Beam up to our Discord Server this Sunday, July 5th at 3:00 pm EDT (-4) / 8:00 pm BST (+1) for our 25th Anniversary Webcast Celebration aboard a virtual starship! The webcast is something we’ve done every year since our 20th anniversary back in 2021. It’s always a lot fun and adds a visual and interactive element beyond the typical simming experience. In addition to spinning the awards big wheel to see who will win real prizes, host Ken Gillis has a few more surprises up his sleeve this round. See you and the rest of the fleet there!
For the third year in a row now, we failed to publish a recap following the anniversary webcast with the list of prize drawing winners in 2025. So we are once again announcing them nearly a year later. Congratulations, and we hope you three have been enjoying your prizes! As for everyone else, someone, anyone please remind to announce this year’s winners before 2027!
First place: Elias Ford of the USS Firebird Declined Award
2nd Place, upgraded to 1st Place: Deanna Celes of the USS Washington
3rd Place, upgraded to 2nd Place: Dean House of the USS Sunfire
4th Place, upgraded to 3rd Place: Emilynn Dove of the USS Firebird
If you visited our site back on April 1st this year, you found this instead of our normal website. Needless to say, Ken Gillis’s take on combining AI and simming was hilarious! He seems to outdo himself every year! We’ve also compiled the videos here:
We did Awardapalooza. And we did Recordapalooza. So why not Commandapalooza? This post is all about our amazing Commanding Officers and everything they’ve accomplished up through the end of 2025. This is one caveat, however: We only have command records for Jul 2001-Dec 2003, Oct 2010-Aug 2018, Nov 2018, and Jun 2019-present. A few years ago, former Fleet CO Jeremiah Griffith gave us records he had saved that cover January 2004 through September 2010. However, they are incomplete and have not yet been integrated into our official record book. Until that happens, we have had 150 unique Independence Fleet Commanding Officers who have guided 58 different sims. And here they are…
They have led 2,361 ship-months, won 207 posting titles, and commanded through a whopping 64,387 posts!
By Sim:
Active sims in bold.
By Commanding Officer:
Commanding Officers currently in command are in bold.
Only the top 25 and active COs are tagged.
What a history! What a legacy! What a group put outstanding role players and leaders do we have! There certainly is a lot I can say, but I’m going to let the numbers speak for themselves. But please do feel free to post your own observations, thoughts, and memories in the comments section below!
We recently had one big post on community awards from outside IDF. Why not another big post on awards from within Independence Fleet? That’s what this is! We’ve crunched the numbers for everything from our July 4, 2001 founding through the end of 2025. In that time, IDF has issued 1,248 monthly awards to 599 unique characters, representing 52 different sims. Wow, what a history! Since a table with 599 people would be too big for this article, we decided to narrow it down to the 25. On a separate note, we’ll be celebrating our 25th anniversary later this year! Awards were presented Jul 2001-Oct 2005, Oct 2010-Jul 2013, and Mar 2020-present.
Here we go with our monthly awards records…
Active or recently active member Hall of Famer
Active members of the fleet are now 1-10 on the all-time leaderboard, and include 18 of the top 25 spots. Hall of Famers make up only 6 of the top 25 today. It seems we likely have A LOT of future Hall of Famers in our midst! Also, Jenna Ramthorne has (barely) overtaken Bonnie “Bon-Bon” Durnell for #1, with Jonathan Grayson not too far behind at #3. Long-time sims USS Chuck Norris, USS Sunfire, and USS Washington dominate the list when looking at the primary sim of characters:
USS Washington: 4 of the top 10; 8 of the top 25
USS Sunfire: 3 of the top 10; 7 of the top 25
USS Chuck Norris: 3 of the top 10; 5 of the top 25
Breaking it out by sim:
The Sunfire leads the way with 236.5 total awards, with the Washington not too far back at 220. Active sims claim spots #1-4 (the USS Liberty is at #3 overall with 96.5 awards) and 6 of the top 10–the more recent addition to the fleet USS Firebird lands right in that 10 spot with 42 awards. The USS Wayfarer is #6 with 52 awards, and the USS Albion and USS Montana sit just outside the top 10 at #11 (26 awards) and #12 (23 awards), respectively.
Breaking it down further to awards issued since they were reinstated in 2020 (546 total awards):
The Washington leads the pack this time with 155, and the Sunfire is in second place at 118.5. The Washington also has the longest streak of winning at least one monthly award, dating all the way back to May 2021 for 57 months in a row if you count January 2026. I can’t find another streak that even comes close. If the W can make it through April of this year, that would make it an astounding five full years with at least one award each month!
Speaking of the W (and a few others), here is the list of sims that led the fleet in awards each year since 2020:
In case you happen to want to see each year fully broken out, we have that too:
Since they are mentioned throughout, let’s also not forget about our other two outstanding sims: USS Churchill & USS Eminence.
Finally, I would like to thank Rook Mirtoh and Arthur Winters, each whom has served as our Director of Personnel, which is the role primarily responsible for selecting the award winners (Mirtoh, March 2020-September 2023; Winters, May 2024-today, with Ken Gillis and me filling in a few times here and there). It’s more tedious than you might imagine! Thank you for making one IDF’s enduring legacies possible!
With that, let’s keep these amazing awards coming!
The 2024 Tournament of Simulations (aka ToS) were finally announced last month, and continuing our long tradition of excellence, IDF took home four more awards! Congratulations to the Captains and crews of the USS Wayfarer, USS Firebird, USS Washington, and USS Sunfire. In fact, the USS Wayfarer was the #2 overall sim for the entire tournament! Well done!
Outstanding Star Trek:
Excellent Star Trek:
In addition to the ToS awards themselves, Ken Gillis and Shran dh’Klar were awarded Ongoing World Community Honor (OWCH) medals for judging at three different Tournaments. We also completely missed that Kevin Riker won an OWCH after last year’s Tournament. Thank you very much to all three of you for your continued selfless service to the community. Without you and others like you, ToS simply wouldn’t be possible.
But wait, there’s more! The Simming League announced just yesterday that the USS Firebird was one of five winners of the most prestigious 2025 Simming Prize! Congratulations and well done to the entire team over there on the Firebird–your excellence and commitment to our craft is apparent to us all! Here is their citation in full:
“With an amazing cast of characters and top-notch host to match, the Firebird has blazed a trail of simming excellence for multiple years in a row, including winning the top overall prize at the most recent Tournament of Simulations, in addition to receiving extensive awards from their home fleet. The players complement each other perfectly, building on their existing culture and lore with new and inventive ideas in seemingly every joint post, which are a joy to read.”
If I haven’t missed anything else, we’re now fully up-to-date on community awards. But please do, keep the awards coming and make me write more blog posts about them!
I am pleased to announce that Captain Jackson Adams, the former Commanding Officer of the USS Montana is hereby promoted to the rank of Commodore and will be filling the new position of Director of Recruiting. As the title suggests, Commodore Adams will be leading our recruitment efforts to guide new players into the fleet. Though often underappreciated, recruiting new members is an invaluable component to the health of both our club and hobby. Commodore Adams will leverage traditional and new channels to bring fellow Trek fans and writers to our community. Wish him luck!
The Command Excellence Medal is awarded for achievement above and beyond the call of duty at the sim Commanding Officer level.
Command Excellence Medal
Awarded to Commodore Jackson Adams for commanding the USS Montana from February 2022 through October 2024. Aboard the only TOS movie era sim on the fleet’s roster, he led highly creative joint posts and missions to faithfully fulfil a major sector of the Trek universe that otherwise would have been a void for the club. When he sees a need, he takes care of it.
As Captain John Wells, he commanded the USS Eminence, the fleet’s only Picard-era sim, from June 2021 through January 2022.
P.S. — As an added bonus, Star Trek turns 59 today.
Ensign Emilynn Dove Operations Officer USS Firebird
The Ensign is a dynamic presence in and out of the story, writing truly outstanding posts while constantly helping others. She is the type of player the who raises up everything about the sim.
Most Posts
Commander Jonathan Grayson Executive Officer USS Washington
For writing 11 posts.
Most Improved
Ensign Kitiuas Thenis ie-Jia’anKahr Science Officer USS Sunfire
The Ensign returned from LOA with a bang, complete with excellent posts and plot twists. It was as if she had never left.
Rookie of the Month
Lieutenant JG Thalek zh’Vareth Chief Medical Officer USS Sunfire
New new CMO dove straight in with complex medial storylines. An amazing entrance–that’s how it’s done.
Recruitment
None this month.
Don’t worry, we’ll be back to your regularly scheduled host next month.
Beam up to our Discord Server this Saturday, July 26th at 1:00 pm EDT (-4) / 6:00 pm BST (+1) for our anniversary webcast celebration. In addition to spinning the awards big wheel to see who will win real prizes this year, host Ken Gillis has a few surprises this round. See you there!
For the second year in a row, it appears that we didn’t publish a recap following the last anniversary webcast:
Happy 24th Anniversary, Independence Fleet! These anniversaries seem to be happening quicker and quicker these days! Continuing a tradition we began a few years ago, we again have a video message from a very special guest:
“This was one of the funniest things I’ve read, although I may have found it even funnier if some of the context wasn’t lost on me.”
“I liked the differentiation between the real characters and the fake ones.”
Congratulations to everyone, and a special thank you to our judges! All three judges expressed to me how much they enjoyed reading the 10 posts. They were all highly entertaining while showcasing the unique personalities of each sim. I hope the Captains and crews had as much fun writing them!
Happy 24th anniversary, Independence Fleet! Thank you for all you do to make our community what it is!
With our 24th year now in the books, it is once again my privilege to formally announce the latest class of the Independence Fleet Hall of Fame. Induction into the Hall of Fame is the highest honor this club offers–reserved for those who have demonstrated exemplary service or extraordinary contributions to the fleet, according to the Hall of Fame Charter (pdf). This is the best of the best!
Without further ado, here is your Hall of Fame Class of 2025…
Inducted by Election:
Commander Natasha Cruix
of the USS Sunfire
A long-time member of the Sunfire during the final days of the fleet’s early era, Natasha Cruix’s superior writing shone through. Boasting six total awards, including two Best Posts, two Funniest Posts, and one Genesis award, she always had just the right touch to move the plot forward in an interesting or humorous way. She also rose through the ranks to become a top-notch Executive Officer.
Commodore Caleb Virgil
of the USS Liberty Belle
A key player during the fleet’s renaissance period, Caleb Virgil commanded the Liberty Belle for 13 months, which landed him one posting title and 2.33 Genesis awards. In addition to being in the top 20 all-time with 994 command posts, he actively highlighted the creative work of his crew, leading to many awards for them. Finally, he answered the call as a Task Force Commander at the end of his career.
Inducted by the Veterans Committee:
None this year.
Congratulations to both of our 2025 inductees! Their actions continue to provide a timeless example for us still role playing today to follow. The inductees will hereby be remembered forever for their extraordinary service to Independence Fleet.
There are now 45 total members of this most exclusive club. Well done!
