I'm just starting campaign mode in Deck & Conn, a game set in an alternate-future 1989, where the player is put in command of a nuclear spaceship in the Colonial Earth Navy. Counted among the enemies of the CEN is the Federation, who are communist, and value the individual over money (unlike the CEN and Earth culture, which value the almighty dollar over everything else). Total tangent, but I really wish I was playing for the Federation. I doubt that defecting is an option in the game, though. All that aside, the progress I've made in campaign mode is to give myself a name, and to start the process of provisioning and staffing my first command, a little corvette with a crew of 89. To do this, I'm offered a list of officers to fill my various open positions. Available officers are all human (no aliens in this universe that I'm aware of), and have brief descriptions as well as some stats, like how experienced they are, their physical fitness, etc. (and in what I suspect is the tradition of the British Navy, they're all Fit at the start of the campaign, in the same way that a seaman, once rated Able, was considered Able if he was generally able to stand on his own and heave on a rope when commanded to do so; yes, this is a very narrow view of British Naval ratings, and no, I won't be going any deeper on it). Each position appears to have a candidate pool of maybe 6 different people. The inexperienced ones have a "reknown" of zero, and the ones with some experience have a reknown of 20 or 30, with the ship having a total reknown value of 50. I suspect this is my spending power, so I can only recruit a total of 50 reknown-points worth of officers and everyone else has to be inexperienced. Over half of the candidates so far are female, which is a nice and progressive thing to see, but hardly shocking for a game put out in 2026. The temptation to create an entirely female command staff, regardless of reknown points, is almost overwhelming. 😁 :lesbian_flag: