Missions, Assignments, & Events

Each month, the ships within a particular sector (or other area of operations) receive and carry out missions and assignments from higher authority, and deal with events that they may be drawn into. For the purposes of these rules, the following distinctions are explained:

Mission

A prioritized objective to which one or more ships (or other units) are given to accomplish.

Assignment

A tasking that tends to be more open-ended than a specific mission (such as patrolling low-threat areas), and generally represents a lower priority to the overall authority

Events

An incident that may or may not have been anticipated in a given mission or assignment, but one in which the ship must resolve.

Missions represent taskings from higher authority that have associated prioritization and immediacy, and run the gamut of complexity from Simple to Challenging, with some considered Difficult (see below). Assignments are generally given to starships when there is no pressing mission objective for that ship. Assignments often incorporate low-priority and/or no specific deadline goals for the immediate authority within the sector, and are generally considered to be Simple or Routine in complexity. Events, however, tend to be unplanned and represent occurrences or encounters with which an individual ship (or maybe formation) must deal before completing the overall mission/assignment. They also have a much higher chance of having demands and results associated with the Difficult and Extreme complexities. (Most episodes in the Star Trek canon represent Events that occur to the heroes.)

Complexity

Missions and Events tend to be described by the level of complexity of the associated task or incident, of which there are five levels:

• Simple
• Routine
• Challenging
• Difficult
• Extreme

Assignments are generally assigned with the presumption that the tasking will either be Simple or Routine in nature, with little chance of increasing complexity. However, ships both on missions and assignments may encounter an unplanned Event that provides an incident with a complexity completely unrelated to the tasking.

Monthly Orders

How ships receive Missions and Assignments and how they encounter Events are handled both by the campaign master and in-character. Missions are received or generated by the sector authority, with any otherwise untasked ships receiving assignments, if they are available to receive them. Events, however, occur randomly. The campaign procedure for determining the number of available Missions, Assignments, and Events, however are provided here.

Each month, the number of commissioned ships (line and auxiliary) within the authority of the sector (or other) command is divided by 12 and then multiplied by the results of a percentage (i.e., 1d100) roll to determine the number of missions that sector command received from higher authority or generated for the management of the given sector itself. The details of each mission are determined by following the Random Missions rules. From there, the authority determines which ships are both appropriate and available to be assigned the mission and provides the details to them. The ship then warps off to complete the task.

All other ships that are both available for operations but otherwise untasked are generally provided low-priority assignments, items that were on the sector authority's issues to complete, but were low key, open-ended, or "nice to haves." Therefore, ships presently on missions or engaged in some other requirement (such as a maintenance period or port call) would not receive assignment orders. The sector authority considers each assignment-available ship when looking at the low-priority assignments list (as seen with the Random Assignments rules), as tasks the ships with the most appropriate ones. Note: assignments can be interrupted by missions, if the need is great enough.

All ships, however, are susceptible to having to deal with an Event, as these are unplanned (and often undefined, campaign-wise). Like Missions, the number of Events are determined by the number of commissioned ships (line and auxiliary) within the authority of the sector command divided by 12 and multiplied by the results of a percentage roll. However, before they are hoisted into the subjected ships, the level of the complexity of each Event is first determined, per the Random Events rules.