After a couple of weeks of intense work, I am back from leave. I would like to thank the Tactical Staff and my Command Attaché for taking care of the business in the meantime. And oh well, that couple of bottles on my desk was a good idea :P
1. GoE awarded to Vice Admiral Marcin Szydlowski
My Command Attaché Vice Admiral Marcin Szydlowski has been awarded the Grand Order of the Emperor in recognition of his exemplary work as my right hand for the past seven months. He has been a key element of the Tactical Office for all these months, and fully deserved this reward. Way to go, Mike ! Just watch your mouth from time to time, and it will be perfect >:)
2. GS awarded to Captain Gord Darkonian
TCC:XWA for the past six months, Captain Gord Darkonian has always shown a great dedication to the Tactical Office. His hard work and great management skills are exemplary and have made the XWA tactical staff an efficient structure; thus, I am very pleased to present Captain Gord Darkonian with the Gold Star of the Empire !
3. Mission Compendium up to 2,192 custom missions
Things kept moving while I was away, and several free missions were released this week, mostly XWA ones. The Compendium stands at 2,192 missions online ! TAC2.2K ?
4. Tactical Database
The Tactical Staff Database designed by Rear Admiral Grail SoulChaser is located at http://www.isdchallenge.org/tacDB. All missions and battles submitted to the Tactical Office are listed there, with their current status. You can even find beta reports for these submitted battles. I decided to keep them available to everyone's eyes, this should allow mission creators to understand the changes we may have to make to their battles. All of them are flown by three different pilots, whose job is to track down bugs and to give thier comments about the battle. They are representative of the pilots who will fly your battle once released; their comments and observations, which can sometimes not be very nice towards a particular battle, help greatly the staff to bring the changes which will allow your battle to be more enjoyable for everyone, and to be of better quality. Comments may be harsh sometimes, but it will allow future reviews to be nicer once corrected and released, it's for your own good ;) Making missions is like making a movie, you don't make it only for yourself... Btw, I remind mission creators they are allowed to ask to correct themselves their battle if they really don't like someone else to modify their own battle... my case actually ;)
5. BSFs
Some of you may still experience some problems with BSFs. It looks like the BSF system doesn't accept zipped files anymore for the time being...just be patient, our dear XO will take care of it once he's more familiar with the database code. BoPs and XWA-DBs pilot file uploading should be enabled as well once the piece of code is located :)
6. Rate the battles you fly !
Don't forget you can rate the battles and missions you have flown, from 0 (lowest) to 5 (highest). Just give your opinion, your comments are a source of inspiration for mission creators...
7. Cheating Policy
The Cheating Policy is still located at http://www.emperorshammer.net/tac/tac-man/cheating.html, this is a must-read for every single pilot of this fleet. It doesn't speak only of how bad cheating is (and yes, it's really bad !!), there are also a couple of information you may not be aware of. Like you can't skip a mission unless you spotted a bug, and made a bug report, or that using unlimited waves in XvT will give you a zero score, whatever you do in the mission...
8. Tactical Manual
Once again, a reference for every pilot of the fleet. Its location is http://www.emperorshammer.net/tac/tac-man/, you can find there the full regulations about custom missions, if you ever want to have one approved, editors, patches etc.
9. Secrets and Lies XWA Campaign
I am still working on the second episode of the Secrets and Lies trilogy. This one will a 9-mission long XWA-CAB battle, and is half done... I expect it to be released by the end of the month.
10. XWA Mission Design Course
the IWATS XAM course, aka XWA Mission Design, is up to 85 graduates. I remind you this course is compulsory to submit custom XWA missions. This is also a really good written and complete course :-D
Graduates of the week
82. 27/03/2002 CMDR/CM Brian/Ghost/Wing XI/ISD Immortal (#6764) 94%
83. 27/03/2002 FL/LT Zexiphir Van Taelyan/Ranger 2-1/Wing XI/ISD Immortal (#8582) 93%
84. 27/03/2002 PREX/VA Dark Angel/VSD Warhammer (#6104) 90%
85. 01/04/2002 FM-XOA-IOA/CM Alex Foley/Ranger 1-2/Wing XI/ISD Immortal (#4612) 96%
And to conclude this report, vote TAC for Mr EH !
TAC-PROF/FA Striker/CS-3/SSSD Sovereign