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SWC has proudly been featured in the US version of PC Gamer, specifically the holiday issue (Dragon Age cover). For those in the US, if you're interested in checking the article out, then we suggest purchasing a copy of the magazine or grab an online subscription if that's your bag. The article discusses the overall concept of SWC as a browser based MMO and touches on the heart of the community and the broad array of things any one character may get up to with their time within the game.
The article features brief profiles on Horley Cyan, Vodo Bonias and Teniel Djo, although many more people contributed and were interviewed. Unfortunately the editorial process didn't allow all of the interesting tid bits of player perspective and experiences to make it in, but the Administration wants to thank all of those who participated. It's a great stage for the game to be featured in a magazine like PC Gamer and goes to show that the game is growing and attracting attention.
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The problem relating to items bought from an NPC store not appearing at the players position has been resolved. Anyone who couldn't find their items will now find them in the entrance room of the store they were originally bought in.
Sorry for any inconvenience.
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Our IRC server hosting provider will be rebooting their servers at 2pm EST on November 19th in order to perform some security-related server upgrades. The downtime is not expected to last very long, but it would be wise to avoid scheduling any meetings requiring use of the chat server close to this time and date.
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From next week we will start trialing new arrangments for determining player starting locations. Instead of the Civic Centres we'll be using the Starports on each homeworld as the spawning points for new players. We hope this will result in less waiting time and a kinder experience for new players in their first days in the game.
If the changes prove successful we plan to integrate some of the existing help available to new players within the Starports and their shuttles. Hop on the forums and let us know what you think, or if you've any other ideas about how we can improve the way help is provided to new players.
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As we've recently turned on Faction Dissolution, we've decided to give you all a little extra time to get your factions back in shape, and have thus, reset your timers. However, we have not reset them exactly to zero, but have instead given you one week of extra grace period from now in which to get your faction in order.
Enjoy
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Assigned Datacards have temporarly been unassigned. I'm working to fix the situation. Please stand by.
Edit: The situation has been resolved as best as possible. We have restored ALL assigned datacards from a backup that was taken on saturday night. This means however that datacards assigned on sunday will have been unassigned. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.
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Bug Fixes & Tweaks
- Fixed a bug in unassigning. (Bug 3696)
- Fixed a bug preventing Dirt Hauler NPCs from being unassigned at the end of a mining run.
- Fixed the display of the coloured boxes on the rules pages.
- Fixed the bug with travel preventing people from using Cross Terrain.
- Fixed an issue with crates only spawning one item when more were requested.
- Fixed the administration section of the classifieds.
- Fixed the issues relating to datacards not being assignable.
- Fixed the issue relating to production with datacards.
- Fixed issues with crates spawning with the incorrect number of uses.
- Fixed bug preventing to move Forum Threads. (Bug 3702)
- Fixed corrupted Heavy Lasers images. (Bug 3582)
- Fixed recycling feature. (Bug 3201, Bug 3640)
- Fixed error preventing to award XP for breaking locks.
- Fixed bug allowing to post on the GNS from a freighter. (Bug 3690)
- Changed force detection time to 1 hour
- Forcers now get their FP set to floor(FXP/100) to make up for masters not getting FP when their students train
- Fixed the display of forces rules page tables going over the sidebar in a smaller window setting. (bug #2454)
- Fixed pop-out "Add Jobs" window height not enough to accommodate choices. (bug #3715)
- Removed "length: m" display for facilities with no length stats.
Maintenance & QA
- Fixed many notices related to recycling, forums, admin tools, GNS)
- "Rooms" has been split into "Rooms" and "Room Messages". Previously, the list of room members would be on the "Rooms" page, now it is in the "Room Messages" page.
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Skumja Jx has been banned for 60 days for one count of ignoring Administrative Instructions, and one count of OOC Harrassment.
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Maliklov Anderson has been banned for 30 days for attempting to have assets owned by a previous character to himself. Remember, having assets previously owned by a character of yours is forbidden. You may purchase assets owned by a previous character of yours, however it must be for a reasonable market value, and also cannot be with credits transferred from a previous character.
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I would like to announce my departure from Public Relations team. I was one of the PR directors for a couple of years and must say it was a very interesting experience. It came to a point where i would need to focus on that job 100% if I would want to do it properly which unfortunately didn't happen. Since I can't leave my "IC life" and it wouldn't be fair to do semi-active job in PR department, I decided to focus exclusively on my character instead.
The main reason I'm writing this is to report back to all of you that Voice of the People #2 Survey results were submitted to core Administration of Combine and despite my departure from the PR group I will continue to do that specific survey every year. You will be informed of third such annual Survey when the time comes. Thank you all that participated in #1 and #2 - your emails were read in full and content summarized for Administration's review. Since the volume of your responses was off the charts, I'm looking forward to 2010.
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We've trolled through the database, losing many a man, but we've come out the other side wielding your missing items. You should now find all the items that you've lost due to the recent changes, sitting warm and snug in your inventory inside crates. This entailed the transferring of ownership of the crates from the original owner to the owner of all the items contained therein. We've also updated crates so that they will now spawn items with the custom picture that was intended for that item during production.
We're still looking into refunding people CPs for lost custom images, we're just chasing up a few people for some information regarding how many customs they had.
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We have finally had the time to correctly address the dissolution of Máurari and their assets that went to the Galactic Market. For those of who you have suddenly lost said assets, you will need to e-mail me directly stating what you purchased (including the ID), for how much, and from who. I only want to hear from the people who owned the assets at the time that they were made back over to the rightful owner.
To those
who purchased the items from the market and then sold them to others after explicit instructions from the Administration not to; you and I will be having a little chat very soon.
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If you were one of many over the past month, to have attempted to have bought from an NPC or crafted an item. you'll have noticed that your items have been quite unattainable. Well, because we're such fun fellows over at the dev team, we've taken the time to fix them all up for you. All lost items will now be in the entrance room of the respective facility/ship/spacestation/vehicle that they were created in.
Enjoy.
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I have been getting responses from some combine members that some custom images were lost as a result of the items becoming abstract numbers inside crates.
As much as I would love to be able to replace the images instantly, I cannot. Nor can I tell what was applied before the cleaning occured, and not refund for reapplied customs. Therefore, while I apologize for the inconvenience:
Any custom images that were applied to an item that has been packaged into a crate must be bought again.
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Okay I have gone though all of the initial responses (about 350). Of course many were duplicates, however I hope you all continue to report if you notice something wrong. This is also a way for all of you people who come to me and say you will do faction checks can assist.
I do have tips (mostly for reporters, but also for those who are in charge of your factions) I wanted to post (however Zhao jumped the gun and posted the link before I had the chance).
1. IC Text includes News. This was the most common mistake I saw (people saying a site did not have IC text when it did). IC Text is ANY TEXT other than the services, history, join info. No this does not mean each word on your rank chart counts, but if you have a small blurb about the faction, and a News post and combined they are 150 words, you’re fine. This is my biggest tip for faction’s make a news area! It can be FAKE news even! IC text is about the easiest part to comply with, yet it’s the most commonly left out.
2. If a faction’s Services or Join info says they do not provide services or they aren’t hiring, that is fine and does count towards meeting requirements. Governments can have laws or a constitution to meet the services requirement.
3. When reporting images, I suggest you do a hard refresh first. Ctrl+F5 . Nearly all images reported worked fine.
4. Don’t simply meet the minimums. If you only have 150, then it is more difficult to tell if you are meeting requirements. Some Factions have pages and pages of history so I don’t even need to check the word count. This is especially good since I plan to raise the 150 minimum here in the future.
5. Just because you may not have received CPs from reporting this time, doesn’t mean you were ignored. You may have submitted correct issues, but someone beat you to it. So please do continue to keep an eye out.
So here are the results.
I will not post this every time I update the page (it will update automaticly when I do) So faction leaders need to check this regularly. Even if your site is fine now, if your host turns off your site, its on you to have it replaced before someone reports you. Depending on how many reports we continue to get after this initial release I may start to DM faction leaders directly.
As stated on the sheet Factions have till the date posted to pay their fines (one week from when I check them). FINES MUST BE PAID BY THE INDIVIDUAL FACTION TO DARKNESS.
Also don’t report the same mistakes until after the date listed (i.e. you MAY report at 351 if they are doing the same issue. You may report at any time if they are not meeting a new criterion that is not currently listed.). If a faction does not pay I will take double the fine manually. They will also be receiving a double fine if they are reported again for the same issue (so I suggest you reporters go through this list on day 351) and this will continue to double until the issue is fixed.
If you have an issue with a fine. Too bad. It was submitted, and then checked at a later time. If you know what we say is missing to be there, then you should make it easier to find. Sites are not only there for faction checks, they are to exist to showcase your faction in a larger venue for your customers, followers, and all members of the game.
I would also like to give a very special thanks to Clarr Solo for creating the form which makes this a much simpler process (it only took two hours as opposed to about twelve).
Also the top contributors (only counting the ones which were found first and were correct. Each critera = 1 point = 250cps) are:
Talor Dakari : 21 (although he most likely had the most incorrect reports as well >.>)
Jacob Jansen: 14
Aves Sunfell: 9
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It seems like no matter how often we say that factions should follow the rules regarding their websites, their histories and so on, they just don't seem to care. So... We're implementing a new system. From now on, players may actively report factions for failing to meet the specified standards. If the report is valid, the first player to report them will receive a CP reward, and the faction will be INSTANTLY penalised through the loss of credits, assets, or for repeat offenders (This includes the people who are running the factions, not just individual factions) far more serious penalties...
In order to do this, we've set up a nice little tool in which you'll find a checklist of things which a faction must abide by, if they're failing in that area, tick the box, enter their faction name, your character name and hit send. The tool can be found by clicking this link, or in the top bar of the Faction Creation section of the rules.
Factions, pull get stuff together already. Players, go nuts!
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Victor Crispin and Felix Golden are banned for being the same person (admitting so in a DM even). One can contact us in 30 days to have one account unbanned with partial asset/cp loss.
Thanks to Talor Dakari for his assistance with this.
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You may have noticed that you are missing some items. Do not panic, this is NOT a bug, but instead, a change to the way in which item and droid production operate.
In the past, you may have had an inventory of perhaps 20,000 items, with only 500 of those being outside of crates. This represents a waste of server space for us, and a larger and slower inventory for you. Our change was to remove any items that were stored within crates, while changing the fuctionality of crates so that they can now spawn a batch of items themselves. When you want an item, you merely need to go to the items tab, select the number you want from the crate, and remove them.
Hopefully you'll appreciate the smaller, faster inventories.
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Features
Escape Pods have been released! Rules can be found here: http://rules.swcombine.com/?Movement#Escape_Pods
Note that as a result of Escape Pods being introduced, and a change to how we store them, the raw material requirements for some entites will have changed.
Please Note: We'll be turning faction dissolution back on next week.
Bug Fixes & Tweaks
- Implemented this suggestion to only allow CP ships and vehicles to be spawned from inside certain facilities. The facilities are listed on the CP exchange, and the entities will be spawned outside the facility.
- Fixed a bug in inline unassigning of entities in all inventories. (BugID 3581, 3570)
- Fixed an issue in inventory where an error would be throw if a 'select all in inventory' case was (or became) empty between being selected and being used to do an action. (ErrorID 80214)
- Fixed a bug where the custom pilot labels (operator, carrier, etc) weren't being displayed on the "piloted" inventory pages. (Bug 3589)
- Fixed a bug in space station construction where the name of the system wasn't displayed in the Tax Administration event to governments. (Bug 3521)
- Fixed a bug where NPC workers weren't being unassigned at the end of production or upon starting the next item in the queue. (Bug 3577)
- Fixed a bug that prevented the issuing of stocks. (Bug 3639)
- Fixed a bug in the headers set for the site-wide CSS that was preventing it from ever being cached.
- Fixed a bug that was causing newly created items to be created at strange locations.
- Fixed the wording in the XP message when modifying a lock.
- Losing a lock breaker while attempting to break a lock will now be displayed in the event.
- Modified the events system to be much faster and reduce server load.
- Cleaned up the library files and deleted old and deprecated code.
- Modified the table engine for both events and actions to allow for better performance during high server load.
- Fixed bug allowing someone to use Force skills (test) and train at the same time.
- Fixed several bugs relating to Force training with masters
- Fixed bug with getForceSkills() incorrectly assigning skillID to the wrong skill.
- Fixed bug where Force Detection used the wrong skillID.
The Force
- Force Points have been restored to their previous values before conversion
- All force users have been re-converted to the new system to preserve their FP
- Fixed bug with assigning unlimited Force Skill Points
- Fixed bug where even with the correct amount of FXP, you needed 1 more successful training to level force
- Fixed master XP on successful student training (Force)
- Masters can no longer view their student's skills, etc. but receive events when SP are assigned
- Combined statistics and training pages into one page since they were a bit redundant
- Updated light side skill color to match FM
- The +1 button is now hidden for skills that are at max (5) or that you don't have enough SP for
Maintenance & QA
- Finished the new Admin tool for creating NPCs.
- Upgraded script.aculo.us to v1.8.3
- Created admin tool for the new Force system |
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Anybody who is experiencing "white screen" issues where the screen turns white when typing a name into a textbox should upgrade from Internet Explorer 7 to Internet Explorer 8 (or an alternative like Firefox or Chrome).
Internet Explorer 8 in Compatability mode also has the white screen issue. If the problem occurs to you, please turn compatability mode off.
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