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To Boldly Go... (a Starfleet quest)

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To Boldly Go... (a Starfleet quest) Starfleet Ship Design Bureau, Refit ("To Boldly Go...")
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Void Stalker said:
So I was looking at our current ec captains and thinking on past ones and they have mostly been either Vulcan or human. I do think we need to start identifying additional captains from the other races that can be EC captains.
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I don't feel a moral compulsion to diversity of made-up alien races in my fiction. As long as the humans are pretty diverse, it's cool with me. EDIT: In fact, one might say it's somewhat preferable to have lot of humans of different heritages over trying to balance cat-people and turtle-people and blue people and green people.
 
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If you want more non-human/Vulcan captains, start playing up non-human/Vulcan characters. Write stories. Develop them.

To date we have three non-human/Vulcan captains in the Explorer Corps over the course of the game since September. We are likely to soon acquire a fourth (Leaniss).

Of those four individuals, three of them figured prominently as omake characters for months before their incorporation as Explorer Corps captains, and the fourth is Nash.
 
Briefvoice said:
I don't feel a moral compulsion to diversity of made-up alien races in my fiction. As long as the humans are pretty diverse, it's cool with me. EDIT: In fact, one might say it's somewhat preferable to have lot of humans of different heritages over trying to balance cat-people and turtle-people and blue people and green people.
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I dunno, I find the 'Federation is actually a human empire' bit of fandom really annoying so I'd prefer not to replicate it in this quest.
 
Iron Wolf said:
I dunno, I find the 'Federation is actually a human empire' bit of fandom really annoying so I'd prefer not to replicate it in this quest.
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I don't think we can reasonably be accused of this. We've got nonhuman presidents, nonhuman vice admirals all over the place, nonhuman captains making up much of the Explorer Corps (and even if Vulcans are the 'bland' nonhuman choice, they are arguably more inhuman than most of the alternatives)

But quite frankly, the solution is simply to create large numbers of compelling, interesting nonhuman characters. Look what you did with Vol Chad- now we have a Tellarite Explorer Corps captain. Or what AKuz did with Mrrshan and Leaniss and (arguably) Nash. If people keep doing that, it will help.

I tend to take characters that already exist, because of my own... limitations, I suppose. But we shouldn't keep whipping ourselves about it, when we're doing much 'better' than canon could (since canon is limited by makeup budgets).
 
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Simon_Jester said:
But quite frankly, the solution is simply to create large numbers of compelling, interesting nonhuman characters. [...] But we shouldn't keep whipping ourselves about it, when we're doing much 'better' than canon could (since canon is limited by makeup budgets).
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"Your new creed is ABO."

"ABO?"

"Always. Be. Omake-ing."

"But I need to--"

"Look at you! You're wasting time you could be omake-ing on this dumbass post!"
 
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Random Member said:
The President isn't a part of Starfleet though, so since we're talking about (perceived) speciesism (or whatever the term is) within Starfleet, what species the President is from doesn't matter.
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Okay, it's just... gaaah.

It's like, we literally can't win this particular 'speciesist' game until humans are roughly a 10% minority of named characters within Starfleet, at which point we're spending more time making up random-gibberish names and alien proverbs for our characters. And given that so many of the canon and 'legacy original' characters are already human, it leaves us with basically no room to make up NEW humans.

So really, in my opinion, "the only way to win is not to play." We're not appeasing an entity that actually exists, we're appeasing this arbitrary fabricated inner voice telling us to stop having fun.
 
Theunderbolt said:
I'm hoping that with our academy upgrades and the consolidation of the new member worlds we will get some more variety.
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I think part of the problem is that we, and thus Starfleet, are Expansionists. and while we aren't Planet of Hats, we do have stereotypical leanings based on species. which effects character bonuses. so we are choosing characters whose bonuses help us with our expansionis goals, which means we are choosing characters with expansionis leanings, which means we are choosing species with expansionist leanings.

I hope that Starfleet will do some good expansionist indoctrination so that we have a more diverse pool of people we agree with.
 
Simon_Jester said:
Okay, it's just... gaaah.
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Interestingly, and I dunno if this is what @OneirosTheWriter keeps alluding to when he [e: jokingly] mentions moving the capital, but there's a tie for species with most seats on the council: Humans and Andorians both have 7 seats each, which is about 1/3 of the total votes. Vulcans have six. Between the Andorians and the Amarki when you look at the Fed council chambers during a sitting, you'll see a lot of blue.

EDIT: how this is relevant is that at least on the political level, humans don't have a plurality and certainly aren't holding some massive political power either.
 
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Simon_Jester said:
Okay, it's just... gaaah.

It's like, we literally can't win this particular 'speciesist' game until humans are roughly a 10% minority of named characters within Starfleet, at which point we're spending more time making up random-gibberish names and alien proverbs for our characters. And given that so many of the canon and 'legacy original' characters are already human, it leaves us with basically no room to make up NEW humans.

So really, in my opinion, "the only way to win is not to play." We're not appeasing an entity that actually exists, we're appeasing this arbitrary fabricated inner voice telling us to stop having fun.
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No, we're appeasing the same in-game characters who also set our Combat Limit, give us our annual resource income, and set our strategic goals. If you don't like that we're beholden to the Federation Council, you're playing the wrong game.

Now, you are correct that it would be a pain in the ass if we had to make all our OC's aliens. There's a balance to strike between verisimilitude and character relatability. But I think we can afford to make, say, 1/4th of our Starfleet OC's human, rather than the current 1/2 to 2/3rds.
 
Random Member said:
Yeah, because that sure won't bring the Council down upon us.
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I don't mean some overt political party B.S.
But Starfleet Academy (like any education system) ought to be emphasising the values of the (socio-political) system it feeds in too.
So, people graduating from Starfleet (and to a lesser extant entering in the first place) will likely share many of the values that Starfleet as a whole does.
We, the meraverse rulers of Starfleet, are expansionist, making Starfleet expansionist.
So our graduates will hopefully be Expansionists and thus pursue skills and abilities (i.e. bonuses) that reflect and aid that philosophy.
More power to whoever graduates with areas of interest and expertise we don't want, but we voters aren't going to prefer them for advancement except in rare circumstances.
 
Leila Hann said:
No, we're appeasing the same in-game characters who also set our Combat Limit, give us our annual resource income, and set our strategic goals. If you don't like that we're beholden to the Federation Council, you're playing the wrong game.
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Oneiros could just choose to make the in-game characters not care about it, and generally they don't. Complaints have been very rare and mild. It's not like they have an independent existence where they're going to get mad and nobody can do anything.

Now, you are correct that it would be a pain in the ass if we had to make all our OC's aliens. There's a balance to strike between verisimilitude and character relatability. But I think we can afford to make, say, 1/4th of our Starfleet OC's human, rather than the current 1/2 to 2/3rds.
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I've taken to randomly rolling a die to see what species they are when I make one, but I don't feel obligated to have a non-human quota or something.
 
Briefvoice said:
Oneiros could just choose to make the in-game characters not care about it, and generally they don't. Complaints have been very rare and mild. It's not like they have an independent existence where they're going to get mad and nobody can do anything.
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Well, yes, obviously Oneiros is choosing to have the NPC's behave in the way that they are. But if you dismiss those characters as an "arbitrary fabricated inner voice" then you're rejecting the entire medium of quests.

If you think Oneiros is making a bad decision in having the characters make those complaints, you should explain WHY you think its a bad decision, not go on a tangent about how everyone is being dumb for taking the GM posts at face value.
 
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The wave of expansion is recent, so the senior officer composition is very different from the graduating classes from the academy. I've seen more of a mix in people writing and creating characters of that vintage (and tried to do some of that, even with a human pov character).
 
Leila Hann said:
Well, yes, obviously Oneiros is choosing to have the NPC's behave in the way that they are. But if you dismiss those characters as an "arbitrary fabricated inner voice" then you're rejecting the entire medium of quests.

If you think Oneiros is making a bad decision in having the characters make those complaints, you should explain WHY you think its a bad decision.
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I think he is making a good decision in having characters not make complaints, as opposed to an occasional bit of color from sources not connected to the Federation Council and not within Starfleet itself.

I think the "arbitrary fabricated inner voice' comes from when quest participants assume that this is an actual problem about which something must be done, when the quest itself has never taken the position that this is a problem about which something must be done.
 
Briefvoice said:
I think he is making a good decision in having characters not make complaints, as opposed to an occasional bit of color from sources not connected to the Federation Council and not within Starfleet itself.

I think the "arbitrary fabricated inner voice' comes from when quest participants assume that this is an actual problem about which something must be done, when the quest itself has never taken the position that this is a problem about which something must be done.
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Fair enough.

Personally, I agree with those occasional bits of color, and will vote for more alien characters because that's consistent with my personal vision of what Starfleet should look like.
 
Iron Wolf said:
Interestingly, and I dunno if this is what @OneirosTheWriter keeps alluding to when he [e: jokingly] mentions moving the capital, but there's a tie for species with most seats on the council: Humans and Andorians both have 7 seats each, which is about 1/3 of the total votes. Vulcans have six. Between the Andorians and the Amarki when you look at the Fed council chambers during a sitting, you'll see a lot of blue.

EDIT: how this is relevant is that at least on the political level, humans don't have a plurality and certainly aren't holding some massive political power either.
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Yeah; you can argue that if Starfleet is plurality-human, it's because other species have agreed that using humans as meatshields works and that they're a good match for Starfleet, as opposed to it just being humans somehow muscling in on other species against their will.

Leila Hann said:
No, we're appeasing the same in-game characters who also set our Combat Limit, give us our annual resource income, and set our strategic goals. If you don't like that we're beholden to the Federation Council, you're playing the wrong game.
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I have plenty of concrete evidence of our resource limits and combat cap.

I have yet to encounter evidence that we're in any danger of encountering political trouble because of "too many humans," especially because of "too many human OCs in player omakes."

Leila Hann said:
Well, yes, obviously Oneiros is choosing to have the NPC's behave in the way that they are. But if you dismiss those characters as an "arbitrary fabricated inner voice" then you're rejecting the entire medium of quests.
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What I mean is, our collective 'inner voice' (players talking to other players in discussion) seems to worry about 'human-dominated Starfleet' a lot more than almost anyone does in-character.

Briefvoice is right. My complaint isn't that there's something wrong with the way the quest is run. It's that I'm not sure that we can ever satisfy ourselves that we're not playing "human-dominated Starfleet" without sacrificing some of our fun in the process.

[EDIT: What I mean is, I'm not opposed to us voting in nonhumans when all else is equal. I just don't think we should self-flagellate over it; we're doing okay so far on that front]
 
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Honestly, I always considered the preponderance of humans in Starfleet to come down to a very simple explanation: more humans join Starfleet, both proportionately and in absolute numbers, than the other member worlds.

Early on, it could be that Earth was trying to make up for its perceived youth and inability to act independently of Vulcan. Then it eventually turned into the "we look to better ourselves" post-scarcity thing, and Starfleet is the place to go to improve yourself and make the galaxy a better place. Then, alongside that, I'd always imagined that the other early member worlds of the Federation were much less expansionist and/or less willing to plonk an unsupported colony down on a marginal world during the 22nd and 23rd centuries, so that by the time it gets to the 24th century there are flat out more human colonies in the Federation than there are other member world colonies.

Like, a recurring thing in Star Trek is how the "Hat" of humans is drive. Exploration of the unknown, settling a world without much aid, operating a vineyard in the 24th century without a lick of technology beyond that of the 19th century, insisting on peaceful cooperation when it would be so much easier to "do the hard thing"? Romulans are schemers, Klingons are warriors, Vulcans are logical, and Humans are stubborn.
 
Godwinson said:
Honestly, I always considered the preponderance of humans in Starfleet to come down to a very simple explanation: more humans join Starfleet, both proportionately and in absolute numbers, than the other member worlds.

Early on, it could be that Earth was trying to make up for its perceived youth and inability to act independently of Vulcan. Then it eventually turned into the "we look to better ourselves" post-scarcity thing, and Starfleet is the place to go to improve yourself and make the galaxy a better place. Then, alongside that, I'd always imagined that the other early member worlds of the Federation were much less expansionist and/or less willing to plonk an unsupported colony down on a marginal world during the 22nd and 23rd centuries, so that by the time it gets to the 24th century there are flat out more human colonies in the Federation than there are other member world colonies.

Like, a recurring thing in Star Trek is how the "Hat" of humans is drive. Exploration of the unknown, settling a world without much aid, operating a vineyard in the 24th century without a lick of technology beyond that of the 19th century, insisting on peaceful cooperation when it would be so much easier to "do the hard thing"? Romulans are schemers, Klingons are warriors, Vulcans are logical, and Humans are stubborn.
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Sure, and explanations like that can go a long way toward humans being massively overrepresented in Starfleet without it raising questions about how egalitarian the Federation actually is. But there's a difference between "massively overrepresented" and "literally 90+ percent of Starfleet." We can and should have more Starfleet alien characters than the shows.

We already do, I think, but were it up to me I'd push it a bit further than we have.
 
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