Rank system announcement

Fleet Announcement

[extrabox]Stardate: 92427.35
Location: Phoenix Starbase, Eta Eridani Sector Block[/extrabox]

[contentbox][heading]First off[/heading]

• This announcement was published in the public visible STO boards to ensure that all Fleet members have instant access to this information. Content of this announcement concerns EVERY Fleet member regardless of current rank or status.
• Be aware that I will find very clear and sometimes hard words in the following announcement.
• Yes, I am fully aware that this announcement is a massive wall of text. But I still ask you to read it. It is important.
• Be aware that in order to make my point clear I have to work with examples and that i have to generalize a bit. Not every member of the fleet is meant on some of my explanations.
• I really would advice you to read it carefully to the end and think a day about it before making a judgement.

[/contentbox]

[heading]General Information[/heading]
As already announced via Fleet mail a new rank system will be introduced to our Star Trek Online Fleet this week.
This topic has been discussed at our last Fleet meeting (saturday 25th October 2014). While all attending Fleet members agreed on the upcoming changes and the need to introduce such changes, I'll consider the absense of the other members as tacitly agreement to whatever has been discussed and decided upon this topic.

[subheading]Why is there a need to change the Fleets rank system?[/subheading]
There are multiple reason actually.

• One would be that specific Vice Admirals of the old rank system felt that certain other Vice Admirals did not deserve this rank.
• Another reason would be that some Vice Admirals desired to be more, to have more rights than others, to have a say in practically every decision... with other words playing the role of the Fleet Admiral.
• The main reason however is that the Fleet was founded as a game section of the SWAT Portal and was meant to be an addition to this community. Fact however is, that over the past 2 years the fleet moved away from this community.
  While every community member was simply allowed to join the fleet, the fleet members didnt see a reason to become part of the community. The whole fleet turned into a one-way road where even old community members for some reason stopped being part of the community after joining the fleet.
  This is an inacceptable state... especially since I am responsible for the Community and its future. I am responsible for this Fleet to serve its purpose and if I have to do a reset to achieve this then I will gladly do that.

About the first two mentioned reasons I will only say so much.
(and please I am definitely going to generalize here; the following subjects really concern only a very few members actually, but i have to address these subjects without pointing my finger on specific people; the people involved will know who is meant)

• If a Fleet member fulfills the requirements that are written on the official Fleet website then this member will get a promotion. Personal opinion about that does not matter.
  It makes no difference if I like this member or not... it makes no difference what other Fleet members think about that fleet member. The requirements for ranks are set in stone and no subjective feeling will change anything on that fact.
  This also means that Fleet members will be treaten equally (without exception).
• Fleet members which think they should be in the leading position or involved in any decision should get the following into their head.
  
  • This fleet has been founded to be a SWAT Portal game section and as such it falls into MY responsibility. Yes... fact is that whenever people disagree with something, whenever something goes wrong, whenever there is an issue with something or someone, I will be the idiot who is taking all the blame (no matter if i am actually responsible or not). I am even taking the blame when not being involved. After 12 years running clans and this community I have plenty of experience with that kind treatment.
  • This community here - the SWAT Portal - has over the past 12 years gained a specific worth (financial, emotional... reputational). Running this community also involves a noticable financial risk (a few thousand € per year) that I gladly have covered year by year.
    The situation is pretty simple actually.
    I do most of the work, I cover all the risks and I am the guy who is taking all the blame. So what qualifies YOU to be Fleet Admiral of the Phoenix Legion and make decisions for a SWAT game section? Fact is if YOUR decisions are wrong then I am still the idiot who is taking the blame while the SWAT Portal as community might have to deal with the damages of such a decision... I am still the guy that is being held responsible for everything... I am still the person who has to deal with the financial consequences for the Portal.
  • "With great power comes great responsibility" -> Since I am apparently going to be responsible for pretty much everything it is just logical to assume that I have the power to decide and try to find the best possible decisions for this fleet and the SWAT Portal.
    My decisions have guided this Community savely through 12 years while all around us communities were dying. The Freelancer players in the fleet should know best about that.
    For 12 years I have guaranteed the stability of this community, its clans/guilds/fleets and ensured that thousands of players had fun while being members of SWAT. Never I gave someone reason to question my motives or abilities. I have worked hard so other people could have fun and enjoy the games they loved to play eventhough that very often meant no joy for me.

Ok, that had to be said. If you think a while about it you will notice how true that is.
It is important that this was said prior introducing the new Fleet rank structure. If you want to put a new important topic on the table you first have to clear things up.

[subheading]Known issues[/subheading]
The fleet in my eyes has many fundamental problems.

• I got complaints from players which feel that our fleet members dont play together anymore (I consider this true and will have to change that).
• I know by first hand that holding meetings in this fleet was wasted time since people either did not attend or did not listen. That is fact and clearly had been proven by the fleet meeting one week ago (18th October 2014) where all of a sudden people were claiming that I would want do disband the fleet. I didnt say a single word about disbanding the fleet, ever. But that happens when people are not listening/reading... that happens when people prefer to interupt important announcements and explanations instead of reading and trying to understand the written words.
  Lets face it... it pisses me off that practically every week I had prepared a Fleet meeting, discussed stuff with the members, made decisions together with them (yes i always did involed the members in decisions) and just 1-2 days later all decisions... everything that we discussed and agreed upon was broken by some of our members. It is frustrating to see this happen... it is no joy spending time to prepare meetings while knowing that all the decisions are going to be broken within just a few days.
  Instead of spending my time to prepare meetings I could go into the garden, enjoy my time and have exactly the same results in the following week.
• Communication between our members sux. Sharing information with each other is often not considered an option anymore. Our fleet is full of lone wolves that dont know anymore what the word team means. Old members don't communicate with each other anymore. New members don't get much support. You wonder why the fleet has that many inactive members? -> thats why!

I think that are the main problems in this fleet. With them in mind and the clear objective to bring Fleet and SWAT Community back together a new rank system has been developed for the fleet.
Yes, after showing you in length and detail what the problems of the fleet are and what we will be aiming for, we finally get to the point how all this can be realized.

[heading]The new Rank System.[/heading]

The main objective while thinking about a new rank system was to think about what needs to be achieved and where the problems are.
Fleet and Community needs to be brought back together, communication needs to be improved, teamplay has to be supported, the meeting problem needs to be solved and members need to be encouraged to help each other and exchange information.
Thats a very hard task.

While having found a solution for all these problems, I am 100% certain that there will be fleet members who wont like that solution.
However, I am at the point where I say "it does not matter".
The current situation with the fleet is terrible and every change is an improvement.
I'd rather to work together with only 10 remaining members in the future which support these changes than to deal with 400 members that refuse any improvements to happen. This certainly sounds hard but the idea behind a fleet or a community is to work together with each other, to support each other... to solve problems and work for a bigger goal.

[subheading]Concept[/subheading]

Originally I hoped for improvements to the STO fleet management with the release of Delta Rising. Such improvements unfortunatly have not been introduced which require to keep the original rank structure (-> Lieutenant, Lieutenant Commander, Commander, Captain, Vice Admiral, Admiral). We would have needed 2 additional ranks to introduce a truely new rank system.
But ok, we simply work with what exists.
All our Fleet members have in the past moved up in ranks based on their contribution to the fleet. This was measured by "earned Fleet Credits". Every fleet member who donated something to the fleet projects earned such Fleet Credits and based on the amount that member got a promotion (e.g. 10.000 fleet credits for the Fleet Lietenant rank, 30.000 fleet credits for the Fleet Lietenant Commander rank, etc.).
These requirements for the different ranks and promotions wont change. The numbers absolutely wont change. Already earned Fleet Credits are "lifetime achievements" which nobody can take away from you. Period!

So if everything remains the same... whats new?

New is that there will be a second criteria for promotions. This criteria is measured by the activity inside the SWAT Portal Community.
It means the use of the Forum will obligatory.
If you want a promotion to the next rank you have to be active member of the community. If you are not active member of the community you won't get promoted and this means you won't get access to fleet bank, fleet stores and all the other shiny things that the fleet has to offer.

And now before you start to rage about this change, let me explain a few things about it.
This change does not require you to spend excessive amounts of time on the forum... at least if you dont want to.
This change has massive benefits for you and for this fleet.

• You don't need to hurry on saturdays so you can make it to the meetings. You also don't need to worry to miss something if can not attend the meeting. We will discuss the topics on the forum... you will not miss anything anymore... you can decide at which point of time you will read about important fleet decisions... you can decide which topics and discussions are important to you. You have the choice and you have one additional hour time on saturdays to play STO.
• The first few rank requirements will be relative easy to get so you can bit by bit your access to fleet bank and fleet stores again.
• You can use this forum (our fleet forums in particular) to get feedback from other fleet members on your ship builds, gear and toons. This will help you to improve your gameplay experience and ship performance.
• With the introduction of Delta Rising pretty much everything in STO is new. Missions are new, balancing is new... many things you easily did before are now pretty hard to do. This would be our chance to develop new tactics, new strategies... new ideas how to play specific missions and this game as a whole.
• The use of the forum allows us coordinate long term projects or special events. It will be beneficial for the teamplay on the server.
• The use of the forum always keeps you up to date with important game related changes. Fact is the game is changing faster meanwhile than most of our players adapt to it. It requires to work together to find out whats new... how to do things in a better way... and to prevent that you miss any important stuff (such as short term events -> e.g. Lobi rewards).
• If you need any help or have question about something you simply could ask on the forum and no matter if somebody is online at that time or not you will always get help.
• In STO we always had the problem of the language barrier. German players which did not understand english well, english players that didn't understand a german question, etc. While i doubt that you can automatically translate the STO ingame chat... you can do this on this forum (at least you will be able to do it as soon ive finished to integrate the translation function). Different languages should not be a problem anymore.
• ... and probably many other benefits.

The obligation to use the Forum holds the potential to solve all problems of the Fleet. It will bring the Fleet back to the SWAT Community, it will ensure that our members communicate with each other again, it will help new members to find help, it will support teamplay, it even improves the meeting situation and information management.
It is a step into the right direction.

[subheading]Action to be taken[/subheading]

• The Fleet permissions for each rank will be restored.
• All fleet ranks will be reset until the new ranks are available to the members (this should not take long, but depends on the members actually).
• The requirements for each fleet rank will change. As already explained to the already existing earned Fleet Credits requirements there will be additional activity requirements.
• There wont be regular fleet meetings on saturdays anymore. Instead all important discussions about the fleet will be done on the forum. All decisions concerning the fleet and its members will be announced on the Fleet internal forums.
• Instead of holding the fleet meeting we will be doing events on saturdays (and probably also at other times). PVEs, PVPs, mission replays... member trainings, etc. (you can make a wish list)

[subheading]Ranks and their new requirements[/subheading]

Let's simply ignore the Fleet Ensign rank as every new member by default would have this rank. The very first promotion a Fleet member would be able to get would be for the Fleet Lieutenant rank. This requires to earn 10.000 Fleet Credits by contributing to our Fleet holdings and to have an active forum account with verified membership in the Phoenix Legion Usergroup (I will explain in detail how this can be done).

Being registered member on the SWAT Portal and joining this usergroup would allow you to see the fleet internal Forums and qualifies you for the first promotion. So, actually not a big deal.

The following ranks require you to earn a specific amount of activity points on the SWAT Portal. You earn these points automatically when being active community member. No matter if you open a Thread, write a Post, comment something, upload something to your user gallery... almost every activity on the SWAT Portal is rewarded with Activity Points.
When you have enough Fleet Credits and Activity Points you will get your next promotion.
This by the way also eliminates the risk that a new member gains access to high Fleet ranks within just a few days to empty our fleet stores.
This is a new level of quality for this fleet.

As you might have already noticed there is a third requirement for the Fleet Vice Admiral rank.
This is a special rank and so it should be filled with members that showed special dedication to the fleet. This is of course a very subjective requirement. Dedication is subjective and every person has special abilities. Some are great at teaching and helping others. Other people have talent to organize stuff. Other are creative and come up with great new ideas and improvements.
Special people with special abilities and the dedication to support this fleet and its members can reach the Fleet Vice Admiral rank.
These members will join the Admirals Counsil they can help to run this fleet.

[subheading]Detailed instructions[/subheading]

I can imagine that some people know how the Portal is working but most will need a bit help. So here are some short instructions on how to get everything running.

• You need to register an account. If you scroll up again you will see the registration button right under the Dashboard.
  [xattach=4682][/xattach]
  The Portal will guide you through the registratio process. Just follow the instruction on the screen.
• Once the registration is complete and you have logged in you can use most features of this Community.
  Now it is time to link you STO toons with your Portal account.
  For this you need to visit your Profil settings. You can find this right under the Dashboard again. Just click on your Account name and then "edit profile".
  [xattach=4683][/xattach][xattach=4684][/xattach]
  Now scroll down till the end of the page and there you will find a large field where you can enter your Star Trek Online toons. One per line.
  [xattach=4685][/xattach]
  When you hit submit your STO toons are now linked with your account. You also can use the member search function of the Portal and use STO toons as search term if you want to contact the SWAT member on the Portal.
  One you have linked your STO toons with your account you will see them asigned to your account at the left sidebar in every forum post.
  [xattach=4686][/xattach]
• Now it is time to join the Phoenix Legion Usergroup.
  For this click on your account name below the Dashboard again and then click on "Settings".
  [xattach=4687][/xattach]
  Now you will see a menu on the left side showing "User Groups"
  [xattach=4688][/xattach]
  On the right side a list of available usergroups will be displayed now. Just search for the "Phoenix Legion Members" group and apply to it.
  [xattach=4689][/xattach]
  Usually within just a few hours the access to the Phoenix Legion Forums will be granted to you. On the main Forum view, when you scroll down a bit you will see a list of games. Among them is Star Trek Online. That is where you also will see the Phoenix Legion Forums one you have been granted access.

This whole procedure needs to be done only one time. It is actually not complicated and will help us to run this fleet in a much better way.
If you create new STO toons it of course would be required to add them to your account profile then so they can get linked with the SWAT member account.
Based on the information you have entered we will be able to do Fleet promotions in future.