Positions Guide
First Officer (Executive Officer)
General
First officers are designed to augment the captain in all the work that they do. A FO will have several things that they are to be responsible for.
A FO should make sure that they know all the duties of everyone on the crew. They should make sure that the crew are able to conduct their duties. If any of the crew have problems with anything then the first officer should either try to sort it out or direct the problem on to someone who is able to solve it. This is especially important for new crew members who the first officer should welcome to the ship, and guide them through what their duties are.
The FO needs to keep track on the CO. If there are any problems such as duties that the CO is not doing then the FO should inform the commanding officer of their ship. If the duties are still not being done, and they are critical to the operation of the ship then the FO should see about completing the tasks themselves or tell their squadron commander and get them to do something about it.
The FO needs to make sure that they have the able to take over from their captain when the CO is not available for a short time. They need to try to carry on the simming and make new simmers welcome. They will also need to keep note on who is active on your ship and talk with your captain about either getting them active or replaced.
In addition to their duties of assisting the CO, the First Officer should also keep track of all the details of the sims so far and produce a condensed log, to be used as a sort of "Story so far…" This job can be given to another crew member should the CO or FO want to do so.
Simming
It may be hard to sim the role of a first officer. They don't appear to do that much when you first look at things. They do not have a specialist position so you cannot say exactly what they do. This means that you should look to spread out your simming areas when general. All First Officers were initially department heads so you might want to stay with what you already know. When doing this be very careful not to tread on the toes of the current department head and take away their role in simming from them.
Don't micromanage. The FO doesn't need to do everything, and quite often they can't. Think of them as a Jack of all Trades. They will be able to have a tinker with the screwdriver in engineering, but you would rather have the chief engineer do that. They can pilot a shuttle craft, but if you need really good flying then the navigations officer would be your first bet. If a crew member has a problem with their work then they could see the FO, but the counsellor may be more affective if it is a personnel problem. They could be involved in negotiations but the captain would do this more often. At the same time, they should not be able to solve all the problems that a ship might be facing.
A first officer should be able to characterise if they are to be a good first officer. They should try to build up relationships with the rest of the crew. The Captain will frequently appear to be a remote person, but the FO must be accessible to everyone on the ship from each department head to the lowest new officer.
First Officers will frequently lead away teams. This is where you get to be really involved, leading the direction that the sim takes, but never sway away from the principles set out by the captain, and where opportunities arise for the sim to change direction, give the captain a chance to make sure that it stays on one track.
The first duty of a first officer is to protect their captain. The only exception to this is if a captain wants to go down with the ship. Then you make sure all the crew get to safety, then try to persuade the captain into leaving. If that fails you beam them off against their consent or knock them unconscious and carry them. off. Starfleet doesn't like to lose personnel, but they would rather have an FO die saving their captain than lose a top quality commanding officer.
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