Posted by Admiral Joe P (Librarian / TECH Chairman / VCmdt) in Proposal: FCOMM change

Posted by Captain Katy Darrah (AFComm, Meridian Fleet) in Proposal: FCOMM change

Posted by Vice Admiral Sarah Hemenway (President) in Proposal: FCOMM change
Posted by… suppressed (3) by the Post Ghost! 👻

Snipping all but the new additional text. I think this can be a positive change with some tweaking.

A Standard Ship may also be a ship which adds additional, fitting, themes to a ship, such as Marines, or carrying fighters.

What does the theme fit? I think this should say canon-fitting. Or canon-compliant. That’s what I think what we want a Standard Ship’s theme to fit with. I don’t actually know that carrying fighters is something we see in Star Trek canon and if it’s not and we go with my wording I’d drop that example.

Theme appropriateness is to be determined by the Executive, however, it should not detract from the ship being otherwise a Standard Ship.

As Thomas correctly pointed out, there’s no need to mention the Executive particularly in this sentence as this bylaw will be primarily enforced by those lower in the chain of command. Actually, I feel like this sentence does not add any content so I would eliminate it. Or perhaps better than eliminating this sentence would be to expand it to actually say what the ship would be detracted from doing. Like following canon, if that’s what the theme could potentially detract from.

In addition, these themes should not require a GM specialized in Alternative RPG environments.

This is good, but the wording here is circular. An Alt RPG ship is defined as a ship that deviates from a Standard Ship so we shouldn’t be mentioning Alt RPG ships in this section that defines what a Standard Ship is. As it is you’re saying a Standard Ship shouldn’t require a GM specialized in non-Standard Ships, which isn’t helpful.

Better would be to say “Standard Ships should not require a GM to be specialized in their theme.”

Adam W.

Points one and three you made are what I was trying to say, in a sense, I just suck at wording. As for point 2, I wasn’t sure where that’d fall, so I had said that to err on the side of caution.

Katy

How about something like this?

Commissioning and Maintenance of Standard Ships

…

All Standard Ships are required to maintain the following criteria:

• They must maintain an enjoyable environment that is beneficial for both the ship and the club as a whole.
• They must maintain a crew of reliable players, with the majority within the ship-specific AWOL guidelines.
• They must maintain, within reason, a full command and senior staff, defined as a Commanding Officer, an Executive Officer, a Gamemaster, a Chief Engineer, a Chief Medical Officer, a Chief Science Officer, and a Chief of Security. Any command-level vacancy must be filled within 14 days of its occurrence.
• They must manage to function as a Standard Ship successfully, with due regard to the current time period and technology level.

A Standard Ship may designate a theme when there is the intent to follow a particular theme over multiple sims. This theme must be canon-based and it may not violate any of the requirements for a Standard Ship listed above. Themes must be approved by the relevant Fleet Commander and be prominently featured in the ship profile and on the ship MOTD.

…

Sarah

I like it! It’s exactly what I was going for.

Katy

I see a small problem. I hate to be that Star Trek nerd, but someone is going to end up being that nerd if we go down this particular road, so I might as well do it now in the hopes of trying to find something that works for everybody.

This theme must be canon-based

The examples of themes that would be “canon-based” that have been provided so far are marines and fighter craft. These things have been traditionally allowed without issue around here, but there is absolutely no canonical basis for them at all in any traditionally accepted definition of Star Trek canon.

The most common definition of Star Trek canon is anything that happened in a live-action television show or feature film produced by Desilu/NBC/CBS/Viacom/Paramount/WhoeverOwnsTheRightsThisDecade. If you watch every single episode of Star Trek and every movie, you’ll find that there are not anything at all named “Marines” that appear anywhere in it, except for people who are actually part of the United States Marine Corps or are otherwise dressing the part (most notably, Q appears in a USMC uniform in Encounter at Farpoint for a brief rant). There are also no ships that act as the space-version of aircraft carriers, (or at least there weren’t until Discovery Season 2, but even then we don’t see any pilots in those things).

So I think if we add that phrase to the rule, we’re going to end up having the opposite effect of what is intended by adding it take place, once people forget the original case that prompted adding this rule. Because people will forget about everything we’re talking about in like… 5 years or so… then some new people will be here, they’ll read it, and then draw the conclusion that it means that space marines aren’t allowed, without even asking any of the original people who knew what that was about, who may or may not even be around to answer the questions that nobody thinks to ask.

So… if there’s some different way to do achieve the thing we want to achieve here without letting “canon-based” do all of the heavy lifting for us… we should find it. I don’t know what that is, otherwise I’d suggest it.

– Joe

In a way, that’s where I was going with the “theme must be fitting” line of my original draft. In that case, a carrier ship or Marine detachment could be fitting–while we have no basis in Trek, we have basis in real life, and with a few modifications could slip RL situations in as sims for those sorts of themes–but like you said, there’s no real basis for Marines in Trek (I can argue fighters, however we have no evidence of them being ship-side).

Another way it could be worded is to just drop the “theme must be canon-fitting” line all together and go with the line below, which kinda works on it’s own:

“A Standard Ship must not require a GM specialized in it’s theme” Credit to Adam for this line.

It allows themes such as Marines or Fighters, yet excludes themes like Horror, Comedy, etc, that are more broad and can’t easily be worked into a sim.

Katy