Science Guide
Written by Jenson
As a science officer, your role will center on scanning phenomena, conducting long range scans for vessels, studying new things, and being an ops officer of sorts. If an ops officer is not present during an RP, it's a good bet you'll be called to perform some of those duties. In Star Trek: TNG, Data preformed duties very similar to a science officer yet held the title of ops. Indeed, the roles of ops and science officers are very similar and only differ in the fact that ops officers tend to deal more with engineering matters and scientists tend to deal more with...well, scientific matters. If you are in an RP that does not center on science, you will most likely have quite a bit of downtime and your duties will probably center on the sensor system. You should; however, be a true scientist and take the occasional scan of a phenomenon without being prompted to. Take your scans down to the science lab and study them in more detail, constantly check your long range scans and compile your findings. If you have nothing else to do, head down to astrometrics and look at stellar phenomenon with greater detail or head to engineering to recalibrate your sensors. Again, the more involved you become with the work of your character, the more interesting your role playing session will be.
As a science officer, you also have a good deal of power to move the plot forward if it gets in a rut. You can always find some fascinating stellar phenomena, have one appear, or have an interesting ship on scans. It's probably a good idea to ask the CO if it is okay introduce a major event into the plot, but if the CO is running out of ideas it can be a great way to bring the story back to life.
The CO will also rely on you to keep the bridge crew informed about what's happening outside the ship. New contacts, big changes you'd see on sensors, etc. should be reported. Often times because of the critical nature of these reports, the CO will PM you the gist of what you need to find on sensors.