Bravo Fleet
At long last, Fleet Assets is here! As of this announcement, everyone should have access to the Fleet Assets system and the ability to buy, sell, and trade their Commands as they see fit dependent on their available prestige. To get a full rundown of the Fleet Assets system, please feel free to read the Logistics Office Policy in full here. I won’t use this announcement to regurgitate each intricate detail to you line by line, which you can read for yourself, but to give you a big picture of what each section does and why we took some of the paths we took to get here. Also for the full patch notes from the Engineering Office, please check those out here. This project has been a long time in development. If you haven’t already listened to the podcast episode I did with Aaron laying out the history, expectations, and groundwork for Fleet Assets, then this will be some new history for you! But first, a little history behind these massive changes to Bravo Fleet, and how all of these massive changes always begin:
Back in the day… around the 2009-2013 era when I was BFCO a few times off and on, and Bravo Fleet was a much more tumultuous place, there were a lot of changes I wanted to enact. It was becoming obvious even then that “the sim” as a sole form of activity was slowly withering Bravo Fleet away. Of the many things I wanted to do, I wanted to set up a new system that allowed people far more choice in their writing based on how active and engaged they were with Bravo Fleet. People who were around back then will remember that the only way to get a command was, more or less, for a TFCO to pick one from a predetermined list of Mothballs and then only list a few open commands available at a time. It was limiting what people could choose! However, it unfortunately had one huge boost: it was the way things had worked since the beginning of time and it seemed it was going to continue that way as people were so used to it. And in those days people were very set in their ways. As happens a lot around Bravo Fleet, there was a lot of resistance to the changes I was proposing (fret not, many of them we’ve put into place since April 2020!). I grew tired of arguing with other people that things needed to change or Bravo Fleet would die, I left rather than push it through, and it never materialized back then.
Fast forward to the more recent future… when I returned in 2019 and took over and it was collectively decided that we were going to really change Bravo Fleet to something we felt was far more sustainable as an activity model. A little bit after that, David and Cath eventually began working on what became the Squadron System that you’re all familiar with today. When they first mentioned the idea I fully supported it with the caveat “You know, I have this idea I’ve been wanting to do but I don’t know if or how we could get it done coding-wise”. I laid out the plan, and they both fully supported it, but we all understood that it would be a daunting task to integrate into BFMS. It was the old plan from many years previous. That plan was Fleet Assets. Fast forward a few years, and Jon became Engineering Officer. One of the first things I did with him when we were discussing him taking over the role was that it would not be a position of putting BFMS into maintenance mode and just keeping the lights on. We had ideas. I had ideas. I laid out a lot of them and how I pegged their difficulty. There wasn’t a single idea he shot down and began formulating how to accomplish them all in pieces. But admittedly, we both knew that Fleet Assets would be the most difficult to achieve and that was the first major hurdle he wanted to tackle first. I’m happy to say that after a few months of coding, the Engineering Office led by Jon has accomplished that and now Fleet Assets is live!
However, “Fleet Assets” is the quick, catch-all umbrella term for what amounts to three separate components working together…
Prestige System
The Prestige System is very simple: [almost] every activity you do nets you prestige. This includes, but is not limited to, participating in and organizing competitions, placing in competitions, earning activity ribbons, earning promotions, earning merit awards, completing Academy programs, recruiting others to Bravo Fleet, and mentoring others in Bravo Fleet. This Prestige can then be used as currency to purchase things. It essentially will be replacing the Squadron system points and, more specifically, the points available per rank. One of the biggest, newest differences now is salaries. Salaries are a very small stipend each week for one of two things: either logging in and being active in BFMS will net you a small salary based on your rank and/or you can also receive a weekly stipend for holding most staff positions. Whereas previously in the Squadron System you were getting points based solely on your rank at the time, now you can get paid a little something to be here. This is going to throw that often hurled saying of “I don’t get paid to be here!” into complete and utter chaos! These stipends aren’t world-changing amounts, but they’re a way for us to thank members for being a part of our club and doing what you do.
You can check out the full policy here–and I advise you to do so as you dive into the system!
Fleet Assets System
This is the meat and potatoes of the system that is replacing the Squadron System. Every ship and starbase in the system now has a cost. Sometimes those costs align more with what you’d expect from the Squadron system, but now we’ve also been able to give some nuance to ship cost. I think it is safe to say that not all Strength 1 ships in the Squadron System were equal. Now, we’re able to scale and have some disparity between ship costs in that lower tier and as we move up. Additionally, as you move up in rank now you will have available to you “slots”. These are where you can park your purchases. At Midshipman you get 1 slot and 1 free California. At Captain, you unlock your second slot!
Another big feature of Fleet Assets that we didn’t have available before is that you can, at a cost, purchase both class changes and custom starship names. These are not cheap, for a reason. We wanted to make them available but have people really thinking about what they wanted before they went off and are changing things. Hopefully, giving people this option will be well received!
Fleet Registry
The Fleet Registry will remain largely unchanged. It will now be a joint venture between the Intelligence Office and the Logistics Office. However, as someone has put it recently, it’ll still largely fall under the primacy of the Intelligence Office and a simple way to think about it is that the Intelligence Office is the “supply side” administrator and the Logistics Office is the “demand side” administrator.
Grants
Another big source of Prestige will be Fleet Actions. Members of Bravo Fleet Command have heard me since the very first Fleet Action back in 2020, The Raptor’s Wings, say something to the tune of we are keeping track of how each TF performs and who are the top individual placers in a Fleet Action for a reason. This is the reason! I knew even back then that someday this could become a reality. As a result, I went back, pulled all of the placements for individuals and task forces over the past 4 years, and calculated the Fleet Action grants. These are the results for individuals:
- Lieutenant Nelson Buechner (2097): 10,000
- Captain Harris Hill (113): 6,000
- Commodore Max Barrick (2036): 3,000
- Fleet Admiral Luke Duncan (1759): 10,000
- Fleet Captain Th’lora Vehl (2240): 6,000
- Commodore Alexandra Sundari-Kravchik (2121): 33,000
- Fleet Captain Andreus Kohl (2374): 6,000
- Commodore Imya Jori (10): 6,000
- Captain Tavek (2622): 6,000
- Commodore Keith Anderson (1849): 6,000
- Fleet Admiral James Neidlinger (1): 3,000
And based on Task Force placements in Fleet Actions, these are the results for each Task Force:
- Task Force 17: 170,000
- Task Force 47: 190,000
- Task Force 72: 120,000
- Task Force 86: 110,000
- Task Force 93: 210,000
Speaking of Task Forces… each point of prestige you earn as a member of a Task Force will also net your Task Force its own Prestige at a rate of 1%, less stipends. That means if you earn a promotion to Lieutenant Commander worth 10,000 Prestige, your Task Force will earn 1% of that, or 100 Prestige, into its own funds. This may not seem like a lot but it can and will add up very quickly on top of Fleet Action stipends! Because of some data gaps, the 1% to Task Forces will only be from now forward. But to make up for that… we also looked at current TF assets. Each TF sports one flagship and one flagbase. Based on fairness, we felt that the most reasonable course was to give a stipend to the Task Forces which was equal to the lowest amount spent by Task Forces on their Assets thus far. This ended up being an additional 130,000 Prestige to each Task Force. This way it doesn’t benefit anyone unduly or put a hardship on anyone unnecessarily.
As of right now, everyone’s Prestige has been calculated by the system at launch, minus debits of your current Assets. Your things are yours to keep and your Prestige is yours to spend! There were a few people who were in the negative based on their purchases under the Squadron System. We felt it was unfair to punish people by starting them with a negative balance based on decisions they made that were perfectly “legal” at the time. Therefore, I’ve also given the following grants to bring these people out of the negative and able to keep their current loadout:
- Lieutenant Commander Cole Shepard (2754): 20,000
- Lieutenant Commander Joshua Randall (367): 10,000
- Lieutenant Imaru (2559): 10,000
- Lieutenant Grigor Eisenberg-Sloane (102): 10,000
- Commander Edward O’Gallagher (2688): 20,000
Conclusion
A few things as I wrap up here. First, I’d like to very much acknowledge the entire Bravo Fleet Senior Staff for finally bringing this idea together, putting together the policy, and spending many long conversations hammering things out, and the Engineering Office for making these ideas a reality. This was very much, as most things are, a very big team effort.
For the inaugural Logistics Officer, with the looming Fleet Action, I felt the best course of action was to ask David to double dip as Bravo Fleet Executive Officer and Bravo Fleet Logistics Officer. This will help stabilize the department without throwing someone to the wolves two weeks before a Fleet Action starts. I know David will have an announcement quickly following this one announcing his staff and he’ll be eagerly awaiting your ship and station orders!
And finally, please keep in mind that this is version 1 of this system. The plan is to adjust things, if and as needed, as far as costs and such as we go. The more people use the system, the more we learn. The more we learn, the more we can adjust to the desires and wants of you, the members. We also, long term, envision a system where it isn’t just ships or stations you buy but many other things we’ve been cooking up even as we were developing what you see now. We have some really fun and exciting stuff down the road for everyone to enjoy.
We really hope that everyone enjoys using this system as much as we’ve enjoyed putting it together.
Its also worth mentioning that if you’re looking for a huge source of Prestige to earn, this year’s Fleet Action, Labyrinth, starts in two weeks…