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Vice Admiral Sulam Suhton peered from the bridge of the Manica at the distant battle. A steady stream of torpedoes pounded relentlessly on the shields of the lone Victory-class Star Destroyer, diminishing its integrity. More than half of the TIEs had fallen to the New Republic fighters. His forces had dug hard into the Imperials and victory was nearly in his grasp. The communications officer called out to Admiral Suhton, "Sir, the Imperials have disabled one of our A-Wings." The admiral continued to stare at the battle as he responded, "It's of no consequence. We can recover it once the battle is over. Tell the other fighters to concentrate on protecting the B-Wings." As the comms officer relayed the message, an MC-90 cruiser exited hyperspace a few klicks starboard of the interdictor. "Our reinforcements have arrived. This should be quick," remarked the admiral. Just moments later the space between the MC-90 and interdictor was filled with laser fire. "That's not one of ours, admiral! Our jamming on the Corvette must have failed," screamed the combat operations officer. "Return fire! Recall all fighters! Plot an exit course!", yelled the frantic admiral as he rushed from the viewport to his command chair, "And find out where our reinforcements are!" The MC-90 Renegade lit the Manica from bow to stern with bright green laser fire. The various Rebel fighters desperately tried to return to the interdictor in time to save it. It was an exercise in futility. The Renegade had twice the firepower of the small interdictor and was nearly as fast and maneuverable. Without launching a single fighter, the Renegade had sealed the fate of the Manica, but the commodore chose to launch Razor, White, and Enforcer Squadrons for good measure. Upon seeing the enemy cruiser launch its squadrons, Admiral Suhton knew his ship would not be able to escape in time. "Abort exit strategy and plot a collision course. Signal the evacuation." Reluctantly the navigation officer turned the Manica to face the Renegade and rushed off to the escape pods. The Manica's shields failed soon after and the ship began to rock with each consecutive hit. Fires burst throughout the ship as the electrical systems overloaded. Several escape pods launched empty, triggered by the fires. The remainder were quickly filled by panicked personnel. Admiral Suhton reached the pod bay just as the last pod launched. His hands grasped the ingress handles in resigned fury. As the interdictor's reactor core exploded, Suhton screamed, "Imperial scum!"  A string of personal struggles has hindered my ability to test battles, but that will soon change. In the mean time, I have begun work on the updated EHBL. This new EHBL will eliminate the need for a separate EH Ship Patcher, use unencrypted missions, and will work for all versions of each game (floppy, CD, 95, and GoG; including X-Wing) and for each of the 3 major operating system families (Windows, Mac, and Linux). When it is completed, I will need testers to verify the Mac functionality, but it should work just the same as on Linux. The codebase is written in Python 3.4.3 due to a job I intend on pursuing. And to insure that any future revisions will not have to be done from the ground up like this one, the source code will be published on the TAC site as well as my personal GitHub account once completed. And now, for all of you drooling at the thought of this new development, here's a preview of the new UI:  Of course this is still a non-functional pre-alpha as I build the various backup, patching, and launching routines for each game and version. The text on each button will show the battle type and number on the first line and the title on the second and, if needed, third line. There are options to have both DOS and Win95 versions of TIE Fighter and X-Wing configured and the ability to swap between them with a simple selection within the options.
I'm hoping to have this project finished before the end of the year, but this will obviously be contingent on my personal schedule. Currently UI and backups are all that have been completed. Those were the easy parts. Now I have to cipher out Darkhill and Ender's patching system and create the launch system that will call on all the other routines. In non-EHBL news, the TAC roster has been trimmed. We're now down to 5 members including myself. There were a few members that had gone AWOL in their other positions or had no time to spare for TAC duties and I hadn't noticed during the lull in testing. So now the TAC roster consists of 4 of our most skilled mission creators and Dunta Polo, who has written some of the most detailed bug reports on the TC database.  Battles Under ConstructionTIE-TC "Sinfire"TIE-TC "Sigma and Kappa's Strike" TIE-TC "X-Wing in TIE Fighter: Tours 1-3" Battles In Initial CheckTIE-FREE "Starfighter Histories: TIE Fighter"XWA-FREE "Recon Run" TIE-TC "The Hunt for the Wing Commander" BoP-TC "UFO Part 1" Battles Under TestingXvT-TC "Securing the Line"XvT-TC "Jeequi Encounter" Battles Under CorrectionXWA-FREE "Deny Some TACcy Vengeance"XW-FREE 11 "Too Much Fun?" Battles ReleasedTIE-free 294 "Hammer Reports - Intercept Intelligence"TIE-TC 246 "Jeequi Encounter" TIE-free 295 "Starfighter Histories: TIE Defender"  Competitions
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TAC Report # 6 (2016-09-18)
This report was submitted by TAC/AD Xavier Sienar/CS-6/VSDII Sinister
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