Some more Trek knowledge related questions...

[Owen J. North 0]

Okay so, still flushing out the background from my character, and there are a few more questions I have regarding Trek canon and/or reasonable deduction...

 

1. It's obvious that phasers and weapons of the like are the preferred weapon in space, but what about for people who're still on earth? Are these things being used down there as well, or are they still using conventional projectile style weaponry, or what?

 

2. What are the generally accepted time lines for the academy? (As in, what age do most people enter, how long does it generally take to graduate, etc?)

 

3. I know that Kirk is known and praised throughout like, all of Starfleet... but how well known are the rest of the shows characters? Is there any sort of precedent of any of the others being known and talked about?

 

Also, I've been doing a lot of reading around the site to prepare to take my first steps into this world, and there are a couple things I'd really like to know before I do...

 

4. Regarding logs, I understand the difference between a duty and personal log... but what I don't get is the formatting for logs done by minor characters. For example, on the shows, they would generally begin with "Captains log..." etc. Well, what if you're just a lowly, say, security officer? Is it then "Security Officer's Log"? Or something else entirely? On the same topic, what exactly does the log term "supplemental" signify?

 

5. Regarding stardates, I've done a bit of reading on memory-alpha and other sites, and it seems like the method of determines stardates is inconsistent at best, and borderlining on random at worst... and yet I see a number of people using stardates in their posts. Is there a system behind how they're determined here, or are people just making up numbers?

 

(P.S. Sorry to be such a pain... but one thing you will all learn about me is I'm a perfectionist. I want to make sure I don't end up being "that guy who makes a million and one errors every time you see his name pop up".)

Edited May 26, 2009 by Owen J. North

[Kansas 0]

Hiya and welcome to STSF Owen - this is a wicked cool Trek site to RPG on. I'll take a crack at your questions here.

 

Conventional weapons: when you sim long enough, you're going to come across a plotline on a planet or some such where so called old style projectile weapons, or some sort of energy based projectile weapons are used instead of Fleet issues phasers.

 

The Agincourt is currently running a plot on a colony planet. Two of the ground team officers encountered looters sporting projectile/bullet weapons.

 

Academy: the character age really depends. It's generally well accepted that cadets start at age 17 and are done at 21 or 22, and then then start off on a new assignment - such as the game the player is posting too. But, this isn't necessesarily the final word, and believable is always better.

 

I started on the Agincourt in 2005, with a 31 year old character at the rank of Midshipman. The age was my choice, the rank is a starting requirement of the sim. Since I don't see why a 31 year old can't be a Midshipman (within reason), I put training assignments in her background, leading up to the 'Court assignment.

 

Canon Character Reknown: Honestly, the Trek characters aren't well known in our sim worlds. They might be mentioned in passing for a plot, they might show up in a player log, but that's about it. I've never known a GM to play Kirk or Spock or someone, in my simming experience here.

 

It's a cool thought, but our own characters are the focus here at STSF.

 

Logs: Per the Trek TV shows, I'm guessing that supplemental would be an add on to a personal log recording.

 

"So and so's Personal Log, Supplemental Recording ... "

 

Everyone has thier own log methods - some just go right into a log with no introduction and start writing, others have the real time/real life date or fictional stardate, location of character, etc, others format a duty log or memo in a recording type format. It really depends on how you want to write. I use general templates.

 

Memo or Duty Log/Recording: I don't use a memo or duty log all the time or every week; they show up periodically in my writings, that sort of thing.

 

= = = Internal ships wireless = =

 

To: Admiral Blah Blah

From: Ensign Hoo Hah

Re: This Subject

 

(Paragraph)

 

= = = End Duty Log = =

 

Regular written log: about 99% of my story logs are in this third person or first person format.

 

May 25, 2009 (I've gotten into the habit of using the real time/real date)

USS Ship Name

Log Title

 

(Character's personal story continuation from sim)

 

When you write your own logs, your formatting and set up will naturally go toward what you find comfortable. If you're already checking out logs here on the boards as you said, there are examples all over the place to get ideas. And really, there isn't any log formatting requirements differing between Security Officer Bobby Boy and Admiral Johnny Boy.

 

Stardates: I'm not the person to be answering this, so I leave it to someone else for the nitty gritty details.

 

Stardates annoy the hell out of me. I use general Star Trek year dates (2397, 2383) or the year month. day (0905. 26) method when needed and applicable. Otherwise, I don't really worry about an exact star date format because I'd prefer to shoot them. :-P

[LoAmi 0]

5. Regarding stardates, I've done a bit of reading on memory-alpha and other sites, and it seems like the method of determines stardates is inconsistent at best, and borderlining on random at worst... and yet I see a number of people using stardates in their posts. Is there a system behind how they're determined here, or are people just making up numbers?

 

Don't worry about it. For Arcadia, I usually use 5YYMM.DD, where YY=2 digit year, MM=2 digit month, DD=2 digit date of the simulation's time. I don't worry at all about the conversion to real time -- sometimes a stardate is 6 months passing, sometimes, it's a few hours. It's just a way of marking sim-time passing that's different from the Gregorian date. I don't like using Gregorian dates for a 24th century sim, because (1) I don't want to enforce passage of absolute time - characters age and get promoted at different rates, and there's a lot of parallel passage of different amounts of time going on in sims; and (2) [Earth-centric] Gregorian dates are rarely, if ever, used in the 24th century. I don't really care if a player uses a different format. If a player does choose to use Gregorian dates, I won't hold myself bound to them.

[LoAmi 0]

Agg, I ate half my post :-)

 

Hiya and welcome to STSF Owen - this is a wicked cool Trek site to RPG on. I'll take a crack at your questions here.

 

Conventional weapons: when you sim long enough, you're going to come across a plotline on a planet or some such where so called old style projectile weapons, or some sort of energy based projectile weapons are used instead of Fleet issues phasers.

 

Earth is not exactly a backwater, and presumably, when they need a weapon, they'd use a phaser. You don't see non-hobbyist or professional Earth people today using match-lock muskets, or for that matter, being intimately familiar with daily life in the 16th century. A lot of characters do have "hobbies" that hearken back to the 20th or 21st century. I'd rather ground my characters' frames of reference in their own time, but it's a personal decision.

[Kairi 0]

1. It's obvious that phasers and weapons of the like are the preferred weapon in space, but what about for people who're still on earth? Are these things being used down there as well, or are they still using conventional projectile style weaponry, or what?

 

Starfleet and most Federation worlds would typically use phasers. And in many non-Federation worlds would use mainly disruptors or other type of energy weapon. That doesn't mean that projectile weapons are not used.

 

In the seventh season of Deep Space Nine, there is an episode that involved projectile sniper rifles. I can't remember much of the conversation and such, so I can't tell you if this was standard issue. But I do remember it was heavily modified (As in able to transport the bullet through walls.)

Edited May 26, 2009 by Kairi

[Aliana Lucindak 0]

Snipers....

 

Some people on earth, as the others said, do collect older weaponry, projectile weapons, ect. But because Earth is pretty much known as the center of the federation, it does have some of the best tech.

 

I believe the minimum age established in the canon for entering starfleet academy was 15, but most enter around 17 or 18. Some enter much later, or much earlier, or simply enlist. It really depends on the type of character you want to have.

 

Some people, like captain Kirk, ambassador Spock, Admiral Janeway (in the post DS9/VOY storylines), might be mentioned, but we really don't bring it up much. It's like Kansas said, the focus is more on the characters in sim.

 

A captains log, is more of an official log. A duty log, is basically equal. Personal logs, however, are private, and would most likely begin with the character who is doing it's name, and the stardate (i.e. "Personal log, Lieutenant, Junior Grade Aliana Lucindak, Stardate 5648.77).

 

And that brings me to stardates. Most people use a format beginning with 5 that involves then the month, year, and day, in different orders. I use the format; 5MMDD.YY, which the the two numbers for the month, then day, and then last two of the year (not in sim, but circa rl). I hope this helped yah.

[Kansas 0]

Earth is not exactly a backwater, and presumably, when they need a weapon, they'd use a phaser.

 

Starfleet and most Federation worlds would typically use phasers. And in many non-Federation worlds would use mainly disruptors or other type of energy weapon. That doesn't mean that projectile weapons are not used.

 

In the seventh season of Deep Space Nine, there is an episode that involved projectile sniper rifles. I can't remember much of the conversation and such, so I can't tell you if this was standard issue. But I do remember it was heavily modified (As in able to transport the bullet through walls.)

 

I wing more towards Kairi's way of thinking as well - modern weapons are the norm of course, but I don't see why some sort of projectile weapons tech couldn't also exist side by side.

 

Especially on a civilian colony world that might be just starting out, on the frontier? I'm assuming phasers are expensive to produce if you aren't a military/exploratory type of organization like Starfleet, so a colonist is going for the non-expensive route of the projectile gun maybe?

 

In Final Frontier, the colonists of Nimbus 3 used pipe parts as primitive makeshift rifles that shot bits of rock.

 

DS9 Sniper bullets transported through walls? Okay, thats a new one on me.

[LoAmi 0]

I wing more towards Kairi's way of thinking as well - modern weapons are the norm of course, but I don't see why some sort of projectile weapons tech couldn't also exist side by side.

 

Some sort -- potentially. But, likely not the familiar 20/21 century kind. I would also suspect that they're specialists' tools.

 

Especially on a civilian colony world that might be just starting out, on the frontier? I'm assuming phasers are expensive to produce if you aren't a military/exploratory type of organization like Starfleet, so a colonist is going for the non-expensive route of the projectile gun maybe?

 

I'm not sure that the economic argument would work, given that we don't fully understand the Federation economy. If you can obtain enough energy(!), you can produce anything (that's what replicators are all about). Phaser equipment is also probably far more common than projectile weapon equipment and has the economy of scale on its side.

 

The projectile gun is also nowhere near as useful. A phaser can be used as a killing weapon, a dematerializer, a drill, a stun-gun, and to heat objects without otherwise destroying them; the phaser is also more accurate over a longer range.

 

In Final Frontier, the colonists of Nimbus 3 used pipe parts as primitive makeshift rifles that shot bits of rock.

 

They probably didn't bring any weapons with them, and it's a lot easier to build an ad-hoc gun than a phaser. :-)

 

The surprise about the use of them in the DS9 "Field of Fire" also gives us some idea of how uncommon projectile weapons are.

[Owen J. North 0]

Canon Character Reknown: Honestly, the Trek characters aren't well known in our sim worlds. They might be mentioned in passing for a plot, they might show up in a player log, but that's about it. I've never known a GM to play Kirk or Spock or someone, in my simming experience here.

 

It's a cool thought, but our own characters are the focus here at STSF.

 

No, I wasn't referring to the characters being played, per say. It was more to do with a recognition and admiration of those who had come before. For example, in the DS9 episode "Trials and Tribbleations" Sisko mentions the enterprise in a meeting with Temporal Investigations, and there's an instant recognition.

 

Temporal: "HIS ship. James T. Kirk."

Sisko: "The one and only."

 

I wasn't asking if canon characters were played as much... more if other characters in the canon had that same sort of name recognition and reverence, or just Kirk.

 

Earth is not exactly a backwater, and presumably, when they need a weapon, they'd use a phaser.

 

Yeah, that makes sense in that regard, but again I think my intention was lost in the actual writing. Where my confusion came from was seeing on memory-alpha and other such sites that phasers were a Starfleet/Federation related invention, and I wasn't sure if they would be made available to the general public on earth, or kept within Starfleet.

Edited May 26, 2009 by Owen J. North

[Kansas 0]

No, I wasn't referring to the characters being played, per say. It was more to do with a recognition and admiration of those who had come before. For example, in the DS9 episode "Trials and Tribbleations" Sisko mentions the enterprise in a meeting with Temporal Investigations, and there's an instant recognition.

 

Okay, I'm with you now.

 

I've played my characters as having a general knowledge of Kirk, Spock, Janeway, Picard, Scotty and those guys. They've never met them any of them, but yes, they know of them and and probably the more well known exploits/missions.