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Time in grade by the 24th/25th century
gulberat
Member Posts: 5,505 Arc User
Ignoring the ridiculously short time in grade that one spends in each rank as you play through the STO missions...
In the military IRL, you are usually expected to serve a certain amount of time in each rank before going before a promotion board to the next (this is time in grade). Is it me, or has the required time in grade lengthened in the Star Trek era for all but the biggest hotshots, due to the significant improvements in human lifespan and fitness? Is the average Starfleet career longer than the average RL military career?
Personally, I've written on the premise that it is (Alyosha has had a 40-year career, though his promotions have come more slowly due to unease with certain admirals about letting a Devidian command others), and in the Cardassian Defense Force the effect is even more pronounced because their lifespan well exceeds that of humans (though not on the order of a Vulcan).
Also, and this is one I can't remember. Is it ever established that the Academy has a four-year curriculum, or because graduates will have more time to serve in their prime, is the program now longer than four years?
In the military IRL, you are usually expected to serve a certain amount of time in each rank before going before a promotion board to the next (this is time in grade). Is it me, or has the required time in grade lengthened in the Star Trek era for all but the biggest hotshots, due to the significant improvements in human lifespan and fitness? Is the average Starfleet career longer than the average RL military career?
Personally, I've written on the premise that it is (Alyosha has had a 40-year career, though his promotions have come more slowly due to unease with certain admirals about letting a Devidian command others), and in the Cardassian Defense Force the effect is even more pronounced because their lifespan well exceeds that of humans (though not on the order of a Vulcan).
Also, and this is one I can't remember. Is it ever established that the Academy has a four-year curriculum, or because graduates will have more time to serve in their prime, is the program now longer than four years?
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Promotion comes fast unless you are Harry Kim. Speaking as a real life military retiree, I would not call Starfleet a military organization (more quasi-military). In real life MMO terms, if you didn't allow players to rank up ridiculously fast, you would lose them to other games. Even James Kirk took years to get a first command. ( I am not considering that upstart pretender!
Speaking of Harry, WTF Janeway. You demote Tom Paris for misbehavior and then reinstate him and not do anything for Harry? In the military, you would now have a demotivated individual, and I thought that was a lost story opportunity there.
Given such long service careers then, the common "up or out" arrangement, whereby an officer MUST be promoted within three years after the minimum time-in-grade or else be dismissed from service, is unsustainable--we'd end up with everybody being a Captain for half of their careers (not everybody is Admiral material), which totally inverts the usual pyramid command structure wherein the higher the rank, the fewer personnel of that rank are in service. Yes, we can do this in STO, but that is because it is a game. In an actually-functioning Starfleet, you can't have everybody reaching the top rank with the majority of their careers still ahead of them. Fast-ish promotion can be allowed for those who show exemplary command ability, but longer time-in-grade should be allowed for those to whom it is suited--we can't give a starship command (or equivalent-level non-shipboard assignment) to EVERYBODY who has served 25 years.
sto canon points to the idea that starfleet was running out of good officers and many junior officers whom ordinarily wouldnt get a chance to command a ship and crew get fast tracked up the ladder, clearly it takes a few months of in game time based on the sto timeline.
in reality, assuming you start at ensign, maybe 6 months to lt j.g. 1 year to lt. grade 3 years to lt. cmdr. 6 years to cmdr. 4-8 years to captain depending on how good that person is as a commander. choice of person but likely 10 years to admiralty and just a few further years to make it to full admiral i would imagine.
Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
Three was hired with the effective rank of Captain as a "licensed subcontractor". Think Blackwater in space.
Now, the only character in Trek canon that we actually got a good career timeline for was Ben Sisko. He entered the Academy in 2350 (at the age of 17) and graduated in 2354 (yes, it is a four-year program - numerous characters have referred to Freshman, Sophomore, Junior, Senior year, etc., and of course Wesley Crusher's time at the Academy is well-documented.)
Sisko had reached the rank of Lieutenant Commander by 2366 (First Officer of the USS Saratoga at the Battle of Wolf 359) and was a full three-pip Commander in 2369 when he took command of DS9. He got his fourth pip in late 2371.
Back-filling, it looks like he served 2-4 years at each rank along the way from Ensign to Captain with an average TIG of 3.4 years. Whatever the 24th-century TIG requirements are, they can't be too far off of what they are today.
...Oh, baby, you know, I've really got to leave you / Oh, I can hear it callin 'me / I said don't you hear it callin' me the way it used to do?...
- Anne Bredon
Or unless you're an expert translator who contributed directly to the salvation of Earth, translated countless alien languages, and basically helped to invent the device that would render the language barrier virtually irrelevant.
So basically, if you're an interesting background character and not a bloated jerkhead like many of the leads.
In the US Navy, when an officer turns down offers of positions that are considered a "step up" (not necessarily a promotion, but lateral moves to the command track) it is referred to as "planting" and the typical response from the brass after two or three offers is to ignore the plant, and steer them toward reserves or retirement.
...Oh, baby, you know, I've really got to leave you / Oh, I can hear it callin 'me / I said don't you hear it callin' me the way it used to do?...
- Anne Bredon
Or worse, we'd end up with the top of the deck fully stacked with long-lived races, preventing shorter-lived races from ever seeing a command chair. Even if a position opened up, the Admiralty might choose another long-lived race to fill the position, considering the short-lived species to be younger and lacking in experience.
EDIT: that might actually speak to the initial arrangement of fleets. If I understand correctly, when the Federation is first formed, all species maintained their fleets in a cooperative arrangement. If that is continued, Vulcans will have what they consider normal advancement, and humans will have theirs. It would only be the Joint Chiefs where there might be an issue, at least in experience.
Is that why we've got a Trill sitting in the CSO chair?
...Oh, baby, you know, I've really got to leave you / Oh, I can hear it callin 'me / I said don't you hear it callin' me the way it used to do?...
- Anne Bredon
Christian Gaming Community Fleets--Faith, Fun, and Fellowship! See the website and PM for more. :-)
Proudly F2P. Signature image by gulberat. Avatar image by balsavor.deviantart.com.
The problem with this is. The crew and Captain remain on the ship far longer then what would be considered normal in Military Terms. So youll watch for 7 Seasons/Years Officers and Crew remaining at the same Rank and Grade as they did when they first came onboard. Or in some occasions losing rank, being promoted once and thats it.
Officers and Crew only move up in rank and authority once the show has ceased to go forward. Which in real life would never happen. In real life, youd atleast be promoted from the lowest rank (Ensign/Crewman) to the next rank upwards within the first year of service out of the Academy/Boot Camp. After that a year or two would pass before seeing another opportunity to be promoted. Each rank would come with new requirements to move on to the next. And a different set of responsibilities. Some would require Testing while others would require a Promotions Board to convene.
If the show reflected real life Military traditions. You would see not only everyday crew but the main cast come and go in 2-4 year intervals. Each cast member leaving or joining the crew at different points in the shows timeline. There would be a constant wave of new faces every 6 months or so as people moved on to other Duty Assignments or gained Rank and took on new tasks. The only time such things would be suspended would be during extended deep space exploration missions. But upon return from that mission the entire crew would be rotated out, promoted and sent on to new duty assignments. Including the Captain.
These Rotations are considered important as it gives lower ranked personnel an opportunity to move upwards, spread experience and expertise across the whole of the Military Organization, and possibly remove any negative or hostile environments from units (Ships, Starbases, Outposts). We see an example of this atleast twice with the U.S.S. Equinox (VYG) and the U.S.S. Phoenix (TNG).
I understand that in the time of Kirk and beyond people lived well over 100. But even in Kirks time. After the first two Movies, He and his crew were constantly reminded they were in uniform longer than the average Officer/Crewman. When others would have retired and spent the remaining years of their lives...30+ years on some retirement planet. The only other person we see that parallels Kirk is Picard. Beyond that 50-65 is the age range for Captains and Above and theres little information on what age Admirals retire at. We see on a handful of occasions where a Captain retires rather then continue to climb the ladder (Capt. M. Scott). And on numerous occasions we see Starfleet Officers leave the service just a few short years into their careers. I seriously doubt that there are Admirals who just wont retire/die retaining a strangling hold on those ranks and positions. And if Starfleet is supposed to be in control of a 8,000 Lightyear long area of Space. Its reasonable to believe theres more then enough Admiral positions in Starfleet.
As of tonight, Steam is reporting a nice round 4000 hours of playing STO.
That's 100 40-hour weeks. Two years on the job, full time.
Mind you, that's over more than three real years, even including my six month break between the first half of Season 4 and what ended up as the game being sold and going F2P, but... :eek:
Sorry I missed this post... So by that standard, Riker would have already killed his career by Best of Both Worlds (as per Admiral Hansen's comments) and realistically, he would have been moved to another assignment following Picard's liberation (or Picard would have been promoted/retired and Riker given command of the Enterprise...) and plot aside, the posting of Jellico showed that command did not have faith in his ability, or he would have been given command of the Enterprise then... The idea of him being given command of the Titan, IMHO, was just never feasible...