Originally, Joy Ten's web page titled her "The Wanderer". With five ships under her belt, Five has now claimed that title. I'm not entirely sure why this is. A lot of it may be higher standards. In spite of her lower number, Five entered play years after her more senior sisters. Seven, Ten, and Eleven found Defiant, Federation Council, and Hawking, which are exceptional sims, meeting my style fairly well. Finding a fourth sim to meet this standard has proven difficult.
Gabriel is an extraordinary ship. Lots of action. Lots of good role playing. StrainSop is one of the most alien of aliens in AOL sims. Alas, I can not stay up till midnight three days in a row. I had a good fun stay on Gabriel while I was in Colorado, simming from the Mountain time zone. Once I returned to Massachusetts, I had to depart.
The Happiness of the Partner was written as the USS Gabriel's introduction to the Joy class, giving hints of the Joy's less than golden past.
LtJg is the story of one of Joy's first watches on Gabriel, and how happy she is to be given a function that she can perform well.
Irregularities The Gabriel seems to specialize in misunderstandings. Just prior to this log, the councilor was under arrest, and the chief of security and captain were trying to question each other's honor to the point of having the other throw the first blow. I figured, why not, let's get into the spirit of things?
Sisters shows the clear superiority of network interfacing over the less perfect forms of sharing ideas used by organic beings.
Plan of Battle finds Joy on a quiet watch as officer of the deck, with the USS Gabriel docked at Deep Space 21. Then there were bad guys...
Five didn't last long on Mendell. In fact, she never got to board Mendell. For the first several weeks of the sim, before an XO had been assigned, we were running station Nightwing Alpha One alone, without her support ship, Mendell. I left not due to any Nightwing / Mendell difficulties, but because I was able to return to The Federation Council, with it's unique format. Unfortunately Mendell and the Council both run Wednesdays at 10 Eastern.
I should note I joined Mendell just after I started playing with Bryce. By the time I got to Republic, I knew a bit more what I was doing.
Sentience is one of those accidents. During one of Joy's last missions on USS Gabriel, Commodore Slayer asked Joy to reconsider her request for a transfer. This implied that Joy was operating against the will of her superior officer...
Fek'Lhr just did not work out. Joy needs an environment where life and law are respected. Hearing statements like, "The captain's word is law" or "This is a military investigation. You have no rights." said pretty clearly this was not to be Joy's ship. I had long before developed a version of the Federation Guarantees based on the US Bill of Rights. Fek'Lhr was the first and only ship I have encountered where the command staff did not want to employ a bill of rights. They were not interested in exploring this theme.
But I was more concerned with organized hazing of junior players. Fek'Lhr is a fairly strict story telling ship. Too often, the only advance of the main plot was the captain, playing a non-player alien, conversing with the XO. Junior crew responded to the lack of main plot involvement by creating subplots. These were aggressively and maliciously snubbed out. The slightest infraction of law, which was unwritten and unavailable to the junior officers, resulted in disciplinary action to the junior crew members. This punishments often featured isolating players from the main plot line. In addition, one player in particular went out of his way to harass and insult junior players. The command staff justified and authorized this, stating that role playing the insulting and abusive character could continue, and that players should not complain to the command staff about such activity.
I understand the theory behind fixed script story telling games. I have seen the style before. I understand a desire for discipline. However, AOL's Terms of Service are not suspended by saying "I am acting in character." If a player is deliberately and repeatedly ruining other's enjoyment of the game, and the insulting and harassing actions would be TOS violations out of character, the victim has every right to request relief from an SFOL host, and the SFOL host has every duty to take corrective action.
I left ugly. Members of Fek'Lhr's ruling clique were allowed to harass junior officers when they broke the law. Junior officers were not supposed to question senior officers when they broke the law. While the ruling clique justified their actions in terms of discipline and the law, they were unwilling to submit in good form to the discipline and law which they so aggressively enforced.
That was the last straw.
I Robot meets Dorsai When Joy first joins a ship, I try to find an excuse to introduce her programming to the rest of the crew. Her boss' Dorsai upbringing created such an excuse
Hacker Alarm OK, so I just don't like bullies. While the ruling clique was allowed to harass, humiliate and pull rank on junior officers, did they like it when the shoe was on the other foot?
If the ship one has been pleased with most over several years time frame is the USS Hawking, is it cheating to join a ship whose crew is 50% Hawking people? While I continued with Joy in security and tactical positions, responsible for taking lives, she seems to be settling in well enough. If only organic beings did not want so often to hurt one another...
Basic Weaponry Commander Darr of Republic registers every unusual weapon that comes aboard Republic. After saving a colony of young Horta from an asteroid belt, it seemed time for Joy to develop and register some unusual weaponry. I like to insert real science into Trek sims as often as I can. This was one of the sillier attempts.
Preliminary Battle Report is Joy at her most robotic. She started on Republic in security, then took the role of Tac officer, roles that stress her orders not to kill without orders.
Implications of the Hawking Clarification Being placed in roles which stress her programming, the proper thing to do is to shift this stress onto the ship's councilor, no? This was written in response to Dr. Flip's taking the Councilor's role.
When Admiral Alpha gave up command of the Hawking, two of Hawking's best started a new ship, USS Valkyrie. I left Republic with regret for an opportunity to start out as department chief on a brand new ship. Things are still settling in. After three months in play, we have already had a command staff change and a department head change. Still, the potential is there...
Genocide : Joy expresses a dislike for Section 31.
Extra Latinum : This one didn't get distributed to the crew. It brings in too many outside plot elements, and would have mess up the command staff's intentions. However, I had too much fun writing it not to post it here.