Line Officer Exam

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The Line Officer Exam is designed to begin command training and preparation for junior officers. The testing process will examine the character's skills and abilities and, if the character passes, qualify them to command away missions or take charge in emergencies.

Line status is not restricted by position, but by department and rank. Position, however, is restricted by line status. The details are as follows:

  • Any Allied officer may, at the rank of LTJG or higher if in Command, Engineering, Operations, or Security, or at the rank of LT or higher in Science or Medical, request to be line certified. More on the actual process below, however.
  • You must have previously earned line status to transfer into the Operations, Engineering, or Security Department Head or Deputy Department Head positions, to the Science Department Head position, or to the Command Branch positions of Senior Intelligence Officer, First Contact Specialist, Senior Intelligence Officer, Flight Wing Commander, Rapid Response Officer, Training Officer, or Mission Specialist. You will not be allowed to earn your line status for these positions 'in play' after transferring to them, and having line status will be considered a requirement for moving into the position.
  • Since only Department Head characters are permitted to enter the game by application with line status already on their character sheet, this means that all of the above positions (except for DHs) effectively become 'promote from within' gigs. You cannot apply for any of the above positions directly from chargen except by the special, 'feature-level' application process for Department Heads.
  • You must have line status to reach the rank of Lieutenant Commander in the Command, Engineering, Operations, or Security branches, or the rank of Commander in the Science or Medical branches. This will include transfers. If you've reached Lieutenant Commander as a blueshirt without earning line status, you will not be permitted to transfer into a redshirt or yellowshirt branch without earning that line status.


Contents

How to Obtain Your Line Officer Qualification

  • When you feel you're ready to take the exam, you tell your section head or department head.
  • That officer will open up a TRAIN bucket job, to which, at first, you will have access. In that TRAIN bucket job, Station Command will name between three and seven reviewer/interviewers. Those people will be drawn from three categories -- Senior Command (CO, XO, 2O), Departmental Staff (your DH and other peers and superiors, but never subordinates, in the department), and Miscellaneous Professional Development Staff (Training Officer, Crew Management Officer, Counseling staff). At least one from each category will be represented. Depending on the sparseness of your record, Station Command might mandate more than one from each category -- if you've been around a very short while, in comparison, and have not demonstrated a certain level of activity and leadership, this will be a near-certainty.
  • Once you have been interviewed by each of these officers -- and here, it will be noted, the affirmative and active duty is on you, the petitioner, to set up and attend these interviews -- the TRAIN bucket job which keeps track of who your interviewers are shall be locked from further access by you, so that the interviewers can then arrange to meet, or to discuss in a limited time frame within the +report itself, their impressions of you, and of whether you meet the standards of leadership and maturity Station Command requires. For this process, not only will you be locked out of the TRAIN bucket, but so will everyone who is not an interviewer, or Station Command -- the report will be raised to Level 7 Clearance and access given only to your interviewers, and these locks will remain ICly in force even after the report is closed and moves to the archives, so that while you might be able to see the report OOCly from the archives, you will never have, nor be allowed to act, on IC knowledge of it.
  • If you are denied at this stage, due to the underwhelmed judgement of the interviewing panel, you will be allowed to petition again in three months, or following your next promotion or transfer of billet, whichever comes sooner.
  • Once an LOE testing phase is approved (i.e., the player has moved past the 'IC approval from the review panel' phase), the officer requesting LOE testing will be advised formally that he has been approved to take the test and must schedule that test with an appropriate proctor. The officer will file a report requesting a test with the primary proctor -- their department head, or, if they are a command branch officer, their section head if they do not report directly to the 2O, XO, or CO (who would be their 'department head'). The primary proctor will have 3 days to plan a schedule, and 10 days to schedule and complete, at least the first set of tests for the requesting officer; if they miss either deadline, the request escalates to the next appropriate officer (up the chain of command) who can proctor, and the deadline begins anew from there.
  • From the time the player of an officer requesting line testing formally makes the post-review panel request to schedule the core and conflict tests, their sheet is considered 'locked' to both automated XP room spends and any requests to staff to add or subtract merits or flaws, or tweak specialties or skills purchased in error. ANY EVIDENCE OF VIOLATION OF THIS RULE WILL RESULT IN A DISQUALIFICATION FOR ASSUMED CHEATING OR METAGAMING OF THE TEST, AND THIS DISQUALIFICATION WILL BE CONSIDERED 'WITH PREJUDICE' AS THE TEST WERE TAKEN AND FAILED.
  • If you are accepted at this stage, you take the Part I Core Tests in the manner currently laid out below, and in game canon. A dramatic failure on any single roll in the core test washes you out for that cycle of testing. You not only fail that Core Test, it's as if you used up all your retests, too, and you must wait for three months, or until your next promotion or transfer of billet, whichever comes first. Otherwise, you are allowed three attempts to pass the core test within a one month span of time. If you fail all three groups of tests, you must wait the three months, etc., as above.
  • If you pass the core test, you enter the conflict resolution test stage. This stage can occur either as a set of very difficult +Rolls or as an on-screen field test or holographic simulation test which will either be run by staff, or occasionally with delegated authority by the XO or Training Officer, as an extended duty scene, somewhere up to 4 or 5 hours in length, but usually shorter. The live test allows the full use of merits and flaws and an actual team of fellow officers helping you out as your subordinates, but there is no guarantee that you will get the exact team you want. The live test is also not about succeeding at rolls but about gauging the quality of your leadership and RP, so it's possible to fail the objective but still pass the test. If you choose the +rolls, you can fail three times (or dramatically fail once) on the sets of tests, before you wash out, and must wait a month before trying again. If you choose the live RP, you get only the one shot, but, again, it is based on your RP. If you fail the live RP, you must wait a month (or two months if you want to take another shot at live RP for the test, since it's very draining and time-consuming). It cannot be stressed highly enough that such 'on-screen' LOE tests are at the writers' sole discretion. Should a normal exam be used for the second exam, a score of 8/12, like the first exam, is required to pass.

Line Officer Examination Tests

The line exam is broken up into two test sections, as mentioned above. The first section tests the day to day command skills 'internal' to a ship or station, such as how to administer the ship's business, issue orders to subordinates, perform command overrides of ship's systems, and read and review regulations. The second tests an officer's 'crisis' mode, such as their ability to handle a ship in battle, during diplomatic negotiations, during mediations between foreign powers, and so on. The mechanics are discussed in detail below.

The first exam is always given in a test setting, on a console or PADD, and a series of twelve +rolls are made, three for each of the four skills tested. A score of 8/12 is necessary for success. Note that rolling a Dramatic Success negates a normal Fail roll within the current set of rolls.

Using Courage

A note about using courage: Courage must be spent immediately after the roll is completed. You can not complete all the rolls and then decide to spend courage. In fact, people should avoid using 'roll scripts' to make all the rolls at once as this will void your chance to spend courage on all but the last roll.

First Exam - Core Skill Tests

Courage may be spent as normal on these tests, but because they are 'in writing', merits such as Charisma which only affect sentient beings do not apply. A perfect score on the First Exam should be reported by the Proctor to the staff for consideration for Renown.

  1. Administration/Starship vs 5
  2. Administration/Starship vs 8
  3. Administration/Starship vs 10
  4. Command/Starship vs 5
  5. Command/Starship vs 8
  6. Command/Starship vs 10
  7. Law/Starfleet Regulations vs 5
  8. Law/Starfleet Regulations vs 8
  9. Law/Starfleet Regulations vs 10
  10. Shipboard Systems/Command vs 5
  11. Shipboard Systems/Command vs 8
  12. Shipboard Systems/Command vs 10


Second Exam - Crisis (or 'Conflict') Skill Tests

The Second Exam cannot occur until the officer has successfully completed the First Exam, but a character must make their first attempt to take the Second Exam as soon as they pass the First Exam. As with the First Exam, Courage may be spent. Should the proctor and the officer being tested mutually agree to handle the Second Exam as an onscreen scene in the holodecks, merits and flaws which would apply in regular RP such as Charisma, Arrogant, etc., all apply, for better or for worse. If the two characters involved choose to simply '+roll it out', then merits and flaws do not apply. Bear in mind, however, that such OOC hand-waving is a sure sign that the RP involved was not worthy of renown or staff XP award. A perfect score on the Second Exam should be reported by the Proctor to the staff for consideration for Renown.

The following are each rolled vs difficulties of 5, 8, and 10:

  1. Conflict Test #1 - Tactics - Starship Tactics/Naval or Starship Tactics/Planetary Support Tactics or Planetary Tactics/Small Unit Tactics or Planetary Tactics/Guerilla Warfare
  2. Conflict Test #2 - Diplomacy and Public Affairs - Diplomacy/Federation Law or Law/Treaties or Mediation/Political or Persuasion/Debate
  3. Conflict Test #3 - Emergency and Crisis Leadership - Command/Combat Leadership or Fast Talk or Intimidation/Bluster or Security/Peace Keeping
  4. Conflict Test #4 - Any skill choice from the above not already rolled.

The proctor, as part of the scheduling and testing phase, will make a formal +request to staff asking for which skills from the appropriate list will be tested. Staff will determine this randomly and answer the request.

What Happens If I Fail?

If you fail at the interview or core test stages, as noted, you must wait a given time period, and then re-enter the queue from scratch, including at the approval stage. This means, if you pass the initial interviews but fail the core tests, you will have to re-interview again after the three month wait. If you make it to the conflict resolution test stage and wash out there, you can skip the interviews the next time around, but do have to retake both the core and conflict resolution tests. Yes, this means you can make it all the way to conflict resolution, fail, wait a month, retest the core, dramatically fail on the core, and then wait three months and start from scratch. Line status is not easy, folks, or everyone would have it. We have a generous XP policy. The point here is to make sure that people do not have line status until they are ready to have it, as both characters and players.

Allied Officers and Bajoran Militia

All Allied Officers at the equivalent rank of full Lieutenant or higher, and all Allied Liaison officers, will be considered to have line status when on postings of their home service, and will be permitted to test for overall line status with regards to the station. However, and this must be made absolutely clear, one of the standards on which they will be judged is their loyalty to the Allied Mission, and Chain of Command, of the station -- if you can't convince the interviewing panel of this, you won't make the cut. Bajoran Line Status, for Bajoran-centric missions, is much more relaxed and it can be assumed that any Bajoran Militia PC in the Commander, Deputy Commander, Company Commander, or Transportation or Monitoring Officer billets can lead such missions; for purposes of the overall station chain of command, the Bajoran Commander and Deputy Commander are considered to be line status eligible, but not line status required.

Important Note

Once you accept line status, you are under the positive obligation to maintain it. You are expected to sign up for and lead an episode, or at least run an extended duty scene in Operations or (with sufficient notice and clearance on an IC and OOC basis) on one of the station's auxiliary vessels on a regular basis.

General LOE Notes

The skills Planetary Tactics, Starship Tactics, and Security can not be used untrained, and an officer who lacks ranks in these will auto-fail the appropriate tests (if such are among the randomly selected rolls on the crisis portion of the test), so it's a good idea to have a rating of at least 1 in these skills before asking to take the exam.

Yes, we are aware that someone who blows all their courage passing the First Exam will have very little or none left to pass the Second Exam, unless they have good stats or get lucky. This is deliberate -- bad things don't always happen when you're fit and rested.


Starfleet Certifications
Training Overview | Certifications | Line Officer Exam | Qualifications | Command School
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