High Admiral Cyric reporting in for the Flight Office on 04/21/05

This report is a little early this week...I will be away for the weekend.

Several things to get on with:

The Flight Office site has moved to http://flightoffice.ehnet.org

Congrats to newly appointed AD BubbaX!
Congrats to the new WC of Wing XIV LC Apophis

I've decided to create a new TCCOM's own Title, TCCOM's own Escort squadron. Citing the discrepancies with the TCCOM's OWN title, which is currently only for wings and ships, it leaves out the activity of highly active squadrons through out the TC. Prae for example has been the most consistent and active Squadron in the fleet for the past few months. So, I've decided to create the TCCOM's Own Escort squadron, which would hold the same prestige as the TCCOM's OWN. I am currently holding a banner comp for the title:

Create a new banner for the newly created TCCOM's OWN ESCORT SQUADRON. Details can be seen here : http://www.ehtiecorps.org/competitions/details.asp?ID=1913

Look at the TCCOM's own banner on the FO site at http://flightoffice.ehnet/org to see the dimensions I'm looking for. ISGR, ISSR, and ISBR are up for grabs! You have until 04/30/05!

The squadron would be graded on OVERALL activity by every member in the squadron. It is a unity title, a moral title, something that should be earned by the entire squadron. As such the first winner of the TCCOM's OWN ESCORT SQUADRON IS PRAETORIAN SQUADRON! Congrats!

On to the TAC Stuff, the TAC is looking for more staff...The Tactical Office is in need of new members for the TAC staff. I would like 3 new testers that are able to fly in each platform, as well as a new TCT for each platform. Requirements are as follows:

Tactical Surveyor (beta tester):
-Must own working versions of XvT, XWA and TIE
-Must be willing to work, TAC staff isn't a joke job to make your ID line longer, it is serious work and it is rewarded heavily should you work well.
-Proven flight activity
-Passed IWATS TACS

Tactician (Corrector):
-Must own working versions of at least one of the above
-Must have passed the IWATS mission creation course attached to the platform you plan on correcting for.
-Proven Mission Creation Knowledge, therefore, you must have at least sent in more then 1 battle/mission to the TAC office.
-Proven flight ability

I'm tired of asking for new staff, so this is likely to be the last one in a long time. Please only apply if you're sure you will work very hard for my staff.

Applications, as well as any questions can be sent to AD Frodo March and VA Master.

The Internet office has also moved to http://ehnet.org/.
Also the EH IO Links Database has been moved to http://links.ehnet.org/. The old address at lenvik.org redirects to the new address.

Celebration 3 is this weekend. AD Joe along with a few select helpers will be in attendance making the EH proud! I sent along a write up about the TC, so maybe we can get a few new members out of this!

Please also remember that the OPS has still not been appointed. The FC is approving medals at his own pace, so be patient, they will come in time!

Now a reminder, when making changes to your rosters, when you submit them please include correct Pin numbers. Allot of times, pilots give you their names, and they are not the names they registered with, so it makes it very difficult to find them!

IMPSTORM is beginning soon! HA Pri is waiting on the Task Force fleets and once in they will proceed! On this note a brief note from the WO:

Background

Imperial Storm is based on a war-game model first designed by the then Captain IQ Pierce (ret.) – his war-game was named Project: Faithful and ran during a few hazy months in late ’99. It featured around half a dozen pilots on each side (myself included) and was to my mind, a resounding success. It set up the future Imperial Storms, and the short-lived Naval Corps.

Fleet Admiral Kessler then used the system tried and tested via PF to implement a war-game for the entire TIE Corps in 2000; Exercise Imperial Storm. While not directly involved with this, I remember it received a warm welcome and was generally a success.

When I took over as Flight Officer, after the Naval Corps was shut down, I also ran another Imperial Storm in June 2001, entitled “Dark Horizon”. I’d like think that this was also a success, but those who took part can judge better than I. It was after this, the position of War Officer was created with the mandate to promote war-gaming throughout the club in the absence of the NavCorps. The first Officer pointed to the position was Vice Admiral (and later Admiral) Pel. The TIE Corps saw two Imperial Storms during his tenure. I don’t think it would be unfair to suggest they received a mixed reception. Pel had the vision of war-gaming being a complex and exciting device for the club, but this did not translate well to something the size of the TIE Corps where attention spans were fickle – it quickly became evident that complex rules meant for complex orders and calculations. This led to Imperial Storm quickly becoming a battle of emails between the Fleet Commanders and the Pilots were left out. Suffice to say, interest quickly dwindled.

Today

http://www.btinternet.com/~spellfire/wo1.html

The Imperial Storm currently in production, I hope is more akin to the war-games of several years back such as the original ImpStorm and Operation: Dark Hammer. I’ve modified the rules to keep them simple and obvious – a small map, smaller list of ships to pick from, a “radar” system for detecting enemy fleets etc. All of this I hope will be to keep the game play fluid and moving and ultimately to focus on the Pilots themselves and get them more involved in battles.

I’ve also change ImpStorm in two significant ways from the previous incarnations. Firstly, ImpStorm is not limited to just the TIE Corps. Members of the Infiltrator Wing and the Dark Brotherhood’s Sith Order have been invited to participate – and they’ve formed their own joint team for this. Secondly, I’ve tried to expand the platforms used. Traditionally, ImpStorm was for MP XWA Pilots which left out a significant portion of the Fleet. For this war-game, we’ll be using XWA MP as normal, but also TIE and XvT SP. This makes for some complex rules involving this, something I didn’t particularly want. However, if you look at the rules closely, you may realise that for Pilots, it’s not really necessary to know them since I’ll be the one dealing with it all. So hopefully this won’t slow down the game play.

Something else I’ll be doing is running small competitions alongside the war-game itself to hopefully involve those Pilots that don’t fly – these will take the form of writing fictional reports on the action that’s taken place so far, as well as creating graphical scenes of the battles. At the end of the war-game, I’m hoping to run a short competition for mission designers to take the most exciting conflicts that occurred and create an EH Battle from them (something like what Ender did for Op: DH back in the days of yore).

That's it from the Flight Office!

In Service...

HA CYRIC
FO-TCCOM/HA CYRIC/CS-4/SSSD SOVEREIGN