Crewing Ships and Bases in Star Trek

[quixote100104]

Greetings :-),

In addition to my unsuccessful efforts (thus far) at writing professionally, I amuse myself by writing slightly more successfully in Star Trek based PBEM games, sometimes called 'simms'.

I'm pretty detail oriented in my thought processes, not to say obsessive (enough others have said that that I feel no need to repeat it ;-) ). My success at running simms in the past has been limited, in part, by the inability to 'get my head around' the larger ships/bases I've tried to work with. More recently, I've been doing better with a smaller ship (same class as DS9's USS Defiant), for which I was able to locate a very nice set of deckplans and to come up with a workable crew list for.

Obviously, small ships and crews have thier limitations as well, and I am hopeful to expand to a larger vessel or small base in the near future. I'll want to define that setting as well as the current one, of course. In light of the problems I've had in the past with such things, I thought I'd ask around and see if there was anyone else who thought about such things and might be interested in dialoguing a bit about it.

Thanks :-),

[Tachyon]

I'm not entirely sure I follow what it is you're asking. What troubles have you run into in the past?

I'm a member of STSF (http://stsf.net/), a live-chat Star Trek roleplaying group that hosts several sims. I'm currently active on one that's set on a Federation space station. Until recently, it was located in the Cardassia system as part of a joint-effort by Alpha Quadrant species to help the Cardassians rebuild after the Dominion War. Recently, the Breen began stirring up trouble before disappearing completely, so we've just finished moving the space station to a system on the edge of Breen space.

Needless to say, the idea of "moving" the station seemed weird to me at first. But this is fiction, and a game, so some creative license is OK. I play an engineer, so you can imagine the amount of fun I had helping us figure out how we might semi-plausibly accomplish this over a reasonable number of games.

The sim's website (http://skyharboraegis.com) has technical specifications and a very detailed history of the sim. It's not that different from writing up the technical specifications for a starship. When it comes to planning detail on a space station-based sim, location becomes more important than on a starship, since you're stuck in one place (with the exception of an outing on a starship or whatnot). And thanks to the fact that your sims can go on for a long, long time, and don't require budgets for special effects, you can define your surroundings considerably better than Star Trek: Deep Space Nine could.

We've got about fifteen or twenty players right now, most of whom are Starfleet personnel. Our CO is a Ferengi ambassador and my superior is a Romulan centurion. We meet for about an hour every week to roleplay live, and then over the rest of the week we can write and send out "logs" that supplement the live gameplay (this is where writing comes into play and we can get really creative).

(Just in case it isn't clear, incidentally, I'm not a host at STSF, nor do I officially represent this particular sim. I'm just a player. :) But I still love talking about world-building!)

[Sarpedon]

I've always wondered who did the mundane jobs in Star Trek.

You'd think a space station would have a dockmaster, space-longshoremen, someone in charge of fueling, space traffic control people, customs officials, safety inspectors, registrars, immigration control, alien life form and disease control inspectors, labor relations staff, maybe a kind of space age 'coast guard' with light vessels for short range patrols, and so forth.

[dclary]

I'm that guy at the docks who laughs at the funny-colored aliens and then gets reprimanded by my pot-bellied boss for being insensitive to other species. :(

[dclary]

Greetings :-),

In addition to my unsuccessful efforts (thus far) at writing professionally, I amuse myself by writing slightly more successfully in Star Trek based PBEM games, sometimes called 'simms'.



Out of curiousity, what does the second "m" in simms signify? I've only seen it spelled "sims" -- an abbreviation of simulations.

[Richard White]

If you want to read some of the "less glamorous jobs", you should check out the Corps of Engineers series of books/e-books by Pocket Books.

The Corps novellas cover a lot of the below-decks (non-command) as well as interacting with a lot of the Starfleet support personnel planet-side and on stations.

(Of course, the fact I wrote one might be how I know . . . *grin*)

[Dommo]

I'd probably like those. It's easier to relate to an average joe, as opposed to it seeming like every main character is a commander or other captain.

[quixote100104]

I'm not entirely sure I follow what it is you're asking. What troubles have you run into in the past?
Mostly trying to envision details that might never come up, or flesh out a ship/station to reasonably match a set of arbitrary statistics generated by people who didn't care about such details, largely for people who also don't ;-).

As an example, I like to have the full crew defined, at least by job title. For me, that helps stimulate story ideas, same as looking at a map or a set of deckplans. Once I see the elements of the enviornment, connections seem to suggest themselves.

On my ship, the limitations themselves shaped important story elements. When I worked out the positions, I discovered that there wasn't enough crew to run her like a typical starship. So, instead of working three shifts or even four (my preference on the big ships) and having periodic days off, my crew all work 12 hours a day, every day, while in space. The ship is cramped, with only the CO, XO and Chief-of-Boat having cabins to themselves and even they have the same tight, two bunk standard cabins as everybody else. There's no holodeck, few amenities, limited computer and storage capacity for replicators (leading to them being programmed only for combat rations, at least until my engineer player gets around to tinkering with them ;-) ).

These are mostly personal innovations, though derivative of canon and, I think, in it's spirit.

Out of curiousity, what does the second "m" in simms signify? I've only seen it spelled "sims" -- an abbreviation of simulations.
I never asked, but my assumption is that it was added to avoid confusion with the Sims computer game.

(Of course, the fact I wrote one might be how I know . . . *grin*)
A pleasure to meet a Star Trek writer...which one was yours?

I'd probably like those. It's easier to relate to an average joe, as opposed to it seeming like every main character is a commander or other captain.
That's a common failing of simms as well, which I am especially encountering in my current one. Very few people want to play NCOs. Being so small, my ship is much better suited for integration of enlisted personnel and has limited officer positions.