Forum:Captains, Admirals, the like

Forums → Hailing Frequencies → Captains, Admirals, the like (Reply | Watch)

Hey all... I was noticing something... Everyone is a captain or an admiral... Now, okay, so that's not 100% true, but I mean look at anyone from the original series, they are all at least captains... even Ensign Chekhov... We just resolved a problem over at Demora Sulu which has a similar issue... and it made me start to think;

What should be the rank of folks here? It seems that if you take last-known rank, then within a few years everyone will be an admiral (Or, in the case of Jonathan Archer, president of the Federation]]. I guess this may or may not be an issue (Unless you are, like I do from time to time, trying to find the picture for the engineering rank of Ensign from TOS and you can't find a single ensign anywhere...).

Anyway, I'm totally cool with a "Aabh, this isn't an issue, go draw your comic and be quiet!" :D

Aabh 05:35, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

Aabh, go draw your comic and be quiet! :D Just kidding.

Seriously: Not quite sure what you're saying. You mean, why does every character end up being captain? When you say "folks here", it sounds like you're talking about users. – Sasoriza ^{Adm • Tlk} 06:13, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

I think you're overblowing it a bit. You're always going to need people of lesser ranks for captains and admirals to order around. So while our captain and admiral ranks will continue to grow, they will continue to be out paced by cats for the lower ranks. You only need one captain per ship, but you need several lieutenants, commanders, and ensigns to get things done.

As for rank images we have plenty of articles just with rank images, plus about a thousand other rank images still unused out there, that are designed to make it simple and easy to locate images for ranks from all eras...so I don't see how finding rank images can be that much of a problem. - JayLR 15:34, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

Well, see, that's what I'm talking about (One captain per ship...), There isn't one Captain, let's take the Enterprise for example; Admiral Kirk, Captain Spock, Captain Sulu, Captain Chekhov, Admiral McCoy, Admiral Uhura... None of them are of a lesser rank. But I'm willing to concede that this may not be a problem, unless you are trying to reconstruct the crew, I guess it doesn:t really matter, it just bothers me :D. But that is absolutely no reason to change it :D. Besides, I can:t make any good suggestion for an alternative, so perhaps I will just go back to drawing :D.

As for the rank, that:s a seperate issue, and it actually isn:t easy to find them... I can find all the ones in Command pretty easy, but finding sciences or Engineering rank pictures is markedly harder (I:ve taken to getting the command pic and changing the physical name of the .png to engineering or sciences and hoping that works...). Since it:s part of the protocol to put rank pictures on all character pages, it would be nice if there was an easy to find, single location for the rank pictures for each generation (Because I:d be willing to believe it:s pretty easy to find Next Gen ranks, they aren:t color coded, but the TOS stuff is pretty tough to find). Aabh 04:19, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

I see what you're saying, Aabh - about the crew ending up being all Admiral's and Captain's and not being consistent with their ranks from TOS. I don't have an answer either, though. :-P I'd say, (from an MA point of view, for example) just keep in mind that the rank you see on the character was the last seen "on-screen" instance of that character. So from an STEU point of view, it would be the last seen "fanon written" instance of that character.

Then again, for the TOS characters, you could go as far as saying they all retired and are dead by the late 24th century. Thus, they shouldn't have any ranks. :-P --Hawku 04:36, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

<Silly question>You are looking in Category:Ranks, Aabh?</silly question> I always thought that we had a very good list of ranks. Though I only deal with late DS9 era ranks (which are also colour coded, only by a different system from the TOS era). - JayLR 05:37, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

---

I've been thinking, too, about trying to make them easier to find and navigate; I've had the same problem as Aabh. That's one reason I stuck the "rank images" link at the top of Recent Changes, but it needs to be more prominent. Just the sheer number of rank images on Cat:Rank images is daunting and time-consuming for people with slower browsers. – Sasoriza ^{Adm • Tlk} 13:12, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

I'd break down each rank page to even more pages, so that you wouldn't be downloading so many small images at once. Take Starfleet ranks (2373 duty uniform) for example: You could break that page down to six pages for each section (Enlisted personnel, Warrant officers, Cadets, Provisional officers, Officers & Flag officers). The page that links to them can have a short paragraph about each of those sections, and 1 example so that people would know what the ranks were going to look like before deciding if they wanted to go even further.

The same "tree" idea could somehow be applied that Template:Starfleet rank eras template. You could have a page for that, with some descriptions for each section and 1 or 2 examples.

And you could cross reference with these pages: Ensign, Lieutenant, Lieutenant Commander, Commander, Captain, Admiral, etc. - and have an example of each era/military section/etc. with that rank on the page. If it's too many, just break them down to seperate pages again.

That's my understanding of the whole rank structure at least. I could be wrong. :-) --Hawku 16:14, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

I had the pages split up into different rank areas and it took too much space, as did having the rank era images on each rank page. --Kevin W. ^Adm•Tlk 03:44, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, that would help a lot... Even if we seperated them by era, the biggest problem I've been having is finding TOS ranks... All of my characters are TOS characters, and I'm populating a ship (With non-captains no less, so I'm all over the board on this one ;) ), and that's where I get all flustered... To answer Jrofetas question above; the case in point is here: category:Rank_images (In the rank_images section of the Ranks) . Okay, now I'm here at the section that should help me... but there isn't a single TOS-era rank on this entire page... There are ranks from places I don't even recognize, but no pictures of TOS ranks... I guess I should ask; Where the heck are the TOS ranks? Aabh 05:53, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

TOS ranks (with some non-canon ones) can be found here. --Kevin W. ^Adm•Tlk 18:20, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

If the question is which rank should I show in the character box for a given character, then I guess we should stick to the rule that we don't put anything in STEUD that is not revealed by the source material. For example, Root is listed as crewman; even if I intend to give him a promotion in a future story-line, STEUD does not "know" this until it has happened in a story. --Leckford 09:35, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

I have created a monster... And a two-headed monster at that. Leckford, I do believe that is what they do here... The problem I was bringing up is that for the TOS characters, they are all admirals now (Or roughly admirals)... so it's difficult (Though not impossible) to see the original rank structure of the TOS era Enterprise... It's all fine as long as the articles are about current characters... but, for instance, in my current incarnation of my comic, my captain is a Commander... but there is notes that she will be a captain in the future (There is even a picture of her as a captain). The rank notation of Captain was added to her bio (Which is cool, BTW... I'm not complaining). If one looks at her bio, though... it could be thought she was a Captain in my comic, and not a Commander... I don't think this will be a problem... and I sure have written an awful lot of words about something that might not even be a problem :D... but that was my point.

I could mischievously suggest that this is an excellent reason to not include something changeable (like rank) in the sidebar in the first place. 8-) Especially as a lot of characters get promoted at the very end of their story arcs... --Leckford 14:09, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

As for the second head of this monster... Kevin, that's cool... when I searched for it before, when I was making characters, I ended up with only command (Yellow) ranks... I didn't seem to bring up the page you are refering to... I guess my only complaint is that if we are to follow some simblance of a uniform way of doing characters... we might want to make it easy to do so... maybe (Because we all know we just have nothing else to do around here...) make a little tutorial... or just have an article where all the correct links are in the right place for making a character. For now, I'm going to keep coming back to this talk page to find that link when I want to make more Tamerlane charcters... Aabh 22:25, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

Isn't that what the page Template:Character does? It as an example of how to fill out the template and descriptions for each field, including links to the ranks category. - JayLR 04:39, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

Yes! :D But... As I pointed out earlier, if you don't (As I didn't) know who "Kuro" is (And, really, who does? Oh... everyone but me... well...erm...), then when you follow the link for rank images you end up with list after list of partial or incomplete ranks from TNG era or later... or at least that's what I discovered... Could we please put "ENT-Era CANON ranks" "ENT-Era Non-CANON ranks", TOS Era CANON Ranks, TOS Era Non-Canon ranks" and so on so that when you make a character it isn't like wading through seaweed to put (Required, I might add) ranks to your character (Provided he or she isn't ultimately just an admiral... there, I made the two heads of this monster kiss... isn't that cute... and more than a little disturbing? :| ) Aabh 06:16, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

If you're publishing Tamerlane in black & white you could always draw up your own set of b&w insignia images to match. Or perhaps not. :-) --Leckford 14:09, 21 November 2007 (UTC)