Academy Setting

This page contains a little bit of background information about the IC Setting of the Academy within Starfleet: The First Era.

From an IC point of view, Starfleet Academy is a new entity in many ways, most of the higher ranked officers were already commissioned officers in Earth military, and were chosen for space duties. These officers then went through extra/new training to be qualified to go into space and on to the NX class ships or were working on the NX projects. In some ways it is comparable to the way NASA has been training astronauts from the various nationalities. Here we have an Academy that takes on a limited number of Officer Candidates that applied directly and do not have an Officer's Commission yet, and they also take on Officers that were put forward by the various military services on Earth for space duties because of their exceptional skills in specific areas that makes them suitable for these type of duties.

Officer Candidates have IC a 4 Year training program, which is completed on Jupiter Station. That means when your character refers to attending Starfleet Academy, it means 3.5 years spent mainly on Earth, and expect small class sizes and an elite corps of students, some of these can vary in age and experience. As time goes on, and Starfleet's numbers and the number of ships increase, Starfleet Academy will evolve with it towards where it is as we know it in the 23rd and 24th century, where they accept Officer Candidates only and train them from scratch and who upon completion receive their Commission.

Like Officers, Enlisted personnel will get their basic training on Earth, and complete their training on Jupiter Station. Their training programs are generally a lot shorter and more specific, however some of the basics about Space and Starships will be similar.

For Andorian, Vulcan, or Denobulan characters, they join our ships on the Alien Officer Exchange program. They also take part in the final stages of the Starfleet training at Jupiter Station. This is to familiarise them with the Starfleet systems, emergency procedures, the Earth technology on the ships etc.

The Jupiter Station Training facility was created so that the final training was as realistic as possible, and would prepare the recruits for deep space assignments. The Faculty has its own training ship, the Atlantis, available as well.