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Personnel Updates for the Star Army of Yamatai

Wes

Founder & Admin
Staff Member
🌸 FM of Yamatai
🎖️ Game Master
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This thread is for discussing changes to personnel (e.g. who is in what position) in the Star Army of Yamatai. It's historically been the case that I strongly prefer that the Star Army's leadership be filled with PCs or NPCs who are being controlled by active players who will actually make improvements to their part of the Star Army. For example, a player who controls the NPC head of Star Army Logistics would be expected to write articles for Star Army Logistics and occasionally play Logistics-related NPCs in RP, or issue orders related to logistics stuff. Currently, there's a lot of characters in the Star Army who belong to, or were assigned to, players who are no longer active on the site. I intend to try to phase out some of those NPCs, or adopt them, and if anyone can help me with this, I'd be grateful. I don't want to run the Star Army alone and so having active players is always preferable to adopting them for myself. So the criteria for these high level NPCs are basically:
  1. Are they controlled by someone who is active on the site within the last year?
  2. If so, have they done anything in the last year?
  3. Have they appeared in RP in the past?
  4. Do they have nice artwork?
  5. Is the wiki article for them well-written?
If the answer to 1 is no, we should look into replacing the character or adopting them (preferably to an active player). Adoption makes more sense if the answer to 3, 4, and/or 5 is yes.

If the answer to 2 is no, we should try to develop some usage goals with the player.

If the character hasn't appeared in RP, doesn't have art, isn't played by someone active, and doesn't do anything in RP, that's someone that we should try to replace with an actively-managed character.

Let's start with an example:

Honda Noriko is an NPC played by Sean_ODuibher. She is currently positioned as Deputy Director of Star Army Logistics. The player was last seen Feb 6, 2016, so it's highly unlikely this character is seeing any play time. The character page doesn't have any art but it's nicely written. I don't know if anyone would want this NPC so it might make sense to discharge the character from the Star Army or put her into some position less vital to the OOC operation of the Star Army of Yamatai (maybe in charge of some off-screen combat unit or something, like a Rikugun legion--we don't want to waste what we have). As we make these changes we can write them into canon my issuing orders on the Star Army Communications Network.

Obviously some of the decisions we make will be tough but the point is we want to Star Army to be more "alive" as an organization and ultimately be made of real people instead of just a collection of stagnant wiki articles. I feel like the Star Army has suffered a sort of "brain drain" caused by people leaving or choosing to work on the site's side factions instead of the SAOY and I want to resist that and get things back to full speed. More than anything I just need people who are invested and actually contributing to making the Star Army the world's finest fictional military, so if you're up to the task let me know and I'll tell you what I specifically would like to do. In the meantime we're going to make some vacancies...
 
Okay, so here's some:

Rizzo's character Jinja Emi is Deputy Director of SAINT but @Rizzo hasn't been on the board since last October ( :( ).

The head of the Star Army Military police is @Ethereal's character (they visited recently haven't posted since November 2018).

A good place to stash our unused Chujos might be to put them in charge of Star Army starbases or bases.
 
I spoke with Andrew tonight regarding 7th Fleet's admiral Katsuko. Andrew hasn't RPed on SARP for over a year (last post in 2017) and has been battling some very serious health issues lately. Andrew said he's OK with a new Admiral taking the leading in the 7th fleet and moving Katsuko to a new role, which he and I will work out soon in a voice chat session. One thing we talked about is rebuilding the 1st XF and making Katsuko the new Taisho there.

@Soban has a concept for an admiral of the 7th fleet that ties into the Occupation of Essia RP plot, so this works out.
 
Updates:
  • Transferred Shosho Honda Noriko to CO of Sakura Fleet Depot.
  • Transferred Iemochi Feyani to CO of the Elysian Naval Arsenal
  • Transferred Jinja Emi from Deputy Director of SAINT to base commander on Vicky
  • Assigned various NPCs and some abandoned player characters as contacts for Star Army bases ("Faces for Places")
 
Current Openings:
  • Commander of SANDRA
  • Commander of Star Army Military Police
  • Deputy Director of SAINT
  • Deputy Director of Star Army Logistics
  • Deputy Director of SARA (Star Army Research Administration)
  • Director of Star Army Operations
 
Since I plan to remain in contact at the least and begin participating in stories at the most it is definitely my intention to put Jinja Emi back into play.
If @Wes and @raz Will have me, I would like to resume participating as deputy director of SAINT with Jinja Emi.
 
Wes already gave his go-ahead, which is what truly matters, but no problems here. The DD is a position that basically maintains operational standards and executes the Director's policy guidelines (and thus Yui's and the Empress') on a day-to-day basis, so the most important thing is having someone around who wants to play them and make appearances for plots that request SAINT admin interaction :)
 
Current Openings:
  • Commander of SANDRA
  • Commander of Star Army Military Police
  • Deputy Director of SAINT
  • Deputy Director of Star Army Logistics
  • Deputy Director of SARA (Star Army Research Administration)
  • Director of Star Army Operations
Man, we haven't really filled any of these!

Also, here's some issues I've noticed after struct data has been updated:
  • There's a shortage of officers in general, except for Taishos
  • There's especially a shortage of first officers we can promote to captains
  • It's now 21 years since the Star Army was formed and a lot of the "OG" Star Army leadership is eligible for maximum retirement benefit and may retire like Minori has.
Solutions:
  • Going to try to promote more enlisted starship operators to officers - get them enrolled in officer courses
  • Might make starship operator an officer-only position and transition existing enlisted characters onto the officer path
 
Sonoda is a "Science Officer" but not an officer. I'm a little unsure about what the command structure is for scientists, but if being an actual officer means more autonomy, I think he would be interested.
 
Sonoda is a "Science Officer" but not an officer. I'm a little unsure about what the command structure is for scientists, but if being an actual officer means more autonomy, I think he would be interested.
The program isn't really aimed at officers other than line officers like scientists but, given the nature of the science occupation, it would make sense for us to make it an officer occupation as most science people probably have a college education in their scientific field.
 
It would make sense. Though perhaps there can still be some enlisted occupation that trains the very basics

It will be funny to see a Nito Hei that has been in for years apply for the position. "9 years of service?! Yeah, I am going to deny your application. You clearly are not officer material if you are still a Nito Hei and never demoted to it. I might recommend retirement as well." Kurita Tomomi cries internally as she completed her college degree.

I might apply that 1 rank promotion from the School of Advanced Infantry Combat to Mikael Harris now.
 
I’d hop at SANDRA because I like the OOC work involved in writing news posts, but already take up two Taisho-level commands as a player. Would love a new SAINT DD, though, since it’s one of the intel command positions I think is best left to an actual person instead of an NPC. Rizzo’s Jinja Emi was cool despite his absence and we got her art, so maybe someone might be interested in just adopting her.
 
I do have one charcter I would love to be a officer. If I knew when back when I started I would of tried to sign them up as a officer. Honestly looking forward to the officer acceleration program.
 
Funneling pc starship operators into officer positions in order to take over departments or the like takes them out of RP. The solution seems to create a problem in my eyes.

Also in my experience whenever a pc is taken out of RP and the player creates a new pc for the plot, the new pc isn’t played with the same enthusiasm as the original pc, so “replace the old pc with a new one” isn’t a solution imo, in case anyone was thinking that.
 
Funneling pc starship operators into officer positions in order to take over departments or the like takes them out of RP. The solution seems to create a problem in my eyes.

Also in my experience whenever a pc is taken out of RP and the player creates a new pc for the plot, the new pc isn’t played with the same enthusiasm as the original pc, so “replace the old pc with a new one” isn’t a solution imo, in case anyone was thinking that.
Why? I disagree. I don't think it makes much of a difference from an RP standpoint if the bridge crew are enlisted or officers unless they start getting promoted so high that it only makes sense for them to get their own ships. But officer promotions are slower and there's 5 ranks (Shoi to Chusa) that make sense as a bridge officer. Also bridge officers generally aren't going to have their own departments - the bridge is the department and if they chose Starship Operator as the occupation that's where they want to be.
 
  • There's a shortage of officers in general, except for Taishos

The program isn't really aimed at officers other than line officers like scientists but, given the nature of the science occupation, it would make sense for us to make it an officer occupation as most science people probably have a college education in their scientific field.

Ah, I think I see. The shortage of officers is a shortage of line officers. Is that right?
 
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