New site, who dis?

Welcome to the first Tactical Officer report using the shiny new site and its shiny new Markdown features.

Fun fact: the old reports were already in Markdown, then parsed with some custom code I had set up to do all the fancy colours and what-not. Okay, maybe not that fun.

On the subject of the new site - it's been my major focus for a lot of the past two years, and I was honoured to receive my second Imperial Cross to acknowledge that effort. However, it was very much due to the leadership, organisation and drive of the IO Turtle Jerrar that the project was delivered (not to mention all of the coding!). I'm grateful I could work with such a stalwart servant of the Empire.

Be sure to check out

The battle center, which now

• looks prettier
• tells you if you've completed each battle (from the listing page, when logged in)
• remembers all your previous scores (on the battle page, when logged in)
• lists the top 10 scores for a battle
• displays the readme for each battle from the zip

BSF submissions, which now

• include a pilot file viewer
• magically process the uploaded file's name to select a battle
• include fancy auto-completing components for pilot and battle selection
• do more early validation, which reduce the chances of accidental submissions and getting held up in TAC review

Behind the scenes I added a few things related to battle and bug management to improve the TAC admin functionality, but you can't see that.

TFTC-R

The new site provides an improved foundation for adding cool features like TIE Fighter Total Conversion support. So, here it is!

Custom Content

As mentioned in my last report, we are accepting battles for TFTC-R as a new platform. The processes will be refined over time, but we'll start with

1. must follow guidelines for XWA battles
2. must make use of at least one TFTC-specific feature (otherwise, it's just XWA)

Campaign Competition

Until the end of May, there is a competition running for flying the Reimagined campaign of TFTC. The full details are here

Battles 0 (training) to 8 are included, as that is what is part of the current TFTC release. In addition to the usual high scores I am also going to track fastest times because that's a thing that XWA does.

But that's not all! I am also looking for written and graphics content related to TFTC. Review the battles! Review the whole concept! Write a blurb for one of the new ships. Make a top/side/front view mashup of a new ship. Take a screenshot and submit it as-is just because it looks pretty! The guidelines are loose to encourage freedom.

All submissions should come to me via email (or Discord).

Important Note: If you're already in the middle of TFTC, that's fine. You don't need to start a fresh file.

More Important Note: I am very keen to compare versions of the same pilot file to better understand the format. Please submit your pilot files frequently, with a note about what stage you're up to.

My position

A minor note to record that I am no longer splitting my time between a flight member in Theta Squadron and being the Tactical Officer - I am now all-in as TAC.

I had an amazing, enjoyable and successful run in Theta but decided I needed to assign all of my EH energy to one thing.