discussion part 2

[sonofalderaan.livejournal.com]

I don't want to be spamming the OOC com, but on the other hand, I'm betting a lot of people don't want to have to wade through 100+ comments in the previous post. So I'm making a separate post with the Important Information from the last post, so that people can read/discuss it more easily.

1. Pending asking Kuroi when she returns, the mechanics are going to be moved over to be a sub-department of engineering, where they will work on servicing all the ships aboard stacy.

2. after a bunch of discussion, the tentative plan is to have the x-wings be their own squadron, the mobile suits to be their own squadron, and after next(?) podpop the macross characters to start a third squadron. All of these squads would be coordinated by a new "starfighter command" department.

2a. I've offered Tycho to be part of starfighter command, and for myself to do the work OOCly coordinating all the squadrons, to make sure that inter-canon CR is maintained. I hope no one feels like 'oh god Fiver's gotten a hold of it, now there's no place for my character to get involved'. If you want your character to be a part IC and if you want to help with the work OOCly, then please, speak up. I would be more than happy to spread the work around. Everyone's agreed though that inter-canon CR is very important, so I think it's important to have persons or peoples willing to do the coordination work OOC to make sure that happens.

3. We still need to pick when all this restructuring/the creation of starfighter command would happen ICly. Right now the suggestion is after the elections to have the new Captain issue orders for it. Anyone have any alternate ideas?

4. Karl and Funk have an idea for an aircraft carrier of sorts for all the fighter squadrons, however I don't know if they want to bring it up for discussion here yet, or what. Guys?

5. I know there's been discussions in chat about how the bridge crew/tactical department/idk other departments/etc will be organized. Could we get that discussion "on paper" as it were, for the people who weren't in chat/weren't paying attention when this was discussed in chat? Plz and ty <3

Comments

[gunslinging.livejournal.com]

If there's anything I can do to help you get this off the ground without tearing your hair out, YOU HAVE MY SWORD.

[sonofalderaan.livejournal.com]

and Wes' vuvuzela? (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7B2LPxggvqY)

This means Tycho is going to make Wes his bitch, jsyk ;D




<333333333333333333333333333

[sithhavecooties.livejournal.com]

First off, thank you so much for doing all of this. You are ten flavors of awesome.

I think that ICly we should postpone all of this until next podpop. Right now, there isn't an IC stimulus to do it, but there will when Karl and Funk pop guys who have new units, maybe we get a carrier, etc. Timing-wise, that will hopefully coincide with the elections being over and the captain doing some restructuring.

I also wanna emphasize that we should do inter-squadron stuff all the time. ♥ I'd really love it if Fighter Command made the current bootcamp a Fighter Command thing and we had the same ready room and all that jazz. That cross-canon CR will never end~.

Okay, so, in chat I think I brought up a tentative idea for command structure:

Fighter Command: Tycho and Thrawn
- Rogue Squadron: Commander, Wedge + 2nd of choice
--- Everyone in Rogue
- Skull Squadron: Commander, Karl's pop + 2nd of choice
--- Everyone in Skull
- Unnamed mobile suit squadron: Commander, ??? + 2nd of choice
--- Everyone else in the MS squad

[sonofalderaan.livejournal.com]

all of this looks good to me emily ♥

[robots-omgh8u.livejournal.com]

Will the Shuttle/Freighter squadron include transport for the ground troops? I'm assuming it would.

[silverduelist]

2a) Maybe one or two players/characters from each team would be able to jump on ship to this to give representation for each team and talk ... idk, good piloting times?

3) Adding to that, maybe we can shift the tactics talk in that direction somehow from an IC route? Maybe not an all out "hey maybe doing this instead" but more "maybe we should reconsider the setup"?

[sonofalderaan.livejournal.com]

2a. that's a good idea, to have a representative from each squad in starfighter command. or to have an official 'liaison' for each squadron.


3. I was considering the same thing. glad to know I'm not out in left field or something X3

[sithhavecooties.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah, as for part 5. I have no idea what sort of bridge Stacy has, but with a new captain on his or her way, it would probably be useful to get a bridge crew going. I imagine their IC responsibilities would mostly involve being switchboard operators (receiving incoming communications to the captain, relaying the captain's commands) and just kind of monitoring the ship so they can let the captain know if anything crazy happens. I'm guessing you'd want eight so they could work in pairs on eight hour shifts but not work every day.

Because of the nature of the work, I think this is a great place to put characters who don't want to do combat stuff and don't have any other specialized science skills.

[sonofalderaan.livejournal.com]

I know there is already a bridge crew in place, but I really don't know anything about it. It would be fab if Karl or someone would contribute to that?


I agree though about it being a good idea for there to be bridge bunnies who are communication relays etc. and about their being shifts. it would give more threading opportunities.

[kitbashurgundam.livejournal.com]

1) I'm cool with that, really. It does make a bit more sense for them to work on all than just a set few.

2) You know, I got thinking about it, and I'm curious - I know we got a squadron for X-Wings, one for Mobile Suits and soon those for Macross mecha and such, but what about those who aren't exactly in any of those categories? Cause I know I got my guy (Kouji) and his flying bricks of mecha, Zita has Vega and his mecha dinosaur and Zoki has Billy and his Zord. If they're okay with it, and any more random mech pilots show up, you think we could have a fourth squadron of "Miscellaneous Machines that Blow Stuff Up"?

Beyond that, I think it's awesome!

[sonofalderaan.livejournal.com]

1. :|b

2. I'm seeing 2 ways this could go. A. there's been discussion of asking the mods if there can be extra mass-produced mobile suits in the hangar so that pilot characters could have the choice of joining the rogues, the un-named mobile suit squadron, or joining the skulls. That is of course if people are down with their character switching to a different machine.

or B. we could make some kind of ad-hoc "miscellaneous fighters" wing, if people were interested, and someone wanted to volunteer to run it.

[holylonelynight.livejournal.com]

2. Me and Funk have decided to bring in our Skull Squad members in this podpop, because it'd be better if this restructuring happened as close to after the elections ICly as possible.

3. Right after Ozma gets popped and gets adjusted a bit to the ship, he'll be pushing for having his own squadron (he doesn't like flying under people he doesn't know). We could have this along with the elections be the IC "push" that they need to get this department organized.

4. I'm fine with bringing this up now. Me and Funk discussed the possibility of having the Macross Quarter (http://www.macross2.net/m3/macrossf/macross-quarter.htm) act as the Starfighter Command Deptartment's mobile command carrier/headquarters. It's large enough to fit all the squadrons, and it's specifically designed to be a carrier, so it has a lot of advanced sensor and communications equipment, but it's small enough to feasibly fit inside Stacy (about 1/5th the size of Star Trek's Enterprise).

However, since it's a canon thing (I don't want people thinking Skull Squad is trying to pull out all the cool stuff while no one else gets to), and since it technically does still violate the size limit we have for ships that can be found in Stacy, we wanted to run it by people first.

5. I'm fine with discussing things here. My suggestion is this: Tactical becomes the Ground Command or Ops department, responsible for coordinating all of the ground forces for Stacy as well as containing all the team leaders. The current bridge crew could be brought into Ops department since this is pretty much what they do. In addition, Ops can be responsible for running training programs for the crew, since it includes all the team leaders. Ops, being essentially a military department, is appointed by the military command (captain, FO, etc.).

Then we have the Starfighter Command department, which is responsible for coordinating and training the starfighters/mecha pilots. This team could have a smaller bridge crew that coordinates with the Ops bridge crew (or we could split the bridge crew to essentially be a part of both departments).

Finally, I agree with the need to make mechanics a separate thing from both the ground forces and starfighter forces, since this will encourage more inter-department CR.

[on-an-impulse.livejournal.com]

I might be confused about how you want to split ops and ground command. Is it something like this?

CAPTAIN
- OPS
--- Bridge staff/captain's staff
- GROUND COMMAND
--- People who fight not in fighters
- FIGHTER COMMAND
--- Rogue
--- Skull
--- MS
--- Shuttle/freighter
--- Quarter
- MYSTICAL
- SCIENCE
- MECHANICAL
- THE MAJOR'S COMMANDO SQUAD

[mercjedi.livejournal.com]

I like the idea of the bridge team being part of both of the departments, but I can see how that might get a bit messy. Maybe just have them under Ops for the sake of organization, but have specific people assigned to work with each command?

[mercjedi.livejournal.com]

3. I think after the election would be a fine time for it to happen IC. That will give us enough time IC to have it reorganized before the podpop, and the new squadron shows up. That said please please let's keep talking about it, and have it all agreed upon, and laid out before then. That way the new captain can give the order and all we have to worry about is IC stuff.

4. I'll restate my opinion that a carrier would be all sorts of awesome. Also I don't think it being from the Skull's canon being a big deal as it's something all of starfighter command would get to share.

5. I know there was also talk of a Quartermaster, but I don't think there was much consensus yet on if they should be a part of Ops, or have their own department.

[holylonelynight.livejournal.com]

I think Quartermaster should be a sub-department of Ops. Ops focuses both on coordinating forces and making sure they're properly equipped, so quartermaster could fulfill the latter part of that, while the bridge bunnies fulfill the former.

[gunslinging.livejournal.com]

+1 to the canon not being a big deal. I mean, I don't think the cool factor of all those Gundams and X-Wings is in any way diminished by loading them onto a ship from Macross, and it is pretty specialized for exactly what we want it to do.

[crysteel-future.livejournal.com]

I'd love to help with any plans for starfighter command. I'm not real busy because I decided against a summer class because as it turned out, I was too lazy to go to sign-up. XD

[sonofalderaan.livejournal.com]

awesome kally. so far it's a very amorphous idea, but I'll let you know when something more concrete develops.

[governmentninja]

3) I agree that the elections are the perfect time for mass reorganization of the various departments.

Addendum

[governmentninja]

5) Also, in terms of reorganizing everything in general, I'm rather wary of creating sub-departments and specialty departments in game. I know I stated that in the previous post, but I'll put it here too.

Basically, I know it makes sense from an IC organizational standpoint to have sub departments and very specific defined roles, and I'm not saying its a bad idea, but you do need to factor in that people drop characters/get braid dead/lose internet/go on vacation/have muse death/drop the game. I think whatever system there is should be flexible enough so that if someone drops, there's someone else there to pick up the slack. If you narrowly define a role, though, it becomes rigid and inflexible.

Also, keep in mind, if you give a character only one task, then, and try to think realistically about this, how often will they actually be playing out that one task? Once a month? Once every two months? And what will they have to do when they're not doing that one task?

So, rather than have a sub-department of two characters who handle only three specific tasks that they'll maybe get to do once every six-eight weeks anyway, just have one department of about ten or so characters who are all responsible for fifteen different tasks. So, this way, when that specific thing is needed, there's likely someone around to do that, and when that specific thing isn't needed, the characters would still have something else productive to do to remain active.

Re: Addendum

[sithhavecooties.livejournal.com]

if you give a character only one task, then, and try to think realistically about this, how often will they actually be playing out that one task?

Tycho seems to do it a lot.

Armored Cavalry Regiment

[browncoatdevil.livejournal.com]

Not sure if this is the right place for this, if it's not poke me and I'll make a separate posting.

Anywho- I've been tossing around the idea of starting up a possible ground based armored cavalry regiment and wanted to get the general feeling about it.

Mostly what they'd be doing is operating any armored vehicle (as well as non armored because, honestly, horseback riding is COOL!), working with high end explosives, providing ground troop cover and also anti-aircraft cover, not to mention being small raiding parties when they need to be. Pretty much it would be a mix between modern day tactics with a touch of how the Civil War cavalry units were used.

Of course this is just me tossing information out there. If anyone is interested holler at me on AIM or here.

Re: Armored Cavalry Regiment

[whyarewehere]

Armored vehicles, you say?

Grif can drive like some kind of idiot savant. It's one of his few useful skills. And he might actually be talked into this, as opposed to straight up combat training.

Bridge Crew

[thewunderkind]

Lash was part of Bridge Crew before being part of the Rouges, so I am glad to see that come up again! (I was kinda sad that the bridge crew wasn't doing anything) This is what we had before: http://community.livejournal.com/trans_channel/131016.html#cutid1

I think we were going to have rotating teams for there too, since just one group can't be there all the time. It would allow for a lot more interaction as well.

Also I think every team shift should have a Kobayashi Maru. Only because I think it would be awesome to see a multi-fandom Kobayashi Maru and how each character reacts to it. :3c

[sonofalderaan.livejournal.com]

I'm trying to get everything straigth in my head, so this is what it seems we're talking about so far. People let me know if I've got this right or not:

Ship organization:


Captain
---first officer
---counsel etc

-Ops
--bridge crew
----starfighter command bridge crew
----strike team bridge liaison?

-strike team

-ground command
---armored cavalry regiment?

-starfighter command
---rogue squadron
---unnamed mobile suit squadron
---skull squadron
---shuttle division
-----dropships?

-Quartermaster
---assistant quartermasters

-engineering
---mechanics

-magical department

-science department



Thoughts: are ops and ground command the same thing?

[robots-omgh8u.livejournal.com]

The quartermaster would be under Ops I believe.

[sonofalderaan.livejournal.com]

Let's try this again:

Military command:
Captain
---first officer

-Ops
---bridge crew
---quartermaster

-strike team

-ground command
---armored cavalry regiment?
---away teams?

-starfighter command
---rogue squadron
---unnamed mobile suit squadron
---skull squadron
---shuttle division
-----dropships?
---quarter crew

Joint command:

Captain/Counsel

-engineering
---mechanics

-magical department

-science department

-medical department

-hydroponics/agricultural division

[robots-omgh8u.livejournal.com]

That looks solid to me. I don't see any major issues.

[jesushasagundam]

It's a bit down the road, but we could always maybe rework X-Wings to use the Ex-Gear system VFs do, which lets them interpret actions and even thoughts to controls. But that's a blue-sky plan.

Is there anyone who is AGAINST the idea of Macross Quarter showing up?