STF

Alt Ship Charter Proposal

Posted April 4, 2020, 11:33 a.m. by Captain James Sinclair (Supervisor of Experiments / FComm, Pioneer Fleet) (James Sinclair)

Posted by Admiral Joe P (Librarian / TECH Chairman) in Alt Ship Charter Proposal

Posted by Steve Johnson (President) in Alt Ship Charter Proposal

SNIP I’m going to handle this separately from Dan’s question.

Okay, I’m gonna play devil’s advocate here. Why not just start this ship up in X-Fleet? Isn’t the purpose of X-Fleet to test out alt-rpg ideas, and then if they work out, move them into the main fleet?

No.

I know this will almost definitely lead to us needing a future discussion the purpose of X-Fleet, so please keep the discussion focused on this one particular ship.

Thank you,
Steve

No, we could read what people who created X-Fleet said at the time, and then think a bit about that. The purpose of X-Fleet is written right into the bylaw (https://www.star-fleet.com/library/bookshelf/charters/charter-xfleet.html) that was passed to create it:

“The purpose of X-Fleet is to provide an area for members to try out new ideas under a set of clear and simple rules, with the ultimate aim of improving the club as a whole.”

Note that the words “alt-RPG” don’t appear there. Note that, the bylaw contains no provisions at all about moving X-Ships into the main fleet. It is extremely deliberate that there is no giant spacecrane in the bylaw and there is no talk about creating Alt-RPGs, because those things are explicitly not intended to be the purpose of X-Fleet. We already knew how to create Alt-RPGs before X-Fleet; we write up a charter that the President passes, and an FComm and the President appoint a CO. We also already knew how to test Alt-RPG ideas before X-Fleet; most charters have a trial period to make sure the ship actually works. We did not need X-Fleet to do these basic things (although X-Fleet is useful for doing those things during times where the political leadership in the club is unduly hostile to new alt-RPG concepts).

What we did not have before X-Fleet, was a way to test new ideas that are a lot more radical. The primary complaint about the club at the time X-Fleet was conceived was that we have too many rules and that those rules stifle creativity. It was difficult to try out new ideas and new rules because, the club was shrinking after reaching an all time membership high after the 2009 Star Trek movie, and so the default posture of pretty much every President was to say no to everything because resources were short. Plus, we had no concept for simply trying a new idea out, because every ship is assumed to be an essentially permanent institution until it gets cut, so trying something out that people don’t quite get is an extremely expensive proposition as far as the rest of the club is concerned. The point of having X-Fleet was to create a way for people who wanted to try new ideas out, to be able to do so without burdening the rest of the club with a new permanent, ongoing investment of resources from the rest of the organization. That’s why there’s a whole section in there that says explictly “X-Ships are exempt from FCOMM. Most Executive Departments and Assistants are exempt from providing support to X-Ship.” That’s the social contract for X-Fleet, right there.

To bring it back to the Dave’s proposal for a TOS era ship, it would not be appropriate to start this up in X-Fleet, because there is nothing to learn from doing so. Alternate Era RPGs are something this club has extensive experience with; we have two of them operating right now already and are fully aware of whether or not maintaining an RPG in a different show other than TNG is viable. There is nothing in the proposed charter or implicit in the proposal that is a radical new rule change (e.g. a significant deviation from the rules in FCOMM) or some concept that people generally don’t understand. Doing this as an X-Ship would not teach us anything at all that we don’t already know from having the Merrimack and the Chernov. To insist that the proposed TOS ship go through X-Fleet just because it is an Alt-RPG would simply add an additional step to acting on it that would be a needless waste of everybody’s time.

This is not a complicated proposal, and it doesn’t need to be made any more complicated by dragging X-Fleet into it. We already know everything we need to know to determine whether or not the proposed ship is worth it on the merits. The only real question is, will people be interested in it enough to keep it going after the initial interest wears off? That question is ably answered by the 90 day review present in the proposed charter.

Joe

As the Supervisor of Experiments, I want to chime in here. Joe is exactly right. This proposal would not fall into the XFleet purview as it stands currently. The Alt-RPG submission would be a Main Fleet ship if approved. That being said…

There has been much talk over my time in the club about working up a way for exactly this kind of thing to happen, that is, create a ship in XFleet and have a process to move it to the Main Fleet. I will start that discussion in a separate thread, because that is a wholly different discussion to the current ship submission.

James


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