Stupid Marine char-gen quesions; Ratings verse Marine

[Blue Ghost]

So, the blurb at the top of the Marine char-gen page states that marines are "naval infantry". Referring back to the discussion we had about naval infantry last year and the year before, does this mean that your typical Ratings cannot be armed and serve as auxiliaries on board a starship?

Also; according to the char-gen table, Marine promotion and comission are tied to Dex (agility) and End. Do I have that right, or am I misreading the chart?

 

[aramis]

So, the blurb at the top of the Marine char-gen page states that marines are "naval infantry". Referring back to the discussion we had about naval infantry last year and the year before, does this mean that your typical Ratings cannot be armed and serve as auxiliaries on board a starship?

Also; according to the char-gen table, Marine promotion and comission are tied to Dex (agility) and End. Do I have that right, or am I misreading the chart?

Pretty much.

The reasons probably boil down to Marc (and the other GDW core members) were 'Nam era vets. And the Naval Infantry being drawn from ship's crew went out of favor in the 1950's, and was finally formally dropped in the 1970's. The Marines began to take over the role during WWII, and pretty much displaced all the Naval Infantry for massed formation use by 1960.

Traveller's Marine Corps very much looks like the 1970's USMC moved to space. Primarily infantry, with manpack light arty, carried aboard ships for security purposes, but also deployed dirtside for beachheads, then backfilled with the Army.

 

[Blue Ghost]

Hmm, erm, well, okay. I think it would be way cool to include pre-WW2 kinds of military artifacts where you could throw a seaman a rifle and tell him to prepare to repel borders, or storm some shoreline hamlet. But that's just me.

I'm also guessing that the T5 rule is predominantly for the Imperium, Imperium Centric char-gen, but that, as per other char-gen, can bleed over and be applied to other races and empires until a source book comes along and overrides that.

Thanks for the clarification.