OBSIDIAN FLEET GENERAL ORDERS

The following rules are established to enhance the gaming experience of all, newcomers as well as old timers. They are divided into two sections. Part one contains the rules governing your conduct as a character owner. Part two covers your character's conduct, and is, of necessity, abbreviated. Character rules actually fall under the jurisdiction of Obsidian Fleet JAG, and a more thorough treatment of them can be found at the JAG website.

Player Rules

1. This is your character, not a clone of Paramount's creations. Picard, Data, Kirk, and Janeway need not apply. Generate a believable character, patterned on your strengths and ability to identify with your creation.

2. Generate a background for your character commensurate with his assignment. The Office of Personnel Management can help you with this. They maintain a profile of the typical background for all positions. The OPM, or your Commanding Officer, depending on circumstances, will make the final determination as to the suitability of your background. Their decision is final. Do not attempt to insert your submitted, but rejected, heroic war record into the sim. Doing so will result in your suspension from the sim, at your CO's discretion, or being banned from Obsidian Fleet altogether, in extreme cases. At the very least you will be investigated for your demonstrated unreliability, as evidenced by your fantasy life.

3. If you have no simming experience, you will enter your first ship as a Cadet. The faster you learn and become proficient at posting, the faster you will 'graduate', and become an Ensign, or an enlisted rating, perhaps on your training ship, perhaps on another. The "Cadet Initial Training" course on the Obsidian Fleet site will give you the basics, but proficiency only comes by reading other's posts, and posting, posting, posting!

4. Those who start with a significant role playing background should have no trouble adapting to the Obsidian Way. You are urged to read through the CIT course anyway, so you know what we look for here. In the end, it will make you a better simmer faster, and enhance your gaming experience.

5. Fill out the application completely. Your initial placement will be based on a combination of your desires and your abilities as demonstrated by your application. In some cases you will receive a questionnaire to complete. Return it as quickly as possible since your application will remain in limbo until it comes back and is evaluated.

6. Under normal circumstances, you are required to post every other week. Some CO's will require more frequent posts, and you are to abide by their requirements. If you fail to post within a three week period, the two week requirement plus a week grace period, you will lose your position. There may be circumstances when, at the CO's discretion, this rule will be relaxed. Talk to your CO, before hand if possible, if you know you will be unable to post for a while. If he knows, he can usually write your absence into the storyline, thereby saving your position. Most CO's refer to this planned absence as a "Leave of Absence", or LOA. Your LOA can normally be accommodated, even if it is an emergent absence due to something unforeseen. Just let your CO know, like you would for your real life job.

7. Promotions are determined, in large measure, by your posting, both quality and quantity. Although there must be an appropriate billet requiring your new rank, a promotion can normally be made to one grade higher than the rank designated for the billet you hold. And of course, you could always move to another billet that requires the higher rank. Notification of these promotions must be sent to OPM, to allow the updating of personnel records. Promotions may not be actually carried out IC until OPM has confirmed the receipt of these promotions.

8. Keep your character 'in character'. Violation of this rule can encompasses many offenses, from telling the CO to "brief you when you get there," to taking yourself off ship to visit friends while on a mission, to having knowledge of things you cannot know. For example, just because you have seen a post that states "Klingons eat Dhurbac children for breakfast," doesn't mean your character knows that this 'fact', unless he was present during the conversation. Likewise, don't have someone who was privy to the conversation relay it to you in your post so you are now aware of the 'fact'. To inform you is their prerogative, not yours.

9. Don't send the ship off on a new mission. That is the sole prerogative of the Captain. Even if the Chief Engineer writes the post that takes the mission in a new direction, rest assured the CO gave him some instructions to do so. If not, the Chief Engineer may be working for you tomorrow, as you get back on track!

10. Follow what everyone else is posting, and keep track of what is going on everywhere on the ship, and what everyone is doing. Nothing is more distracting than to be taking care of a casualty, than to suddenly have someone post about the wild time you're having at Alduran's Pub!

11. Control your language. Cursing beyond the generic 'damn', or 'hell' turns a lot of people off, and really doesn't add to your character. As in real life, it simply demonstrates your lack of verbal skills.

12. Over sex is also taboo. Save the soft porn descriptions of grappling and groping for your "profitable writing career". In the Obsidian Fleet Universe, the hint and the tease are far more effective that the descriptive reality.

13. Our playing ground is a blending of the Star Trek universe copyrighted by Paramount, and our own fertile imaginations. However, there are realities that intrude even into our fantasies. The cavalry isn't always around the corner. If your ship is heavily damaged, a repair ship won't suddenly turn up and fix you up good as new. Not all damaged systems can be repaired without returning to the fleet repair yards; you may have to limp home, or carry on with your mission only 25% capable. Your mission success in the face of adversity creates the hero you are striving to become!

14. As an owner, your time is limited, and you do have a life outside of Obsidian Fleet. To do our part to ensure you eat and sleep, you are limited to 5 posting characters in the Fleet, of which only one may be in command of a ship.

15. No player may have more than 7 characters total, of which a maximum of 5 are allowed to be, and a minimum of one must be, posting characters.

Additionally, no player shall have more than one character permanently assigned to any simulation, no character shall occupy more than one billet, and each character belonging to a given player shall have a separate and distinct name.
Furthermore, no character will be assigned to a billet for more than 6 months, if his paygrade is greater than or less than the paygrade assigned to that billet. Players who have characters that occupy more than one billet as of the date of adoption of this rule will be allowed to keep their characters as they currently are, however such characters are no longer eligible for promotion, unless they comply with the one character, one billet provision.

16. Each member of the Fleet Staff has 1 vote. However, where there is a clear conflict of interest for the player, this vote is rescinded. An example of such a conflict of interest would be a member proposing a change that would directly influence events on their ship, in their TF or position. In the case of matters affecting the fleet as a whole, there would be an exception to this rule, as no-one would stand to gain any great advantage. Staff members would be allowed to present their cases for the proposal, but not vote on it.

17. Should a player make a complaint against a staff member, then the staff member in question must defer the case to someone of an equal or higher position in the fleet for investigation, or in extreme cases, the complaint should be forwarded onto JAG for investigation.

18. You may only have one character on an individual ship! Period!

19. If you are a CO, you must have 5 crewmembers, in addition to yourself, to start a mission. Talk to OPM to help fill your requirements.

20. Enjoy yourself! The rules are meant to enhance your enjoyment of the game, not to inhibit your creativity. Just stay in character, and if you have developed him fully, you will have no trouble with the rules.

21. Learn enough about the military chain of command (see the Rules for Characters below) to avoid doing anything that will get your character hauled in front of a courts martial, or dragged in front of the Captain for NJP.

22. Obsidian Fleet reserves the absolute right to request and require the removal of any player who is deemed to constitute a risk to the safe gaming environment. A player will be deemed to constitute such a risk by the collective agreement of the Triad, the Judge Advocate General and Deputy Judge Advocate General of Obsidian Fleet.

Character Rules

1. You are living and reacting to events happening in a military environment, even you civilians. In the military, there are specific ways to do things, and to avoid trouble, follow the rules! Every rule has either a solid reason behind it, though it may not be readily apparent to you, or is deeply rooted in tradition.

2. The chain of command is the primary roadmap of relationships in the military. Basically, the military chain of command is the path taken by an order traveling from the highest ranked admiral, to the lowest fleet recruit, and all personnel it passes through. Your immediate chain of command runs from you, the character, to your Commanding Officer, and all stops in between. Your sim should have a command layout on the site, so you can know all steps from you to the CO.

3. Do not bypass or go around your chain of command! Even for something negative, go through the chain of command. For example, your XO does something you feel is in violation of Fleet regulations, you have talked to him about it, and he fails to address your concerns. Your next step is to place your concerns in writing, and send it to the Captain, through your chain of command, not directly. This includes through the XO, strange as that may seem. Each step has 24 hours to address your concern, endorse your memo, and pass it to the next person in the chain. If, at any step, you feel the situation has been corrected, you may pull your memo, and stop the process. You are the only one who can do so, all others must endorse and forward, even the XO. At each step in the chain, the person who endorses your concern, either positively or negatively, must send you a copy of the endorsement, as well as send a copy to all who have previously endorsed it. Since you always send a memo of this type to the person above the problem, you must know the complete chain of command. If you can't figure it out, ask!

4. Any memo you receive addressed to someone higher in the chain of command, must be endorsed and forwarded on within 24 hours, unless the submitter withdraws it.

5. The commanding officer of any ship is addressed as 'Captain', regardless of his rate/rank. If the CO is a Lieutenant, and you are a Captain riding his ship, you address him as 'Captain.' Since there can only be one captain on a ship at a time, all captains riding ships are referred to by the courtesy title of "Commodore," that is, the rank one step higher than their own.

6. You address all officers senior to your self by their rank, their job title, or "Sir", in the case of commissioned officers, and by their rank, their job title, or "Mister", in the case of warrant officers. You address all officers junior to yourself by their rank, their job title, or "Mister". This rule applies when you are 'on duty'. Each ship will have it's own rules on how to address each other off duty.

7. The phrase "Very well", in response to a verbal report, is reserved exclusively for the commanding officer of a ship to use.

8. You do not give orders to those senior to you in station. This refers to both rank and watchstation. For example, the Command Duty Officer is the senior watchstation on a ship. Only the CO gives the person standing this watch orders. All others, regardless of rank make suggestions, or requests. Assume you are the Chief Engineer, a Commander, standing watch as Engineering Officer of the Watch, and the Navigator, a Lieutenant, is on the bridge standing watch as Command Duty Officer. You take orders from the Lieutenant, and do not give him orders. His is the senior watchstation.

9. A ship is a combination of work space and home. Because of the close quarters, and the extended time the crew is thrown together, certain actions performed in other branches of service are not done on board a vessel. Specifically, saluting is not done inside the confines of a ship, by anyone other than a fleet marine, and then only when he is at a security post. When the Captain walks into a space, everyone does not leap to attention. No one calls "Attention on deck!" when a senior officer enters a meeting room. No work would ever be accomplished if these things were done, or the Captain would have to be confined to his quarters to allow work to be performed.