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Perhaps an adaptation of the specialization exams could also be implemented into the console expertise level idea. Also, I have no idea what teamspeak avatar thing you’re talking about Matsiyan, but if that’s a thing, it could be a way to show off a bit with ribbons. I agree they should be given out more often.
Vaj, about criteria for promotions, I’ll tell you how it usually goes.
We mostly keep track of how you’re doing, but it’s more so for prominent members of the community, in terms of how well you interact, how dedicated you seem, and basically, how visible you are. Eventually each captain knows his crew just fine, but I, the XO of Apollo, have no idea about the personality or talents of the newly assigned ensign on a random ship until I get to serve with him or change a word or two with him.
We add to the agenda the names of people we feel might be ready. Say, I think Lt-jr Pangloss was performing well, so I put her up for promotion. We all sit and chat about how Pangloss worked, raise our points for endorsing it, see if any other officers who served with him agree with me, or if someone has a problem with Pangloss. For example, Dante might be concerned about how his positive attitude is downright annoying, or dangerous for the ship if Pangloss insists on talking about how we can’t possible die doing a mine run with no shields and no warp.
If we agree Pangloss deserves to be promoted, he will be. If we agree he isn’t there yet, we either shot down the idea temporarily or place Pangloss under closer observation, that might involve giving him additional duties or having another senior officer take care of him for a week or two, until we reach a consensus.
Now, what we take into account for raising a candidate varies wildly, as each captain’s priorities vary a lot from ship to ship. The rank expectations are a must, but you’ll notice how they leave a lot of elbow room. A certain period of time has to pass since your last promotion to be elegible, technical skill on your primary expertise is considered, your aspirations to command, how positive an addition we think you are, if there’s someone we think should get it first… Promotions to lower ranks are easier to agree upon than higher ranks, at least.
Thank you for explaining that, van Leigh.
Another quick thing about levels: I disagree that they will be treated like a secondary rank system, because EVERYONE could reach the highest level, whatever it may be, given time. And I do think that OOC experience will show through this, because the better you get at a station, regardless of where you’re learning, the better you’ll perform during a Duty Shifts, and the more likely you’ll be to get that commendation.
To use your example, if you think Slate is going above and beyond in her specialty, offering a commendation would be a suitable reward, regardless of her rank or likelihood of being promoted.
That’s a risk on its own. If everyone can reach the highest level we’d either accept it as it is, or have to increase the level cap because of a differential between the top of the level and the bottom.
The commendation system makes a lot of sense, though.
Like I said, I think the console levels would take a really long time to get to higher levels. Just because everyone can reach the highest level doesn’t mean that anyone will. A lot of people could get to the second level around the same time, but fewer will get to the next as easily. And if they eventually do max out on the level of one specialization, there are four others to work on, too. As for increasing the cap, we haven’t even decided what it will be yet. But if it takes an exponential increase in commendations to get to each level, it’s going to take officers a long time to increase in level the higher they get – and I think that’s a good thing.
Matsiyan, thanks, I never realized you could change that!
About promotions in general, and the promotion process, here are my personal thoughts, and they may not be entirely consistent with things I’ve said about the ranks earlier.
If we were talking about a real life naval career, of course I’d want to progress as much and as fast as possible, retire as an Admiral with a good pension, and bore young family members with stories of glorious battles. But it’s not. It’s a game. I have found, in and from online games, that I am not one of those players who wants to race through the levels as fast as possible to get to the best loot and the biggest monsters, I actually want to take my time at the lower levels and explore lots of the game world, its sub-quests, etc. So, in the TSN, I actually want to enjoy the RP, become technically competent at my station first, and then all the other stations, and then advance to command when I can do so without killing our crew.
I don’t really mind how long I stay a Lieutenant. I don’t really care if people who joined after me get promoted ahead of me. I might RP resentment, just for fun, but I would try to make it clear that it was in game, not real. And actually, since Adele joined the TSN for reasons that have nothing to do with career advancement, I think she would only resent someone being promoted if she had good reason to believe they were incompetent and/or a danger to the fleet. And you can see from van Leigh’s explanation of the promotion process that it’s set up precisely so that such a promotion would be unlikely.
Ribbons and medals are fun, but they’re not essential. They’re little extra trimmings. If they’re going to become a chore for somebody to keep track of, then we should find a way to make that job easier, or we can just accept that they may be handed out whenever is convenient. Commendations could work the same way, it’s nice to be recognised when you do something well. But, as I said, it’s not essential.
As a taiko player I admire immensely always used to say after he expressed his thoughts, “that’s my personal opinion, not general.”
I agree with Adele, I participate because both the RP and the game itself are fun, with peer recognition of skill and/or participation being merely good color. Myself, I don’t need to get promoted to enjoy the experience of the the rich storyline and vibrant personalities. That said, because promotions are a relatively rare event (other than from acting ensign to full ensign), they do not add enough color to make any difference in the experience. Having at least one other more-frequent but still meaningful marker of accomplishment is a good way to keep the playing environment fresh (and a small incentive to improve).
Looking back through the thread, I don’t see that folks fundamentally dispute the general idea of adding something somehow, but we may be losing sight of that goal by getting caught up in picking the nature of the marker — levels, medals, etc. Heck, we can implement more than one type of marker, for example: give a ribbon for attaining a level of general skill and experience (participating in enough sims and missions at a console, with at least one regular CO attesting competence), a medal for acts of initiative and derring-do (nominations by anyone), and a formal commendation for RP participation (by CO or higher). Promotions would still be handled as van Leigh described and be subject to the existing, stricter standards, but every shift or two somebody may get one of the other types.
One additional thought. van Leigh raised a very good point about the lack of peer nominations for recognition sapping momentum. Perhaps nominating should be a specific charge to lieutenants (when not serving as CO) and lieutenants-junior, even if just for a while to get the ball well and truly rolling. They have enough experience to notice a colleague’s meritorious act during a battle and enough perspective to appreciate how above-expectation it really is.
I’ve been thinking about nominations and I’m not sure what to say about it. The thing is that those that play good, play good. So do we nominate them each time we serve with them? That would quickly get repetitive and boring. We all know people who are the ones that are excellent at their primaries: Adele, Mats, Graybeard, Quinn, Aposine, Aramond, Slate, etc. Should we nominate them when they do well on a station that is not their primary?
And what about nominating ship captains? Verok is always amazingly good. And van Leigh is not slacking, either; he’s a great CO and a great captain. Do we nominate them every time?
Do we prefer to wait for something special to happen? If that’s the case, than someone might get more nominations, even if that someone is overall worse than someone who’s always good, but never did something so remarkable as to get nominated. An example of this would be nominating a helm officer who survived flying through mines, but not nominating an officer who never went into the minefield in the first place.
I really don’t know what to do with those nominations.
The thing is, weapons officers can be normally good or normally bad, but it’s incredibly rare for them to do something extraordinary because their station doesn’t allow them much initiative.
It depends, honestly. There are nominations for awards given in the basis of an extraordinary achievment, even more so for higher awards, such as DSM and NC, and lower awards (bronze and silver stars) are given either for a long story of good service or minor achievments. NC and MV are given with a semi-official limit of one of each per campaign, but they’re not just given to the most deserving: there has to be something worth being nominated. Even since the institution of the award system (and that was two years ago), there was only one medal of valor, to Captain Corwin, who was the CO of the scout we had back then and developed many of the currently-accepted scout tactics.
I like the nominations system, but it does have problems (as stated above by Blaze and Leigh). What we could do instead is hold exams for levels. Not like the written exams like the ensign and others similar, but rather field exams to show off your current skills. These exams could be held during sims when requested by an officer, the facilitator of the exam would accompany the crew during the sim, evaluate the officer and decide if a level increase is deserved. The criteria for the exam could be decided by the superior officers of the console
Or, instead of taking the exams, we might do something more with the part of shift where the captains debrief their crews after a simulation/mission. Instead of just saying to the crew what they did good or bad, they could also update a document and add marks for the shift. Something simple, along the lines of
- 1 – unsatisfied performance or a major problem
- 2 – normal level of performance, nothing major in any way
- 3 – very good performance or a major achievement
We can have as many of these marks as we want, but I think that anything more than 5 is too complicated to be kept constant over time. The document can be made to only be available to the senior officers. Then the marks themselves would show if someone deserves a reward or not.
On a similar note, I’d be willing to keep a record of all officers, their ranks, their permanent assignments, dates when they were promoted, and whatever else we want to. I think it should be at least 2 or 3 people on this, but I’m willing to put in time to keep it up to date, especially when we can see the ranks of other on the weekly shift.
@admin, you’re being awfully silent. Did we annoy you too much or are you just collecting ideas?// I confess to a preference for nominations over exams. It is lighter and more RP.
I had been noodling pretty much exactly Blazes idea over the last few days, but he wrote it so nicely. I think that would be a way that senior officers could justify an opinion. It is essentially elementary school merit stars 🙂
Blaze, we already have such a document, the central officers records, but access to it is restricted to the senior officers.
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