This week I recommended a well deserved Gold Star of the Empire for Colonel Impulse's work on the XWA patches. He's also now the Science Officer, a Vice Admiral and apparently sharing my office on the VSD Sinister. It's obvious which one of those things is the most prestigious. I hope he doesn't mind listening to Kowakian Death Metal. I'd like to repeat my submission in case you haven't read the SOO report...

Custom ship patches are one of the key ways that the Emperor's Hammer TIE Corps provides additional value and enjoyment for the games that we play and love.

Ever since the EH Ship Patcher was released and eventually abandoned without XWA support, playing battles for that platform has been a complicated mess. When 64 bit operating systems became prevalent, the ancient methods became untenable. This been to the detriment of all pilots, and to those whose work on the patches has been unappreciated.

Impulse has done the fleet a great service by remaking a patch executable for modern operating systems. Not only that, but he has secured us against future problems by documenting his solution and providing a source code backup. We will forevermore be able to build from our current position rather than remaking lost knowledge.

Work on the patches and their tools is complicated and requires technical ability of rare quality. For his skill, initiative and single-handed efforts to restore the XWA custom ships, I hereby recommend Impulse for the Gold Star of the Empire!

I flew XWA-TC 20 (aka that one with the tugs) to celebrate the XWA patch release. As per some emails on the mailing list, one particular line of the .bat file requires a tweak to get it properly installed. After that, it's smooth sailing. Or flying.

I've decided to put other projects on the back burner and focus all energies towards Project Pyrite. The foundations of it have underpinned all work thus far, and it's time to just dive straight in. The other pieces are simpler so I was trying to get them done first, but they really will work far better if they can go on top of this one.

Project Pyrite is a bit of software that I've been planning for a long time, related to mission creation. I am going to work torwards having a usable beta as an Xmas present to all good pilots from Santa Yoda. 2018 is going to end with something awesome!

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

- You get 0 points if you fly with unlimited waves on, and then your BSF is queued for manual approval

- Some battles are tremendously difficult, but almost most of them are gentle on Easy

- Why not just give it a go?

- Early on I just flew through the XWA and TIE lists with cheats

- Flying XvT without cheats was the way I started getting okay at flying.

- Now I have a couple of high scores. Maybe you can get some too?

- Project Pyrite

- Trivia

- BSF approvals

- Working on the TAC site

- XWA-TC #20

- Apparently I am still Commendably Loyal

- Fixing up some stuff behind the scenes

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}