Basic Conception

The 5th fleet is a non comercial club with a large scale of interests, like roleplaying, gaming, internet communication. It is dedicated to the Star Wars universe, created by George Lucas. To those who have some experiance in internet clubs, the term of fleet fits best to this club, that's something between internet comunity, gaming clan, internet RPG and fan club. Members of the 5th fleet play soldiers of the New Republic some years after the battle of Endor. Well, that doesn't mean that members have to act military in any kind, or need to know facts about Star Wars, but members should behave a bit like officers in the form of showing at least bit respect while communicating with other members or visitors of channel and message board.

The structure of the club is splitten into 3 different parts. The fleet itself as the community of the club, the requirement to be in the fleet, is the wish to be in the fleet. Every activity and every organizational stuctures are rising from volunteers in the fleet. The second part are the subgroups, a concentration of a small number of highly active members with a special interest. And the 3rd and last part is the staff, a few members concentrating on special fleet wide matters.

The backbone of the 5th are the battlegroups. Every member is asigned to a single squadron, on a single ship in a single battlegroup. Some squadrons are limited to players of a special computer game, while others are limited to a special level of activity, but most are mixed with all kind of different members. Vice Squadron Commanders, Squadron Commanders, Wing Commanders and Carrier Captains are supposed to hold contact to the different members of their units through message boards, IRC communication and/or e-mails or each other way they are able to do it. They are the first source on informations of the fleet. Each member of one of the battlegroups is allowed to take part on each activity the fleet offers such as ladder games, tournaments with other clubs, roleplaying, ..., even those members with reserve status. Another way of proceeding in the fleet is developing each officers personal caracter, though painting pitures of the caracter or just of the uniform, writing short stories about a caracter or writing a biography of a caracter, making an own office page. After some time of experiance many members have the interest of becoming part of the administration. They want to create their own squadron with an own page, they want responsibility for a number of members. Theese officers usually have two was in claiming higher positions. The first one is to asks his line commander for an open spot or if nessesary for creating a new unit with a new command position in it. The second possibility is waiting till an officers moves down from a position, maybe cause he got a better one. In this case usually the best qualified officer of the local unit replaces him. With a higher position the chance of getting promoted increases, on the other hand, the expectations on an officer increase. here is the point, I like to mention, that the 5th is a fan club, and no military organization. A line commander can not really give orders to one of his officers, but he can decide, which members fill which positions. A member surely can deny getting positions higher then Flight Leader. Personnal management is usually seen as group level issue. The decisions about promotions, positions, asignment usually end on this level and only a few of them raise to fleet level issues. The Carrier Captain is usually suposed to make sure the ship page is online, same with the Group Commander and the group page.

Where the required activity level in the fleet is low, the subgroup commanders can request a high activity from their members. Where everyone is asigned to the fleet just a small number of high qualified members are part of a subgroup. Where the fleet tries to offer all activities subgroups are dedicated to a special form of activity. Each Subgroup has 4 levels describing the position within a subgroup, while an Officer in the highest level like Intelligence Director or Jedi Master leads the Subgroup.

The staff finally has an overview on fleetwide aspects that can't be solved in a single battlegroup. Like the subgroups staff members concentrate on a special fleet interest, but staff members are operating in even smaller teams.

Since the 5th fleet is a fleet of the New Republican armed forces, each member has a ranking that is related to an officers reputation in the fleet. Ensign and Second Lieutenant are junior members, Officers, that are just a few weeks or months in the fleet. Lieutenant and Lieutenant Commander represent experianced members. Theese officers have proved their qualities more then one time. Commanders and Captains are Veterans, they are members for a long time, took part on plenty of activities. Many of the greatest heros of the Rebel Alliance were Commanders or Captains. Commodores and Rear Admirals are old men, standing on bridges of capital spaceships. It's not easy to get his ranking, members are not only supposed to do a lot in the fleet, no they need to do a lot for the fleet. Vice Admiral and Admiral are boss rankings. This ranks are reserved to high commanders. Officers not only need to be active member of the 5th for years, they also need to have shown loyality and dedication to the club. Admiral is the highest ranking in the 5th, just members with the highest qualifications and biggest skills get this ranking. Fleet Admirals and High Admirals are heros to the fleet. Theese ranks are just honorably, an Admiral has exactly the same to say and can do exactly the same things a a Fleet or High Admiral. Theese ranks are just given to officers who did a heroicale deed for the 5th once in his career, well a High Admiralwould have to do 2 heroicale deeds in this case, one for the promotion to Fleet Admiral, and one for the promotion to High Admiral, butthere is no need to got too far in to details here. Finally Grand Admirals and familiar ranks are remnants of the Imperial times of the 5th. The meaning of Grand Admiral in the New Republic is totally different to original Imperial one. In the modern 5th Grand Admiral is not more then an Admiral with an additional dot on the ranking emblem. Grand Admirals are usually the founders of the fleets the Imperial 5th and the Naval Headquater got created of.