Posted by Dave Eads in Question for the Candidates (All tickets)

REPOSTED by Sidney Parker due to formatting errors in the last reply

Thanks for the questions and I like hypothetical ones so hopefully I can give you some insight about how I would go about something similar. I responded in line.

Hi guys!
I know most of you Candidates on at least a “We’ve written together” level, and I believe you all to be good and fair folk. Thus, I wanted to throw out a hypothetical scenario and see if we can get into some the “stickier” situations that sometimes arise in the course of running a ship, or a fleet, or the club itself; and how you’d likely react to such situations.

Hypothetical Part A:
Johnny is CO of a ship. He dislikes his XO, Bob and decides to remove Bob from that position. Bob, doesn’t like this idea, of course, and complains to the Fcomm.

Well this has several perspectives. One is from the Fcomm position and the other would be the President. As Fcomm I would initiate a Q&A with both to hear both versions. Then continue that in areas where there are discrepancies in the versions. As we all know both versions can be right from their individual perspectives but we need to investigate which may actual differ from known facts. Attempt to see if there is room for reconciliation and work toward that if there is. If that is not the case then I am going to look at the ship and the overall health, time on the ship of both, and any other info I can find to see how they impact the health of the ship in OOC and IC. My end goal is a good RP environment. Getting CO’s and XO’s to gel is important and usually a good selection process helps. However sometimes it does not work out for one reason or the other. My goal would be to suggest to both to talk it out and see if they can make it work for the good of the ship. If not come back and lets look at it again. If not go to Part B.

Hypothetical Part B:
It comes to light that Johnny hasn’t been the best CO and Bob has been doing all the admin work on the ship. In fact, some of Bob’s counter-complaints are very legitimate.

Again in this I’m going to look at this as a Fcomm and then in this second part as a President. As a Fcomm I’m going to investigate the portion on Admin work. Under FCOMM a CO can delegate as much or as little Admin work to the XO as they want and the XO will accept. Was there an agreement in place on dividing up the work? Did the XO agree to take on those duties? Was there circumstances where the CO had a big RL issue and the XO stepped up but now is not happy about it etc....It can be pretty fluid so I want to have all the facts. If it comes down to the CO shucking off his duties on the XO then I will still speak to the CO to see the why of it. Is this a CO of the ship who has done well for years and suddenly something is happening in their life or RP life that has changed? Were the two getting along and had a disagreement they never talked out? I want above all to see if reconciliation is possible. A CO and XO in step usually means a good and healthy ship. So that is the goal.

I consider the removal of the CO as a last step. In the scenario the XO has taken on the duties of the CO but it does not say if those duties are being neglected. The end result, as seen in the FCOMM Edict, is that the CO is responsible for the end result of any delegated duty. So I cannot penalize him if the end result is still good no matter who is doing it. Removing a good XO is not what I would want to do either so the final decision will come down to who is more important in the long run to the ships health. Remembering under Fcomm I can’t tell the CO to keep the XO even if I feel like that is correct and express that. I can only agree with the decision or not and make a separate decision after I make the first. Such as agree with the XO and not removing him and then start a removal process of the CO as a result.
As President I would look at the investigation done by the Fcomm. Ask some questions to that person and maybe the other involved parties. Make sure the Fcomm has done due diligence and if so probably support that decision. If not then work on the areas they neglected and do impartial due diligence and make a final call based on a completed investigation.

Please describe what the behind the scenes dialogue might look like from your position? Also, your reasoning behind whatever decision(s) you might make?
To your mind, what is the proper reason, and when is the proper time to remove a CO from command?

As far as this scenario goes I do not see enough to remove the CO and if all being equal I might have to agree with the CO decision even if I would have wanted another outcome.
So in short removing the CO to me is the last step in a lot of steps and the long term health of a ship, based on the FCOMM guidelines and situational facts, is the metric I would use to make a decision to remove any CO. Any CO in this situation would be put on notice that they would be looked at for problems in the future and be evalauted based on a totality of the facts.
Tough Scenario as they always these can be very subjective but I hope this helps.

Sidney