On Captainship

[Kaed]

I considered making this a suggestion thread, but I will hold off on this until I get a better understanding of the reasoning for this. So, someone recently quoted to me what appears to be an 'official standard' for the duties/privileges of captains.

 

This is a reminder that the station's assigned Captain has full authority over the operation of the station. He or she is authorized to shut down departments at their discretion, reassign crew members, issue direct orders to all crew members on the station, and take actions within reason that may violate regulations in non-standard situations.

The Captain is loyalty implanted, and is therefore trusted to act in the best interests of the company, crew, and station he or she is assigned to. Any complaints or concerns over the Captain's decisions should be addressed after their orders have been carried out, and after the situation that prompted those orders has been resolved.

 

The way this standpoint is structured seems to imply that captains have absolute authority because loyalty implants are some kind of perfect, infallible system that absolute trust can be put into, for anyone that has them. Why exactly, then, are there still blacklists on anything not skrell or human being in an implanted captain positions? I guess I can understand vaurca and diona being out, because they are strange and alien in behavior. IPCs are still machines, and subject to the general suspicion therein.

And maybe tajarans, because they are almost universally played as emotionally unstable and childish.

But what about the other races. If you can implant an a sentient creature and apparently they are now unable to do anything that would damage the company, why can't there be a captain in one of them? Is the only actual reason beyond just 'muh token xenophobias?' There are plenty of non-human/skrell characters that would probably do fine as captain, but they can't be them, because... I guess, just because?

Maybe someone can explain this standpoint to me in a fashion that doesn't involve spouting memes about xenoscum?

[Azande]

Because racism. We haven't know taj/unathi/dionae/vaurca long enough to trust them with a nuclear bomb.

[ForgottenTraveller]

Captain's are the absolute authority on the station because they are the captain.

The implant is that they are reassuring you that they are meant to be acting in your best interests even if you are not fully aware of the context. The implant doesn't make a leader, it makes reassurances.

As for the speciation. NT is a human company so humans get to be captains, and Skrell are our longest found alien sentient species, and are seen as culturally advanced. They are effectively our most respected other alien species. Where Taj and Nathi are seen as backwards and behind the times. An the collective is viewed less favourably. Diona are weird, and we met the vacura less than a year ago canonically. An synths are seen as we made you we tell you what to do not the other way round. An 'rise of the machines' fear.

[Skull132]

It's late so I'm going to keep this short. But hopefully it'll help.

The short answer is that you're for whatever reason conflating the second paragraph to be the reasoning for the first. This is not the case. You should stop doing that. The first describes the power and authority of the captain, the second the loyalty implant. Though tangentially related, they are not dependent of eachother. If they were, they'd be in the same paragraph.

The first paragraph describes the absoloute power of the Captain: one that he would possess regardless of the loyalty implant. I've explained this on many hundreds of occasions, but the concept is very simple: you are separated from aid. ERT is uncertain and at least 15 minutes, usually 30 minutes away. Within those 30 minutes a metric ass of shit can happen. In a situation where the line between right and wrong gets blurry, it is objectively better to fall in line behind one man, the Captain, as one cohesive unit, than it is to resort to infighting. And do note that Captains aren't random Joes, they are trained for what they are expected to deal with. Even without a LI, you should follow your Captain unless there is outright fuckery going on that brings the integrity of his command into question. And no, violating a harmless space law article usually is not cause for "REEE BRIG THE CAPTAIN!"

The second paragraph outlines the nature of the loyalty implant and how to handle a Captain violating regs. I don't really need to explain beyond the fact that this paragraph, specifically the note of the LI, has little to do with the first one, for reasons I outlined above. I hope you can now understand this.

Now, here comes the kicker! None of this has anything to do with xenos being and not being allowed as Captains! At that high a level, what actually dictates who gets what piece of the pie is company politics. Obviously Tajarans, Unathi, whoever and their mother can presumably be trained to be a Captain. (Not exactly but if we're talking species level, yes, you will find suitable candidates from all species.) But you don't want to do that necessarily! Because it influences who has what authority in your company! And if your company is a nationstate all of its own, then this becomes a very important issue to address with a very clear cut line.

While I cannot unequivocally speak for the lore people in explaining why certain species aren't allowed to be Captain, allow me to give you reasons which I deem acceptable. All of these reasons are backed up by lore, mind you. (Unless I'm wrong, at which point, go ahead and correct me.)

• Humans are obviously good to go. The company has immense ties and power over human space. So keeping them in good favour is important. Which is why you want a lot of humans in high command positions. It makes good politics.
• Skrell are the longest xenoscum allies of the humans. They're also extremely stable in terms of politics: their last conflict of note, really, was probably the Glorsh affair. They also have bountiful tech! So again, cooperation with them is not only safe, but beneficial! Because the more you can demonstrate to the Skrellian corporations and government that you trust them, by allowing them into high command, the more likely they to soften up to you. And boy, dat skrell-tech is good stuff.
  
• The Tajarans are not only viewed down upon as pests in the higher classes of human society, but are also in the middle of a planet-wide civil war. A war which has lasted long enough that a victor is not certain. Not only that, but the regimes there at play are extremely political! This means that any addition of them to high command makes them outright dangerous: they will most likely already be involved with, or are going to be recruited by, the ruling communist party and then you have a pawn of a still-unstable regime in your high command. This is no good! And thus, you keep them away from shit like that.
  
• Unathi are kinda average. They're prone to their tedium of power struggles which never cease, but in a key incident, during the end of the first (or was it the second?) antag contest, emerged as a legitimate threat to human space. Their nation is viewed upon with caution as a result. This is not helped by their generally aggressive nature. There's also the fact that there's absoloutely nothing to gain from cooperating with them, unless NT goes full extremist and wants to powerplay the Unathi against Sol to gain power. But. Their deal with Sol and TCeti is sweet enough at the moment, so I don't imagine they're interested.
  
• IPCs are just machines. There's nothing to gain from having them in higher status positions other than brownie points with the pro-synth people. There's also a security risk: unlike humans, their memories are perfect. I imagine this makes their application to company secrets a touchy and fun subject.
  
• Diona & Vaurca are newcomers. Also, neither is really fit for the roles far as human standards go. Diona are too slow, they don't really have the imaginative spark that you'd want from a higher level leader. And Vaurca are literally mind slaves. So, no-go on either.
  

 

Remember when I said this was going to be a short post? Well, turns out, I lied. But seriously, your question stems from you not being able to view the bigger picture, lore wise. I hope I was able to provide that bigger picture. [mention]Senpai Jackboot[/mention] can correct me if I'm wrong on anything.

[Synnono]

A Thing

 

As the author of that announcement I wanted to post a thing.

But Skull posted a better thing.

Just read his thing.

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

There are no hard laws saying xenos can't be captain in Tau Ceti (except for IPC's and Vaurca). What Skull said more or less flies. It is the unspoken prejudice against the alien species. On an OOC level, this reinforces the 'lesser' status of the non-skrell xeno races. For an archaic example, look at African Americans and women in American corporations in the 50's - 90's. Pretty small slices of the pie. For modern examples, look at how hostile portions of American leadership is on the state level to the federal level are at the inclusion of Syrian refugees and immigrants in American society. These are loaded (and probably generic) examples, but they get the point across I think.

A Unathi could be a great Captain with a sense of duty, honor, and diligence, or they could be a poor Captain because the cutthroat ruthlessness of NanoTrasen's corporate structure would give them problems. They're also from a feudal empire that frowns on NanoTrasen and overtly flirts with NT competitors. All of these combine together to give NT's Chief's of Staff reason enough bias and preconceptions to make them not take applications from Unathi seriously.

Loyalty implants do not make you a good leader, they just protect you from mind control and subversion.

And for characters it also provides drive. Having an unreachable goal your character strives for is compelling. For example, my HoP Jawdat seethes with envy at fully ranked Captains, but he is stuck on his rung of the ladder beneath the glass ceiling. So a huge part of his character revolves around his deeply rooted belief that if he works hard enough and 'proves himself' that he will finally receive that coveted tacky blue hat and gold ID. If Tajara could just up and be Captains, I'd not know what to do with him anymore. Captainship is the end goal - where do you go from there, in terms of character development?

That's a personal argument, but it's an argument in favor of the current system. Our setting has tried to reinforce time and time again that there is a clear pecking order in the galaxy and within NanoTrasen, and all of our conflict comes from people working on embracing, rejecting, rethinking, or overthrowing this system.