First off if Araa was a female I would prostrate myself at her feet for using the word metric ... LOL .. I am a programmer and in recent years found myself doing alot of metrics work .. so I kinda got a little hot and bothered ..(the love of my life talked dirty to me in geek speak .. still looking to recapture that rofl....)

Okay kidding aside ..

I am just of 2 minds on this .. I understand the NEED to protect the fleet .. and folks need to remember in order to have ships/ships provisions available that means we have to do those tedious fleet tasks which means the fleet needs to be active in doing those .. on the other hand we have alot of 'old contributors' that have been hoardin their earned fleet contriutions points waiting for the starbase to level before they buy things. So while it may seem there are alot up for grabs .. recall they may be waiting for the fleet to level before purchasing.

Now on the other hand, I have seen the looking for a fleet officer for invites or store permissions ... I think however in the past 2 weeks yet again I have seen 3 promotions so I think fleet management is on top of this .. but does it suck if you finally got that last module you needed and now there are no officers online .. its a tricky subject because as it stands right now only someone able to invite to fleet can do the permissions for buying .. and it comes back down to .. can we have a fleet invite rank .. then a separte buying rank to give better coverage to the 'metrics'. This would be supporting the current conditions and parameters to buying but also allow fleet growth in a more pro-active way.

The fleet provisions are not like the bank, in order to buy something you need to have already contributed to the Fleet. You can't just join, walk in to the provision store and empty it. To empty the fleets provision store you'd have to have a shit ton of fleet credits and dilithium. Now a member who joined who was in a prior fleet could theoretically walk in and clean us out, but what would be the point? If they'd generated that many credits with their original fleet they'd already have access to everything they'd just looted

Edit: Also in reference to that other LGBT guild you wouldn't happen to be referring to the one with the god awful name?

"The lawsuit, filed in the Superior Court of New Jersey, charges that Jews Offering New Alternatives for Healing (JONAH), its founder, Arthur Goldberg, and counselor Alan Downing violated New Jersey’s Consumer Fraud Act by providing conversion therapy claiming to cure clients of being gay."

That is exactly what it is. Every psychological and psychiatric group in the world now has said that "ex-gay therapy" is the short road to a suicidal person. If they can get a judge to listen to that fact then this will set a good precedent to shut down this crap across the county.

SPLC files groundbreaking lawsuit accusing conversion therapy organization of fraud

I dont have a problem with it being locked. I think the wipe out of the fleet bank is a good example of what issues can come up if it is open to all. I can't see why someone could not wait, or even msg a captain they wanted something. Is there a situation where someone would need a fleet item immediately or their game play would be hurt?

Also I don't think it is a bad idea for a review of the player pulling out items from the fleet. If you have someone who has only given a commodity (say 1 shield charge), yet wants in so they can outfit all their ships with MK XII gear, and all their BOFFs with MKXII gear the fleet captain is there to say "whoa nelly, you need to give more to get more". If it is open to buy there is nothing stopping said person, and its not like you can take things back. Yes they can be kicked from the fleet, but the damage is done.

So basically what I want I guess is a locked system, in which a review is done to make sure where giving to the base is balanced with getting from the base.

hi, followed your link to this thread. i just started playing again after leaving when the game came out. not sure how the store works in this game...assuming it's like stores in real life. how are stores abused? if a store is designed to make a profit then the more business the better. if the benefit is greater for the buyer than the seller, then they really are more like a perk dispenser and it would make sense to have it controlled by the organization..but then there should be some sort of fair reward system set up then? or maybe it's some other model entirely.. though i suppose if we're looking at the 'buy and quit' scenario...one could raise the prices enough so that there's no profit from buying and reselling (though are items sold bound to the character..?) but a price that's high enough to make it competitive with the exchange might make members think..well what's the benefit of being a member. so i guess as long as there is a benefit of being a member vs not, then there is the opportunity to taking advantage of the difference as long as moving back and forth between membership is free. but i'm thinking of the store as an abstract store....not sure what it really is in STO. oh i did see some stores in the fleet base this week..are those what is being talked about?

Hello everyone :)

I've bumped this topic to the fleet leadership for discussion.

I can tell you just coming over from a fleet that really didn't do much with the starbase system at all, everyone had two or more full outfits of fleet equipment on their ships and there was plenty of provisions still. I could see a timer, or a minimum contribution thing myself as this is a much larger and more active bunch of people. Just what I see and have seen.

The only thing I'd like to see is an increase on the 1 ship per member cap. That seems a little ridiculous seeing as there are several hundred unused.

THIS POST IS A SIDE DISCUSSION WHAT METRICS TO USE TO ASSESS RECRUITMENT AND RETENTION SUCCESS (Spolier: It's not the roster count)

On a totally seperate point, it's probably a valuable discussion to look at your recruitment concerns in a bit more detail.

I just want to warn you that total roster count is a dangerous metric to use to assess the health of your recruitment (and particularly retention) efforts. It's highly likely that you`d be pruning your roster list to accept new members even if your fleet was shrinking.

Why? The simple reason is zombie accounts, people that join a fleet and then just leave the game (or take a break long enough to get pruned), artificially inflating the size of the fleet.

As an example, imagine a VERY unsuccessful fleet, that has a very high turnover, with active people coming in, hating it, and leaving after a period of time. What happens? Everyone active leaves, but the zombie accounts ALL stay, inflating the user base. In this case, as long as arrivals keeps up with the outflow of active members (i.e. a small % of the inflow), the fleet would be effectively dead, with no long-term members, yet they'd be constantly trimming zombie accounts from their roster thinking that they're 'growing'. The bigger the % of zombie accounts you assume, the more exaggerated this effect. One way to try to estimate this for us is to ask yourself, what % of our 500 members currently log on semi-regularly?

So, what's a better metric, IMHO? I track online users of all of my active fleets on a regular basis (/who stonewall, /who nagh, ...). How's stonewall doing? Well, is it news that we may no longer be the largest LGBT fleet in STO? It's close, but I've seen one other fleet (who I only know by name) that seems to maintain a slightly higher count of active users most of the day, beaten by SW only during NA peak periods (which I'm guessing is because they're more internationally based).

Another data point I got (since I've been trying to get a feel for this myself), was a story that Stonewall used to run out of vent licenses occasionally because there were too many people vying to get on at one time. Now I don't know how many license we've had, and maybe someone can verify/deny this story, but I've rarely seen more than 6 active vent/TS users on at one time in my time here.

Anyway, I'm not trying to advocate anything at all in this post, just trying to make sure we all have good data to work from, it can come in useful for all kinds of discussions.

Cheers again,
John/Araa

P.S. If anyone turns this into an opportunity to make zombie jokes, I'm going to scream.

Well, if I'm the only one that feels this is a concern, then I will totally shut up. lol. I`m only advocating this approach because I place an overly high value on us demonstrating egalitarianism and trust with our members, even (or especially) at the expense of security. I can totally understand how a reasonable individual could think otherwise, but it pains me to see other fleets being more trusting of their members than we of our own.

So I`ve said my piece, I`ll let anyone else speak up if they feel it`s worth it. If not, case closed.

As an aside, I would make the point that if *everyone* is doing something, it usually is a good idea (e.g., cars, computers, walking upright, sliced bread, the Kardashians, oh wait...). Well, a lot of the time anyway. :-D

Give me liberty or give me death... unless of course provisions are involved, in which case the liberty thing isn't all that important. (joke!)

Cheers,
John/Araa

My not-so-humble opinion is that you don't fix it if it ain't broke, and I recommend that we stick with our justified and sensible caution.

Remember, this policy is designed to PREVENT abuse or raiding the provisions, and it has done so. We have not had problems. While you are doing your market research, find out how many of the other fleets can say the same thing. We have recently had a raid on our fleet bank by two people who joined, took as much stuff as they could, quit, and then joined new fleets the same day. Propping open the door of the vault at the store that is next-door to the bank that was just burgled seems insanely foolish.

As for the recruitment issue, our numbers are consistently around 500 members and we are continually kicking out inactive members to make room for new ones. Our numbers aren't dwindling. We aren't having problems funding our projects or getting people to our events. So exactly why does it matter what other fleet recruiters say? We don't have a recruitment problem.

As for the point that other fleets "allow anyone in the fleet to buy directly from the stores", I would point out that we also do that. In fact, every fleet does that because buying directly from the store is the only way to buy from the store. We just monitor and control it. But every time I have wanted something from the fleet provisions, I have had no trouble "buying directly from the store". So, if you are talking to a potential member, feel free to truthfully say that we do indeed "allow any member to buy directly from the store". Because we do. We just have to do it in the proper way. No big deal.

"Everyone else is doing it" is almost never a good reason to do something. I urge we stay the course.

I like to name my ships based on noted scientists of the years.. being a science geek/toon..

Though I started with lots of different names.. I started renaming older ships with generally anything just so my current ship is always the U.S.S. TESLA. Just love that name..

Though my shuttle is called U.S.S. Scuttler

This really was an absolute fun time!

Thanks again!! :lol:

For the first off, I'll just be on all day long saturday.

Very powerful. :)

If it's Saturday evening, I'll be running an RP event of not-entirely-certain length, but I'll be happy to drop in. I've been tracking our starbase projects' progress since the rebalance, so some of my data might make for a useful reference.

Rise of the Kir'Shara - Composition by Chris Amarello (Me, Eurrsk)

Hey everyone! Here's just another score I composed in homage to the Vulcan struggle for piece and logic. Hope you all enjoy! ^_^



Oh yeah, the artwork is also done by me using Adobe CS6. The three pyramids represents the Vulcan God of War, the Vulcan God of Peace, and the Vulcan God of Death.

- Music made with FlexiMusicComposer

I suck because this was posted six days ago and I just noticed it. This is apparently pre-pre-pre-alpha combat footage.

Shut up and take my money!

.... that it's now time to get rid of our antiquated "find an officer to buy from the fleet store" policy.

While the "we're gonna be conservative while we're figuring it out" policy made sense at one point, we're now the only fleet in STO I'm aware of (out of about 10) that has a policy anywhere near this restrictive, as most are either wide open or have a bare minimum amount of fleet credits. Needless to say, none have had any problems, and the provisions continue to build up faster than they`re consumed.

So let's not be the last overly conservative fleet in STO, if it's not too late. It was like a little kick in the teeth every time I heard a fleet recruiter say "and of course we allow anyone in the fleet to buy directly from the stores....". Why not us?

Do some market research and ask around if you want to, but please, do it for the children! *gets on knees and starts begging unseemingly.

Weren't able to attend the Trek Trivia Event? Think that you're the knowledge keeper of all things Trek? Think that you'd have given Calandra a run for her money?

Find out how you'd have fared in the Trek Trivia event! Enjoy this complimentary sampling of ten of the forty-five questions that were posed during the event. Compare your answer with the answers in the bottom of the post!

1. What Ferengi seeks revenge on Captain Picard for his son’s death?
2. What famous treaty was struck between the Federation and Romulan Empire?
3. In the original series, what is the full name of Captain Kirk's nemesis, "Mudd"?
4. In Star Trek Voyager: which crew member created the Beowulf holodeck program?
5. What is the name of the fictional detective that Captain Picard plays on the holodeck?
6. Where is the Enterprise-D en route to, when the crew encounters 'Q' for the first time?
7. What is the name of the moving warp nacelles on USS Voyager?
   
8. In the movie: Generations, why does the star drive section of the Enterprise explode?
9. What does Captain Picard do for the first time on-screen, in the episode: "Sarek"?
10. Which Star Trek cast member appeared in the gay romantic comedy "Make the Yuletide Gay"?

Click the 'spoiler' heading below to view the answers!



Remember, it's not just about knowing the answer without resorting to Google, it's also about having the fastest fingers! If you did well, make sure that you join us for the next run of the event, to be announced in the near future!

If your knowledge of Trek is somewhat lacking, be sure to brush up on your skills and be ready to dominate the next event!

Thanks again to all who participated!