CS Dominators aka Mind Melter OCC

[dragonfett]

What rank would a starting Mind Melter in Psi-Battalion hold?

[Khanibal]

Well, Psi-Stalkers start at corporal. So that seems good.

[Shark_Force]

psi-stalkers start off at the squad level mostly though, don't they? working with a squad of dog boys? and they're a heck of a lot more common than mind melters too.

i'd suspect that mind melters are more along the lines of a seal or a green beret while psi-stalkers are more like airborne rangers... yeah, the rangers are special forces, but they're organized a lot like typical military, much like how psi-stalkers are used. meanwhile, something like a mind melter (or a psi-ghost, or whatever the anti-magic psychic guys are called) are going to be used very differently, usually as individuals or in small squads at most (and even in those small squads, i wouldn't expect a team of mind melters, i'd expect a mind melter or two either working with other non-psionic special forces or at least different kinds of psionic special forces).

so as far as rank, i'd go more with CS special forces as a guideline. I don't have their rank table available, but i would suspect that they either have a rank somewhere in between sergeant and lieutenant (of which there are a whole bunch in RL militaries, with names ranging from stuff like petty officers of various grades, warrant officers, or others depending on the specific nation and branch of military service) or potentially high up in the sergeant ranks (of which, again, irl there are a lot of kinds of sergeants).

in all likelihood, this rank doesn't come with a group that they command, per se, and depending on how the military is organized (and particularly given the treatment of those with psionics in the CS until *very* recently) their rank may quite likely not actually hold any real weight outside of psi-batallion at all. as in, sure you're a master sergeant first class or whatever, and sergeant McSoldier may be lower ranked than you, but you're not his commanding officer, so no, you're not countermanding his orders.

edit: i feel like i explained that badly. i'll try to give a better example.

a group of CS squads that were formerly part of a platoon lost a battle and were completely scattered and have been wandering in the wilderness for a week without hearing anything from their commanding officers. the seniormost officer amongst them is a sergeant. by chance, they come across a mind melter who holds the rank of lieutenant within the psi-battalion. while he definitely outranks the senior sergeant on paper, the sergeant of the squad may not be under any obligation to treat the mind melter as any sort of commanding officer, because while the mind melter holds the rank of lieutenant, it doesn't reflect the same kind of training and experience that an army lieutenant would have; he likely hasn't commanded more than around a dozen men at any given time (just like the senior sergeant), or been on the staff of someone who has held that responsibility. that doesn't mean that they will always ignore his rank, particularly if this particular mind melter lieutenant has spent some time commanding large groups of soldiers... but it does mean they're not going to instantly defer to him because of his rank the way they likely would if they encountered a regular army lieutenant.

[Blue_Lion]

Psi stalkers are typically used as squad leaders for dog packs so their rank may not be standard for psi.

Generally In military games unless told other wise for enlisted I have grade equal level up to level 6(E6/staff Sergent) after that every 3 levels equals 1 promotion.

So a level 5 SF would be E6, while a level.

This means most enlisted start of as a PVT/E1 and as they gain experience their grade impoves.

[Blue_Lion]

psi-stalkers start off at the squad level mostly though, don't they? working with a squad of dog boys? and they're a heck of a lot more common than mind melters too.

i'd suspect that mind melters are more along the lines of a seal or a green beret while psi-stalkers are more like airborne rangers... yeah, the rangers are special forces, but they're organized a lot like typical military, much like how psi-stalkers are used. meanwhile, something like a mind melter (or a psi-ghost, or whatever the anti-magic psychic guys are called) are going to be used very differently, usually as individuals or in small squads at most (and even in those small squads, i wouldn't expect a team of mind melters, i'd expect a mind melter or two either working with other non-psionic special forces or at least different kinds of psionic special forces).

so as far as rank, i'd go more with CS special forces as a guideline. I don't have their rank table available, but i would suspect that they either have a rank somewhere in between sergeant and lieutenant (of which there are a whole bunch in RL militaries, with names ranging from stuff like petty officers of various grades, warrant officers, or others depending on the specific nation and branch of military service) or potentially high up in the sergeant ranks (of which, again, irl there are a lot of kinds of sergeants).

in all likelihood, this rank doesn't come with a group that they command, per se, and depending on how the military is organized (and particularly given the treatment of those with psionics in the CS until *very* recently) their rank may quite likely not actually hold any real weight outside of psi-batallion at all. as in, sure you're a master sergeant first class or whatever, and sergeant McSoldier may be lower ranked than you, but you're not his commanding officer, so no, you're not countermanding his orders.

Actually rangers are not special forces. Special forces wear green berets but are officially called Special Forces(green berets is a nick name). Rangers are an elite force but they are not SF.

[Khanibal]

Heroes of Humanity(tm, etc) says mind melters can quickly become officers or NCOs. So I would guess that if they are smart enough to test into officer's candidate school, or connected enough, then they would start as a Lieutenant. Otherwise either a specialist or corporal.

[Nekira Sudacne]

Given the CS's general mistrust of Mind Melters (In the origional Rifts Main Book, Mind melters were said to be banned from entering the Mega Cities for being too dangerous; I don't know if there are exceptions for Psi-Battalion or if they are only quartered outside the Mega Cities), I think they likely start as enlisted privates like everyone else.

That said, I'm sure Psi-Battalion has an OTS for training promising officers, and given the heavy casulties the CS seems to suffer, battlefeild commissions are likely not unheard of.

[Colonel_Tetsuya]

Given the CS's general mistrust of Mind Melters (In the origional Rifts Main Book, Mind melters were said to be banned from entering the Mega Cities for being too dangerous; I don't know if there are exceptions for Psi-Battalion or if they are only quartered outside the Mega Cities), I think they likely start as enlisted privates like everyone else.

That said, I'm sure Psi-Battalion has an OTS for training promising officers, and given the heavy casulties the CS seems to suffer, battlefeild commissions are likely not unheard of.

I doubt that they keep Psi-Bat officers out of the cities. Remember that Psi-Net (the civilian version/counterpart of Psi-Bat) employs Master Psychics as agents in the cities, often assigned to work with ISS and NTSET.

[Shark_Force]

Given the CS's general mistrust of Mind Melters (In the origional Rifts Main Book, Mind melters were said to be banned from entering the Mega Cities for being too dangerous; I don't know if there are exceptions for Psi-Battalion or if they are only quartered outside the Mega Cities), I think they likely start as enlisted privates like everyone else.

That said, I'm sure Psi-Battalion has an OTS for training promising officers, and given the heavy casulties the CS seems to suffer, battlefeild commissions are likely not unheard of.

the CS has always treated psychics working for the military better than other psychics (still not necessarily treating them well, but better than non-military), and it makes absolutely no sense to train or treat them like a private. their typical use is going to require them to make a lot of decisions for themselves, not just because they'll frequently be operating alone or in very small groups without consistent contact with leadership available, but also because there is a list of stuff that they *might* be able to do, but until a given officer has worked with that specific mind melter for an extended period of time, you're not going to have a firm grasp on what combinations of things are possible for that mind melter, meaning that the mind melter needs to be expected to be able to make a lot of decisions on how things will be done, and even whether or not things can be done.

you can't really standardize psychic ability the same way that you can standardize skills. a mind melter focused on telemechanic abilities is not the same as a mind melter who uses a lot of telekinetic abilities, and neither of them can necessarily provide emergency surgery... but either of them potentially could, if they have the right abilities. and even if you take two mind melters with a telemechanics focus, one might be able to read surface thoughts (telepathy) while another might be able to sense danger (sixth sense), and either of them might or might not be able to do what the other can.

there is no baseline assumptions you can make about all mind melters, especially not at the earliest levels (if we're comparing 2 level 10 mind melters, it is likely that they have a lot of the same powers, but even that presumes that the list of psionic powers in the book is intended to be 100% comprehensive and that all psychics with a given power are supposed to be identical rather than being a convenient list that we use to keep from needing to reinvent the wheel every time another psychic shows up).

they're not necessarily going to get a high rank, and their rank may not mean anything in terms of being able to give orders to other military branches, or even afford them much respect compared to similar ranks amongst other soldiers, but they're going to be officers.

[eliakon]

Based on the fact that it says that they can get promoted to officer or senior NCO?
I would suspect that they will start somewhere between E-1 and E-3 or E-4 based on qualifications, background, connections and skills... and work up.
The reasoning is that you don't want to spoil them. They are already the most likely to go meglo and have superiority issues. So there is no reason to reinforce that by giving them a fast track that is better than the other 90% of their psychics.
Thus the 10% of Psi-Bat that are Mind-Melters would start out like any other soldier as an enlisted person with their initial grade determined by the same things that determine the initial status of any other soldier.
My hunch is that most of them will start training as an E-3, end it as an E-4 and then be on the fast track as their powers will be in high demand putting them in a position to 'check of the boxes' to get their promotions that follow.

[Shark_Force]

for a specialist that is going to be moving from unit to unit to provide a specific set of skills, it really doesn't make sense to have them be someone who has no command authority (at least over themselves) whatsoever.

let's put it this way... every time they go to a new unit, in order to know what this particular mind melter can do, the commanding officer would need to memorize half a dozen pages of information. instantly. and it isn't going to be of any use once that mind melter is needed elsewhere.

and, the specific information is going to change, and not in any consistent way. a level 1 mind melter with 70 ISP can super TK 700 lbs for 2 minutes to a range of 100 feet... at level 6, they'll be able to lift 1200 lbs (71% increase) at a range of 700 feet (600% increase) for 14 minutes (600% increase)...

but if you make it about 200 lbs, the level 1 can do that for 6 minutes, the level 6 can do it for 84 minutes (1300% increase). and if you start mixing in how that interacts with questions of how it might change if you need 100 total MDC value of telekinetic force field along the way, or if they had to use a mind block.

essentially, having one of these guys moving around would be like having a regular soldier moving around... if that regular soldier's commanding officer had to constantly ask them the most basic questions about what they are even capable of. this would be like assigning squads of soldiers to a commanding officer, except instead of squads having fairly standard expectations (they'll have a certian model of laser rifle with a certain range, a certain number of e-clips, a certain number of hand grenades, a certain number of soldiers in the squad having special equipment, soldiers being trained with basic radio skills, etc) with mostly minor tweaks, it would be like the officer needing to memorize every single squad's equipment and training, because squad A doesn't even have any guns, squad B doesn't have radio training, squad C has guns but they can only use them twice before needing a day to resupply, squad D has only SDC weapons but carries silver and wood and cold iron ammunition, and somehow expecting the commanding officer to track all that... oh, and also, each of those squads are moved around on a regular basis, so there is no chance for the commanding officer to get used to it. and there are dozens of other potentially critical details different about each squad that the officer may or may not even know about.

i'm not saying they're all going to be majors or something. but simply by virtue of the fact that their abilities are completely non-standardized, they're going to need to be officers in charge of themselves, if nothing else. they will need to be trained like an officer, because they're going to be constantly put into situations where they must make decisions like an officer; is it more important to hold this barrier up for an extra 10 seconds (after which your replacement barrier will be broken as well) or to save that ISP for a mind bond? which is the mission-critical thing to do? how much ISP should be kept in reserve for sixth sense? do you actively use clairvoyance, or leave it unused to potentially receive other insights into the future? because the odds of your commander tracking that you have 35 ISP left (enough that you could use mind bond or telekinetic force field, but not both) in the middle of a firefight are very slim, and in any event, he certainly can't order you quickly enough to place a new force field that you could use it the way you would a dodge or parry.

with something like a burster or a psi-stalker, you have fairly straightforward baseline expectations; every psi-stalker can have slightly different sensitive powers, but they all have the same main powers. every burster can have some slightly different powers, but they all have the same main powers.

your mind melters need to be empowered to make decisions on how to best use their powers. so you either have "privates" that need to be insubordinate on a regular basis, or you completely cripple your psychic operatives by giving control of their powers to someone who has not spent years developing and training and understanding them... or you just make them officers, require them to go through officer training (if they don't make it through officer training, you pretty much don't use them), give them some sort of rank ("special operative" or something else that does not remotely imply typical command structure is perfectly fine), and call it a day.

edit: to put it another way...

imagine someone else creates a mind melter character. they hand you their character sheet before a gaming session for you to look at and familiarize yourself with for a few minutes, but once the gaming session starts, you don't have that information on hand any more. and you are now in charge of deciding when, where, and how they use their powers. they, on the other hand, have their character sheet at all times. they designed the character, they know where they put in synergy, they have constant access to their current ISP, how much their powers cost, all rules of psionics that pertain to their character, etc, but you don't. and they cannot answer questions about ISP with any numbers. additionally, all questions and answers must be concluded in the in-game amount of time you have before the power must be used, including time spent thinking about what to ask. and you'll also be making all decisions for your own character that way as well.

next week, they'll create a new character, spending hours on that, and then you will once again have a few minutes to look it over before the start of the session and be expected to make all major decisions on how their psionics are used.

do you think you would be able to get anywhere near full value out of that psychic compared to the person who designed the character and has the character sheet in their hands available to consult at all times?

the mind melter has spent years, maybe over a decade, developing their powers, trying different things with them, understanding their limits, learning how they interact with each other and with the world around them, to reach even level 1. they need to be the ones making the call. any officer of a unit they're working with probably still has access to most information about their abilities, but for the most part, the mind melter needs to be in charge of themselves if you're going to expect good results.

[Proseksword]

The latest word in Heroes of Humanity is that Dominators tend to be rapidly promoted to NCO & commissioned ranks. That seems to both indicate that they start below that rank but are not prohibited from obtaining them.

[Colonel_Tetsuya]

for a specialist that is going to be moving from unit to unit to provide a specific set of skills, it really doesn't make sense to have them be someone who has no command authority (at least over themselves) whatsoever.

let's put it this way... every time they go to a new unit, in order to know what this particular mind melter can do, the commanding officer would need to memorize half a dozen pages of information. instantly. and it isn't going to be of any use once that mind melter is needed elsewhere.

and, the specific information is going to change, and not in any consistent way. a level 1 mind melter with 70 ISP can super TK 700 lbs for 2 minutes to a range of 100 feet... at level 6, they'll be able to lift 1200 lbs (71% increase) at a range of 700 feet (600% increase) for 14 minutes (600% increase)...

but if you make it about 200 lbs, the level 1 can do that for 6 minutes, the level 6 can do it for 84 minutes (1300% increase). and if you start mixing in how that interacts with questions of how it might change if you need 100 total MDC value of telekinetic force field along the way, or if they had to use a mind block.

essentially, having one of these guys moving around would be like having a regular soldier moving around... if that regular soldier's commanding officer had to constantly ask them the most basic questions about what they are even capable of. this would be like assigning squads of soldiers to a commanding officer, except instead of squads having fairly standard expectations (they'll have a certian model of laser rifle with a certain range, a certain number of e-clips, a certain number of hand grenades, a certain number of soldiers in the squad having special equipment, soldiers being trained with basic radio skills, etc) with mostly minor tweaks, it would be like the officer needing to memorize every single squad's equipment and training, because squad A doesn't even have any guns, squad B doesn't have radio training, squad C has guns but they can only use them twice before needing a day to resupply, squad D has only SDC weapons but carries silver and wood and cold iron ammunition, and somehow expecting the commanding officer to track all that... oh, and also, each of those squads are moved around on a regular basis, so there is no chance for the commanding officer to get used to it. and there are dozens of other potentially critical details different about each squad that the officer may or may not even know about.

i'm not saying they're all going to be majors or something. but simply by virtue of the fact that their abilities are completely non-standardized, they're going to need to be officers in charge of themselves, if nothing else. they will need to be trained like an officer, because they're going to be constantly put into situations where they must make decisions like an officer; is it more important to hold this barrier up for an extra 10 seconds (after which your replacement barrier will be broken as well) or to save that ISP for a mind bond? which is the mission-critical thing to do? how much ISP should be kept in reserve for sixth sense? do you actively use clairvoyance, or leave it unused to potentially receive other insights into the future? because the odds of your commander tracking that you have 35 ISP left (enough that you could use mind bond or telekinetic force field, but not both) in the middle of a firefight are very slim, and in any event, he certainly can't order you quickly enough to place a new force field that you could use it the way you would a dodge or parry.

with something like a burster or a psi-stalker, you have fairly straightforward baseline expectations; every psi-stalker can have slightly different sensitive powers, but they all have the same main powers. every burster can have some slightly different powers, but they all have the same main powers.

your mind melters need to be empowered to make decisions on how to best use their powers. so you either have "privates" that need to be insubordinate on a regular basis, or you completely cripple your psychic operatives by giving control of their powers to someone who has not spent years developing and training and understanding them... or you just make them officers, require them to go through officer training (if they don't make it through officer training, you pretty much don't use them), give them some sort of rank ("special operative" or something else that does not remotely imply typical command structure is perfectly fine), and call it a day.

edit: to put it another way...

imagine someone else creates a mind melter character. they hand you their character sheet before a gaming session for you to look at and familiarize yourself with for a few minutes, but once the gaming session starts, you don't have that information on hand any more. and you are now in charge of deciding when, where, and how they use their powers. they, on the other hand, have their character sheet at all times. they designed the character, they know where they put in synergy, they have constant access to their current ISP, how much their powers cost, all rules of psionics that pertain to their character, etc, but you don't. and they cannot answer questions about ISP with any numbers. additionally, all questions and answers must be concluded in the in-game amount of time you have before the power must be used, including time spent thinking about what to ask. and you'll also be making all decisions for your own character that way as well.

next week, they'll create a new character, spending hours on that, and then you will once again have a few minutes to look it over before the start of the session and be expected to make all major decisions on how their psionics are used.

do you think you would be able to get anywhere near full value out of that psychic compared to the person who designed the character and has the character sheet in their hands available to consult at all times?

the mind melter has spent years, maybe over a decade, developing their powers, trying different things with them, understanding their limits, learning how they interact with each other and with the world around them, to reach even level 1. they need to be the ones making the call. any officer of a unit they're working with probably still has access to most information about their abilities, but for the most part, the mind melter needs to be in charge of themselves if you're going to expect good results.

I dont disagree with most of this.

The current US Military (and the militaries who we got our rank structure from) have ranks for JUST this type of person:

Warrant Officer.

A Warrant Officer in the US Military is (usually) an NCO who is so experienced that trying to find an Officer to do their job is pointless; but this person needs to be able to "stand on their own" with the Officers, at least the junior ones. They dont have command authority (they are not "line officers") but they do have an air of authority - Junior officers will tend to defer to a Warrant because the WO has the experience, or at least offer him the chance to offer his opinion and experience.

I think the highest rank a Warrant Officer obtains (WO-4) is equal to an O-3, and those are fairly rare, but WO-1/2 (0-1) are not that uncommon, particularly for specialists.

Now, this would be for those assigned to work with regular troops. Remember Psi-Bat is entirely composed of psychics.

The majority of the grunt roles (E-1 - E-3/4) are probably filled by Dog Boys and Minor Human Psychics. Master Psychics probably fill NCO roles, and Officer roles are likely filled by experienced NCOs who have gone maverick, or graduates of an Officer's school specifically for Psi-bat officers, and are probably all Major Human Psychics with a CS Military OCC or specially trained Master Psychics with a big emphasis in their mundane schooling on command and military tactics.

[eliakon]

I would point out that a Dominator will not START at high rank.
Why?
Because rank is not based on what skills you bring to the table, but what leadership ability you have.
An unproven Dominator is going to be an E1-E4/Private or Specialist type.
Once they have some experience and have passed some basic NCO school they will become a Corporal, then work on getting promoted up the chain there.
If they have other qualifications they may placed in the officer track.
But as has been pointed out the books are clear that they can be PROMOTED into NCO and Officer positions.
That means that they do NOT start in those positions.

I will also point out that dominators are NOT all that rare
a full 10% of the Psi-Bat is made up of dominators!
That sort of demonstrates that they do not have some sort of super rare skill that would be in super high demand!
Quite literally by statistics in any 10man squad you will find a dominator, with 4-6 in any platoon and a dozen or more in a company.
Considering that a US Army Company will have maybe 4 officers total... if there are 12-20 Dominators in each company then they are obviously NOT going to all be officers.

Yes, they have special powers and unique talents. But so do the Psi-Ghosts, and the Psi-Stalkers, and the Psi-Mechanics, and the Bursters, and the Zappers, and the....
They are not the special snowflake in Psi-Bat, they are just "one of the guys" and as such will not get an sort of special treatement in the ranks.

As for Warrant Officers, I am not aware of the CS using them.
But in the US there are five levels
WO 1 and WO2 are "Company Grade Officers"
WO 3 and WO 4 are "Field Grade Officers"
and a WO5 are considered General Officers

[Shark_Force]

I would point out that a Dominator will not START at high rank.
Why?
Because rank is not based on what skills you bring to the table, but what leadership ability you have.
An unproven Dominator is going to be an E1-E4/Private or Specialist type.
Once they have some experience and have passed some basic NCO school they will become a Corporal, then work on getting promoted up the chain there.
If they have other qualifications they may placed in the officer track.
But as has been pointed out the books are clear that they can be PROMOTED into NCO and Officer positions.
That means that they do NOT start in those positions.

I will also point out that dominators are NOT all that rare
a full 10% of the Psi-Bat is made up of dominators!
That sort of demonstrates that they do not have some sort of super rare skill that would be in super high demand!
Quite literally by statistics in any 10man squad you will find a dominator, with 4-6 in any platoon and a dozen or more in a company.
Considering that a US Army Company will have maybe 4 officers total... if there are 12-20 Dominators in each company then they are obviously NOT going to all be officers.

Yes, they have special powers and unique talents. But so do the Psi-Ghosts, and the Psi-Stalkers, and the Psi-Mechanics, and the Bursters, and the Zappers, and the....
They are not the special snowflake in Psi-Bat, they are just "one of the guys" and as such will not get an sort of special treatement in the ranks.

As for Warrant Officers, I am not aware of the CS using them.
But in the US there are five levels
WO 1 and WO2 are "Company Grade Officers"
WO 3 and WO 4 are "Field Grade Officers"
and a WO5 are considered General Officers

psi-bat is tiny. 1/10th of psi-bat is nothing. that's like saying that 1/10th of all the people in the military are engineers on the basis that a division completely specialised in engineering has 1/10th of the people in it as engineers. there are several *million* CS soldiers of various varieties. if an organization with only a few thousand, or even tens of thousands, has 1/10 being mind melters, that does not mean that mind melters are common.

and again, due to the nature of their abilities, they need to start off at least in charge of themselves, or else you are never going to get any decent value out of them. a psi-stalker or a psi-ghost or a zapper or a burster has a baseline of abilities, some of which don't even have any costs associated. and a few minor psychic abilities on top of that. a mind melter is entirely an assortment of powers which any given mind melter may or may not have. a commanding officer never needs to wonder if a burster can control fire; the answer is always yes. can a mind melter control fire? well, maybe. can a mind melter read minds? maybe. can a mind melter sense supernatural evil? maybe. can a mind melter move a dozen fusion blocks against that bunker 400 feet away? maybe. can a mind melter perform field surgery? maybe. the list goes on and on and on, and it is all a list of things that a mind melter can potentially do, depending on the individual mind melter, and when you consider that any given psi-bat mind melter is going to be moving around between commanding officers on a regular basis it gets even worse.

whether or not the CS calls them warrant officers or something completely different is completely irrelevant. by the time a mind melter becomes a mind melter (whether in the CS or not), they have spent several years getting to that point, which is far more than someone who has just come out of boot camp. they may not be the same kind of officer as the general who commands an army corps, or the captain that commands a cruiser, or the sergeant in charge of a squad, or the drill sergeant responsible for training raw recruits on how to be a soldier, but they will not just be regular soldiers, because that would be a gross misuse of their abilities and is almost guaranteed to either require the mind melter to be insubordinate on a regular basis (and the CS military doesn't strike me as an organization that is ok with that sort of thing), or require that the entire reason you even have someone with that set of abilities around be rendered pointless.

now, it is entirely possible that starting at this "not really an officer but not really a private either" rank can eventually lead into becoming a regular officer of some form or another, but that rank needs to exist (and there is most likely a progression within that rank that doesn't lead to becoming a regular officer of any kind as well), because the only person who can reliably keep track of the things an individual mind melter can do is the individual mind melter.

[eliakon]

I would point out that a Dominator will not START at high rank.
Why?
Because rank is not based on what skills you bring to the table, but what leadership ability you have.
An unproven Dominator is going to be an E1-E4/Private or Specialist type.
Once they have some experience and have passed some basic NCO school they will become a Corporal, then work on getting promoted up the chain there.
If they have other qualifications they may placed in the officer track.
But as has been pointed out the books are clear that they can be PROMOTED into NCO and Officer positions.
That means that they do NOT start in those positions.

I will also point out that dominators are NOT all that rare
a full 10% of the Psi-Bat is made up of dominators!
That sort of demonstrates that they do not have some sort of super rare skill that would be in super high demand!
Quite literally by statistics in any 10man squad you will find a dominator, with 4-6 in any platoon and a dozen or more in a company.
Considering that a US Army Company will have maybe 4 officers total... if there are 12-20 Dominators in each company then they are obviously NOT going to all be officers.

Yes, they have special powers and unique talents. But so do the Psi-Ghosts, and the Psi-Stalkers, and the Psi-Mechanics, and the Bursters, and the Zappers, and the....
They are not the special snowflake in Psi-Bat, they are just "one of the guys" and as such will not get an sort of special treatement in the ranks.

As for Warrant Officers, I am not aware of the CS using them.
But in the US there are five levels
WO 1 and WO2 are "Company Grade Officers"
WO 3 and WO 4 are "Field Grade Officers"
and a WO5 are considered General Officers

psi-bat is tiny. 1/10th of psi-bat is nothing. that's like saying that 1/10th of all the people in the military are engineers on the basis that a division completely specialised in engineering has 1/10th of the people in it as engineers. there are several *million* CS soldiers of various varieties. if an organization with only a few thousand, or even tens of thousands, has 1/10 being mind melters, that does not mean that mind melters are common.

They are common in Psi-Bat though.
And if we are going by the argument that rarity in the force equals rank then ALL of Psi-bat should be officers.
This is not true, so we can conclude that the ranks in Psi-Bat are based actual military material and not just having psionics.

and again, due to the nature of their abilities, they need to start off at least in charge of themselves, or else you are never going to get any decent value out of them.

Why?
Why in the WORLD is the least trusted form of Psi in the force, the ones who are considered to be least stable going to be required to be incharge of themselves to get work done?
They can do all the work needed with out being an officer.
You can still work by following orders.

a psi-stalker or a psi-ghost or a zapper or a burster has a baseline of abilities, some of which don't even have any costs associated. and a few minor psychic abilities on top of that. a mind melter is entirely an assortment of powers which any given mind melter may or may not have. a commanding officer never needs to wonder if a burster can control fire; the answer is always yes. can a mind melter control fire? well, maybe. can a mind melter read minds? maybe. can a mind melter sense supernatural evil? maybe. can a mind melter move a dozen fusion blocks against that bunker 400 feet away? maybe. can a mind melter perform field surgery? maybe. the list goes on and on and on, and it is all a list of things that a mind melter can potentially do, depending on the individual mind melter, and when you consider that any given psi-bat mind melter is going to be moving around between commanding officers on a regular basis it gets even worse.

That is why you have files
When I get a new soldier in the US Army I don't have to wonder if they can drive a specific vehicle.... I simply look at their file. It will also tell me what schools they have been to, what skills they have, what medals they have, what qualifications they have...on and on.
I don't need to have each soldier be an officer who is independent of the command to know what they do.

whether or not the CS calls them warrant officers or something completely different is completely irrelevant. by the time a mind melter becomes a mind melter (whether in the CS or not), they have spent several years getting to that point, which is far more than someone who has just come out of boot camp.

Um no
A Mind Melter is born that way. They do not spend years getting to that point.
And thus yes, most Mind Melters will be just out of boot camp...

they may not be the same kind of officer as the general who commands an army corps, or the captain that commands a cruiser, or the sergeant in charge of a squad, or the drill sergeant responsible for training raw recruits on how to be a soldier, but they will not just be regular soldiers, because that would be a gross misuse of their abilities and is almost guaranteed to either require the mind melter to be insubordinate on a regular basis (and the CS military doesn't strike me as an organization that is ok with that sort of thing), or require that the entire reason you even have someone with that set of abilities around be rendered pointless.

Again you seem to be assuming that the military is incapable of knowing what its people can do.
As Spc. Meltys Captain I look at his jacket and see the list of known abilities. That lets me know that I want to assign him to prisoner interrogation and to be on watch in areas where we have dimensional instability...
He doesn't have to be an officer to do that. He just has to follow orders.

now, it is entirely possible that starting at this "not really an officer but not really a private either" rank can eventually lead into becoming a regular officer of some form or another, but that rank needs to exist (and there is most likely a progression within that rank that doesn't lead to becoming a regular officer of any kind as well), because the only person who can reliably keep track of the things an individual mind melter can do is the individual mind melter.

Or you know... the military who has a huge database on everyone.
They have files and personal jackets and I am pretty sure those jackets will have listed evey power that every psi has.
That is after all what the entire psychic registration system is for! I mean they even talk about listing out peoples powers in the book.
So there is no 'mystery' at all. just read the jacket.

Now yes, after some time in the service the Melter will have put in their dues, they will (to use the US terms) Have gone to PLDC, and then BNOC, and get their promotions to Cpl, then SGT, and onwards. Those that show leadership potential will be put into OCS to become officers, and those with specialized skill sets might be made into Warrents for their fields...
But they all start out in Basic as a PVT like everyone else.

[guardiandashi]

I would argue that they start out as an E1, or an O1 just like any other recruit.
IE they go to boot, or if they are allowed to they go to OCS. Then when they graduate and take up their duty stations, they begin advancing like anyone else. They MAY get some fast tracking due to abilities but only ways that are similar to other troops with desired skill sets that are given opportunities to succeed or fail to determine whether or not to give them further chances.

[eliakon]

I would argue that they start out as an E1, or an O1 just like any other recruit.
IE they go to boot, or if they are allowed to they go to OCS. Then when they graduate and take up their duty stations, they begin advancing like anyone else. They MAY get some fast tracking due to abilities but only ways that are similar to other troops with desired skill sets that are given opportunities to succeed or fail to determine whether or not to give them further chances.

^exactly^

[Shark_Force]

they aren't born mind melters. it is quite clear. straight out of the OCC description: "More than any other psychic, the Mind Melter has minimal education, having spent much of his time learning and mastering the complexity of psionic powers." (RUE page 151).

they are (most likely) born with the *potential* to become mind melters, and that is a very different thing. it is even possible to have creatures that *are* born mind melters (or at least, as powerful a psychic as one). but for a human to become a mind melter, barring intervention from something like gene splicers, requires that they have spent a great deal of time learning and mastering their powers rather than doing other things.

and there is an important difference in a typical soldier as compared to a mind melter. the typical soldier has a very specific baseline. expecting an officer to make decisions in real time for a mind melter is stupid. you're going to end up constantly having the officer order things that are impossible, because a lot of the information you need in order to make decisions is not even numerically available to the CS. how many ISP does it take to lift 100 lbs? 10. how many ISP does the CS dossier say it takes to lift 100 lbs? it doesn't have a damn clue. it doesn't know about ISP costs, nor does it know about the concept of ISP or that psychics have a reserve of it. it doesn't have any way of calculating what ISP is, or how much of it the psychic has. he cannot possibly know every combination of things the psychic can do, particularly since that changes over time and suddenly, IF the CS even has detailed numbers on everything the psychic can do, the numbers all change, and not in any consistent manner. some might double, some might go up marginally, some don't change at all. and you're telling me that every single CS officer who *might* ever have a mind melter assigned to their command, from sergeant to general, somehow has all this information just sitting in their head, when half of them probably can't even read, or perform basic math without using their fingers, and probably less than 5% have anything even remotely like lore:psionics to give them a baseline understanding of what even is or is not possible with psionics.

bull crap. that's like claiming that being able to give orders for a bridge to be built over a river somehow gives you the competence to direct the engineer in every step of the process, from drawing up the designs to calculating what kinds of supports will be needed to what kind of equipment will be necessary to build the bridge. you might be able to tell an engineer to build a bridge, but you're delusional if you think that qualifies you to give every sub-order along the way, and in the same way, a mind melter is going to need a lot of latitude in how they execute very general orders, because the specifics are no more within the grasp of an officer who has never used a psionic ability in their life than calculating how much material is needed to build a bridge to support a certain weight is within the grasp of someone who has never taken an engineering course in their life. in that specific area, the engineer (or psychic, in our case) is the one with the knowledge and experience to make the decision, especially in real time.

for something that can be planned out in downtime? sure, the officer can consult their records (again, provided the officer in question can even do so; while i expect most generals are literate and capable of using computers, in addition to having staff that can do the same, i'm not remotely certain the same is true of most sergeants in the CS military, but *someone* must be giving those privates their orders). i suppose so long as you think that the CS never expects their experts in various fields to be needed to ever, under any circumstances, make any snap decisions, that might be reasonable. personally, i find it hard to believe that the CS is so mind-blowingly incompetent as to believe that their specialists will never be required to make those decisions. in fact, i expect it comes up all the time in the military, far more than it would everywhere else. the mind melter is an expert in a field, and they need to have the authority to make decisions on their own, without having an officer to hold their hand every step of the way.

they may not need any authority at all to order regular soldiers around, and i am totally ok with assuming that whatever rank they have does not include that. but when an officer tells them to do something stupid and impossible because the officer has no damn clue what they're talking about due to being the exact OPPOSITE of an expert in the field of psionics, the mind melter needs to be able to refuse their orders, because the mind melter is the one who actually understands what the mind melter can do. which, again, means that you either have a rank of "private that can be insubordinate" (which i don't imagine exists in *any* military), or a rank of "doesn't command any soldiers, but isn't a private" for those starting mind melters. because in the middle of an assault, the guy standing a couple hundred feet from the bunker that needs busting doesn't have time to pull out a file on the mind melter and figure out whether the mind melter can even move stuff with their mind at all, let alone how far, how many objects, how heavy those objects can be, or how long they can do it for. it isn't like assigning a soldier to a vehicle where you can take your time and check your files. if you expect an officer to be making every decision, they need to know those files front to back by heart and not constantly get them mixed up with the guy they were assigned 3 weeks ago for a special mission.

and if they aren't trusted mind melters, then they don't get into the army (or psi-bat) in the first place. so while mind melters in general may not be trusted, by default, the fact that the ones in the CS military that are actually allowed privileges like entering military installations ARE trusted. if they weren't, they would not be working for the CS, they would be feeding the psi-stalkers instead.

[eliakon]

they aren't born mind melters. it is quite clear. straight out of the OCC description: "More than any other psychic, the Mind Melter has minimal education, having spent much of his time learning and mastering the complexity of psionic powers." (RUE page 151).

I guess you haven't read the game books recently have you.
You don't train psionic powers.
You are born with them.
The Mind Melter OCC has no training requirements.
And no, an old RMB era statement about how learning to master your psi costs you skills doesn't apply since it has been removed from the game.
Now sure, they will likely take additional time to learn all the military intricacies of the proper use of all their complex powers...
But there is nothing in canon to support the claim in this sentence at least not now.

they are (most likely) born with the *potential* to become mind melters, and that is a very different thing. it is even possible to have creatures that *are* born mind melters (or at least, as powerful a psychic as one). but for a human to become a mind melter, barring intervention from something like gene splicers, requires that they have spent a great deal of time learning and mastering their powers rather than doing other things.

Too bad the canon disagrees with you.
The Mind Melter OCC does not have any rules on time spent learning their powers.
When we have a conflict between fluff and canon, canon wins.
There is no training or time to become a Mind Melter as of RUE

and there is an important difference in a typical soldier as compared to a mind melter. the typical soldier has a very specific baseline. expecting an officer to make decisions in real time for a mind melter is stupid.

Why do you keep assuming that the officer will need to make decisions in real time?
Militaries are not some micromanaged video game.
The officer makes the general orders and assigns the MM duties.
The MM does those duties.
It is as simple as that.
And the baseline that you love? Doesn't apply to ANY "low density MOS"
ANY specialist in any field will have skills that the officer will not know. That is why they are low density specialists. The officer though can usually assume that the person knows how to do their job and thus doesn't have to do the job for them like some drone.

you're going to end up constantly having the officer order things that are impossible, because a lot of the information you need in order to make decisions is not even numerically available to the CS. how many ISP does it take to lift 100 lbs? 10. how many ISP does the CS dossier say it takes to lift 100 lbs? it doesn't have a damn clue. it doesn't know about ISP costs, nor does it know about the concept of ISP or that psychics have a reserve of it. it doesn't have any way of calculating what ISP is, or how much of it the psychic has. he cannot possibly know every combination of things the psychic can do, particularly since that changes over time and suddenly, IF the CS even has detailed numbers on everything the psychic can do, the numbers all change, and not in any consistent manner. some might double, some might go up marginally, some don't change at all. and you're telling me that every single CS officer who *might* ever have a mind melter assigned to their command, from sergeant to general, somehow has all this information just sitting in their head, when half of them probably can't even read, or perform basic math without using their fingers, and probably less than 5% have anything even remotely like lore:psionics to give them a baseline understanding of what even is or is not possible with psionics.

This is so wrong I am hard pressed to begin
1) I am pretty sure that Psi-Bat personal are not assigned to random officers who have no clue about psionics.
2) again they don't NEED to know every detail to make orders. You say "Can you do this" and they do it. Or your say "You do this job" and they do it how ever they do it. There is no need for an officer to give every step of the instructions. That is NOT how the military works. Again, the military is not a drone shop or some video game where the player must give each and every unit constant orders to do every little task.
3) And yes I am pretty sure that they DO have a fairly close understanding of ISP... it is a known quantifiable energy force and they can pretty well know how much energy a person has

bull crap. that's like claiming that being able to give orders for a bridge to be built over a river somehow gives you the competence to direct the engineer in every step of the process, from drawing up the designs to calculating what kinds of supports will be needed to what kind of equipment will be necessary to build the bridge. you might be able to tell an engineer to build a bridge, but you're delusional if you think that qualifies you to give every sub-order along the way, and in the same way, a mind melter is going to need a lot of latitude in how they execute very general orders, because the specifics are no more within the grasp of an officer who has never used a psionic ability in their life than calculating how much material is needed to build a bridge to support a certain weight is within the grasp of someone who has never taken an engineering course in their life. in that specific area, the engineer (or psychic, in our case) is the one with the knowledge and experience to make the decision, especially in real time.

Your the one that is assuming that the officer needs to be the engineer.
When I was in the army I had all SORTS of highly specialized skills. My commander did not walk me through every step of every one of my jobs. My Chief simply said "Your the NCOIC of these shops. I expect that all the work to be done properly, on time with full paperwork. You have this budget for the year. Sign here for your tools, vehicles and parts." And then I went off and did my job. When a device came in that was broken I figured out how to diagnose it, how to fix it, I made the call on if therer would be a statement of charges. I came up with the list of lesson plans for training, and I implemented them...
And I was a E-4 Specialist.
The same thing here. The Psychic just does the job of the slot they are in. Most of them will NOT be in jobs where they will be using every power they have all the time. Those types will be in stuff like SF units...
...which tend to have NCOs as the line staff. Which means that you will have MMs who have already earned their stripes in them...
And guess how you earn those stripes? Hint they don't just show up because you want them.

for something that can be planned out in downtime? sure, the officer can consult their records (again, provided the officer in question can even do so; while i expect most generals are literate and capable of using computers, in addition to having staff that can do the same, i'm not remotely certain the same is true of most sergeants in the CS military, but *someone* must be giving those privates their orders). i suppose so long as you think that the CS never expects their experts in various fields to be needed to ever, under any circumstances, make any snap decisions, that might be reasonable. personally, i find it hard to believe that the CS is so mind-blowingly incompetent as to believe that their specialists will never be required to make those decisions. in fact, i expect it comes up all the time in the military, far more than it would everywhere else. the mind melter is an expert in a field, and they need to have the authority to make decisions on their own, without having an officer to hold their hand every step of the way.

they may not need any authority at all to order regular soldiers around, and i am totally ok with assuming that whatever rank they have does not include that. but when an officer tells them to do something stupid and impossible because the officer has no damn clue what they're talking about due to being the exact OPPOSITE of an expert in the field of psionics, the mind melter needs to be able to refuse their orders, because the mind melter is the one who actually understands what the mind melter can do. which, again, means that you either have a rank of "private that can be insubordinate" (which i don't imagine exists in *any* military), or a rank of "doesn't command any soldiers, but isn't a private" for those starting mind melters. because in the middle of an assault, the guy standing a couple hundred feet from the bunker that needs busting doesn't have time to pull out a file on the mind melter and figure out whether the mind melter can even move stuff with their mind at all, let alone how far, how many objects, how heavy those objects can be, or how long they can do it for. it isn't like assigning a soldier to a vehicle where you can take your time and check your files. if you expect an officer to be making every decision, they need to know those files front to back by heart and not constantly get them mixed up with the guy they were assigned 3 weeks ago for a special mission.

Again your making the assumption that for some bizarre reason the CS military does not function like any other military in the world.
The commander does not need to know every person's skills and give them step by step orders to do their jobs. They just do their jobs.
If your assingned a MM for interrogation then you give orders like "Can you read his mind for us" or "Your job is to scan incoming prisoners for psionic abilities, those detected you will keep within your group mind block so they are jammed until they are ready to be questioned"
Unless there is something in the books I missed about how the CS has lobotomized everyone and they are robots that must be told step by step how to get dressed "Okay, now you slide your left arm into the left sleeve, making sure that the front of the shirt is still facing forward...."

and if they aren't trusted mind melters, then they don't get into the army (or psi-bat) in the first place. so while mind melters in general may not be trusted, by default, the fact that the ones in the CS military that are actually allowed privileges like entering military installations ARE trusted. if they weren't, they would not be working for the CS, they would be feeding the psi-stalkers instead.

There is no such thing as a trusted mind melter.
They distrust ALL mind melters. The book is pretty clear on that.
Mind Melters are shot at the slightest sign of going even slightly rogue. No other class is treated that way.
They are not somehow just going to be granted privilages and rank with no need to earn them or demonstrate that they are trustworthy.
Thus the reason that they go to basic and then after their basic they have a period where they are monitored and seen if they are trustworthy and if they are competent. THEN if they are, they can start getting promoted.

The book is abundantly clear that they are NOT initially NCOs and Officers because it tells us flat out that they can earn those positions quickly.
You do not earn later a position you start with.

TL;DR
The MM does their job, they don't need to be told how to do every step of their job anymore than any other soldier does.
And this is why the books are abundantly clear that MMs do not start as NCOs and Officers, but are simply on the fast track to promotion to those statuses.

[dreicunan]

they aren't born mind melters. it is quite clear. straight out of the OCC description: "More than any other psychic, the Mind Melter has minimal education, having spent much of his time learning and mastering the complexity of psionic powers." (RUE page 151).

I guess you haven't read the game books recently have you.
You don't train psionic powers.
You are born with them.
The Mind Melter OCC has no training requirements.
And no, an old RMB era statement about how learning to master your psi costs you skills doesn't apply since it has been removed from the game.
Now sure, they will likely take additional time to learn all the military intricacies of the proper use of all their complex powers...
But there is nothing in canon to support the claim in this sentence at least not now.

WB12 in the entry on the psi-nullifier on p.66 mentions that the CS has a program that allows them to train young reactive psychics into psi-nullifiers with a 72% success rate. Clearly, it is quite possible to train psychic powers. This theme of training is continued with the Psi-Slayer and the Psi-Warrior. Clearly, at least some psychic powers can be trained.

[eliakon]

they aren't born mind melters. it is quite clear. straight out of the OCC description: "More than any other psychic, the Mind Melter has minimal education, having spent much of his time learning and mastering the complexity of psionic powers." (RUE page 151).

I guess you haven't read the game books recently have you.
You don't train psionic powers.
You are born with them.
The Mind Melter OCC has no training requirements.
And no, an old RMB era statement about how learning to master your psi costs you skills doesn't apply since it has been removed from the game.
Now sure, they will likely take additional time to learn all the military intricacies of the proper use of all their complex powers...
But there is nothing in canon to support the claim in this sentence at least not now.

WB12 in the entry on the psi-nullifier on p.66 mentions that the CS has a program that allows them to train young reactive psychics into psi-nullifiers with a 72% success rate. Clearly, it is quite possible to train psychic powers. This theme of training is continued with the Psi-Slayer and the Psi-Warrior. Clearly, at least some psychic powers can be trained.

So we have a total of thre classes that are trained
Psi-Warrior
Cyber Knight
and the Psi-Slayer which is a focus change
And there is a possibility to CHANGE ones focus via some sort of training.
None of which I will note applies to Mind Melters

Of those only the CK can train psionic abilities to a non-psi who is not born that way and of the others NONE of them change your category.

So... yes, you can not train psionic powers (with the possible snow flake exception of the CK)
You CAN train a person who has powers to manifest them in certain ways... but in every canon case of that such training results in a specific OCC/PCC resulting.

Now if someone has anything canon that says that Mind Melters need to be trained and are not born (which, I will note conflicts with BOTH the Mind Melter and the Psi Slayer entries) I am all ears.
Othewise it is simply a houserule/head canon that they need training.

[dreicunan]

they aren't born mind melters. it is quite clear. straight out of the OCC description: "More than any other psychic, the Mind Melter has minimal education, having spent much of his time learning and mastering the complexity of psionic powers." (RUE page 151).

I guess you haven't read the game books recently have you.
You don't train psionic powers.
You are born with them.
The Mind Melter OCC has no training requirements.
And no, an old RMB era statement about how learning to master your psi costs you skills doesn't apply since it has been removed from the game.
Now sure, they will likely take additional time to learn all the military intricacies of the proper use of all their complex powers...
But there is nothing in canon to support the claim in this sentence at least not now.

WB12 in the entry on the psi-nullifier on p.66 mentions that the CS has a program that allows them to train young reactive psychics into psi-nullifiers with a 72% success rate. Clearly, it is quite possible to train psychic powers. This theme of training is continued with the Psi-Slayer and the Psi-Warrior. Clearly, at least some psychic powers can be trained.

So we have a total of thre classes that are trained
Psi-Warrior
Cyber Knight
and the Psi-Slayer which is a focus change
And there is a possibility to CHANGE ones focus via some sort of training.
None of which I will note applies to Mind Melters

Of those only the CK can train psionic abilities to a non-psi who is not born that way and of the others NONE of them change your category.

So... yes, you can not train psionic powers (with the possible snow flake exception of the CK)
You CAN train a person who has powers to manifest them in certain ways... but in every canon case of that such training results in a specific OCC/PCC resulting.

Now if someone has anything canon that says that Mind Melters need to be trained and are not born (which, I will note conflicts with BOTH the Mind Melter and the Psi Slayer entries) I am all ears.
Othewise it is simply a houserule/head canon that they need training.

Was anyone arguing that psionic potential could be trained? You claimed that psychic powers couldn't be trained. Since you can take someone with ths potential to be a Mind Melter and turn them into a Psi-Slayer instead through training, it is ironic that you are claiming that saying that this contradicts the Psi-Slayer entry. Seriously, training turns a human being into a PPE vampire!

Your list is also missing the Psi-Nullifier, as well as the Psi-Ghost for the ones without intangibility (WB12 p. 65: they sometimes adopt Major or Master psychics and train then as Psi-Ghosts).

So, once again, clearly psychic powers can be trained. Yiu aren't born with them (psychic potential, yes, but not powers). If you were, then you'd have all your powers from the get go and not learn more with level-ups.

[Shark_Force]

the quote about mind melters needing to train their powers is from RUE, not RMB. it has not been removed, and is still canon, at least for human mind melters under normal circumstances. there are absolutely creatures in the megaverse that can have mind melter equivalent powers without training (or other interference like major genetic modification), but humans are not one of them.

so you can add mind melters to that list as well (though not necessarily a large number of creatures that get mind melter abilities).

the difference between a regular soldier and a mind melter is that the mind melter doesn't have a small, limited set of expected functions. a regular soldier fresh out of boot camp you might expect to be able to do a handful of things. a mind melter has a lot of different things they can do, and assigning them only one specific duty is a waste. if the CS needs someone to have something to stand behind, they don't assign you a mind melter with TK forcefield... they assign you a wall. if it needs to move, they assign you a vehicle. and a suit of armour. the whole thing with a mind melter is that they can do a bunch of different things, assigning them to do one role is a stupid and pointless expenditure of resources. a mind melter *can* potentially move fusion blocks to a bunker, but you don't specifically assign a mind melter for that, because that would be stupid when a mass-produced rocket launcher can perform that same function without being super rare, super expensive, and without any concerns over trustworthiness. also without worrying about difficulty to recruit, which is important because they are normally treated more like demons than people.

and yes, i expect much of the time they are assigned to commanders that neither know nor care to know about psionics. because that is primarily what the CS has (and in fact encourages), and if they're only assigned to officers that know about psionics, then they would essentially be assigned to nobody, ever. psi-bat is assigned as needed, and unless there is some way to ensure that every time a psychic is needed in a certain location the officers there are all open-minded about psionics and educated on the subject (which is going to be hard, given that once again the CS encourages the exact opposite of open-mindedness in their people, and unless you're going to constantly have only the political elite micromanaging their psychics on the front lines they also encourage the exact opposite of educated).

they don't have a corps of people with even a high school education equivalent education to turn into officers. they certainly don't have an abundance of college graduates likely to study an esoteric field that doesn't apply to themselves and is incredibly unlikely to prove useful, particularly given that psi-bat is a recent development and as such being prepared for a psi-bat operative being assigned to you makes no sense for anyone trained before the last couple of years of CS history, and even then, psi-bat is a tiny fraction of the CS armed forces and you're still almost never going to be assigned one under your command just because they aren't common enough.

a mind melter is not a single-function operative, they can perform dozens or hundreds of functions, and their mastery over their powers comes from years of practice and testing their limits. it is not going to be duplicated in some random sergeant or lieutenant or colonel who hates psychics and has never had any desire to study them beyond extensive testing of whether laser blasts to the skull are an effective means of extermination. not on even the most basic level. and where those skills are not being applied in real time, you may be able to effectively give orders. but you have to remember, the typical CS officer has about as much comprehension of how psionics works as you have into quantum physics... you've probably heard some stuff, most likely just barely enough to think you know something about how it works, which translates into "not enough to know how completely and utterly wrong you are about quantum physics" most likely (unless you happen to be a quantum physicist), this idea you have of an officer making all the decisions for a psychic is about as good of an idea as having a coach for an american football team that has never played the game, never studied the game, and hates the game with a burning passion, with everything they "know" about the game revolving around everything that everyone they've ever known hates about the game (most likely with those other people "knowing" stuff based on wildly inaccurate information), but expecting them to make every policy decision and most minor specific decisions down to what play you use, when you use it, etc.

these are not modern university graduates with modern education and degrees in history or administration or engineering that you are used to dealing with. most of them are uneducated except for the political elite. almost all of them are extremely prejudiced and even the educated ones are very unlikely to be educated in even the most basic concepts of the subject apart from possible rumours they've heard from other people who are completely ignorant on the subject and have not studied it. they most likely do not understand concepts like empirical data or peer review (those concepts encourage them to ask questions, and if there is one thing the CS is not encouraging, it is questioning whether something is true or not, because people finding the truth for themselves is incredibly bad news for the government), they trust what the state tells them, and the state has been telling them for something like a hundred years that these people are not human, that they are dangerous, that they can do all kinds of things that psychics cannot actually do (seriously, have you ever considered the fact that for something called a mind melter, mind melters are pretty terrible when it comes to anything remotely approaching melting minds? and yet, that's what they're called, because people believe they can do all kinds of things to your mind, and nobody cares that there are no studies showing that mind melters are actually capable of doing any of the things they're rumoured to be able to do).

[Colonel_Tetsuya]

Ill point out that the “only the elite are educated” thing youre stressing is for civilians.

The CS military has far more educated people in it. All the OCCs that can become high ranking officers are literate. Without looking (its late, im in bed), i think even most of the OCCs capable of mid-ranking officers are literate. And a decent number of them even get lore skills.

Now, im sorta in the middle on the argument about rank. Ill go into that later (its late, in bed, typing big posts on a tablet sucks).

But the officer pool in the CS Army isnt full of morons. Xenophobic, racist, close-minded neofascists, yes. Idiots and fools, no.

[Blue_Lion]

Rue almost contradicts it self on the mind melter.

PG 150 This Powerful master Psychic doesn't need a machine or outside energy source to fuel his powers, nor does he need to rely on years of magical study and training. No. His powers come from within. They come from his mind, are created at the speed of thought and are fueled by his willpower and desires.
PG 151
More than any other pschic, the mind melter has minimal educations, having spent much of his time learning and mastering the complexity of psinoic powers.

So 150 heavy implies that it is something innate to the mind melter and he relies on psy more than skills, while pg 151 says they spent time learning to use the power.

[dreicunan]

Rue almost contradicts it self on the mind melter.

PG 150 This Powerful master Psychic doesn't need a machine or outside energy source to fuel his powers, nor does he need to rely on years of magical study and training. No. His powers come from within. They come from his mind, are created at the speed of thought and are fueled by his willpower and desires.
PG 151
More than any other pschic, the mind melter has minimal educations, having spent much of his time learning and mastering the complexity of psinoic powers.

So 150 heavy implies that it is something innate to the mind melter and he relies on psy more than skills, while pg 151 says they spent time learning to use the power.

Those quotes are quite reconcileable. The potential is inborn, but the ability to use it requires training - even if that training is self-training such as "learning and mastering" one's powers through practice.

More evidence for powers being trainable: the Gladiator OCC from Mercenary Adventures, p. 23, has options for augmentation of the class. One of those options is "Master Psychic (but untrained and underdeveloped in the use of psionic powers)."

[Shark_Force]

yeah, those quotes are completely reconcilable.

doesn't need years of magical study. developing psychic skills is not magical study. it probably does mean that they don't need a mentor to teach them to become a mind melter, nor do they need books or anything like that (though as some books show, actual training can make you a *better* mind melter, for example the third eye or whatever it is in psyscape)... just time spent learning and mastering their abilities. but while their training doesn't appear to come from any external source, it is still training.

also, in the context of the CS... high ranking officers ARE political elite. so when i say only the elite are educated, and you point out that high ranking officers are educated... well, yeah. i already said that. but their education is going to be very different from modern education from the most part; their teaching won't emphasize objectivity the way our education system does, for example (objectively examining government policy will lead to a realization that, for example, there really is no solid basis for exterminating every d-bee as an invader when most of them got rifted onto earth or have lived there for generations and have no ability to leave, for example. this is obviously an undesirable outcome, so... expect state-sponsored schools to not teach people to think about stuff too hard). but mostly, psi-battalion is an extremely recent development. the high ranking officers who are educated most likely did not receive education suited for commanding a psychic operative, because most of them will have been trained over a decade ago (high rank most often comes with time served, and while there will be exceptions, well, the exception is not the rule, so most won't have that education). even more recently trained officers frequently won't have the training, because psi-bat is also tiny. you're very likely to never need those skills, and while the military would probably like their officers to have *all* skills if they could, they're going to have to make a choice whether it's more important to teach them how to spot an ambush that they'll come across all the time, or how to command a psychic operative that they'll probably never meet, and who can just be trained to manage themselves regardless.

[eliakon]

Or you know...
They have innate powers that need no training whatsoever (like all psis)
BUT they spend time learning how to use them the best.

Which does no violence to canon.
The claim that they must train their powers or they are not mind melters though... well violates canon.
Hmmm, I wonder which one it could be...

[eliakon]

Spoiler:

the difference between a regular soldier and a mind melter is that the mind melter doesn't have a small, limited set of expected functions. a regular soldier fresh out of boot camp you might expect to be able to do a handful of things. a mind melter has a lot of different things they can do, and assigning them only one specific duty is a waste. if the CS needs someone to have something to stand behind, they don't assign you a mind melter with TK forcefield... they assign you a wall. if it needs to move, they assign you a vehicle. and a suit of armour. the whole thing with a mind melter is that they can do a bunch of different things, assigning them to do one role is a stupid and pointless expenditure of resources. a mind melter *can* potentially move fusion blocks to a bunker, but you don't specifically assign a mind melter for that, because that would be stupid when a mass-produced rocket launcher can perform that same function without being super rare, super expensive, and without any concerns over trustworthiness. also without worrying about difficulty to recruit, which is important because they are normally treated more like demons than people.

and yes, i expect much of the time they are assigned to commanders that neither know nor care to know about psionics. because that is primarily what the CS has (and in fact encourages), and if they're only assigned to officers that know about psionics, then they would essentially be assigned to nobody, ever. psi-bat is assigned as needed, and unless there is some way to ensure that every time a psychic is needed in a certain location the officers there are all open-minded about psionics and educated on the subject (which is going to be hard, given that once again the CS encourages the exact opposite of open-mindedness in their people, and unless you're going to constantly have only the political elite micromanaging their psychics on the front lines they also encourage the exact opposite of educated).

they don't have a corps of people with even a high school education equivalent education to turn into officers. they certainly don't have an abundance of college graduates likely to study an esoteric field that doesn't apply to themselves and is incredibly unlikely to prove useful, particularly given that psi-bat is a recent development and as such being prepared for a psi-bat operative being assigned to you makes no sense for anyone trained before the last couple of years of CS history, and even then, psi-bat is a tiny fraction of the CS armed forces and you're still almost never going to be assigned one under your command just because they aren't common enough.

a mind melter is not a single-function operative, they can perform dozens or hundreds of functions, and their mastery over their powers comes from years of practice and testing their limits. it is not going to be duplicated in some random sergeant or lieutenant or colonel who hates psychics and has never had any desire to study them beyond extensive testing of whether laser blasts to the skull are an effective means of extermination. not on even the most basic level. and where those skills are not being applied in real time, you may be able to effectively give orders. but you have to remember, the typical CS officer has about as much comprehension of how psionics works as you have into quantum physics... you've probably heard some stuff, most likely just barely enough to think you know something about how it works, which translates into "not enough to know how completely and utterly wrong you are about quantum physics" most likely (unless you happen to be a quantum physicist), this idea you have of an officer making all the decisions for a psychic is about as good of an idea as having a coach for an american football team that has never played the game, never studied the game, and hates the game with a burning passion, with everything they "know" about the game revolving around everything that everyone they've ever known hates about the game (most likely with those other people "knowing" stuff based on wildly inaccurate information), but expecting them to make every policy decision and most minor specific decisions down to what play you use, when you use it, etc.

these are not modern university graduates with modern education and degrees in history or administration or engineering that you are used to dealing with. most of them are uneducated except for the political elite. almost all of them are extremely prejudiced and even the educated ones are very unlikely to be educated in even the most basic concepts of the subject apart from possible rumours they've heard from other people who are completely ignorant on the subject and have not studied it. they most likely do not understand concepts like empirical data or peer review (those concepts encourage them to ask questions, and if there is one thing the CS is not encouraging, it is questioning whether something is true or not, because people finding the truth for themselves is incredibly bad news for the government), they trust what the state tells them, and the state has been telling them for something like a hundred years that these people are not human, that they are dangerous, that they can do all kinds of things that psychics cannot actually do (seriously, have you ever considered the fact that for something called a mind melter, mind melters are pretty terrible when it comes to anything remotely approaching melting minds? and yet, that's what they're called, because people believe they can do all kinds of things to your mind, and nobody cares that there are no studies showing that mind melters are actually capable of doing any of the things they're rumoured to be able to do).

You do realize that you are absolutely wrong on pretty much every point here?
Every CS officer IS educated. Look at the classes skill sets.
And once again your implying that the only way a person can possibly use their abilities is if they are told step by step how to use them.
Again that is totally the opposite of every military in history.

You simply give the soldier their orders and job asignment and then they do the task.
You dont have to tell them to use their TK forcefield to close the breach...they know that already. It isn't like the MM is just standing there slackjawed unable to act.
The idea that somehow Mind Melters are unique and are the only psyhcic with a wide array of powers is ludicrous. Even the Burster has a wide range of non-fire powers. And every Psi-stalker, and Psi-Hound, and...gee every single class.
I guess they must ALL be officers then? I mean the book says they are not, but obviously the book is wrong because no one in the whole history of ever has ever commanded a soldier who has skills or abilities the commander did not.

Like I said before. When I was a E-4 Specialist I got given orders to do my job. And I did it. I was told to figure out how to make certain things happen, and I went and...figured out how to make it happen. I didn't need someone to sit down and tell me every step of the job, or tell me how to make it happen... I did that in response to a general order.
When I was ordered to cut down the damage to NVG systems in the field which was causing a spike in deadlines and budget problems I was simply told "Find a way to fix this Specialist."
To which I decided that it was possible that the soldiers did not know the proper care procedures, and that people were getting lazy on safety because there was no liability. To counter that I wrote the curiculum for a training class, then I contacted the First Sergant of each company to get slotted into the training rotation. I then presented the classes, and emphesized that from this point on damages of the nature that I had just provided training on would not be covered, and that I would be issuing counciling statements and statements of charges. When the inevitable damage showed up, I then wrote out said counciling statements (even counciling an E-7...who accepted the statement because it was my job to give it to him) and wrote out the statements of charges that were passed on to Chief to be signed and issued out.
No one had to tell me each step, no one had to do that FOR me... but hey, I was the NVG guy. My comander who asked me to do this told me point blank that he knew absolutely nothing about optics or electronics...
And yet he was able to command a person that did, and get that person to do their job in that area with out knowing how I did it just that I did.

[dreicunan]

Or you know...
They have innate powers that need no training whatsoever (like all psis)
BUT they spend time learning how to use them the best.

Which does no violence to canon.
The claim that they must train their powers or they are not mind melters though... well violates canon.
Hmmm, I wonder which one it could be...

According to canon, we have people who could have been mind melters who get "trained" to become psi-slayers. There are Gladiators who are "untrained" master psychics. Canon clearly supports training impacting how someone with Master Psychic potential ends up manifesting their powers. Oh, and they develop additional powers as they level up.

Self-training is still training. Canon demonstrates that training matters for master psychics. Want yet another example? You can take someone with the potential to be a psychic and turn them into a Magebane through a training process (Mercenary Adventures p. 25).

[Shark_Force]

a psi-stalker gets a handful of minor psychic powers in addition to the ones they default to, with a tiny fraction of the options of where those powers come from compared to a mind melter. likewise with a burster. they will never get more. and they always start with a core set of abilities (sensing magic/psionics for psi-stalkers, controlling fire for a burster).

not so for a mind melter. they start with a wide assortment of powers that don't necessarily have any theme or relation to one another. their super psionics are not limited to one specific ability, but to a full range of possibilities. a psi-stalker or a burster is a specialist in a single field. a mind melter does a whole bunch of completely different things, none of which are even necessarily related to each other, and continue to become more complex as they increase in experience.

you know why a psi-stalker is there; it is to sense magic or psionics and track it. you know why you have a burster around; it is to burn things. there is nothing like that with a mind melter. they may or may not be able to melt minds at all (and, as noted, none are truly great at it, the closest thing they can do to melting a mind involving a massive cost on their own end that is pretty hard to justify).

as to all CS officers being highly educated... eh, not really.

let's look at the military specialist, all of which are officers, starting at the rank of lieutenant (and who most likely are the closest thing in terms of the roles they'd be used for to a mind melter that the CS has)... ok, they're literate (not that it does them much good when there aren't any books to read). they can do basic math, use computers (with no internet or publicly available libraries on them)... aaaaand that's all of the education not related to war that they're guaranteed to have (and to be honest, computer use is probably mainly intended for war related stuff). such smart! very educate! much learn!

technical officers... starting rank corporal, highest listed rank captain: literate, basic math, computer use... and some technical training specific to their field.

no history, no research, no lore, no science, unless they go out of their way to choose them (and small if any bonuses to those), no knowledge of anything that isn't directly related to how they're expected to contribute to war. they haven't received an education on how to think or how to understand or how to learn, they've received an education on how to do. you're a medic? here's how you fix holes in people. you're a mechanic? here's how you fix robots and vehicles.

so... no. all CS officers aren't really given anything remotely close to a modern education. they receive training for their job, and they can potentially choose other things (but i can't imagine that wanting to learn about history or philosophy or research is going to get you on the fast track to higher rank, quite the opposite in fact, so i doubt most have anything along those lines).

the simple fact is, a typical modern high school graduate that hasn't been sleeping through classes has received more of an education than these CS officers. by the time you get through middle school, if you were paying attention, you have probably received more education in several fields than these officers are ever likely to receive.

they certainly get more than the average CS citizen. but, given that the average CS citizen is getting *no* education, that isn't saying much. if that's the extent of the education that modern US military officers are likely to have, then i will be very surprised. i know it isn't the standard for my country.

[eliakon]

a psi-stalker gets a handful of minor psychic powers in addition to the ones they default to, with a tiny fraction of the options of where those powers come from compared to a mind melter. likewise with a burster. they will never get more. and they always start with a core set of abilities (sensing magic/psionics for psi-stalkers, controlling fire for a burster).

not so for a mind melter. they start with a wide assortment of powers that don't necessarily have any theme or relation to one another. their super psionics are not limited to one specific ability, but to a full range of possibilities. a psi-stalker or a burster is a specialist in a single field. a mind melter does a whole bunch of completely different things, none of which are even necessarily related to each other, and continue to become more complex as they increase in experience.

you know why a psi-stalker is there; it is to sense magic or psionics and track it. you know why you have a burster around; it is to burn things. there is nothing like that with a mind melter. they may or may not be able to melt minds at all (and, as noted, none are truly great at it, the closest thing they can do to melting a mind involving a massive cost on their own end that is pretty hard to justify).

Again you seem to be willfully missing the point
1) you are assuming that for some reason the CS is willing to ignore the wild card abilities of every other psychic that they possess...except for Mind Melters.
Because you are writing off every other psychic class as "well they have one focus, so we will ignore every other power they have"
which is absurd.
Zappers will be assigned to intelligence units to utilize their rare mind-bleeder power
Anyone with healing powers will be made a psi-medic
The list goes on and on...
Same with a Mind Melter. The Mind Melter who's powers fit one area will be assigned to that area.
If a MM has a lot of telepathic abilities, they are going to be given an assignment where those abilities are going to be used.
If they have sensory powers, then a sensory role. Same thing for precogs, negators, stealth, recon etc.
The people making the assignments for these people are not going to be idiots pulling names out of hats after all.
They will be experts with access to the full jackets of the psychics.

as to all CS officers being highly educated... eh, not really.

let's look at the military specialist, all of which are officers, starting at the rank of lieutenant (and who most likely are the closest thing in terms of the roles they'd be used for to a mind melter that the CS has)... ok, they're literate (not that it does them much good when there aren't any books to read). they can do basic math, use computers (with no internet or publicly available libraries on them)... aaaaand that's all of the education not related to war that they're guaranteed to have (and to be honest, computer use is probably mainly intended for war related stuff). such smart! very educate! much learn!

Interestingly...
That is exactly same education that a 20th century person starts with as well.
They have the exact same skill set as an 'educated modern person'
Funny that.

technical officers... starting rank corporal, highest listed rank captain: literate, basic math, computer use... and some technical training specific to their field.

no history, no research, no lore, no science, unless they go out of their way to choose them (and small if any bonuses to those), no knowledge of anything that isn't directly related to how they're expected to contribute to war. they haven't received an education on how to think or how to understand or how to learn, they've received an education on how to do. you're a medic? here's how you fix holes in people. you're a mechanic? here's how you fix robots and vehicles.

Again odd how that "O.C.C. RELATED" thing gets overlooked by people.
That is stuff that they learned that was, wait for it... related to their job.
So if your OCCR skill is "lore Psychic" that means that it was job related. Same with history or any other skill.

so... no. all CS officers aren't really given anything remotely close to a modern education. they receive training for their job, and they can potentially choose other things (but i can't imagine that wanting to learn about history or philosophy or research is going to get you on the fast track to higher rank, quite the opposite in fact, so i doubt most have anything along those lines).

Uhhh they get the identical skill set of a modern education.

the simple fact is, a typical modern high school graduate that hasn't been sleeping through classes has received more of an education than these CS officers. by the time you get through middle school, if you were paying attention, you have probably received more education in several fields than these officers are ever likely to receive.

Um...
Not according to canon
We HAVE the canon stats for modern education in many books.
And the CS officer has it.

they certainly get more than the average CS citizen. but, given that the average CS citizen is getting *no* education, that isn't saying much. if that's the extent of the education that modern US military officers are likely to have, then i will be very surprised. i know it isn't the standard for my country.

The US has the same standards...
AKA modern highschool and some collage
Since to Replicate the CS Military Specialist in HU you need a collage degree... and get LESS skills, both rounded out and military

Now let us look at WHY there are so many problems with the idea that every Mind Melter is an officer.

First off we can note that WB 11 was written knowing about WB 12, as it refers us to WB12 several times in the CS psychic section.
And yet it STILL does not list any one starting as officers except for Military Specialists...
Almost as if they dont start psychics as officers.

The WB 12, does not state that they start as officers, and in fact says the opposite that they can be promoted quickly to officer and NCO

I will also note (though I usually hate to resort to fluff)...
that Lt. Callaway is just a Lt... at level 7, he isn't even a platoon leader (a 2nd Lt slot) but a squad leader.
That doesn't sound like a brand new level 1 MM should start out as an Lt.
As earning 6 levels should get him at the very least one promotion....

Then there is the argument that the officers need Lore: Psychic to properly use them... which is proven false by the fact that most Psi-Stalkers, Psi-Net, Psi-Hounds and all sorts of other psychic troops dont have the skill...guess they dont know how to use psionics?
And of course officers can have psyhcic lore as part of their required training (OCCr)
Not that Lore: Psychic is needed as it is an overkill skill for commanding a psychic who you know what they can do, and are assigned to your unit to do some specific jobs.


Now yes, there will be some wild card MMs with wildy random powers (although that would seem to run counter to the claims that the CS can 'shape and hone psychics' and the claim that the CS MMs are trained...)
But those wild card swiss army knives? If they prove aimiable and successfull are the ones that will get the nod to be promoted into things like SF and the like...where they will be making their own decisions based on much more nebulous jobs.


TL;DR
The CS officers are educated to 20th/21st century collage standards
The books have no evidentury support for anyone besides Military Specialists starting as officers
There are no Warrant Officers in the CS
Conclusion: Psychics will start at Corperal.

[Mack]

There are no Warrant Officers in the CS

CWC p51 disagrees with you.

[eliakon]

There are no Warrant Officers in the CS

CWC p51 disagrees with you.

Ahh
My bad
The CS does not have the Warrant Officer like the US does which was what was being proposed that the Dominator would be.
The CS Warrant Officer is like the British model Warrant Officer and one of the most senior NCOs (they appear to be the equal to Command Sergeant Majors...rather implausible for the starting rank for every single one of the CSs 1000+ Mind Melters.

[Colonel_Tetsuya]

There are no Warrant Officers in the CS

CWC p51 disagrees with you.

Ahh
My bad
The CS does not have the Warrant Officer like the US does which was what was being proposed that the Dominator would be.
The CS Warrant Officer is like the British model Warrant Officer and one of the most senior NCOs (they appear to be the equal to Command Sergeant Majors...rather implausible for the starting rank for every single one of the CSs 1000+ Mind Melters.

They are explicitly -NOT- NCOs:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warrant ... ed_Kingdom)

Right there at the bottom of the intro.

[Shark_Force]

literacy, basic math, and computer use is not a modern education, or at least, not in any developed country. by the time i got out of high school i had taken years of literature, chemistry, physics, basic biology, history, geography, basic geology, music, art, drama, public speaking, accounting, marketing (wait, scratch that... only one year of marketing), programming (which is *not* part of the computer use skill in rifts), and probably a few other things i'm not remembering at the moment. i had already learned literacy, basic math, and computer use by the time i was in middle school, and had started learning some of those other skills i've just listed by then as well.

now i suppose it's possible that you grew up in africa or something in a school that just teaches those basic 3 skills; basic literacy, basic math, and basic computer use. frankly, those are probably the most directly applicable to getting yourself out of crushing poverty in underdeveloped parts of the world, and if nothing else can provide you the tools to get a real education (between books and the internet, there is more to learn than you could ever hope to learn in a lifetime, even if it is not in a formal school setting). but it is not a modern education by itself. and the CS soldiers don't have libraries or the internet available to them (the CS most likely has much of the great works of literature that have been written, but they're *hiding* that information from their people, not teaching it).

and yes, i am largely ignoring the random stuff a psi-stalker or burster gets. they get a handful of minor psychic abilities from one category which is typically related to their major power. that is nothing at all like a mind melter. there is no such thing as a mind melter that starts off mostly knowing sensitive powers, because they start off knowing a diverse set of abilities, which explicitly includes powers from each category in equal numbers. the "mind melter [that] has a lot of telepathic abilites" is also the mind melter that has telekinetic abilities and is also the same as the mind melter that has healing powers. but that's all the minor stuff, which the CS is going to have tens of thousands of people capable of doing. literally. minor psychic powers are so common that the CS is going to quite literally have tens of thousands of people capable of using any given one. probably hundreds of thousands if we're talking about sensitive psionics thanks to their dog boys and the many many psi-stalkers they have that are not part of psi-bat (including the approximately 6% of dead boys that are psi-stalkers according to the RUE writeup, which alone gives them something crazy like 150,000 or more, and that's ignoring the fact that apparently most psi-stalkers are members of the actual psi-stalker OCC which means at least another 150,000 but probably much more than that in their other armed forces).

when you tell psi-bat that you have *gasp* the power of telepathy and should be recruited, they probably say something like "don't call us, we'll call you", and then never call. so yeah, bursters can know TK jump or something. nobody cares. it isn't as good as a jetpack when you have nigh-infinite resources (and the CS apparently has nigh-infinite resources), and it isn't actually that rare, so it's really no big deal.

now, of course, if it's no big deal, that raises the question of why mind melters would be of such interest? well, for one thing, they have a much higher ISP reserve and can do those things a lot more often. they have a lot more versatility in the powers they gain, rather than picking a handful from one category; as noted, a mind melter can be a medic *and* an interrogator *and* an infiltrator *and* an engineer etc. so you get someone who can do a whole bunch of different things and does not rely on a supply chain... where are you going to use them? well, you could have this incredibly versatile individual do one straightforward task, where they will most likely be vastly outperformed by technology... or you can send them to do tasks like the military specialist OCC is sent to do, where mind bolt isn't just a worse version of a pistol in every way, it's a worse version of a pistol that can be smuggled almost anywhere... where a telekinetic force field isn't just a crappier bunker, it's a crappier bunker that can be placed 500 miles away from the nearest CS outpost in the middle of hostile territory with no backup at a moment's notice. where they're not just a 20th century hospital with only one doctor working in it in a world with 22nd century medical tech, but rather they are miraculously capable of performing field surgery in a drainage ditch without having to carry hundreds of pounds of medical tools and supplies and without risk of infection.

and when they are working in those conditions, separated from the CS by potentially hundreds of miles, or at the very least only being able to make limited contact to keep from blowing their cover or giving away their position, they need to be able to give themselves orders, even if they can't issue them to anyone else.

so sure, you *could* have someone with a skill set that makes them perfect for working far from home with limited resources just sit in a base and be a limited-use interrogation tool when you could already have tens of thousands of other people do that exact same job equally well, but that would be stupid. that would be like having a professional race car driver in a professional racing car on hand 24/7 just in case you need to get some milk from the grocery store. they can get the job done, certainly, but you could do the same job just as well using far fewer resources, and meanwhile that race car and driver could be doing something that actually puts their skills to full use.

mind melters are not specialists at one thing. they're specialists at being able to do lots of things, and it is laughably absurd to expect someone with no knowledge or training in psionics whatsoever to manage them in anything remotely like an efficient manner. "go look for invisible things" will drain a typical level 1 mind melter dry in under 2 hours, for example... so what does the mind melter do? do they follow orders and walk around for a couple of hours, run out of ISP, and then go rest for a while* so they can do some more looking later? and that's just one sense. if the officer expects them to sense evil, their uptime gets even worse. and, now that they've followed orders, they have nothing left for clairvoyance or sixth sense in case of an attack, and if the officer needs them to suppress fear in someone they've blown all their ISP for that as well, all because they had to follow an order that sounded perfectly reasonable but actually wasn't (i mean, it's right in their list of abilities, they can see invisible things, so why wouldn't "go look for invisible things" sound like a reasonable order). or, alternately, the psychic can just, you know... not use the ability, and disobey orders. or be constantly telling their commanding officers that their orders are unreasonable and impossible... yeah, i'm sure that'll go over reaaaaally well...

it isn't until around level 4-5 that a typical mind melter might expect to be able to follow that order for 8 hours, and even then that's taking someone with 26-28 distinct capabilities and using them for only one of those capabilities, all to follow an order that sounds perfectly reasonable, and carrying with it a substantial risk that at some point the officer will ask something more of the psychic and only *then* find out that the psychic has been blowing all their energy doing something less than half as well as a dog boy could have done without spending a single ISP (sense of smell if nothing else), and now all those other 25-27 things listed in their file are no longer options because they blew all their ISP looking for invisible stuff.

* it's hard to say precisely how long the mind melter needs to rest to fully recharge their ISP. it seems likely that they should have a superior ISP recovery rate, particularly since they did in RMB, but RUE removed it entirely and doesn't give them anything at all unless you go check the psionic combat section in the far back of the book for specific rules. in any event, even using the more generous RMB rules, it would likely take 10 or more hours for the psychic to recharge their power at level 1, giving them 4 total hours of uptime per day. it gets better with levels, but then again, experienced mind melters should have been promoted, so the ones you want to have as basically being privates in rank *will* have this kind of problem, because they'll be the level 1 mind melters.

[dreicunan]

We can also add Psi-Techs to the list of results obtainable through training (WB12 p. 145), and then add "other area/RCC where the CS military has wants or needs."

[Nekira Sudacne]

I think given the update in Heroes of Humanity means that a mind melter in Psi-Battalion likely enlists at E-3 as a Corporal and probablly has some kind of training program that gets them to Sergent within a year.

[eliakon]

literacy, basic math, and computer use is not a modern education, or at least, not in any developed country. by the time i got out of high school i had taken years of literature, chemistry, physics, basic biology, history, geography, basic geology, music, art, drama, public speaking, accounting, marketing (wait, scratch that... only one year of marketing), programming (which is *not* part of the computer use skill in rifts), and probably a few other things i'm not remembering at the moment. i had already learned literacy, basic math, and computer use by the time i was in middle school, and had started learning some of those other skills i've just listed by then as well.

now i suppose it's possible that you grew up in africa or something in a school that just teaches those basic 3 skills; basic literacy, basic math, and basic computer use. frankly, those are probably the most directly applicable to getting yourself out of crushing poverty in underdeveloped parts of the world, and if nothing else can provide you the tools to get a real education (between books and the internet, there is more to learn than you could ever hope to learn in a lifetime, even if it is not in a formal school setting). but it is not a modern education by itself. and the CS soldiers don't have libraries or the internet available to them (the CS most likely has much of the great works of literature that have been written, but they're *hiding* that information from their people, not teaching it).

You are not in a palladium game though are you.
You don't have all of those as skills in game.
We know this because you look at, say Heroes Unlimited and see what a high school education is.
Literacy, Basic math, Pilot Automobile
2 skill programs and 10 secondary skills
This is repeated over and over again.
A PhD?
Just gets a grand total of two more skill programs!
We can see the same in literally every other modern day game.
By the standards of Palladium? Every single CS Military Specialist is... a collage educated military specialist (four years of collage plus advanced work)

In the game skills are not just strewn around like candy
Thus the number of things that we take in the real world in no way converts over to skills.

and yes, i am largely ignoring the random stuff a psi-stalker or burster gets. they get a handful of minor psychic abilities from one category which is typically related to their major power. that is nothing at all like a mind melter. there is no such thing as a mind melter that starts off mostly knowing sensitive powers, because they start off knowing a diverse set of abilities, which explicitly includes powers from each category in equal numbers. the "mind melter [that] has a lot of telepathic abilites" is also the mind melter that has telekinetic abilities and is also the same as the mind melter that has healing powers.

Too bad you are now contradicting your own book.
The book claims that the CS can teach mind melters to direct their powers to manifest in specific ways...
...or are you now claiming that your stance has changed and they do NOT train?

but that's all the minor stuff, which the CS is going to have tens of thousands of people capable of doing. literally. minor psychic powers are so common that the CS is going to quite literally have tens of thousands of people capable of using any given one. probably hundreds of thousands if we're talking about sensitive psionics thanks to their dog boys and the many many psi-stalkers they have that are not part of psi-bat (including the approximately 6% of dead boys that are psi-stalkers according to the RUE writeup, which alone gives them something crazy like 150,000 or more, and that's ignoring the fact that apparently most psi-stalkers are members of the actual psi-stalker OCC which means at least another 150,000 but probably much more than that in their other armed forces).

when you tell psi-bat that you have *gasp* the power of telepathy and should be recruited, they probably say something like "don't call us, we'll call you", and then never call. so yeah, bursters can know TK jump or something. nobody cares. it isn't as good as a jetpack when you have nigh-infinite resources (and the CS apparently has nigh-infinite resources), and it isn't actually that rare, so it's really no big deal.

now, of course, if it's no big deal, that raises the question of why mind melters would be of such interest? well, for one thing, they have a much higher ISP reserve and can do those things a lot more often. they have a lot more versatility in the powers they gain, rather than picking a handful from one category; as noted, a mind melter can be a medic *and* an interrogator *and* an infiltrator *and* an engineer etc. so you get someone who can do a whole bunch of different things and does not rely on a supply chain... where are you going to use them? well, you could have this incredibly versatile individual do one straightforward task, where they will most likely be vastly outperformed by technology... or you can send them to do tasks like the military specialist OCC is sent to do, where mind bolt isn't just a worse version of a pistol in every way, it's a worse version of a pistol that can be smuggled almost anywhere... where a telekinetic force field isn't just a crappier bunker, it's a crappier bunker that can be placed 500 miles away from the nearest CS outpost in the middle of hostile territory with no backup at a moment's notice. where they're not just a 20th century hospital with only one doctor working in it in a world with 22nd century medical tech, but rather they are miraculously capable of performing field surgery in a drainage ditch without having to carry hundreds of pounds of medical tools and supplies and without risk of infection.

and when they are working in those conditions, separated from the CS by potentially hundreds of miles, or at the very least only being able to make limited contact to keep from blowing their cover or giving away their position, they need to be able to give themselves orders, even if they can't issue them to anyone else.

No. No they don't
That isn't how the military WORKS
You keep acting as if people are incapable of any form of initiative with out being an officer.
Enlisted are NOT mindless drones.
They are perfectly capable of doing all sorts of things... they can even give themselves orders in limited capacities if they are in a leadership position. But they are not an officer.

so sure, you *could* have someone with a skill set that makes them perfect for working far from home with limited resources just sit in a base and be a limited-use interrogation tool when you could already have tens of thousands of other people do that exact same job equally well, but that would be stupid. that would be like having a professional race car driver in a professional racing car on hand 24/7 just in case you need to get some milk from the grocery store. they can get the job done, certainly, but you could do the same job just as well using far fewer resources, and meanwhile that race car and driver could be doing something that actually puts their skills to full use.

And for those rare individuals that have that exact set of powers, AND the right stats, AND the right mental make up, AND proven loyalty... then yes, they will be slotted into those positions.
But they will not be put in there to start.

mind melters are not specialists at one thing. they're specialists at being able to do lots of things, and it is laughably absurd to expect someone with no knowledge or training in psionics whatsoever to manage them in anything remotely like an efficient manner. "go look for invisible things" will drain a typical level 1 mind melter dry in under 2 hours, for example... so what does the mind melter do? do they follow orders and walk around for a couple of hours, run out of ISP, and then go rest for a while* so they can do some more looking later?

and that's just one sense. if the officer expects them to sense evil, their uptime gets even worse. and, now that they've followed orders, they have nothing left for clairvoyance or sixth sense in case of an attack, and if the officer needs them to suppress fear in someone they've blown all their ISP for that as well, all because they had to follow an order that sounded perfectly reasonable but actually wasn't (i mean, it's right in their list of abilities, they can see invisible things, so why wouldn't "go look for invisible things" sound like a reasonable order). or, alternately, the psychic can just, you know... not use the ability, and disobey orders. or be constantly telling their commanding officers that their orders are unreasonable and impossible... yeah, i'm sure that'll go over reaaaaally well...

it isn't until around level 4-5 that a typical mind melter might expect to be able to follow that order for 8 hours, and even then that's taking someone with 26-28 distinct capabilities and using them for only one of those capabilities, all to follow an order that sounds perfectly reasonable, and carrying with it a substantial risk that at some point the officer will ask something more of the psychic and only *then* find out that the psychic has been blowing all their energy doing something less than half as well as a dog boy could have done without spending a single ISP (sense of smell if nothing else), and now all those other 25-27 things listed in their file are no longer options because they blew all their ISP looking for invisible stuff.

And here again you are acting like everyone is idiots.
Seriously.
The military is NOT morons
If their job is to use their sensitive powers to prevent intruders (an actual normal order for say someone on a security detail) they will be free to do so in the way that they see fit. No one will (usually) micromanage them. They don't have to.
Your making up an absurd strawman of a situation that will never happen in a military and using it as proof of why the military is wrong?
Your not demonstrating anything here other than you appear to have zero understanding of how militaries work.
What WILL happen is going to be more like this
<Lieutenant> "Okay Cpl. Simms. Your new to this unit. So here is your general orders. Your main job is to prevent intruders either invisible, spiritual or astral into the base. As a secondary task you are expected to run routine checks of everyones auras at least three times a week. Mix up the times and days for that. I note here that your file says your a class III healer as well. I'm placing you on the QRF as their medic. If you have any precognitive events you are to immediately notify Major Clark via the radio precint activity has flash priority here, and no I do not know why and I don't want to. Any questions?"
<Simms> "Roger sir. I do have a question. will you be wanting me to be rotating my sensory scans, and if so did you have a particular one you wanted?"
<Lieutenant> "Yes, we have been informed that there have been entities spotted nearby, and Pvt Jones caught an astral spy last week. I want you to make sure to sense for both on a regular basis. I will leave the exact rotations up to you. You will be in charge of Jones and Star.
<Cpl Simms> "Yes sir."
<Lieutenant> "Dismissed"

THAT is how an actual military situation would go.
No one is going to give micromanaged orders except in unusual situations where those orders would be important aka if there is a specific invisible person that is known to be on the loose in the area then yes all psychics with the power to see the invisible would be ordered to activate it and help hunt them down. But otherwise? For 99% of the time they will get general orders that they will follow as they see fit.

* it's hard to say precisely how long the mind melter needs to rest to fully recharge their ISP. it seems likely that they should have a superior ISP recovery rate, particularly since they did in RMB, but RUE removed it entirely and doesn't give them anything at all unless you go check the psionic combat section in the far back of the book for specific rules. in any event, even using the more generous RMB rules, it would likely take 10 or more hours for the psychic to recharge their power at level 1, giving them 4 total hours of uptime per day. it gets better with levels, but then again, experienced mind melters should have been promoted, so the ones you want to have as basically being privates in rank *will* have this kind of problem, because they'll be the level 1 mind melters.

They will be privates in training and should graduate as a Cpl.

[Blue_Lion]

IF you do not think that people in the military are often in situriaons where they are micoromanaged you are the one who does not understand military.
In the US Military micro-management by leadership is common.
When given an order to do something you do it until it is done. Typically flexibility does not come until you are NCO and it is your job to manage privates.

This problem of micro-managment stems from 2 main issues. 1 if you are not ensuring privates are doing the job right they will slack off and the job will not be done to a standard. 2 management not trusting people to do a task.

The Micro-managment is written into regulations. Example look up instructions for the army physical fitness test, they go into great detail on how to do a push up.

The military is you do what you are told when told to do it mind set. (That is a micro managment mind set.)

[eliakon]

IF you do not think that people in the military are often in situriaons where they are micoromanaged you are the one who does not understand military.
In the US Military micro-management by leadership is common.
When given an order to do something you do it until it is done. Typically flexibility does not come until you are NCO and it is your job to manage privates.

This problem of micro-managment stems from 2 main issues. 1 if you are not ensuring privates are doing the job right they will slack off and the job will not be done to a standard. 2 management not trusting people to do a task.

The Micro-managment is written into regulations. Example look up instructions for the army physical fitness test, they go into great detail on how to do a push up.

The military is you do what you are told when told to do it mind set. (That is a micro managment mind set.)

Um you seem to be misunderstanding the military totally
There is a HUGE difference between a regulation on a push up and assuming that the only way a non-officer could possibly be used is for an officer to order him to activate a specific psionic power at a specific time and do a specific action.
This is not Command and Conqure.
As I previously pointed out the claim that only NCOs have slack is utterly false.
When I was a Specialist E-4 I was in charge of my shops and I had fairly loose orders that boiled down to "make sure the following tasks get done each month/quarter/year" and vast leeway on how to do that.
I wrote up my own schedules, I wrote up my own lessons, I gave those lessons, I gave coinciling statements...
And this was the norm for every shop I was familiar with, or any shop that one in any of THOSE shops was familiar with.

There is 'regulation says do this" for some things.
But it is not micromanage everyone every second of the day. There simply isn't any way to possibly do that. ESPECIALLY with the plethora of specialty personal with training in fields that their Officers and NCOs do not understand in any great detail.

Now with in some areas you will find a lot more micromanaging. For example I found that the infantry soldiers had a lot of micromanaging in how they were run.
But that was infantry running infantry running infantry running infantry...
When my people showed up to do our support for said infantry? I was usually met by the XO and told who my POC was, given a list of priority tasks and deadlines and then they got out of our way. As long as the contact teams kept everything running they didnt care that we were just a bunch of E-4s and E-3s. We were the subject matter experts on this particular area, and thus we were presumed to know what we were doing. If there was a question (for example, if a piece of equipment broke that would normally be a low priority, but the commander felt was more important... then we would be told and adjust our work acordingly).

I imagine that the psychics work the same way.
When they are in fully psi units there will be a lot more micromanaging... because it will be a lot of psychics commanding psychics for purely psychic operations... and there will then need to be juniors and seniors so there can't exactly be nothing but officers.

When they are attached to regular units they will get more leeway, again based on general orders and mission peramiters (like my previous mission briefing showed). And again this doesn't require an officer.

In short... I see no reason to assume that psychics have to be officers.
There is no historical reason. No military reason. No canon reason. No skill reason.
Nothing I can see other than "I think we should have all mind melters start out as officers because I want to play an officer"

[Shark_Force]

"requires training" does not mean "can train whatever you want".

it requires training to become a lot of things. that doesn't mean that i can spontaneously develop whatever talents i want. a mind melter requires training to develop into a mind melter. if they don't spend time that otherwise might be spent developing skills, they don't become a mind melter. it is right there in the OCC: you give up skill training time to train your powers. nowhere does it say that mind melters train to develop whatever specific power that they get, any more than the book says that a mystic spends their time meditating to choose which spells they will learn when they level up, it just says they must spend that time.

and again, the result of that time spent: a GENERALIZED ability in psionics. there is no such thing as a mind melter that doesn't have psionic powers from all 4 categories.

as to modern education, you still aren't listening. the military specialist has received TRAINING. it has NOT received an education. it has received zero training in learning how to learn, zero training in how to think for itself, zero training in how to develop its own opinions, zero training in how to take those skills and turn them into a genuine tool for being their own person. there is no knowledge of history in there, no understanding of the past and thus no true understanding of the present or how to avoid the mistakes of the past. there is no training in logic, no training in the scientific method, no access to books that might teach them how to put themselves in someone else's shoes or expose them to new ideas, and the CS is never going to give that to them. a modern education is not a list of instructions on how to do something, it is, if you have been actually applying yourself to it, a way of learning how to learn, how to understand the world for yourself rather than just blindly following whatever someone else says.

that is what modern education offers. not every person will take advantage of it, of course... my understanding of topics like the scientific method, of testing ideas methodically to prove them for myself? way more developed now than it was when i was in high school. my understanding of history and how the world came to be what it is now? way more developed now than it was when i was in high school. but it was offered, and had i accepted it rather than just ignoring it out of laziness or disinterest, i could have been much farther than i was in high school, and i was certainly much farther along in high school in those areas than the training a CS military specialist or technical officer receives, because at least someone *tried* to expose me to those things, and i at least nominally picked up some of that. frankly, i expect that i will continue to develop my understanding of those principles on my own as my life continues, as i continue to take advantage of the indescribably vast library of information that is the internet (though of course, not all of it is equally relevant, and i expect that i will also continue to expose myself to the less relevant parts too).

when i was taking physics classes, i wasn't just told "here's a formula, here's how to use it, now here are 20 pages of physics problems for you to practice". i learned the history of the scientists who discovered those principles, what experiments they did, heck, i learned about people who basically fudged their results and was clearly told that this was not how you do science and an emphasis was placed on the experiments that confirmed the results, which were not fudged.

you think the CS is going to teach concepts like "you need to find out ______ for yourself"? because i sure don't. not in a million years, unless maybe your dad is a general or something, and maybe not even then. you think the CS is going to have their kids read Huckleberry Finn or To Kill A Mockingbird? because again, i sure don't. there is not a chance in hell that the CS is going to deliberately expose their population to the idea that hating a person for being different is wrong.

and that is a key difference between even a modern high school education, and the CS equivalent of college. the CS may put you in something they are calling a school for a longer period of time, but it is not remotely the same thing as our schools today.

as to how to use psychics...

so again, we have mind melters, excellent generalists, abilities that are not at all standardized, very limited resources, but those resources are not limited by being separated from CS territory. there is an obvious use for them, and it isn't "wander around a base and somehow figure out when something invisible is sneaking by and then use your power to see it". that works brilliantly for psi-stalkers and dog boys of course; both can sense magical or psionic methods of becoming invisible, and the dog boys have a strong regular sense of smell too. they have a passive, zero-cost sense that enables that order to become reasonable, and not only can they continue to patrol even if they do burn all their ISP on seeing invisible things, they actually are far less likely to need to do so because they actually have some means of making a decision on whether or not they should be looking for invisible things at any given time.

and as to not needing to be an officer to be out in the middle of nowhere, on your own, making command decisions... well, the CS apparently disagrees very strongly about that one. all military specialists start at lieutenant. every. single. one. no matter what their specific job is, they are officers, and not just corporals, but lieutenants. that is the standard for people the CS expects to even potentially be under their own command, and again, the only reason it even makes sense to have mind melters in the army at all is to use them the same way you would use a field operative military specialist, because that's where their disadvantages are minimized and their strengths are maximized. in the middle of a military base, almost all of what they could conceivably do can be done better by machines, or by the hordes of other psychics that are not part of psi-bat, or by regular people, or by some combination of all those things and more. if you're insisting that the CS military aren't morons, then that's how they'll be using them, because they are freaking amazing at that, and not terribly amazing at anything else the military might want them to do.

[dreicunan]

" a modern education is not a list of instructions on how to do something, it is, if you have been actually applying yourself to it, a way of learning how to learn, how to understand the world for yourself rather than just blindly following whatever someone else says."

Actually, that is the design and purpose of a classical liberal arts education. Modern approaches to education (Dewey and other illnamed progressive approaches onward) were indeed trying to take a factory based approach to education, reducing it to lists of instructions. Many most definitely do want you blindly following what someone else says (just look at any appeal to scientific "consensus" as an attempt to shut someone up).

Also, look at the behavior of students on college campuses, many of whom are so threatened by the idea of a dissenting view that they have to shut other people down rather than attempting to engage in a dialogue.

[Shark_Force]

the entire concept of scientific consensus indicates that people have already been discussing and *testing* an idea. yes, some people (even many people) will choose to act in a manner inconsistent with their education... but no, education is not just a list of instructions for you to follow. otherwise it would not include things like literature, arts, or history, or really even science. in a 2-year program on electronics, i spent several weeks learning about the theory and physics behind semiconductors. i have never used that knowledge. i don't know anyone from my class or from my program that needed that knowledge, ever. my teachers talk about programming microchips or troubleshooting PCBs in the context of things that they've done, but none of them needed the knowledge they were teaching in those weeks for their jobs before they became teachers, and yet it was still considered an essential part of our education. that doesn't happen if all anyone cares about is that you know which end of a diode or transistor goes where. you don't need it to understand what a transistor does in a circuit, or anything like that. you don't need to know how to derive the various formulas that you use, or the history of how something was invented or how it changed electronics, or any number of other things that we learned. you certainly didn't need any of the electives that were absolutely required if you wanted to graduate.

in a program intended to train people for a specific kind of job in a highly technical field, care was taken to ensure that the students had opportunities to broaden their minds. now, i'm certainly not going to suggest that everyone took full advantage of that... in fact, i really can't help suspecting that most of my classmates took the food, wine, and culture class purely for the food and wine tasting parts of it (as it turns out, the joke was on them... they worked their butts off in that class doing reports and stuff, while the literature class i took at the same time was frankly a lot less work and the work was much more enjoyable for the most part). but it was there. whether or not it was taken advantage of, it was there. the effort was made to teach them the history of what they were doing, the underlying reasons why things worked the way they did, and even to introduce them to things that they likely would not have done on their own.

and this is even more true in earlier education, where history, literature (it's called english class usually where i live, but how much time do you spend learning grammar and spelling compared to the amount of time you spend studying literature beyond the earliest grades?), art, music, drama, and other classes like that are required parts of the curriculum? why do we get to choose the topic of so many of our independent studies? heck, why do we even *have* independent studies? why are we expected to do research for ourselves instead of just having everything handed to us if we're only supposed to come to a specific pre-selected conclusion? why do we write essays and have open-ended questions on tests if there is no interest in making us think about our questions, when a few simple multiple choice questions to check if we've comprehended our instructions properly could suffice?

if education is not as successful as might be desired in broadening people's minds or teaching them how to think for themselves, it isn't because education is not trying to do those things.

[dreicunan]

the entire concept of scientific consensus indicates that people have already been discussing and *testing* an idea. yes, some people (even many people) will choose to act in a manner inconsistent with their education... but no, education is not just a list of instructions for you to follow. otherwise it would not include things like literature, arts, or history, or really even science. in a 2-year program on electronics, i spent several weeks learning about the theory and physics behind semiconductors. i have never used that knowledge. i don't know anyone from my class or from my program that needed that knowledge, ever. my teachers talk about programming microchips or troubleshooting PCBs in the context of things that they've done, but none of them needed the knowledge they were teaching in those weeks for their jobs before they became teachers, and yet it was still considered an essential part of our education. that doesn't happen if all anyone cares about is that you know which end of a diode or transistor goes where. you don't need it to understand what a transistor does in a circuit, or anything like that. you don't need to know how to derive the various formulas that you use, or the history of how something was invented or how it changed electronics, or any number of other things that we learned. you certainly didn't need any of the electives that were absolutely required if you wanted to graduate.

in a program intended to train people for a specific kind of job in a highly technical field, care was taken to ensure that the students had opportunities to broaden their minds. now, i'm certainly not going to suggest that everyone took full advantage of that... in fact, i really can't help suspecting that most of my classmates took the food, wine, and culture class purely for the food and wine tasting parts of it (as it turns out, the joke was on them... they worked their butts off in that class doing reports and stuff, while the literature class i took at the same time was frankly a lot less work and the work was much more enjoyable for the most part). but it was there. whether or not it was taken advantage of, it was there. the effort was made to teach them the history of what they were doing, the underlying reasons why things worked the way they did, and even to introduce them to things that they likely would not have done on their own.

and this is even more true in earlier education, where history, literature (it's called english class usually where i live, but how much time do you spend learning grammar and spelling compared to the amount of time you spend studying literature beyond the earliest grades?), art, music, drama, and other classes like that are required parts of the curriculum? why do we get to choose the topic of so many of our independent studies? heck, why do we even *have* independent studies? why are we expected to do research for ourselves instead of just having everything handed to us if we're only supposed to come to a specific pre-selected conclusion? why do we write essays and have open-ended questions on tests if there is no interest in making us think about our questions, when a few simple multiple choice questions to check if we've comprehended our instructions properly could suffice?

if education is not as successful as might be desired in broadening people's minds or teaching them how to think for themselves, it isn't because education is not trying to do those things.

Well, I'll,l appeal to my own authority and experience as a professional educator to point out that I know of what I speak. An essay question can just as easily be a tool to make sure that you are regurgitating the approved party line as multiple choice questions. Choice in what courses you take says nothing about what is actually being done in those courses.

Of course, not all schools have abandoned a classical liberal arts approach (at least not in spirit); you may well have been at a school that has maintained that approach (I went to a few like that myself). However, the vast majority of schools below the university level don't do that.

By independent studies, do you mean "electives"?

[eliakon]

"requires training" does not mean "can train whatever you want".

it requires training to become a lot of things. that doesn't mean that i can spontaneously develop whatever talents i want. a mind melter requires training to develop into a mind melter.

The book is quite clear that you either have powers or you don't. No amount of training will give you powers.
It is also quite clear that education is not a required function of becoming a mind melter... as you can not train for psionics. What they DO do is spend a lot of time learning how to use their powers best.

The CS though is clear that they have a training program that allows for people to direct their powers manifestation...
...which would be, wait for it, represented in game terms by the powers they have. Which is why they are not randomly rolled but selected.
Now if you want to argue that the powers are not actually selected I will be fascinated to hear your proof.
But the canon is that the mind melter selects the powers they want. No random tables, no 'will of the cosmic' nothing. Just "select X powers"
That sounds like they develop what talents they want to me...

if they don't spend time that otherwise might be spent developing skills, they don't become a mind melter. it is right there in the OCC: you give up skill training time to train your powers. nowhere does it say that mind melters train to develop whatever specific power that they get, any more than the book says that a mystic spends their time meditating to choose which spells they will learn when they level up, it just says they must spend that time.

your wrong on two counts there
the first count is that you can still learn skills AND be a mind melter... the CS in fact demonstrates this with their highly educated mind melters.
The second is that while the Mystic OCC explicitly states that their powers are intuitive and not under their control there is no such text in the Mind Melter OCC.
As the powers are selected by the player, and the book clearly states that the mind melter can train to manifest the desired powers (the entire POINT of the CS training).. then yes, canon is that they pick their powers and it is NOT random.
Now if you have a canon statement to the contrary fine... but your personal house rule does not have any bearing here.

and again, the result of that time spent: a GENERALIZED ability in psionics. there is no such thing as a mind melter that doesn't have psionic powers from all 4 categories.

And they can STILL be specialized in one area
Just because they have a number of healing powers for example doesn't mean they will be a useful medic if their powers are not ones that are of use to a medic.
Same with any of the categories really.
The end result is that after their training the Mind Melter will most likely have a power set that matches their skill set which will match up with their normal assignment in the military.

as to modern education, you still aren't listening. the military specialist has received TRAINING. it has NOT received an education. it has received zero training in learning how to learn, zero training in how to think for itself, zero training in how to develop its own opinions, zero training in how to take those skills and turn them into a genuine tool for being their own person. there is no knowledge of history in there, no understanding of the past and thus no true understanding of the present or how to avoid the mistakes of the past. there is no training in logic, no training in the scientific method, no access to books that might teach them how to put themselves in someone else's shoes or expose them to new ideas, and the CS is never going to give that to them. a modern education is not a list of instructions on how to do something, it is, if you have been actually applying yourself to it, a way of learning how to learn, how to understand the world for yourself rather than just blindly following whatever someone else says.

Great I missed the page where this was stated.
Can you share the book and page?
Because your personal opinion on what the education the Elite of the CS receive, not the peasantry but the elite, is not the same as canon.
Nor, frankly is much of what your claiming to be required needed.
Yes it is considered important in our society... and yet many other places seem to have done quite well and produced fully educated individuals with out the modern 20th century western education world view.

that is what modern education offers.

That is your OPINION of what a modern education offers you mean.
I will note that I can not find any authoritative support for this stance NOR can I find any game text that states that people get this or do not get this in certain societies.
So again... it is 100% your personal opinion on what the CS education is and is not.

Spoiler:

not every person will take advantage of it, of course... my understanding of topics like the scientific method, of testing ideas methodically to prove them for myself? way more developed now than it was when i was in high school. my understanding of history and how the world came to be what it is now? way more developed now than it was when i was in high school. but it was offered, and had i accepted it rather than just ignoring it out of laziness or disinterest, i could have been much farther than i was in high school, and i was certainly much farther along in high school in those areas than the training a CS military specialist or technical officer receives, because at least someone *tried* to expose me to those things, and i at least nominally picked up some of that. frankly, i expect that i will continue to develop my understanding of those principles on my own as my life continues, as i continue to take advantage of the indescribably vast library of information that is the internet (though of course, not all of it is equally relevant, and i expect that i will also continue to expose myself to the less relevant parts too).

when i was taking physics classes, i wasn't just told "here's a formula, here's how to use it, now here are 20 pages of physics problems for you to practice". i learned the history of the scientists who discovered those principles, what experiments they did, heck, i learned about people who basically fudged their results and was clearly told that this was not how you do science and an emphasis was placed on the experiments that confirmed the results, which were not fudged.

you think the CS is going to teach concepts like "you need to find out ______ for yourself"? because i sure don't. not in a million years, unless maybe your dad is a general or something, and maybe not even then. you think the CS is going to have their kids read Huckleberry Finn or To Kill A Mockingbird? because again, i sure don't. there is not a chance in hell that the CS is going to deliberately expose their population to the idea that hating a person for being different is wrong.

and that is a key difference between even a modern high school education, and the CS equivalent of college. the CS may put you in something they are calling a school for a longer period of time, but it is not remotely the same thing as our schools today.

]

You realize that ALL of this is utterly irrelevant?
No seriously.
Your personal opinion on educational theory has no weight here as it is
1) not canon
2) not supported by canon
3) not even supported by a general consensus among educators.

as to how to use psychics...

so again, we have mind melters, excellent generalists, abilities that are not at all standardized, very limited resources, but those resources are not limited by being separated from CS territory.

And who will have power sets that they picked to fit their desired roles...

there is an obvious use for them, and it isn't "wander around a base and somehow figure out when something invisible is sneaking by and then use your power to see it". that works brilliantly for psi-stalkers and dog boys of course; both can sense magical or psionic methods of becoming invisible, and the dog boys have a strong regular sense of smell too. they have a passive, zero-cost sense that enables that order to become reasonable, and not only can they continue to patrol even if they do burn all their ISP on seeing invisible things, they actually are far less likely to need to do so because they actually have some means of making a decision on whether or not they should be looking for invisible things at any given time.

Your making several false assumptions here.
1) you are assuming that the Mind Melter would be the only person doing such. In my example they were in charge of the dog boys attached to the unit.
2) you are making the false assumption that the dog boy and psi-stalker powers will some how tell them when to suddenly look for invisible things
3) you are ignoring the fact that there are situations where they may not WANT a psi-stalker
4) you ignored that in my example, I wanted a sensitive, who can also deal with them (so needs offensive powers) AND is a medic...

and as to not needing to be an officer to be out in the middle of nowhere, on your own, making command decisions... well, the CS apparently disagrees very strongly about that one.

You are again making the unwarranted assumption that every single Mind Melter s going to be out in the middle of nowhere...
there is literally ZERO support for this claim.

all military specialists start at lieutenant. every. single. one. no matter what their specific job is, they are officers, and not just corporals, but lieutenants. that is the standard for people the CS expects to even potentially be under their own command,

Incorrect. That is the rank for the OFFICER CORPS.

and again, the only reason it even makes sense to have mind melters in the army at all is to use them the same way you would use a field operative military specialist,

No it makes less than no sense
The way you use a psychic is to assign them to do a job that matches up with their power/skill set best.
If that power/skill set is optimized as a field operative then sure do that... but a MM with divination, precognitive, postcognitive and interrogation powers with a skill set on administration, civil law, psychology and forensics is probably going to be MUCH better used if you attach them to an MP company as a CSI/Interrogator.

because that's where their disadvantages are minimized and their strengths are maximized.

No, you have that backwards
Their disadvantages are minimized and their strengths are maximized when they are put into roles where their particular power set is of most use and their skill set is of most use.
Putting a psychic loaded down with healing powers and long term trance time abilities in the middle of a SF Assualt Raider team is a bad move... their powers are not going to be of much use. You want them in a position where they can take the trance times needed. Maybe a field hospital, or FOB.

in the middle of a military base, almost all of what they could conceivably do can be done better by machines, or by the hordes of other psychics that are not part of psi-bat, or by regular people, or by some combination of all those things and more. if you're insisting that the CS military aren't morons, then that's how they'll be using them, because they are freaking amazing at that, and not terribly amazing at anything else the military might want them to do.

Your acting like there are only two positions in the military (and as if there are machines that can do most of what the MMs will be tasked with...)
In HUGE bases full of extensive forces...
...and out in the middle of nowhere all alone.

Those two are the rare exception not the rule.

The norm will be to have MMs in psionic battalion and its psionic units.
As such...you will not simply make the mind melters the officers and assume it works out well. That is how a psiocracy might do it... but not the CS.
You will have a regular chain of command with people in various positions doing their various jobs. The MMs will simply be regular soldiers in that battalion (now division I believe) because they are 'just another psychic' albeit one with the ability to specialize in a couple areas, or to be wide spectrum generalists.
They will be put into those slots where their powers are of most use.
Then, those who once in the military and under real world pressure show that they are reliable, who have the ability to maintain their cool, and show their loyalty... those MMs will be promoted or tapped for officer school and the like. Those that don't... will either be relegated to support roles... or shot.

Similarly specialists assigned to units to fulfil a specific role... do not need to be officers because they are not giving themselves orders... they are there to do a specific job already and as such already have their orders.
If you assign a couple of MMs with neutralization, divination, and interrogation powers to an MP unit... you don't need them to be officers so they can order themselves to do the job of an MP. Their captain or Lieutenant can do that. They dont need to be an officer to give themselves the order to use their powers... that is part of their job they already know to use their powers as needed. They are not pokemon that have to be told "Mind Melter....Telepathy!" they can do that on their own initiative... again, with out being an officer.

[dreicunan]

The book is quite clear that you either have powers or you don't. No amount of training will give you powers.
It is also quite clear that education is not a required function of becoming a mind melter... as you can not train for psionics. What they DO do is spend a lot of time learning how to use their powers best.

I'd submit that the book is quite clear that you have psychic potential or not. As I've cited previously, it is quite clear that training can most definitely affect the actual powers that are developed.

Allow me to highlight again the Gladiator OCC, which allows a character to be a "master psychic, but untrained and underdeveloped in the use of psionic abilities." (Mercenary Adventures p. 23) I'd also again highlight WB12, p. 145, where it makes clear that training can turn a potential Mind Melter into a psi-slayer, psi-tech, psi-nullifier, or other area. If the actual development of powers were not impacted by training, that wouldn't be possible. It also mentions that the early training allows someone with psychic potential to develop more quickly and with a greater range of power and control. A greater range of lower could mean that they might be making minors into majors and majors into masters. If it doesn't mean that, then I struggle to see what it would mean, as the training bonuses don't appear to reflect a greater range of power.

[eliakon]

The book is quite clear that you either have powers or you don't. No amount of training will give you powers.
It is also quite clear that education is not a required function of becoming a mind melter... as you can not train for psionics. What they DO do is spend a lot of time learning how to use their powers best.

I'd submit that the book is quite clear that you have psychic potential or not. As I've cited previously, it is quite clear that training can most definitely affect the actual powers that are developed.

Allow me to highlight again the Gladiator OCC, which allows a character to be a "master psychic, but untrained and underdeveloped in the use of psionic abilities." (Mercenary Adventures p. 23) I'd also again highlight WB12, p. 145, where it makes clear that training can turn a potential Mind Melter into a psi-slayer, psi-tech, psi-nullifier, or other area. If the actual development of powers were not impacted by training, that wouldn't be possible. It also mentions that the early training allows someone with psychic potential to develop more quickly and with a greater range of power and control. A greater range of lower could mean that they might be making minors into majors and majors into masters. If it doesn't mean that, then I struggle to see what it would mean, as the training bonuses don't appear to reflect a greater range of power.

And all of that still supports my premise
My premise is that you do not 'train' to become a Mind Melter. You either have that level of psionic ability or you do not.
You can train yourself to hone and refine that talent yes
You can train yourself to reshape that talent into something else yes.
But at the end of the day, you do not have to go to school to become a Mind Melter... because it is perfectly possible to be a Mind Melter with out having access to schools and training.

[Shark_Force]

again, numerous OCCs state that mind melters require training. the mind melter calls it out specifically: if you are a mind melter, you have spent time training your psychic powers. whether that is in a school or not is irrelevant; i don't need to go to a formal school to know how to play a piano, but that doesn't somehow mean that i must be walking around one day and miraculously manifest the ability to play the piano without any training. training does not have to mean you spend time in a school, and there is nothing that says that mind melters cannot self-train, but it is quite clear that they do, in fact train, as it is a stated part of being a mind melter that they have spent time training their powers instead of their skills. having trained (whether you trained yourself or someone else did) is an explicit part of being a mind melter. if you haven't trained your psionic powers one way or another, you are not a mind melter, just like someone who does not have the class features of a cyber-knight is not a cyber-knight.

as to how i can tell what kind of education the CS elite receive... well, it's right in the books. take a look for yourself. the CS military are all defined as CS elites (even the grunts, that's right in their class descriptive text as well), and the officers are therefore the elites of the elites.

when you look at the OCCs of CS officers, what kind of education have they received based on the skills they have? do you see a lot of literature, or arts, or philosophy in there? or do you see WPs and physical skills and military skills? when you look at their related skills, where are the bonuses? their technical officers are literally unable to learn any science skills that aren't part of their program, and barely get any OCC related skills at all for that matter, and only 2 categories get any bonuses at all: military and communications.

then you look further, at what sorts of materials are banned in the CS. no history, no literature, nothing that might even remotely go against what the government teaches. we know exactly what sorts of things the CS is against. you can scream all you want that there is no place in the books that specifically says that the CS doesn't have in-depth classes that boil down to "how to think like a rogue scholar", but the simple fact that they hate and destroy rogue scholars should tell you what they think of people who pursue the kind of education that will encourage you to think like a rogue scholar.

and i still haven't heard a remotely half decent explanation of what exactly a mind melter does well in a military organization apart from the exact same kind of stuff the CS military specialist does when assigned to field work. a medical specialist mind melter? don't make me laugh. the medical technology of rifts is amazing, particularly when you consider that you are far more likely to need a replacement arm when you're talking about MD combat than you are to need a cut healed.