Lesson 06-ST: Departments

SECTION 5: SECURITY / TACTICAL

Who in the Star Trek shows to watch for clues or examples:
Worf, Tasha Yar, Chekov, Tuvok, Odo, Malcolm Reed

SECURITY Responsibilities:
All internal security on board. Responsible for handling intruders, supervising security on away teams, etc.

Sim: The Security Officers should work on all aspects of security on the ship including registering weapons, upkeep of the brig, providing security for guests, etc.

NOTE: It is not unusual for ships to have officers serving as a combination of security/tactical.

TACTICAL Responsibilities:
In charge of shipwide defense. Phasers, Photon Torpedoes, shields. Also tractor beams, Damage Reports, and Communications (Tactical can share these duties with the Ops Manager).

Sim: This is one of the more exciting positions on the ship because Tactical is involved with the action packed Starship battles. The Tactical Officers should be suspicious about every unknown vessel that is contacted.

Lecture

A security officer is there to safeguard the citizens of the Federation and the interests of Starfleet. That means his job is that of any other officer on board: exploration and diplomacy, for those are the interests of Starfleet. Exploration, cultural interaction, and diplomacy cannot be carried out under threat of force, meaning a Starfleet security officer should never consider violence or force as an option. Therefore, never wear a phaser.

With violence and force removed from a security officer's job description, agression, strength, and the ability to kill are also no longer important for a security officer. What a security officer DOES need is the ability to foresee a problem and avoid it. He needs to be able to think on his feet if a problem DOES arise to figure out a peaceful, effective solution to the situation at hand. These demands on a security officer require an intricate knowledge of the scenario AND the people involved. You must know the problem you're dealing with inside and out before you enter. If you don't have vital knowledge, you must ask questions until you find it. This takes time, but it's better than having a mission go bad. You must run through all possible outcomes, all possible twists the game master can throw in, and you must be prepared for all of them, or find ways to prevent them. And you must know how the people involved will respond, what they are capable of.

This brings us to our second set of requirements: The ability to anticipate and prevent problems, and the ability to understand human behavior. The first can only be gained through experience, hopefully under the guidance of a good Chief of Security. The second can be gained by taking the counseling class, or just observing life around you with an eye for detail.

Nowhere in any of this is a phaser required. So, don't wear a phaser unless it's called for on the mission.(See a recurring theme?). When you do have to wear a weapon you have the following to choose from:

Your first choice is, of course, the Type I phaser. It is a small, low-powered number. Small enough to be easily concealed without any revealing lumps, but packing enough power to stun an unruly guest. This phaser is usually only used for backup purposes, to suplement the larger, but less-stylish Type II phaser.

The Type II phaser is everybody's favorite for playing cowboys. It rests in a holster, and has a pistol grip. Its levels of power range from light stun, which gives an amazingly relaxing tingly sensation all up and down the body, to level 16, which melts rock into lava.

The Type III phasers are a little too large for most occasions.. They are usually manufactured in rifle form. Their cousins, the Type III-A compression phaser rifle, are even more powerful.

Though not standard issue, some officers HAVE been known to carry archaic hand-to- hand combat weaponry. Their effectiveness varies on whether or not your foe has a phaser with which to melt you into the carpetting. But, all security officers should remember that weapons in these instances are purely ceremonial.

What Do All Those Buttons on the Tactical Panel Do?

Security officers often must serve at the tactical station on the bridge. This means you are at the complex nerve-center of all of the ship's weapons. It also means you have to spend your entire eight hour shift standing. This particular job is more boring than you'd think. Most of the time the ship is scanning nebulae or planets, and so torpedoes aren't really useful for anything.

Communications: All external communications are handled through tactical (because otherwise the security officer working there would REALLY go nuts with boredom). This includes hails from planets and ships, as well as regular updates from Starfleet (which may or may not have information useful to the sim, so look into these).

Phasers: The standard energy weapon on Starfleet ships. They come in two varieties: Beam and pulse. Phaser beams are exactly what you see the Enterprise-D using. Pulse is what the Defiant uses. They vary in that pulse phasers deliver all of their power in one burst, rather than a drawn out beam, but pulse phasers can only be shot forward.

Torpedoes: As many as ten torpedoes can be loaded to a standard torpedo tube, and shot either at a single target or in a spread across a target zone. Most ships still use photon torpedoes, though warships are being outfitted with quantum torpedoes. Quantum torpedoes have a higher yield. How? We don't know. Torpedoes are both more powerful than phasers and can be fired at warp speeds (phasers are essentially beams of light, they can't go faster than light).

Security Officers are the ship's police force. They are responsible for insuring the safety of the people on board the ship as well as the structure of the ship. In the sim you should be making sure the ship's vital systems are safe from physical or electronic assault. You should be making sure the ship's crew and families are safe from assault.

Security officers are the CO's body guard, the brig's jailors, the guards for prisoner transfers, the investigators of crimes, the maintainers of peace and happiness on board the ship. On top of that, they must be tactical geniuses for when the ship DOES enter combat (Try researching military history and basic military strategy), and knowledgeable about all tactical systems (we recommend studying the specs for your ship and the Star Trek technical manuals). So, when the sim does not directly call for your assistance, your character will still have a dozen other tasks, making sure the ship and its people are safe, and the ship and yourself are prepared for the next conflict (take some time to study a martial art, if you get bored, box with a fellow character in the holodeck).

A quick side note:
If you can play an alien character (Vulcan, Klingon, Ferengi, whatever) really as an alien, and not as a human with some added power, that's good. But far too many people play Vulcans with emotions or Klingons who fit in perfectly with the humans around them. These are the sign of a poor roleplayer, and will get you no respect. Super characters are unwanted, and destroy the sim by giving the character the ability to magically save the day. That only happens in the movies, and this is not the movies. Not even a TV episode. I recommend you start off with human characters, try to face the challenges with the gifts a human has: intelligence. Then you can move on to characters who have advantages over humans, but make sure you include disadvantages to balance the character. And, ah, because humans are intelligent, you really don't need to carry a phaser.

BATTLES

Up to this point, I've said you should avoid wearing a phaser. But, what if you get into a gunfight? Then what? Surely you'll want a phaser so you don't end up shot, right? Wrong. If you end up in a gunfight, you've already failed in your duties to promote the interests of Starfleet. Gunfights should be avoided at all cost. If you find yourself under phaser fire, don't shoot back, you'll only give away your position and make it really easy for the other guys to figure out where to shoot you (This is part of Murphy's Law: Never share a foxhole with a man braver than you). Take cover until you can figure out a way around the guy with the gun, then go there. There's always an air vent in the ground or ship's transporter or something.

As anybody who's watched the original Star Trek knows Captain Kirk went up against an armed Gorn without a phaser (but a fortune's worth of precious gems) and still saved the day. Why? Because Captain Kirk couldn't just shoot the Gorn and be done with it. He used his wits. Shooting people with phasers is BORING. Outsmarting them makes the sim really interesting.

Much like Captain Kirk's cunning made the episode pretty sweet to watch, a security officer who uses his mind instead of his fists or his phaser will make the sim more enjoyable for all involved.

War is hell. You are a human being (unless you insisted on playing an alien character), you have feelings and sympathy towards your fellow human beings. If you kill somebody, it WILL affect you. So, after you've had your shoot out (which you shouldn't have been in in the first place), write about the stresses of being under fire, the stress of shooting somebody, of seeing people die. You're a human being, you're thinking and feeling things.

Similarly, at all times you should be thinking and feeling things. Write about that. Commanding officers LOVE that kind of stuff. Even if you're sitting there guarding the brig, SOMETHING is going through your mind, so write about it.

Lesson 06-ST will be continued on the next page:
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