Phoenix Insignia

Phoenix has streamlined the Star Fleet structure, collapsing nine enlisted rates into three. “Master Chief” is used on Phoenix for the senior chief of a department–the departmental equivalent of the Chief Mate.

Harding somewhat reverted the officers’ rank structure to an age of sail model. In that time, a commander had a command; it wasn’t until later that commanders became senior officers aboard larger ships as well. The lieutenants were numbered, and the first lieutenant was his second in command. The Phoenix lieutenants are numbered, as was the custom in those days; Galens is second lieutenant and Karol third lieutenant, but only Harding actually cares. Athena talked him out of changing ensign to sublieutenant, saying the crew had just gotten used to ensign. The most senior officer after the captain is the first lieutenant, and is also the executive officer.

An important feature of the badges for Harding is that they satisfy the requirement of “a fixed distinctive sign recognizable at a distance,” making the Phoenix crew legal combatants and qualified for prisoner of war status. Officer’s badges are roughly 5cm square, a little smaller than modern police badges but bigger than a Star Trek combadge; enlisted badges are a bit larger.

Terran leap rings are less flexible than Star Trek transporters. One limitation is that they can’t lock on to anything that doesn’t have a quantum anchor attached to it. Interstellar cargo containers have one built in, and the badges contain one. Lose your badge, and you can’t just be pulled back to the ship.

The badge materials got a last-minute rework for this posting; after last issue, I realized that there wasn’t enough contrast between the Jolly Roger and the backing as there needed to be, and the pure copper officer’s badges got lost against Engineering red. Chalk it up to an early production run. Also, as Zifro pointed out, the badges are a little impractical, but I’m going to let the Rule of Cool protect them. 

The collars are the biggest visual change, with the addition of the holographic rating badge on a structure inspired by a faceless watch. The civilians of Phoenix’s crew are very used to having something like a smartphone available all the time, and were feeling the loss; Goodbody, Nivina, and Sister Hertha bundled the extra functionality into the collar.

On a Star Fleet ship, virtually any function can be accessed via a neuralink or tablet over the ship’s wireless network. The Aeneans put much less faith in software security, and distrust wireless networking so much they didn’t even install it on Phoenix. They did things by physical security; if you want to control the helm, you have to be sitting in the helm chair on the bridge. Since there’s no wireless network at all, there’s no way to connect a neuralink even to the ship’s library or entertainment systems. The same holds true for interfacing the collars with the ship. This is why you see a lot of people using tablets even though they have the other tools; the tablets can be physically docked and exchange data with the ship’s network. 

It’s actually possible to connect an optical cable to a collar, but it’s annoying enough most people don’t bother except to transfer their favorite music and videos. The collars and neuralinks do run an ad-hoc mesh network, which is what passes for social media aboard Phoenix, and Quinn and Anders have connected it to non-secured part of the voice & chat system so at least people can use the intercom.

Even with all the technology, though, the main purpose of the collar is to divide officers from enlisted. If you wear a collar, you take orders; if you don’t, you give them.