Originally Posted by
Kineem
-1
I've never seen Tessa Hudson or your other character Ryan Sauderdale in a position of Command. I hardly even see you playing the game, and I play frequently across many different timezones. I can't feasibly advocate for your Captain whitelist if you don't even play Command on CM, and that's just the tip of the iceberg.
You're incredibly new to the community as well. You've only been around for roughly four months on Discord and you've only been on the forums AND active on the Discord for two months, starting in November. Your post count on Discord in the month of December alone makes up for roughly 3/4ths of all of your messages, suggesting that you've only been active during this month. You've got a whopping SIX posts combined on the old forums and the new forums. You're not somebody who despite their short time in the community, sticks out from the crowd and is talked about all the time, like Katashi Juro when he first began playing Command.
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The app is in all honesty dogshit.
You don't even properly fill out some of the questions on the app. It looks like you sat down, thought for a minute on what you want to put down, then immediately move onto the next question. In tandem with the generic and short responses to all of the questions, it's clear to me that you put pathetically little effort into your application or how you'd play Captain.
You're asked to "Make a list of links to all of your applications and (job)ban appeals", but you don't actually put a link to the dev app that you wrote and were accepted for. The old forums are still online. It'd take you a minute at most to get that link, but you couldn't even do that. On the fifth question you don't even fully answer it, completely ignoring the third portion that asks "Where do you think the Battlefield Execution Mechanic Differs from regular Execution and why?", and you do the same thing on the seventh question with the portion that asks "How will your Commanding Officer run his/her ship? Provide a detailed explanation on how he would handle situations that might commonly occur such as, a insubordinate engineering staff, a Staff Officer who cannot do anything right, and an Executive Officer who keeps questioning you", providing no explanation on ANY of these scenarios, or scenarios like them.
You definitely didn't read your own answers, otherwise you would've noticed the glaring errors in the sixth answer and ideally would not have any errors in the ninth or tenth. Given how small your application is I think it's fair to say that you shouldn't have this many misspellings. I would cut you some slack if you weren't a native English speaker, but from what I've heard, English is your first language. I'll admit this is a relatively minor point, but it's worth noting with all of the other signs indicating your lack of effort.
The answers for your app aren't even good, either.
When asked "How do you view the tool of Battlefield Execution to be used?", you comment that you think the MPs should handle the situation, but then you immediately say that, "however,... the battlefield 'exercution' can and should be used if there is an immediate threat to my command". It sounds like you're implying you'd use the BE even if the MPs were there and more than available to handle the situation, which isn't a good mentality to openly admit towards having (and as such very much confuses me when Bancrose states that you show you clearly won't abuse BEs).
When asked, "How will your Commanding Officer run his/her ship?", your response is generic and bland. It more or less indicates you have no distinct plan for your character and, in my mind, also shows how little you've thought about your character's motivations and backstory; more on that in the coming paragraphs. "I will delegate to the marines in my service" is literally just being a Captain. This is akin to a Predator applicant saying "I will stalk people, and then I will *laugh2 and kill them" for their quirk.
For example, MattAtlas in his Captain application puts an interesting spin onto things by saying he plans on playing a cold, calculative Captain who cares nothing for his men so long as they can do their job, and if they can't, they're nothing to him, to be demoted and replaced by a more efficient marine. That's fucking amazing.
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The dossier... The character... It saddens me. It really does. The dossier is pathetically small and almost no thought is put into any of the details. It's like a framework of an actual dossier. What does exist isn't interesting, isn't developed, and doesn't really make much sense, but it easily could've been so much more.
Tessa Hudson, first coming aboard this ship, notices the marines are genuinely braindead as they spin in their chairs like monkeys while beating themselves over the head with trays in briefing. Hudson notices how low budget the ship is with the Mark 1 Synthetic with audible motors slowly stomping around the ship, spouting "REPORT:" and "SUGGESTION:" with a painfully annoying shrieking voice. They see that almost everybody is a dumb sheep with no clue what they're doing, and still refuses to listen to orders, either due to sheer incompetence or just the plain principle of "FUKc AuTHhORITY". Hudson? She fucking hates it. She, in your words, "detests it". She then starts to think to herself what the reason for her assignment could be.
Despite thinking to herself that this must clearly be punishment for something she's done, even wondering to herself whether or not a higher-up was being a vindictive jerkwad who just wanted to screw them over with a shitty "promotion", the character then immediately gets over their assignment to the USS Almayer with only two voyages over a span of six months. Despite absolutely hating it prior.
Keep in mind, for most of this time she's in cryostasis (and unable to dwell on her predicament) as the Almayer is travelling to and from planets and stations. A CO with six months under their belt is astonishingly green, with less than a handful of operations led. She reasonably should only still be figuring out just how terrible the USS Almayer is.
It's a little unrealistic just how quickly she gets over it, but what really sucks is that the character's potential is squandered. What could've been built into an interesting character who has pent-up anger issues because she thinks she's "too important" and that her talents are being "misused" on a ship like this, perhaps resorting to the CL as some kind of pseudo-psychologist they can rant towards and occasionally lashing out at marines when a facade of friendliness shatters, is one who's suddenly and unrealistically forced to turn on a dime to become some parental figure for no reason. If she were an older character who served for a much longer duration of time this progression could be natural, but it's not.
That isn't even entirely bad. It could've been salvaged without making her into some old hag with a long record of service aboard the USS Almayer, IF you explained this unnatural disposition to the marines. You mention that the character viewed her assignment as some form of punishment. Why? You gloss over this and don't even explain WHY she would think that, which leads me to assume the character is naturally pessimistic or vengeful, but if you still wanted to go with the paragon Captain idea then this could've easily been a lead-in to an integral part of her backstory.
Perhaps there was a tragic operation where a previous Captain screwed it all up and blamed it all on the then-XO Tessa Hudson? It would've neatly explained why she had these negative thoughts without merely being a paranoid bitch who hated everything and simultaneously explain why she was so sensitive towards the crew while also adding depth to the character's backstory, but uh... Who knows, and really, who cares? It's never mentioned. None of her previous operations are mentioned, in fact. All that's stated is that, uh, basically... she decided to rise and grind. Took it all in stride. Now she's Captain, OORAH.
None of this is good. It's not even average. It's bad. Very bad.
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I understand this is the CO whitelist, however, and despite the increase in expectations with the new forums and new application, it's still definitely the easiest whitelist to obtain. It's basically XO+ with a couple of neat toys and privileges not shared by any other crew aboard the USS Almayer.
This is both to you, Cakey, and to anybody reading this with the desire to one day earn their Captain rank and lead their men onto the battlefield.
You don't need an unparalleled character that's beautifully designed, has a great looking sprite, cool AND interesting all at once. You don't need a perfect application with no blemishes or marks and wonderful prose. You don't need a fantastic, well written story. You don't need years of play time. You don't need to be constantly playing XO and SO, grinding out those roles to the point of boredom. You don't need to be some CM celebrity that everyone talks about and loves.
You don't need all of these things, but you need at least some of it, and Cakey, you have none of it. As harsh as it may be to say, there is NOTHING that makes you worth whitelisting as a CO. Seriously.
Start playing Command, start playing the game, and main one specific character while you're in Command so that it's easier for you to get a reputation or at least be acknowledged as a Command player. The next time you sit down to write out a Captain application, put far more effort into it than you did with this one. Maybe try DMing a Captain councilman and asking them if they have the time to sit down and go over your app with you, or try asking for help in the #whitelist-app-help channel (which you have not done for this application, checking your posts on the Discord).
I personally recommend asking for the app to be taken down so you can put a better one up at a later date. I doubt you'll be accepted.
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