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Allow for a Rear-Admiral in Each Fleet
SoupKitchen Riker
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in Make It So!
It would be nice if a Rear-Admiral could be appointed within each fleet and be able to carry out the duties of the Admiral should that person be unable to carry out those duties (or do them concurrently as it can be a challenging position).
Not sure if it has been done, but it would also be nice if anyone holding the rank of Admiral could disband any squad without having to expel the squad leader. Some people forget at times, go on vacation, etc.; and for fleets that reform squads frequently, it can be confusing.
Not sure if it has been done, but it would also be nice if anyone holding the rank of Admiral could disband any squad without having to expel the squad leader. Some people forget at times, go on vacation, etc.; and for fleets that reform squads frequently, it can be confusing.
“A committee is a cul-de-sac, down which good ideas are lured and quietly strangled.” —Mark TwainMEMBER: [BoB] Barrel of Bloodwine... We are recruiting and putting the “curv” in scurvy! Best Event Finish: #3 Honor Debt: Inconceivable...Honor Bank Account: Slowly building...
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Well, I have known a few individuals in fleets where the admiral has gone a.w.o.l. A Vice-Admiral could step in in such a situation and continue in that leadership role for the fleet. Also, as pointed out, we personally tend to rotate squads for every event. At times, people forget to disband, and it can cause confusion as people start to fill in squads from previous events (would be nice for an Admiral to be able to disband). See, nothing Nazi-like... I wouldn’t postulate that every fleet runs like your fleet. But, kudos for making it run smoothly.
if your admiral goes inactive then you just have to email support and they will let you designate a new one. when starbases started and admirals and officers actually started to matter, all admirals and officers in the fleet had been inactive for over a year. All but 14 players were also inactive and clogging the slots. With 1 email, I was made the admiral and we dumped the inactive players and turned it into a decent fleet fairly quickly. I will admit to probably sending 50,000 invites during the first couple weeks, but it did produce a decent fleet.
Why on earth would you rotate squads? I really don't understand the benefit of doing that. I'm not being critical, I'm just honestly curious. It just seems like a lot of hassle that doesn't serve much purpose. Squad rewards from events aren't significant enough to worry much about getting them.
I guess I just see fleets as a way to earn honor hitting targets and building the starbase. I am in a squad that does try and do well in the events, but there's no benefit for the fleet doing well in events. That means I don't care much about how the other squads are doing in the event. I just want them to make their daily targets, which produce honor, and make their starbase donations.
We do care about how members do in events and try to help as best we can. And honestly, tickets can take awhile, as threads on here attest. For us, a big part of the game is the fleet, socialization, and helping out. Squads are a way we do that.
To help with that, I would like to see a Vice-Admiral added with the suggestions I added.
Could you please continue the petty bickering? I find it most intriguing.
~ Data, ST:TNG "Haven"
Wow, you are very much more involved in the activities of your fleet members than I am. It sounds like you guys have meetings and exchange notes. To each his own, I guess. I try to not have newer players in my fleet because I've noticed about half of players under level 40 quit playing and go inactive pretty quickly. Only allowing players level 40 or higher has cut down on the number of people that join and go inactive significantly, I have cut the amount of kicking and replacing more than in half since we made that change.
If there were actually some tangible benefit related to fleet rank I'd care about it. But even running a fleet where the only enforced policy is don't go inactive for 10 days, we still earn a fleet rank between 150-600 depending on the week. Last week the fleet had at least 5 players finish in the top 1000, while about half the fleet chose to either just clear thresholds or just not do the event.
That said, I really don't think that your rear admiral idea is a good one. It doesn't take long to email support if your admiral goes inactive. Having to wait a day or two for them to get back to you isn't really the end of the world. If your admiral is having problems disbanding your squads you can either have the squad members or squad leaders leave them voluntarily, or you can designate someone else as admiral who has more time and is willing to do what you would like done.
Honestly, I really think you're making things way more complicated for yourself than necessary.
I was just trying to show that you can actually have a fleet without somehow turning it into a full-time job. Yes, i think it is unnecessary. Yes, I think it's silly to turn a fleet into some kind of super organized activity.
I honestly just don't understand why anyone would want to create all that extra unnecessary work for themselves that you describe. I know I wouldn't want to participate in anything at all like that. I'm interested in playing the game, collecting cards that strengthen my crew, and earning honor to finish fusing my crew.
I wasn't trying to be mean and I'm sorry that you seem to be taking what I said that way. I just honestly don't get it. It is so far removed from how I play the game I just don't get the point. I can think of about 9000 other things I'd like to have rather than this. I don't even know why it interests me enough to post on it.
That's why I keep repeating myself because all you say is that's great, but you don't say anything about the benefits of the way you do things. I was actually genuinely interested. I am not going to start micromanagement of my fleet, but I have always been interested in why people do it when there are no rewards or benefits associated with fleet rank or how a fleet finishes in an event. To me, no benefit means no point.
The reason I would like a Vice-Admiral rank (and I am not saying to force that on everyone, just allow squads to designate such a position if they choose...as opposed to just another general “officer” title), is that at times Admiral’s have gone a.w.o.l. I understand that an email can be sent, and a response would come shortly thereafter. But I feel it would be nice to handle it in-house and quickly.
The other item I would like, is for Admirals to be able to disband squads if needed. I know in our case, rotation can be chaotic (and we invite that cup of crazy by doing it that way), but people forget to disband, or go on vacation, or whatever other reason there is...it would be nice if an Admiral could just clear old squads without booting someone from the fleet.
Hopefully, this is more clear. I think there is a benefit, albeit a small one.
Thank you for clarifying. I still don't think that we need anymore admirals. Officers can do almost anything an admiral can do except kick out admirals. You can currently have as many officers as you would like. I do think it would be nice if officers/admirals had the power to promote/demote squad leaders. Currently when a squad leader goes inactive kicking him out of the fleet disbands the squad. Since I don't dictate the behavior of my fleet, that means sometimes new squads are very slow to form back up. It doesn't really matter that much overall. (In fact I've currently got 4 players with very solid event scores that choose to just hangout on the bottom of the list and not join any squad. They contribute to building the starbase and meeting daily targets, so I consider them in good standing despite not being in a squad.) But it would be less disruptive to others in the squad if the squad didn't just suddenly disband.
Just my 2 bars of Latinum, and maybe a way to tweak the idea -
Some fleets, my rag-tag group included, like to rotate squads for faction events. Squad lineups for Galaxy really don't matter all that much, as there are no shared crew. End-event Squad rewards aren't exactly blowing my skirt up, and Fleet ranking/rewards haven't been implemented. Yet.
So for today, the game we have, the only thing that matters (relevant to this discussion) is faction event and crew share. We post the event notes whenever Shan announces them, and then everyone leaves a post/comment about where they want to place and what bonus crew they have. Then, the night before the event starts, SilverRose or myself will get friendly with a bottle of 15yr old Glenfiddich and make out 6 or so squads.
Squad leaders are both people trying to push hard for a top 25 or 50 finish and need the boost of VP from the shared crew. We assemble around them people that will be playing and using the crew. Now you may notice I said only 6 squads - that's because nothing is mandatory and we really don't care who does what. If you want to participate, great - I'll make a spot for you. If you don't, hey that's great too! Just don't comment on the post and we will mark you off the list by process of elimination.
This entire mentality is a hold over from a year + ago when we were hyper competitive. The early days of events and Fleet/Squad pride was a different animal than it is today. The super competitive folks worked and tried to get a great showing to earn a spot into the "Alpha" squad, which was traditionally the top 5 guys. We wanted to end up higher and better than those Klingon guys ( ha! ).
Now-a-days, I'm retired from the 'competitive' aspect of the game. Won enough events and immortalized enough crew that I am content to just play and support the people around me and the community. I'm happily friends with the other fleets instead of trying to beat them.
All of that is to say this - earlier in the year, SIlverRose had to undergo a very dangerous and risky surgery where she had REDACTED removed and then REDACTED swapped with her left REDACTED so she doesn't have that weird REDACTED anymore. While she was under the gas and dreaming happy thoughts of Wesley, she passed the Fleet Admiral baton to me. We made it a public transfer of power on Discord with witnesses from other fleets where I would agree to give it back and wouldn't try and sell the fleet to the Russians.
After 48 long and wild hours, she returned to us and I, as contractually promised, transferred the fleet back to her. In my tenure, I did accept a new member who doesn't speak a lick of English, wear fleet tags or join our fleet chat room. We christened him the Fleet Hobo, and he remains in a squad by himself to this day. If you get into trouble for some reason, you have to go join the Hobo in his squad.
The temporary transfer of power worked great, and was all we needed. No need for a 'Vice Admiral' as it were, however there does need to be additional permissions for Officers, including the ability to disband squads (without fleet kick) and the ability to approve applications as they only go to the Admiral.
Past that, everything is fine. Give the Admiral an additional duty that only they have to make them feel special. Nothing wild, but something that sounds fancy - like the ability to invite is solely to them.