Post details: December/Holidays 2009
2009-12-21
December/Holidays 2009
Starfleet Academy Status Report
by Rear Admiral Charles D. Clark
The ebb and flow continues. In 2009 I have seen the largest, and the smallest, number of signups per month in the more than two years that I have been commandant. It also looks like this year will be the largest number of graduates of that period as well, but I intend to write more on that for next month's end-of-the-year roundup.
There were seven new signups this month. Two were accepted, although one eventually dropped away. As of November 30, the one cadet in training was Cadet Theene, played by Scott Snider, and trained by Mike Eubanks. There were no graduates in November.
As for the ebb and flow, it laps over into the duty stations as well. I have the privilege of posting on two of our three active dutystations, and can report that many of our 2009 graduates are thriving. But almost as many have already fallen away from the game. Thanks to Rob007 for doing some field research into that, and for bringing back some of our former players who had left.
As someone who has been on the Command team of the Valkyrie for several years now, I try to be constantly aware of who is posting and who is not. There are some players who simply don't post that much, but they do post regularly and well, and we are glad to have them with us. They may not rise to Command status, but they are valuable members of their respective crews, and I don't think anybody hesitates to ask for replies from them.
There are other people who seem to come and go, as their real life constrictions allow. Maybe they have classes or a job that demand differing amounts of their time, or family or health situations. They are good enough to let us know when these times come and we are comfortable with granting LOA's for them.
Then there are people who fly through the Academy and get assigned, and we think that they are going to be a vital part of the future of FF. All of a sudden, you realize you haven't seen them on the list for a couple of weeks. You email, and get no reply. You wait a couple more weeks, maybe a month, email a few more times, still nothing. Finally, a Captain has no choice but to remove their PC from the roster.
These are the most frustrating ones, because you have come to care about that person and that character. They invariably leave reply requests hanging, which you then have to work your way around and carry on. As a First Officer and Captain I always ask myself why these people just disappear. Was it something I, or the Command team, did? Is there anything I could have done to keep them playing?
The problem is, you get no feedback from them. That's why you end up removing them, because they simply don't respond any more, to anything. On the Valkyrie we have gotten four new Ensigns from the Academy this year, and two of them are already gone. They simply stopped replying to any contact whatsoever. I would love to know what happened. Did someone offend them? Do they find the game dull, or in some other way not what they expected? Did they feel left out?
Knowing Kelley and Rob Versteegt as well as I do, I believe that all the leadership is trying their best to address these issues. Many of the new people to the game are staying and apparently having a good time. We have had almost two hundred signups in the last two years, and yet we have just done our second contraction of the game. Pandora is an all-SPC station on which no one posts, and the Atlantis is in dry dock.
There is an old line about the US Army's Green Beret corps; for every 100 applicants, only three ever wear the Green Beret. I suppose it would be comforting to think of Frontier Fleet in that same way, but I couldn't honestly say that it's true. My disadvantage in this area is that I'm actually newer than many of the people on the Command list, and certainly newer than our Council.
So I ask the question; how has the game changed since the heyday when there were five active duty stations? A couple of years ago someone mentioned in a status report that their posting numbers were good, but still only half of what they'd once been. What is different? From what I understand, the game started with just the Calhoun. How did it grow so much that it spawned three other ships and a space station?
I for one would like to hear what those days were like. Maybe someone could write a piece on that for the newspaper or something, but we were already up to the five when I arrived. In this era when Star Trek itself is looking at its own origins for inspiration, it might be time for us to at least dust off the cornerstone. We don't have to go back in time, and really we couldn't if we wanted to. The game is clearly founded on the idea of moving the Trek we know forward, not backward. But maybe it's time to take a look at how far forward we've come.
Submitted by RAdm. Charles David Clark, Commandant / Rick Clogston
