Federation Space: What is it?

Chances are you've heard of Federation Space, either through fleet members, or just reading topics on the board. Federation Space is a Star Trek Role-Playing game set 39 years after the events portrayed in ST:TNG, ST:DS9 and ST:Voyager. Players assume the roles of Star Fleet officers stationed on ships and bases throughout the quadrant.

The game is text based via a forum type layout with posts being written in past tense. While you may think you need to know a lot about star trek to play the game, that type of knowledge isn't required - in fact the site was started (and still run) by a guy that doesn't even watch Star Trek! Technobabble is always fun, and we have a great wiki with pages on all the technical jargon you'll ever need, you don't need to have a great grasp of warp theory to play an engineer, or a medical degree to play a doctor.

The minimum posting requirements are twice a week and the time commitment is varied, but generally I would say about 4-5 hours a week on the higher end. Most of your time will be spent reading other peoples posts to see what has happened, and then writing your post responding to it and possibly moving the plot along. Some people check it fairly often throughout the day, catching up on the one or two posts that have popped up since they last checked. Others check once a night, when they get home from work, or while they watch TV. Some only check every other day, which might mean they are reading a number of posts in one sitting. Think of it like checking email - if you check it often, a good amount of time you won't have a new message, if you wait 2 days you might have 10 unread.

Each ship and crew go on missions. We have GMs who have mission outlines for the ships, COs who are the ships Captains, FOs who acts as First Officers and crew contacts, Department Heads who are in charge of their various departments, and junior officers who are crew in each department. We have a number of ships that are different speeds, some have crews that only post once every couple of days, other ships are full of fast posters that post once every couple of hours.

Players can play in a variety of different departments. We have Security Officers, Medical Officers, Tactical Officer, Science Officers, and Engineering Officers. Most people join in the Security and Tactical roles because they are seen as the "easiest" to play (you just shoot things, right?). In reality, all of the departments have their easy and difficult sides, and you should join whatever seems interesting to you. Want to have a character that talks to the ship? Go engineering. Want to have a character that gets to order the Captain to take the day off? Play a doctor. Want to be the one who does in depth scans of whatever is happening and find the answers? Go science.

Finally, let me share a quick note about how you increase in rank on FedSpace. Each month a person is awarded points. If you posted at least 2 posts a week for that month, of good quality, you can expect to see 500 points each month. If you are a GM, Academy Instructor, or a Department Head you'll have additional points. If you win Role Player of the Month for your ship, that's a 500 point bonus too. The higher you go, the larger the gap between ranks and the more time it will take the rank up. With no bonus points (which is rare), a person will go from Midshipman to Ensign in only 3 months of postingm while Ensign to Ltjg will take 4 months.

If this description has whetted your appetite, spend some time checking out the wiki pages, reading a few ships on the board, and head to the Join Federation Space page to learn how to join us. If you mention your referrer as "Star Trek Online" you'll get 100 bonus points

As an example of what a post looks like, here is a post I wrote for my character, Azernal Rin, who is First Officer on the USS Pegasus. A little background - we were heading to a first contact situation on a previously undiscovered planet.
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Azernal turned back to his sensors as they approached the planet, which started lighting up with responses to his input.

As expected, what characterized a government building was almost universal, and the computer was able to locate a large city on the North Eastern section of the Southern Continent with expected architecture and traffic.

Az spoke up "Coordinates for a landing site being sent..." in the next moment, all the consoles on the shuttle had the info for people to do with what they wanted.

"See that large, cleared area for vehicle landing?" Az asked Ouse.

"Bring us in nice and slowly over the area, with a direct path to the landing zone. Shields up, weapons not charged. Land us slower than normal, nice and softly, no surprises." he ordered, knowing the pilot had a flair for showy flying.

He lifted his voice then, and added a touch of command tone.

"Those of you who aren't yet armed, grab a Type II hand phaser. Everyone make sure they are set to setting 2. Without a direct order from myself or Crawford, do not raise the power setting for any reason." his tone left no room for argument.

He knew it probably wasn't enough in the eyes of the COS, but he needed to balance the safety of the away team with the need to appear nonthreatening and friendly to the inhabitants of the planet.