Originally Posted by Archived Post

Actually, given how things are set up in-game, I tend to think of things like this...

Starfleet itself isn't what players play in the game...the assault from the Borg have put so much pressure on the Federation that trying to field the numbers of ships and personnel needed to counter the continuous attacks would drain even the massive resources of the Federation to the point they couldn't be sustained. At the same time, Starfleet Command has come under greater and greater pressure from member worlds of the Federation to station protective ships at every member world (the memory of Betazed during the Dominion War has not faded from many politicians' minds).

To solve these problems, Starfleet has reorganized itself. While the main body of Starfleet continues to follow their orders from the Federation Council and protect every major world and station, they have also created the Reserve Fleets, semi-independent squadrons of Starfleet ships under the command of officers technically under Starfleet jurisdiction but free to operate as their commanders deem fit to carry out operations Starfleet is too thinly spread to do. Such ships are actually privately owned by their crews, and more akin to privateers than actual Starfleet ships. Thus, each squadron tends to implement their own uniform regulations and deploy their ships at will.

Thus, yes...there is a standard regulation uniform (those you see on NPCs), but there is no set uniform for player characters because they have the latitude to establish their own regulations aboard their ships and fleets (within the provisions Starfleet imposes upon anyone who wants to be known as Starfleet).

Feel free to accept or deny the above explaination as you wish. As I said, it's only my own rationalization of a Starfleet where captains purchase their own ships, fly them where they will, and set whatever uniforms they want on their ships.

Originally Posted by lincolninspace

What about this era?

http://www.google.com/imgres?hl=en&b...r:5,s:20,i:149

Originally Posted by red01999

I like this.

It actually fits in pretty well with some theories/explanations I've come up with with the game in general. More specific to THIS, I imagine that Starfleet has wide swaths of ships under broad command jurisdictions. Ergo, while we are all in the part headed by Quinn, there could be others as well. This actually also helps explain why we're all VA's - very different organization under alien psychology, among other things (that said, I continue to wear my captain's pips and have the "Captain" title).

I think we need to see more rationalizations like this, because they can show how creative the fans can be.