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Section 31 Official Career Path?
banegrivm
Member Posts: 46 Arc User
I have been wondering this ever since the Science Destroyer came out and again looking at the Intel ships that looked like they came right out of Section 31. I always figured because of this representation that they were science. Is there anything anywhere that actually says whether or not they are Tactics, Engineering, or Science? I have one of each so it works out for me no matter what, but if there is something official I'd love to hear it. I've been looking for a while now and haven't been able to find anything concrete. Thanks in advance!
Post edited by baddmoonrizin on
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I mean I know I probably would since I love alts...but others probably not.
Agreed, with a mix of Starfleet and Non-Starfleet intake.
When I started my Xbox toons (I've 17 PC toons as well over 9 years), my first one was deliberately an S31 Agent from the TOS Era as it suited the narrative given after you transition to the 25th Century.......and he's a death-dealing Sci toon
It's pretty much the same as why the original DS9 & ENT version of them also didn't bother with any dedicated ships or facilities of their own; they have Starfleet for that.
You'd still need tactical, engineering and science specialist to make sense of the intel you gather, after all one the largest parts of intel gathering is making sense of the intel you just gathered. It is vital to make sure that you know the data you got is for the new prototype you wanted intel on and not the maintenance report for the ventilation systems, or to give a tactical example that the recent troop movements are something you want to look into and not just troops moving from the training posts to their service posts.
And for that you need people who know certain things and it would be inefficient and impractical to train your field agents for all of that so you get analysts you can trust to keep your secrets (and Starfleet patsies don't really do as they're not reliable) so S31 would need to hire people from the regular careers as well to make sense of the data being gathered.
Blowing them away....that's another thing all together.
In DS9 and ENT S31 was more of a civilian organization with tentacles into government and military agencies via undercover agents. For interpreting military intelligence they probably use the regular Starfleet Intelligence analysts and intercept the results for themselves.
Most likely. In Discovery they seemed to be more of a legit organization, maybe connected with Starfleet Intelligence, but went rogue. After the events of season 2, we see the organization starting to return to the shadows as they were in Enterprise and DS9.
To me, it's a black ops, unacknowledged organization.
Section 31 was NEVER a Civilian organization - it was always a Black Ops organization and an intergral part of both Star Fleet Intelligence and Military. It just was a very deep secret in the 24th century. Admiral Ross was working dircting with them in the DS9 episode "Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges" (and BOTH he and Sloan directly played the hyper-intelligent Dr. Bashir BIG TIME).
There's also no way a Civilian organization would be able to block/redirect internal Starfleet info requests (or have Star Fleet Admirals directly deny requests) as happened in DS9- "Extreme Measures").
PWE ARC Drone says: "Your STO forum community as you have known it is ended...Display names are irrelevant...Any further sense of community is irrelevant...Resistance is futile...You will be assimilated..."
Actually, in the real world the CIA can and does do that at times to the US military (though it seems to be rather rare), and it is a civilian organization (though it has direct congressional oversight, something S31 does not according to the dialog). The CIA also has a kind of semi-military arm that is often openly imbedded in military units or operational areas using their own equipment or borrowing it from the military without it actually being part of the military itself.
If you ignore the MiB style exaggerations that S31 has it is similar to the typical civilian vs military intelligence rivalry that is in a lot of science fiction (which in turn was based on things like the real world US CIA/ONI rivalry that was probably at its peak in the 1950s and '60s), something that Roddenberry was toying with putting into TOS but never got around to anything more than internal memos with it (like a lot of stuff it was pushed into the fourth season todo list along with the recurring Enterprise/Gr'oth competition in the Organian neutral zone and so was never done).
Assembling everything known about the two agencies in the various series, S31 is a (overly) wide ranging organization that takes the place of the CIA (in an over the top sort of way) while Starfleet Intelligence is far narrower in scope and takes the place of ONI.
The rest... In the DSC era, Section 31 had its own ships, so they definitely need Tactical, Science and Engineering officers.
Someone like Sloane in DS9 could really be anything - he really didn't show off all that much that seems specific to any department, no combat skills, no scientific research (at least none he did himself), no technical expertise.
Sloane's cover identity (or real identity?) suggested he was some kind of paper pusher, which doesn't really narrow it down.
He seemed to be decent at withstanding interrogation attempts, but what branch is that? Members of every branch are expected to hold top secret information, so it seems more like he had this training because he was an Intel officer rather than a specific branch. If any branch, it could be tactical, assuming that some tactical officers are also specifically trained for covert operations which hold a high risk of capture. However, we've also seen Picard, Crusher and Worf being sent on a covert operation, so it might really be more like a specialization or elective study. Or it is part of the command track - at least Picard (obviously) and Crusher had also taken Command Training courses. The Command track isn't directly a branch in STO. But of course, we have a Command specialization. And we have a Commando Specialization, too.
So maybe a mix of Intel, Command and Commando spec, but in any branch?
My character Tsin'xing
Starfleet Officer instantly becomes Secret Agent Man. lol
Fans have spent decades ignoring the episodes of DS9 to invent their own headcanon ghosts that either aren't affiliated with the Federation at all (utopianists) or some sort of fascist arm of a Federation military (disopianists).
They're a part of Starfleet (therefore are ironically a civilian organisation though not in the way utopianists like to think) that much is clear with even a casual use of Occam's Razor, every appearance since in ENT, ID, and DSC has further compounded and solidified this despite persistent headcanoning.
Bashir and Sisko not knowing about S31 is one of the most ridiculous lines of 'evidence' towards a supposed nonexistent branch of Starfleet that did absolutely nothing in DS9 to suggest it wasn't operating in any other way other than fans personal distaste for black ops units (rightfully so, S31 are a bunch of genocidal lunatics, but you'd have to be as deluded as Slone to try wish them away).
Norway and Yeager dammit... I still want my Typhoon and Jupiter though.
JJ Trek The Kelvin Timeline is just Trek and it's fully canon... get over it. But I still prefer TAR.
#TASforSTO
'...I can tell you that we're not in the military and that we intend no harm to the whales.' Kirk: The Voyage Home
'Starfleet is not a military organisation. Its purpose is exploration.' Picard: Peak Performance
'This is clearly a military operation. Is that what we are now? Because I thought we were explorers!' Scotty: Into Darkness
'...The Federation. Starfleet. We're not a military agency.' Scotty: Beyond
'I'm not a soldier anymore. I'm an engineer.' Miles O'Brien: Empok Nor
'...Starfleet could use you... It's a peacekeeping and humanitarian armada...' Admiral Pike: Star Trek
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I see S31 as being a black-ops organization analogous to the NSA back in the day, when they didn't officially exist and their budget was a "black box" add-on to the CIA budget. Several people know about them, even more suspect, but officially nobody knows anything. Whether they're necessary to the health of the Federation is debatable - Grunt says firmly no, but Roclak isn't so sure. (Yes, my characters hold debates in my head sometimes. Vovonek doesn't care one way or the other, but enjoys watching everyone else argue over it.)
This right here, seems more like it should be a specialization, than a class. A very gimmic heavy spec tree.
Spock to Kirk, as Kirk is about to hug him.
Star Trek V: "The Final Frontier"
You already have a trait allowing you to call a S31 ship. And not only does it take a while to activate it (use ensign abilities 10 times, each in less than 60 seconds) but the ship is utterly useless in combat, more than likely blowing up after the nearest non-common enemy's first volley of weapon fire.
My character Tsin'xing
> (Quote)
> *points at Intel tree*
Intel is different, the idea is a skill tree that give you abilities that are more in the grey areas of legality, what powers, i dont know yet, but the devs can come up with something interesting
My character Tsin'xing
I have that trait and I find it fun. Not great, but fun. It can take about 30s to activate at most, if you're hitting stuff on cooldown, assuming 30s cd on your ensign powers, but if you have cooldown reduction, it comes even faster. If you play it that way, its actually a nice addition, a frequent friendly ship to lay down some extra firepower. If, however, you use your ensign powers judiciously, then it isn't going to seem that great.
You would get two active ship slots that you can fully equip with gear - your mothership, and your droneship. In combat, the droneship would mimic your boff activations with stats based on that ship's gear. This means you could run something like a Neghvar as your mothership and a Raptor as your drone - when you eject warp plasma, so will the drone(even if it couldn't normally do that). Unique skills like launching fighters, Cloaking, Sensor Analysis, Inspiration, etc. will be done automatically by the drone upon entering/exiting combat. However, Drone ships won't use/mimic 'clickies' granted to them by gear. Career skills would be stuff like tethering/sharing health between ships, super-charging your droneship's offensive capabilities, etc.
On the ground, the 'Captain' is just a host/proxy. The class specializes in infiltration and control/confusion while having some super-natural melee capabilities with offensive adaptation-like mechanics. Maybe give them a boost to those silly minigames for flavor.
It might be a good segue into an eventual Borg Cooperative faction as well.
As far as Specs go, I'd still rather see a proper "Logistics Officer" spec centered around buffing people(charging their power levels, increasing their accuracy/crit, etc.) and helping them move around the maps(micro-gateways, movement/inertia enhancement, etc.). Hopefully the potential Command spec revamp will help open the door for it to have its own place.