Posted by Jack D in URGENT: Command is trying to Decommission Sojourner

Posted by Lieutenant Helena Laursen (Helm/Navigation Officer) in URGENT: Command is trying to Decommission Sojourner

Posted by Captain Marceau Renault (Commanding Officer) in URGENT: Command is trying to Decommission Sojourner
Command wants to decommission us. I don’t think Sojourner deserves to be decommissioned. I don’t think decommission benefits the site, I think it hurts it. I think this ship will be fine. Decommission doesn’t treat the underlying problem, it only makes the site a little bit worse.

I haven’t been the CO I wanted to be, but that doesn’t mean Sojo deserves to die. So here’s what I want to do. I want us to use this post, to tell Command why Sojo deserves to continue existing.

Can we do that? At least let them know what we think about it? Even if I can’t be CO anymore, which I do still want, I do NOT want to see this ship go away.

~ Capt Renault

Here are my two cents:

1. One of the things that STF does well is having alt era ships so that members can engage with the series they enjoy most. Sojo is our only Ent Era ship, so there is no other Ent Era ship for people to engage with.

2. Being part of the cabinet I know that several ships have undergone a review period and given time to improve. Why has Sojo not been given the same opportunity. If we are going to evaluate and judge ships by the same criteria everyone should go through the same process before final decisions are made.

Lt. Laursen, Helm/Navigation Officer

Hi all,

Sorry to encroach, but I want to put my perspective on this. Unfortunately, I was not made aware that this post was going to be put up on the ship by Lucas. I wasn’t made aware that this post would be going up, and I would have appreciated a heads-up so it didn’t take me by surprise. I’m really disappointed that what is already a hard decision on my part is being made harder still, and that it’s putting at risk my friendship with Lucas.

I don’t want to go into the full details of exchanges between Lucas and me on this subject, but I do feel he has been given fair warning both by me and the FComm. Ultimately, not posting for 50 days has not helped the ship move forward. In the other cases, where I have put ships on a formal review, the CO has been active but just needed to focus their efforts on getting their ship back up to speed. I offered to help develop a plan to get the ship back up to speed, but that was not taken up. Now, I understand there may have been a misunderstanding, but my intent was never to do the work for Lucas - I needed him to step up but, for whatever reason, that didn’t happen.

So ultimately I had a choice; remove the CO or decommission the ship. Across the club, I’m already struggling to fill CO slots — the Chernov once again needs a new CO — and it wouldn’t be fair to assign a new CO to the Sojourner given the lack of an XO and the reduced posting rate. In addition, I have to consider the general health of the club. 20 years ago, when we had 180 members, we had 36 ships. We are now down to 59 members (22 of whom are AWOL), with 17 ships, and the health of the ships are showing signs of that overstretch. Hence the decision that both the Vice President and I came to; to decommission the ship.

However, I am open to alternatives; and one such alternative is to move the Sojourner into X-Fleet, where it won’t receive the support the rest of the mainstream ships get, but it will be allowed to continue. I am undecided on this concept, and it will need a change to bylaws, but (as I have said to Lucas) I am willing to explore it. There is a discussion I have started in Command on the subject (https://www.star-fleet.com/core/command/command/posts/282852/). I would really welcome your participation in that discussion.

I am more than happy to take any questions you may have via my contact form. All I ask is that you keep an open mind to the wider challenges across the club, and engage in the discussion in Command.

Yours,

Jack
STF President

I’m not going to start a public debate on the matter. That wouldn’t be right and my goal is not and was never to start a public debate or galvanize people into bothering or harassing you.

That said, I still feel XFleet is a bad compromise. I will do it, if there’s no other choice, but it isn’t fair. I’ve been over why. As for your plan, yes, I did not reach out, I told you I didn’t know how. I have never heard a peep from an FComm, I found my own GM, I’m working on getting the shop back up to speed.

Yes, I went AWOL again, I had an overwhelming situation at work. I was going to post the day you brought this to me.

And yes, I could fight my arguments about other ships, but I don’t want to. I want to save the ship I am in charge of, that I care deeply for.

But all that, that’s not the point of this post. It really, really isn’t. It’s to show I’m not the only one who doesn’t think this is the answer to the club’s problems. Or at the very least, that this shop, the Sojourner, doesn’t deserve decom, whether or not I am its CO.

~ Capt Renault