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  • 📅 February and March 2024 are YE 46.2 in the RP.

Personnel Updates for the Star Army of Yamatai

Right, we're trying to ensure the future Star Army of Yamatai has enough ship captains and leaders and this helps build the foundation by giving us more officers who can potentially get to those positions over time. It has immediate helpful effects but the real benefit is a long-term, long-lasting one. In retrospect it kind of seems goofy that we didn't make bridge bunnies officers from the start.

I'm still mulling over how to convert science officers to an officer position as well. Maybe the Star Army would just start only recruiting them as Shoi and it would pay for college for the enlisted science people so they could all become officers eventually. Honestly IIRC science was an officer position in the past, I don't know when or how it changed, lol.
 
"Bridge bunny" seems to come up lots of places in the wiki, but isn't explained. I gather from context it means a young female on the bridge crew.

If it helps, I see Sonoda as having taken 3 years towards a degree in the sciences, then once he reached enlistment age he walked into the recruitment centre. I suspect this wouldn't be uncommon, considering the minimum age of enlistment is 21. Maybe a program where you take 3 years of a degree program, then transfer to the academy for your final year plus basic? Maybe if you went into the degree program with the plan of enlisting (unlike Sonoda, who just did it on a whim), you could do something like NROTC to prepare for being a commissioned officer?
 
I do think there would be something for interested science/medical enlisted. Particularly those who have shown good leadership. I think it would have two paths, they could either take a test to see if they have picked up the required skills or go through the starship operator course. Then as qualified starship operators, they can go for the Accelerated Officer Program.
 
This is actually great info for me, I have some bridge crew I didn't know should be officers (been with the plotship for a few years now). But I think I misspoke when I said starship operators and should have just said starship crew in general.

I'll add the bridge bunny note to it in some place on starship op page ^0^
 
The Star Army is currently seeking a commanding officer for the Star Army Reserve. This is a Chujo or Taisho position. It is expected that a huge number of Star Army Personnel will eventually be transferred to the Star Army Reserve. The commander of the Star Army Reserve would be responsible for setting up regional reserve centers where soldiers can meet annual and monthly training requirements and coordinating with Star Army Personnel Command (Hanako).
 
I'd like to do a career counseling session with each Star Army of Yamatai character where we:
  • Fill in any missing information (ask the character their birth date, birth place, enlistment date, etc)
  • See if the character is behind on promotions and help if so
  • See if the character is interested in any occupation changes and let them know what is in demand right now
  • Discuss Star Army Reserve options
  • Talk about education and personal development
  • Record the characters's wishes regarding use of mental backups and cloned bodies to restore them in the event of death (important!)
  • Help set up their life insurance
  • Discuss their housing and financial situation
This would be an ongoing goal in the metaplot: https://wiki.stararmy.com/doku.php?id=plot:star_army_personnel
 
Counseling sessions!! And I have the first one all ready on Yamatai in the recent timeframe.
 
Alright, so I figured I need to write this down somewhere so here goes (and feedback is welcome):

1. I'm going to to be making a push to cut down the number of warrant officers in the Star Army now that the war is over. To do this, this means that I'll be looking for warrant officer characters and seeing if I can reclassify them as regular officers. There may be an update to the accelerated officer training program to facilitate this. There are not many Star Army occupations which should even have warrant officers at all. For example, there are not supposed to be any warrant officer cooks, period, which brings me to the next point...

2. There are a lot of characters who are warrant officers who have been promoted erroneously from enlisted ranks due to confusion on how ranks work in the military. This is an issue when the occupation is supposed to be enlisted only. We're going to be trying to fix these on a case by case basis, with a preference for converting them to officers when it makes sense.

3. Since Star Army has been around a long time, a lot of characters are inactive and their players have left, so we can't consult their players about changes to the character's rank. Our stance on this is basically: Players control their characters, but they don't get to control what decisions Hanako or the Star Army Personnel Command makes about their careers. Characters don't decide when they got promoted, transferred, assigned, etc. In other words, Star Army orders are up to the Star Army and we're going to issue orders whether or not the players are around.

a. If the players are around I'm going to talk to them about their preferences, the character's options, and then issue orders accordingly.

b. If the player is not around I'm still going to issue orders and update the character - the characters will be placed some relatively quiet place where they can exist until the player returns, this may now include moving them to the reserves. Unless we see something indicating otherwise we'll keep them in the Star Army until they reach 21 years of service at which point they'll be retired. If the character bio specifically says they plan to get out of the Star Army at a certain time we'll go with that. Remember terms of enlistment are usually 3 years each.

c. Characters who have been abandoned for a while can be fixed up and adopted or used as NPCs to give them some life, unless the bio says not to. This includes giving them a few promotions and career events to fill in the gaps in their histories as needed. I've actually adopted a few characters myself just for the purpose of fixing them up and using them as familiar faces in various locations in the setting.

d. If the player left over a year ago, got banned, or is not expected to return, and has also said the character is both NOT adoptable and NOT usable as an NPC then the character is basically no longer usable by anyone here, so I will issue orders discharging them from the Star Army so they're not on our roster anymore.

4. As the years go by, the NPCs will slowly rise in ranks as well and you will see me giving orders to NPCs. Some NPCs, especially low-ranking ones, can be claimed by players as pre-generated player characters. The lowest ranking NPCs will be replaced by a new wave of fresh NPCs each year.

5. Characters without assignments will all be assigned SOMEWHERE as soon as possible.

6. Characters without orders threads will be provided orders threads as soon as possible.

7. Characters without data in struct will be updated to be on struct as soon as possible as they're discovered.

8. All of the Starship Operators we gave orders to in January in accordance with (IAW) the Accelerated Officer Program (AOP) should be officers now. I'm going to go through the starship operations list again and doing a second wave of orders to clean up any stragglers, which there definitely are some:

1615732234445.png

9. Please made sure your "Date of Rank" (DOR) on character sheets reflects the last year of promotion so we can identify characters that haven't been promoted in a while and could use a rank bump.

10. In cases where there's multiple MOS numbers listed on an occupation page we're going to try to split those up at some point so each MOS has a specific page. For example, some Cargo and Supply characters have been converted to the more-specific Unit Supply Specialist.
 
Updates: All junis (warrant officers) got promoted to officers or discharged if they weren't usable (e.g. no player and opted out of adoption/NPCing).

I've kind of got a surplus of Taisho-ranked characters due to the fleet consolidation and I'm trying to figure out what to do with them (they can't stick around as Taisho unless they have some Taisho position to fill).

It probably makes sense to promote all the Santo Heis in the Star Army to Nito Hei and also eliminate any remaining Yonto Heis (or discharge if they don't really do anything). The Santo Heis will be replaced by the next generation of characters and NPCs that join in YE 43 or 44.

Thinking a little about making an E7 rank.
 
You mean E8? I could see a need for them in the Rikugun with the sheer numbers (even with advanced minds/AI assistance). But myself personally wouldn't just make a rank just for people to fill in. People moving into Juni instead of remaining where they were or going commissioned was due to individuals not understanding the promotion scheme.

Which I don't blame them, civilian life isn't regimented or went through the joys of trying to guess the right "Three stripes, three rockers, and something in the middle" from a distance. :p

As for the Taishos, couldn't they be placed in the reserves?
 
So who are the current Taishos? I know Yui is head of the Army, and Fletcher is in charge of 7th, (And Hanako might be Personnel?) but that's about it.
 
So with a little digging, this is the list of current Taisho I was able to come up with.

Commander Star Army of Yamatai: Yui (Wes)
Star Army Intelligence: Nakaide Shida (Raz)
Star Army Logistics: Kawahara Opal (Wes)
Star Army Personnel: Hanako (Wes)
Star Army Reserve: Hisae Emiko (Wes)
Star Army Medical: Kinsaka Yukiharo (Rawolf)
Star Army Ground Forces [Rikugun]: Mizumitsu Benji (Demibear)
First Fleet: Kessaku Irim (Wes)
Second Fleet: Eikan Minato (Wes)
Third Fleet: Shizuka Endo (5tar)
Fourth Fleet: Shinja Rika (Nashoba)
Fifth Fleet: Johnathan Whitmoor (Kai)
Seventh Fleet: William Fletcher (Soban)
First Expeditionary: Motoyoshi-Yamada Ayano (Andrew)
Second Expeditionary: Mikasa Sorano (Nashoba)
 
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I'm having a little trouble finding the regulation updates post but the position of Director of Star Army Personnel was made a Taisho position (again) in YE 42 around the time Minori was retiring. It was after the quoted YE 38 update. Also I approved a head of Star Army Medical being a Taisho, as well as the head of the Rikugun (planetary ground forces). I guess I need to update the page text (done!).

There's 17 Taisho currently on active duty, as shown on the Taisho page's automatically-updating table. These include one that was just found in an Soul Savior Pod and a couple other oddities.
 
Updated my list, so 15 Taisho. The SAOY Assignment part should probably correspond to what they are in charge of. (Some list space stations, not their command)

Large Formations should include

Intelligence
Logistics
Personnel
Reserve
Medical
Ground Forces [Rikugun]


Anzai Saya, while previously having the rank is not currently assigned to a Taisho position and so has likely reverted to her permanent rank.
Shimizu Akina, seems to be retired as Shinja Rika replaced her at the top of 4th fleet. So has likely reverted to her permanent rank.
 
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That list will balloon by another 10 when I finally fluff out the area armies. I was hoping to give them off those interested in doing something like the fleets, but things happened. I'll add it to the things to do this week.
 
I feel like we have almost too many at 15, I'd prefer to see less than 12. 25 would be wayyy too many.
 
I can bump up the ranks so it will be Chujo instead and a Taisa leading a legion. Chui won't feel like a transitory rank now in the Rikugun.

With Wes' approval of course.
 
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