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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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Gods, this police action against the Orion Syndicate is indicative of how utterly, utterly terrifying the Federation could be if it were like the Terran Empire.

It is good that they are by and large reactive pacifists.
 
Cornuthaum said:
Gods, this police action against the Orion Syndicate is indicative of how utterly, utterly terrifying the Federation could be if it were like the Terran Empire.

It is good that they are by and large reactive pacifists.
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The Terran Empire would have simply razed the Syndicate fortresses to the ground via unrelenting phasers and maximum yield torpedoes.
 
Don't forget, in Mirror Universe, Orion Syndicate are good guys.

Any ideas how exactly they are?
 
Though I like the idea that "T'Lorel the Devastator" or whatever Mirror T'Lorel is like has this preternatural ability to use her orbital phaser strikes to obliterate everything but that one specific prize she's after...
 
Yeangst said:
I feel like Mirror T'Lorel is also a big fan of orbit to ground photon torpedo strikes.
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No, that would be Mirror T'Rinta.

And real T'Rinta.

Briefvoice said:
He's not going to be punished. He simply might not be chosen again. It's a different thing.

EDIT: And again, this is how things are done in the real world. Are real world militaries just really dumb for considering loss of a ship kind of a black mark against a captain, even if he was formally cleared? Or do they perhaps have their reasons?
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The biggest difference is that in real life, we don't routinely order warships to go poking around desolate islands that just miiight have batteries of gigantic undetectable antiship missiles on automatic watch waiting to sink the first ship that comes near.

The conditions of the sea, while potentially strange and treacherous, are fundamentally predictable and have been known for thousands of years. When a ship sinks outside of wartime, it's a good bet that someone made a serious mistake. Sometimes the ship's designers, but usually the captain- or both. If a ship sinks at sea, and the court-martial formally clears the captain, there's a distinct possibility that the motivation was a political whitewash, or that important evidence of the captain's incompetence didn't come to light. Or something. Because the ship must have sunk due to known threats like wind and wave and navigation hazards- and a good captain would, axiomatically, have been able to avoid all those things somehow.

The prior probability of "the captain messed up somehow," given the fact of "they lost a ship," is very high. Even if there isn't enough evidence to prove a case of negligence,

Whereas in Star Trek, the variance of threats to a ship's safety is much higher. There are many kinds of crises we can routinely expect captains to handle... but sometimes the gods hand you a no-win scenario, especially when alien ultratech is involved. And we deliberately send our exploration ships to places that are unlike anything else known, exposing them to hazards never before experienced by our fleet.

This makes the finding of the court-martial all the more important, because "the captain's ship was destroyed by a force no one could have foreseen or overcome" is much more plausible. There is ample precedent for such things happening to ships in the historical record. And blindly assuming the captain must be a screwup in some way the court-martial simply failed to detect becomes less supported by the evidence.
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So yes, a real navy might well decide that Mbeki is is just Not Promotion Material. But then, a real navy wouldn't have subjected Mbeki to the Kobayashi Maru scenario as a trainee. They'd make the first decision for the same reason as the second one- because a real navy doesn't expect its ships to end up against impossible odds once in a while in the routine course of peacetime operations.
 
In the mirror universe, the Orion Syndicate is much the same... but they look a lot better by comparison and their "protect the people against a government you can't trust to look after your interests" schtick comes across as much more plausible.
 
Simon_Jester said:
This makes the finding of the court-martial all the more important, because "the captain's ship was destroyed by a force no one could have foreseen or overcome" is much more plausible. There is ample precedent for such things happening to ships in the historical record. And blindly assuming the captain must be a screwup in some way the court-martial simply failed to detect becomes less supported by the evidence.
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So yes, a real navy might well decide that Mbeki is is just Not Promotion Material. But then, a real navy wouldn't have subjected Mbeki to the Kobayashi Maru scenario as a trainee. They'd make the first decision for the same reason as the second one- because a real navy doesn't expect its ships to end up against impossible odds once in a while in the routine course of peacetime operations.
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Further more he managed to save nearly the entirety of his crew. If anything he's someone I'd want on a ship, someone whose shown themselves capable of quick and coherent thinking in a situation that literally collapsing around them.
 
Yeah. Alternatively, if I didn't put him on a ship, I would still promote him. Say, into a role where his outside-the-box thinking makes him a valuable part of the team that designs the next generation of explorer.

Remember that guy we court-martialed but didn't throw out of Starfleet for hesitating during the Biophage crisis and letting an infected freighter escape because he was still trying to beam up survivors? A normal military would almost certainly have thrown the book at him much harder. This is similar- we have different expectations of our captains than the Generican Space Navy would, so we have to think differently about what we do or don't punish our captains for.
 
Simon_Jester said:
There's a difference between believing in chance, and making hiring/firing decisions based on the perception of whether a person has luck. Especially if that becomes recursive and we start shunning people or future career advancement because they once served on a 'cursed' ship that we assigned them to in the first place.

Of the many reasons I kept advocating so long for Nash ka'Sharren, I don't think one of them was because of luck. Because I enjoyed reading of her exploits? Yes. Because I thought she was extremely able? Yes. But those are specific things that don't involve appealing to magic.
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It amuses me how much of this falls apart if you know the full context of the quote.

Many of the people who were removed from submarine command because they weren't lucky went to command destroyers with the Atlantic escort force when they lost their submarine commands. Their performance was usually above average, they were decorated several standard deviations above the norm. There was nothing wrong with them as leaders, but it just takes more than skill for that branch.

Now, that was over "productivity"; two patrols with nothing to show and you were out. Here, we gave Thuir his promotion after his mission was over, he's a perfectly fine officer, but his career as an Explorer Corps captain was a low point for us and brought us an enduring security issue. You need to be more than a fine officer as an Explorer Corps captain. Whatever that is, Thuir didn't have it.

Magic? I suppose you could argue that. But it's hard to say we're not judging them on their performance at the same time considering it's only being employed after the fact.
 
I'm not sure I even understand what you're getting at anymore.

I mean, are you equating a five year mission in command of an explorer to a few patrols in a submarine? So that if someone gets promoted out of their Explorer Corps command at the five year mark it somehow indicates that they didn't "produce" for us and don't have some indefinable, non-measurable, apparently supernatural "what it takes?"

Because gee, tell it to Eaton and T'Lorel. Or Maryam Ajam. I would really, really hesitate to claim that Straak has "what it takes" more than T'Lorel, when it comes to sitting in the chair of an Explorer Corps ship. The biggest difference there is that Straak strongly desires to avoid promotion because he has such a deep and strange passion for geology surveys, whereas T'Lorel seems well content to advance in rank and undertake other duties.

Furthermore, you seem to be hopping back and forth between judging Thuir, and judging Mbeki. Who's on trial here?
 
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You know, I keep going back and forth on Seruk. Is it time to finally force him to retire? Maybe yes, but on the other hand he's becoming a recognizable character of his own. Old Father Time, squatting in the Personnel Office and trying to keep Starfleet's positions perpetually balanced between inexperience and stagnation. I'm sort of starting to like him. Maybe we should keep him forever, the dark hand of time clutching at the shoulder of every officer in the fleet.

You notice he's never put forth his own name for any of these Vice Admiral slots.
 
Briefvoice said:
You know, I keep going back and forth on Seruk. Is it time to finally force him to retire? Maybe yes, but on the other hand he's becoming a recognizable character of his own. Old Father Time, squatting in the Personnel Office and trying to keep Starfleet's positions perpetually balanced between inexperience and stagnation. I'm sort of starting to like him. Maybe we should keep him forever, the dark hand of time clutching at the shoulder of every officer in the fleet.

You notice he's never put forth his own name for any of these Vice Admiral slots.
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I wonder is there any way to keep him in his slot and yet also remove the [old guard] tag, so we could get a bonus from him?

Also I've been beginning to think there might be a possibility that when Sulu takes the chair, some of our current admirals may become old guard. Since it seems to be based on the personal relationship with the people in question, it might be possible that people who currently have a good working relationship with Kahurangi, might not have the same with Sulu, at least initially.
 
Ato said:
I wonder is there any way to keep him in his slot and yet also remove the [old guard] tag, so we could get a bonus from him?
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Our Chief of Staff, Shey ch'Tharvasse, used to be an Old Guard head of Intelligence, so it's possible?

OneirosTheWriter said:
[ ] Rear Admiral Shey ch'Tharvasse
Andorian Male, 58
Current Posting: Commander, Starfleet Intelligence
Shey still has ambitions in Starfleet, and despite being an appointee of your predecessor, has noticed which way the wind is blowing. +2 to Diplomacy results.
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Briefvoice said:
He's not going to be punished. He simply might not be chosen again. It's a different thing.

EDIT: And again, this is how things are done in the real world. Are real world militaries just really dumb for considering loss of a ship kind of a black mark against a captain, even if he was formally cleared? Or do they perhaps have their reasons?
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He would be refused any further possibility for advancement or even going on further five-year missions explicitly because he ran into a stroke of bad luck that destroyed his ship, despite him doing everything in his power to avoid that result and despite him saving almost all of his crew from the incident. Explain to me how this is not a punishment.

If he is refused advancement or not placed on another five-year mission, it should be because there is someone else available who is explicitly better qualified; not because of a single incident of bad luck.
 
Briefvoice said:
You know, I keep going back and forth on Seruk. Is it time to finally force him to retire? Maybe yes, but on the other hand he's becoming a recognizable character of his own. Old Father Time, squatting in the Personnel Office and trying to keep Starfleet's positions perpetually balanced between inexperience and stagnation. I'm sort of starting to like him. Maybe we should keep him forever, the dark hand of time clutching at the shoulder of every officer in the fleet.

You notice he's never put forth his own name for any of these Vice Admiral slots.
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I was going to suggest that we can increase Personnel to Vice Admiral for 30 pts so we can keep him in spot.
 
Interested Party said:
He would be refused any further possibility for advancement or even going on further five-year missions explicitly because he ran into a stroke of bad luck that destroyed his ship, despite him doing everything in his power to avoid that result and despite him saving almost all of his crew from the incident. Explain to me how this is not a punishment.

If he is refused advancement or not placed on another five-year mission, it should be because there is someone else available who is explicitly better qualified; not because of a single incident of bad luck.
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If he's not put in command of the next Explorer Corps ship that's fine by me, as long as the man's career is not destroyed by this incident, which would be a gross injustice.

Mbeki has been a captain since 2306 when Thuir left Challorn to take command of Miracht. Given his seniority in grade, it might be a bit premature to bump him to commodore. But a shoreside staff posting would be perfectly reasonable, and if he isn't being considered for promotion to flag rank in a few years, something has gone wrong with our promotion board.
 
Simon_Jester said:
I'm not sure I even understand what you're getting at anymore.
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Obviously. And why not? They're both the most demanding, exposed position of ship command available, requiring a high level of skill and the proper combination of boldness and caution; both jobs are subject strongly to the whims of random chance. You don't have to like that, but you have to acknowledge that. And a run of bad luck is thus a valid reason not to want a captain for either position, because chance is such a large portion of their jobs. (And because bad luck reflects underlying problems as often as good reflects underlying successes. You really can't have it both ways, that one is entirely attributable to underlying training and skill and the other isn't.)

You don't seem to know what you're arguing for either here, so I can hardly be blamed for arguing against a scattershot approach with one of my own. I've never said that I want Mbeki's career to end, for example; said the exact opposite in fact. But you've brought it up again and again. The idea that believing in luck is somehow unprofessional is bizarre, too, considering that we've seen far more unprofessional beliefs in Starfleet (watch Riker talk about the Prime Directive in Pen Pals; this is how people think of the Prime Directive? For real?) and the traditional superstitions attached to ships have been brought up before here (renaming them being explicitly unlucky has come up before) without comment.

Mbeki is a perfectly fine captain. But he's not lucky. The Explorer Corps can't use him. We have plenty of non-EC Excelsior commands coming up.
 
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