Soban
Convention Veteran
Something something one goat.
Star Army
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Personnel Updates for the Star Army of Yamatai
- Thread starter Wes
- Start date
A service ribbon is now available for all characters in the Third Mishhu War:
Third Mishhuvurthyar War Service Ribbon on Star Army Space Roleplay
It's also available to Nepleslian characters and other future allies. Talk to Star Army Personnel or your ship captain to get a post in your orders thread for it.
Third Mishhuvurthyar War Service Ribbon on Star Army Space Roleplay
It's also available to Nepleslian characters and other future allies. Talk to Star Army Personnel or your ship captain to get a post in your orders thread for it.
Hello! Promotions in the Star Army started ramping up in YE 43 as part of the OOC "promotion fest." And then Hanako decided to extend that to YE 44 in-character by making sure everyone got a promotion if they were eligible. It still seems to be happening in YE 45. As I recall, a lot of motivation behind this was to fill out certain rank brackets because the Star Army was top heavy.
Looking at the Characters by Rank wiki page, we're pretty evenly distributed at this point. Still a little heavy in the Shosa-Taisa range but automatic promotions aren't really maintaining what should be a pyramid.
According to the promotions page, the time-in-grade requirements aren't supposed to be indicators for automatic promotion at all. And, in fact, for officers it makes little sense to always promote soldiers once they've reached the minimum. For example, enlisted have a minimum time-in-grade of 3 months but "it is most common for soldiers to get one promotion per year at this stage" but every soldier is currently on the same schedule. The promotions page makes it clear that NCO (Heisho) and officer ranks are supposed to be granted for more than just minimum time in service. It's also strange when a ship's entire NPC bridge crew gets offered a promotion and they all are suddenly Shosas instead of Chuis.
I'm not here asking for a community vote on the topic or anything, but I'd like to inquire as to whether it's still necessary to automatically promote every soldier once per year. It makes it feel like ranks aren't earned anymore after the soldier is fast tracked to Taii, or are made a Heisho afer being Joto Hei for a year. For me, it's always been part of the RP/simulationist fun to anticipate and wonder about what promotion my characters might get based on their actual actions and recommendations but it's currently just "see ya next year, new stripe!"
It's Wes'/Hanako's decision but thought I'd ask.
Looking at the Characters by Rank wiki page, we're pretty evenly distributed at this point. Still a little heavy in the Shosa-Taisa range but automatic promotions aren't really maintaining what should be a pyramid.
According to the promotions page, the time-in-grade requirements aren't supposed to be indicators for automatic promotion at all. And, in fact, for officers it makes little sense to always promote soldiers once they've reached the minimum. For example, enlisted have a minimum time-in-grade of 3 months but "it is most common for soldiers to get one promotion per year at this stage" but every soldier is currently on the same schedule. The promotions page makes it clear that NCO (Heisho) and officer ranks are supposed to be granted for more than just minimum time in service. It's also strange when a ship's entire NPC bridge crew gets offered a promotion and they all are suddenly Shosas instead of Chuis.
I'm not here asking for a community vote on the topic or anything, but I'd like to inquire as to whether it's still necessary to automatically promote every soldier once per year. It makes it feel like ranks aren't earned anymore after the soldier is fast tracked to Taii, or are made a Heisho afer being Joto Hei for a year. For me, it's always been part of the RP/simulationist fun to anticipate and wonder about what promotion my characters might get based on their actual actions and recommendations but it's currently just "see ya next year, new stripe!"
It's Wes'/Hanako's decision but thought I'd ask.
It is not, and the current plan is these promotions by SAPERSCOM will cease in YE 46 and traditional recommendations by the unit commander (e.g. ship captain) will be the main promotion method. Promotions will be earned by good participation in RP plots.
Cool that there's a plan. Not saying this negatively, but all of this makes me wonder about if certain rank brackets will have cultural stigmas about their quality during the early stages of the Third Mishhu War. Just worldbuilding stuff.
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I dunno. Since my question was answered by Wes, I guess it's an opportunity to ramble.
The SAoY is made up mostly of Neko and Minkans. Both species are effectively immortal. Even peoples considered baseline humans in the setting live to be 150+ (just like in Star Trek, amusingly). Unless any given soldier is a real badass or an exceptional leader, it makes sense that many of them sit at Joto Hei or max out at Taii for 15 years before retiring or finally maturing enough in their long lives to actually advance. Plus there's a hard cap at Chusa for most command track officers even if they're particularly badass (Riker syndrome, wanting to be XO of the flagship more than being put in command of some science explorer).
Hey, I know all you Yamataian FMs probably have a plan for SARA now that it's in need of a commander, but I was wiki surfing and came across a few cool candidates. All have kind of low ranks for a directorship, but there is no general order saying that the director of SARA must be a certain rank like there is for SAINT and Personnel. They're also NPCs, so shouldn't be a problem in the position (part of the reason that the most sensical candidate, Kage Yaichiro, can't be used).
- Tanaka Shina: One of the classic characters who got iconic Lexxy art. Actually a science character. It says she's assigned to some task force, but never got orders to that effect so I'd rather just assume she's been doing cool science stuff in the background instead.
- Kessaku Eris: Longtime captain of the YSS Nozomi. The wiki says she has only been a Taisa since YE 43, but she was credited as "Taisa Kessaku Eris, Fleet Processing Center, Hoshi no Iori" all the way back in 2004. She's not a scientist, but is Irim and Anri's sister.
- Kessaku Sakai Yuuko: A legendary ace PA pilot who did flight testing and was once stationed at Scorpio Research Base. Currently retired, but also has iconic Lexxy art and Kessaku connections. Instead of a scientist, she'd bring cool R&D experience to the directorship; it's an interesting angle and kind of reminds me how aircraft carrier commanders come from aviation instead of surface warfare. Why couldn't the science org commander come from a testing instead of theory background?
Soban
Convention Veteran
Far as I'm aware, Iemochi Feyani is still in charge of SARA. I haven't done anything with her or SARA nor do I have any strong desire to do something with them. (That said, I'm always open to JPing). So if someone wants to take SARA over, I'm more than happy for them to make or to use a NPC and she can go and do something else Sciency for Star Army in the background. Without someone specific who wants to manage it, I don't see any reason to change the status quo.
Maybe I’m missing something but they aren’t your character and they were never adopted by you like Iemochi Seinosuke was.
The change was discussed publicly during the last community meeting in December, anyway. So the recent news post wasn’t really surprising for anyone who was there. I remember suggesting that Shinja Fujita come back so that a Nashoba NPC got the spot but we realized the character resigned himself for a good reason.
Just dropped by to throw out some suggestions anyway. When I was looking, the taisa, shosho, and chujo ranks weren’t necessarily thin but lacked characters with relevant experience like the three I suggested above.
The change was discussed publicly during the last community meeting in December, anyway. So the recent news post wasn’t really surprising for anyone who was there. I remember suggesting that Shinja Fujita come back so that a Nashoba NPC got the spot but we realized the character resigned himself for a good reason.
Just dropped by to throw out some suggestions anyway. When I was looking, the taisa, shosho, and chujo ranks weren’t necessarily thin but lacked characters with relevant experience like the three I suggested above.
Soban
Convention Veteran
She's Eth's character and he left her to me, that makes her my character. I did a formal adoption of the political side of Seinosuke's life because there was some question of exactly who had control over the character due to circumstances in place at the time.
I don't really care who knew about it, I didn't. I'm not against the leadership or structure or whatever of SARA changing. (Although unless we have someone specific who wants the leadership of SARA, I think we shouldn't.) What I'm against is having my character autoed with ZERO input from myself about it. Especially in a way that makes them look stupid and incompetent.
I don't really care who knew about it, I didn't. I'm not against the leadership or structure or whatever of SARA changing. (Although unless we have someone specific who wants the leadership of SARA, I think we shouldn't.) What I'm against is having my character autoed with ZERO input from myself about it. Especially in a way that makes them look stupid and incompetent.
That makes sense, and I understand where you're coming from. That said, Yui and Hanako are the ones who make calls on who is stationed where and not necessarily the player of a character. Ideally everyone would be on the same page, though, where is where communication comes in. Usually there's some sort of advance talk about promotions and assignments and stuff instead of just cold-sending orders to people by surprise. Orders threads are typically the source of canon for who's assigned where.
In an ideal world I'd have a player for each division of the Star Army but the community's so small that's not feasible. But essentially if there's someone who wants to activitely run parts of the Star Army for me, I could use all the help I can get.
It needs to be pointed out that Feyani isn't a player character, she's a non-player character (NPC). And she's inactive. No one has posted for Feyani since Ethereal left and when Feyani was last messaged in the RP, no one responded. Since she's an NPC, in theory the faction mangers can control her.
I've thought about removing Feyani before--Yui doesn't really care for the way she's done things, and I consider submissions of banned members radioactive and I try to phase them out at the first opportunity because I've been burned bad in the past and I don't want to go through that again. I want Yamatai to be safe with articles and characters that no one can take away from Star Army. I didn't remove Feyani sooner because I didn't have anyone better to put at the head of SARA.
I was caught by surprise by the news post too. News posts are normally reviewed by me but this one bypassed the approval queue because Ametheliana is an admin. I did bring it up privately that basically it was an auto of Yui and/or Hanako because firing an admiral was their call to make. But I decided not to trash the news article because it'd just be removing someone's RP without gaining anything in return, and it was probably inevitable anyway. Also, there is some SARA reform in talks amongst the Yamatai FMs. What I said was essentially "next time, please ask first." And that's what the recent rules suggestion was about, too: "Ask first." I want to promote player consent and protect players control of their creations, while also keeping the faction active. What I'm not trying to do is make anyone feel bad or persecute anyone, and I ask that you don't either. This is a very small community and we depend on each other to keep it alive.
So let's communicate:
In an ideal world I'd have a player for each division of the Star Army but the community's so small that's not feasible. But essentially if there's someone who wants to activitely run parts of the Star Army for me, I could use all the help I can get.
It needs to be pointed out that Feyani isn't a player character, she's a non-player character (NPC). And she's inactive. No one has posted for Feyani since Ethereal left and when Feyani was last messaged in the RP, no one responded. Since she's an NPC, in theory the faction mangers can control her.
I've thought about removing Feyani before--Yui doesn't really care for the way she's done things, and I consider submissions of banned members radioactive and I try to phase them out at the first opportunity because I've been burned bad in the past and I don't want to go through that again. I want Yamatai to be safe with articles and characters that no one can take away from Star Army. I didn't remove Feyani sooner because I didn't have anyone better to put at the head of SARA.
I was caught by surprise by the news post too. News posts are normally reviewed by me but this one bypassed the approval queue because Ametheliana is an admin. I did bring it up privately that basically it was an auto of Yui and/or Hanako because firing an admiral was their call to make. But I decided not to trash the news article because it'd just be removing someone's RP without gaining anything in return, and it was probably inevitable anyway. Also, there is some SARA reform in talks amongst the Yamatai FMs. What I said was essentially "next time, please ask first." And that's what the recent rules suggestion was about, too: "Ask first." I want to promote player consent and protect players control of their creations, while also keeping the faction active. What I'm not trying to do is make anyone feel bad or persecute anyone, and I ask that you don't either. This is a very small community and we depend on each other to keep it alive.
So let's communicate:
- Soban, since you've taken responsibility for this NPC, where do you think is the best place to put her?
- Ame, did you have some plans for SARA?
- Does anyone else want to run SARA? If not, I can do it. I'm SARA's creator and I've run it before.
The Yamataian FMs are going to be managing SARA since it's historically not got a lot done with it when done by one person (save for with Wes ofc). Hopefully having multiple people handling it will mean it can get some good movement going. I'm not looking for reform or lots of structural changes, just activity from it whether that be through RP or additional setting elements that SARA canonicly provides.
