The link to the official fleet FAQ isn’t as prominent as it used to be, so I thought I’d make a thread in case anyone in the future tries to find it here in the Guidebook!
So here you go:
FAQ - 38th Fleet 'Argo'
And as a special treat, here’s the most frequently asked question that isn’t actually covered by the FAQ:
Why is Argo’s IC year (IRL year)+399 instead of (IRL year)+400? Wouldn’t it be easier to just use a round number?
Of course it would be easier! Unfortunately, unlike some other fleets you might find that use the easy +400 number, Argo has actually existed since 2010 - the real year STO launched.
But why does that matter?
See, the game was planned to be released in 2009 with an in-game year of 2409. Everything would have lined up neatly! But because things rarely go according to plan in the real world, the game was delayed until 2010. STO didn’t change the in-game year to reflect the delay, so we were left with an IRL year of 2010 and an IC year of 2409.
Sure, but why does THAT matter?
Because Argo progresses at a real-time pace, we’ve always been left with that one-year mismatch: our unique +399 IC year. Despite some overhauls and name changes along the way, the fleet has been in continuous operation ever since. We’ve never had the opportunity to skip a year to “catch up” without drastically impacting all of our active RP characters.
Can’t we just change it? It’s such a pain!
No, too bad! We decided long ago that the minor inconvenience to new/incoming characters was worth preserving the character and fleet histories in the actual time periods they occurred. To see what it is that we’re talking about, check out Argo’s timeline to see exactly when each major story arc of STO was canonized, all the way back to the launch of the game. (Plus all our custom stuff since!)
Thanks for reading! <3