The way it's worded implies he was an admiral at the time of the coup as well.

Ah ok...

For the record however i meant not a full admiral. Rather a rear admiral or somthing.

"Commander of the GTVA 6th fleet" is an officer of at least equal rank as Petrarch. He would have been a full-fledged admiral.

StratComm wrote:"Commander of the GTVA 6th fleet" is an officer of at least equal rank as Petrarch. He would have been a full-fledged admiral.

I dunno; how do you know it wasn't the 6th Logistics and Waste Management Fleet?

If he was head of an entire fleet, he was probably a Fleet Admiral or someone of higher rank than even plain Admiral.

It's likely Admirals Wolf, Shima, Petrarch, and Khafre were not "Admirals" in the official rank sense, but more likely Rear Admirals or Vice Admirals. They were just called Admiral because they were the only ones on the ship. Just like Lieutenant Commanders are sometimes called Commanders and whoever's in charge of a ship is called Captain no matter what rank they are.

I think Petrarch was almost certainly of equal ranking to Bosch, in fact, I think in the final cutscene he even names himself as a fleet commander?

After a thing like the Battle of Capella you really don't have to be a full Admiral to be a fleet commander... and there wasn't not much of a fleet left anyway...

Bosch was probably a rear admiral or vice admiral; full admirals end up commanding whole theaters, not fleets. Once he was in charge of the NTF, however, a self-promotion to full admiral would not have been remiss.

But Bosch was "commander of the 6th fleet" prior to starting the NTF. Being in charge of an entire fleet makes him a Fleet Admiral or someone of similarly higher rank. Not a lowly Rear Admiral.

Since it's generally assumed in Freespace 2 that one system contains one fleet, a fleet and theater are probably synonymous (unless you count all three NTF systems as one theater).

Since Petrarch is ordered around by 3rd Fleet HQ, he's obviously not a Fleet Admiral. Therefore, Bosch outranked him, both before and after starting the NTF.

In the final cutscenes, all Petrarch says about his rank is "This is Admiral Petrarch, signing off."

Koth was the Rear Admiral. >..>;

Goober5000 wrote:But Bosch was "commander of the 6th fleet" prior to starting the NTF. Being in charge of an entire fleet makes him a Fleet Admiral or someone of similarly higher rank. Not a lowly Rear Admiral.

Being in charge of a fleet, in the FS context, doesn't merit a full admiral's rank. Consider: the GTVA has how many fleets? Each of which consists of what essentially amounts to a glorified task force. 2 destroyers, maybe 5 corvettes, 15 at most cruisers. That's being generous. Simply put, that's not enough ships and people to justify a full admiral being given command, regardless of the "fleet" designation.

Goober5000 wrote:Since it's generally assumed in Freespace 2 that one system contains one fleet, a fleet and theater are probably synonymous (unless you count all three NTF systems as one theater).

It's difficult to determine what constitutes a theater in FS terms. The only references are to the Nebular Theater and civil war theaters, and the nebula was probably given a theater designation because multiple GTVA fleets were operating in it. (It may also be considerably larger then a normal system, though, considering a Sathanas couldn't get across it in one jump.)

Given the above, a theater's size would seem to vary, but be larger then one system under most circumstances.

Goober5000 wrote:Since Petrarch is ordered around by 3rd Fleet HQ, he's obviously not a Fleet Admiral.

That's not quite supported by the available evidence; more likely 3rd Fleet requested the Aquitaine's assistance. Also, since Petrarch has a fleet command of his own (6th), 3rd wouldn't be giving him orders.

Btw What i have understood from the modern command structure it would be likely that Petrarch didn't command the Aquitaine if he was the commanding officer of the 6th Fleet. Chain of command, he might command the captain of the ship in the fleet that was under his command but he couldn't give orders directly to the ship. There would be some other lower ranking officer commanding the ship (perhaps lower ranking Admiral). Petrarch might be located on that ship but he wouldn't be the ship's captain while being at the same time CO of the fleet.

Or the other way around, there might have been CO of the 6th fleet lurking somewhere in the background and Petrarch was only the captain of the Aquitane, but after Capella he got the other responsibilities...

Just my own opinion. End of derailing for my part.

ngtm1r wrote:

Goober5000 wrote:But Bosch was "commander of the 6th fleet" prior to starting the NTF. Being in charge of an entire fleet makes him a Fleet Admiral or someone of similarly higher rank. Not a lowly Rear Admiral.

Being in charge of a fleet, in the FS context, doesn't merit a full admiral's rank. Consider: the GTVA has how many fleets? Each of which consists of what essentially amounts to a glorified task force. 2 destroyers, maybe 5 corvettes, 15 at most cruisers. That's being generous. Simply put, that's not enough ships and people to justify a full admiral being given command, regardless of the "fleet" designation.

By that logic, the GTVA would have a maximum of 2-3 fleet admirals. That seems quite few in my opinion, given the fact that there is a war on.

ngtm1r wrote:

Goober5000 wrote:Since it's generally assumed in Freespace 2 that one system contains one fleet, a fleet and theater are probably synonymous (unless you count all three NTF systems as one theater).

It's difficult to determine what constitutes a theater in FS terms. The only references are to the Nebular Theater and civil war theaters, and the nebula was probably given a theater designation because multiple GTVA fleets were operating in it. (It may also be considerably larger then a normal system, though, considering a Sathanas couldn't get across it in one jump.)

Given the above, a theater's size would seem to vary, but be larger then one system under most circumstances.

Goober5000 wrote:Since Petrarch is ordered around by 3rd Fleet HQ, he's obviously not a Fleet Admiral.

That's not quite supported by the available evidence; more likely 3rd Fleet requested the Aquitaine's assistance. Also, since Petrarch has a fleet command of his own (6th), 3rd wouldn't be giving him orders.

The Aquitane is a part of the 3rd fleet. Bosch commanded the 6th. And at any rate, this whole "degree of admiralcy" issue is pretty moot. Rear, Vice, Full or Fleet, Bosch would have had high enough security clearance to know of the Colossus and any other secret projects before starting the NTF rebellion

ngtm1r wrote:Being in charge of a fleet, in the FS context, doesn't merit a full admiral's rank. Consider: the GTVA has how many fleets? Each of which consists of what essentially amounts to a glorified task force. 2 destroyers, maybe 5 corvettes, 15 at most cruisers. That's being generous. Simply put, that's not enough ships and people to justify a full admiral being given command, regardless of the "fleet" designation.

That's a rather big assumption and to be honest not one that I feel is supported by the facts. AFAIK we only have one statement in the entire game that shows how big a GTVA fleet actually is (indirectly admittedly).

36 hours ago, the NTF launched a full-scale offensive in Epsilon Pegasi, taking the GTVA 6th Fleet by surprise. Commanding his forces from the NTD Repulse, Rear Admiral Koth leads the rebel advance. With 75 percent of our forces in this system decimated, the regional death toll since the incursion now exceeds 80,000.

That seems to indicate that the 6th fleet alone has over 100,000 people in it. (assuming that Admiral Petrach doesn't know what decimated means of course. Otherwise we're talking about a million people ). That's a bigger fleet than the one you've suggested by a few tens of thousand people.

On top of that there are several other assumptions that need to be addressed.

1. The figures above completely ignore the possibility that the 6th fleet had any detatched units. For all we know a large portion of the 6th fleet might have been elsewhere. We know that the Aquitaine was repeatedly detatched from its fleet.

2. You've made a complete assumption about the dispensation of the ships within a fleet. I wouldn't say that we saw 2.5 times as many corvettes as destroyers in the game or 7.5 as many cruisers and even if we had that wouldn't mean we were getting a true representation of a fleet's makeup. That said I feel your numbers are somewhat cruiser heavy and destroyer light based on the number of NTF ships we see and hear about being destroyed.

3. Seeing as Command seems to give everyone orders it's pretty hard to tell what role an admiral plays. Even the colossus (presumably the flagship of it's battlegroup) takes orders from command. Due to the fact that an admiral is in constant contact with HQ I very much doubt that an admirals duties are anywhere near as independant as those of a real world one. Given that who knows what an admiral's duties are in the GTVA. Commanding a fleet certainly doesn't appear to be one though. All orders came from Command not Petrach. In fact I don't recall Petrach ever giving an order in-game.

All in all I say that Bosch is always presented as having been a full admiral. Nothing suggests that Bosch wasn't a full admiral when the coup started and he strikes me as a Gaddafi like figure who wouldn't have promoted himself even if he hadn't been a full admiral anyway. I see no reason to say that he can't have been full admiral.

Agreed on the Cruiser heavyness. The GTVA fleet is far more likely to be destroyer centric than cruiser centric because fighters and bombers seem to be the most powerful weapon in the GTVA arsenal, and they need destroyers to get them from system to system (I doubt they'd equip intersystem jump drives to ships that don't need them).