Since the dawn of time, well, around 1974, SFC’s overall presentation as a fleet has been fairly simple and straight forward. The Fleet is the overall structure, the Administration are the Admirals and the heart of it all – our individual groups and regions – are the Starships, each with their own Captain, command crew and optional know it all teenage genius.
All units within Q2 base themselves on the ships of the line we’ve seen over the decades on TV, from the original Enterprise right through to, well, the new original Enterprise. Partly down to the logic that every group needs someone in charge (the Captain), and partly because, well, star ships are cool. Even God wanted one for himself. And with so much variety, especially now with decades of design input, all new and prospective CO’s have a wide range of favourite looks to choose from.
As part of the larger structure of Q2, there are a few unit types for differing purposes. For large geographic areas we have the Regional Command Unit which is just a fancy term to convey a larger catchment and online/remote member base while small developing unit’s may opt for a lighter ‘Outpost’ specification, which basically means an offshoot of a Starship that’s considering becoming a unit down the line with support of their CO.
Star ships are the standard. Just as we’d watch our heroes explore the stars on TV, units would mimic that structure to operate and as a visual representation. Over the years we’ve had many ships come and go, form and disband and today have a small but stong base of units with an individual purpose, aim and crew to lead the way forward!
With each new unit in Q2, the incoming CO and the board work to establish what kind of unit you’re looking to achieve and work out the visual tone and presentation. Most CO’s have a good idea of what they’re aiming for and often bring their first crew together to talk it out. The starting crew of the USS Tesla put a bit of thought behind it with some discussion over what they were aiming for; small in scale, rare in design and a ship within the universe that mirrored their science and engineering focus. The Rhode Island – a ship often associated with that aim – was their prime choice.
In contrast the USS Churchill was originally chosen by the Director of Operations at the time as a Galaxy Class due to the sheer scale of the region it was set to represent, as well as to mirror it’s ‘sister ship’, the Sovereign. While there’s no hard line, while putting together a new nit with a proposing CO, we try and marry up a visual representation of the look, scale and profile of the new unit and what they want to attain while marrying that with a visual representation of evolution if the CO or crew want to level up each achievement with an upgrade to a larger class.
While the idea of scaling up the ship over time as a unit grows and evolves adds a visual component of scale, some prefer to stay in the same ship presentation for the sake of continuity, a small start up might look for a smaller ship design such as a Defiant Class, but after some time growing to a larger group, may look at upgrading to a scale more fitting to their development. There could be other reasons for changing the look. Such as looking at more modern design options. Churchill CO led the charge for moving from a Galaxy Class to an Enquiry for that reason, updating one of the two ‘regional command’ units to a more contemporary design.
Choosing that unit to start with though can be a challenge and while we’re generally flexible, we do try and put some restrictions in place to keep things sensible. Some of those might be obvious -such as maybe not having a Millenium Falcon Class – while some are in place to not overload with fan designs of the many oddities of FASA or 2D sketches coming into play. We try to keep the canon ships as the base selection point with a few from the ‘beta’ canon that we can work with and fit the reality of Star Trek itself. To try and help out new Captains on the ‘approved’ list of ships so far, our Starfleet Recognition Guide is always available in the Fleet Database as a companion to our New Unit guides for prospective CO’s and has recently been updated with a list of ships and tiers categories by suggested rank, starting crew numbers and general ideas of purpose and mission profile for each.
If you’re thinking of becoming a new captain within Q2, you might have a favourite in mind already. Maybe the California Class for an underdog with a casual edge. Maybe you’d like to have a bit more retro style with a modern twist with an Excelsior II or go really old school with an Essex Class. Or maybe you’re not sure yet and need a helping hand with our pre-approved list which now includes more recent additions including the Lamarr Class and the now canonised Shangri-La class!
You can check the full and newly updated list within the Fleet Database or look back at profiles in our Ships of the Line feature! For more information on becoming a CO, you can check our New CO information section or Command Training Program.
About the author
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