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2023 State of the Federation Address
Fellow members of StarBase 118 PBEM RPG, welcome to the 2023 State of the Federation Address. 2023 marks a monumental year in-character in our game’s universe: the dawn of 2400! While technically the 25th century won’t begin until next year in 2401, the year of 2400 nonetheless is a noteworthy one for our characters as the repercussions of Picard season 1 are now fair game for our stories (the end of the synth ban chief among them).
Even without regard to the new canon being introduced by Picard and other shows, 2400 is also a reminder of how much lore for the StarBase 118 universe has been generated from you, your shipmates, and those before you. The USS Voyager returned home 22 years ago, and the Dominion War is now a quarter of a century ago. Most of our characters will be far more familiar with events of the 2380s and 2390s–which have primarily been established by StarBase 118 players after the last time we saw the 24th century (2379) in Star Trek: Nemesis. New technologies such as the quantum slipstream drive, the Warp XV engine, and advancements in holographic and communication technology have permitted us to expand Starfleet’s reach to the distant worlds of the Gamma and Delta Quadrants. As the venerable Klingon alliance with the Federation continues to be tested with occasional skirmishes with rogue houses, rising tensions emerge on the periphery from old powers like the Tholians and Sheliak.
In the “real world,” this past year has been marked by the unprecedented stability seen across ships and up to the fleet administrative level in both the Captains and Executive Councils. Quinn Reynolds earned the distinction of being the first person nominated and bestowed the rank of Admiral (in its current form as a four-star rank) in recognition of her years of service and dedication. Oddas Aria was promoted to Fleet Captain, and his development of the Project Aria sim management tool has become an essential resource for all ship command staff.
As we continue into this decade, we remain committed to our unending task of upholding our proud legacy as an innovative and inclusive RPG organization while also seeing what can be improved and streamlined to ensure that our players continue to enjoy the best Star Trek roleplaying experience and community available. I’d like to leave you with a quote from one of our members Raissa Moonsong (aka Mandy), who sadly passed away last year. Mandy was a dear friend and published author who gave the following advice to aspiring writers:
“I heard someone say that out there somewhere is a reader with a hole in their soul that is the shape of your book. You have that story inside you. Write it. Someone will love it as much as you do.”
– Madalain Ackley (1958-2022)
There’s a new century of stories that await our characters ahead. Let’s write them together!
-- Rich/Commodore Roshanara Rahman
A Look Back at 2022
As we reflect on the year that has passed in the blink of an eye, we take a look at all the good things that have happened this year, what challenges we've come into contact with as a community, and what we've done about it. Despite the difficulties posed by the pandemic and the various hurdles it brought over the last few years, our determination to support one another never wavered. In our virtual world, we found numerous ways to connect, whether that was through our Forums or the Discord server, Monthly Chats, Trivia, Annual Contests, or Watch-Alongs.
Let's take a closer look at what happened in 2022:
- The new year kicked off with a bang! January saw a wave of fresh-faced Academy Graduates join the ranks, along with the State of the Federation Address for 2022, and the introduction of Pennants, which recognized the efforts of whole crews towards achieving yearly goals. We started the year off strong, with a total of 1878 posts made in January alone - that's an average of 208 posts per ship. Not too shabby!
- February was all about celebrating Black History Month, Trek style. We held a dedicated Poll of the Month to mark the occasion.
- Come March, we honoured the Klingons with a Watch-Along that had everyone wielding Bat'leths with gusto. It was epic!
- Our Annual Graphic Contest was a big hit in 2022, with participants from all over the fleet submitting fantastic entries inspired by the theme of "Home". Kivik and Ikaia Wong from Amity Station were crowned winners for their digital and non-digital works. Congrats, guys!
- May brought exciting changes to the upcoming Award Ceremony, including new awards to nominate for and more opportunities for everyone to get involved.
- The Writing Challenge 2022 got everyone's creative juices flowing, with a mouth-watering prompt from the previous year's winner. Corliss Fortune from the USS Gorkon was crowned champion, with Ulasso from the USS 'Oumuamua coming in a close second.
- June saw the Annual Awards Ceremony 2022 roll out the red carpet for numerous well-deserved awards. We couldn't be prouder of our amazing crew members!
- July brought with it our Annual Fleetwide Trivia Contest, which was a hit with everyone. After a tough competition, Rachel Flores from the USS Constitution-B emerged victorious. Congrats, Rachel!
- August was a time to kick back and relax, but our post counts didn't slow down. We made a whopping 1921 posts over the month, averaging 213 per installation.
- In September, we got into the spooky spirit with the Halloween Avatar Contest's 12th Anniversary. Come October, Amity Outpost and StarBase 118 Ops came out clear winners. Well done, guys!
- Sadly, in November, we said goodbye to a dear friend and long-time member of our community, Mandy Ackley. Her beloved characters Raissa Moonsong and Jayla Petras touched the lives of many in the group, and she will be sorely missed.
- We also bid farewell to the USS Thor, USS Chin'toka, and USS Juneau, as their crews moved on to new digs on the USS 'Oumuamua, USS Astraeus, and Denali Station, respectively. Here's to new beginnings!
Simming
Due to the incredible work of Oddas Aria and the construction of "'Project Aria,"' a dedicated gateway built to track sims from every member and ship, including metrics and more, our ability to track the simming rate has become immensely simple.
In 2020, we began with a strong average of 208 but had a few hiccups during the year. 2021 saw a slight decline but still concluded with a positive average of 184. And while there were some ups and downs in 2022, we still finished up with a solid average of 183.
It's likely that these rates were impacted by recent events like the epidemic lingering in recent memory, but even with these hurdles, the overall trend is upward, and that's something to be happy about!
Applications, Training and Placements
Well, it looks like our Academy has been quite the popular choice among applicants! In 2020, we had a healthy number of 129 folks wanting to join us, and while that number may have taken a plunge in 2021, with 72 applicants, we're still proud to say that we're in high demand. This year, 2022, we're thrilled to see 112 individuals eager to join our community.
We had 81 happy simmers graduate with flying colours in 2020, and while the number may have fallen in 2021, with 38 grads, we pulled it in this year, 2022, finishing with 49 people graduating from the academy.
And now for the conversion rate! This little number can tell us how many applicants actually become graduates. In 2020, the conversion rate was a cheerful 62% and while it may have taken a little dip in 2021 and 2022, with conversion rates of 52% and 43% respectively, we're still super pumped.
All of this wouldn't be possible without the dedication of our amazing trainers. Their hard work and passion for helping our Academy entrants succeed is truly inspiring!
Taskforces
Our fleet ships and taskforces have been working hard and we just love to hear all about it. We've got a list as long as your arm of all the amazing taskforces who have shared their updates with us. It's great to hear all about the challenges they faced, the victories they achieved, and their exciting plans for the future. It's clear to see that we're not just a game, we're a community! We're so proud to be a part of it and to see our members grow and develop their skills.
This team is perhaps the most important in the fleet. All prospective members undergo a week-long training mission before they’re placed aboard a ship or installation in the fleet, so the effect that the Training Team can have on all new members, and therefore the fleet, is significant.
Toward the latter half of the year, we had a few difficulties getting enough volunteers to staff a class, and we asked the ship COs to check their rosters for people who might join the Academy. The response was positive, and many thanks to those who did so! This remains an occasional problem, primarily when we’ve had several large classes back-to-back, but we plan to recruit more trainers in 2023.
Some of the Academy staff, all of whom are active COs, expressed feeling burnt out with the administrative tasks in the Academy. Discussions began over potential new deputies to relieve those who need to step back.
One goal continues to be elusive because of the available time; auditing and creating new scenarios. While we completed an initial audit of scenario usage, it proved to be of limited use for analysis as scenario usage seems dependent on trainer preferences as much as anything else—trainers often go back to scenarios they’ve had fun with and have worked well in the past. That said, there does definitely appear to be some which attract little enthusiasm and/or appear “old-fashioned” which we could update or retire.
The Academy team is pleased to report we completed several goals for 2022, including creating a process to address training officers not meeting their requirements, and staffing the team.
The Academy Statisticians now track each trainer's activity and report to the Academy staff on a monthly basis so that staff can check in with inactive trainers and see if they need support, a break from the team, or simply if the dread spam filter has been at it again.
We were delighted to welcome several new and returning training officers this year, exceeding our goal of adding 2-5 trainers to the team in 2022.
We have also updated our tracking processes so that Academy staff are promptly notified when trainers complete the requirements for training team badge awards, as previously this was flying under the radar.
Cadet feedback on the training program in 2022 was overwhelmingly positive:
- 100% of cadets rate their application response time as fast or good;
- 98% of cadets rate their training wait time as acceptable;
- 100% of cadets considered their training officers engaging and helpful;
- 91% of cadets considered the tutorials helpful preparation for simming—the remaining 9% offered feedback or had questions their ship COs are better suited to give;
- 100% of cadets rated staff contact as at least one of the following: great, courteous or efficient, while 60% rated it as all three;
- 98% of cadets considered training fun and educational.
Special Thanks
- Cadet shoutouts this year go to Addison MacKenzie and Elizabeth Snow who were both singled out by cadets in the feedback forms as exceptional training officers who led and mentored their classes with enthusiasm, kindness, and patience.
- From the Academy staff, thank you to our statisticians, who provide vital support and keep us all on track with who’s done what and when. You make our lives a hundred times easier, and it’s very much appreciated. Likewise, thank you all our trainers for your time and expertise in welcoming new members to the fleet!
- I’d also like to take this opportunity to thank everyone in the Academy who has earned Training Team awards for volunteering their time:
Gold Excellence in Training Badge
We award this badge for those who volunteer for an incredible *50* classes beyond their minimum requirements. Thank you all so much!
- Commander Genkos Adea
- Commander Addison MacKenzie
- Commander Jo Marshall
- Lt. Commander Samira Neathler
- Lt. Commander Atan T'Seva
Silver Excellence in Training Badge
We award this badge for those who volunteer for an amazing *25* classes beyond their minimum requirements.
- Fleet Captain Oddas Aria
- Commander Serala
Excellence in Training Badge
We award this badge to those who have completed their minimum Academy requirements (which comes out to a minimum of 8 classes in various roles, no mean feat!).
- Commander Wil Ukinix
- Lt. Commander Alora DeVeau
- Lt. Commander Elizabeth Snow
This team handles the creation and manipulation of all images that StarBase 118 uses, from character portraits to ship banners to new badges and awards.
This year we have reached a plateau within the group. Overall the image requests are being made in a timely manner which is the core of our activity (with a total of 189 images produced using the IC watermark, an average of nearly 16 images per month), but there is still little motivation to make spontaneous art (unrequested images), particularly of non-character subjects. This has been largely influenced by the facilitator getting the awareness spread across multiple tasks, both within the SIM itself and IRL.
An issue that has arisen that must be addressed in 2023 is the decline of visits in DeviantArt, mainly influenced by the migration of users to other platforms, which has reduced the visibility that we can achieve. Given the current issues affecting DeviantArt at the moment, we are currently looking for alternative galleries, and we are examining a couple that looks quite promising.
In terms of the goals for the year 2022, we have accomplished four of the five objectives we had planned, with the last one that has been discussed but has not been consolidated (collaborating with other taskforces). Let's hope that this next year it will be achieved!
- This year, we had 157 images uploaded to DeviantArt, far exceeding the 144 images per year we had projected. These images help to promote our group and have been successfully used by other taskforces and in other social media, which reflects the use of these graphics as an advertisement. In the same vein, some of them are part of our landing page, with great effect.
- Regarding the group itself, we have not only maintained our numbers, but this year we have grown, increasing our rooster to include a trainee, a great candidate that we are gradually guiding in the craft of images. It is a more hands-on mentorship than we usually do with a drone, and I am proud to say that the whole group has been involved in this training, sharing the collective knowledge and contributing their fair share. I think it is an excellent example of the good teamwork and collaboration attitude within the taskforce that has made me feel really honoured for each and every member.
- In addition, we successfully revived the Graphic Contest (I want to give a call-out here to Jo Marshall for her exceptional management of the event, the participants, and the judges). We saw some great entries and I hope that this year's second edition will have even more participants.
- Lastly, I have to mention that the quality of the group's graphics continues to grow and we have seen an excellent improvement throughout the year.
Special Thanks
- This year I would like to give a commendation to Keegan, the writer behind Kivik/Robin Hopper. He has been one of the most reliable people in image production, a continuous source of inspiration and information, always looking for new techniques and sharing them with wilfulness and passion. On an artistic level, he has made several of my favourite images this year and I have seen him improve image by image and grow as an artist by leaps and bounds. Not only that, but his presence has been a continuous source of optimism, encouragement, and enthusiasm and embodies many of the best skills and characteristics that a drone in the collective (and an artist) should have. The image collective is better off having him with us!
- I want to make a special note here to Jared (Aine Sherlock) for being the most productive artist on the roster and shouldering a good number of images throughout the year, thank you very much, Jared!
- Last but not least, I want to take a moment to thank my two co-facilitators, Jess (Jalana Rajel) and Em (Jo Marshall), who have kept me sane throughout the year when I've had plenty of reasons to drive myself crazy. Without their help and support, the IC wouldn't be the same and I probably would be even more insane. Keep rocking, ladies!
The Federation News Service (FNS) continues as a successful spinoff of our community, helping to create a shared universe of stories that reflect StarBase 118 canon and may be used by simming groups around the world.
Our primary challenge in 2022 has been the same since the year before: creating a routine posting schedule and improving our efficiency in article editing for the monthly mission reports, as well as our weekly article submission through the FNS site. Our contributor number remains high, however, regular contributions from all members are still hit and miss, with a few taking the creative bull by the creative horns, and a few dedicated (and no less important) monthly article editors. We're once again keeping this as our main list of goals for the year ahead.
Special Thanks
- Our newest members for their extra creative and engaging articles!
- Samira Neathler and Genkos Adea for being consistent editors for the monthly reports. It is really appreciated.
- Yogan Yalu for his never-ending bag of tricks he calls a mind.
Wiki Ops handles the ongoing maintenance and improvement of our wiki. While everyone is welcome and encouraged to edit and contribute, the Wiki Ops team curates and helps make the experience more enjoyable and streamlined for all. The Administrators of the wiki are those members who have sysop rights on the wiki. Admins are generally tasked with keeping everything in order on the wiki and ensuring that there is no vandalism or inappropriate posting.
Unused files on the wiki have increased from 4,873 to 4,930. This is not unexpected, but admins are still cleaning the house of files uploaded well over a decade ago. While we use the wiki to host files helpful for wiki pages, the wiki itself is not intended to be a media server. Discussions with other teams about image hosting may need to be had in future.
Maintenance of our wiki has been difficult to maintain, and though encouragements have been made to Wiki Ops about categorization or deletion maintenance, it's been difficult to keep an ongoing interest in such issues. For example, last year one of Wiki Ops' goals was to reduce the number of stubs on our wiki from 390. As of writing this report, we still have 390 stubs.
118Wiki:Featured Articles remains untouched and unloved. Members are encouraged to participate.
Thanks to every wikier's diligence, uncategorised pages currently sit at 147 (about the same as last year, despite new characters and players). We currently have 5,243 uncategorised image files, down from 5,539.
- Deleted a massive gif file causing wiki slow-down.
- Created the wiki-web-questions forum on Discord for questions about wiki pages, coding and processes.
- Noa T'Nessa Levinson threatened the possibility of upside-down wiki pages. Given Levinson is entirely capable of actually making that happen, the Chief and Vice Chief politely declined.
- ILI changes as reviewed by the Captains Council:
- Updated the Pakleds ILI page to Restricted.
- Updated the Balivari and Greeters pages to Forbidden.
To celebrate the continued quality of the community and share with a wider audience, we have renamed the Top Sims Contest to Appreciations. As there is no team assigned to this, a general overview is provided.
- In 2022, Appreciations received 262 submissions of appreciated sims and appraisals for quotes from our game. Incredible! Well done, everyone!
This team compiles and publishes the weekly newsletter that all active members receive. With two active members, it’s also one of our smallest teams.
- Current Facilitator: Commodore Sal Taybrim
- Active members: 4
The newsies team still only consists of four members which has limited the types of articles we are able to produce. Despite the low number of members, the news team produced over 50 news articles that gave insights into various OOC activities and members in the fleet.
Special Thanks
- Alora DeVeau for painstakingly sending out and editing an insane amount of interviews over the last year, consistently ensuring we have an article to go to print with every month. We wouldn't be anywhere without her.
This team is dedicated to ensuring that they preserve the long history of our community. Primarily, that work now takes place on the wiki, though they have a great wealth of sources to draw from, including old groups, past sims, forums, defunct sites, and interviews with current and past members.
By far our largest obstacle continues to be a lack of any form of functional archive. When piecing together ship histories, it is difficult to tell dates of crew arrival and departures for the construction of a more holistic space on the wiki. Without it, we have very few methods to be able to piece together ship, crew, and award/ribbon histories.
We also lost several personnel on the team due to extended LOAs and retirements.
Most of our work at this time continues to be the maintenance of records for active vessels.
Despite the challenges above, the team has accomplished several significant achievements this year:
- Updated the fleet-wide OOC community history project to include more detailed information about fleet personnel and included relevant information from canon Trek series.
- Continued to update the list of badge recipients as new badges were issued and old records became available.
- Ensured that all active ships had someone assigned to maintain the various aspects of their crews' history.
- Continued updates to the Command Family Tree.
This team is responsible for putting on monthly chats, including special chats.
- Current Facilitator: Commander Serala
- Assistant Facilitators: Fleet Admiral Tristan Wolf
- Active Members: 2
One of the biggest challenges this team is facing is a small roster. While the routine monthly tasks are easily done by the facilitator and only require a small amount of time, when it comes to presenting ideas for topics of conversation in the monthly chats, along with additional ideas that the team could be trying to accomplish (such as alternatives to the monthly chat or watch-along) the low membership count reduces the number of sources for this and other ideas. The facilitator has attempted in the past to recruit members who would be able to help brainstorm in these areas, but retention has been an issue. Because of this, one of the stated goals, which was to find a topic for a town hall-style meeting for this year (something that went over well for the Year of the Commodore event), no ideas were forthcoming and that goal was not met. Additionally, another stated goal for recruitment was not met either.
Another challenge has been turn out for the two watch-along events held this past year. For various reasons, many members were not able to stay for the shows, and as a result, Serala is considering whether to continue to offer these events or simply have the monthly fleet chats and Annual Trivia Challenge. One idea mentioned by Fleet Admiral Wolf was to increase the advertising of the event, and Serala is considering ways to implement this suggestion in the coming year.
Despite the challenges presented this year, the team was able to still host a monthly fleet chat each month, including two watch-along events; special time events for those who reside in Australia, New Zealand and Asia. We were also able to successfully hold the Annual Trivia Challenge which saw Rachel Flores named the Trivia Winner this year.
Special Thanks
- Commodore Sal Taybrim who takes charge and coordinates the Annual Fleet Trivia Chat each year. Their experience in this event is instrumental in ensuring a great time is had by all.
- Ikaia Wong, who despite not being a member of the Chat Team, faithfully creates a "SideTrek" thread, which allows for side conversations while the monthly chat is in progress.
Poll of the Week has been a source of intriguing inquiries, ponderous proposals and thought-provoking examinations. Though the team has transformed over the years, the goal has remained the same; continue to create questions that spark thought, debate, or ideas that might not have occurred otherwise. Sometimes, the polls simply ask for preference (“What was your favourite episode in season X of Star Trek and why?”).
- Current Facilitators: Commanders Genkos Adea
- Active Team Members: 3
We have five members at the start of the year, (and two facilitators!) and now we're down to three due to two members taking long LOAs and stepping back from taskforces. It's a shame, but inevitable. This meant that the "burden" (in inverted commas because it's hardly manual labour) of the monthly polls has fallen on fewer people, and so there was an instance (December) where a poll was prepared and written but never posted due to IRL stresses on my part (mea culpa, sorry!). Moving from weekly to monthly means that it is sometimes very easy to forget about, even with my robust system of notes and reminders.
We have increased our average number of engagements both in terms of votes (with a high of 44 voters - almost half the fleet) and comments.
Special Thanks
- Tahna Meru, who throws some fantastic ideas into the pot to get the brain churning.
- Jo Marshall - despite stepping down as Facilitator... a while ago now... Jo always goes A & B the C of D whenever I fail as a human, as well as simply being a great contributor to our little puzzles.
The Social Media Team manages each of the social media platforms and content for the group, thereby driving recruitment efforts through various mediums to reach a wider audience.
2022 seemed like another almost unpredictable year, lending to challenges for the team. We were not able to recruit more members, and as such, we were not able yet to reinvigorate and launch our Instagram posts. We also struggle to gain any ground with using these posts as a recruiting resource, though we do see quite the following on DeviantArt. We were able to meet some of our goals this year, such as maintaining posting, but others, such as recruitment and added channels, continue to remain unreached.
Last year was a year with many hurdles for many people. As such, I think one of the achievements of the group remains that posting and engagement have remained steady and have not faded. All of the social media pages except Instagram are active and thriving, and while we may not see an influx of new applicants through these tasks and posts, we provide proof that there is life in here, compelling news and beautiful images for members and non-members alike, and some valuable insight into what we do here. We also looked into the use of Reddit and have worked to build that into the Publicity team strategy rather than an ongoing social media team channel.
Special Thanks
- Alieth - Reliable, stalwart, and always present, without her our Deviant Art progress and indeed, the account itself would not exist. Her work is amazing and we appreciate her part in this.
- Genkos Adea, Samira Neathler, Artinus Serinus, and Sky Blake drive the content and interactions behind our ability to stay active and relevant on all of our active social media channels. Without them, we would not be the lively feeds that we are.
Special Shoutouts
Each year, we ask ship captains to nominate members for special commendations, which we’re rebranding as Shoutouts.
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- Jack Kessler - A newer simmer (Lieutenant JG) but provides a lot of assistance with rosters, other areas of the wiki, etc.
- Wes Greaves, Alora DeVeau - Logistical heavy lifters!
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- Addison MacKenzie, Kirky Bean, Genkos Adea - The staff of the Excalibur - I don't think I could ask for a better group to be the leaders of this ship or the future leaders of the fleet. They are supportive, but offer honest feedback and are ready with solutions when the situation demands it. Even through the rough year that 2022 was, we were successful because we are a team. Thank you for all you guys do.
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- My staff, for supporting Arrow through challenging times.
- All hands of the Arrow, whose collaboration and dedication have made this community one I am proud to be a part of.
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- I would like to commend the entire crew of StarBase 118 Ops for being the top posting sim 8 of the 12 last months and with the top two for 11 of the last 12 months. They have done a fantastic job of continually improving the game on Ops in every area.
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- Tahna Meru] - When the call goes out for a volunteer, Eris is right there ready. When our Quote of the Month Poll (which has been going on for a whopping five years!) needed a facilitator, Eris jumped right into the fray. Picking up the compilation of the quotes from all the sims of the month before, putting the poll together, and sorting out a cool and unique graphic for each, Eris has brought a delightful energy to it, effortlessly making sure the whole thing is a blast every month. Thanks for bringing the party, Eris!
- Samira Neathler - Sami's contributions to the Gorkon cannot be understated, and one of the ways she hits the hardest is in keeping our ship wiki up to date. Whether it's new mission info, awards ceremonies, or anything else noteworthy, Sami is geared up to get stuck in there and make sure it's logged for posterity. We couldn't do it without you, Sami. Thanks for being the wiki queen!
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- Cade Foster - Jamie has been incredible since becoming part of the crew. She has been a great help, sharing her experience, giving advice or just lending an ear when needed. That she is able to RP with us next to running her own station is awe-inspiring, and I keep learning from her. I'm glad to call her my friend and that she is part of my crew.
- Nugra and Lazarus Davis have been great support and help, ready to jump in, learn and help out wherever needed. I wouldn't have gotten this far in the last year without them. I feel happy that they are great friends and not only write with us on the Conny with their creative ideas, but also help me to keep things going behind the scenes.
- The whole Constitution Crew is just amazing. I feel incredibly lucky to have such great writers and creative people at my side that allow us all to write such great stories together, some serious, some heartwarming, and some whacky. I'll never not be grateful that you all share to spend your time and creativity with us and that we get to make these connections behind the writing as well. Stay awesome!
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- To the crew of Amity: it’s been an amazing “first season” of our experiment with a different kind of Trek sim, and I can’t wait to see what lies ahead for us!
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Looking Ahead to 2023
From the Executive Council
To quote Fleet Admiral Vance from Star Trek: Discovery, "The past is the only light with which we can see the future." Thus, in that spirit, we begin the Executive Council's report with an assessment of what's been done to meet the goals set for last year and what still needs to be done.
Report on Last Year (2022)'s SOTFA Goals
- Examine the costs of web infrastructure and consider whether any suitable alternatives exist and/or find ways to raise more funds to cover rising costs.
- EC examined costs as outlined by Fleet Admiral Wolf. This will likely be an ongoing annual evaluation going forward.
- Investigate ways to extend the pool of supporting personnel for administrative duties, whether from within the fleet staff or by using existing, proven models of operation like the Training Team that incorporate the efforts of non-staff members to fulfil the fleet's needs.
- Expansion of roles for Commanders is being examined, including positions such as Captain-At-Large (as the Captains Council Member-At-Large) as well as expanding Personnel Office workload to additional vetted members.
- Streamline active task forces, reducing those of low activity to squadron-level groups or retiring them completely.
- Publicity Team, Newsletter Team, Calendar Team, and Podcast Team were retired.
- Department of Veterans Affairs team was converted to a squadron.
- Establish and begin operations of a new recruitment team modelled on the Training Team's structure and operations to tackle this critical role for the fleet.
- This effort remains ongoing.
- Continue implementation of the IDIC's recommendations as best as possible to follow through on the group's commitment to diversity and inclusion.
- Fleet Census Team created with goal of a fleet demographic survey to be conducted later in 2023.
- Create a vision statement and list of values for the fleet staff to help foster greater cohesion and minimize conflict.
- This effort remains ongoing.
- Continue to explore ways to stop former members from hiding their membership history when returning to the group, including better education of our general membership on what our returning member process is and why we have these policies and protocols.
- Academy and ship staff members continue to be vigilant against suspicious applicants and cadets.
- The use of AI and other tools to detect sock puppet applicants is under consideration.
- Complete the review of the Commander's promotion process.
- This effort remains ongoing. A total revamp of both commander and captain examinations and processes is under consideration.
- Cross-train additional staff members who can support the Project Aria player management tool.
- Captain Nugra has joined Fleet Captain Oddas Aria in further expanding Project Aria into a larger sim archive. Fleet Captain Oddas further has been creating documentation.
Challenges and Opportunities in 2023
The new year holds both new and familiar challenges for the fleet:
- As the majority of the fleet's COs continue long-term commands, prevention of burnout and the creation of processes to allow graceful exits for when COs need to step back from their commands are of a higher priority now.
- Good administrative practice across ships can sometimes give way to less-than-ideal habits, especially as members join and leave ship staff ranks.
- The fleet has a large pool of Commanders now, but only one has completed the captain's written examination. Further separation of the captain's written examination from the practical and a change in the initiative so that the written exam is to be taken at the candidate's choice could be examined.
- Grading time for written examinations has nearly quadrupled since 2020 from an average of 18.6 days (2020) to 51 days (2021) to 73.5 days (2022).
- Despite advisement against using Discord as primary communications for ship business, more ship staff have still been using Discord and not documenting conversations and decisions later on their ship staff lists, which has resulted in problems later down the line when the record needs to be examined by a third party such as the Executive Council when there are player complaints or other such necessities.
- Likewise, Discord use to discuss council business for the Captain's Council and Executive Council has also increased, which has helped move the discussion along at the expense of those who are unable to participate at the time of such live conversations.
- Fleet size has not grown within the last year, preventing expansion of the fleet with new ship launches.
- Ship staff composition across ships is not consistent, with some ships having robust staff support structures in place while others rely nearly entirely on the CO and FO, leading to overtaxing of the command staff of these ships.
Executive Council's Fleet Goals for 2023
To tackle some of these challenges, the Executive Council has set forth the following goals:
- Formalization of Captain/CO vacation procedures.
- Conduct annual check-ins with COs and investigate avenues for more flexibility in the command role.
- Develop continuing education materials and opportunities such as an annual convention for both COs and ship staff to review best administrative practices.
- Investigate opportunities to open constitutionally-mandated council positions to more fleet staff members.
- Reevaluation of the examination policies for Commander and Captain, including rotating out graders and setting clearer deadlines for results.
- Creation of official fleet policies on acceptable Discord use for ship business and expectations of documentation of such use by COs/FOs.
- Creation of official fleet policies on acceptable Discord use for council business of the Executive Council and Captains Council.
- Launch and operation of the Recruitment Team.
- Explore and investigate the role of ship staff and what if any minimums might be established for both requirements and staffing size of ships.
Pennants
Fleetwide Pennants
These pennants serve as a means to highlight the attainment of specific goals and milestones, rather than being a competitive event. Ships can now display these accolades on their sidebar to showcase their achievements from the previous year. The criteria for the available pennants have been outlined below, and ships are encouraged to strive for excellence throughout the year in order to earn them.
Following each pennant description is a list of eligible ships for 2022.
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Awarded to ships whose submissions to the appreciations thread on the forums total or exceed twenty-five (25) individual sims.
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Awarded to ships whose submissions to the annual awards ceremony total or exceed fifty (50) individual nominations.
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Awarded to ships wherein half the crew (50%) have participated in at least one Academy class in the last year (as commanding officer, executive officer, or mock cadet).
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Awarded to ships who provide the most tangible contributions towards competitions held by Starbase 118 RPG with tangible contributions being volunteers, content, and judging support.
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Awarded to ships whose crew has earned two or more Duty Post Awards in the previous ceremony.
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Awarded to ships whose character biographies are complete relative to the expectations of their rank (based on achievement standards), and whose mission archive pages are updated to the most recent mission under the current commanding officer.
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Awarded to ships who participated in a joint mission in which two or more ships/installations complete a mission together.
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Awarded to ships wherein eighty percent (80%) of the crew have reached full-time simming rates for 11 out of 12 months of the year.
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Taskforce Goals & Recruitment
The following goals have been set for the fleet's taskforces by their facilitators:
Training Team
- Create a fleet challenge to create new, modern scenarios for the Academy (full class and small class) which fit better with our current fleet ethos, and work with CC and image team to come up with reward badges.
- Assess the existing scenarios and retire or update those which are out of date, or rarely used.
- Continue the rolling goal of staffing the team by recruiting an additional 2-5 training officers in 2023.
- Recruit 1-2 deputy commandants who are not active COs.
Recruitement Status: OPEN to new members
Rank Required: Lieutenant (with CO approval) or lieutenant commander (and above)
How to join: Hold the rank of Lt. Commander (we sometimes accept Lieutenants who sim exceptionally well and have shown strong OOC abilities);
- A prospective training officer should approach their CO, who can nominate them for the team if they feel they're ready.
- Training team members set an example for our incoming cadets, so they must sim to a good standard, and be full-time on their ship. Sims will be assessed to ensure they set a good example of simming for the cadets, demonstrating that their writing abilities are among the best in our simming group and that their written English is proficient such that spelling and grammatical mistakes in sims are uncommon or rare.
The (Image) Collective
- Continue the Fleetwide Graphic Contest and increase participation.
- Find an alternative gallery to DeviantArt and start publishing images there.
- Encourage the group to produce more images that don't come from request, both by fostering interaction with other taskforces and by supplying inspiration and tutorials.
- Maintain a roster of at least 5 active team members.
- Maintain a medium level of quality from our members. This can be achieved by offering mentorship and education to new members.
Recruitment Status: OPEN to new members
Rank Required: Lieutenant JG
How to join: Contact the team facilitators via email or Discord.
Special Note: To join, we ask you to be Lieutenant JG or higher in rank, and have received the sign-off from your commanding officer, agreeing to your commitment to OOC work. Reach the facilitators with your CO copied in if you make it via mail or ask your CO that reach us in Discord. Images created may be used for social media and our Wiki, and will be curated.
Federation News Service
- Develop and implement the FNS handbook designed by Yogan Yalu.
- Kick-off story arc projects designed to give writers more direction in articles to write. Target is to run one project through the year, with an article a month dedicated to the story arc (12 articles), or two projects (6 articles each).
- Increase submitted articles by one per two months per writer, from the top down.
- Achieve an article a week on the FNS for 12 months (52 weeks), not including monthly ship reports.
Recruitment Status: OPEN to new members
Rank Required: Lieutenant JG
Requirement: We do ask you to submit a tester article here: https://fednewsservice.com/submit/
Special Note: Membership is also open to non-SB118 members. If you know people from outside our membership who may be interested, please put them in contact with this team’s leadership.
Wiki Operations
- Potentially find two new administrator users to continue wiki maintenance.
- Tackle stub pages.
- Send at least 10 species for Captains Council review.
- Encourage participation in 118Wiki:Featured Articles, with at least three articles nominated over the course of 2023.
- Categorise at least 500 uncategorised images.
- Delete 1000 unused files.
Recruitment Status: OPEN to new members
Rank Required: Ensign
How to join: As this is not a taskforce, anyone with relevant Discord permissions can access the wiki channel.
Special Note on Administrators: To become an administrator: https://wiki.starbase118.net/wiki/index.php?title=118Wiki:Administrators. Power users must contact an Administrator to be considered for the Power User wiki rights.
- For 2023, our hope is to increase membership by at least 25% and we will be actively recruiting to meet this goal.
- Facilitate the publication of a wider variety of articles that may interest the fleet
- Intend to update our spreadsheet that tracks what members have already done and which articles in order to prevent duplicating interviews with the same people.
Recruitment Status: OPEN to new members
Rank Required: Ensign
How to join: Players can contact the facilitator via Discord or email, or contact their ship command team.
Special Note: There are no special requirements to join, but members are required to submit 2 feature articles per month - a commitment of approximately one hour.
- Ensure that each active ship/station has someone to track the various archival data (crew assignments/transfers, promotion and ribbon history, assignment changes, PC character changes, etc.).
- Increase team membership to ensure that we have as many members on our team as we have active ships/stations.
- Work with administrative staff to find a meaningful solution/substitution for the ongoing archive issues to better account for previous ships/personnel.
Recruitment Status: OPEN to new members
Rank Required: Ensign
How to join: Contact the team facilitator via email or Discord. Staff members may also recommend officers who may be a good fit, and the facilitator will initiate contact.
Chat Team
- Increase team membership by a minimum of 2 by sending out announcements on Discord for team membership at a minimum of every other month until a desired minimum membership of 5 members has been reached, then continue recruiting on a quarterly basis in the event any other players are interested in contributing ideas for the team
- Determine the viability of sustaining bi-annual watch-along events, reasons for low turn out and methods to help encourage greater turn out.
- Try and find a third special event to host at least once during the year, preferably in a Town Hall format. This would require brainstorming with other team members once membership reaches greater numbers.
Recruitment Status: OPEN to new members
Rank Required: Ensign
How to join: Contact the team facilitator via email or Discord.
Special Note: Must have an active Discord account.
Poll of the Week Team
- Recruit at least one more member of the team through personal connections to Lt. Cmdrs. in need of facilitator roles
- Increase the average number of votes by at least 15% by posting the polls to the Officers-Chat on Discord with a "haven't voted in our poll, why not?" type statement (but fun)
- Increase the number of comments on our polls by 10% by directly responding and engaging with the responses on the forums
Recruitment Status: OPEN to new members
Rank Required: Ensign
How to join: Contact the team facilitators via email or Discord.
Advanced Starship Design Bureau
Recruitment Status: OPEN to new members
Rank Required: Lieutenant JG
How to join: Contact your CO to have your approval forwarded to the facilitators.
Special Note: Love ships, be willing to pour through technical stuff, and argue about it all cordially.
Social Media Team
- Implement a strategy to get Instagram active again, recruit one member to be an Instagram specialist, and post at least 4 images per month (1 per week) there.
- Reassess the overall approach of the social media team to review how it can be leveraged to reach more people and provide more value to the Fleet by speaking with the specialists, compiling data from traffic, and devising three things that can be adjusted, tested, or changed to better meet the needs of the fleet from a publicity stance.
- Increase membership by 2.
Recruitment Status: OPEN to new members
Rank Required: Ensign
How to join: Contact the team facilitator via email or Discord.
Special Note: No special requirements other than to state the areas where you are interested in working.
Fleet Stats
At present, the fleet consists of the following vessels:
The Executive Council
The Captains Council
Captains and Above
Captains, Commanding Officers, and Above
Members of the Executive Council, Flag Officers, Captains, and Commanders acting as Commanding Officers hold full discussion rights and 1 vote each. They may put motions to vote before the Council and second such motions.
Full voting rights CC members are listed below in alphabetical order by by surname as OOC rank beyond captain has no bearing on council privileges.
- Captain Diz'mim Ch'Nilmani (Nugra), First Officer of USS Constitution
- Commander Gogigobo Fairhug, Commanding Officer of Starbase 118 Ops
- Fleet Captain Addison MacKenzie, Commanding Officer of USS Artemis-A
- Commodore Mei'konda, Commanding Officer of USS Astraeus
- Captain Karrod Niac, Captains Council Magistrate, Commanding Officer of USS Ronin
- Commodore Kali Nicholotti
- Commodore Oddas Aria, Commanding Officer of the Denali Station
- Commodore Jalana Rajel, Commanding Officer of USS Constitution-B
- Admiral Quinn Reynolds, Commanding Officer of USS Gorkon
- Commodore Lia Rouiancet, Commanding Officer of USS Octavia E Butler
- Commander Serala, Commanding Officer of USS Chin'toka
- Captain Randal Shayne, Commanding Officer of the USS Arrow
- Commodore Sal Taybrim, First Officer of Starbase 118 Ops
- Rear Admiral Rivi Vataix (Roshanara Rahman), Commanding Officer of Amity Outpost
- Captain Theo Whittaker
- Fleet Admiral Tristan Wolf
Commanders
Any officer who is not acting as the Commanding Officer of a vessel, but has officially been recognized as a Commander, has full discussion rights and will have 1 vote on the council except in votes of the following matters: discipline of officers; nominations for, or promotions to the rank of full commander; creation, alteration or amendment of the requirements for advancement to the rank of full commander. They may put motions to vote before the Council and second such motions.
First Officers
Any officer who is acting in the official, out-of-character capacity as First Officer of a vessel, as recognized by the ship’s official Commanding Officer, has full discussion rights. They may not put motions to vote before the Council, but they may second such motions.
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