Revising the Rank System

[John van Leigh]

Yep. It’s a different document from the crew assignments, although they’re based on the records as well. So you might notice that promotions take a lot of time to get noted on the public-access roster, but we have your date of rank registered with reasonable accuracy.

[Matthew Vaj]

I agree that Blaze’s idea has merit. However, the CO’s will still make subjective decisions on those ‘marks’. I don’t see a good way around that, except if they discuss their decision with the XO’s before making a final decision, which would mitigate but not eliminate subjectivity.

[Blaze Strife]

I don’t see a problem with that. I trust the senior officers. Even if we do implement tests and whatnot, I don’t think we should ever implement ranking by rule. Having top marks on all possible test shouldn’t mean that you need to advance in ranking.

[Jemel Eahain]

There is already a station ranking system…. the ops tests give you 3 grades, they only test theory so we could add ribbons for a couple grades of practical competency on each station ?

[John van Leigh]

In fact, I think that a strong subjective element is one of the best features on the TSN rank system. Rank is not just based on how skilled you are, it’s also a reflection of how much responsibility we entrust you with: ranking higher means more opportunities in charge of anything at all, serving as DO, postings… Even if you’re the very best at a station, if you’re not ready to take responsibility, if you fail to handle power properly, if your way around your underlings is detrimental instead of constructive, you will not be promoted. And that’s all subjective assesment.

[Adele Mundy]

And what van Leigh said, above, is what makes the promotion system a people management skill rather than just a database.

[Xavier]

An update with regards to this:

The senior officers last night discussed the various options proposed here and have decided upon an initial course of action.

First, there will be promotions higher up the rank structure. This began last night with the promotion of Jemel to Captain. We have had only one captain for quite a period now. Promotions higher up had been postponed to some degree due to the absence of some of the senior command officers. There has elapsed a reasonable time to now consider promotions. This promotion should enable us to promote more officers to replace thise promoted above.

The second decision made has been to create a Senior Lieutenant role. This will allow us to differentiate between those who have served for a longer period of Lieutenant but do not necessarily wish to move to senior officer/ command ranks. It is a way to recognise an Lieutenants participation and commitment to the division. My though is that promotion to Lieutenant Commander could be drawn from officer ranking either Lieutenant or Senior Lieutenant.

Finally, the senior officers are looking at differentiating between different command officers and their experience, attendance and level of command role (e.g. ship captain, battle group commander).

As for developing and gaining awards for expertise, Jemel has put together a series of tests for when officers are changing roles. More advanced assessment criteria could be designed too in order to have officers gain advanced qualifications in operating in a particulae role. There are archived documents with much of this set up which should just require revision. This is something that we will look at further down the line however.

[Blaze Strife]

Thanks for the update!

Will the new rank be called Lieutenant-Senior or Senior Lieutenant?

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