USS Northwood

There are regular games each weekend on the Artemis Teamspeak server.

Location: Artemis.teamspeak3.com
Password: Artemis1

People use the Friday Night Flights thread, Saturday Night Flights thread, Sunday Night Flights thread and Game On? thread to say when they are online and organise games. These are casual games and anyone is welcome to come along and play.

I also run an RP community that you are welcome to join. We follow standard procedures and protocols, have a full rank structure and promotions, train together, and play in role as Officers of the TSN. All the details can be found on the wiki. The RP group runs every Saturday night for about 3 hours, from 8:30pm UTC onwards. Full details of the RP community can be found in the RP Community Handbook, created for new members and current players of the community.

I love the Rp idea, but the biggest consurn is that my entire team would be split out among other ships, with some random jackhole (no offense) leading the show as we are expected to blindly follow. I would be willing to bring quite a few people into the fold, but We need a way to maintain our crew. We are willing to embrace your rules and regulations, we just request you give us our own ship.

Maybe comission the TSN Northwood? ;)

I am a member and this problem has come up several times as an issue. The fix Xavier made at the time was that you could run an academy vessel. None of your officer would get any official standing in the community however you would get your own vessel. This was never implemented as the other crew decided to just join the fold in the end.

The reason however that you wouldn't be allowed in as an intact vessel with full commission is that it would undermine the rank system. If you join and immediately are promoted people like me who have been working through the ranks and still have yet to reach captain (right now there is only one captain in the fleet with the next highest officer being a Lieutenant Commander) would e quite annoyed that someone else just got promoted past them. The other reason you can't be promoted that fast is that their are numerous protocols people need to learn that inhibit one from being able to take the captains chair.

However if you work at it your current captains could make the captains chair and while you may be split up I doubt you will be put under bad captains as Xavier has very particular views on how skilled a captain must be to take the chair. Plus with the skills you all developed I would bet that you could become captains rather quickly (meaning faster than average not like two weeks).

That is my take on the situation however it would be best if you contacted Xavier as he is the official captain of the fleet as well as the founder.

I did this on my phone so I apologize for the errors.

As stated by Captain above, this has been something that has come up before particularly when the RP was first forming. There were a couple of RP crews that had formed around a similar time, and I was contacted by members about joining the RP Community. They however wanted to join as commissioned officer, retaining their ranks which they had used aboard their own RP crew. I refused this however, as I wanted to develop a system in which rank had to be truely earned, rather than just a title given to someone fulfilling a particular role.

A principle on which the RP Community was founded upon was that of using a proper rank system, in which all members would progress through based on a skill and ability. At this time, there are well developed criteria for each officer rank, and only when an officer fulfils those criteria can they advance. An officer must have served in their rank for a period of time before they can be advanced (you cannot be promoted to Lieutenant in week one, then promoted to Lieutenant-Commander the week after). This ensure that all higher ranking officers have extensive experience in their roles before they advance, as well as a higher set of skills and knowledge. To gain the next rank is not just a matter of "3 weeks in, your a Lieutenant now," or "you have completed 20 missions, now you have the rank of Commander," rather, you have to meet very high standards and be recognised as meeting those standards by a senior officer.

As for making a command rank (Commander and Captain ranks) and being a ship captain, the standards are even harder to meet. I expect extremely high standards of all commanding officers, includng myself (I am sure that you can get references from others online about my ability as a Captain, both inside and outside the RP Community), and feel that this standards will ensure that those in command are more than capable.

As for your own crew, it will still be possible to play together by using Academy vessels. The idea behind them was developed for this specific purpose. An Academy vessel is one used primarily for training purposes, but can also be used to play with different groups of players and in different role. Aboard an Academy vessel, any officer can take on any role in order to develop their skills. There is no official crew assigned to an Academy vessel, so anyone may join or leave when they wish. In non-RP terms, they are "free-play" ships.

TSN vessels are the "official" ships. A TSN vessel will have an assigned crew and each officer will work in a particular role. Only full officers may crew a TSN ship (Ensign and above) and only an officer holding a command rank may captain a TSN vessel. Crew will be able to apply to be assigned to a vessel (so if you don't want to serve under a particular captain, you dont have to). In non-RP terms, these ships are the "storyline" ships. They are the ones that take part in story campaigns and can develop a history of their own. They are also the ships where you can develop your own command experience and serve as a first officer in order to advance to a command role yourself (learning the ropes as it were). In terms of promotion, your actions aboard a TSN vessel are the ones that really count (actions aboard Academy vessels only really count for Officer Cadets. Of course, you can still develop other skill areas aboard Academy vessels which may also be taken in to consideration when promotions occur).

If you have any questions, then please do ask.