Bravo Fleet
Hello, everyone in Task Force 38 and across the fleet! This announcement will be slightly different in format than my previous monthly reports, as it’s going to both explain how Task Force 38’s staff will be tracking your activity across the fleet and give you a run-down of the canon situation in the Delta Quadrant, for those of you who are new to the task force and may not have seen the announcements we’ve made about the changes that have been in the works since last November.
Activity Monitoring
- First of all, as of April 25th, having a BFMS account and at least one character in the system is a requirement of membership in Bravo Fleet. Therefore, all game managers in TF38 must ensure that all of their players have registered and have a character linked to their game.
- As in every task force, everything you do across the fleet (writing on a game, writing fiction on your own and posting it on Relay Station Bravo, participating in Bravo Fleet gaming events, and participating in fleet contests) will count towards your activity. Because of this, it is important that you use the BFMS’s built-in activity reporting system to make notes about your own activity, so that we do not miss anything.
- For example, if you go follow us on Twitter and Facebook (which is an option for promotion) add that to your activity tracker.
- Did you make 10 posts on a game between April 25th and April 30th? Good on you! Write that in your activity tracker.
- Post a 20,000 word fiction on the forums? Make a note, so we can give you your 80 fiction ribbons!
- Based on your current rank’s minimum time in rank, the Task Force Senior staff will be updating our activity records intermittently. So, if you’re a Lieutenant Command already, we’ll only be updating your activity and nominating you for awards on a monthly basis. This is to make things easier both on us and on the chief of staff’s office, rather than have a trickle of nominations going to them the whole month. If you’re just starting out, we’ll be tracking things on a weekly basis to make sure you don’t sit at any particular rank longer than necessary.
- We will only count game posts (that is writing on a game) on games that you have at least one character linked to, which is further incentive to add your characters to the BFMS!
Canon Summary
For those of you who haven’t been keeping abreast of TF38’s canon shifts, this will serve as a short summary of how to get started. We are actively improving our wiki entries every day, and they serve as the main place for getting TF38 canon information. Check out the main page here, which includes links to all of our other articles.
- If you’re just re-joining us, TF38 has gone through a massive revision of its canon, which includes removing previous canon which was dominated by ‘fanon’, that is to say, areas and races that had nothing to do with Star Trek: Voyager. We’ve made nearly a complete 180 to instead focus entirely on areas visited by Voyager during her journey home, which we’ve broken into four task groups. Currently, we’re operating with two fully and two in more limited ways.
- The Nacene Reach is a new area that represents the earliest seasons of Voyager. Named for the Nacene, of which the Caretaker was one, this area is home to the Kazon, the Ocampa, the Vidiians, and the Talaxians, among others. It is unusually resource-poor, which leads to squabbles over planets and keeps the technology level in the region relatively low.
- The Gradin Belt has already been in play for TF38 for many years, ever since Vince created it over ten years ago, and represents the other end of the spectrum: the end of Voyager’s journey and the home to advanced races like the Devore, the Hierarchy, the Hirogen, and the Turei. This is a diplomatic tinderbox and Starfleet’s main priority here is maintaining the balance of power to keep the region suitable for exploration.
- The Nekrit Expanse is a region between the Nacene Reach and Borg Space, ending at the so-called Northwest Corridor discovered by Voyager. It is a natural barrier that keeps the more advanced races towards the galactic core from overrunning the Nacene Reach. Currently, the only vessel in this region of space is a Klingon ship that was swept there after a warp engine malfunction.
- The Swallow Nebula is 2,500 light-years from the Gradin Belt and is thus the most distant region TF38 will operate in. It’s currently being scouted by a single ship to see what the situation is there, but it is home to the Krenim and the Alsurans.
- Formerly, TF38 used a wormhole near Raeya to connect to the Delta Quadrant, but this has been retconned and replaced with the newly-stabilized Barzan Wormhole, first mentioned in Star Trek: The Next Generation, which is to give the story a grounding in canon and solid connection to the Alpha Quadrant. This wormhole connects to the Gradin Belt and a point between the Nacene Reach and the Nekrit Expanse every 30 days for 30 minutes; otherwise, the ships in TF38 are completely cut off from communication and travel home, which makes any mistakes potentially deadly. Supplies are also difficult to manage, as many ships operate several months away from the mouth of the wormhole. The purpose of this is to give the task force the feeling of isolation that Voyager had, while also allowing new ships (especially avatar ships) to have a reasonable way into the story. Most ships assigned to the Delta Quadrant will go many months or even years before returning home.
- Starbase 38 is the only fixed installation besides relay stations assigned to Task Force 38, and it is located on the Alpha Quadrant side of the wormhole. All new players will be assigned to the Barzan Sector before they receive their ships. If you’re writing your fiction here, you could be in command of a runabout patrolling the area, or a junior officer working somewhere on the starbase. There are no planetary bases, colonies, or starbases in the Delta Quadrant.
Please let me or any of the other Task Force 38 staff know if you have any questions!
