Klingon Fleets?

[SilentP]

Something that started going around in my mind after watching the intro for Star Trek: Armada on Youtube (the Toral vs Martok fleets battle) made me wonder about how the Klingon military ships are owned/controlled.

We know that there is a central non-House aligned military within the Klingon Empire (the IDF I think), and IIRC there are vessels that are owned by Houses, mainly the more powerful ones, so here are my points of curiousity:

- In times of war against other nations, are the House vessels subsumed into the IDF completely without needing permission, or do Houses have to submit their vessels voluntarily?

- Even if the Houses do submit their vessels to a war effort, would they retain complete autonomy about what actions the ship perform, or do they have to submit to the central command of the IDF?

- In cases of inter-House wars or Civil Wars, how does the IDF figure into such conflicts?

Any thoughts would be welcome, and additional points of curiousity would also be interesting

[Deks]

The overall actions of Klingon ships belonging to different houses can reflect in one way or the other to outside powers.
They have a centralized governemnt apparently, but the amount of ships working for that government is ascertained how loyal each house is to the government in question.

We've seen two opposing houses fighting each other in TNG.
The Klingon empire as a whole can for example still denounce it's connections to any house that does something 'damaging' to external powers ... such as the Federation (if they want to retain good relations).
So one particular house is to blame in such a case and the government simply cuts it's ties (offocially) to it if it sees it's actions were damaging to the empire overall.
Otherwise, I do think they conform to the central government for the most part but each house retains autonomy in what it'd ships do as long as it's not damaging to the Empire.

[Tanagra]

I always thought of it as similar to medieval systems, where there is no standing army but the nobles contribute themselves and their troops to collectively create a royal army for the monarch in times of war.

[mirandafave]

That fits rather well with the Klingon culture and why traditionally honour was so esteemed. If a a warrior or house was more honourable they might attract more support for their House and its causes.

[Tanagra]

Yeah and again ties into the medieval concept... nobles would be trying to get in the monarch's good books (unless they opposed them for whatever reason) just because it ultimately made them more powerful. Klingons want their House to be regarded highly by the High Council, and surely if the Empire was in a state of war then it would be considered extremely dishonourable to not contribute your House's forces to the KDF.

[C.E. Evans]

And there also has to be sizeable number of Klingon ships dedicated to maintaining control over the individual worlds, systems, and entire sectors that have been presumably annexed (either by force or by coercion) into the Empire as well...

[EmperorTiberius]

Tanagra wrote:

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I always thought of it as similar to medieval systems, where there is no standing army but the nobles contribute themselves and their troops to collectively create a royal army for the monarch in times of war.

I think so too. The IDF is made up of houses whose members man the ships and they're responsible for certain areas of the Empire. They might own some ships, others might be "rented" from the govt.

Personally, I like the idea of space vikings/medieval Japanese/mongols. It's something different. It worked very well for the SFC3 game.

[MeanJoePhaser]

So in TNG/DS9/VOY era are the really crappy Houses the ones still fielding TMP-era D-7's?

"House of Kl'Rarrt got another Attack Cruiser...and here were are, crawling through space at warp 7 in a 200 year old rustbucket like some pa'taks."

[SilentP]

I could easily imagine the Houses with lesser reknown having only the wealth to afford the old D-7s and to maintain, especially knowing the Klingon's penchant for keeping old designs running for decades, if not centuries. More powerful Houses may keep old ones that earned them much honour, so keep them around as 'heirlooms.'

[captcalhoun]

it's the KDF. the IDF is Israel's Defence Force...

[SilentP]

I'm trying to remember what Klingon agency using 'I', which presumably stands for Imperial...

[Kaijufan]

On a somewhat releated note, I hope that when we get another TV series the various alien fleets have a few more ship designs then they do in TNG/DS9.

I understand that they were limited by the number of models they could build and 2-3 was usually enough (or just 1 for the Romulans ) and I'm not expecting as many ships as Starfleet has, but maybe 2-3 new ship designs (along with the old ones) per race would be nice.

[Tanagra]

captcalhoun wrote:

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it's the KDF. the IDF is Israel's Defence Force...

*edits*

[Myasishchev]

captcalhoun wrote:

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it's the KDF. the IDF is Israel's Defence Force...

I really liked the episode where the Klingons derailed the Romulans' antimatter power program with a unilateral, surgical strike on the experimental reactor, which earned the ire of Jean-Luc Picard for some reason.

I think the notion that the Klingons maintain essentially a feudal-era military organization despite the technology to create perhaps the second most powerful space fleet in Alpha Quadrant is an interesting one, to be sure, and explains the chronic instability in the Klingon Empire.

It occurs to me that it's probably similar to the organization in the Ferengi Alliance, which in all likelihood also maintains privately-held military forces, albeit ones controlled by publically-traded PMCs instead of a hereditary nobility.

[SilentP]

Myasishchev wrote:

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I think the notion that the Klingons maintain essentially a feudal-era military organization despite the technology to create perhaps the second most powerful space fleet in Alpha Quadrant is an interesting one, to be sure, and explains the chronic instability in the Klingon Empire.

It certainly paints a picture that it takes a fair bit of political saavy on the part of any ruling Chancellor to get a unified response to go to arms (or not to go to arms, as the case may be) in different scenarios, the Klingon penchant for warmongering aside. Shows that the Klingons aren't as one-dimensional as some people on the board make them out to be.