Bravo Fleet
We’re a month now into the new model, and we at the Office of the Chief of Staff are constantly trying to streamline the process for everyone – new members, current members, the leadership. So here’s our latest update on a couple of changes, intended to improve everything for everyone.
Legacy Awards
Some of you may have noticed in the last week that the awards of some older members have changed. The Hall of Honour in Bravo Fleet has historically been a complicated beast – once it included IC awards for things that happened to your character, right alongside OOC awards representing player excellence. It has always been chronically under-utilised, sometimes more of an indication of who was brilliant and had a GM or TFCO who bothered with nominations. There has rarely been consistency across administrations on what sufficed to earn what award.
Our new award system, however, is the most organised the Hall of Honour has ever been. Bold statement, I know, but we have a team who are fully committed to maintaining standards and ensuring consistency going forward. Getting nominated isn’t just a question of if your GM submits them – award nominations are part of the everyday responsibility of your TFSS (which we should see in motion once the Fleet Event is over!). So we’ve had a difficult job with a lot of old awards, some dating as far back as 2015. We made some guesses converting them to the new model, but sometimes the written nominations didn’t line up with the new criteria, or often there hasn’t been a written nomination at all.
Awards aren’t just about rewarding; they’re about inspiring and setting an example. A well-written nomination not only congratulates a player (specific words on a player’s quality are worth much more than one dinky image file!), but it demonstrates to those reading what it takes to be rewarded by this organisation. That’s why it’s important for recorded actions, whenever they were taken, to match the award they’re attached to. In some cases, we’ve been able to read detailed nominations and assign them an award under the present system. But that’s not always been possible, so we’ve introduced the Legacy Awards.
The Legacy Medal and Ribbon have replaced awards from the old Hall of Honour when there is no appropriate equivalent in the new system, or where the Office of the Chief of Staff does not have enough information to reach a fair judgement. The Legacy Awards do not mean that old actions and medals are meaningless; it simply means we can’t transfer them fairly to the new system. This way, we can honour the contributions of members in years gone by, even when the details of their actions are lacking or lost, without misrepresenting the award criteria for the new system.
Spring Cleaning
When we prepared to institute the new system, we contacted everyone in our records telling them what was coming. This was a chance for those who wanted to be recorded as inactive, or even have their dossiers deleted, could tell us. Anyone else was given a new dossier and assigned to one of the Task Forces. Many people have embraced the new format – the activities, competitions, and community, some coming out of the woodwork after years of silence to rejoin and engage. But our membership list has grown over the years of the BFMS, so there are always people who’ve dropped off in that time. With a busy first month of new activities, it is the judgement of the Office of the Chief of Staff that those who wish to return to Bravo Fleet would have done so by now, and we will be updating the roster accordingly.
This update will happen this weekend, after the end of Phase III of The Raptor’s Wings. Then, any member who has not logged into BFMS since 24/04/2020 and does not have a BFMS character listed on an active game will be transferred to the Reserves. Their characters, awards, and information will remain within our system, and can be reactivated very easily should that member wish to return.
I ask you all to bear with us in this process. We are a small volunteer team working through a lot of dossiers. If a clerical error happens, please just contact us and we’ll correct it; it will not have been done in malice, but as a simple error after going through hundreds of records.
You will see Task Force numbers go way down. Don’t panic. This is just our records becoming a true representation of the members who want to be here and are engaging, and means it’ll be much easier for your Task Force Senior Staff to give you the attention and support you deserve.
That’s all from the Office of the Chief of Staff! Stay frosty, and remember – compete in TRW competitions for fabulous prizes and the cool challenge coin you get just for participating!