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!
