The month started pretty relaxed, but that changed quickly. I discovered that one of the battles in the queue had a corrupted mission which has been requiring me to pull out all my old tricks in order to salvage as much of it as I can. Normally this would not be the case and I would just ask the submitting member to rewrite or resubmit the mission, but the member that made it, our esteemed former-SCO Ender mBind, has not been active for several years.
Early in the month, VA Plif's Battle Storylines Competition gave us 4 plotlines to produce battles for. Currently 1 is awaiting checking and 2 are being made, leaving only 1 to be made when things calm down. All 4 plotlines had an intriguing enough story that I awarded the CoS to their authors... It wasn't until the past weekend that I was reading through the TAC Manual and discovered
the rules outlined for the CoS (which I thought was only listed in the EHTM) and found out that absolutely none of the entries met the minimum requirements. Well, we can't all be perfect. I'm just glad that it happened in my first month in office rather than after I had time to adjust.
With the holidays looming close I decided to ask the staff to volunteer for assignments rather than just being assigned to them. Apparently the rest of the staff is just as busy as I have been this month, because outside of creating the plotline battles, I received no replies. I know December will be a similarly dead month, but the whip will be cracked once the new year begins.
Just last week I discovered that XW-FREE 11 violates EH mission standards by having the main goal of the mission set as destroying several EH squadrons and "mooning the bridge" of the Challenge. Currently Dempsey is trying to bring it in line with standards while trying to retain the humor in the plot.
The competitions I launched had pathetic participation... Thanks, Battlefield! It will be a while before I launch any more competitions and I hope when that time comes I have more than 3 competitors. I will surely be more descriptive in my mission creation competitions as well, seeing as the one entry I received portrays me as the villain. I must say, I walked right into that one.
I spoke with RA Hawkins about his epic "X-Wing in TIE Fighter" battle saga and he liked my suggestion of holding all the battles to be released at the same time so that they have sequential battle ID numbers. Being a 6 battle series complete with professional quality briefing and radio message recordings, I felt it needed to stand out. Of course the TIE-FREEs that he makes using the non-Tour of Duty missions will be released as normal, but the main saga which parallels the X-Wing Tours up to the Death Star attack will all be released at once. Sadly that means you have to wait for him to finish the last Tour (2 battles), but it will be well worth it. And this way, I'm the only one sitting on the edge of my seat waiting for the next one.
And speaking of amazing things coming to the TAC Office, Pickeled Yoda's mission analyzer is coming along much faster than expected and is currently being tested on XvT. After the kinks are worked out, all that's left is the XWA version. At this rate it might be ready for integration into the TAC site by mid year!
Battles Under Construction
TIE-TC "Sinfire"
TIE-TC "Sigma and Kappa's Strike"
Battles In Initial Check
XvT-TC "Securing the Line"
XWA-FREE "Deny Some TACcy Vengeance"
Battles Awaiting Testing
TIE-FREE "The Kester"
Battles Under Correction
TIE-CD "CDNG: Paper Round"
TIE-TC "X-Wing in TIE Fighter: Tour 2, part 1"
TIE-TC "X-Wing in TIE Fighter: Tour 2, part 2"
XW-FREE 11
"Too Much Fun?"
Battles In Final Check
TIE-TC "X-Wing in TIE Fighter: Tour 1, part 2"
Battles Pending Release
TIE-TC "X-Wing in TIE Fighter: Tour 1, part 1"
WAV Packs Pending Release
TIE-TC "X-Wing in TIE Fighter: Tour 1, part 1 + 2"
Competitions
