STF

Quick Guide to Sorting a Roster

Posted Jan. 23, 2020, 9:07 a.m. by Gene Gibbs

Posted by Vice Admiral Daniel Lerner (Personnel Director, EGO) in Quick Guide to Sorting a Roster
(Feel free to distribute this post to the COs and XOs that don’t check Command.)

It’s been a while since I last wrote about this - probably back when we first switched to Exodus. However, given how some of the rosters have been sorted lately (which I’ve been noticing as Personnel Director), I thought a refresher might help.

The ship admin menus have a very powerful tool: the “Sort” column on the left hand side of the roster table. When used properly, you can do some very interesting things with your roster other than the default. When not used properly, you can end up creating a lot of unnecessary work for a ship’s CO and XO.

I’ll show examples of how to do the two most common ways of sorting a roster at the end of this note, as well as probably the worst way to sort a roster. First, though, I thought I should explain how it actually works. The sort letters sort everybody in order of the letter you assign to that position (A positions, B positions, etc). Within each Sort Letter, Exodus will sort those ship positions by rank, with the rank Gamemaster at the bottom. So if the entire roster was all sorted in “A”, Exodus will just automatically sort the entire roster by rank.

If you want a very traditional roster (CO, XO, CNS, DHs, JOs, GM), then you would just keep everyone in “A”. Whenever a new player was added to the ship, Exodus will just automatically place that position in the appropriate place on the roster by rank. You would only notice a problem if you have an unusual set up where a JO has a higher rank than the DH, or if someone on the ship has a higher rank than the CO, in which case you would need to do some grouping by Sort Letters.

If you want a department-based roster (CO, XO, CNS, Dept 1, Dept 2, Dept 3, Dept 4, GM), you would assign “A” to your CO, XO and CNS, “B” to Dept 1, “C” to Dept 2, “D” to Dept 3, “E” to Dept 4, and “F” (or “Z”) to the GM. Within each department, Exodus will automatically have the DH before the JOs because it will sort the departments by rank. When a new player joins the ships, just assign them the letter for their department. Important tip: with this set up you do not have to assign a separate letter for the department’s DH and the department’s JOs!

The worst way to sort a roster is assigning one letter per line on the roster (“A” to the CO, “B” to the XO, “C” to the CNS, “D” to the first DH and so on). Besides how time-consuming and unnecessary that kind of work is, every time a new member is added you will have to change the letters of every ship position that is lower than that person on the roster - which again is just make-work. So this is a method of sorting that should be avoided.

I hope this helps people with figuring out how to sort their rosters effectively and in such a way as to avoid too much work every time there’s an addition or deletion to the roster. Always happy to answer questions in Discord for the best ways to administer your ship.

Daniel Lerner

Thank you Daniel. That is very helpful! .. Gene


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