May 2020 saw the second straight month of increased posting for the fleet – with overall posts increasing from 1,675 to 1,706 and an average per ship increasing to 244 sims. It’s definitely an exciting time around the fleet with so many stories being told and so many fun things going on.
The Constitution and the Gorkon led the fleet with 293 sims per ship, followed closely – neck and neck – by the Juneau and Ops with 269 and 268 posts respectively. The Veritas finished the Month with 242 posts, followed by the Thor with 172 and the Atlantis with 169.
With the month of June including the Annual Award ceremony and so many talented writers it is sure to be another blockbuster month for the fleet!
Check out some of the highlights of this past month’s simming through our Appreciations forum, where you and your fellow members can nominate sims, great quotes, and other memorable moments for the rest of the fleet to enjoy!
The Executive Council is our community’s highest decision-making body, comprised of a maximum of five admirals and captains who have more than one year of service at that rank. The EC is endowed with the power to commission and decommission vessels, promote members to the rank of captain or beyond, and generally manage OOC concerns.
Appointment to the Executive Council is one of our community’s highest honors, denoting our utmost trust in the leadership and stewardship of each member.
Following the retirement of Rear Admiral Toni Turner after a long and fruitful membership on the Executive Council, the EC is pleased to announce that we have filled the fifth seat with a returning leader: Aron Kells (Tony).
The Executive Council (EC) is constantly evaluating our successes – and debriefing our challenging moments – to determine how we can replicate what works and change what doesn’t. As a result of a recent evaluation of a ship decommissioning, the EC recognized that we had no defined requirements for the selection of First Officers, and ensuring that they were recognized as the second in command of ship.
A new bylaw has been created to solve this confusion, with three main points:
First, that a Commanding Officer of a vessel must have the appropriate authority to choose the First Officer of the vessel.
Second, that a First Officer must be a member in good standing with a minimum of nine months experience since graduating from the Academy, OR six months experience and experience acting as a Training Officer in the Academy.
Third, that a First Officer is the ship’s second in command even when other players – who may have a higher rank more experience – is assigned to the ship.
As part of drafting this bylaw, the two Councils – in coordination with First Officers from ships in the fleet – has drafted guidance about the rights and responsibilities of First Officers. This guidance is made available to new First Officers upon appointment to the role, in addition to our detailed “Lt. Commanders Training Manual.”
While the UFOP Constitution defines our group’s structure and elements, the bylaws are clarifying additions which help guide our day-to-day work and ensure that important rules have the weight of community law.
April 2020 was an exciting month with two crews transferring to new vessels – the Embassy of Duronis II moving to the USS Thor and the USS Eagle moving to the USS Juneau! As a result, sim submissions went up across the fleet in general, averaging 239 posts per ship and 1,675 in total.
This month, Ops shot ahead of everyone with 350 posts, followed by the Constitution with 270, then the new ships Thor and Juneau with 237 and 235 sims respectively. The Atlantis followed with 209 posts, just ahead of the Gorkon with 204. The Veritas posted 170 sims for the month.
With two new ships and summer approaching, May promises to be a great month, especially with such a great lead-in. Great work and can’t wait to see what May brings the fleet!
Check out some of the highlights of this past month’s simming through our Appreciations forum, where you and your fellow members can nominate sims, great quotes, and other memorable moments for the rest of the fleet to enjoy!
As the webmaster for our site, I get a lot of automated messages from all our various systems, including – pretty regularly – notifications when people have been locked out of our systems for trying the wrong usernames and passwords. Inevitably, I see some of the same folks bumping up against our logins, particularly once you’ve reached a certain level and have access to more areas of our site like the Lt. Commanders training area.
We’ve tried some utilities to make it easier to log into the site, but often they become cumbersome to work with over the long term as security standards change. One login system we had for our WordPress site started requiring monthly manual updates that were a nightmare!
I’ve solved this problem by using a dedicated password manager. I have only two passwords I remember: The one that opens my computer, and the one that opens my password manager. Beyond that, every password is a long, random, and complex set of characters. Not only does that ensure that it’s hard to break my passwords by randomly guessing, but if one website in my life gets hacked (looking at you, Target.com!), hackers don’t have access to everything else. It also means that I don’t ever have to worry about trying the wrong password in any of our sites – as long as the username and password are correctly filed with the URL of our site, it’s popped into the form automatically by my password manager and I’m good to go!
I personally use 1Password which I find to be really well designed and easy to use. But it costs about $4/mo if you pay yearly. Other password managers (like LastPass) have a free version anyone can use!
The Fleet saw a slight decrease in its activity during March, probably not surprising giving all of the anxiety present in the world. Still, despite the ongoing global crisis activity was not suppressed as we might have expected, with a fleetwide average during the month was 175, down from last month. The total across all ships was 1,228 sims.
This month, the USS Atlantis led the month with 244 sims posted and the Embassy came in second with 218. The Gorkon with 194, Veritas with 164, and Ops 151 brought up third, fourth and fifth respectively while the Eagle with 146 came in sixth, and the Constitution posted 111.
What does April hold for the fleet? What does your ship have planned? Can’t wait to see!
Check out some of the highlights of this past month’s simming through our Appreciations forum, where you and your fellow members can nominate sims, great quotes, and other memorable moments for the rest of the fleet to enjoy!
The Starbase 118 Fleet held its own through February, with some ships seeing quite an uptick in their sim counts and everyone showing strong. The fleetwide average this month was 196 sims, down just slightly from last month. This made for a total of 1,375 sims across all active ships. February is a month where the numbers typically dip slightly due to it being a short month, so it was good to see it didn’t have a huge impact!
This month, the USS Gorkon leads the pack with 277 sims written. Not too far behind them is the Embassy with 215 sims, and Ops with 211. Fourth place goes to the Eagle with 187 sims, while fifth place goes to the Atlantis for the second month in a row with a strong 182 sims. Following them, but not by far, the Veritas came in with 155 sims and the Constitution with 148. Where will we stand next month? With a new year going strong, stand by for March!
Check out some of the highlights of this past month’s simming through our Appreciations forum, where you and your fellow members can nominate sims, great quotes, and other memorable moments for the rest of the fleet to enjoy!
The Starbase 118 Fleet was off to a great start in January with over half the ships in the fleet beating all previous January numbers in their histories. The fleetwide average this month was 208 sims, up some from last month for a total of 1,459 sims across all active ships. After the holidays and various vacations and real world activities, it is great to see everyone jumping back into some incredible stories!
This month, the Starbase 118 Operations leads the pack with 285 sims written. Just behind them is the Gorkon, for the second month in second place, with 247 sims, the Veritas with 242 sims, and the USS Eagle with 239 sims. Fifth place goes to the Atlantis at 176 sims, with the Constitution not too far behind them with 139 sims. The Embassy put in a good showing as well with 131 sims this month, increasing their lead on prior years numbers. Where will we stand next month? With a new year fully in motion, stand by for February!
Check out some of the highlights of this past month’s simming through our Appreciations forum, where you and your fellow members can nominate sims, great quotes, and other memorable moments for the rest of the fleet to enjoy!
We are proud to announce that the renovation of the official sims archive has been completed and released! This new version has a brand new look, faster loading, and now includes keyword searches of all sims going back to 1995. Other features now present:
Access to all sims, including inactive ships since our founding;
Faster loading of pages;
Streamlined view for both PC, mobile and tablet display;
December was much as it was expected to be, with the fleet putting out some really great sims, but not quite as many as last month. The fleetwide average this month was 187 sims, for a total of 1,307 sims across all active ships. With many people on vacation and some being pulled away from their online personas with family from out of town, we are used to a bit of a downturn like this in December. Our stories are still going strong though!
This month, the USS Veritas leads the pack with 283 sims written. Just behind them is the Gorkon with 250 sims, the Atlantis with 231 sims, and the Starbase 118 Ops with 166 sims. Fifth place goes to the Eagle at 150 sims, with the Constitution not too far behind them with 122 sims. The Embassy put in a good showing as well with 105 sims this month, which beat out their numbers from this time last year. Where will we stand next month? With a new year here and plenty of stories to be told, stay tuned for January!
Check out some of the highlights of this past month’s simming through our Appreciations forum, where you and your fellow members can nominate sims, great quotes, and other memorable moments for the rest of the fleet to enjoy!
Looking for something fun to do? We have a whole list of fleet activities that are looking for members like yourself! Check out the Fleet Activity List today to see where you'll fit in.
