Posted by Fleet Captain Adam W. (EGO) in Office of the President - Edict #5

Posted by Captain James Sinclair (Supervisor of Experiments) in Office of the President - Edict #5

Posted by Captain Katy Darrah (AFComm, Meridian Fleet) in Office of the President - Edict #5
Posted by… suppressed (2) by the Post Ghost! 👻
Edict #5
September 12, 2020

Some of you may have noticed that we have three ships in one fleet, six ships in another fleet, and some other number in the rest. Recent commissionings of new RP areas and decommissioning of old ones have left the fleets unbalanced and not allowed us to use our volunteers as effectively as possible with the limited time we all have available to contribute to the club’s government. With this in mind,

The USS Chimera is hereby relocated from the Infinite Fleet to the Pioneer Fleet.
The USS Viking is hereby relocated from the Infinite Fleet to the Meridian Fleet.
The USS Constellation is hereby relocated from the Infinite Fleet to the Black Fleet.

The Infinite Fleet is hereby decommissioned.

This brings the totals to a consistent six ships per fleet.

This will be effective immediately OOC, but in order to allow the COs time to notify their crews, TECH, please plan to complete these moves in approximately a week (on or around September 20, 2020).

Sarah
President

I believe this is a poor ideea, and certainly a poor one to not discuss before implementing. The guidelines Daniel wrote that are linked on the Command MOTD suggest that we should talk about cutting a fleet before doing it. Why didn’t we here?

I had questioned in Command why the latest ship we created was placed in the Foremost Fleet and not the Infinite Fleet. I eventually figured out that was done to set up this move and I figured my question wasn’t answered because no one wanted to admit that a problem of imbalance was intentionally being created so that it could be solved later.

This move is a repeat of one you did in 2007. Only in 2007, from what I could tell, there was a reason for it. Now it’s been clearly indicated in Command that we have a lot more people wanting to be FComm than we have spots for that, and we have more people wanting to be AFComm than spots for that.

While I’m sure it’s possible for an FComm to oversee six ships, I’d think they could all do a better job if they don’t have 20% added to their load. If we didn’t have enough qualified volunteers to run the fleets, I would understand doing this. But I believe we actually do.

I don’t get why we’re doing this and I’m not a fan of how we’re doing this.

Adam W.

I believe it’s because there’s (soon to be) 3 different Alt-RPGs being added to fleets. Having 3 of those in one fleet would make it seem like Infinite Fleet was “the Alt-Fleet” so a rebalancing was needed. Plus, we lost SB Magellan, and I think another ship, last term, which dropped Inf Fleet to 3 ships. It’s easier to rebalance than to continue providing an FComm and AFComm for a fleet of 3 ships. Plus, we’re currently (still, I believe) having issues with member retention, which means that…do we really need 5 fleets, one of which is 6 ships, 3 are 5 ships, and one is…3 ships, 2 of which are/will be Alt-RPGs.

Each fleet needs to have at least one standard ship, which would still be the case in the Infinite Fleet. The imbalance problem you’re talking about was created by putting the Leviathan in the Foremost Fleet instead of the Infinite Fleet. The problem was created so it could be solved by this edict. Better would be to have four fleets with five ships and one fleet with four ships. As it is, what happens if we decide to add one more ship? I don’t think that’s very unlikely. And then we either would need to have seven ships in one fleet or undo this edict.

^^^ This. We now have no breathing room to consider adding another ship. And why would we block ourselves from doing that? If a group of members is feeling creative and wants to put together a ship and go through the commissioning process, why shouldn’t we let them? Leaving no where for the ship to go immediately stifles that idea unless we’re just going to undo all this shuffling. While it’s a seemingly arbitrary thing to decommission a fleet, moving ships about is not. I’d be pretty pissed off as a CO if people just up and decided to move my ship somewhere and then a little while later moved it again.

A command discussion would have allowed people to raise their concerns before this edict and for that reason alone I think it was a poor choice to just impose this plan on the club.

~Linds

I don’t think this is a problem, tbh, until we either get a huge surge in membership and need to recommission a fleet, or we run into any issues with FComms managing the new numbers, which we need time to see.

Katy

I will echo Adam’s position in that I think this something that should have been discussed prior. Eliminating an entire fleet is a drastic move, and cuts back on FComm positions which we already have more interest in than we have spots.

This is a heavy-handed action that really should have been discussed prior. Especially after all of the past talk around rebuilding ‘fleet identity’.

James Sinclair

Someone who hasn’t commented on here to this point asked me about the possibility of EGO vetoing this - which isn’t something EGO can do. There’s opposition to this move, which hasn’t had a chance to have a voice. I suggest putting a hold on this until we can determine it’s the best course of action.

I do want to acknowledge that when I suggested my question about the Leviathan being placed in the Foremost Fleet because we didn’t want to admit what was going to happen that it doesn’t necessarily mean that is the only explanation for the lack of a response.

Adam W.