IC:

Vice Admiral Astin walks over the command bridge of the ISD Hammer, making his way to the communications station. He slides his hand through his graying hair, visibly nervous. Astin is finding himself in command of a starship for only the second time in his career and is preparing to address his crew via the ship's public announcement system. Normally, this would take place in the assembly hall in front of the ship's senior officers and pilots, however the Vice Admiral canceled this event to ensure the ship is prepared for battle as fast as possible. Things are in fact moving so fast in fact that Astin has not had time to even think about what he is about to say to the crew. He reaches the console, takes a deep breath, and then asks the communications officer to activate the PA system.

'Crew of the Hammer, this is Vice Admiral Astin. By orders of the TIE Corps Commander, I have taken command of this ship. I am sure you are all confused as to why you are here and have been assigned to positions that may seem unfamiliar to you. Let me just say that each and every one of you has been hand picked by the Admiralty Board. We have organized a best of the best crew here on the Hammer, and each of you are in your individual positions because we felt that you are the best possible person for your job.

We are all here today because an unknown attack force has hit us in our very heart. Our once great capital ship, the Sovereign, has been heavily damaged, and our capital on Aurora lies in ruins from intense orbital bombardment. The TIE Corps is not about to let this go unanswered. We are not about to let this go unanswered. We have brought together the most elite resources the TIE Corps has to one ship, this ship. We will use those resources to seek out and destroy the enemy, and bring to them the destruction that they have left behind with us. This is what we are trained for, and this is what we will do.

Staff Officers and Squadron Commanders, you have your new rosters. Organize your units and have your people ready for battle. We will be underway soon. Vice Admiral Astin out.'

'Well, not as inspirational as I would have wanted, but it will do,' he thought.

Astin asks the Communications Officer to raise Admiral Viper Pred on the radio.

'Sir, this is Vice Admiral Astin. All of the Hammer's crew is aboard and the ship is battle ready. What are your orders?'

OOC:

Gentlemen and ladies, the time has finally come to carry out the drastic changes to the TIE Corps roster. We have had restructures in the past, but none to the scale to what we have just done. As you can see, all of the wings, ships, and squadrons (save Alpha) have been officially closed and all pilots have been moved to Wing I aboard the ISD Hammer. The active squadrons on Wing I are now Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, and Epsilon. Lambda is currently inactive but also available on Wing I. We have decided to return our organization to our roots. The Emperor's Hammer began as a single wing with the squadrons you are currently in. The disastrous reign of GA Astatine saw these squadrons moved and spread throughout the fleet. We have decided to return them to where they belong and assign our active pilots to where it all began over 15 years ago: Wing I. The ISD Hammer was chosen mainly because the ISD Avenger, the EH's original ship, has evolved into the Super-Star Destroyer flagship of the Dark Brotherhood. We wanted a neutral ship, one that nobody has ties to or memories on. The Hammer felt like an excellent choice due to it's freshness and namesake.

I am sure many of you are angry or confused. Essentially, we are doing this for the same reason that we did it in the RP event. Rather than having you all spread out across 4 different wings and 8 different squadrons, we decided to condense everyone into 1 wing and 5 squadrons. Now, rather than having a bunch of squadrons barely larger than a single flight, we now have a few squadrons that are nearly full. The average squadron size is now 10 pilots rather than 5, and each squadron's roster was hand picked to make them as balanced as possible activity wise. Squadrons are now of sufficient size to actually have fun and enjoyable single squadron competitions, and enough squadrons still exist to have squadron vs squadron (and even 2 squadrons vs 2 squadrons) competitions.

There obviously were not enough Squadron Commander positions to allow us to retain every single command officer in the fleet. As such, we had to very carefully chose who would lead these new squadrons. These decisions were painful for us, but unfortunately necessary. Those of who who lost your command position, please do not consider yourself 'fired'. We had around 10 existing command officers but only 5 spots to fill. Now, I am very confident that we will expand in the near future. Daedalus has seen a very good amount of new recruits throughout the summer, much more than I've seen in years. We can build on this by working hard at recruitment and bringing even more new faces in. If we get just a few more pilots, it will already be time to open Wing I's remaining squadron. If we continue to grow past that, you will see Wing II along with a couple more squadrons open. We can't go anywhere but up from here. So for those of you displaced command officers, remember that as we expand more command opportunities will open up and we will always value our experienced members for these positions.

The position of Wing I WC will at this time remain vacant. As in the RP event, I will be acting as Wing Commander of Wing I until we expand to a point where I cannot carry out my duties sufficiently anymore. I will be shifting my duties to that of a Wing Commander, and my SOO reports will essentially be Wing I reports.

Squadron Commanders, you all have very good squadrons under your command. They are at this point blank and clean slates. That means they don't have banners, patches, nicknames, mottos, or websites. There is a huge amount of potential for getting your squadrons involved in their personalization. Have fun with this!

That's all for now. I really hope that everyone will embrace these changes as a step in the right direction. By doing this some may think we are heading even further down a dark hole, but I see the light at the end of the tunnel. Let's go get it!

SOO/VA Astin/ISD Hammer
GSx3/SSx2/BS/PCx8/ISMx7/IS-1SW-1GR-1SR-1BR
MoI-BC/MoT-4rh/MoC-1poc-3soc-10boc/CoLx2/CoB/LoA/OV-10E [LGNR]
{IWATS-CBX-GFX-IIC/1/2/3-LIN-M/1/2-MCBS-SM/2/3-WM-XMD}