((Ok, so

cloned mercenaries have been a thing for only about 2, maybe 2.5 years now. Your father could not have been one.

And people all too frequently misuse the idea of 'Doctrine' when referring to combat.

"Military doctrine is a formal expression of military knowledge and thought...describing how the army thinks about fighting, not how to fight. As such it attempts to be definitive enough to guide military activity, yet versatile enough to accommodate a wide variety of situations."

Saying that rushing in with a 'full-on assault' is the Gallente way is as incorrect as saying always staying at long range and using only long-range weapons is the Caldari way, etc etc.

Space combat =/= ground combat. ))

While my combat style has been versatile, my grandfather (in real life) was a sniper in the defense of Stalingrad, a decorated war veteran with 26 confirmed kills in Stalingrad alone.

Our family has continued his legacy. My father had Spetsnaz training and fought in Afghanistan amongst the Red Army, and I myself fought with OMON in Chechnya, 2003. I was my squad's sniper specialist.

I have carried my skills over to FPS games. I continue to stalk the shadows, and snipe from afar, always taking point and dropping UP from vantage points.

I can also play assault, when need be. But if there are no snipers on the field, I wield my rifle with pride and authenticity of a real sniper.

There is nothing more pleasing than watching cloaked scouts and logis cry against me and send me hate mail when I peg them in the head. I apologize for my eyes being overpowered, thank you. And by the way, I kill with Militia Sniper Rifles. The only way to go--skill, not power ))

-Dmitri Chuikov, a.k.a. axINVICTUSxa, of the Federal Marines

Is it rude? I think not. When one is scarred from actual combat, is it wrong to drink vodka and let loose a little bit? To have seen your comrades die in front of your face at the hands of Taliban scum and know that you could have done fairly little to prevent it? Can you ever know that feeling of helplessness?

I can no longer atone for my mistakes during the Chechnyan War. I could only fight to defend the honor of the man who took that bullet for me, because he believed I had a future. I saw what I meant to him and fought that I might have a future.

More than half of my squad was wiped in Grozny. I had just taken vantage point over a small portion of Western Grozny, when some Chechnyans had leaped behind Lieutenant Kostov and three of my fellow soldiers and slit their necks. I had stopped one moment to check my magazine, and more than half of my squad had been wiped out. While they were gloating and spitting on my comrades' bodies, I took the oppurtunity and killed two of the four assassins, but nothing hurts more than knowing that if only you had moved quicker, if only you kept your eyes open wider, you might have seen those damned Terrorists...

Until you have experienced the gore and violence yourself, I don't know what to say. At times I've been lost for words. I don't think I could have recovered from depression, had not that missionary come along and give me hope when I lay in the hospital.

War is brutal. I cannot fight in real life war again, so the very least I can do is to prevent others from dying by taking out the enemy in front of me, albeit this is a video game, and it has no effect on real life whatsoever....but I do not ever want to have that feeling again. I want to protect my comrades, my nation, my people.

I learned from a famed swordsman in the Amarr empire, he taught me to use my skill for the reclamation. I learned my skills with weapons from combat experience.

I was first taught by the Imperial Guard back before I got the implant. However, I would attribute most my combat knowledge to be learned from my time after a promotion when I was made an officer of a squadron of Kamieras. They may not be of True Amarr blood, but they are by far the greatest example of combining swift and precise combat excellence with the grace and justice of spirituality of the faith. They planted the seed which stemmed into most of my combat style.


Faith is the only motivator needed, but a little friendly competition never hurt anything. Perhaps a medal for the most kills each month? Much like the Admiral's Prize is to the capsuleers of PIE.

This is getting interesting...

Negative. We Amarrians know life is too sacred to be killed purely for competition. Yes, even clone lives of an immortal soldier. If we shall run any form of competition on this matter, it will be in conjunction with our current efforts to wipe out Matari terrorists.

I am torn, as always, by my dual life treading the line 'twixt empires. But, by birthright I should rightly represent the Khanid.

Kador my friend, in this instance your division is surely deeper and more complex than mine. Petty squabbles and political intrigue between noble families has nothing on conflicts of identity!

I have no doubts as to whom my grandfather would want my allegiance to be given...
If we were back on speaking terms, that is. His distaste for my status as a clone is not something I have yet been able to overcome.

Hm.

Perhaps our situations are not so different after all.

Reading through this thread I see there are a lot of hard cases with broken homes and misspent youth in here. I suppose that is to be expected. Mercenary groups throughout history have consisted primarily of hard cases from the streets, and military vets who know no other life.

I am neither of those things. To be frank, if it was not for the implants I would never have willingly become a solder. It is not that I am afraid to die. It is more that I would prefer to continue living.

Reading over the stories of other Caldari I realize that I did not mention my mandatory service training. Believe me, it was not much of an oversight. The idea of making every young person serve is fine in theory, but in reality not every young person it fit to serve, and the system unofficially adapts to that reality.

They had pegged me as someone destined to design new weapons, not weald them. My mandatory service training was simply going through the motions. My instructors did not expect me to ever see combat, and neither did I. I did not really pay too much attention. I learned to march and look good in a uniform but that was about all that they really insisted on. If I had any musical talent I am sure they would have put me in a marching band. As it was I fulfilled my mandatory service guarding things that no one was really interested in stealing anyway.

I had long since completed my mandatory service when uncle Renier came to visit for the first time after his exile, telling me stories of his adventures fighting with and against pirates in Syndicate.

Of course the Company that drove him out took exception to RenierGÇÖs return, and they sent a number of large men to talk to him about it. Renier kindly extended to these men the hospitality of his crew, a crew he had picked up on freelance stations in Syndicate space. This induced the Company men to remain on their best behavior, but that obviously would not have been the end of it. Except that Renier had picked up some sensitive information relating to the CompanyGÇÖs operations when salvaging the remains of a cloaked industrial ship that had tried to slip through Syndicate space.

When Renier contacted Company management to discuss this information, they came to a mutual agreement that it would be best to stay out of each otherGÇÖs business. Renier had explained that there was no need for him or his associates to release this information to the competition, if the Company did not give them a reason. The Company concluded that continuing to take punitive action against Renier Gaden was no longer a financially sound course of action, so Renier was once more free to operate in Caldari space, as long has he took no further action against the Company.

So Renier was free to visit us, and on his visits he described his new perspective on conflict, explaining that battle was as much a mental endeavor as a physical. He was not the same man I had known as a child. He was confident and sure of himself. Facing death and rebirth had changed him, given him perspective. I, and my brother Crash, admired this, and we wanted to experience that sort of challenge ourselves, to pit our selves against worthy opponents. I had harbored hopes of becoming a Pod Pilot like my uncle, but then I heard that my Company had landed a contract to design the next generation of cognitive interface implants used in the creation of Immortal Solders. Since I was already working in R&D, it was not hard to get myself transferred to the project, and volunteer as a test subject.

My younger brother Crash was just going into his mandatory service training when Renier first returned to inspire us with his stories, so Crash took his training far more seriously than I had and as a result he got a lot more out of it. Six months after my first battle as an Immortal Solder, I had developed enough connections that I was able to pull some strings to insure that Crash received implants as well. CrashGÇÖs first experience as an Immortal Solder was not as one sided as mine. He went in with some training, and gave almost as good as he got.