Ok, so this is what I am thinking at this moment:
Traits – arbitary levels assigned to a character based on their rank and position.
Command Authority – linked to your current rank. We can outline things like ‘Lieutenants can be expected to organise small groups of officers to undertake specific tasks’ and ‘XOs and Lt. Commanders have authority to organise teams and direct them appropriately as well as put together crews and lead ship operations when authorised by a more senior officer’ or something along those lines. More detailed descriptions and examples are needed, but you get the general idea.
Security Clearance – a numerical level giving you access to more or less possible intelligence information, e.g. level 3 might give you access to more critical station/ship security systems whereas level 4 might give you access to databases and comms equipment to link up with operatives. Again, we can add more detail later.
Skills – things that reflect your characters training and expertise. A bit more depth here; for these I was thinking you could select skills based on modules studied at the academy as well as ones that a character has chosen to continue studying in their own time after the academy. My thoughts are to have a list of modules from which you can pick a set number. As you use them in RP they would be boosted higher. For levels, I was thinking of a simple rating system of ‘untrained’, ‘trained’, ‘confident’, ‘expert’ and ‘master’. The modules would then look like this:
Xeno linguistics
Xeno biology
Intelligence analysis
Sensor analysis
Medical
Drive systems engineering
Software engineering
Astro-naviagtion
Alien culture
Jump point theory
Warp drive mechanics
FTL communications theory
And so and and so forth (I have more jotted down and others could be suggested and added as we think of them.)
When you start, you pick something like 5 modules to study. You then get to boost two of them initially to being ‘confident’ in those skills.
As you progress, you’ll get a chance to boost them further based on your usage, though I dont think we should expect them to advance rapidly, or set an arbitary number of uses/ shifts to advance them.
I think there should be a system for characters to study a new skill too, which could link to some good things to talk about in the bar. It would have to link to canon too. For example, if we use Randal’s kralien language, people studying it could use it as a source material to better inform thier own RP.
In terms of fitting in things like connections to the unakalhai, we could adopt simple phrases and slot them in to ‘gifts and flaws’. So someone could use their ‘Connections to unuks’ gift and say, ‘I’ll contact a couple of people I know and see what I can dig up’
I think this should give us a framework to build on. A spreadsheet with character profiles on would help create an easy reference for GMs as well as other players too.
In terms of RPing on the forums. It might be possible to have games between shifts and split it in to five ’rounds’ somehow. Though to be honest, we’ll need to look at this.
Framing things as questions or as ‘I try to…’ sounds the best way to go about getting across what you want a character to do. That way then, you are uncertain of the success or failure of ths attempt until the GM follows up with all the extra information about the outcome. Again, clearer guidelines can be drafted up about this.
Thats it for now. Any comments are welcome!