Well, let's chill for a sec, lol. I mean, if we wanna put people ships and move them up the chain, that's fine, but I still think that it's almost too much of a priveledge for new recruits, lol. I know that sounds weird, but let's think about this. In a squadron, you're definetely on the bottom rung, but you've still got tons of flexibility. How? By working with your flight: you brain storm and come up with the plot for your character and his/her comrades. So there's plenty to work with, and everyone is in kind of the same place position/career/interest wise. Also, I completely agree that longer relationships between NPCs, or potentially real characters, should be developing outside the squadron. We can do that by attaching squadrons to a ship: sure, I'm all for that too. But you see how there's this nice solid base? People know where to be and, with the help of their squadron, they have a team they can write with?
If you do this on a ship, the configuration is much, much more loose. You're not necessarilly at the bottom of the ranks for instance: you're in charge of people, which kind of denotes position and rank/experience. Or, let's say we didn't do that and just made someone an engineer: well, not everyone's ganna be an engineer in the story, right? Unless we wanna start making legions of engineers, mechanics, etc. That means that the overall model and connections between the characters are also more loose. This requires a different approach to how that story is going to work: how will the character's interact? To me, that doesn't sound like a position that a new recruit is ready for, or that he or she has really earned for that matter.
I bring up this "earning" thing a lot, and I don't mean to implicate that one person is more worthy of another, per se. Rather, it's kind of like the DJO and why we don't let characters have force abilities unless their in it. Let's say I give a new recruit force abilities: what's he ganna do? He's ganna use them... Probably all the time and not so gracefully. There'll be exceptions, but for the most part, folks don't have the experience to use that trait gracefully. So the DJO has people earn it. I'd kind of like these responsibilities on ships to have a similar level of integrity. If you want the freedom and opportunity to have so much latitude in your writing, I'd kind of like to see that you're ready to do the job justice. It seems wiser, to me then, that we ought to allow members to
progress into ship roles. Higher-ups would be allowed super high-up jobs, because their writing shows they can manage it, and maybe members somewhere in the middle can be given opportunities that, also in a median capacity, they can fulfill on ships. So, I'm basically just not convinced that, atleast without some guidance, new recruits are going to be able to coordinate very well or do the job justice.
That being said, I like the comment about allowing folks to do time on a ship, perhaps the ship their squadron is assigned to. Perhaps we could develop skills by allowing members to write as different occupations in their "down-time?" Not only would they be developing new traits, but they'd be given that opportunity to communicate/work with one another acting, still, as a squadron yet with completely different roles. Another benefit to that is that we wouldn't have to come up with new rank models and systems for promotion that would be necessary by creating a whole seperate subdivision. In fact, merely "progressing" wouldn't require it either; people could still keep their ranks but tack on a different position.
