Positions Guide
Commanding Officer (Captain)
Logistics
All ships need a message board, and a mailing list, which can be linked to S47. The mailing list for any ship will be set up by the command staff, but the message board is the responsibility of the ship's captain to set up and maintain. A website is not essential for each ship but it is recommended. Both the message board and the mailing list are the responsibility of the captain to keep up to date, but these may be delegated to crewmembers if they want to help.
The personnel officer automatically places new crew on the mailing list. They are only removed if they specifically request it, or should their captain want to remove them once they have left the ship.
If there are any errors in the crew manifests, or people not on a mailing list, it is the job of a captain to inform the personnel officer and make sure that any mistakes are rectified.
Captains must report to their Squadron commander each week and inform them of people not active in the sim, officers on leave and what they are currently doing in the sim. It will also be a good idea to send them an updated version of their mission logs. You should do this as a matter of course at the end of each mission.
Captains can make requests for crew to be assigned to their ship. It is also possible for a captain to set up a new position on his ship, but they are the person who has to look for someone to fill that spot. Positions that will be considered are things such as mission specialist (for people who might not be very active), pilot (for both shuttles and attack craft) and transporter chief. Other positions will also be considered. Any application to set up a position such as this on board a ship should be sent to the personnel officer. They will either turn down the request or pass it on to the command staff to be considered. In most cases it will be accepted as long as the position is one that it is possible to sim and a ship does not have too many of these extra positions already
When a ship has no first officer, it is the job of the captain to find an officer to fill this position. The main criteria should be that the candidate be of Lt-cmdr in rank or higher. If the captain does not know of anyone whom they would like to fill the position of FO then they should contact the personnel officer who will send a list of candidates who have shown interest in becoming first officers. The command staff reserves the right to veto any choice that is make. Once a prospected FO has been selected, the captain should tell the personnel officer, who will then contact that officer to ask if they want the position, unless the captain or FO has already indicated that they would like the position. Once conformation has been received, the PO will add the new first officer to the list, place them on the ship's mailing list and arrange for them to be added to the cofo mailing list.
Make sure that your crew do not start insulting each other. Try to limit this kind of this and enforce discipline when it comes to this area. Section 47 is supposed to be a fun place, so please try to make sure that it stays that way. Indecent language from parties on your ship can be a cause for disciplinatary action for the parties involved and it is not treated very will when it is the captain of a ship who is taking an active part in such an exchange.
Tell the Keeper of the Logs when a mission has been completed or reached an end point.
New Officers
Send them a welcome message, or an e-mail
Tell them what you want might want them to make available for the ship. Maybe a bit of a description of their character and give some background story. Please make sure that they have completed their bios.
Inform them of their responsibilities
Congratulate people each time they are awarded promotions or commendations.
Simming
The captain must run and guide his ship's sim
They must guide the story line and try to get his crew to take part.
A captain must make sure that hero syndrome does not occur and everything does not get solved in one go in an unrealistic fashion.
No ships will have any modifications done to them that would make them unrealistically. Any ship on which this happens on may find that it loses its upgrade.
You ship has more than just nine officers on it. You may wish to set up a few npc (non-player characters), on your ship. Make them available to the crew to add to their stories and write small bios on them. These do not need to be as in depth as the normal characters bios, but they will be a welcome addition to your crew. It is recommended that you create at least a few officers for your ship. Assistant officers for each of the main 7 positions might be warranted, since these can be used to respond when a player is not available to answer with their own character. Your officers may also want to create a few npcs for their department. Encourage them to do this. Remember that there is a whole raft on non-officer ranks which can be filled should you want them to.
Planning and Running a Sim
There are several different types of sim that a captain can run, and they should be rotated so that there is some variation. The ship could be sent to investigate several different missions. These can include search and rescue, evacuations, infiltration and espionage, battles, war games, scientific evaluations, exploration, delivery of goods, delivery of personnel, sudden problems or anything else that your mind can come up with. A small explanation of what might be involved in any of the above missions can be found below. Please remember that these are just basic ideas and can be changed, embellished upon or completely re-written for a mission. The only limitation is your imagination. Don't be afraid to let your crew dictate the path of a mission. If they do something unexpected, try to write it into your plan or maybe follow their lead. It is very rare that a mission will end in the exact way that you had originally planned it to.
| Mission Type |
Description and possible paths to develop |
| Search and Rescue |
A search and rescue mission is very versatile because it can later develop into almost anything. The basic premise is that your ship goes to rescue another ship in distress. This might be because of orders from Starfleet or through a distress message that has been transmitted. The reason that the ship is in trouble could be because of many things. The ship could have been under attack, in which case your ship might also be attacked later on. There could have been a saboteur. Maybe an accident occurred, in which case your security officer might still be sent to look for saboteurs but will find nothing. It could be the result of an experiment that has gone wrong. The crew might have caught an illness, which could affect your people giving your medical or science staff something to investigate. |
| Evacuation |
Similar to search and rescue but with a planet or space station instead of a ship. Again it might be introduced with a planetary distress call or orders from Starfleet. Once at the mission there are several done. You might need to pick up the entire population of the planet, or maybe just the affected area and move them. This is only really an option for the larger ships. Considering a Defiant class ship might have trouble picking up more than 80 people you might want to look at other solutions. What is the cause of the problem? Is there an incoming asteroid which threatens to destroy the planet? Maybe there is unusual volcanic activity in the area and you need to come up with a situation for this problem. These might appear to be natural problems but maybe there is someone behind all these things and you need to discover these facts and then solve them. |
| Battles |
This is frequently the fall back for captains when they run out of ideas. They are generally micro-managed by the captain who will run the sim and everyone else will react to what happens. This sort of control by one person should be avoided where possible so try to get people to do things which have a result in some way or another. Battles are fine when mixed with other scenarios as a way of providing relief although be careful not to use them too much. |
| Exploration |
Exploration missions frequently are the starting point for other missions. Things might crop up. Exploring a place will frequently give the crew a pointer for the way that things might go or it could provide them with an opportunity to move the story in the direction that they want to go. Things generally go slowly with explorations but you must be ready to increase the speed when you think that the time is right to do something, or be ready to follow the lead that has been set by someone. |
| Emergencies |
Frequently a road that will be taken if you start of down the exploration route. It will give your science and navigation officers something to get into. Maybe you are unexpectedly sucked into a wormhole or a blackhole that will cause an immediate problem for your ship. The only real problem with these missions is that you will frequently be moving the story along slowly and the sudden change of pace could leave people behind if they are not expecting it. |
| Infiltration and Espionage |
Sometimes Starfleet needs people to go undercover and solve its problems. This mission might be started from an order from Starfleet, or it could be the result of another mission, where the only way that answers are available is to go undercover. This scenario will normally involve just a few of the crewmembers, preferably those who post frequently. Your crew may require cosmetic surgery to fit in with the local crowds, or maybe they will beam in as a stealth assault team. This second situation is more appropriate if you already have information about a target, were-as a disguise will be more important if you are searching for information. This story can be in several parts. First there is getting to the target. If you are going undercover on a Federation world where it is not unlikely that your ship would be seen then this is no problem. If you are going to the Klingon homeworld then one of the Federation's strongest warships might not be very discreet and people might think that you were up to something so security will be very tight. You would need a cover reason to get around this; such as you were to attend an important convention. Other worlds will need other excuses. If you go to Ferengina you will need to have lots of cargo to trade, which would be unusual for a Federation ship. Maybe the excuse of looking for emergency supplies for a nearby colony would do, but your time around the planet would be limited. Other planets would be off-limits without some form of stealth technology. A visit to Romulus might even start with your crew on passengers on a trading ship!
The second part will be the away mission itself, with your operatives reporting on how things are going. A secondary story might be used for the rest of the ship during this time so that everyone is kept active. Maybe the ship will have to leave the planet to avoid rousing suspicion. Maybe some new fact will be discovered by the away team which the rest of the crew can investigate. The final part of the mission will be either an escape from the planet, or how the information is used.
These sort of missions can be hard to achieve and frequently require close co-operation between several crewmembers to get them working properly. |
| Delivery of Personnel |
There might be several reasons for this. You might have picked up a strange passenger who will later cause a few problems, or you could be ferrying an important officer to a location who will end up giving you new orders at a later time. You may be transporting a scientist who has new technology to test out, and new technology will very rarely work perfectly on the first attempt. It is also likely that they will be a target to major powers or maybe just people with a personal vendetta will be out to discredit their work which might cause a few extra problems.Another case might be that you are transporting an important spy or diplomat who needs to get to their target undercover. This might result in having to sneak through enemy territories, maybe masking your ship's signal or by going through treacherous areas where your ship could easily be lost or damaged. |
| Delivery of Goods |
What might appear to be an unusual mission for a starship to do is actually fairly common in the Star Trek universe. You might find yourself with orders to transfer a highly poisonous cargo from a planet who wants to dispose off it. Maybe it will be a precious material or something that could be used to make weapons and would attract people who want to take the cargo from you. These missions can be fairly dull if you do not have a few role-players who can be descriptive. Things that need to be done can include preparation for the cargo, adding security and things like that. The middle of the mission might include the sudden disappearance of the cargo, an attack on the ship or a switch to the emergency scenario due to a problem with the cargo. Now might also be the time to add a second story. There might be a time limit on this cargo. Maybe it is medical aid and you do not have long to get to its destination when something happens that will cause you to be delayed. Some of your crew could work on extending the time you have while others would be better suited to solving the problem that you might have encountered. The final part of your mission might include the solution to the problem or the retrieval of the cargo and its safe delivery. |
Points to Remember
Captains do all the work and get none of the fun. You have to run a ship, take care of everyone on it, work out conflicting story lines and try to keep people active. Worst of all, the captain very rarely gets to go on an away mission and take part in the fun first hand. Despite all these apparent problems it can still be a very fulfilling experience commanding a ship and seeing people working together to form a story.
Bad guys need some motivation. If you are in a mission where there is some sort of opposing force, it might help for you to work out some sort of basic motivation for them at the start and to help them evolve throughout the mission. Remember that most people do not do things just for the sake of doing them but for a personal gain. Write up some sort of bio, parts of which might be unveiled by the crew as the mission progresses. You don't always need to catch the culprits. You may end up with nothing more than suspicions about something but nothing concrete enough to forward the mission It might be a good time to move on to something new and bring them back at a later time. Remember not to keep using the same enemy mission after mission. It might get repetitive and Starfleet doesn't like her captains to go off on vendettas.
Try to keep people active if you can. Remember that some people will have more to do than others on a mission. Try to avoid doing things where the counsellor will have nothing to do for months on end. Focus on giving your good simmers the ability to do things. They may not even need prompting from you. If they seem to be doing something then maybe you should go with them and let them experiment a bit. The weaker simmers on your ship will need help so try to provide them with plenty of chances to say something, even if it isn't very important to the story.
Plot isn't the only thing there is in a story. Encourage your crew to explore their characters. Let them make little points about their characters so that the other members of your crew can learn about them. There is very little fun to be had in purely story based sims. Try to get some emotion in there at times. There is no point in having a bunch of automatons on a ship who all act like robots and always seem to be off duty. Use things like the holodeck, recreation time and shore leave to get some background story going.
Ships do not have to be on missions all the time. Sometimes a ship might spend a short time docked at a space station or in orbit around a planet. Maybe something could happen there. There will be basic duties for the crew to do, but they can also be allowed much freer reign than they might normally get during a mission.
Try to get your crew to make regular reports from their departments. That way you can see if they are still active even when they might not have much to do in a sim, and they can use these reports to create something that might get them involved in the role-play
Finally, remember that this is supposed to be fun for everyone. Give your officers some free room to manoeuvre and see what they can do with it. Hopefully they will help to improve the story or point you towards a new story line.
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