In universe question - "command major" at academy?

This feels like a dumb question (and I know that these forums are tumbleweeds these days) but I'm working on a LUG game and I have a question about the in-universe reality of starfleet majors/divisions.

I always liked the lifepath system in the FASA game. It presumed that you would choose a dept while at the academy (helm, nav, comm, engineering, security, med or science) and then from there you would learn command skills either during tours or at department head or command school. In affect, you didn't "major" as a commander at the acedemy which seems to mirror how things worked on-screen in the Trek universe.

The LUG game includes the Command overlay which seems to not represent a Conn/Helm/Flight Control officer. Is it just an in-game construct to allow players to build a leader/commander character from scratch, or is there on-screen precedent for characters going through Starfleet Academy and basically specializing in command/administration/tactics/law and not more "practical" skills?

Just looking for someone who might have gone deeper into Trek lore than I have and might be able to offer an opinion. I'd like to adjust the overlays (largely based on some of the great overlays I've found on these forums) that might better represent what Starfleet would "really" be like.

BTW - shout out to those who might still be lurking on these forums. I still love LUGTrek!

We see command-division ensigns and lieutenants in the shows milling about, but aside from those that show up in the conn position it's hard to tell what their duties are. Given the amount of sheer work coordinating people takes, along with the other duties—negotiation, tactical and strategic operations—I can see someone going up the command division for their whole career.

AFAICR the TNG Player's handbook said that some characters spent their whole career in the Command branch, it all depends on your choices during character creation. Though as far as I am concerned that isn't a very good choice, as it doesn't make for a well rounded character.

I think its a bit of both... While the Command Overlay is intended to help develop a Command based character, as TDK points out we see an awful lot of Red Tops loitering around during the TNG era... Not everyone is sitting at CONN or the Command seating so, what are they doing? We know from Worf that Red is also used by conn and tactical, so we can assume that some of these people are working those crews.

I seem to have lost it, but I bet its in here somewhere, where I wrote out a treaty on some departmental duties, including some speculation of roles aboard ship. So I see many of these junior Command Officers as Team Leaders, perhaps having been promoted into command from their branch, or specialist leaders, Off-duty shift leaders (The night crew?), also some NCO's such as master of the Boat, Captains Yeoman, and other administrative personnel (Probably some crossover with Ops there too). There is also the Quartermaster and his team, while they may be less hands on in an age of replicator, there are still stores, resources and cargo that require management and allocation.

So long and the short. I believe that the academy probably DOES teach some Command school type stuff, as they seem to be trying to create cadets who are masters of more than one discipline, but perhaps the focus is on aptitude testing and ensuring that the people who get the advanced training are the ones likely to achieve and take over come crunch time... (Which might explain poor Ensign Kim... Even the EMH got promoted ahead of him!)

Also of note in the Players Handbook are the Advanced command training for making a department head or shifting a character into the command branch...

Thankfully Owen's Memory ICON has retained all my lost data after a recent catastrophic crash or two;

http://www.coldnorth.com/memoryicon/

http://www.coldnorth.com/memoryicon/...Sourcebook.pdf
- Departmental Duties; Page 21

Thanks for the responses - glad to see people are still commenting on the ICON system.

I understand that it is totally fiction, but it doesn't seem to make sense to churn out so many managers, or at the least that all those managers would be tactically trained (administration I can understand).

I guess I liked the idea that you'd be a science officer or navigator to whatever and then move upward in rank. Although the 2009 Abrams movie (which I know some people don't like) seem to reinforce that Kirk could go straight from the Academy to First Officer/Capt so it would lend credence to the idea that you could be trained as a commander straight out.

The Price of Freedom seems to indicate that Ensign Ro uses the Command overlay. It doesn't make much sense to me that an ensign with 1/2 in Conn Operation would be the preferred Helm officer for an Enterprise-class ship when there would presumably be plenty of Fight Control officers with 2/3 Conn fresh out of the Academy according to the rules as presented. I guess I want the ICON overlays to work more like FASA, since most of the on-screen captains (TOS Kirk, Picard, etc) started out as navigators or Janeway started in Science and no one really seemed to be a commander (position not rank) right out of the Academy. Seems like something you have to develop into and the system doesn't seem to model that as effectively.

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Originally Posted by Trr

I understand that it is totally fiction, but it doesn't seem to make sense to churn out so many managers, or at the least that all those managers would be tactically trained (administration I can understand).

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Agreed, this is a real-life issue with the NHS in the UK! ;)

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Originally Posted by Trr

I guess I liked the idea that you'd be a science officer or navigator to whatever and then move upward in rank. Although the 2009 Abrams movie (which I know some people don't like) seem to reinforce that Kirk could go straight from the Academy to First Officer/Capt so it would lend credence to the idea that you could be trained as a commander straight out.

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I agree with your preferred option, and don't think that we should take Command Tips from JJ Abrahms... Where the ex-cadet seems to be promoted over line officers simply because the captain likes the jib of his Cahones...

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Originally Posted by Trr

The Price of Freedom seems to indicate that Ensign Ro uses the Command overlay. It doesn't make much sense to me that an ensign with 1/2 in Conn Operation would be the preferred Helm officer for an Enterprise-class ship when there would presumably be plenty of Fight Control officers with 2/3 Conn fresh out of the Academy according to the rules as presented. I guess I want the ICON overlays to work more like FASA, since most of the on-screen captains (TOS Kirk, Picard, etc) started out as navigators or Janeway started in Science and no one really seemed to be a commander (position not rank) right out of the Academy. Seems like something you have to develop into and the system doesn't seem to model that as effectively.

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I think what you want here are the packages. So for your example of Ensign Ro, you could start with Command template, add in some piloting skills with the cadet and first tour packages, add in a couple of later tours to round things off, and finalise with the Advanced tactical School. ICON rather lets you add as many tours as you want (although a better/fairer option is to allow an equal points value for all players and allow them to pick pre-existing packages or fine-tune skills as needed. Which is probably a better option...

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Originally Posted by Trr

I understand that it is totally fiction, but it doesn't seem to make sense to churn out so many managers, or at the least that all those managers would be tactically trained (administration I can understand).

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The logistics and resource allocation aspect of running a ship is complicated; likewise navigation, communication, organization of information, logs, correlation of everything. There's a lot of different things to administer and manage—check out this list for ideas of jobs to give command-division junior officers. (Interestingly, we also see weapon techs in TOS in command gold, implying something about the correlated areas of responsibility as Starfleet saw them at that time.)

The other thing to remember is that Trek is a little inconsistent when it comes to things like the existence of noncom crew on Starfleet ships. It's been said, I don't know how accurately, that Roddenberry's original idea was that it was all officers, but later shows obviously changed that. That means that an ensign-ranked command division officer is probably supposedly managing a whole bunch of noncoms like on a contemporary vessel.

Someone upthread mentioned cargo crew as potential Command personnel. Problem with that is that virtually every time you see them they're wearing Operations gold, not red.

Two types of TNG "redshirts" (in the literal, not the death-rate sense) no one has mentioned yet include Tac Officers (NOT Tactical officers who also act as Security Chief) but rather Starbase (and presumably Starfleet HQ) officers like Tac Officer Chang in "Coming of Age". Taking a semi-educated guess, I'd posit that Tac Officers are responsible for Strategic and Tactical analysis and planning as part of the base commander's staff.

The other is JAG/Internal Affairs, as witnessed by Dexter Remmick, Phillipa Louvois, and Admiral Bennett.

Side Note: You would think it would be simple to do a quick Google search and find out exactly how real world navies organize their crews by department. It isn't. I tried every combination of "department", "crew", "roster", organization", etc I could think of and not a thing same up at the ship level.

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Originally Posted by Chris Donovan

Side Note: You would think it would be simple to do a quick Google search and find out exactly how real world navies organize their crews by department. It isn't. I tried every combination of "department", "crew", "roster", organization", etc I could think of and not a thing same up at the ship level.

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You'd need to mash up an aircraft carrier's org chart with that of a research dept. at a university, too.

As for the logistics shirt colour, the physical movement and safety assurance of the material would be a gold-shirt job, but the establishment of what and how should go where, the determination of proper safety procedures and communication of those facts to the gold-shirts would be a red-shirt job as it pertains to the overall organizational schema of the ship.

i've definitely considered Tactical officers to be Command brand based on what has been seen in TNG and DS9. By that time it seems like there is a distinct difference in role between Tactical and Security, although each should likely be able to fill in for the other in a pinch. I've modified the Tactical Overlay based on the Security overlay in the TOS rulebook -

Tactical
Energy Weapon 2/3
Starship Tactics 1/2
Security 2/3
Ship. Sys - Tactical 2/3
SysEng. - Security 1/2
Unarmed Comb. 1/2
Athletics 1/2
Computer 1/2
Dodge 1
History - Fed 1/2
Lang - Fed 1
Pers. Equip 1/2
Planet Surv. 1/2
Veh. Op. 1/2


Security
Energy Weapon 2/3
Planetary Tactics 1/2
Security 2/3
Ship Sys 1/2
Sys. Eng. - Security 1/2
Unarmed Comb. 2/3
Athletics 1/2
Computer 1/2
Dodge 1
History - Fed 1/2
Lang - Fed 1
Law - Starlet 1/2
Pers. Equip 1/2
Planet Surv. 1/2
Veh. Op. 1/2

It never really made sense to me that the Tactical Officer would not have some kind of Starship Tactics training (same thing for the Helmsman really). So these overlays can support each other but the Tac officer focuses on Starship Tactics and Ship Weapons and the Security Officer focuses on Planet/shipboard tactics and unarmed combat.

This way Command has the Command, Helm/Nav, & Tactical overlays, Ops has the Ops, Security, and Engineering and Science has Sci, Med and Counselor. I also include a Linguist (Hoshi-style) in Sci because that seems like an interesting role to fill. I've built one based more on an Ops template and one based on the Science template and I'm not sure which one I think works best - thoughts?

Linguist - Science Communicator
Admin 1/2
Language 3 levels
Science 1/2
Ship. Sys - Communication 2/3
Sys. Eng. - Comm 1/2
Athletics 1/2
Computer 1/2
Dodge 1
Energy Weapon 1/2
History - Fed 1/2
Lang - Fed 1
Law - Starlet 1/2
Pers. Equip 1/2
Planet Surv. 1/2
Veh. Op. 1/2


Alt. Linguist / Science Comm. Officer
Computer 2/3
Language 3 levels
Other Science 1/2
Ship. Sys. - Comm. 2/3/
Pers. Eep - Comm. 2/3
Engineering, Comm 1/2
Dodge 1
Energy Weapon 1/2
History - Fed 1/2
Lang - Fed 1
Law - Starlet 1/2
Planet Surv. 1/2
Veh. Op. 1/2

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Originally Posted by The Tatterdemalion King

You'd need to mash up an aircraft carrier's org chart with that of a research dept. at a university, too.

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Maybe I just didn't look deep enough, but I could not find something that broke it that far down.

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As for the logistics shirt colour, the physical movement and safety assurance of the material would be a gold-shirt job, but the establishment of what and how should go where, the determination of proper safety procedures and communication of those facts to the gold-shirts would be a red-shirt job as it pertains to the overall organizational schema of the ship.

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That makes sense.

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Originally Posted by Chris Donovan

Maybe I just didn't look deep enough, but I could not find something that broke it that far down.

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I tried looking for specific ships' org charts, but ended up finding that by searching 'aircraft carrier crew organization'. Given that the document I found is a teaching document it makes sense that where you'd find that is in Navy educational materials; it may be that some of that stuff is actually somewhat classified.

So we could make up a list of Command Roles within Starfleet, beyond that of the established Captain and XO... So feel free to add to it;

Captain
XO
Chief of the Boat (Command NCO)
Conn Officer
Tactical Officer
Strategic Operations Officer
Intelligence Specialist
First Contact Specialist
JAG / Legal
Quartermaster
Flight/Shuttle Operations Officer (Manages overall Shuttle Ops, probably Lt. on smaller vessels will probably combine with Conn)
Deck Officer (in charge of the Shuttle Bay, Junior Officer)
Yeoman (Administrative NCO, probably a number of these personnel aboard ship, but the Captain has a dedicated Yeoman)
Team Leader (Assigned to command a working group, possibly an ad-hoc role for suitable candidates that wish to move departments)

I'm not sold on the idea of the onboard Tactical officer (by which I assume you mean the role filled by Yar, Worf [on the Enterprise], Tuvok, etc), unless you want to split off weapons control from Security in which case I'd recommend changing it to Weapons Officer.

I also think the First Contact officer should be Science division.

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Originally Posted by Dan Gurden

So we could make up a list of Command Roles within Starfleet, beyond that of the established Captain and XO... So feel free to add to it;

Captain
XO
Chief of the Boat (Command NCO)
Conn Officer
Tactical Officer
Strategic Operations Officer
Intelligence Specialist
First Contact Specialist
JAG / Legal
Quartermaster
Flight/Shuttle Operations Officer (Manages overall Shuttle Ops, probably Lt. on smaller vessels will probably combine with Conn)
Deck Officer (in charge of the Shuttle Bay, Junior Officer)
Yeoman (Administrative NCO, probably a number of these personnel aboard ship, but the Captain has a dedicated Yeoman)
Team Leader (Assigned to command a working group, possibly an ad-hoc role for suitable candidates that wish to move departments)

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Chief of the Boat is merely the senior Petty Officer on the ship and in Starfleet would have another name (in the USN, only subs are called boats). In most non-US navies this position is called the Bosun. Normally they have other duties as well, and would probably wear their original branch colours.

A Tactical Officer is strictly a weapons officer and not in charge of ship ships tactics. As such they are part of the Security Division with in Operations Branch. The Chief Tactical Officer is the senior member of the Tactical Division and may also be the Chief Security Officer.

The Quartermaster is an Operations Branch position, usually a Chief Petty Officer.

First Contact Officers is a Command position, while First Contact Specialists are non-commissioned personnel from all three branches.

Yeomen are non-commissioned personnel (though not necessarily NCO's) assigned to all three branches and would wear that branch's colour.

Team leaders are temporarily assigned by a superior in their division and do not become Command Branch just because their supervisor told them to head up a job.

Just to put this into focus, this assessment is based on having grown up in a Royal Canadian Air Force family, having been in the Canadian Army and having had many friends over the years in the Royal Canadian Navy, all filtered through what has been seen on screen in every incarnation of Star Trek. It rationalises the on-screen depiction of Starfleet with a lifetime's familiarity with all branches of the military.

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Originally Posted by Owen E Oulton

A Tactical Officer is strictly a weapons officer and not in charge of ship ships tactics. As such they are part of the Security Division with in Operations Branch. The Chief Tactical Officer is the senior member of the Tactical Division and may also be the Chief Security Officer.

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Which brings us back to my theory about two different types of Tactical Officers.

How so? Starship Tactics is the job of the Captain. He may have junior officers who are on the command track to eventually become captains themselves, but they are not Tactical officers, just Command Branch officers, sometimes junior Strategic Operations officers and sometimes Flight Control officers, who are often also on the command track. Tactical officers are strictly weapons officers and do not need to know Starship Tactics. They only need training in specific attack sequences and are directed by the Captain as to which attack sequence to use.

As to the question of how Worf fits in, remember, before he became Security/Tactical Chief, he was a Command Branch who seemed to have cross-training in Security, although his background was never actually discussed. Perhaps he was a junior Strategic Operations officer, which would make him manifestly qualified to become DS9's Strategic Operations Officer.

Note that in my messages, I use the term Tactical officer simply to refer to officers in the Tactical Division and Tactical Officer (with the capital "O") to refer to the Ghief Tactial Officer. It's the same difference as distinguishing an officer with the rank of captain to the commanding officer of a ship, who is entitled to be called "Captain" regardless of rank (though it is pretentious of an ensign in command of a runabout to refer to himself as Captain So-and-so...). It's all in the context, whether it is a rank, a job description or a position. This tends to screw up a lot of people unfamiliar with military/naval protocols. Just ask Sarge or Davy Jones...

We know canonically there are officers described as "Tac Officer" that wear red (Tac Officer Chang in "Coming of Age").

If Tactical Officers that wear gold are the Weapons Officers/Security Chiefs and wear gold, then those like Chang must be something else. The only role that makes sense for a Command Division Tac Officer is that of tactical and strategic analysis as part of an Admiral's or Starbase CO's staff.

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Originally Posted by Owen E Oulton

How so? Starship Tactics is the job of the Captain. He may have junior officers who are on the command track to eventually become captains themselves, but they are not Tactical officers, just Command Branch officers, sometimes junior Strategic Operations officers and sometimes Flight Control officers, who are often also on the command track. Tactical officers are strictly weapons officers and do not need to know Starship Tactics. They only need training in specific attack sequences and are directed by the Captain as to which attack sequence to use.

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My assumption is that the "line officers" who might take over the Conn on different shifts or when the Capt. and XO leave the bridge would also need some rudimentary tactical knowledge. The Bridge Certification package really only lists the Command skill but I would assume that anyone taking over the chair ought to have at least a point or 2 in Starship Tactics.

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Originally Posted by Trr

My assumption is that the "line officers" who might take over the Conn on different shifts or when the Capt. and XO leave the bridge would also need some rudimentary tactical knowledge. The Bridge Certification package really only lists the Command skill but I would assume that anyone taking over the chair ought to have at least a point or 2 in Starship Tactics.

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I think the Bridge Certification package is really intended more for non-Command officers who can fill in in a pinch.

Exactly. It's explicitly stated in the episode Thine Own Self, where Troi is undergoing Bridge Certification.

Well, my theory was to help try and explain the sheer volume of Red Uniforms in TNG (now that the expendable Redshirts in Security now wear Gold)... And my options were not entirely limited to how the US Navy does it (Things might change in 400 odd years with cultural input from outside the USA :P )

If we start discounting as many as we can into other branches, while this may not be wrong, we still stumble to meet the Thread topic about what exactly these guys are learning at Academy...

That's true. The type of Command/Tac Officer I am talking about would have (in addition to the usual Command skills) lots of specialities off of the "Combat Strategy/Tactics" skill. At a minimum each of the primary historical Federation opponents, though Klingon might be falling out of active favor as they're no longer considered "opponents". The really good ones might also have Culture/History for some or all of them as well. (To know how to fight them, you need to know how they think and why they do things.)

Given Federation cultural mores regarding the political goals of warfare, too, a strategic or tactical officer will have to have particular kinds of risk assessment, medical and cultural-infrastructure-related skills.

Well, I rewatched Wrath of Kahn today and maybe I was wrong. It certainly seems that Saavik is presented as a Command officer as written in the book. Even though she's a trainee she's allowed to take the Kobayashi Maru and Kirk has her sit in the Captain's chair and give basic orders while on the training part of the mission. The issue I've taken with it is that she's commonly accepted to be the Navigator on that mission and right out of the overlay she'd be a pretty bad Navigator. Is it safe to assume that taking the Exploration Academy life package (Space Sci 1/2/2, Ship Sys - Sensors 1/2) would be sufficient to act as a Navigator? I realize that she'd have Sci 2/3 from her template but I would think that Starfleet would expect their training to provide the basic skills to do the job. I have wondered how most Command characters we see on screen act as Navigators and Helmsman when the Overlay so poorly prepares then for that task. Maybe 1/2 in the skill is considered sufficient for Starfleet to warrant assignment to the position?

Part of the plot of TWoK is that the crew of trainees weren't really up to the task of fighting off Khan, and had Starfleet known what was up, they wouldn't have sent the Enterprise. Saavik not having a Tour of Duty's worth of navigation-related skills might be part of that.

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Originally Posted by The Tatterdemalion King

Part of the plot of TWoK is that the crew of trainees weren't really up to the task of fighting off Khan, and had Starfleet known what was up, they wouldn't have sent the Enterprise. Saavik not having a Tour of Duty's worth of navigation-related skills might be part of that.

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Good point. Still don't like the Command overlay for some reason.

Well, the very fact that we have this thread means that it's use and application weren't explained well in the game book itself. I think the CODA subdivisions of the Command profession template explain what's going on a little better.

As a side note, I'm working my way through Voyager season 3 and there almost always seems to be a red-shirted command officer at Mission Ops. Not sure what that really means, unless a red-shirted Tactical officer is manning it, or a relief bridge officer instead of an Ops officer.

I know this topic is nearly dead, but I'm still churning through Voyager and an episode shed some light. There's an episode late in the 5th season where 7of9 is considering crewman to go on her first date with. The first is a red/command-shirted officer who is "assigned to the airponics bay" which would lead me to believe he's a command character who remains in red even though he is assigned to manage a science dept.

I've also been paying attention to crowd scenes on Voyager and there are a ton of red-shirts represented. In the average shot of 8 random crewmen 4 will be ops, 3 command, and only 1 science. I know that the production side of things is probably more worried about which costume off the rack fits which extra more than they are worried about in-world sensibility, but I thought it was noteworthy.

One thing to keep in mind is that Airponics is not a standard duty post. It was converted out of a Cargo Bay in order to reduce demand on the Replicator sysem. Also remember that Voyager had suffered casualties and crew were being cross-trained like crazy. I would not assume that the red shirt's primary duty station was Airponics.

Also remember that originally Voyager had been on a specific anti-Maquis mission and probably had a reduced Sciences section, while Command would have been at full strength and Security/Tactical would have been beefed up. This may also have been why they carried a tricobalt device in addition to their standard arms loadout.

I figured that someone would point out the nature of the mission (understaffed, chasing the Maquis) as a disqualifying factor. That's totally reasonable, but it would still stand to reason that a command officer assigned to science might still remain in red.

Of course he or she would. Officially they're still in Command branch TDY to Sciences. However, going back to the original conversation Command branch handles a lot of stuff that one doesn't really think about that is required to run Starfleet every day. Where Tactical Officers are in Operations branch, they are merely the weapons officers. Tactics and Strategy are handled by Command personnel as are staffing, discipline and most other administrative duties. Look at it this was. Operations branch has a lot of personnel simply referred to as Operations. They do a lot of the nonspecific duties in Operations that aren't specifically handled by Engineering, Security/Tactical or what-have-you. Same thing with Command.

The hydroponics bay would be a logistical concern on Voyager, as opposed to a research concern, so if you want an explanation there's one.