Zentraedi Promototion and Genetics

[Rimmerdal]

How would a simple soldier who miraculously get to the rank of High command get the abilities bonuses of an Officer? Switch of class? even if the soldier (Will call him Bob) does get there and doesn't improve. Would he not have inadequacies at his job?

That still means Officer who earn rank are not High Command Genetically. The High command officer gets certain bonuses..and that suddenly bothers me. Not sure why. Regardless..I'm considering the bonuses of all zent to be altered to increase as they perform.

I dislike the idea of a poor soldier never getting promoted because his DNA says he has to be soldier. and you wonder why they desert?

(Bob the Zentraedi: "What they promote anyone?"
Bob: Leaves and joins the humans...)

Any way I also wonder How the the officer get promoted do they keep officer stats and get the title or do they get some sort Biological up grade?

My thought was they improve as they gain exp and at promotion become smart/stronger/what have you...is that fair?

[Pouncer]

How would a simple soldier who miraculously get to the rank of High command get the abilities bonuses of an Officer? Switch of class? even if the soldier (Will call him Bob) does get there and doesn't improve. Would he not have inadequacies at his job?

That still means Officer who earn rank are not High Command Genetically. The High command officer gets certain bonuses..and that suddenly bothers me. Not sure why. Regardless..I'm considering the bonuses of all zent to be altered to increase as they perform.

I dislike the idea of a poor soldier never getting promoted because his DNA says he has to be soldier. and you wonder why they desert?

(Bob the Zentraedi: "What they promote anyone?"
Bob: Leaves and joins the humans...)

Any way I also wonder How the the officer get promoted do they keep officer stats and get the title or do they get some sort Biological up grade?

My thought was they improve as they gain exp and at promotion become smart/stronger/what have you...is that fair?

Based on the latest info and the long accepted belief that the Masters treat their warriors as expendable machines would they really even promote anybody? It really doesn't look like anybody can be promoted outside of their caste, the Masters would find that to add too much "personal value" to their "war machines" perhaps promoting too much "individuality."

-POUNCER

[AzathothXy]

Aren't they pretty much born into their roles so to speak?
Once a grunt always a grunt.

[Jefffar]

Yeah, I think the Zentraedi cannot get promoted beyond their birth station except by particularly unusual circumstances.

That being said, I am sure there is a hierarchy within the grunts and a hierarchy within the elites so there is some room to move. Afterall, Mirya was in command of a number of other Warrior Elites by the RPG definition.


By the way, anyone else chuckle when they realized that Konda, Rico and Bron were all Warrior Elites?

[drewkitty ~..~]

While the masters view the zentraedi as disposable, the zent's senior officers' are anything but stupid. (maybe ignorant or insane or brainwashed loyal, but not stupid).
So smart & capable soldiers get promoted to the top of their rank tiers ether through recognition or through attrition of the less capable.

No, there isn't any eugenic modifications for soldiers promoted out of their rank tier.

[glitterboy2098]

easy.

if a zentreadi does something worth being 'promoted' for, he's stuck in a protoculture chamber and recloned to have the same physical augmentations as the higher caste officers...

[drewkitty ~..~]

easy.

if a zentreadi does something worth being 'promoted' for, he's stuck in a protoculture chamber and recloned to have the same physical augmentations as the higher caste officers...

Which comes back to the masters seeing the Zentraedi as throw away war drones. If it was "possible" to do such a thing, would the masters even care enough to provide the process to the Zentraedi. No, they wouldn't.

"what if some rouge soldier actually broke his conditioning, figured out how to reprogram the clone factories and decided to rebel against us?" the masters might think. One of his 1st priorities might be to make soldiers that are smarter and maybe learn other things, like how/why the machines they used worked and how to repair them. Then they wouldn't need the Masters to give them thing to wage war.

There would of been so many real and imagined reasons for the power hungry Masters not to give such an option to the Zentraedi. That they reasons not to would vastly our weigh the reason for giving them the option.

[taalismn]

Your success as a grunt means that your genetic batch code gets another look by the Clone Masters, the source codes get duplicated and tweaked, and somewhere a Factory Satellite cloning facility starts churning out a new officer-class that looks a little like you, but will be 'better'...
doesn't help you, of course, but it's your contribution to the empire...

[drewkitty ~..~]

Your success as a grunt means that your genetic batch code gets another look by the Clone Masters, the source codes get duplicated and tweaked, and somewhere a Factory Satellite cloning facility starts churning out a new officer-class that looks a little like you, but will be 'better'...
doesn't help you, of course, but it's your contribution to the empire...

See RT RPG Adv. "Ghost Ship" page 15, GM notes on the Protoculture Chamber.

Maybe such data would be passed between ships, but I doubt the automated systems would be linked to any of the record keeping systems.

[taalismn]

Your success as a grunt means that your genetic batch code gets another look by the Clone Masters, the source codes get duplicated and tweaked, and somewhere a Factory Satellite cloning facility starts churning out a new officer-class that looks a little like you, but will be 'better'...
doesn't help you, of course, but it's your contribution to the empire...

See RT RPG Adv. "Ghost Ship" page 15, GM notes on the Protoculture Chamber.

Maybe such data would be passed between ships, but I doubt the automated systems would be linked to any of the record keeping systems.

Dunno if Ghost Ship is considered canon any longer, so forgive me if I don't dig it up to check just yet...
Well, I figure what I speculated would be the case in the Good Ol' Days of the Empire when there was greater cohesion and coordination...but I'm also looking a larger scale system, with the determination of who gets 'promoted' being more a function of the regular reports submitted by Zentraedi officers, combat recorders, and other data...crunched and scanned by automated systems and search engines at the Factory Satellites during repair/replenishment visits...most of the records(simply because there's so MUCH of them) simply get archived, but anomalies in the records get flagged, and booted up the chain of command...if it's considered juicy enough, at some point some living Tirolian anaylyst gets called into the decision tree to take a look at "hey, look, Zaros Parino shows a fifty or better kill rate, and meets or exceeds physical parameters four through twelve over 60% of the time, and has been recommended for commendation and battle honors eight times in the last time-cycle"...cross-references it with forwarded battle records, and forwards a report to the Eugenics Board...."Okay, then, we're seeing a forty-percent increase in efficiency of the #431245 strain of Parinos, specifically the 'D' batch....Let's tweak it a little more for traits eight thru eleven and run off a new batch and see what happens..." And the order goes out to the gene banks to make alterations in the gene plasm, and a new group of Enhanced Strain 431246 Parinos starts bubbling into being....
Shipboard cloning vats wouldn't be detailed to such work...they'd be like xerox machines, doing processing of existing templates, rather than creating new ones...They COULD be set up that way, but the Clone Masters would have to okay it(transmit the necessary enabling codes and remove operations blocks in the computers)...it's like the difference between the offset printers used by the Treasury department and the printing presses at your local town newspaper...

[green.nova343]

Yeah, I think the Zentraedi cannot get promoted beyond their birth station except by particularly unusual circumstances.

That being said, I am sure there is a hierarchy within the grunts and a hierarchy within the elites so there is some room to move. Afterall, Mirya was in command of a number of other Warrior Elites by the RPG definition.

Definitely in agreement there.

And what we should consider as well is that the Warlords were exemplified by Khyron & Azonia... in other words, not your lower-level unit commanders, but the higher-level unit leaders. Sure, they called Khyron a "battalion" commander, but he apparently commanded hundreds of ships. In a real-world navy, that would put him up at least around Rear Admiral level, possibly even Vice-Admiral. And each of those ships, not to mention the companies & squadrons of mecha forces assigned to them, are going to need unit leaders that are probably going to come from the ranks of the Warrior Elite.

By the way, anyone else chuckle when they realized that Konda, Rico and Bron were all Warrior Elites?

Makes you wonder sometimes if the Three Stooges were inspired by secret Zentraedi transmissions beamed to Earth back in the early days of television...

[taalismn]

Konda, Bron, and Rico were actually pretty good soldiers...they just got caught outside their familiar social context and THEN their professionalism began to unwind...They were, after all, even when dazzed by the 'Miss Macross Contest' transmissions, able to spot Rick Hunter first and open up on him(while he was unprofessionally distracted by his own viewing of the contest)...They almost got him, too, with the self-destruct...

[Jefffar]

Ever squint when seeing Konda, Rico and Bron on screen and notice how much like Max, Rick and Ben they looked?

[taalismn]

Ever squint when seeing Konda, Rico and Bron on screen and notice how much like Max, Rick and Ben they looked?

Separated at birth....

[FreelancerMar]

The three spies were each offered a Cruiser command upon the successful completeion of the mission by Dolza himself. This would be a special case. The Thunderal Salan would be the ship type they would have been slated to recieve. However the Promotion never actually happens.

Myria Parino was already an Officer as pre-determined by her DNA. She was also an Ace Pilot due to here personal Drive.

Although None of the Zentraedi can be called 'Stupid' or 'Dumb' it still does not make one Officer Material. The Highest in the teri they they would likely be able to achieve would be the equivelant rank of a Sgt Majior or Master Chief Petty officer.

Each Clone Type is also Memory Programed into the station they are intended for and unless the programming is Broken they will desire nothing more.

[Lt. Holmes]

Also, you need to remember that most Zentradi wouldn't live long enough to move up any sort of rank system. The average life of a male Zentradi grunt was... what? Three years? Even taking into consideration the fact that they emerge from their cloning chamber with rudimentary skill programming, that's still a very short amount of time to get any experience.

Also, while I do believe their is a sort of hierarchy in the various Zentradi castes, I don't think any formal method for moving between them exists. Above all else, the Robotech Masters were ego-maniacal twits who loved playing God with other people's lives. Their delusions of grandeur and godhood would not allow them to let the Zentradi make any choices like that on their own.

[ESalter]

Also, you need to remember that most Zentradi wouldn't live long enough to move up any sort of rank system. The average life of a male Zentradi grunt was... what? Three years? Even taking into consideration the fact that they emerge from their cloning chamber with rudimentary skill programming, that's still a very short amount of time to get any experience.

But not every Zentradi is an infantryman or pilot. And even an infantryman can get lucky. FWIW, in the U.S. Army, promotions for the lowest ranks can come in less than a year.

Also, while I do believe their is a sort of hierarchy in the various Zentradi castes, I don't think any formal method for moving between them exists. Above all else, the Robotech Masters were ego-maniacal twits who loved playing God with other people's lives. Their delusions of grandeur and godhood would not allow them to let the Zentradi make any choices like that on their own.

But surely there's been enough time for the promotion system to diverge from whatever one the masters set up. After all, the Zentraedi don't organize themselves in threes or commingle the sexes either. And certainly the caste relation between Breetai and Azonia implied by tMSS is, at the least, questionable.
FWIW, in Macross there are three castes (worker, warrior, officer). Personally, I would prefer a system like that, with plenty of movement within and between the castes.

[FreelancerMar]

Perhaps we should also assume that Merit alone also does not determine Promotions. When all of the slots are full up the chance of anybody getting a promotion are practically non-existant. At least in most modern Human Military's.

The Zentraedi probably wouldn't have that problem. But a difference is that unless you are hatched as an officer you will never be able to atain any kind of officer or command rank.

[taalismn]

There, as appears to be the case with Rico, Konda, and Bron, some leeway within a given class/caste for promotion, without jumping up to another class/caste altogether....but no more than that...So your average cannon-fodder Grunt isn't going to ever get the opportunity to command a cruiser, no matter how good or lucky he is...He may be assigned more subordinates up to a certain point, or allowed a bigger share of battlefield loot(as long as it passes inspection for possible 'contamination' factors), perhaps better food, and a chance to hobnob with the officers a bit more and get in on more battle intel, but more likely a good performer is going to be awarded the 'honor' of being in more risky missions until he croaks.
In the olden days, when the Masters had tighter reign and more frequent communication contacts(i.e. electronic spying, rather than face-to-face contact), a good performer might end up being approved for more cloning(not that the individual in question would ever know of this)...As the chain of command broke down and the Zentraedi became more on their own or were cut off from the traditional supply and command chains, individual officers might buck the system(typically out of necessity) by assigning top performers to responsibilities that normally were outside their caste-class, simply because no replacements for attrition in the upper ranks were available to fill open command slots. These battlefield promotions were rarely, if ever, honored if and when such units rejoined the main forces, though, depending on their performance, the individuals concerned might get some boon within their caste-class(so a Pod Commander who had to assume temporary command of a Salan-class cruiser...it was a REALLY bad day, casualty-wise.... in a scout flotilla would be rewarded with a new Pod battalion up to strength to command when the flotilla was re-absorbed into a Grand Fleet formation, rather than allowed to keep his assumed ship command ).