Officer Candidate Orientation

Welcome to Capital Ship Crew Member Orientation, recruit.

In this Chapter, you will learn what it means to be a member of Fleet Command, here in the Vast Empire's Navy. There is information for you as a writer and new member (OOC), and information for your character to learn as a new crew member (IC).

The Orientation is split into four short tutorials, each of which details a different aspect of VE Navy life, and then ends with an assignment. Each tutorial is designed to be short but informative; you are encouraged to do further research on your own, but an understanding of the basic information provided is all that is necessary to graduate to active duty. It is highly recommended that you read through all four tutorials before attempting to complete the assignment.

Tutorial One - Imperial Capital Ship Basics

An overview of Imperial Capital Ships, and a discussion of how the VE's equipment and tactics differ from those of most Imperial factions in Star Wars canon.

Tutorial Two - Enemy Capital Ship Basics

An overview of capital ships commonly used by likely enemy factions.

Tutorial Three - Basic Capital Ship Tactics

Space combat is a dynamic, 3-Dimensional experience which can seem overwhelmingly complicated to the uninitiated, and which many people find difficult to write about convincingly; this tutorial shares some basic tips on writing compelling and realistic combat scenes involving capital ships.

Tutorial Four - The Essence of a Post

A short discussion of the basics of story posts.

Assignment

The short tutorials above were designed to help you integrate into the Vast Empire, without overloading you with too much information. With any luck, the information in this Chapter has equipped you to write a decent story post, as your junior crew member PC. So guess what your assignment is?

Assignment Title: Chapter 2 - Posting

Summary: You will make a post to the current Fleet Command training mission story. Right now, the current training story is titled "Command School: Loyalty, Honor, Courage," and it can be found on the Naval Academy board of the ComNet. Read the initial post (the mission briefing). Read the subsequent posts (other recruits' simulator runs). Write a post of your own, using everything you've learned in this Chapter, and post it to the story thread. Your post should only reference the initial briefing post, and not any of the other cadets' sim runs. We're just evaluating your ability to write a basic post in response to a scenario outline for this exercise, not asking you to start interacting with other PCs.

Tips: Your trainer will be looking for creativity in your execution and interpretation of the assignment. Remember too to be realistic; you don't have to singlehandedly defeat the entire simulated enemy force to do well, nor should your character "do everything" (in fact, such "god-moding" would result in failure for the exercise). Part of what we're evaluating is your ability to research and then write with pre-existing NPCs.

REFERENCE MATERIALS for your post:

• Follow this link to see a diagram of the layout of Simulator One.
• Follow this link to see the wiki page devoted to the mission, which includes a complete list of the NPCs (remember, you'll replace one of these characters, either a communications mate, a ship's pilot, or a gunner, and all the other NPCs listed will be the rest of the "crew" for the simulated mission).

Submission: After you have posted your reply post on the "Fleet Command: Loyalty, Honor, Courage" story thread, also post a link to that story in your original training thread, to let your Training Officer know your work is ready for review. Your TO will evaluate your work, and if he/she approves, you'll be cleared to advance to Chapter 3 of Fleet School.

As always, should you have any questions, feel free to contact a member of the training staff.