Star Trek online - Trek BBS fleet - Final Announcement

[T J]

Greetings to the few remaining remaining of what was once 300+ of the Trek BBS Fleet.

This fleet was created in 2010. Since 2012 this fleet has represented something special to me in Star Trek Online. It was the first fleet I joined and until last year the only fleet I ever knew. Last year I came to find out our once strong fleet had fallen to neglect and abandonment by the former leaders. At that time I took on the role of leadership doing all I could to revive this once proud fleet. I now realize despite my best efforts, as the fleet stands now the support was never sufficient to do that.

Even though that is the case I am still not willing to allow this fleet to pass into oblivion. Nor am I willing to abandon it as its former leaders did, and "leave the keys on the nightstand before I leave to turn off the lights". Instead I bring the following announcement.

I'm very proud to announce the fleet is going to be absorbed into a new armada. It will be renamed and rebranded in full. Our fleet has found a permanent home with the 8th Wing Tactical Armada, my home for over a year now. The 8th is the most organized armada in the game with way more than enough manpower (in the hundreds) to finish our fleet and to give the remaining fleet members not only a completed fleet but a large armada that is essentially a giant fleet! In my time with them I have made great friends and know you all will as well. Their website can be found here: https://8thwingtactical.shivtr.com/

The Fleet name will be changed to the "8th Wing Tactical University" The Trek BBS proud tradition will continue in it's new home and I hope to see you all there.

Signing off,
Fleet Admiral
Tomas Galactic-Roamer

 

[Scout101]

Have asked repeatedly, but can any of the original fleet members get an invite to the fleet again? You’ve booted me twice thus far, would be nice to get another invite so I’ve got a fleet again before you merge is off into something else. Don’t think it’s an unfair ask

 

[Azselendor]

Hi Scout,

I'm one of the Admirals in the 8th Wing Fleets.

Sorry to hear that you've been removed in the past, but to answer you question, Yes, any TrekBBS fleet member is more than welcome to rejoin and join any of our fleets within our community.

All I need is your captain@handle that you wish to add in game to the fleet.

 

[Scout101]

Awesome, thanks. Not active much anymore, but like to have a place to go when I do jump on. Used to run the place, way back when

I’m Scout@Jscout33

 

[Azselendor]

Hi Scout, just tried to send an invite to you and the game is kicking back a player not-found error. Can you message me @Azselendor in game when you have a chance? Also, I don't know if your handle as the #1234 code on the back. STO tends to be picky about certain things.

 

[T J]

Thanks Azselendor, I tried as well and got the same results. Scout, as always you can contact me as well in game for any assistance. It may be just a glitch.

 

[Bird of Prey]

Hey fleet, I just noticed that I got booted as well. I was a fleet member with TrekBBS back when it all started. Please add me back in - Bailey@Kahlua17. Thanks !

 

[T J]

Hi Bailey, I certainly remember you as well. I had tried to contact you a few times but as was almost always the case, I didn't receive a response, or more likely you happened to miss my multiple attempts at contact. At this time we will not be placing directly into the old fleet just yet as there will be a short period where we will finish the colony and then when we do, it will be repopulated and any member will have full colony access, everyone that wants in will be able to do so at that time. In the mean time I will send you an invite to another fleet in the armada and and you are welcome to have as many alts in as many fleets as you like, I myself have at least one in each and in a couple cases more than one. Great to see ya again and welcome home.

 

[Azselendor]

Hello and Howdy Bailey,

Welcome to the fleet! What TJ says is correct as we have a policy to not populate under-construction fleets. Our main fleets are all built by our armada membership and more than fully provisioned (even the KDF one). For the most part, any former trekbbs fleet member in sto has an open invitation to join the 8th Wing.

we don't have any special requirements beyond having fun and enjoying the game and promotions are merit based, not donation or buy in. So as long as we see you participating, helping and playing with others alls good and if you like to fly solo, not a problem!

TJ might've reinvited you back by the time you read this, so once again, Welcome to the Fleet!

 

[Scout101]

Thanks for the re-invite, got back into the (renamed) fleet.

Any way to get some of the old fogies flagged for 'don't delete for inactivity'? Personally, I don't play a ton, but like to check it out from time to time when the fancy strikes. last couple times i did so, I'd been kicked for inactivity again, so it sorta sours the mood and I don't log in as much for a while after that. Booting every 30 days just means I'll have to find someone and ask to join almost every time I play, which obviously leads to just playing less. Looking for the "Starfleet, Retired" rank where I can join in on occasion, but aren't expected like you young active duty folks I figure that as long as my name is still higher on the donation lists than most of the active folks, it's not an unfair ask. Tried to put something to that effect into my character notes. As long as there's no issue with cap space in the fleet roster, should be ok, right?

Also, we talked about it online, but still feel the need to defend the Oldsters on the 'neglect and abandonment' swipes. Gotta recognize that it's been over 10 years for some of us, things change over time. Different priorities and free times for the 28 year old me vice the married with a house and 2 kids me at 38. Hell, paid money for this game when it came out, it wasn't free. And bought it on a CD, if you can imagine that. Lots of those people have Beta Testing experience in this game. I'd guess a certain number of the people that used to play don't even own a desktop or laptop computer anymore, gaming has shifted a lot to the mobile phone, and STO didn't make that leap (as far as I know? they had talked about it at one point, but never happened that I'm aware of). Anyway, just didn't like the tone of the post (or several previous ones of the same vein). It happened, but even then, not like the Fleet was raided and run down, we turned it over to you (TJ) after you asked about it and few of us were going to be able to keep up with it anymore. Sorry it struggled after that, but it's an older game and recruiting is hard (same thing we found out). Banning many of the original members for inactivity (when roster wasn't full and forcing that decision) probably didn't help either. And then the tone changed when you were the only officer anymore and everyone else was pretty much limited to Ensign permissions. There's some blame to go around for sure, but don't feel like people did wrong by you and deserve the sniping that many of these posts contain. Best part of the original Fleet group was that there was essentially zero drama. Everyone chipped in, basically everyone but the randos we picked up had (essentially) full Fleet permissions, several admirals shared responsibility without any conflict. It was nice. I don't blame you for missing that and being somewhat angry that it didn't still exist like that. Eventually interests changed and people faded out. Tried to recruit, but people logged in less and it became harder, so more logged in less often. Really not much different than what you ended up experiencing as Fleet Admiral, with about the same result. You just turned the fleet over to a bigger group instead of a single motivated individual.

Either way, glad the Fleet/resources that lots of us put time, effort, and money into has found a use and wasn't just wiped out of the server, and glad that anyone of the old group that wants to log in and play every now and then still has a place to go. Most of us probably will never play like we once did, but it's fun to log in every now and then and fly around for a bit, wander the starbase, or do a mission/raid and check out the new content.

 

[Bird of Prey]

Hi Bailey, I certainly remember you as well. I had tried to contact you a few times but as was almost always the case, I didn't receive a response, or more likely you happened to miss my multiple attempts at contact. At this time we will not be placing directly into the old fleet just yet as there will be a short period where we will finish the colony and then when we do, it will be repopulated and any member will have full colony access, everyone that wants in will be able to do so at that time. In the mean time I will send you an invite to another fleet in the armada and and you are welcome to have as many alts in as many fleets as you like, I myself have at least one in each and in a couple cases more than one. Great to see ya again and welcome home.

Thanks. I honestly must have missed you trying to contact me as I don’t recall being reached out to. I usually log in late in the evening to do a couple of quick tasks, such as refine dilithium, run the current daily task, and if time permits I try to complete some endeavours (I’m only at level 60 there). I might not participate is fleet group missions, but I was a frequent contributor to the fleet projects. As with Scout101, I’ve been playing STO since I purchased it on disc. I still have the original box stowed away. Priorities do change, and I may not play as much as I used to, but I do try to log in a few times a week. I also have 5 other alts, but I mostly play on my prime character. Thanks for sending the fleet invite - I’ll keep an eye out for it !

 

[Azselendor]

Hi Scout,

Per my message in game to you, (and this goes for any and everyone) all you have to do is mark yourself as Leave or Exempt in your member comments on the fleet roster in game. After speaking with TJ, I made sure yours was marked accordingly in the officer comments. Obviously if you move to a completed fleet we'll have to remark you, but that's not an issue. We have a couple of completed colonies and I don't know if you want or might want to check it out or have access to it.

Members in the 8th have access to all fleet provisioned stores from day one (and we have way more than we'll ever need) and limited access to the fleet banks, depending on rank in the system as we normally stock the banks with stuff players commonly need, especially new players, until they can stand on their own feet.

The 8th wing is a fairly active system and most of our players log in daily and all of our players, with a few exceptions, have played in the last 30 days. We have a number of players with ongoing medical needs, business and family commitments (real life always come first, of course), play more than one game, travels the country, active duty military and such who routinely go on leave and come back several months later. But I will inquire about adding a Retired command to our roster tool set. While we do prune our roster every 30 days or so, our method takes into account a variety of factors from rank to contributions and more. All of this is designed to retain members who participate in the system and give them every opportunity to return to the community and also allow us to prune off the Lookie-loo folks who play the game for a week and quit for good. So I'd say, in your case, you've got several layers of protection against being pruned in the next roster cleanup.

We pride ourselves on being relatively drama free and a fun causal group that likes to help one another out and teach & share knowledge with new comers to the game. TJ didn't turn the fleet over to us outright, the 8th Wing is a tight knit community that enjoys STO and it took TJ a fair amount of hat wringing to broach the topic with our leadership at the 8th. He didn't want to see the Trek BBS fleet left to rot and die out completely. More important, it's just a larger group as much as a home built group. Nearly every fleet in the Armada is founded by and built by 8th wing membership and the 2 fleets adopted prior were barely a month into projects before they were adopted us. TrekBBS is the first time we've adopted a nearly completed system and TrekBBS has a long tradition. I remember seeing TrekBBS flagged ships in every map and quadrant when I first started out in the game. I want to see that honored and I'd be happy to see the old guard from Trek BBS take part in honoring that.

I don't know what happened in the past internally with TrekBBS fleet, but I (can safely say) and the 8th wing bear no ill will or animosity to its membership past and present going forward. But make no mistake, it is mine and the 8th Wing's (our leadership and membership's) hope that this will be a new start for the honored Trek BBS fleet.

 

[Scout101]

Roger all, and thanks. Not looking to make any trouble, and no interest in leading again, so you won’t see any from me. Just looking for a place to hang my hat on occasion when I dust off the computer and pew-pew with the old starship or surf on Risa. And again, glad people are able to take advantage of what we built back when we were more gung -ho gamers.

I’ll just be the old guy at the back of the roster that pops in occasionally to say hi and wander around. Would love to promise more, but work, travel, children, etc. speaking of which, off to Hawaii for work for a couple weeks

 

[Azselendor]

No worries Scout.

Real life comes first and we're not a group that asks or demands of people. You'll have a docking port waiting for you when you get swing by Enjoy your trip!

 

[Bird of Prey]

Thanks for sending the invite ! Received and accepted. Looking forward to this new fleet. I will definitely try to participate a little more when I can.

 

[Trek]

I was one of the founding members of the TrekBBS fleet and even lead it for a short time before real life got in the way of both that and being able to play STO on a regular basis. I remember the fun we had as a fleet on the early days. I've managed to get back into STO for the 10th anniversary and have been enjoying all the new content that has been added since I played last.
One thing I was saddened to see was that fleet had apparently disbanded (my captains all still have their uniforms) but I'm glad to see that it continues on in some form.

 

[T J]

Hello Trek. We did have a lot of fun I certainly remember. Despite a couple sour apples those of us left still do. Our old fleet hasn't disbanded, it just found a new home, renamed and rebranded but it's all still there. Most of the old fleet members don't play anymore but those that wonder in here are welcome join a fully staffed and provisioned Armada. We have loads of fun daily and are super active! If you would like to pm me your character name and @ handle I'd be glad to send you an invite or several depending on the number of characters you have. I hope to see you in game!

 

[Trek]

Yeah. I initially thought the fleet had disbanded when I logged on, but was glad to see it hadn't when found this thread.

I'm currently running 6 characters in STO and rotating between them (I think they were all part of the fleet back in the day). I'll drop you a message with the names and handle when I get home later. Really looking forward to reconnecting.

 

[Haggis and tatties]

^^I have actually got back into STO since this new update, quite enjoying it, the new story is great, but we really need more content more often of this nature, as the game in my opinion moved too far from story and too far into grinding mechanics, of course if your not in a fleet that grinding can be curtailed to a good degree so you don't scunner yourself with the game, but yeah i am up for more updates like this, long time since i have wanted to run all my charactors through a story arc.

 

[137th Gebirg]

Beware that (at least on Xbox) the new "Into the Breach" Event TFO is immensely buggy, crashing out if you have another account logged in before logging into your account. Make sure the first one is closed before starting into it. If you don't, the game will immediately crash to desktop upon starting the TFO and there is less than a 10% chance you will be sent directly into it after restarting. 90% chance that it will put you back in normal space, AND earning you a bullshit 30-minute "early-leave penalty" where you can't attempt to restart that or any other TFO queue. Quite absurd. There are multiple threads about this in the Arc Games forum who, as usual, don't seem to be doing much about it. When you do get to play that TFO, the strange variable speeds going down the initial Zaxxon trench make it quite difficult to maneuver. It's also fairly easy to get hung up in the tunnels and their entrances, which have a lip around the edge that your ship can easily get hooked on. Kind of a nail biter when you're trying to escape the exploding Voth city ship at the end. It feels like they really rushed this thing out without play-testing it adequately. It could have been a really cool op, but there emerged too many things that messed it up in general.