Guide:Avalon Fleet Yards

Avalon Fleet Yards is an ongoing open sandbox for members of Bravo Fleet. Open to everyone holding the fleet rank of midshipman and above, this space is meant to provide people with an opportunity to write character development stories and organic plots without relying on direct game manager intervention like a traditional RPG.

Set in the system-wide facilities comprising the Fourth Fleet’s fleet yard, Avalon focuses on this array of stations, laboratories, construction teams, research institutes, and other engineering and scientific initiatives. Characters may work in different areas and locations but usually live together on planetside Sato City or the vast orbital Brahms Station.

Unlike the slice-of-life or ‘Lower Decks’ feel of Starbase Bravo, Avalon’s stories are about the dramas and tensions of teamwork, rivalry, bureaucracy and politics between and within research or engineering teams and institutes. Where SBB members focus primarily on their specific character in a manner more akin to a traditional Bravo Fleet RPG, Avalon gives players an opportunity to develop their own smaller sandbox-within-a-sandbox - a construction team, a research facility, etc - for which they are wholly responsible, and tell stories both within it and alongside these fiefdoms of other players.

Initial Character Creation and Joining

Any Bravo Fleet member with the rank of midshipman or up can join Avalon Fleet Yards. It is highly recommended, but not required, that you complete the Character Creation Program, which can help you find useful resources here on the wiki to create realistic characters. We also encourage you to read the wiki articles about Avalon.

Character rank is linked to your OOC fleet rank, so you may create a character of your fleet rank or lower for Avalon. Upon joining, that character may hold one of the non-finite roles appropriate to your rank, such as a research team leader or construction supervisor. Because there are dozens of research initiatives and small facilities scattered across the system, members can jump in immediately as even mid-level leaders.

What that team, project, institute, facility, or platform is is something you establish upon joining. The main wiki article can provide inspiration and examples for the facilities, and the research projects are outlined in the Avalon Research & Design Group article. It’s fine to apply with a reasonably bare-bones concept, but you should write at least a short paragraph with the name of the team or facility and its purpose. Once you’re in the game, it’s okay to develop more - alone or in collaboration with staff or other members!

You should create a character on the BFMS, set to Story Mode and assigned to Avalon Fleet Yards. Then click here to fill out the application. The character biography should be complete (though you can still expand and develop it further later), and your application should include a writing sample of at least 250 words - this could be your first post on AFY if you like. Details of your assignment should be included as a separate paragraph in the writing sample field.

What to Write

An open sandbox, Avalon exists as a place to write about the lives and work of the teams and facilities without the constant action, activity requirements, or mission directives of a traditional RPG. Members thus have free rein to write as much as they wish and about whatever they wish - within the confines of the game. The advancement structure relies on a combination of joint and solo writing, so we encourage you to flesh out your character’s team/facility, develop stories around it, and then reach out to your fellow members to look for opportunities to write together. As long as you don't change the main mission/political situation or hurt anyone else's character, feel free to write as you see fit!

Avalon missions can provide further structure than that. Lasting some months, staff members introduce a situation facing the facility or research teams. These differ from those of traditional RPGs, merely introducing a scenario and offering suggestions on how they might impact your team or facility. Members can incorporate these events or issues into their storytelling, but they may also continue with their independent writing. Missions are almost never a clear and present threat to the fleet yards; they do not disrupt everyday life or demand every officer's primary attention. As such, engagement with them is completely optional.

The emphasis is on members driving this writing. You choose what story hooks to pick up on, who to write with, and how to resolve your plot. While you should never write something which ‘fixes’ the whole overarching situation without staff permission, there is plenty of room for your characters to have their own important stories within the scenario. Free rein can admittedly be a little intimidating, but this really is your oyster.

But this means you should keep the scope of storylines and posts relatively small or at least focused. People participate in and write on Avalon at their own pace, and the game, by design, is a sandbox for focused and character-based stories. The game is also very open regarding who can participate and who can write, and to accommodate this, no player should be put in a position where they have no choice but to write with a certain storyline or another player. As such, no member-created storyline should necessitate other players and characters knowing about it to allow people to opt-in and out as they see fit.

This means no plot should affect the whole fleet yard - but Avalon is a massive facility spread across a system, with multiple locations and hundreds of thousands of people living and working there. A lot can happen - even big, dramatic, or dangerous events - about which another officer has absolutely no idea or at least doesn't need to drop everything and get involved. Think about it this way: if your idea would necessitate one of the senior officers being informed—a major disease outbreak, an explosion of a starship in a dockyard, an external security threat, major damage to facility components—it is likely too big for a member-initiated plot line, so it would be best to ask about it first.

Remember that Avalon’s content is also restricted to 111 on the RPG Ratings scale, in accordance with our Content Policy. More information on acceptable content is found in the rules.

Teams, Facilities, and Staff Officers

While members join with individual characters on BFMS, in many ways, you are joining with a team or facility crew, or as a staff officer. Unlike SBB or other RPGs, the emphasis is not on how your individual character interacts with the setting and other PCs, but on the story of the work being done (research, construction, etc), how the people in these projects work together, and how rivalries and cooperations might develop with other teams written by other players. SBB and other RPGs are where you focus on only your character - Avalon is where you can focus on your own ‘fiefdom,’ be it a facility, research team, design institute, or small outpost.

The scale of this fiefdom is dependent on your rank, not your activity. A midshipman can only create a character who’s a member of such a team. But by the time you’re a lieutenant, you’re heading your own team or leading your own facility. Teams are under projects, which are led by commanders and up, while projects are under bureaus, which are led by fleet captains and up. There are dozens of bureaus at AFY, each with dozens of projects, each with dozens of teams.

If you don’t have the rank to create your own bureau to house your project, or project to house your team, that’s okay. Some existing bureaus and projects are mentioned in the positions guide. Some teams or projects are independent, with the capacity to become bigger projects or bureaus over time IC - perhaps, OOC, as you gain fleet rank! Other members may have bureaus and projects they’re happy to put your team under. Only do this with permission of both parties, and while this is technically placing one PC as senior to another, there is no reason for a bureau leader, for example, to be involved in the day-to-day of one of their projects. Working together like this can be a great opportunity for collaboration, but it can be as close or as loose OOC as you like.

Pick a team, project, or bureau if you want characters doing research or design work, acting in think tanks, or developing new technologies.

The non-finite facilities, likewise, are minor facilities a lieutenant (or up) can command - such as a lab station or deuterium refining facility - or minor outposts a commander (or up) can command, like a drydock or a small science station. These are not the specific, named starbases in the Avalon system, like the Jupiter or Presidium classes identified in the main article. They are among, for example, the numerous construction drydocks of the main fleet yard or the subsurface research facilities in Avalon II’s oceans.

Pick a facility if you want characters working to build, repair, maintain, or upgrade starships, or performing practical engineering tasks to facilitate this work and the ongoing operations of the whole fleet yard.

Another option is the position of ‘staff officer’ at AFY’s Yard Command or in a department on one of AFY’s starbases. This includes, for characters with the rank of Fleet Captain or higher, Yard Board Members. These are more administrative roles, facilitating the operations of the larger AFY facilities or its overall operations. The departmental staff officers are more likely to be future department heads or hold other finite positions on the stations, or various team leaders and administrators. If you want to play, for instance, a security officer having a ‘slice of life’ experience aboard Brahm Station, you can do that, but you’re more likely to find other people writing alongside you on Starbase Bravo.

Pick a staff officer if you want your character to be flexible on where they can be involved in AFY, especially if you don’t want to write a whole team or facility. It also makes a good starting point for characters you’re looking to write in a finite position someday. Yard Board Member is a particularly good role for higher-ranking characters you don’t want to write leading a bureau.

Finite Positions

Any member can join as a leader or member of the teams and facilities mentioned above. But there are other parts of Avalon, from the planet-based Sato City to the massive Brahms Station to the various mobile command assets around the system. It is possible for your character to play a major command role in these parts of AFY, but they are reserved for players who have demonstrated an investment in the Avalon game.

How to earn those positions is explained below. There is an expectation that those who hold these positions are interested in writing with and facilitating storytelling with others - otherwise, what’s the point of, for instance, pursuing the unique position of commanding Avalon’s Utility Squadron? While there is no activity requirement for these positions, we encourage members to take them up in good faith.

Most of these finite positions are command and administrative roles. While their day-to-day might provide plenty of writing material, their emphasis is on leading the major facilities and stations of Avalon. As a progression path, it follows more naturally from the non-finite facility command or staff officer roles described above rather than research team leadership and is best suited for characters who want to oversee the operations of Avalon Fleet Yards.

How to Write

The Avalon Fleet Yards staff will create a mission approximately every six months or sometimes for an applicable fleet-wide story, laying out the present storyline. You can directly post in this mission, either on your own or with other people.

It's considered polite to request a joint post with someone before you start the post, so reach out on Discord. If you have one of the finite positions, try to be willing to write with others as much as possible. But AFY is not like other games; it is perfectly appropriate to focus on developing your own team or facility, with more sporadic cooperative writing than might be the norm elsewhere. Again, check the rules on content guidelines, and the guide on joint writing if you need technical assistance.

Characters and Positions

Avalon serves a very different function from Starbase Bravo. While Starbase Bravo is intended to allow people to write together in a Lower Decks-style experience for slice-of-life and character development of junior officers, Avalon is intended to allow for members to write their own small fiefdoms within the Fleet Yards itself.

1. Types of Positions — There are two types of positions available, Playable and Staff
   1. Playable positions are the standard positions available for play by any member meeting the rank requirements for that position. They can be used for joint or solo writing.
   2. Staff positions are certain senior roles at AFY that are held by staff members, and which they must give up when leaving their staff position. They are used primarily for story updates that impact the entire sandbox, but staff members may also use them for joint-writing.
2. Available Positions — There are both finite and non-finite positions at AFY. Finite positions are in various leadership roles at the system and station level, ranging from the admiral in charge of AFY itself to the commanders and captains leading the smaller stations within the system, and by definition only one member can hold these at a time. Non-finite positions are custom roles that are created on a member-by-member basis.
   1. Finite Positions are listed and may only be held by one member at a time. Members meeting the rank requirements may apply to hold a finite position with a completed character biography and short writing sample.
      1. Finite positions are divided into tiers, earned through both joint and solo writing on AFY. The tier system is laid out below. Members who take finite positions are expected to generally be willing to write with others, in particular if they choose a very important role. Consistent non-responsiveness to joint post requests may result in a member's character being taken out of that finite position.
      2. Non-finite positions are described in this guide and members meeting the rank requirements may apply to hold a non-finite position with a completed character biography, a short writing sample, and a description of the unit/office/team that they are proposing.
         1. Midshipmen and above may write as a Science, Engineering, or Medical specialist
         2. Lieutenants and above may lead Science, Engineering, or Medical teams, or direct minor facilities.
         3. Commanders and above may lead Science, Engineering, or Medical projects, or command minor outposts
         4. Fleet Captains and above may direct Science, Engineering, or Medical initiatives
         5. Midshipmen through Captains may write as generic “Staff Officers” assigned to AFY command or to a Brahms Station department.
         6. Fleet Captains and above may write as “Yard Board Members” assigned to AFY command.
3. Character Ranks — Members may write characters up to their own fleet rank on AFY or to the cap of their position, whichever is lower. A character’s rank may not have a higher rank than their supervisor’s rank. (For example, if a member with the rank of commander has a character serving as Brahms Station Executive Officer, a member with the rank of rear admiral could only make a character with the rank of commander or lower for the Brahms Station Chief Medical Officer role, even though the cap of that position is captain.)
   1. Staff positions are exempt from this restriction, as a staff member with a lower rank may be granted position to write with a higher rank required for their position by the Intelligence Officer. (For example, a member with the rank of lieutenant commander serving as Deputy Operations Officer may be granted the ability to write as a Fleet Captain for one of the puppet positions.) This exemption is at the discretion of the Intelligence Officer.
4. Number of Characters per Member — Members may only have one character at a time on AFY per tier. In total, a member with the rank of fleet captain or higher and a staff role could have all three tiers of finite characters and all four tiers of non-finite characters, for a total of seven characters. Members can still create additional supporting characters within their team/office/unit/station, but these should be cameo characters on the BFMS (if they get entries at all) and won’t be added to the AFY roster.

Non-Finite Character Tiers & Positions

Because members can only earn finite positions through joint writing on Avalon itself, all members start on AFY with one or more non-finite positions. This is how we're referring to user-defined roles at Avalon Fleet Yards, in the Avalon Group, and around the Avalon System, which range from staff officers and team members to the leaders of small outposts, laboratory teams, and larger research institutes. Access to these tiers is driven purely by your fleet rank.

The difference between a finite position and a non-finite position is that a non-finite position doesn't have an impact on the rest of the sandbox or cause other members to depend on that member's participation in joint posts.

Avalon Fleet Yards Non-Finite Position Tiers

Tier	Position Type	Requirements
I-NF	Science, Engineering, or Medical Specialist/Team Member AFY Staff Officer Station Department Staff Officer AFY Yard Board Member (Fleet Captain and above)	Fleet Rank of Midshipman or higher
II-NF	Science, Engineering, or Medical Team Leader Minor Facility Commander (Sensor Station, Deuterium Facility, Small Drydock, etc.)	Fleet Rank of Lieutenant or higher
III-NF	Science, Engineering, or Medical Project Leader Major Outpost Commander (Large Drydock)	Fleet Rank of Commander or higher
IV-NF	Science, Engineering, or Medical Institute Leader	Fleet Rank of Fleet Captain or higher

For examples of position titles currently in use, consult the Avalon Fleet Yards BFMS page as well as the Avalon Group article. The following table has other examples as well.

Avalon Group Non-Finite Positions

Department	Title	Tier	Examples	Notes
Science Engineering Medical	Specialist	I-NF	Deep Space Scanning Specialist Impulse Systems Specialist Inorganic Virology Specialist
Science Engineering Medical	Team Leader	II-NF	Team Leader, Deep Space Scanning Team Leader, Impulse Systems Design Team Leader, Inorganic Virology
Science Engineering Medical	Project Director	III-NF	Director, Big Bang Project Director, Phase 7 Impulse Manifold Project Director, Polywater Intoxication Project
Science Engineering Medical	Institute Director	IV-NF	Director, Fourth Fleet Cosmology Institute Director, Fourth Fleet Advanced Impulse Design Institute Director, Fourth Fleet Inorganic Virology Institute

Note: As per the Avalon Group article, teams and projects can either be part of institutes or not. It's up to you. If another member has an institute that you'd like to write as a part of, you can create a team or project under theirs with their permission and if you have an available character slot.

Avalon Fleet Yards Non-Finite Positions

Department	Title	Tier	Examples	Notes
Yard Command	Staff Officer	I-NF	Staff Officer, AFY	Any officer not assigned to a specific role (Captain or lower)
Station Departments	Staff Officer		Staff Officer, Brahms Station Security Staff Officer, Phlox Station Nursing
Yard Command	Yard Board Member	I-NF	Yard Board Member, AFY	Any flag officer or fleet captain not otherwise assigned to a specific role is a member of AFY's Yard Board, a group that advises the CO and performs admin tasks
Facility	Minor Facility Commander	II-NF	Construction Supervisor, AFY-29C CO, Deuterium Refining Facility AFY-002A	Planet-side deuterium refinery Sensor or subspace relay post Class 8 or Class 7 Drydock
Facility	Major Facility Commander	III-NF	Construction Supervisor, Drydock AFY-21A	Class 10 or Class 9 Drydock

Finite Character Tiers & Positions

Tier	Positions	Requirements
I-F	CO/XO of Presidium, Jupiter, or Anchorage Stations Department Heads on Brahms Station	5 Duty Ribbons earned on AFY 20 Service Ribbons earned on AFY
II-F	CO/XO of Brahms Station, Avalon Prime Station, or Sato City Station	10 Duty Ribbons earned on AFY 40 Service Ribbons earned on AFY
III-F (Staff)	Yard Command Roles	Hold a BFSS role or Academy, Intel, or Operations Deputy role. Must surrender on leaving staff role.

The following table is a list of finite positions, which may or may not be available. The Avalon BFMS entry should be considered the most up-to-date list of which positions are taken and which are not. At the present time, finite roles have intentionally been limited to just fixed assets in the Avalon System, but this may expand in the future.

Avalon Fleet Yards Finite Positions

Department	Title	Rank	Tier	Notes
Yard Command	Commandant, Avalon Fleet Yards & Commander, Grazer Sector	ADM - FADM	III-F (Staff)	Also CO of Brahms Station if Vacant
Yard Command	Deputy Commandant, Avalon Fleet Yards & Chief Engineering Officer	VADM -ADM	III-F (Staff)
Yard Command	Commander, AFY Orbital Assets Commander, AFY Planetary Assets Commander, AFY Mobile Assets	FCAPT - RADM	III-F (Staff)
Orbital Command	Commander Officer, Brahms Station Commander Officer, Sato City Station Commanding Officer, Avalon Prime Station	CAPT - RADM	II-F
Orbital Command	Executive Officer, Brahms Station Executive Officer, Sato City Station Executive Officer, Avalon Prime Station	CMDR - CAPT	II-F	Only available if corresponding CO role is already taken
Brahms Station	Brahms Station Department Heads	LTCMDR - CAPT	II-F	See Brahms Station article for available roles.
Orbital Command	Commanding Officer, Scott Station Commanding Officer, Tucker Station Commanding Officer, Hemmer Station Commanding Officer, Phlox Medical Station Commanding Officer, Archer Station	LTCMDR - CAPT	I-F
Orbital Command	Executive Officer, Scott Station Executive Officer, Tucker Station Executive Officer, Hemmer Station Executive Officer, Phlox Medical Station Executive Officer, Archer Station	LT - CMDR	I-F	Only available if corresponding CO role is already taken

Joining Avalon Fleet Yards

Every member's first character on AFY should hold a non-finite role from the ones listed above. To join, members need to submit an application through the BFMS which should have at least three things:

1. A complete character biography, with at least some detail in all of the sections of the character biography (summary, personality, physical description, and history). This does not have to be a full, detailed account of everything the character has experienced in their life, but it should be a thoughtful presentation of where they are at the present moment. It should follow the Canon Policy. Members are encouraged to complete the Character Creation Program through the Academy first.
2. A short sample post of at least 250 words—this could be the character's first post on AFY, if you like.
3. An appropriate rank for the position you have selected—you may write up to your own fleet rank, but not higher. If you do not have the ability to set your rank because it is higher than captain, note this in the application so that a member of staff can correct it.

If you are proposing a non-finite position that runs a team, project, institute, or facility, in the writing sample box you should also include a paragraph describing your team/institute/facility, with details such as where it is located and what its mission is. Examples can be found in the Avalon Group article.

Each character you wish to add to Avalon must have its own application.

Advancing Character Tiers

It is your responsibility to notify staff once you have reached a new tier, by keeping a list of the posts you have made on AFY. When you are ready to either propose a new character with a higher tier or promote a character to a new tier, follow the above steps to complete another application.