#ooc: long story short - Area Rangers are the type of ranger you battle in the main game series

[freerangeranger]

What kind of stuff does being a pokemon ranger involve? It seems like a really cool career path :)

Oooo glad you asked - I'm actually doing a presentation soon for @adventures-on-foster-island on the topic of non-ranger career options in the Ranger Union so for this I'll focus on Area Rangers and Field Ops specifically. No one likes Top Rangers they are too full of themselves and get all the credit. But imagine they are like Field Ops but even more independant. Rangers that specialize also fall into one of two categories because while they do have more lenience and report to different people, they have very similar rules and regulations.

So Brandy mentioned some of the important stuff in an earlier ask but I'm gonna ramble for a while.

Area Rangers:

Area Rangers: It's Me! Pikach- ahem. These are local rangers usually assigned to a single base and expected to live, work and patrol a specific area associated with that base. We are usually granted the chance to choose the area we move to - and are much more likely to get postings in regions that we want to be in because there are so many open jobs. There are often multiple bases within a single area, especially in urban areas. I think I mentioned this previously but I work in one of the many bases in Castelia. We monitor the sewers and docks, the desert resort and pinwheel forest. We all take turns patrolling the inner part of the city. The only time Area Rangers really leave our bases is if we are assigned a mission that is outside our range, or there is mass casualties and other bases are swamped. The most recent example of this was the Opelucid Freeze and a recent ecological disaster in Hoenn.

Area Rangers are the first line of defence between wild Pokemon and humans. Not all interactions are necessarily negative or dangerous. My very first mission in Unova was to investigate whether or not a ghost type was haunting the Nacrene museum. Turns out it was an unconventional Claydol that looked like pottery. No one was harmed, the Claydol was taken in by the museum and allowed to continue people watching during the day. Only real change is that it goes home with the curator at night so it doesn't start levitating things out of boredom. Problem solved and only a few plates were broken.

Area Rangers assist Professors, Gym leaders and Law Enforcement when problems including Pokemon occur. It's our primary goal - protect Pokemon from people (which often results in protecting people from Pokemon but that is not our job mandate). We are not allowed to arrest people unless their presence would be a direct threat to Pokemon lives (being a nuisance does not count and honestly the wild Pokemon more often than not deal with annoyances). That's why you hear of Rangers arresting Pokemon smugglers, poachers and Iv/Shiny breeders. They harm and kill Pokemon, as well as put the local environment at risk. We are allowed to arrest them. As a treat.

I'll be honest when I say that an Area Ranger position is much more convenient for people who want to start families, have healthy relationships and generally. Not have to do massive amounts of field work and move constantly from place to place. It might not be as flashy but you build rapport with the people around you and form relationships with the wild Pokemon populations as well. You get to keep as many Pokemon as you can feasibly care for and are a registered trainer for the purposes of Pokemon battling. It's not a super big leap from being a professional trainer.

Field Ops:

Field Operatives are basically rangers who are not tied down to a specific region or area. You will see them return to the same city and stay with ranger bases but strictly speaking they do not have a home range. They report to the Ranger Union, the Pokemon League or a local base if their mission is a cooperative effort.

Field Ops are the flavor of rangers that most commonly carry Stylers. Every ranger (and union support staff) can technically use a styler if they went to the Ranger School but most of us do not have the paperwork or certifications needed to actually carry one in the field. Field Ops went through a seriously tough screening process in order to be allowed to carry them. Why? Well if you think about it with your brain it would be utter pandemonium if people could just befriend a Pokemon, bring them across a region for a mission, and release them at the drop of a hat with no monetary penalty or way of identifying the previous owner. A nightmare for the ecosystem, the local human population and for the poor poor operators who have to do all the incident reports.

That's right folks! Most field ops are specifically trained to understand local ecology, Pokemon habitat and what Pokemon are native to what region. The only place where these stringent rules do not apply is in the Oblivia, Almia and Fiore regions because of the universal ban on pokeballs. People there befriend Pokemon the old fashioned way (with TLC and godlike patience) and trainers who come for vacation have to register every Pokemon they bring in - and every pokeball. However even with the lack of rules there are still places you cannot take pokemon out of, and a cap on how many pokemon you can capture based on your Rank.

Because Field Ops have so much flexibility in terms of their temporary team compositions they are often given more long term and complex missions (see poor Brandy and the whole giant-elephant-thing-... idk man I feel bad for them) They also Do Have The Authority To Arrest People! But that requires knowing actual laws. Which is more memorization. On top of this Field Ops usually do not carry pokeballs with them and are allowed a very limited number of long term pokemon on their teams - often limited to a single permanent partner.

Are you starting to see why there are fewer Field Operatives than Area Rangers?

The jobs Field Ops do are generally more dangerous. They are the first responders to major crises, rampaging Pokemon, mass casualties, and other potentially problematic issues. They do take less strenuous missions but there is a reason that Brandy was my partner for investigating Donphan poaching near Cascarrafa. It was a good thing too because without the help of Great Tusk the we probably would have been in even more trouble.