A Rant About Rank

As I was working out today, I spent the time catching up on my STO podcasts (in particular Priority One). There is, with good reason, a lot of excitement over the impending release of Season 4 and the subsequent rank increase to Fleet Admiral. I'd like to take a moment to stand up on my soap-box, pitch my two cents, and rant about how much the latter irks me.

If I have any complaint about STO, it would be the way rank has been thrown around. I'm not talking about level or abilities, those are all fine and I couldn't be happier than I am cruising around in my tier 6 Galaxy-class. What I'm talking about here is the actual title. I'm very proud of my military heritage and on a fun little nerdy level I get giddy when Star Trek tries to reflect the actual military structure ("Lower Decks" TNG-167 and "Good Shepard" VOY-240 are excellent examples and the inspiration for my entry into the March Fiction Contest). One of the best things about Star Trek is that evan as a fantastic sci-fi adventure set 400 years in the future, it tries hard to maintain a certain level of credibility. [On a side note, the day I realized the Wolf 359 was a real star was one of favorite nerd moments of all time.]

In my humble opinion, very few if any at all, of us should be Admirals. Being an Admiral is a big deal. I don't want this to sound like I'm bashing the game, because I'm not, but cannon Star Trek treats this issue with a little more respect than STO does. Very few, if any, Admirals are running around the quadrant with their own ship playing hide-and-seek with Romulans or joining away teams in the middle of a Borg Unicomplex. Sure, about now at least one person is screaming, "What about James Kirk!? He was an Admiral while dragging whales across time and space!" But lets be honest here, Kirk was the exception and not the rule. In "All Good Things…" Riker commands Starbase 247 and doesn't really spend his days running around picking fights with Klingons except when his wayward friends are on walk-about in the Devron System. When you really think about it, how does random Admiral John Doe have the authority to order you on any mission? Especially if you are a Fleet Admiral!

Given the sorts of activities we as the average player engage in (front missions, data mining, exploration, PVP, FEs, STFs, etc), there are really only three ranks that any of us should be: Lieutenant Commander, Commander, and Captain. Within any of the series you never see anyone in command that is less than LtCmd and those are usually temporary commands (i.e. Data and the USS Sutherland, Beverly Crusher and the Enterprise-D, or Jadzi Dax and the USS Defiant are good examples). Worf was Commander before he commanded the Defiant, but he never got a crack at the Enterprise. Sicko's first command was a space station at the rank of Commander. All of these individuals were very bright and exceptional officers with circumstances that required them to step-up in time of need. I mean, what's wrong with being a Captain in Starfleet? Why don't we look at Captain as a position of respect and authority in and of itself? Certainly a long, drawn-out campaign against KDF expansion, a Borg invasion, and the subversion of the alpha quadrant by the Iconians constitutes a need.

So, purely an exercise and fanciful daydreaming, here's what I think would be fun to see and would make a bit more sense than 80% of the fleet with Vice Admirals in command. First, leave the level structure itself alone; we already climb through ten levels all within the same "rank." Is there any reason that Lt. Commander couldn't be levels 1-25, Commander 26-50, and Captain 51-75? Heck, Cryptic could even throw Rear Admiral in with 76-100 if the level system ever manages to climb that high. By then we are talking about the hard-core end game types that, truth be told, have earned the title of Admiral and in fairness have become the exception to the rule. Second, a series of special missions to mark the transition from LtCmd to Cmd and Cmd to Capt. Something next of kin to mini-FEs or the equivalent--the sort of adventure that sets a young Commander apart from his/her peers and even warrants a field promotion to Captain?

Ok, so I'm done ranting now. I'm curious to see what the rest of you have to say on the subject. (I'm sure some of you want to reach through your screens and slap me right now, lol.) :lol:

I loved your rant...

Back to Star Trek in general... Startrek has always treated its flag officers (Commodores and Admirals) as people who see the 'big picture' as opposed to the Captains who see the human side of things. Some flag officers were just down right out of touch with reality and seen as corrupt, but they always thought they were justified in their actions.

In STO the lvl system is flawed for a number of reasons. Firstly no one really cares about the grades, just the ranks. No one celebrates that they are LC4 or Cm7 its always when they increase in rank and can then buy a new ship.
Secondly you are right that its daft to have a Lieutenant in command of a starship (even a crappy NX replica) we are in effect all Captains from the begining of the game. How experienced we are should depend on our lvl. Picard was a Captain when he was in command of the Stargazer and then in time he got a Galaxy class and a soverign but he was only ever Captain.

Admirals in general would be in command of taskforces, or starbases or sectors. People who run fleets would be Admirals with a starbase, if they ever do a LOTRonline skirmish style system then you could be an admiral who leads a taskforce.

My final point is that in other MMOs when you get to a certain lvl you have to perform a specific task in order to prove you are at a certain ability to get a new skill. This could be the case in getting new ships.

I never gave any thought to this point before... but I think you're 100% justified in your thoughts.

Maybe you should post your opinion on the STO forums. I'm sure there are many other fans, including myself, who would think there is a lot of merit in the point your making.

I totally agree with you all. You could try posting on the official forums, but I imagine this discussion has been and gone a dozen times already!

Even though my main, ARCH-I, is a Vice Admiral, I display Captain as the rank above my name... because as far as I'm concerned, that's what I am. It's a shame that I have to try and pretend one of the game systems doesn't exist. :(

AFAIK, Anyone above Captain would normally be behind a desk, pushing PADDs around (possibly a fun mini-game!). There were many episodes focussing on this... didn't Picard refuse Admiralty a couple of time because he wanted to carrying on flying about on adventures?

He did and the theme running through the TOS movies was that Kirk didnt suit being an Admiral. He used the V'Ger crisis to get back in command of the Enterprise and Bones warned him in Wrath of Khan to get his command back before he turned old.

The happiest moment for Admiral Kirk was when he was demoted to Captain lol

I had this very concern when STO came out with Vice Admirals. Star Trek ranks have always been similar to Navy ranks (http://www.navy.mil/navydata/navy_legacy_hr.asp?id=266)

At this point, the only ranks left are "Admiral" and "Fleet Admiral". I am of the opinion that the level system should be redesigned from the ground up. However, that would take some major reworking of various aspects of the game.

Love the rant. But some of you know me, i love to look at the picture from the outside. And I agree 100%, but I like to point out things from the other side.. :evil:

Yeah I think the ranking system is flawed, and it does restrict a lot of potential level expansion, but I doubt that's a concern for down the line, and if it is, they can always revamp it. As far as nobody being Captains of ships as Lt's etc. That's not entirely true. Depending on the class of ship even in the real US Navy there were LT and LT jg ship captains, these are usually small ships small patrol vessels, WW2 PT boats, etc. So it's not unheard of. And it appears they attempted to keep with that theme with of course tiering the ships as you level.
As far as #'s of Admirals, granted there should never be this # of Admirals in one place other then special Ceremonies/occasions/dire needs. But remember this, we are thinking on a Earth Population scale of people. Even so far as as low as a per Navy basis. In the Star Trek Universe, there are untold umpteen billions upon billions of sentient beings, and so theoretically there would be millions of members of Starfleet. Hence there would be a LOT of admirals. And in the shows, with very few exceptional episodes, they are taking place in 1 small area of space. We'll take DS9, not including off tangent episodes or through the wormhole. Most of the primary action takes place in the areas between Bajor and Cardassia. That's a lot of area to cover in relativistic terms and that's a tiny fraction of space. Also remember Space is 3-D. It's not Pie Shaped, it's Orange Shaped. Use an Onion as Example, cut it into 8 sections, each section is covered by a FA, as example, then each layer of each section is covered by a VA, example. And Space is a LOT bigger then an Onion so it could be cut into 1000, 10000, 100000 sections.. And granted the Federation isn't in/cover the entire "onion" even if you take out those sections, it's a huge galaxy.
Unfortunately due to the tinyness of the current STO areas available. It is ridiculous to see this many Admirals this close together. But if you look at it from a literal #'s point of view. We need more Admirals.. :blink:

And as far as Admiral's not Captaining a ship personally. (I'm an Admiral I'm gonna do whatever the hell I want. :whistle: )

Some excellent points, but I'd like to touch on a two of them that I had considered when I was writing my first novella, but got lost in my somewhat wordy flood of thoughts…

First, I had considered the fact that the galaxy is a big place. Where 500 or 1000 admirals would be unheard of here on earth where a single sovereign military may not really exceed more than about 1.4 mil (which was the size of the entire US military in 2010), obviously Starfleet is a significantly larger organization. My only qualm with that is totally in the writing because they never really tell us how big Starfleet is. The Battle of Wolf 359, which destroyed 39 starships and killed around 11,000 people, was a implied to be a massive blow to the make-up of Stafleet. Even two years later during the Klingon Civil War of 2368, Picard has a hell of a time assembling the 23 starships he needs to form his blockade of the Klingon/Romulan boarder. Its not until the Dominion War kicks off that we start to see massive fleets containing hundreds of starships… and even then, who is running those shows? Approximately one admiral per fleet (which is Admiral Ross for most of what we've gotten to see in DS9). But even fleet command occasionally falls to Captains. Picard and Sisko both commanded several fleets and battlegroups throughout their on-screen careers.

[On a side note: It makes me sad that we didn't at least get a "hear through the grape vine" some of Picard and company's exploits during the Dominion War. I mean, its the flagship for crying out loud and Picard is a brilliant commander. Some lip service from the writers might have been nice… but oh well.]

Second. The notion that an admiral can do whatever the F they want would be my second pet peeve. Yes, there is an exceptional amount of authority and autonomy for an admiral. Within the scope of their respective organizations they have the latitude to be choose their own course of action. However, everyone has a boss and Starfleet admirals are no exception. In this case its the Federation Council and the President (very similar to Congress and the President here in the real world) who dictate the scope of the Federation's activities and policies. Starfleet's job is to explore and keep the peace under the rules the the Council has laid down--they are the tool through which policy is executed, not formulated. So the idea of hordes of red-shirts marching to the whims of an admiral simply because he/she is an admiral is… silly. I think it would also be honest to point out that we do see several admirals through the series that do have the mindset that an admiral's power is supreme, but weren't they usually the villains of the respective plots? (i.e. Cartwright and the Khitomer fiasco, Dougherty and the Son'a blunder, Leyton and the coupe…)

Ok… now I think I'm done. Thanks again guys for you input and joining me on this little exploration of thought.


PS. Even the great Kathryn Janeway--valiant steward of USS Voyager, nemesis to the Borg, and aunt to omnipotent beings--ended up with a desk job along with her shiny new boxed in pip.

I would love to see the ranks system redesigned. There are dozens of problems with it including how quickly we level and what the ranks are. [Not to mention how confusing it can be to spend your skills points.]

When they were designing the game they said countless times "we're going to do something different the with leveling mechanic than what you've seen" which excited a lot of people, but in the end, we got the same leveling mechanic as everywhere else.

I prefer EVE Online's system as opposed to STO's where you generally just have one character that you can do everything with. I've spent three years in EVE with just one character. I think it'd be much more immersive if I just had one character that I spent much longer working my way up to Admiral.

I think reaching the rank of Admiral should be somewhat separate from getting commander or captain, possibly based on meritorious actions instead of just XP.

Of course, to be really cannon appropriate, we'd have to start out serving on a ship, instead of running it and that's something that's just never gonna happen, sadly.

Quote by jbrenden

As I was working out today, I spent the time catching up on my STO podcasts (in particular Priority One).

Good choice ;)

Ok, I've actually put some thought into this one and came up with a brilliant solution for reworking the lower levels of the game with your changes in mind.

Since there is a naval history of lt's being in charge of smaller ships, why not rework the entire LT section of leveling to be shuttle/fighter missions? I know at first you might think that's crazy but hear me out.

First off I know the Dev's have mentioned wanting to put in more shuttle missions. Secondly it would allow us to serve on the ship that we eventually need to start commanding. We could get all of our LT rank missions from the current Captain of the ship. As we hit Lt. Commander, that's when (based off the current story line) we could have the Tutorial Level Khitomer Accord mission where we come in to help, and the command crew of our ship is killed/kidnapped. This leads to our Field promotion to Lt. Commander. From that point you could expand on the number of grades/slow down the curve/Add the rank of Commodore. Whatever would be needed to help make the journey to ultimately I'd picture no higher that Rear Admiral.

It's amazing that I do my best thinking when I'm bored out of my mind in the shower.

I love it, and the fact you tempted us with a little shower image was just the icing on the cake lol

LOL not quite the intention of that but *shrug* who am I to argue?

I often think about Admirals as I lather up lol

LEt's not get too out of hand, My fiance MarkNine might not approve.