...nononono. Don't be afraid, that's a good rawr! =|
I recently began chatting a bit to Enterprise-D and Goldy, the later of which suggested that I make our presence known.
I'm @Rahhmi of U.S.S. Starchaser. It's a fleet, It's also my ship. And Zuki's now too.
Back before fleet starbases and endless level grinding, I had a group of friends that I would idle or roleplay with in populated places while wearing similar (and non-canon) attire. Us LOOKING like a crew simply wasn't enough, we had to play the part of a crew... so soon after, U.S.S. Starchaser was above our heads. This is really the only reason we ever bothered to become a fleet.
I was designated Captain, in an offline sense, and they picked the starship I was flying, claiming that I was the only reason they were playing the game. From there, we all took up different positions in this fictionalized crew based on our interests and where we seemed to fit. It was in doing this that many of us completely lost interest in space-related elements and focused purely on Ground, so we could feel more like cogs in the wheel. (we should have just played Gears of War =/)
...as time went on, We encountered people of a similar mindset, and our "free society" seemed to prosper a bit. We made a Facebook page, started posting random pictures, made a GoogleDoc Spreadsheet with all kinds of pointless information, and eventually my First officer Dantastic and I made our Wikia.
It was a place where we could post our bios, our pictures, and our stories. The Starchaser ship itself was Starfleet's "First Official Tribble Breeding Facility", the in-character idea being that Klingons wouldn't board a ship infested with Tribbles. As we were stationed in the Romulan sectors at the time, I guess the plan worked! It was quite fun...
Unfortunately, Season 6 came out and totally totally destroyed everything as we knew it.
Some were desperate to work on fleet projects, Some wanted to ignore them completely. Many simply ditched STO altogether as this and Lockboxes had irritated them to the point they forgot why they were here. I admit I actually felt the best thing might be to disband the fleet completely and simply wear the outfits in protest. This garnered universal negative opinion and seemed to bother everyone much more than I expected. It was then I realized that I had a bit too much pull in the group, and stepped down from leader, leaving 3 capable people in my place.
As they say in Fight Club, "you decide your own level of involvement". I'm more a commander than a leader. I'm neither political, nor particularly formal. I started this introduction with "rawr" when I probably should have said "Yoo CHING, Chef~FOIS!!!" and then lowered my head abruptly. Of the 3, Lego really shined with his enthusiasm, intent, and ability and he became known as our official Fleet leader. It took him a while to realize I respected being "below him on the food chain", But he's lead us back from the horror that is season 6.
Our current group is Rather laid back. Everyone has a say, Everyone's strengths are played up, Everyone's weaknesses are compensated for and it really feels more like a family than an organization. We do a lot of strange things just to make each other smile and from a psychology point of view, We're probably too emotionally connected.
We seem to know the offline person, and the online person equally well. At a moment's notice, we can get half the fleet online to Fedtrain around DS9 or idle in some obscure location simply to warp in and out all at once for that wow-factor, or simply to take a few screenshots.
...then there's the wikia. http://ussStarchaser.wikia.com/ Was created for us. But more recently we've been encouraging non-fleet to get in on the fun. We've acquired some non-fleet people, main characters, Boffs, Totally Fantasy characters.. a few Trek Fiction writers are on there who I've taken ingame pictures to accommodate their writings... and my significant other even bothered to make me an exclusive Graphics mod which he re-makes every week after maintenance to insure that I could have the same effects I got used to in Secondlife.
It's home. And it feels more like Star Trek than what the base game allows. I think an alliance with the 12th Fleet might give us an extra group of people to smile and throw tribbles at. =D So I guess... that's my life as a Starchaser. And that's my view of our fleet.
.....who told you?? was it dan.........................XD
, mmmmm romulan ale *drools*