Both comps for XvT-TC 146: Securing the Line - high score and review - were won by Captain Rando. Well done, sir!

I'd like to highlight the reviews in particular. They were very hard to decide between.

Rando's review was a nice mission by mission recap with some useful notes on what to look out for.

Plif's review considered the story aspects in greater detail, with some musings on the relationship between plot and execution.

Both were fine examples of the review form. I encourage everyone to read through them and think about leaving a few reviews themselves. (A short review can be great too, you don't have to go into the same level of detail!)

Colonel Impulse has delivered a great boon to us all! He's craftily decoded the format of the XWA patches and made a replacement for the 16 bit executable that no longer ran on modern systems.

Not only that, he's worked tirelessly to ensure that we don't lose this knowledge in the future by documenting his findings and sharing the source code.

A huge problem for the Emperor's Hammer over basically it's entire life has been the loss of resources and knowledge to technical failures, schisms and personnel attrition. How many times did we lose the database/forums/email/domain/etc? Where could we be if we'd been able to add to existing foundations instead of reconstructing them from scratch?

To counter this, I'm very keen to create backups of everything and ensure things are not so easily lost. To this end I've set up an EH TAC organisation on Github. The updated tiepatch is the first bit of saved code, with a few other projects to follow.

The updated XWA patches will be released this weekend.

Here are some things you might not know about XvT scoring:

- You get extra kill points if the enemy ship has beam or warheads equipped

- There's a 2500 point bonus for completing all bonus goals

- You get points for unused craft waves at the end

It's been a little quiet of late - hence a month between reports. I've been doing a bit of behind the scenes coding and the TAC staff have been testing.

My time has otherwise been occupied with building a (knock-off) (not)Lego Millenium Falcon, working late IRL and training for a marathon, but this should smooth out soon.

There have been a few high scores to approve as well. A special thanks goes to Rando for verifying some of the XvT scoring information mentioned above.

TAC/AD Pickled Yoda/CS-6/VSDII Sinister

IC/GOE/GSx4/SSx13/BSx13/PCx13/ISMx21/IS-3PW-27GW-109SW-180BW-3PR-31GR-66SR-96BR/MoI/MoT-6rh/LoC-RS-TS-IS-CSx4-Rx2/LoS-PS-RS-TS-IS-CSx4/DFC-SW-Rx2/MoC-7doc-6poc-7goc-6soc-55boc/CoLx11/CoE/CoSx2/CoB/LoAx47/OV-16E

IMPR | Veteran 4th | Ranger 3rd

{IWATS-AIM-AMP-ASP-BX-CBX-CSS-CTW-DW-FLA-FW-FWT-FZ-GFX-HIST-IBX-ICQ-IIC/1/2/3-JS-LIN-M/1/2-MCBS-MP/1/2-MS-PHP-RT-SFW-SGBMC-SM/3/4-SWGB-TLN-TM/1/3-TT-VBS-WIKI-WM-WPN-XAM-XMD-XML-XTM/1-XTT-XWAI}