Halfway and Status Reports

Well, it looks as though I have reached the halfway point with the Officer's Handbooks. I have three more to write; Captain, Tactical and Helm. In the original Officer's Handbook, these three sections were the ones that I focused on predominantly, however after considering how I have expanded the Engineering, Communication and Science Officer's content, I feel that the remaining three sections can definitely be added to and improved.

After scanning through the original content, the new content includes much more information on interacting with other bridge officers as well as with the Captain. In each of the new handbooks, I have included guidelines for giving a Status Report giving details on the information that a particular officer should provide to their Captain. I have presented them in a hierarchical order, with what I consider to be the most important information at the top, and have tried to ensure that no officer has the same information to report.

The Status Reports are guidelines and recommendations, and I wouldn't expect officers to use them in a strict manner. What I really wanted was to provide officers with a clear list of the essential information that they should and could present to the Captain based on the information available to them. The Status Reports are there to make the officer aware of what they need to focus on a report. In addition, it meant the Captain would know who to ask for particular information, and by making each list different nothing would be repeated; conflicting information and excess 'bridge chatter' would be reduced.

I am not sure which Handbook to work on now. I am going to leave the Captain's Handbook till last, as having detail on how to fulfil the other roles will dictate how a Captain will interact with and use those officers.  For the Tactical Handbook, I want to include details on weapons and how to employ them to maximum effect against an enemy. Although Tactical Officer could be considered a relatively straight forward role (just point and shoot), I think more experienced officers should be considering how the can effectively disrupt and destroy enemy vessels, for example by manually targeting specific systems. The Helms Officer role I consider to be the more challenging of the two to write about. I don't want to present a list of manoeuvres and positioning that the Helms Officer should follow, rather give ideas and guides on how to fly the ship more effectively, just like the Engineer's Handbook. I never wanted to provide a list of presets, but give ideas and guidelines to improve the Engineer's ability and effectiveness.

Anyway, that is all for now. To find all of the TSN Handbooks that I have created, follow this link: TSN Handbooks.

Thanks for reading!