We have a few exciting staff announcements today.

First, I'd like to congratulate our two new assistant simmasters (informally, asims), Popara Anjiliac Diresto and Cornelius vi Cron, whose government names will be Leon and Strife respectively. They will be helping with the traditional asim duties: account issues, helping players affected by bugs, rules enforcement, etc. The current asim team now consists of Erek, Ghost, Leon, Strife, and Arjuna.

I'd also like to announce a promotion for one of our current asims, Arjuna, to a full administrator position. He will be in charge of asim management and the primary contact for any abuse or complaint issues. He will also be continuing and expanding his previous work as Galaxy Director to create a more detailed and vibrant in-game universe and oversee the creation and integration of new game content such as quests, in conjunction with the asim team.

Congratulations to everyone, we look forward to working together.  

In a recent sync, the developers added the ability to set flavor text for item types. This was implemented for the purpose of special quest items and items for in-game events, but we would like to expand flavor text to existing item types as well, for informational and entertainment purposes.

Therefore, a thread has been opened in the Work for CPs forum where all creative individuals are invited to submit suggestions for flavor text. Further instructions and information about flavor text are included in the submission thread, and small amounts of CPs will be awarded for text used and for solid suggestions in general. There is no deadline.  

Hi everyone, you may have noticed that there is a problem where you get redirected to some spam sites, sometimes. This is being caused by a bad ad being served by google; as far as I know there is nothing we can do until google resolves the issue from there end. I believe it has already been reported to them and we are just waiting for them to finish investigating. Thanks for your patience, I know this is a really annoying thing to have happening!  

With the increasing need for more members of the administrative team, we're once again looking to the players to find new Assistants to help with the day to day work of keeping the combine "functional"

Job description: Assisting and resolving players problems requiring manual help, using admin tools. Must be knowledgeable about the Combine and how it works. Willingness to set aside previous IC relations, to take strong player criticisms, and to spend frequent time on IRC to discuss administration actions and direction. Specifically would be working with; Ticketing system, join applications, multi-accounts, #swc-help, and player assistance. This position will require you to drop your character, and remove yourself from the IC universe. You will not be able to return to the same character later.

If interested, please email to Arjuna@swcombine.com and include the answers to the following questions:

Combine Questions

1. What is your Combine handle?

2. How long have you been with the Combine?

3. What have you done IC so far? What are you doing at the moment? What is your position in your faction?

4. Did you complete any tasks for your faction that could qualify you for the programmer team? like doing a website, setting up a member's DB or anything like this?

5. Could you name two people that have been in the Combine for at least two years who worked with you and may be willing to give a testimonial for you?

6. Why do you want to help us?

7. What do you think you can bring to the team?

8. Are you involved in any other online games, or RPGs of a similar nature? If so, please specify your position in them.

Real Life

1. Where do you live?

2. How old are you?

3. What do you do IRL?

4. How much time can you spend on the Combine in general and helping in particular?

5. Were you involved in any projects that would qualify you for the position?

Feel free to email/DM with any questions.

This posting will remain open until Year 16 Day 43  

Since the room maps tool was fixed at last, the current set of CP ships have had their final room map designs added. These were the winning designs from the room maps contest two years ago and the winners were already rewarded several months ago. If there are any issues with the maps, such as inaccessible rooms or missing room types, please file a bug report so it can be resolved. These designs were brought to you by:

Veltraa: Daisuke Haines
Strike: Temseti Wolf
Foray: Korinas Vildras
Shieldship: Adrian Kilstar
Herald: Lilith Delcroix
Dragonboat: Orgeno Kartan
Class 720: Cait Catra
578-R: Darlene Bazinga
S-250 Chela: Aiko Constantine
IRD Starfighter: Eirkefe Iyal  

Update to revision d8d43317dfffcb457a41e7a2fe13da18e49673fa

Bugs:
- Can no longer buy items to be auctioned before the auction begins (Bug #3640)
- Special characters displayed correctly in XML exports (Bug #3188)
- "Command: Board Entity" affects Squads now (Bug #3605 and #3606)
- Fixed broken link for the support page (Bug #3622)
- Fixed broken link for #swc-help (Bug #3623)
- If a faction/individual takes control of an unowned planet while a slab is being built, the slab is still built (Bug #3630)
- Fixed art bugs #3596 and #3635

Rules:
- Updated the Terms of Service to reflect the current SWC rules and correctly represent SWC as a browser-based online game
- Updated the Facility Income rules to clarify that FI runs on the last day of every month at 17:00 server time
- Added ECM and Sensors to applicable entities on rules summary pages
- HP on race pages now uses current equation for health. Gives range of initial hp for each race at level 1. Added link at top of content to explanation of hp
- Replaced mat images with large version for mining rules table
- Many improvements to HTML structure including fewer deprecated tags and less inline styling

Tweaks:
- Flavor text visible for items that have it on the Equipment page
- Fixed five missing table indexes which should improve performance on main
- Market query performance should be dramatically improved as well, due to a complete rewrite
- City Designer now respects user skin
- LISP Changelog: Fixed exceptions in get-eta, get-destination, and get-location; added the ability to create flash messages (the green/blue/red boxes that come up when you do something in game).

Tools:
- Database optimization improved asim tool performance dramatically
- New Property Editor to manage per entity-type generic properties
- New git web UI is ready for managing dev server's status
- Completed git migration for the implementation team's version control system
- Room tool fixed again, should be able to create room maps this time

Hotfixes: (you may have noticed these already)
- Increased the volume of medikits and toolkits so they can no longer be stacked inside of themselves
- Join Team and IRC Team icons added to the staff bars on the forums
- The following Darkness-owned planets received a ranch, zoo, or wildlife preserve for the hatching of Mysterious Eggs: Malastare (at 4, 10), Nuswatta (4, 4), Vortex (7, 3), Muunilinst (4, 6), Kiffex (5, 3), Kinyen (4, 6), Gravlex Med (7, 6), Tibrin (5, 2), Vinsoth (1, 4), Togoria (3, 1), Maridun (6, 7), Nimban (8, 2), Huk (5, 2), Brodo Asogi (5, 6), Dorin (4, 6), Giju (6, 4), Aleen (6, 4), Devaron (9, 3), Denhui-Eight (8, 1), Antar4 (1, 2), Dressel (5, 5), Bothawui (5, 3), Chadra (3, 4), Toola (3, 6), Af`El (8, 4), Barab I (4, 3)

The most important thing that happened for this sync was our switch from svn to git (you may have noticed our revision number is now a 40 character hash instead of an actual number). Much of our time was spent developing a user interface to manage branches and code on the dev server. We've also started work on a re-implementation of squads and parties due to the massive number of issues with these features, as well as general work on the concept of power pools to replace the current city-level facility power system. Power pools will generalize the concept of powering facilities: a number of power generators combine to supply a "pool," and facilities are assigned to that pool at a managing structure (such as a CCC). This allows for redundancy and segmentation of the power grid on a planet. Pools are visible on a planet scale, rather than a city scale, allowing them to be better protected in interior locations. Full rules will be posted prior to release. Repair is still in testing and a new UI is being developed for it to make it look nicer.

There was also an (apparently long standing) issue with the galactic market, brough to my attention by people fighting over entities purchased from Cloud City's dissolution. It was previously possible to purchase an item during a short period of time before the auction began, which was unintended behavior. This had been reported before but it seems that due to miscommunications, it wasn't properly identified as a bug and believed to be the correct behavior. We will be reversing all purchases made in this manner in the past 60 days, refunding money spent, and relisting the entities as proper three week auctions.  

Hello everyone. As Selatos indicated in the most recent sim news, we've been working on developing a new set of rules for the Force. We've recognized for a while that the current rules simply can't be integrated with how combat in the Combine has evolved. Keeping that in mind, we've come up with a more streamlined and coherent set of rules that work very well together, and integrate into the rest of the Combine to avoid Force users being gamebreakers while still enabling them to contribute something special.

Here is the link to the new rules: Click me!

I'd like to explain some of the changes we've made. First, we've removed the concept of "facets", and along with those the detriment that players would see when becoming Force Sensitive at a higher level. Second, most of the skills have changed, as I said, to be more in-line with the Combine's combat system philosophy. With the removal of facets, Force users will no longer have skill points to assign upon becoming FS. You will gain 1 Force skill point per Force level to spend on leveling Force skills, which continue to level in the same manner as normal skills.

Additionally, while the Force Meter has not been entirely removed as was once considered, we have lessened the number of skills in which it plays a factor, so that it remains a largely RP aspect of the Force. Using light and dark skills will, in some undetermined fashion, affect the Force Meter, allowing Force users to modify their FM through the use of skills.

Finally, as I've alluded to before, there will be a change coming with regards to Force cooldowns. Specifically, Force users will have a number of "slots" that may be used for Force actions, and each Force action will take up a number of slots for the length of their activation/cooldown.  

I just wanted to share a quick word on development progress. We haven't had a sync in a few weeks but I assure you we're still working on things. This is finals time and then holidays snuck up, so the team hasn't had as much availability, and we've also been transitioning to a new version control system (git, from svn), which has taken a lot of time out of useful feature production. But, in the future this should improve the build stability because it provides more careful control over which code is slated for release and which is still experimental.

Apart from that, I've also got some new rules announcements. The first version of the new set of force skills and mechanics has been created, and Mikel will be posting more information on the details shortly. The rules pages will be updated no later than the actual release of any in-game mechanics but likely much sooner. We're also introducing a new mechanic known as "stochastic rounding," which will be used (almost) everywhere that we currently have a round mechanism for integer stats. Stochastic rounding rounds a number like 4.3 to 4 70% of the time and to 5 30% of the time, such that if we take a large number of 4.3s, round them in this fashion, and then take the average of the rounded values, it works out to 4.3 (rather than normal rounding which works out to 4, or ceiling rounding which works out to 5).

This was motivated by an issue identified during repair development, but it should improve the "smoothness" of other game behavior (such as combat). In particular, repair works by creating an action that ticks every 30 minutes to heal the building partly and then deduct credits and RMs--however, by rounding, we either always take too few RMs or too many, resulting in a total repair cost that is very different from the expected amount. With the stochastic rounding you will fluctuate in how much you pay per step in the repair process, but across repairing the entire building you will see the correct average cost. In combat, this will reduce the quantization effects that plague several weapons: it will be possible to have actual fractional DPS values based on a several-round observation, rather than being binned to a lower damage output with several weapons until you cross the next rounding threshold.

Finally, we are also changing the underlying mechanics of combat, but the objective is to have it play (almost) the same way. Specifically, we're changing dodge into a roll-vs-threshold system (similar to how stealth works) in order to allow for accuracy and dodge buffs that aren't tied to stats. For instance, currently you roll a 0-5 value, add it to your skills, and compare against your opponent's skills. Unfortunately this has no (clean) way to "add 10% accuracy." Using a threshold system in the future, we will take the skills, index them into a table to select the threshold, apply accuracy and dodge modifiers, and then roll 1-100 to compare. The thresholds will be chosen to provide the same distribution of hits and misses as we have currently. This change shouldn't affect gameplay right now, but it provides opportunity for more items in the future (think R&D) and for Force Skills to work more reasonably with combat.

We are also changing how armor absorption works, very dramatically. We will no longer use a subtractive armor system where the AP functions like additional HP that must be removed before actual damage happens. Instead, all weapons will be gaining a new stat called 'firepower,' and armor reduction will be a percentage of incoming damage, based on the armor points of the target and the firepower of the attackers's weapon (plus buffs and debuffs for both sides). Initial values for firepower stats will be chosen based on numerical optimization in order to provide the "closest" possible behavior to the current system, in terms of effectiveness, although you should be aware that it is impossible to achieve a perfect match. This change accomplishes two things: it simplifies traditional "effective HP" calculations as you might see in an MMO or ARPG (with the dodge changes, real eHP is now calculable in a general form), and it makes it possible to have R&D for weapons and armor at all. By adjusting the firepower and armor points in a way that affects absorption but not raw output damage, our in-game weapons will not scale to the point where unarmored targets die instantly. But, the system will retain the constant struggle between new weapons that do more (effective) damage and new armor that blocks more of it.

These are just initial "heads up" or preliminary warnings about upcoming changes. More details will be announced as code changes actually happen to implement these things, and a rules page with modern combat equations to reflect all of the changes described above will be posted before anything changes on main. 

The first cut has been made.  I have sent a DM to a list of people who have advanced to the next level of selection for the Q&A Team.  If you have received a DM from me, please answer the questions enclosed and please begin idling in the #swc-dev room.

I would also like to announce the list of current testers who have been reactivated or who already know the tools and do not have to go through the training process.  This list will comprise the current team until the new ones are added.

With the focus being on reforming the Q&A Team into something more structured, people may be removed from it at any time due to inactivity and other reasons.

Current Q&A Team:

Simkin Dragoneel

Kay Dallben

Syn

Jeff Knight

Memnoch

Dollian Teague

Dunta Star

If you feel you should be added to this list for some reason please DM me and explain why.  

The development team needs you to test for the Combine!  

We're looking for players with experience in vast parts of the game, or willing to learn parts of the game to help the Combine Development Team test bug fixes and other assorted things we want.. tested.  

I'm not going to take players who I will presume to be released onto the Development Server, and just play around spawning SSDs or something.  

Full training may be given, depending on how much time I have, pay will be set at a similar standard to other teams depending on your activity and bugs tested.  

Former and current Testers that have gone inactive during the long interim or that still want to be on the team please message me so I can get you working again.  

Anyone interested needs to email me (sims@swcombine.com) with why they should be on the QA (Testing) team, preferably answering the following questions:  

1) What is your handle?

2) How long have you been with the Combine?

3) Why do you want to join the QA Team?

4) What skills do you think you can bring to the QA Team?

5) What country do you live in?

6) How much time can you spend on the Combine in general and helping in particular?

7) Were you involved in any projects that would qualify you for the position?

8) Can you spend time every day/other day idling on #swc-dev to help test things as needed?

9) Anything else we should know about/can help your application?  

I will review your applications and I will be selecting players to join the team, depending on my busy schedule this may take a week or two.  

Thank you much!   Sims  

Any questions, please join #swc-dev on IRC.    

P.S. Yeah, I am also appreciating the irony of Sims posting on the Sims News.  Laugh loudly for about 10 minutes and then it will be all over.

Edit: Wrong Room  

A couple of weeks ago we held a community forum to hear players’ thoughts on the spying rules and the rules governing IC/OOC separation in game. I want to thank everyone who came to participate, sent me emails, or read the logs afterwards. We considered the options and decided to make only minor changes to the underlying rules and philosophy, but we have tried to make the written rules more clearly reflect these things.

In particular, we’ve updated the life and death rules and the spying rules, as expected. You may not respawn into the same position within your faction, as determined by Darkness. This means you may not die and become leader or 2IC, but other promotions are permitted. We rely on players to encourage “good RP” regarding new characters, but attempting to micromanage what is good and what is not is difficult to do consistently without an unambiguous standard, and it is a better use of ASim time to focus on other tasks. The rules about asset inheritance remain unchanged: you may only purchase previous assets at a fair market price.

This decision was made quickly, and Felix Goreclaw was already unbanned as he isn’t breaking the clarified rules.

The spying rules changes were less controversial, but we needed to spend time deciding what their consequences would be for previously banned players. We’ve clarified the text to state that you may not share or post a player’s OOC information without their permission.

We’ve decided to reduce Kyran’s ban to 6 months, rather than permanent, after making this clarification, as a first offense. But, let me be clear. This counts as a first offense for everyone, and should this come up again there will be no opportunity for leniency.  

Update to revision 29286 (+256)

Bugs:
- Added Merchant Space Docks to HQ checks and NPC Transport locations
- Mines now yield properly (Bug 3582) (hotfix)
- Named rooms will now properly appear in the movement list (Bug 3583)
- Fixed station construction throwing an argument error (Bug 3580) (hotfix)
- NPC Control now shows all NPCs you can access, previously was just the ones you piloted
- Added the Arrested overlay to the Cockpit view (Bug 3581)

Rules:
- Improvements to templates for NPCs
- Rules pages for ships, droids, and vehicles now indicate what class it belongs to (such as Light Freighter, etc.)
- Production Faction Types updated in the rules
- Spying rules, life and death rules, and multi-account rules have updated wording
- Weapons table on the rules page is now sortable and weapon names link to their respective rules pages

Tweaks:
- Talk/Interact only appears if the entity has a script available
- New images for the following: Thermal Goggles, Robe, QH-3 LAV, Mobquet A-1 Deluxe Floater, Minimag PTL Rocket Launcher
- Journal UI changes and general HTML cleanup
- DM ship/vehicle owner link in cockpit
- Updates to LISP system, see changelog for details, as there are too many changes to reasonably list here

Features:
- Party stealth: you can enter stealth mode while in a party now. The lowest stealth skill is used for the whole party, and a penalty based on party size is applied to your stealth score.

Philosophy:

This sync has fewer changes than usual, but it seems everyone is taking holidays at the same time. With the new year approaching, I thought it might also be good to identify the primary development goals that we have for the year. Minor things will probably come up, but this is an overview of the tasks that will guide our implementation strategy over the next 12 months

In the target list, completed targets (shown to establish a reference point) are in green. Targets in progress are in orange, and targets not yet started are in grey. Repair has started testing this past week. We are also developing a new, planet-level power sharing system, which entered the initial implementation phase this week, and work has begun on another new inventory system, because the current system has too many issues for a straightforward fix. Likely we will not wait until it is 100% complete to release it but instead offer the ability to use both inventories once it is stable, until all features have been moved over.

The focus is primarily on engine support for combat and non-combat game content creation. After combat we can implement R&D, and after our main new features are done we will loop back around to the economy to start working on a new stock market, the first of many changes that will enhance the economic simuation. In parallel we will be rolling out lots of server changes to address performance scaling and improve the developer workflow.

I know there is a strong interest in announcing the results of last weekend's presentations regarding the spying rules and IC/OOC separation. We are still discussing things and I will post an update during the week some time with the results and a dedicated message about it. Some of the basic rules clarifications were included in this sync, but we have not reached our final conclusions.  

The above player has been banned for six to nine months (sixty-nine months?!) (NO! Six TO nine months) for the continuous harassment of several members of the IC Faction the Galactic Empire, several instances of OOC extortion, and for attempting to utilize players' IP addresses to find their identities and physical locations.  The reason for the variable length on the ban, other than to give you all a reason to yell about my levels of stupidity, is because I'm still looking at just how much harassing he has been doing. Where's there's one ant...

Nine months it is!  

We have banned the following three players for various offenses including collecting inappropriate OOC information about other players, abusing the bug base to gain IC information, instructing players to violate specifically listed rules on the spying rules page (such as not attempting to abuse IRC to gain faction member lists, a very long standing rule), establishing in-faction policies encouraging others to do the same, and continuing some of these practices even after more explicit rules prohibiting them were posted in December.

Damon Phet has been banned for three months.
Lukastar Narvaka has been banned for six months.
Kara DuMonte has been banned for nine months.

I am in particular disappointed in Kara who has done a significant amount of "leading by example" in this regard. 

Forgive me, Combine, for I have sinned. It has been 29 days since last I held the hammer.

The above account was an already banned player, any action taken by the character has been reversed and the account has been banned.

As always, we'd like to remind players that attempting to skirt a ban by living out your characters life vicariously (both by orchestrating in-game events and by giving orders that other characters must follow) is against the rules; any banned players found doing so will have their punishments extended and any players aiding them will be banned. This warning also extends to those aiding in the breaking of any rules.

This player has been banned for 6 weeks for attempting to OOCly extort IC gain from another player when he suspected them of cheating. This is a breach of IC/OOC. If you believe someone is cheating, reporting them is strongly encouraged by the Administration.

As always, appeals, complaints and concerns may be submitted via support ticket.  

The rules state "Your old character's assets cannot be returned to you. However, you can purchase your assets back from characters at the current market price." That said, Kraton Xel and Alistaire Bravos have been banned for 3 weeks asset laundering and violating the aforementioned rule. The assets have been seized. After 3 weeks, both parties can open up a support ticket asking to be unbanned. If either party feels they have been wrongly accused, they are free to open a support tickets to protest the charges.   

What happens In-Character should remain In-Character  

What happens Out-of-Character should remain Out-of-Character  

Do not retaliate against or insult players OOC for IC actions or IC for OOC actions  

Each characters life is new, do not bring an old grudge to a new sandbox  

Supruu Semper has been banned for 3 weeks in relation to this  

The above players have been banned for three months for treating death as a way to launder an infiltration attempt. They have also been banned for attempting to launder assets. Any old assets saved or recieved have been siezed.

In the unlikely event that no one gets banned in the next three days, have a Mer-... oh. Stand by.  

The above player has been banned for using two multi-accounts. As this is a second offense, the ban is set as indefinite with an appeal in six months.  

The following accounts have been banned for one month. The earliest-made may return.

He also attempted to make a third. It has been banned.  

Happy Thanksgiving! If you don't happen to live in the best country in the world, Happy Thursday!

As a repeat offender, the above player has been permabanned. The player may request a review of their ban after one year's time. Their registration in the Multi-Account Database has been revoked.  

The White Scenario (WS) team is looking for new moderators and trainers! 

You might have noticed a bit of a downturn in activity on the WS Board these past two years, and you're not alone in that. And if you're also thinking back to the good times you had there, especially in that one scenario with that mercenary, and that bar, and those zombies (okay, maybe not such good times for your character), then you're still not alone! Instead of commiserating with your cat while writing your character's history on the Holocron, come join "White (and Red) Scenario Veterans Support Group," otherwise known as the WS Team.

We need experienced roleplayers with strong writing ability to be Moderators and Trainers. These positions are awarded a very generous salary of CPs every month for time spent reading and evaluating posts. Prior participation in at least one White Scenario is strongly recommended, but not required to apply. Visit the Moderator / Trainer Sign-Up thread to learn more.

Ever thought about GMing?

If moderating or training just isn't your thing, but you have a hankering for a good story set in the SWC universe, please consider a stint as a GM. The Scenario Request forum awaits your proposal of most ingenious plotting through which you will be afforded the opportunity to torture and/or entertain your fellow Combiner with your creative devices.

Lost but intrigued?

For those who don't know what all of this blathering is about, the White Scenario Board is for long-form roleplay with the opportunity to earn XP for your character. WS Moderators score the posts of participants to determine how much XP to award for each (and how many CPs a GM should earn for their moderation and story guidance). You're welcome to look through the Public Viewable Scenarios section of the WS Board for examples. RP Trainers, meanwhile, take new roleplayers through a ten part training curriculum in the RPG Centre to prepare them for scenario style roleplay in any one of the Combine's RP forums.  

Onasha has taken it upon himself to begin a set of art classes aimed at encouraging new artists, or low to mid-level skilled artists, into increasing their skillset. If you ever wanted to know how to do that one thing, or perhaps learn 2D or 3D art, now is the perfect time to do so!

Subjects include general art/image theory, 2D drawing, and 3D modeling. Their are classes for all skill levels. The link to the main schedule is here, or you can head to our public art forum:

http://www.swcombine.com/forum/thread.php?thread=66538&page=0

If you have questions, DM Onasha or myself, we will be more than happy to do our best at answering.

Head Art Penguin  

With quest progression going well, the NPC team needs committed players to help us write quests for people to engage in. Initially we will be looking at more tutorial style quests to get new players used to how the game works, but in the future we will then move into more expansive quests and galaxy-wide style quests as well.

So what we need are players that are knowledgable in the scripting feature (here) and are interested in helping out. If you have an interesting scrip that you want to show off your skills, go ahead - might make the difference when we decide.

It is the end of the old Deathmatch - time for a new one! Go vote for your favourite and leave the others in the dust. Also new grudge matches for you to peruse, with one timely one as well - no promises that the ASims will actually follow through with it.  

It was recently brought to my attention that a significant number of people feel that the art rules for custom images are either to strict, limiting, or harsh. And despite me asking the people to message me about their complaints i had not yet heard anything. So, to start the new year off to a good start, I would like to hold an open discussion on the current rules pertaining to customs. The current list of them can be found here:

http://www.swcombine.com/members/cp/index.php?mode=exchange

I honestly want to hear people's opinions and thoughts on this, as the rules have perhaps become limiting or outdated and this is a chance to review what was created many years ago. I welcome anyone to freely express their opinions.

Link to forum discussion thread:

http://www.swcombine.com/forum/thread.php?thread=66345&page=0

Sincerely,

The Art Penguin  

Time for another round of the Deathmatch. Who will win, Frezt or Obi? Some more grudge matches for you to vote on and looking at the last round it seems more syncs would be appreciated - so get yourselfs in gear, learn to code and volunteer!  

Well, time again for another round of the Deathmatch. Who of the final four will make it to the finals? We also have some new Grudge matches for you to peruse. Looking at some of the last ones it seems that most of you value your friendships and won't sell them out for credits. You lot also think that SWC will not progress without some massive changes.  

Two updates for you all this evening.

The first is that the easter eggs/presents have finally been converted into CPs. For your entertainment, here are some statistics on the results:

Total eggs: 158799
Homeless eggs (unclaimed): 147824
Claimed: 6.911%

Top ten egg collectors:
#1: Steve Sphinx with 365
#2: Xrati Zee with 253
#3: Bancho Curr with 250
#4: Guenther Netzer with 250
#5: Xakic Jix with 159
#6: Bossive Ketwol with 156
#7: Dac Kain with 150
#8: Kal Djin with 142
#9: Ellias Aubec with 134
#10: Emanon Klatoo with 131

You may also have noticed that you received two CP events. This is because I screwed up the first time while distributing rewards :(.

The second is that we've posted two new bounties in the "Work for CPs" forum: the first deals with improving the way CSS files are organized and updated, and will probably be a relatively lengthy project; the second deals with NPC template skill representation on the rules pages. If you'd like to contribute to SWC but don't know how to program, these are good opportunities that do not require extensive experience, and hopefully you will be satisfied with the reward/effort ratio.

Edit: The egg removal caused some problems with certain containers, but this has been fixed.  

New round of the Deathmatch. There are a selection of new grudge matches as well for you to vote on.
   

Well, I finally got around to refreshing the Deathmatch. So, go vote for your favourite players. We also have a selection of new grudge matches for you to vote on - remember, we always need more so submit a new grudge match now.  

Especially those of you who are actively contributing to the Holocron have been waiting for a voting process to be implemented for the monthly featured article. You can now suggest articles and vote for them on the talk page of the "Featured Articles" page. It is all quite simple. Everyone can support one article, article with most votes wins. If you do not have a Holocron account yet, you will have to create one and have it unlocked to vote. Please remember to use your exact SWC handle for your Holocron account.  

Due to Keir, I will be retiring as ASim.

Just kidding.  But on a serious note, after however long it's been on the ASim staff I would like to announce that I will be stepping down from the position and returning to in-character status.

It's been a wonderful time and i've thuroughly enjoyed my time working with the Administration here in SWC and doing would I could to support the players in the development of this game.  I will not be gone entirely, as I will be joining the Universe Team and devote my development efforts to the in-character and roleplay development of the Combine.

Thank you all for your support and for keeping me in-line when it was necessary and I will look forward to working with the players in Universe development and playing alongside the community once again.

So long, and thanks for all the fish.

Love,

Arete