Academy proposal

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A fleet that almost everyone seems to remember fondly, but was disbanded in May 2003. The Academy, not surprisingly, served as the entry point into the RS for many years. All new members entered the Academy as Cadets, were trained in an Undergraduate Wing, and then graduated into the Fleet of their choice as full-fledged members. The Academy was also home to several Graduate instruction wings, which provided more specialized training in such disciplines as custom mission creation.

Former COs include Castor Efrata-Landis (founder), Jake Blues, and Matt "Stallion" Williams (who led it twice, and was the last CO, voting to disband it).

New Academy Plan

Proposal 1 (BP-centric)

  • Make Beginner's Path the requirement for the first 2 promotions, up to 2Lt.
  • Cadets can still play any game and fly in any fleet, earn their MCw/H medals, etc., but can't be promoted anywhere until they have gotten to 2Lt in the Path.
  • Make certain things required to be promoted in the Path, such as taking an entry academy course (heh..not multiple choice), reading the bylaws, and operations manual.
  • The Training Office handles Beginner's Path, oversees the fleets' TOs to make sure they all have reasonable requirements and are performing well -- but fleets are still in control of their academies, they are just advised by the RS TO -- and is available for any RS-wide questions.

Debate

  • This removes the cool instant promotion to 2Lt on getting Master Cadet w/Honors, which some people might like to keep. Although, it's fairly easy to get to 2Lt on the Beginner's Path-- it can be done under an hour right now.
  • This is the way a lot of other clubs do it -- to get your first rank you have to take a "core academy test", or something like that.
  • Maybe we could say that you need to do BP to get to LJG only, and 2Lt is up to the fleet or more BP, and past that it's up to the fleet. That might be a better way.

Proposal 2 (Academy fleet)

  • Reinstate the Academy fleet, just as it was.
  • Bring back groups like Grey-Alpha that have a few people who are expert in one or more particular games, and will fly missions and participate along with the cadets.
  • Put control over who runs the academies to the Academy CO, instead of the individual fleets' COs.

Debate

  • This proposal gives back the idea of "your first home in the RS", but also doesn't let you join a fleet and start participating with it right away. That may be somewhat realistic in IC terms, but it would seem that it would be good to let people start participating in the regular way as soon as they want to.
  • Don't forget the problem where a specific undergrad isn't really doing its job, and the Fleet CO has no way of changing the command staff or just approving cadets into the fleet himself or herself. It's a loss of control for the Fleet CO, and that might be aggravating -- that was one of the reasons for the disbanding of the Academy fleet in the first place.

Proposal 3 (Primary instructors)

  • Ask new members to select a primary genre of games to sign up on, so that they only join one fleet at the beginning, and have less to deal with if they would have otherwise signed up with a lot of games.
  • Have the Training Office maintain a staff of instructors who each specialize in a game, or preferably a genre, and one of these is automatically assigned to each new member by the DB based on the genre the cadet selected.
  • This instructor will be the cadet's go-to person, and needs to understand everything about Beginner's Path, as well as the requirements of the game(s) the cadet has selected for that genre.
  • The cadets would be able to select one of the initial following genres:
    • Newer flight sims (XvT, XWA)
    • Older flight sims (XW, TIE)
    • MMORPG (SWG)
    • Newer FPS (RC, BF2, BF)
    • Older FPS (JA, JO, JK)
    • Strategy (EaW)
    • Writing (AF)
    • Roleplaying (ABG)
  • The cadet will immediately enter into the unit they selected upon joining.

Debate

  • This approach depends heavily on having good instructors, and a good TO to make sure everything is maintained properly.
  • The disadvantage here is that units like PBF probably wouldn't see a lot of influx, as people don't seem likely to choose "older flight sims" over "newer flight sims", for instance.
  • This would almost completely cut down on confusion for people who normally sign up for a lot of games.
  • This places a strict limit on the number of things someone can do right when they enter the RS, which might lose us some potentially active members.
  • The chief difference with "primary instructors" is that the TO maintains the list of instructors, rather than each fleet. So this is a little bit like an Academy fleet, but not quite. And instructors can be asked to handle many games, if they say they can. An alternative to this proposal is to have each fleet provide a list of its instructors, and automatically assign one of them, except that it might be best for TOs to assign the instructor that they think is best.