Taking up XO'ing again...

[Brainiacus]

Well, that is for you to decide. I am just stating here that I have the green light for leading sims and where I find it neccesary, progress the storyline.

 

To catch up on the current situation, I have read all the stories on the XCAS site, yet I notice there are bits of important information missing. Or entire sims which might have been very important are not discussed. If any of you has memory of a very important event happening (such as the destruction of an Apocalypse, which is mentioned in a story... I wasn't around when that happened, and would like to know when, where and why it happened), which is not mentioned clearly in the stories, I'd appreciate it if you posted here in reply.

 

*****

 

Furthermore, I have some suggestions for direct changes to the site to make our lives somewhat easier.

 

1) A main storyline status update. This page would debrief most very important events in sims with just oneliners, nicely positioned behind a date. Like this:

 

17th of January 2083 - Aliens attack major city. 2971 civilian casualties. Aliens barely deterred by local military.

19th of January 2083 - Combat mission versus alien base was barely deflected by alien local defenses. Heavy losses on human side, few losses on alien side.

26th of January 2083 - X-Com suffered the loss of a high ranking officer today, in a freak accident with two sectoids and a muton. Captain T.F. Bundy will be forever in memory.

27th of January 2083 - Alien Battleship shot down, and was invaded briefly after interception. Minimum losses on human side, and total annihilation on the alien side.

 

I am sure any sim, and events relating to the sim which might happen a few days before or after the actual sim date, could be summed up in short sentences like this. Once the archive becomes to lenghty it could be split up in smaller archives, each covering 1 or 2 months. There could even be references to stories for more information, or references to the full debriefings. Like this, anyone missing sims for 6 weeks or someone compeltely new to XCAS can quickly check what major events happened over the last few sims.

 

2) Debriefings should be on the site, once verified and approved. They can't linger on these forums eternally and the thread would become very cubersome.

 

3) Starmap! What bothers me is that no one - me included - knows just what is located on which planet in the Arkunis system, and the planet's climate and vegetation seems to continuously alter which each succesive sim. This is - of course - because no one can remember all those weird exotic names and what climates are attached to them, what faction controls them, what type of and where bases are located, etcetera. I suggest there will be at least a table showing how many planets there are in the important systems, who controls them, what the climate is, what the vegetation is, what the hostility ratio is, etcetera. Further details could include simple graphical displays of the entire system, showing planets with distance related to the major sun(s), relative distance to eachother, and possibly deepspace military bases, asteroids, possible locations of fleets, and maybe even warp nodes(?).

 

Also, when clicking on a planet in the star system table, more details could be shown, and could be accompanied by an image or picture showing what most of the planet looks like.

 

*****

 

That's about it. If possible, I'd like to use both this thread and today's (8th of February 2003) Saturday sim to discuss this. I need both input about what important stuff happened, and people to help me figure out which planets were already linked to a set environment or faction occupation in earlier stories (as in our own planet, and Ascadia). Besides that I'd like some feedback on whether you think these ideas are good or just a waste of time.

 

On a side note - I'll most likely be adding those subsites to the main site by myself, so I only need actual data.

[Loonie]

To reply in what best way I can to some points:

 

1.) I must agree. The De-Briefs would actually cover this combined with the stories, but it would be too cumbersome to find the MAJOR events. So yes I would be up for it.

 

2.) We've discussed this with DH already. I recently proposed that they are moved as well but in the end he agreed that they just might be boosting forum activity. In any event it does no harm to have them in the forum and to have them there can only do good. DH might want to post about this too so as to confirm it.

 

3.) That could be possible, though overall it would really not be so much for information as more for furthering the XCAS universe. Though I must admit that I am somewhat confused as to how the aliens or the API can just jump into Arkunis and attack our base. Wouldn't the High Council have plenty of ships stationed in the system so as to defend it??

[Brainiacus]

To clarify point 2, I am suggesting that we move the debriefs to the site after they have been on the forums for like two weeks. That is in essence also the best way to verify them. The forum would remain the primary place to check the latest debriefings, but the site would keep an archive of the older ones in case the thread on the forum gets too large or the entire forum gets erased by evil alien hackers.

 

About point 3, your questions are exactly what I'm talking about. Currently, aliens and terrorists just pop out from nowhere, and we have had missions on the same planet (or at least, tagged with the same number) - yet encountering a totally different climate. The starmap would just serve as basic information, and to add some backbone to the storyline, allowing people to see where the actual frontlines or disputed planets are, etcetera.

[Loonie]

We've already done that Brain in November. The forum activity did jump after a while. Ask DH for more info.

 

I also keep an archive of all De-Briefs on my PC so don't worry about hacking