Official Announcements

[Sheriden]

Game Rules Updates

1. When the game round starts, do not submit a budget.  We will tell you when to submit budgets.  Hint: It might be done on a fiscal calendar rather then an annual one.

2. Ask questions in game, not out of game.  If you don't know how much something should cost, send an action asking your government to study how much it should cost, and we will tell you.  At no cost to you. If you don't know how long it takes to get somewhere, ask your military advisors and we will come up with an answer.  Instead of piling a bunch of stuff into one mega action, spread it out into smaller chunks - that way you don't overwhelm staff with needing to do ten things at once instead of ten simple things one at a time.

3. When submitting actions, you must post a news article before submitting the action.  The news article should not describe the results you get from the action - you don't know what results we will give you, but it should announce your governments intentions and maybe even speculate on what results they hope for.  Think of it like a press release.  You must include a link to the article you post when you submit your action. It can be included in the Article field of the Action.

That said, maybe your action is secretive in nature.  We still require that a news article be posted.  It can be about an unrelated program.  For example, if attempting to assassinate a foreign leader you can post a news article in your LBC about grant funding for Alderaanian war orphans. That's okay! The idea is that your news article is the payment you make to the moderator team in exchange for our processing your action results.

The theory is that content drives participation, and that secret actions make it look like the game isn't taking place.  So we always require a news article of some kind be posted prior to processing any action.  The action tool includes a field for sharing your news article with us.  Instead of copying the text of the article, simply post a link to the news article you already posted so we know which article is attached to which action.

Unlike in ancient times, you won't get Domestic Popularity (DP) bonus for news articles, your reward for news articles is action results.  That said, if your News Articles are a cut above and of a high quality level you might get DP bonuses on top or your results.  Likewise if your BS news articles meant to hide your intel and secretive actions do a good job of actually being relevant to your secret actions (thereby hiding them in plain sight, you might get bonus results as well.

Once staff communicate the results of your action to you, you might feel inclined to post a follow up article sharing those results with the galactic community and your citizens.  These posts are great opportunities to earn those classic DP bonuses if you liked milking those for bonuses in past game rounds.  

Finally, staff will not always post Holonet news about action results.  Your primary source for news about what other players are doing will come from their news broadcasts.  If an action has impacts on other worlds we might have the Holonet news do a brief headline story about it, likely including a link to the news article posted by the player.  We might also highlight news articles that are particularly well written. 

Because staff are relying on players to post quality content about what they are doing, players who don't keep the community up to date with their activities by way of detailed news articles can expect to see the quality of the results they receive from their actions suffer in turn.  As the success of the game depends on how we interact with one another in public - not the bonuses and results we horde in secret.

[Fury]

Game Start Date Announcement - 21 December @ 1900 EST

The time has come to announce a launch date/time.  Our goal is to launch in 48 hours. While we would like to say everything will be perfect, it won't. Understand that we could spend months more on this effort, and we would still have issues arise. We are at a point where we need to launch, and we've all been patient for nearly a year. We are working through our final edits and fixes, and we will turn on the game clock on the 21st. We will aim to flip on the game clock and open the game around 7pm.  Your indicator ultimately will be the game clock. If you see it running, then we have begun. I will also put a banner on the forum to highlight the game round status. 

Please continue submitting suggestions for units, as we will honor all suggestions submitted before the launch date itself.  We are looking through suggestions now, and working on planet starting militaries. Finally, please review the tutorials. We will continue to add more tutorials as we see need for certain topics. We have begun pushing out guidance in this thread to help you know how the game round will run.

Remember - DO NOT submit planet budgets when the round begins. We will provide guidance on this, as the fiscal year will offset from the calendar year.  Please keep monitoring this thread for all updates and announcements in regards to the game. 

[Fury]

Cutoff for Unit Additions

I know I previously stated that we would accept unit addition suggestions all the way through the round start, however I am going to rescind that. There have been an absolutely ridiculous number of unit inputs - almost all of which came in the last 72 hours when it became clear we were within very short reach of the game launching. All of our units were finished being added about a month ago. Furthermore, we have been adding units for about three months now.  I also posted our unit list as far back as March and April of this year for review and inputs.  We need to draw the line somewhere, as @Sheriden has been pulling the weight here with military units.  I know nobody had no malintent here, but it is a bit insulting to me to see that our unit list has been completed for a month, but nobody cared to input almost anything until it was nearly too late.   

I understand people will be frustrated with me for this - but poor planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on ours.  As of this post - you have until midnight EST tonight (about 34 minutes from now to submit unit suggestions. Anything received after that will not be added, and you will need to develop it in-game.  Additionally, outstanding units waiting to be added that have met this cutoff will be added at our pace. Whether they make it in-game by the round start, or it takes a few days or a week to make it in the game, you will have to live with it. 

Note: If you submitted the unit suggestion, and are simply being asked for fixes to that submission or additional clarifying information - this cutoff will not apply, and you have until round start to get it submitted.  

[Fury]

SWD Launch!

It has been a long time coming - we appreciate your patience. The game is now live! Actions, military production / sales, and well...everything is now open for business. Have fun! 

[Sheriden]

While not a requirement.... I'll emphasize that it is best practice to include Hyperlinks in all actions you submit. 

It saves staff time and energy having to research your actions.  And a happy moderator is a productive moderator.

Anytime you mention a planet feel free to just go ahead and hyperlink to the wookie for that planet. 

Anytime you mention a ship type, consider hyperlinking to the unit stat card here on the game site.

Etc.

It'll make your lives and ours just that much better.

Also, it's gonna be 2022 soon, y'all can learn to imbed your links.

 

😄

[Sheriden]

A friendly reminder that the deadline to adjust your org permissions before the round started has passed. If you want to join or leave an org now it must be done in character. Likewise you must send an action in to have staff adjust your org permissions. 

You can review what orgs your planet is in on your planet page.

When you join as a new planet you are allowed free association with any Orgs of your choice.  Simply inform staff what org you want your planet to be a part of and they will add you to the roster. 

[Sheriden]

Fun Fact:  The Star Wars calendar includes ten months of 35 days!  Don't get confused.

[Sheriden]

Breaking News!

The Club feature, previously planned to be used for planet management, was formally discontinued earlier this week once players confirmed that they had removed all content from the private forums that had been created prior to completion of the new Action Submission system.  While work is ongoing to improve the quality of the new game engine and its integration with our website and game forums, the removal of the private planet forums as part of the club feature left that feature unused and available use in other ways.  We have relaunched it now as part of functionality for in game organizations.

While each organization formed in the game will have a single private forum on the main page of site, any additional forums needed by those orgs will be located in "clubs" a feature of the website.  The Club pages, or "Organizations" as we will call them, can be found in the Game menu on the top bar of the website, labeled under Organization Management.  These forums are all set to private and only members invited to join them should be ab le to see the list of orgs that they are part of.  Being part of an organization in general does not mean you should have access to one of these private forums.  Typically most players will only have access to the primary forum located on the main site forum list.  But players who join the leadership of their organizations or get special assignments within their orgs may have access to additional forums for private communication.

The big improvement over nested forums for organizations (which we used to do and can still do) is that these clubs give more access to moderation tools to players without a need for access to our Admin Controls.  Including the ability to invite members to join. Removing the need for staff to be constantly involved in making changes to rosters of who has access to what and where.

[Fury]

Bugs vs. Suggestions

I want to offer up a reminder to everyone. There is a difference between bugs and suggestions. Do you have an idea of something to add or modify to make the game better? That's a suggestion. How about a unit or planet to add to the game? Also a suggestion.  

A bug would be something that is built in to the game code that is not operating as it is intended.  For instance - do you see an issue with how the TPC system is intended to work, and it is not operating in that way? That is a bug.  

Please submit your bug or suggestion reports in the proper place. I want to keep them separate. Suggestions take a lower priority to bugs. I check the bug tracker much more often than the suggestion tracker.  

Bug Tracker: https://forum.swdiplomacy.com/index.php?/gamesupport/bugs/

Suggestion Tracker: https://forum.swdiplomacy.com/index.php?/gamesupport/suggestions/

 

They both have separate menu items on the support drop down. 

[Fury]

Ongoing Bug with Military Production

I want to address a problem that was identified to us today, but others have likely identified.  Military production orders are NOT deducting money from your treasuries upon completion.  While this sounds like it may be awesome and you may have gotten free orders...you have not. I am going through all military orders and manually adjusting the cost of your production orders and editing your treasuries.  I am only doing it for orders that have completed - so if it is still in production, you won't have a reduced treasury.  This is incredibly tedious - so this is going to take me probably two or three weeks to get through them, especially as new orders complete every day.  Just understand that if you have money disappear - this is very likely why. 

Enjoy the "free units" now - but you WILL be paying for them. 

[Fury]

Organization Forums

Due to an unforseen permission bug (which will be addressed by the developer), we have moved ALL organization discussions into their own private section.  All of you will receive invites to join your respective organization portal.  These pages are locked down for now. You will only be able to see the organizations you are a member to, and also only members of that organization can see who is a member of that organization. We have implemented the tightest permission security. If you notice a mistake, let one of us know.  Please accept invitations as they come in, so you can seemlessly get back to your organizational discussions. The old organization forum links will remain on the main page - and clicking them will redirect you. This should help with ease-of-access for all of you. All of your organizations posts have been migrated as well. 

[Sheriden]

Take note of the previous announcement about organizations and be advised that failure to join organizations you have been invited too does not mean you are not a member of that organization, only that you don't see posts made there and can't participate in discussion.  Likewise, leaving a club/organization you are a member of does not remove you officially ether. To leave an organization officially you must send an action in that the moderation team will act on.

To review what orgs you are a member of please check the planet list and review what orgs are listed on your planet page. 

[Sheriden]

It has been encouraged that we bring your attention to the "Follow" feature located in every forum and club, and individual conversation threads for that matter.  This button is often located in the top right corner of the screen, or in that general direction...  When you click it you can select notification setting for any update posted in that region of the website.  This is useful because of our recent migration of all org forums into the club feature.  You may not receive notifications or notice new content being posted in those clubs associated with your organization if you don't use the Follow feature to set your notification preferences.   Please use this tool.

I will also take this opportunity to remind members that failure to join a club you are invited to does not mean you are not part of that club - it just means that you are negligent In Character and not bothering to pay attention to what is happening in that forum.  Don't blame us when decisions get made without you. 🙂

[Sheriden]

I'd like to shed some light on the unit design process for our community; first and foremost that it is a process.  You participate in that process but you do not dictate the results of that process.  Most of you who are doing tech actions are doing just fine, but we're hitting enough speed bumps that I want to make a few things a bit more clear for everyone so that we can all step up our game.

1.  Please submit your unit designs using the same format that units are posted in the unit list. When you deviate from this format you make more work for the moderators processing your results.  If you repeatedly make more work for for staff your results will be penalized and costs will be increased.

2.  Following the format also means including all the information on the unit.  Little things like not including what type of unit it is (Frigate or Corvette, Light Vehicle or Heavy Vehicle) again means more work for staff.  In some cases we may ask you to clarify and fix the omission for you, but we're just as likely to make a decision for you and proceed with results.  Don't be the player who ends up paying to design a starship with no engines!

3.  When you submit a design to the moderators you are providing specifications to your R&D team about what you would like the final product to look like.  When staff responds with the finalized design it may not look exactly like what you laid out in your proposal.  In game this is because your experts did their best to meet your specifications but had to make alterations.  In reality this is because of one of ether two reasons:  The unit didn't conform to what our unit spreadsheet is capable of handling and we produced the best results we could for you that were similar to your design and possible within the system... OR  The unit was unbalanced within the game system and we modified it to fit within the realm of what we believe fits within the game setting.  When the second thing happens we usually take a moment to tell you so and may give you an opportunity to do research to push these limitations with future unit designs or weapons research.

3A.  In order to save staff time and effort, the unit spreadsheet makes use of standardized weapon systems. Weapon Systems have names, and every weapon with that name has the same statistics.  The spreadsheet auto fills those statistics and calculates game costs based on them reducing the amount of effort we have to put into data entry dramatically.  In game you can think of this as representing the fact that there are supply chains, and industrial standards, and just because your government wants a custom weapon doesn't mean that it is readily available.  When designing a unit we will endeavor to match the weapons systems you call for on your ships to our standardized list, ether matching the name or matching the proposed GTs in your proposal.  It is not always possible to match both if you don't base your weapons on examples from the existing unit list.  Simply making up your own weapon systems, names, and GT values doesn't work however and wastes staff time.

4.  SWD has been around for many years, and a lot of great work and wise decisions were made in the past.  Also some not great decisions as well.  In ether case, SWD has also been plagued by site crashes and data loss.  So let me be clear (and I've said this before) There are no records of any of these past decisions.  NONE.  And constantly citing past rulings and past decisions that you happen to remember having been made in the past has no bearing on how things are being done now.  If you care to write some of these things that you remember down we can take them into consideration for how we do things moving forward, but your oral history of SWD does not help us implement decisions now.  If you've heard this speech from me before and continue to argue for things based on past rulings be advised that I'm going to just stop listening to you at some point.

All that said, if you find yourself unsure how the tech process works, rest assured that we're aware it can be baffling, and we handle your actions with kid gloves.  We're not going to try and screw you just because you don't know whats going on and you won't be penalized for making casual mistakes.  These notes are for those of you who are or may be getting ready to submit a lot of tech actions and we want to help you avoid repeat errors.  Thanks for listening to my TED talk.

[Sheriden]

The following units had their Unit Classifications adjusted to be more internally consistent with other units:

Gamma-class ATR-6 Assault Transport
Grek-class Troop Shuttle
Delta-class DX-9 Stormtrooper Transport
Svelte-class Imperial Shuttle
Katarn-class Boarding Shuttle
Theta-class T-2c Shuttle
TIE/la "TIE Lander"

 

If this change hurts or hinders you in anyway.... Die mad about it.  Also thank @redhunter for prompting a review of the size classifications for Landing Ships, Large Transports, Small Transports, and Starfigthers. 

Have a nice day.

[Fury]

Military Production Orders

I want to address something about how production orders work. I've been approached multiple times about this, with people thinking it is broken. It's a fair idea.  However, the production system runs a task every hour to complete orders. This is done to save CPU usage and not have tasks running on the back-end every minute.  So if an order completes, and it has not been 60 min since it was supposed to complete...wait. If you are a few hours after the completion time and you don't see the units populate in your inventory or see the credits deducted, let us know. I am able to force-execute the task - however I don't want to do this every time. 

[Fury]

Action Limit 

We are going to officially institute a limit on actions.  All players are now limited to five actions total in the queue at any given time. However you decide to slice that up with which action categories, is in you.  Additionally, if you have actions listed as 'On Hold', they will not count towards this limit.  If you currently have over five actions, they are grandfathered in and will be allowed to remain - however you will be unable to submit actions until you have less than five actions in your queue.  All new submissions will be deleted by the moderator staff.  Finally, if you wish to cancel actions on your own in order and prioritize a new action, you may do that.  When you open up the action in your planet management page, you have a dropdown that allows you to select a status for the action and cancel it. 

[Sheriden]

A reminder to our player community that all game play must take place on the game website and forums.  Discord & other forms of direct communication are suitable for community engagement and logistical communication but do not replace or remove the need to role play your planet and its activities here in our community.  SWD and its staff are not responsible for ether community behavior or out of game content generated outside of our community.  Agreements you make with other players are not binding and cannot be used as proof or evidence of any game action or game state. 

So by all means, communicate with your friends however you like, but be strongly advised that unless it happens within the realm of the game environment it is not part of the game and you do so at your own risk.

[Sheriden]

Star Wars Lore & Wookiepedia

The Star Wars Galaxy is vast, and largely we experience it through the eyes of protagonists in Movies, TV shows, and Books.  The things they see and experience are the things we know about in there universe and much of that information is documented for us on Wookiepedie.  However that does not mean that everything we know from the movies and that is available for us to read about on Wookiepedia is known to our characters and governments in the game world.  In fact much of it is NOT known.  In general we expect you to be the custodians of this knowledge and to check yourselves when submitting actions that utilize lore that you as a player have access to but might not as your planet.  Please do not make extra work for staff by abusing such knowledge.  We know that there are times when the line between these can be grey or even blurred, you and staff might not agree one where the line should be - but we ask that you do your best, because our assumption has to be that attempts to use such knowledge are potentially exploitative.  As such when you attempt to use such knowledge there are several possible outcomes:

Staff will agree that you have access to that knowledge and process your action as submitted.

Staff will disagree that you have access to that knowledge and inform you so - cancelling your action.

Staff will respond to your action with seemingly positive results and then have something tremendously bad happen to you as a consequence of your hubris. 

[Sheriden]

Drop Pod type units have had their stats adjusted to reflect the fact that they are single use type units.

[Sheriden]

Beginning Month 6, Day 1, 5 ABY players may submit Budget Actions.  A link to the tutorial on Budgets is included below.  Veteran players should be advised that we now have a working budget formula and they can freely adjust the RR/IR ratio without worrying about staff giving them penalties. The formula credits or penalizes you for changes via GDP Growth.  Do not submit a budget action before the specified game date.  You will be penalized. 

 

 

[Sheriden]

24 hour count down to Month 6, Day 1, 5 ABY begins now!  Budgets open at 4:00pm PT / 7:00pm ET tomorrow, January 19th. 

[Sheriden]

We just love the excitement and fervor in this community, we hope you are enjoying the game round - and appreciate the feedback from those who have expressed that they are (and from those who have expressed that they aren't as well!)  But we remain a small staff at this point, and in order to make sure that everyone's actions get the attention they deserve we are commencing our first Game Pause to clear the action back log.  There are approximately 50 actions that need to be processed at the moment, many of which impact the budgets it will soon be time for you to submit.  Therefore at this time Budgets are not yet open.

The Game Engine does not yet support our ability to turn off action submission, so be advised that any actions submitted from this point forward will be deleted while we work to clear the backlog.  Do NOT submit new actions.

In addition to the pause allowing us time to clear the action queue, we will process GDP and Population growth, verifying that the moderator tools to complete those functions in the game engine work correctly, and eventually we will open budgets and take the time to review them and verify that the budget calculator is working as intended.  We will keep you informed as we move through this process and let you know when we need you to take action.

Finally, having stress tested the game for a month now, we can identify where things are working and where they aren't.  Ultimately our goal is for the game to be a fun experience (for players and for staff) so we anticipate making some changes to the way things work in the game to improve the game experience for everyone.  These will likely include changes to how Research Time is calculated, the pace at which TPC can be constructed, and related systems.  Any change will be retroactive and include any ongoing projects to make sure no one gets stiffed for longer research times if we make the process move faster.  We will announce specific changes before unpausing the game.

All that said, we regret having to pause because we don't want to interrupt the flow and excitement of the game round...  But we are a small and might crew on staff.  If you would like to be considered as a possible addition to our team, you may send your application to me via DM.  We reserve the right to say no (because some of you are slum lords) but letting us know you are interested is the first step.

 

[Sheriden]

I have recently noticed several instances of players editing in character content.  That is not allowed on SWD.  We have enabled players ability to edit posts on this forum because we are all adults and we understand that it is convenient to be able to edit posts for formatting and other issues that do not impact in character play.  But using this power to change or remove the content you have posted in in character forums is not allowed and is considered a form of cheating in this community.  If you are a new player or were unaware of this please consider this your formal warning not to do so.  Further instances of this will result in game warnings and may result in our needing to turn off the ability of players to edit posts.

[Sheriden]

The following players are believed to have been inactive since before the round started:

Bonadan @Allen Kalashnikov
Etti IV @Andromeda
Yaga Minor @Erich
Sluis Van @Hunterthemadman
Ralltiir @Itake
Brentaal IV @Willselph07

We would like to give them the opportunity to respond to staff prior to the end of the pause, to remain on their planets.  Otherwise they will be removed and those planets made available for new players.  They are welcome to reapply at any time if they are removed.  But they are also encouraged to join the fun!