Argo Vision of Starfleet

[Katriel]

ARGO VISION OF STARFLEET

Star Trek lore is a vast and amazing world of characters, species, capabilities and event timelines and universes. These all make for great entertainment via TV shows, movies and games. It also makes it an amazing place to role-play.

However, the vastness of it all can create for, sometimes, competing visions of what various organizations within the universe are like.

As a consistent and persistent role play community, it is important for all the players that are a part of Argo to have the same general understanding. The information below serves two purposes. It serves to be an initial familiarization of the vision of Starfleet for new applicants. It also serves as a reference tool for existing members to come back to and see how their stories and plots fit into this vision. The below information fits hand in hand with current character and story policies within the fleet. This is the vision, those policies are how we maintain it.

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STARFLEET IS HUGE, ADVANCED, AND BASICALLY PEERLESS.

In the known and explored sectors of alpha and beta quadrants, the Federation is more or less the predominant power in terms of political influence and economic strength. Though the Klingon Empire is potentially on par in sheer military force and the Romulan Republic is competitive in technological advancement, neither faction can match the Federation’s more well-rounded infrastructure.

As a result, Starfleet is phenomenally well-supported in terms of resources and staff, making them capable of quick recoveries in times of devastation. Though Federation security can be and periodically is threatened by especially competitive or superior enemies (e.g. Vaadwaur, Voth, Undine, Iconians), these threats tend to be high impact, short duration, and generally storied out by Cryptic and the official STO mission campaigns directly.

When interacting with other factions, Starfleet favors diplomacy while simultaneously staying prepared to use force. Additionally, as a post-scarcity economy, Federation citizens enjoy a nearly utopian quality of life, where every individual is entitled to pursue what interests them and has access to basic material needs (decent living conditions, sufficient food, medical care).

COMMON PITFALLS

Backstory states that a Federation character’s parents are both dead or missing, resulting in the character needing to raise and fend for themselves as an orphan. As a post-scarcity society, the Federation would not turn away minors in need. They would be cared for and educated until their majority, after which they would be free to choose their own path.

Assuming Starfleet consists of pacifists who refuse to fight or that Starfleet would never go on the offensive. Starfleet is best characterized as an organization who uses their significant power with great responsibility. Though they will work very hard to achieve a diplomatic solution first and foremost, if Starfleet is dealing with a particular recalcitrant group, they are not above deciding that they require a more efficient ending ‘now’. Starfleet’s decisions to ally and negotiate with others is usually based on principle, not need.

Assuming Starfleet is strapped for capable personnel due to recent war losses. In the immediate aftermath of a conflict, this might be true, but as months pass, it will no longer be so. As a general rule of thumb, Starfleet is more likely to have too many personnel and not enough postings to put them in, especially when it comes to starships.

 

STARFLEET IS STRICTLY REGULATED.

Starfleet may not be solely a military organization, but they do operate under a structure that very closely mirrors a modern, developed government-funded military. This includes a military rank structure with implied hierarchy and chain of command, thoroughly detailed processes and procedures for all manner of administrative and operational requests (read: lots of paperwork), and a sophisticated system for conducting judicial review and executing measures for correctional punishment.

COMMON PITFALLS

Backstory involves a career progression in which some ranks are especially short or skipped entirely, or battlefield promotions are mistaken for actual promotions. While Starfleet appreciates individual merit and raw talent/skill, it also understands that there’s no substitution for direct experience gained over time. Though actual lengths of time spent in each rank will vary widely between officers, officer promotion is generally only granted to those who have consistently and repeatedly demonstrated their ability to handle the increased responsibility. Battlefield promotions and/or commissions should always be considered temporary until the immediate situation in which the promotion was granted is resolved. After the situation is normalized, Command may or may not choose to make the promotion permanent.

Character holds multiple positions or job titles or character has unique training (especially MACO) or capabilities that are not relevant to the character’s career trajectory. The vast majority of job positions in Starfleet are never part time. Not only does any given position come with day to day tasks and obligations, officers are expected to continue training as necessary to stay atop new developments in the field. This means personnel generally cannot be qualified to do more than one job at a time, as a staying abreast all the issues for both would be effectively impossible. Exceptions would be skills that involve testing for certification, of which MACO is not one. Please see our MACO policy for more information on Argo’s vision of MACO.

Character is an officer in Starfleet, but their species is not already a member of the Federation. While Starfleet embraces diversity, it will not do so at the expense of regulation. Non-Federation species youth candidates must be sponsored by a Starfleet Captain to enroll in Starfleet Academy and adults are expected to undergo at least an abbreviated training period to learn what they need to acclimate to working in a Federation environment.

Character by default prefers to engage in ‘cowboy diplomacy’ or ‘shoot first, ask questions later’. Starfleet officers, and Captains especially, are expected to be diplomats with the same level of maturity and understanding that goes with a position earned through years of service as a subordinate on other ships and duty positions. Behavior that runs counter to this will be reprimanded.

And while it is true that one James T. Kirk engaged in a lot of reckless behavior and seemed to get away with it, consider what one Captain Janeway said in regards to that:

JANEWAY: It would seem that Captain Sulu decided not to enter that journey into his official log. The day’s entry makes some cryptic remark about the ship being damaged in a gaseous anomaly and needing repairs, but… nothing else.

KIM: You mean, he falsified his logs?

JANEWAY: It was a very different time, Mr. Kim. Captain Sulu, Captain Kirk, Doctor McCoy - they all belonged to a different breed of Starfleet officer. Imagine the era they lived in: the Alpha Quadrant still largely unexplored, Humanity on verge of war with Klingons, Romulans hiding behind every nebula. Even the technology we take for granted was still in its early stages: no plasma weapons, no multiphasic shields; their ships were half as fast.

KIM: No replicators; no holodecks. You know, ever since I took Starfleet history at the Academy, I always wondered what it would be like to live in those days.

JANEWAY: Space must have seemed a whole lot bigger back then. It’s not surprising they had to bend the rules a little. They were a little slower to invoke the Prime Directive, and a little quicker to pull their phasers. Of course, the whole bunch of them would be booted out of Starfleet today. But I have to admit, I would have loved to ride shotgun at least once with a group of officers like that.

- ‘Flashback’, Star Trek Voyager E3x02

 

STARFLEET IS MORALLY SOUND.

The United Federation of Planets was founded on principles of universal liberty and rights, as well as the Rule of Law, and the vast majority of Starfleet’s officers exhibit an intrinsic respect for these same values. Though the recent frequency of mass galactic conflict may arguably take its toll on a single individual’s morale, Starfleet as an organization remains committed to upstanding moral conduct, even if circumstances contrive to tempt them otherwise.

COMMON PITFALLS

Character is a product of government (Federation or Starfleet) experiment. Starfleet would never purposefully sanction experimentation on sentient beings or their offspring.

Character is motivated primarily by vengeance. While vengeance can be a legitimate enough trope for starting a character along a certain path, an officer who was motivated only by this would likely eventually be eliminated by psychological attitude exams unless they develop additional career-related interests.

Character is a pawn of a corrupt Starfleet Admiral or other high-ranking official’s conspiracies. While there are occasionally corrupt officers and even organizations shown in the TV series or movie plots, these are rare and are always ruthlessly hounded out and dealt with. Furthermore, even if a subordinate is following a superior officer’s orders, should said orders be morally reprehensible, the subordinate would not be fully exonerated in the aftermath review.

Character is an ‘honorable’ mercenary, bounty hunter, or assassin by profession and holds a contract with Starfleet. While it’s true that space is vast and there are certainly regions of it that harbor both shady places and people, those who engage in the business of bounty hunters and assassins will be uniformly condemned by Starfleet, as Starfleet would not condone meting out punishment without due process, let alone for financial gain. More potentially justifiable is the existence of private security bodyguards or ‘military substitute’ mercenaries, but these are a generally unnecessary investment when Starfleet already has numerous fight-capable resources at its disposal that are likely both better trained and better equipped. Please refer to our civilian policy for more information on playing civilian-type characters.

 

STARFLEET CONSTANTLY PRIORITIZES SAFETY.

A significant reason for Starfleet’s sometimes seemingly excessive bureaucratic structure is due to its responsibility to the safety and security of all its personnel, as well as the lives of those who interact with them. This includes planning operations to avoid firefights when possible, stun settings being the default on weaponry, and not allowing mentally disturbed and/or impulsively irresponsible officers to stay in command. While accidents can and do happen, especially when working with experimental scientific or engineering advancements, they are always carefully scrutinized so improvements to safety procedures can be made for future endeavors.

COMMON PITFALLS

Character possesses a cavalier or apathetic attitude towards death and gore, due to previous extensive experience with violence. This is a likely flag for psychological review, as officers who have become so desensitized to violence and loss of life would not be considered good candidates to manage operations in which other personnel’s lives would potentially be at risk.

Character is from another dimension, Mirror Universe or other, or from another time frame, but arrives in current present dimension and desires to join Starfleet. Accepting a candidate from such a foreign and volatile environment would be an unfathomably huge risk on Starfleet’s part. Not only is it impossible for Starfleet to verify the truthfulness of any information provided by the candidate, the likelihood of double agents in these scenarios is increased significantly when one considers the sheer lack of positive interactions with members of these other realms.

Character consistently manages to avoid annual health or psychological reviews and/or character manages to hide a particular detrimental character feature at every health review, only to lose control of it ‘now’ at a critical juncture. This suggests that all of the physicians and counselors who have worked with this character’s case thus far have been incompetent and/or negligent in their duties. Furthermore, annual health and psychological reviews are required for every officer and the burden of completion falls on the subject, not the caretakers, so officers who try to avoid these responsibilities will eventually be barred from duty until it’s completed.