Task Force 93 – Operational Report July 2019

 

Mess Hall: USS South Carolina

0513 HRS

Rayean Transit Corridor

(TF Timeline) Day of Annex

The main lights were dim, set at their low level for the night shift, anyone who entered the mess hall for their breakfast now would be greeted with no less than 3 tables covered in padds containing various intelligence briefings, ship movements and Commanding Officer logs and enough coffee mugs unreturned to fill a small cafe on Earth. Feeling tired and frustrated, Kara continued to stroke her right temple in a circular motion as she read the same line from the padd in her left hand for the third time, clearly unable to take in the details it contained.

It had been just over a week since she had received word from Command that she was to halt all her work on the propulsion project she had spent the last 2 years at Avalon Fleet Yards spearheading and assume command of  Task Force 93, had Command not sweetened the deal with allowing her to place her Flag on DS6 so that she could once again be close to Roman, she would have strongly objected to leaving her project.

Now though, sitting in the small mess hall of the cramped Defiant Class starship that Roman had sent to collect her from AFY, head about to explode from the amount of information she had attempted to consume, she had wished she had put up more of a fight in accepting the position in active operations again. Kara took a sip from her now cold coffee and attempted to read the latest report from Deep Space Six on this so called ‘Sovereignty of Kahless’ that she had been hearing so much about. Long range scans and sensor data passed on by the SS Warden had suggested that the Klingon rebels had went into open confrontation with the Klingon Defence Force and had ramped up their movements along the Federation border, before she could read another line, Kara was suddenly thrown to the floor, swiftly followed by a combination of padds, empty coffee mugs and cold coffee as the alert klaxons in the roof and bulkhead around Kara beamed bright red, from the floor she slammed her comm badge “Thrace to bridge….report” she demanded, utilising the table Kara had, only seconds ago, to stabilise herself to her feet.

“Torpedo hit to the starboard nacelle” called Commander Lenord Denton, the CO of the South Carolina for this mission, Kara could recall Roman talking about him being recently promoted to XO of DS6. “Did you say Torpedo?” Kara asked, unsure if the noise from the alert klaxons had muffled Dentons report “Yes man, unknown origin, we have dropped out of warp” There was a short pause and some muffled discussions in the background before Lenord Dentons voice came through on the comm system “Ma’am, we have 2 Klingon Birds of Prey decloaking directly ahead…. Wait… make that 2 fore and 2 aft…we’re surrounded”

Kara didn’t bother to answer, she had read enough over the last few days in her reports to know exactly what was happening

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 News from Task Force 93!

 

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Canon Updates

There are several canon updates in progress or ready for you to have a read through! With the closing of the Gorn story arc, the Task Force canon will be focusing more on the Romulan and Klingon side of the TF bringing an awesome opportunity for compelling storytelling.

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Bravo Fleet and Task Force 93!

There are some new policies in place regarding sim activity levels, which I know sounds scary out of context. These new classifications give you the power to tell your story, your way, without having to be worried about volume – I would strongly urge all COs to look over the new policy shift and determine which classification is best for you, your crew, and the stories you’re trying to weave.

Bravo Fleets First Competition is live – I’d love to see plenty of great entries from TF93 in our Design a Logo Competition

Our Task Groups have been re-organised to form some structure around the Task Forces Area of Operations and bring in some much needed nostalgia to the Task Force

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In Conclusion

Well it’s only been just over a week and what a week it has been, I’ve been really amazed at the engagement and activity levels of every player within the Task Force, I can’t wait to see what we can do together. 

Coming up with be the announcement and final details of the TF wide mission arc, the Task Force fiction site on DS6 going live and lots of joint posts.

Keep doing what you’re doing, writing great stories and hosting great games.

Jolan Tru, Quapla’, Peace & Long Life

 

 

 

Bravo Fleet & Star Trek: Picard

To all the members of Bravo Fleet, past and present:

In early 2020, we will be receiving the first new official canon in the late twenty-fourth century of the Prime universe in nearly twenty years with the debut of Star Trek: Picard. This is an exciting time for Bravo Fleet, and we intend to take full advantage of it. This is something that Bravo Fleet, and in fact the simming community at large, desperately needs. Bravo Fleet will be going in both feet first! We want to make this announcement now so that everyone can get ahead of the game and be properly and fully prepared!

Within a month of the end of the first season of Picard, we will be changing the default setting of Bravo Fleet’s fiction to 2399 to line up with Picard. Through the run of the series we will be proceeding at a 1:1 time scale, with one year passing in-universe for each that passes outside. This will allow us to keep pace with Picard in time.

This is a necessary step in the long-term security and survival of Bravo Fleet. With the exception of the Hobus storyline, Bravo Fleet has largely languished in its own fanon (“fan canon”), far removed from any source material, since Nemesis premiered in 2002. And while we are all some of the most creative people on the planet, we can only do so much with so little over almost two decades without feeling stale. Another large reason for this change is because we don’t want to have to continually and constantly have to retcon our own ongoing writing as Picard is airing. It’s much more conducive for us to move to 2399 and adjust our “history” according to Picard. Rather than Picard outright changing what we’re doing in its history.

What does this mean for you? It means that our primary canon support will be focused on the new 2399 setting. Most current fleet stories will be wrapped up or see major changes as we prepare for the time skip, and new stories to tell in the new setting will be discussed. Some stories will endure a decade into our timeline’s future. In the end, the specific year doesn’t affect most individual sims, but it does affect fleet storylines which, in turn, trickles down to the sim level. For your sims, we will offer as much time as you need to tie off your current storylines and make ready for the time skip. For those who do not want to move to the 2399 setting, there will be options as well. If the number of sims staying in the 2389 setting is small, they will be moved to a new Task Group in Task Force 99; if it is large, we will open a new Task Force for the “classic” Bravo Fleet setting. Fictions outside Task Forces 99 and 64 will need to advance to the new setting – a part of the point of fictions is to help tell the fleet’s stories, and that means they need to run inside the main setting of the fleet. All non-alternate (TF99) or historical (TF64) sims opened once the time jump is made will be 2399.

This will also serve as a soft reboot of sorts for Bravo Fleet. We have two decades of our own canon, and we do not know how much of that will be contradicted by what happens in the new show. We will, as always, be following screen canon first, so this will be an opportunity to bring our stories and those being told by the creators of Star Trek more closely into line. But it will serve as a fresh start for many people and will allow us to tie nice ribbons on other storylines.

At the same time as the time skip, we will be restructuring our Task Forces! The current structure, while straightforward, has led to situations where areas of operations and breadth of storytelling, especially in 72 and 93, are overwhelming. While each task force is simply divided into the four quadrants, 38 and 9 don’t encompass the entire quadrants they represent. Asking the staff of 72 and 93 to manage the canon and sheer potential number of sims in those task forces is not fair. Additionally, we’re looking for stability in our task forces, and burnout is not the way there. We will be adding multiple Task Forces to Bravo Fleet between now and around the time skip, each with a smaller, more focused area of operations. We’re hoping this will help sims focus on the stories they want to tell a lot better, allow task force staff to have more individualized attention on specific stories and areas of operations, and help build a more cohesive story overall between the sims in a task force.

COs – look for surveys to be hitting your inboxes in the next few days so that we can get a tally count for those wanting to stay in the 2389 era and those going with Bravo Fleet to 2399. We will also be releasing more information on future task forces as we finalize what that will look like.

New Task Force Logos!

To all the members of Bravo Fleet:

As part of our fleet rebranding, the task force logos have also been at the top of our list. They have largely gone unchanged since their current inception which has been well over ten years. I will also explain some changelog thoughts with each one!

TASK FORCE 9

This one is pretty self-explanatory. 9 is keeping its iconic cyan-like blue color, but the logo in the center has changed to something more 9-centric: the Bajoran Wormhole!

TASK FORCE 38

Task Force 38 keeps its purple color! The Greek delta logo has changed, though. The lowercase Greek letter was simply too “fat” to fit into the new Bravo Fleet logo correctly. The solution was straight-forward: use the uppercase delta letter!

TASK FORCE 64

This one was probably the logo that saw the most change and was a bit tricky to work with. A few concepts were drawn up that changed the inside logo to laurels and other imagery. However, with a 64 “rebranding” of sorts coming soon (more on that once Domingo returns from STLV!) we wanted some imagery that really conveyed what 64 is all about. The logo color was also changed to red for the simple fact that the gold coloring did not work well with the gold accent of the new logo. It was very much a pain in the ole’ eyeballs.

TASK FORCE 72

Very little change here. 72 has barely changed in 20 years. Continue on with your sexy logo, 72!

TASK FORCE 93

This is the other logo that, along with 64, got quite a bit of change. The first was the color. With 9 and 72 occupying a lot of the blue spectrum, 93s “greyish blue” was hard to accommodate. To set it apart and on its own, it has been given a more emerald green. To mix with 72, you get some very Earthish colors. It’s also a reminder that those sneaky Romulans are right around 93s corner! The sextant that originally occupied the 93 logo was also changed for similar reasons to 38: it was too “fat” to sit in the current logo properly. 93 has instead been given the replacement of a compass, which is the most fitting logo 93 could have.

TASK FORCE 99

Just as with 72, 99s logo remains largely unchanged. Black, infinity, infinite possibilities. Go 99!