First Officer’s Log (2012.0917): August 2012 Artemis Tactical Simulations – “Peak Performance”


[Above: CMDR Sung mans the helm station]

If you like Star Trek and you haven’t played Artemis yet, I don’t know what to tell you. Wait, I do: you should play Artemis. You’ve probably got a laptop that can run it. Find five other people who do, too, plus a TV you can connect one of the computers to, and you’ve got yourself a bridge crew.

Or you could find a friend with an office space, a wide-throw digital projector, and the best crew in Starfleet. You might end up making a video like this one with some friends:

And that was the FIRST run of the night, with the reckless and bloodthirsty Anthony Carboni of Rev3Games in the big chair.

Our next mission featured the crew of the USS Loma Prieta herself, with Captain Zach Perkins in command. I would give a complete roster, but the stresses of taking the helmsman position prevented me from paying attention to much other than flying the ship. Flying the ship to victory. [Captain’s addendum, our crew was: Cmdr Sung on helm, Capt Roberts on tactical, LtCmdr Hesser on engineering, Lt Dolgoff on sciences, and Lt(jg) Roodman on communications]


[Above: CAPT Perkins takes the big chair and CAPT Roberts sets up at tactical]

The rest of the night consisted of civilian crews taking to the bridge, some in various states of inebriation that may have helped or hindered; I’m not sure. But they were all awesome. We agreed we had to do it again.

And so we did! For the second night a handful of days later, we gathered some of the first night’s participants and more of the USS Loma Prieta crew, and made some important discoveries:

  • The Artemis missile gunboat is a fearsome engine of destruction and surprising vulnerability
  • Engineers make excellent captains but need some training on the use of shields
  • Space monsters can be an effective if unexpected ally when dealing with massed enemy fleets

It was more fun than we’d ever had. However. We’d long wondered what would happen if we could get another ship’s worth of computers together and try to fly two ships at once: would it be possible to double our fun? No. We quadrupled it. At least.


[Above: The USS Loma Prieta crew on the main bridge]

It turns out that having two ships in the same sector, flying under two different captains, with communications officers talking to each other via FaceTime on dedicated iPads, is at least four times as much fun as it is with just one. The fun expands exponentially (I would expect a third ship to increase the fun by nine).

For our third and last night in the space formerly occupied by Bolt | Peters, we once again assembled the bridge of the USS Artemis, but in the empty upstairs office, the bridge of the USS Intrepid came online. iPads with FaceTime were set by the communications stations, and our missions began. And they were amazing.

We were thinking about trying to battle each other, real Wrath of Khan style, but we had much more fun tackling enemy fleets together, coordinating our movements and battle tactics, warning each other when nukes were being deployed, taking turns flying cover and staging raids on enemy fleets. It was outstanding.

We said goodbye to the Bolt | Peters space that night with simulated battles and a lot of booze, which may explain why we thought it was a good idea to try something at the very end of the night that I later dubbed “WOLFPACK MODE.” We took four computers and made each one an entire ship. Yes, an entire ship: one person manned all five stations, switching between them as best he could, with the highest-ranking officer (me) assuming strategic command of our battle fleet. And we did it! It was not without its travails — we nearly lost one ship — but we emerged victorious after a lot of planning, communication, and frantic, frantic multitasking.

I think it’s been definitively proven: Artemis is the most fun any Star Trek fan with a computer and some buddies can have, full stop. But we may not stop there. You have been warned.

=/= CMDR Jon Sung
Executive Officer
USS Loma Prieta
Starfleet, Region 4


[Above: VICTORY!!!]

Away Team Report: (2012.0723) TNG Remastered in the Theaters!

For most of us, it was a once in a lifetime event. Not only to see Star Trek: The Next Generation on the big screen, but to see it in all its high definition glory – the way it was meant to be when it was originally shot on 35mm film in 1987.

The USS Loma Prieta had an excellent turn out for our away mission. Our huge away team consisted of 14 crew members, and nearly everyone was in uniform! We actually weren’t the only ones in costume either, and spotted plenty of Trek themed t-shirts and even a tastefully done season one uniform skirt. The theater was sold out and packed to the gills, but the Loma Prieta away team managed to secure seats for our entire crew to sit together. There’s nothing like the sight of an entire movie theater row of Trekkies in uniform!

We were first greeted by a TNG trivia quiz on screen, which was laughably easy for any card carrying Trekkie. But when the lights dimmed, the projection started, and the familiar planetary bodies of the TNG opening credits came into view, the experience was breathtaking and other worldly. It doesn’t matter how many times you’ve seen the Enterprise-D roll on screen or heard Patrick Stewart recite those famous lines – NOTHING compares to seeing it on the big screen!

Before and between episodes, the crowd was entertained by some never before seen behind the scenes footage, a documentary about the impressive undertaking required to remaster a show like TNG, and best of all some hilarious and revealing casting footage from the pre-production of TNG. If you haven’t seen the ‘Geordi jheri curl’ picture yet, Google it asap – it’s breathtakingly awesome.

The TNG Remastered screening was possibly my favorite movie screening experience to date (I still have the bad taste in my mouth from the Star Wars prequel premieres ), and proved to be an excellent recruitment tool for our chapter. Since then, we’ve added 5 new STARFLEET registered crew members! Why can’t they screen TNG episodes like this every week??

~Capt. Zach Perkins
Commanding Officer
USS Loma Prieta
Starfleet, Region 4

Away Team Crew Manifest:

CAPT Zach Perkins
CMDR Jon Sung
LT CMDR Tom Hesser
CAPT Erik Roberts
LT JG Ben Roodman
LT JG Jesse MacKinnon
CPO Tria Connell
EN Andy Smith
EN Amy Sloan
EN Chef Spencer Scott
EN Tiffany Bukowski
EN Shawn Alpay
EN Nick Leonard
Crewman Robert Barton
EN Eden Sherry (not pictured)

Away Team Report: (2012.0519) Maker Faire Bay Area

There is no better place to study what Earth civilians are making and creating in the 21st century than at Maker Faire—a two-day, family-friendly festival of invention, creativity and resourcefulness, and a celebration of the Maker movement. Ensign MacKinnon and myself, Ensign Sloan, beamed down to the San Mateo Events center where the 15th Annual Maker Faire was behind held.

First duty was seeking out the Tesla stage for a demonstration by ArcAttack! of using Tesla Coils to create music. It was a symphonic orchestration using electricity, the likes of which we often see in our space exploration and I was pleased with the representations these civilians concocted. We recorded some of the music created in the demonstration to bring back to the ship and share with our fellow officers. Additionally the center that contained the Tesla Stage was very dark and contained many glowing things, so it appealed to our inner teenage selves.

As a cyberneticist I was quite fascinated by the robot area, which was very primitive compared to the androids and robots of our time, but very fun to interact with. Some of the models we encountered: R2-D2 and other Astromech droids, Wall-E, a Class M-3 Model B9 Robot, and a Dalek. The Dalek was quite terrifying as it notified us of its wish to EXTERMINATE us. We blinded it with our camera flash and made our exit before it could accomplish this task. As we continued our study of the faire, we encountered a native android performing a tribal dance to music, which Ensign MacKinnon joined in on.

There was also a section of the festival dedicated to Steampunk, which contained a lot of metal, steam, fire and quaint devices. There were many different models of computers, and many areas where faire goers could create their own crafts and devices. We sat down for a lecture given by Mike Estee on The Laws of Paper Robotics. Mike has been creating cardboard robots, and cardboard-copters in the past year and shared what he has learned, and encouraged others to partake in this cheaper way to create robots. In another area we happened upon magnificent models of ships created out of LEGO pieces, one of which was a formidable weapon that the Federation would never approve of, called “The Deathstar.”

We saw many inventions involving electricity and many inventions involving fire. All in all the festival was so packed with inventions, demonstrations, and amusement that it was impossible to see it all in one day. We reported back to the ship before the Faire closed that day, and will definitely be returning again next year.

-Ensign Amy Sloan
Cybernetics Officer
USS Loma Prieta
Starfleet, Region 4

(Above: Ensigns Jesse MacKinnon and Amy Sloan are ‘exterminated’ by a Dalek)

Away Mission to the Maker Faire

First Officer’s Log: (2012.0527) 75th Anniversary of the Golden Gate Bridge

In an act of supreme cosmic coincidence, I happen to live in the Presidio right above Crissy Field, about a block’s distance from the Golden Gate Bridge, on the future site of Starfleet Headquarters and Starfleet Academy, but I didn’t attend any of the 75th anniversary festivities (exhibition tents! music stages! who knows what else!) on Sunday, May 27th, aside from the food tents and the fireworks show. Why? That’s a story.

The city had shut down access to the entire Presidio except for buses, taxis, cyclists, and residents who had special passes, and I thought I was going to be fighting rivers of pedestrians trying to get around, so I’d resolved to stay home and walk down to the field later. However, I discovered an errand I needed to run that morning which couldn’t be avoided, so I had to make use of my pass to get in and out. To my delight, I discovered that the system worked incredibly well. If I had a hat, it’d be off to whoever worked out the logistics of the roadblocks and police officers thereat — getting in and out was very smooth!

Armed with this knowledge, I felt secure in leaving later that afternoon to go see Men in Black 3 on a spur-of-the-moment impulse with some friends. It was great, btw, and if you liked the first one, you should go see it (nobody liked the second one; we can acknowledge this). When the movie was done, my companions and I reentered the Presidio utterly frictionlessly, the cops waving us past the barriers like VIPs at a big arena concert. It was awesome.

So were the food tents. I don’t remember the name of the one I went to, but I got a nice pile of tasty noodles and a big hunk of delicious chicken on a stick. Grilled cheese sandwiches stuffed — stuffed! — with bacon were also in evidence. There was no beer — no alcohol of any kind, in fact — but this was probably the one and only time that my home’s location would prove to be an advantage (it’s an otherwise lonely existence here in the Presidio; nobody visits you, but it’s okay — I like to think of my time here as keeping the place warm for the eventual construction of Starfleet’s most important planet-side site). It didn’t matter anyway, as the sun went down and it started to get cold, like it always does out here.

I need to tell you that the fireworks show was probably the best one I’ve ever seen. There were plenty of stunning fireworks in a variety of colors, but there were also laser spotlights, volleys of rockets, and showers of multicolored, coordinated sparks launched from the Bridge itself that boggled the mind. Just do a Flickr search for “golden gate bridge anniversary” and you’ll get some idea of what it was like. I’m sorry you couldn’t be there yourself, but if ever there was a good excuse for violating the Temporal Prime Directive, this would be among them. Real talk.

~Cmdr. Jon Sung
Executive Officer
USS Loma Prieta
Starfleet, Region 4