User:Hayter/BF

Bravo Fleet (sometimes referred to as Bremer Fleet or simply BF) is a Star Trek simulation group that was started in 1997 by Mike Bremer and Pat Weber. It is a large and long-running Star Trek RPG group on the Internet with a September 2005 internal census revealing a total of just under 1500 members and over 150 individual games (referred to as "simms" within BF)^[1]. The games themselves are Play by E-Mail, Message board role-playing game, and more recently IRC and Messenger based. Bravo Fleet is voluntarily rated "PG-13" in the style of the trademarked MPAA rating though some affiliate simms are rated "mature."

Bravo Fleet History

In 1997, Mike Bremer was involved in a "very serious dispute" with the then CO of "Tango Fleet" which resulted in Bremer leaving the simming group and taking his simm with him. Along with his fellow gamers, Bremer joined his simm, the USS Pegasus, with the independent simm USS Miranda managed by Pat Weber. Together they created Bravo Fleet and Weber took command of the group (under the IC name of RAdm Murdock) whilst Bremer functioned as the group’s executive officer (using his real name within the game). In 1998, BravoFleet.com came online as Bremer took over control of the group and Weber left with his simm and formed Alpha Fleet following disagreements over the way BF was headed. Pat Brice was introduced as the new executive officer of the group and provided the BFHQ with its first server space. By 2001, Bravo Fleet had expanded to over four Task Forces. In the summer of that year, disagreements over the way the group was being run led to two of the Task Forces leaving the group and taking a disputed number of players with them. These breakaways joined together to create Obsidian Fleet. Relations between the two groups remained frosty but changes in senior members have led to more cordial relations in recent times. Amongst other things, the two groups feature on each other's respective banner exchanges.

Mike Bremer continued as Fleet CO until Monday, March 15th, 2004 when he stepped down due to time constraints. He was succeeded by Ed Smith who held the post for almost two years, overseeing the removal of the Marine CoC and various other initiatives. In mid-2005, Smith was succeeded by Lenny Murphy. Bremer once again took up the position of Fleet XO.

On October 4th, 2005, Bremer stepped down from his position as Fleet XO and the admiralty, citing personal reasons as the motivation for this move. Despite the voluntary drop in rank and position, Bremer remained a member of Bravo Fleet and the game master of the USS Pegasus simm.

On January 10, 2006, a slight restructuring of the fleet happened. Task Force 63 was deactivated, and the individual simms were reassigned to other Task Forces within the Fleet.

In April 2006, Task Force 93 was "mothballed" (essentially disbanded in a similar manner to TF63 earlier in the year) as part of a drive for "quality over quantity" championed by Murphy.^[2]

Story Arc

Following the Borg Incursion of 2373, Starfleet endorsed the creation of the “Fourth Fleet;” a fleet created with the sole purpose of defending the Federation and parts of the Klingon Empire from destruction, codenamed “Bravo Fleet.” Bravo Fleet was originally composed of less than ten starships and its earliest action of note was making first contact with the Raeyans although they were also responsible for developing a number of new starships, specifically designed for combat. These new designs came in useful during the Dominion War as they attacked Cardassian/Dominion shipyards and eventually helped retake the Starfleet outpost, Deep Space Nine and subsequently partook in the final assault against Cardassia Prime. The Fourth Fleet also made first contact with the Krazzle and C’Hakilians – two hostile races from the Beta Quadrant responsible for the deaths of dozens of Starfleet officers.

Command Timeline

This timeline has been created using information from various sources, including the Command staff themselves. Names listed are OOC as far as they are available. IC names are listed in italics.

1997-98 – CO: Pat Weber, XO: Mike Bremer
1998-1999 – CO: Mike Bremer, XO: Pat Brice
1999-2000 – CO: Mike Bremer, XO: Zarek Dragon
2000-2001 – CO: Mike Bremer, XO: William Coast-Endas
2001-2001 – CO: Mike Bremer, XO: John Cline
2001-2004 – CO: Mike Bremer, XO: Jason McCormick
2004-2004 – CO: Mike Bremer, XO: Ed Smith
2004-2005 – CO: Ed Smith, XO: Lenny Murphy
2005-2005(Sep-Oct) – CO: Lenny Murphy, XO: Mike Bremer
2005-present - CO: Lenny Murphy, XO: Darian Caplinger

Group Features

Bravo Fleet Forums

At least as far back as 2000, Bravo Fleet has provided discussion forums for its members and visitors to communicate. Discussion ranges from the validity of fan-made starship specifications to what a user is listening to. Like Bravo Fleet itself, the forums are rated PG-13.

The first known forums for Bravo Fleet were created at least by 2000 by Ed Smith and were eventually turned over to Dan Shepherd and John Leschinski who converted the forums over to a new software package and hosted the forums for Bravo Fleet for roughly 2 years.

In 2003, Bravo Fleet disassociated itself with the now re-branded Subspace Comm Relay administered by Shepherd and Leschinski due to continued disagreements between the two staffs and complaints from Bravo Fleet members regarding the actions of the forum administrators.

The current BF Forums were brought online on 3rd March 2003. After their first year of activity, they had 107,149 articles and 669 registered users. As of August 2005, they had 6290 individual topics (following yearly archives), 1236 registered users and an average of just under 130 posts a day.

On 3rd May 2006, Bravo Fleet switched its forums over to vBulletin software.

Bravo Fleet IRC Chat Room

For as long as, if not longer than Bravo Fleet has provided some type of forums for its members, they have also provided an IRC chat room. The first chat room was established by Jason McCormick and Ed Smith on their own server. Like the forums, it started off slowly, but gradually became popular with several members.

Eventually, it was determined that more control over the IRC chat room was needed, and Darian Caplinger, with the help and input of Mack Burton created BravoFleetIRC. However, BFIRC, as it came to be known as, would eventually be merged to form a new service. Darian, Lenny Murphy and Dan Taylor created an IRC server called AceIRC and is the official home of Bravo Fleet's chat services.

Website Services

Bravo Fleet Headquarters (BFHQ) has several website services it offers its members and other Sci-Fi fans, including hosting packages, top site lists, banner exchanges, and website awards. BF also has forged partnerships with other sci-fi websites and Star Trek RPG groups.

Controversies

Judge Advocate General

Bravo Fleet has its own JAG setup in place in order to settle disputes between members that may arise as a result of the game. JAG has faced heavy criticism in the past; detractors claiming that JAG members are ‘biased’ and the rules and rulings, ‘unfair.’ These criticisms were addressed by then CO Mike Bremer in early 2004 when it was rumoured that due to a number of differences, many centring around JAG, over twenty simms were considering leaving BF. It was said by Bremer that Bravo Fleet’s Uniform Code of Military Justice would be reviewed and rewritten and amongst other things, that no one would be “banned” from Bravo Fleet as persons had been in the past; rather “suspensions” would be given out. The use of the phrase, “We've even decide to no longer 'ban' anyone, but suspend people from playing in Bravo Fleet if needed,” is contradictory because as recently as June 2005, people were being stated as ‘banned’ from Bravo Fleet.^[3] The judgement of the featured case however, was a, “semi-permanent” ban whereby, after six months, the player could appeal to be allowed back into BF. Subsequently, this decision was appealed and the player was allowed to return to BF after two months under conditions.^[4] Due to this, we can assume that Bremer’s statement was intended to mean that there would be no lifetime bans for BF players. As of February 2006, the UCMJ has undergone no public changes.

Marines

Like many other Star Trek based RPG groups, Bravo Fleet has an active Marine Corps. Marines were never seen or mentioned onscreen and as such are not canonical however the large number of fans who enjoy writing about them means that they have been included in many fan-fictions and RPGs. On 30th June 2005, Bravo Fleet abolished the Marine Chain of Command,^[5] taking away positions such as Fleet Marine Commanding Officer. Though this decision was made in order to “bring the Fleet closer together,” it sparked outrage in the marine community where many members thought the decision amounted to the stripping of privileges from Marines and would eventually lead to the ultimate dissolution of the Corps – an action which the BF Admiralty has claimed will “never” happen. The policy that removed the CoC essentially gave Marines exactly the same rights as Fleet characters however Marine members claimed that this guise of equality equated to no BF members being afforded any rights of consequence. Calls were made for the removal of the acting Marine CO (the late Catherine Davilia) from her position due to her support of the policy, though given that the policy effectively did this itself with the consent of Davilia, these calls were ultimately ignored.

Image Theft

Bravo Fleet, like many online Star Trek RPGs traditionally has a negative reputation when it comes to image use. Accusations levelled at the group include,

That fan-made images of Starships (both series bases and original designs) are used without the permission (or knowledge) of the artist.^[6]
That BF members remove the original credits of an image and display said images as their own work.^[7]
That BF members hotlink to other fans websites without permission, thus using up their bandwidth.

It should be noted that many of these accusation are levelled not at the BFHQ, but affiliated simm websites, the majority of which, the BF Admiralty has no direct control over; simm websites traditionally being created and updated by individual game masters on non-BF affiliated hosting domains.

Recently, Bravo Fleet has begun to crack down on its members who are guilty of the above accusations. Bravo Fleet’s Forum Administrators operate a Zero Tolerance policy under which unaccredited images are deleted immediately and there is an announcement on the BFHQ front page which deals specifically with this problem in which it is asserted amongst other things, that in order to display images on their simm websites, BF members must obtain permission from the original artist(s). The BFHQ's own credits page has drawn criticism due to the vagueness of its detailing. "Several Trek 3D images," and "various images," are both offered as clarification as to what individual artists have contributed however many images on the BFHQ are displayed without credits on the image itself and due in part to this anonymity, the site still receives criticism from many in the graphics community.

The BFHQ has in place a script to block right clicking in an attempt to safeguard images shown on its own pages.

References

^ Bravo Fleet produced census.
^ Murphy advocates "Quality over quantity" in April 2006.
^ Player is stated as being "banned" despite earlier claims that this practice was ended.
^ The "ban" is revealed to be "semi-permanent."
^ Bravo Fleet announcement detailing the abolition of their Marine Corps.
^ Scifi-Meshes.com forum discussion regarding Bravo Fleet's image use. (Google cache)