sci Fi servers I worked with. It's quite simple, you give them a course, think of it as a competition. You announce to people currently on the server during passive that Corporal training is currently available, obviously only people with the appropriate rank to do it can come to participate, a Private is not going to get in this course and earn himself rank. You test people, with maybe a pretend paper test or whatever and have them basically try to compete, the best of the best that come into these tests will get the rank, the worst will not. You need to be strict and if you don't like announcing, you could do forum apps and then have a specific GMT time for the people to get on for their test.

The point is, you need to make sure that when you promote Corporal Joe to Sergeant Joe, that he is actually capable of doing his job and not making the other Sergeant's look like retards. So you need to figure out something, because the current method of promotion is pretty terrible and just because it's easy to do, doesn't make it feasible. There's a saying, you can do it the easy way or the right way and in this case, you can make a choice.


Just as a note I'd throw my hat out to do training or help other people learn how to train NCO's. It's easy to train a private to be honest, anyone can do it, you teach them how to not be completely and utterly retarded. But there isn't really anything for NCO's, no courses, no tests, nothing. They just get a promotion because we think their cool and most of the time - it's emotional.

We like to think we're logical about our decisions, but we tend to just give out a promotion or a present to the person we notice or like the most, quite often ignoring people who actually work their ass of for something they clearly deserve. Personally I don't care that much about a promotion, I'd have a ball if I could train people, but that's all I see a promotion for, helping people understand how to play their assigned roles and wearing a fancy hat to let people know that I shop at vogue.


Some Examples:

Lance Corporals Course:

Very basic radio telecommunications course(Basically you tell them where the button to turn the radio on is and that you shouldn't talk about your pet hamster during an emergency on Comms.).


Fitness and shooting course(This is actually a trick, you're going to see if they know how to spell when they /me. If they do /me shoots gun at target. You know they aren't LCPL material.).

Corporals Course:

You teach them basic things about Radio Telecommunications(Sounding cool on the radio.).

A few things about field craft(How to be in a formation, how to not be seen, how to put a bandage on someone's bruised ass. In general it's just how not to die and make sure that other people also don't die.).

Giving commands(You know, because sometimes people don't know how to sound like an officer. You don't want them saying "Yo doge, better git your fine ass up in that tower n' shoot some ruski's.".).

Sergeants Course:

Fitness Course.

Shooting Course(Once again, they already learned what they needed from being a Corporal, so you don't need to teach them again. What you want to do though is make sure they can /me correctly and are generally capable roleplayers. So check em' out make sure they know how to spell the word banana. Really, I bet you guys have an NCO who can't spell words correctly, I could probably find him. His name's probably Cpl. Ghaz Jehws.).

The basic of it is, make sure they know how to roleplay properly and that they don't think that the key thing to being an NCO is being an asshole and yelling at everyone with all caps constantly. Yelling is purposeful, you don't just yell because you see it in the movies, when an NCO yells, it has purpose to it. You yell at your recruits because you need to scare them and mold them into something harder, with your privates that's over. They were trained, they know their shit, you only have two reasons to yell at a trained soldier, because he's either receiving an order in the midst of battle or because he's pissed you right the fuck off. Anyway, that is my rant over, it's something that bothered me for a while.

Although don't feel bad about it, EC used this method of promotion for years - I wonder if some poor sap like me tried to change the system just like this. Then failed miserably because people don't like these new fancy times, with their fancy trainings and we all miss the old days where you roleplayed by dressin' up in the back yard and playing wizards.

A note on yelling:

Something that can be taught in a course is this.

Everything in the military has a purpose, nothing exists just because it sounds cool. Things are placed into training because it was thought that it was vital enough that millions upon millions of soldiers over the next six generations need to know this.

Yelling is something we use, because it's useful. You yell, because when you're in combat, the only thing you will hear is yelling. So people teach it like muscle memory, like a dog who learns the command sit. You hear it so much that it becomes instinct, you hear a command being yelled and you respond, because you are scared. You sub consciously remember what happens to you when you don't respond in less then a half second to an immediate command, that's part of drill. Drill shapes you and teaches you to respond quickly and perfectly, to be as symmetrical as a ballet routine with your fellow brothers.

A Recruit learns to respond to the order attention for his entire life, when he see's the flag raise up each morning he breaks whatever conversation he was in and turns into someone else, he flips around, he stands at attention and he salutes that flag, both out of respect for his military as well as fear for what might happen if he fucks up. He shits himself, he wonders if he's standing correctly or if that his salute is off, then the flag is raised and he goes back to what he does.

A year later, the recruit is a private, he goes into battle and he hears the command "COVER!" he hits the ground faster then a falling rock and his stomach's safely glued to the floor before any bullets can hit him. He does this because he remembers how to salute and because he remembers to obey, if it was a civilian, the man wouldn't have reacted to the yell and he'd be dead.

That had little to do with the rant, but I thought I'd hit two birds with one stone and make it clear yelling has purpose. It's not a dick you wave around in front of people's faces because you saw Full Metal Jacket one time and now want to encompass the Drill Sergeant's very personality.

Couldn't really agree more. As of now promotions are more of a pat on the back because A. You know NCOs and COs OOCLY. Or B. Someone saw you shooting. They're completely random, where as it should be based off of the fact that the UMS trusts you to lead soldiers.

To be honest, when you think about it, training is just Sergeant's remembered from when they were trained. So I mean, there's no official training or anything, no boards or threats. Should be a guide or something about being a Marine, like a manual.


-

I decided to modify my old training manual for a Sci Fi Roleplay I was going to release back in 2014 that never quite got finished up in time for University. So now I have a fuck load of documents and design shit that never got to use, in short - I'm modifying some docs and handing them here, one of them is an 8 page training manual that will surely be hell for you land lubbers.

Please do!

I haven't had much time to set up guides and the such, stupid time schedule. It'd be rather appreciated to have.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_mm3bNAUWKoK5l_eq424W9YJvdr-vVH90bnq2MAbICI/edit#heading=h.yda0su6reijg


Unfinished, anyone with the link can view this basically and I can add you as an editor, so you can make changes to it if you PM me an email address.

This is some other stuff that's more of inspiration then anything:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1eoPyokSm22jk-H_nYxxefB08r2DTIPRdnnO7MLvYqkw/edit

I gave the most rough edit possible ever and I basically said fuck it as well. Use it for ideas:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1LOUKQRDg2TohrLeiOXeBfAj7bZqLvaxLMNziskcUots/edit

Once again could not be fucked re-doing it, use it for ideas:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1LZjUXObIAM6Dre9yD_QmWruMJT8CJ__duNDTJNxMGp0/edit

I need to eat my ham sandwich now, enjoy.