Posted by Joe P in Discussion Topic: Ship Speeds and all that

Posted by Russell Watt in Discussion Topic: Ship Speeds and all that

Posted by Rear Admiral Sarah Hemenway (Second Assistant Personnel Director) in Discussion Topic: Ship Speeds and all that
Posted by… suppressed (3) by the Post Ghost! 👻
Discussion Topic: Ship Speeds and all that

Right now, we ask new members to tell us their expected activity rate. We give them the following choices:

-Infrequent (once a week or less)
-Slow (1-3 logins per week)
-Average (2-5 logins per week)
-Regular (4-7 logins per week)
-Frequent (daily or almost daily)

Within the Academy, there’s really no room anymore for ships of different speeds. We did that back when we had four ships, but we’re now down to one ship. Everyone goes into the one ship, except for Infrequent (and we will contact the new member to address the situation). If the Academy ever started having different speeds again, we would use a similar model to the non-Academy ships.

Within the Academy, we match as follows:

Infrequent –> Slow ship
Slow –> Slow or Medium Ship (priority on slow)
Average/Regular –> Any speed (priority on medium)
Frequent –> Fast or Medium Ship (priority on fast)

The current procedures have the flexibility in them because sometimes are hands can be really tied if we’re stuck with looking for one speed ship. For example, there are currently no fast ships in the club willing to take a new member. There are currently only three slow ships in the club able or willing to take a new member. And the PDept is not involved in any discussion about changes to a ship’s speed - so if all three available slow ships decided to become medium speed ships, we would have no slow ships.

One issue that has come up over the last year or so is that the minimum posting speed of a ship (Slow, Medium, Fast) doesn’t reflect how many posts there are on a ship. A large, slow ship can often generate many more posts in a very short period of time than a small, fast ship.

Also, it is easy for a medium ship to just start posting more frequently to the point where everyone is posting the equivalent of a fast ship’s expectation without needing to change the ship’s speed (whereas a medium ship couldn’t start posting at a slow ship speed rate without formally changing the ship’s speed. So while we have (and are seeing) some medium ships look to formally changing to a slow ship, the PDept sometimes becomes aware of a “fast ship” that is still formally a medium speed ship.

So that all raises a few questions about the current policies that I can think (perhaps others have more):

-does the current link between requested speed and placement speed make sense? Should we be changing the categories on the application form?

-does it make sense how we address a situation when the specifically requested speed is not available (like anyone requesting frequent outside of the Academy)

-should we take into account how many posts a ship generates on average, and have that as a new tie-breaking rule (or even a new elimination step)? (This is related to the proposed metric discussed in Command last month.)

Daniel Lerner
Personnel Director

There is some room for improvement on the current policy. There’s things like this:

“Slow posters will only be placed on ships with Average or Slow posting speeds”

People who want to post slow should end up on one of the few slow ships if possible, but the way the policy is written following it strictly would mean that slow posters are actually more likely to end up on a medium ship than a slow ship. To me that is broken.

The more I think about it I don’t like placements being made based on how fast the ship is actually playing. I know I used to play fast, but I’m a very slow player currently. I’m CO of a slow ship and while we don’t accept new members I’ve thought about changing that. The ship’s post count has been unusually high recently and trying to keep up reading them all is more than I want right now. If I got a new player, I’d want one based on the speed I want for the ship, not the recent posting rate.

Adam W.

This last sentence is so awesome, I’m just going to quote it again for truth, in bold:

If I got a new player, I’d want one based on the speed I want for the ship, not the recent posting rate.

There’s no way I could emphasize this enough.

Joe

I absolutely agree with this… but what if the indicated speed is not reflective of the posting rate for months on end? Or the CO would like to have X be the minimum, but is actively encouraging something faster/slower than X? Does that then fall to the FComm to handle since the PDept has no say in posting rate?

Sarah

Then yes, I would suggest that the CO and FComm would need to have a chat and also, couldn’t the PDept have a quiet word to an FComm about it? “Hey, the Journeyman’s going rather slow for the last three months, but the speed is average, is the ship changing speeds? We’ve got someone who wants to post on a slow ship, and our choices are limited. Could you find out from the CO and let us know? thanks?”

As FComm, I was always of the opinion of ‘let’s make life as easy as possible for the PDept and the ships, so that the PDept is happy with our fleet and ships when it comes to placements, who knows a ship might get an extra crew member.’

Russell.

If a ship is going slower than the minimum, there is a problem and some responsible person in the chain of command (e.g. CO, FComm, etc) needs to get involved to find out what it is and fix it.

If a ship is going faster than the minimum, it’s not clear to me that this is actually a problem, because the minimum is supposed to be… erm… minimum. You want ships to be posting at more than the minimum. It’s very strange to treat that as a problem.

I think if people are citing a ship running faster than the minimum as a problem, there might be some other problem with it that isn’t really fully captured by counting the number of posts on the board, that maybe the sort of natural language we use for talking about how ships are doing doesn’t properly express. Like, say, if there’s only a subset of the crew posting in the sim, because those people are advancing the sim too quickly among themselves and not really giving anyone else any opportunity to get involved. That might get expressed as a “that ship is going too fast” issue when it’s really a question of etiquette.

Joe

I absolutely agree with this… but what if the indicated speed is not reflective of the posting rate for months on end? Or the CO would like to have X be the minimum, but is actively encouraging something faster/slower than X? Does that then fall to the FComm to handle since the PDept has no say in posting rate?

I feel that the management of ship posting speed is something to be handled by the CO. If it’s becoming problematic somehow (such as running below the minimum - as Joe said I don’t think exceeding this is problematic), that is for the FComm. I don’t think the PDept should have any role in managing or enforcing ship speeds. To me, their only role should be matching the applicant’s reported desired ship speed with the CO’s reported desired ship speed, as possible. If something is creating a problem with placements, that should be reflected in PDept report for consideration.

-Thomas