Congratulations fellow NT Employee, you’ve met the minimum departmental work hours requirement and have signed to enable eligibility in the NT commanding officer core, culminating in your assignment to an illustrious Command staff position aboard one of our many ships, deep space installations or orbital platforms.
There are many problems, mistakes and minute to minute issues faced by the Command staff of any operation, but this guide, written by NT’s Central command, H.R. department and co-written by a Kalavi Lumen, is intended to help you adjust from role the simple co-worker of your peers, to the respectable, sought after and leading member of your department or station.
Currently Speaking, N.T. Centcom and H.R. are still in the process of constructing and authenticating guides to the various department specific Command staff and this document is intended to cover the broader strokes central to all members of Command.
Personel Awareness - Who is where, doing what?
Being aware of the persons assigned to you is useful for reasons two fold, ensuring productivity and safety of your staff and the station.
As command staff, it is within your purview to issue orders to staff assigned to you with regards on what and what not they should be doing on the job.
Making sure your assigned staff is productive is often a great way to ensure their safety and the safety of the station in general, as thusly you can easily check your department’s work areas for the persons assigned to them, this is leagues preferable to running around the station wondering where they are.
You and your staff may not have the connivence of a fixed work space however, in this case periodically checking in over coms, preferably with amplification active, is often enough to get the job done.
“NT’s Mining core may be the most prolific users of this practice, but that shouldn’t be the case as getting an idea of where someone is and what they are doing can be surprisingly useful.” - Kalavi Lumen
Situational Authority - Pulling Rank with regards to problems
you as command staff have been entrusted with keeping your department functional, this means that sometimes you’ll have to step outside your department to achieve that.
As stated by Kalavi Lumen
"Firstly you need a proper reason to be stepping out of your department to get something done, if you’re C.M.O. then a fellow head of staff had better be injured if you’re ordering people around, but for the purposes of securing, stablizing and getting the H.o.P on their feet and back to work, you have a great deal of sway. the health and well being of a person, A HEAD OF STAFF at that, is the issue here.
If the station has a gaping HOLE in it, you as C.E. have every right to initiate a lockdown of an area to prevent persons from entering and spacing themselves and reduce the loss of valuable atmospheric presure, the structural integrity of the station is the issue here after all.
if Research and development is going slow, you as R.D can order afew things via your departmental budget to shake things up, if a face hugger is found or issued by NT for the love of god get some engineers and scientists togeather to BUILD some proper containment for experimentation this is a matter of Research and development its Your job to ensure safe scientific research.
If a person has decided to do a little break and enter or otherwise makes a pest of themselves in your department, you have every reason to contact Security and Co-operate with them to ensure these persons are caught and sentenced. keeping your department safe is good just don’t swipe a pair of jackboots and SEC huds because “they look nice”
If the reason you are ordering people around is directly applicable to the operations and duties of your department, congrats, you’re doing your job right even though many crew will consider this annoying.
Just remember that NT does not take kindly to the abuse and misuse of command authority, do not be surprised if NT H.R. Blacklists you from command roles for going outside the scope of your duties and training"
Authority of rank - The pecking order
the Following is as stated by Kalavi Lumen and may not fully reflect NT’s opinions on the rank and authority of Command staff.
"NT’s Official authority among heads of staff looks something like this:
Captain : this man has been vetted by NT H.R. and appointed by Centcom itself to ensure the station is running, his word on station is overruled by only two other forces, Space Law and Centcom’s own word and personel. He should have a basic grasp of everyone’s responsibilities and is here explicitly to cut through any of your petty disagreements in the face of crisis through rank.
H.o.P. : much like the captain, this man has be vetted by NT H.R. for “people skills”, which includes saying “no” to some of you people who are either innately too irresponsible to properly handle certain tasks, or have proven unwilling to accept additional responsibility and changes of assignment.
while more civilian and not sent with Centcom’s full ceremonial blessings, the H.o.P. second highest in terms of overall authority on station
R.D. : Officially speaking, the purpose of this station is that of research and development, Thusly bereft of any of the prior mentioned, the Research Director is expected to take the reigns of guiding the station.
C.E. : Keeping the structural integrity of the station is almost as important as keeping the people aboard it from leaking NT’s secrets and committing larceny of all NT assets, almost as important, you probably won’t be acting captain.
C.M.O. : AS IF YOUR LIFE WASN’T STRESSFUL ENOUGH! this may be a curse or a blessing but you are the lowest priority and importance in terms of Command staff the station, just focus on keeping people alive as you usually do, especially your fellow command staff.
H.o.S. : While you may fancy yourself the most esteemed, best armed and destiny ordained one to uphold space law and enforce peace and order on station, that does not mean you are second to the captain, heaven forbid the mindset of some folks in this position that consider the captain entirely superfluous in their presence. you are last on the list due to overlap in roles the Captain plays in space law.
Official order aside, Who is usually thrown or catches the reigns in actual operation and durring emergencies looks abit like this; Captain (duh), H.o.P. , H.o.S, C.M.O, C.E, R.D
Notice the shake up between official order and one that occurs in practice.
this is due to afew reasons, Firstly heads of staff are expected to stick to their departments and the duties those entail.
More often than not, an R.D, C.M.O, and C.E. Will throw the greatest commanding power to a SANE H.o.S for the simple fact their jobs do not involve protecting the station from threats foreign and domestic and they like to keep their plates to the insane levels of full that they already have to deal with.
Notice the Emphasis on SANE. if you’ve taken the time to ensure tribute to blood gods, random acts of violence and the gross miscarriage of space law aren’t things you do, this includes you, don’t be surprised if your fellow command staff decide to retain their higher authority over you if it does not include you."
acting and official heads - Keeping command bracket staffed.
NT H.R. has various methods, systems and metrics for ensuring stations are staffed to maximum efficiency, this however includes the appointment of Acting heads of staff by Command staff present
at shift start.
Command staff, sent by NT are preferred and keeping the respective Command position open in the manifest is mandatory if a department head is not present at shift start. But acting heads of staff are to be treated similarly, with some guidelines to be followed.
Recruit from departments ; If acting heads are needed, the place to start is most logically the department you are looking to promote an acting head for.
Ensuring loyalty ; any acting heads, unless needed absolutely urgently, should be mind shielded before being put to work in their newfound position of power.
Replacement and retirement ; take note command staff It is your duty ensure that acting heads of staff are relieved of their Head of staff gear, command permissions and reverted to their prior levels of access and authority once Centcom approved, proper heads of staff have arrived! Take note Acting command staff it is your duty as an employee of NanoTrasen to co-operate and reliquish any high grade equipment reserved for Command staff, along side any Command permissions and access, once a Centcom approved, proper head of staff has come on station, insubordination will not be tolerated. Proving competence and loyalty may allow you to retain some benefits per the discretion of the superior officers handling your return to regular duty.
Deviations from what is described here may be necessary, this is to be carried out at the discretion of shift start present command staff.
“Believe me you want ANY heads of staff you can get, preferably a C.E. , C.M.O and H.o.S. seeing as the other departments tend to sort themselves out. C.E. keeps the station intact, C.M.O. keeps the crew intact and H.o.S. tries to keep the situation intact, after those are satisfied, you’ve got surprisingly less to deal with on your plate and a much more manageable job you are less likely to fuck up all by your lonesome.
Who knows, maybe you’ve got some compotent Command staff working with you who know the round and rough shape of how to keep everyone from running around like chickens with their heads cut off regardless of their departmental positions.” - Kalavi Lumen
final notes and afterword.
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In the event revolutionaries have been confirmed, SECURE ALL HEADS OF STAFF, PROPER AND ACTING, Shit is about to hit the fan and some of you may actually want to just leave, others may want to arm up. - Kalavi lumen.
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The bridge is pretty much your second office, if shit is getting dicey in your department and you’ve already packed up every useful thing from your proper departmental throne room, or you just need to access some of the computer systems, most of those things can be found there or downloaded to a modular computer stationed in there.
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speaking in private is done easily from your office, just close the shutters and boom, you can now discuss in person or via holo-pad with your fellow command staff, or speak with individual members of your department in great privacy.
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Holo-pad calls are also great for projecting your presense about the station without the publicity of intercoms, radios, announcements or the NT net chats.
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disabling your PDA messaging may be good practice as corrupted data messages and yield serious software errors, which is the last thing you need.
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With regards to guidance specifically for captaincy, go read “Art of Captaincy, by Captain Sergeant Baron Gary Ulysses Johnson” it’s fantastic.
NT and Kalavi Lumen thank you for taking the time for reading