Early in Year 14, we released an announcement that NPC starting skills would be reduced. This change has just been implemented, so you will notice that all NPCs in the galaxy that currently exist and that are hired in the future now possess significantly fewer skill points than before, and have had their bonus skill points per level refunded. As this will undoubtedly be discouraging to many players, further explanation follows.

The reason for the change itself is two-fold:
* First, NPCs previously started with the full skillset of a level 1 character, regardless of which skills could actually be used by each NPC type. This created an imbalance both between low level characters and NPCs, and between NPC types themselves.
* Second, this created a situation where race bonuses unrelated to an NPC's type were being returned for allocation to significant effect, causing effects such as high-Management races making superior combat types for the skill refund alone.

All NPCs now start with a total of 10 skill points allocated appropriately over skills useful to each NPC type where possible. This was chosen because it is the same number of points a player allocates to his second-priority skill category (although the NPC starting points are not necessarily restricted to a single category). NPCs will still receive one skill point per level to freely allocate, and the level 10 cap for NPCs is still in place.

NPCs that have no implemented roles or skills (such as many Civil and Tutorial NPCs) were given a default skillset suitable for civilian non-combat NPCs. Should further implementation occur for any NPC types, their skills may be slightly tweaked as needed to account for such changes in the future.

The reason for the delay between the original announcement and this implementation is that this update necessitated a significant rewriting of the admin tool to create NPC templates (thanks to Mikel), the complete revision of all existing NPC templates (I can be blamed appropriately), and the syncing and updating of all existing NPCs (thanks to Selatos), along with considerable testing time. We had also hoped to have a method for mass-allocation of NPC skill points available, but unfortunately that is not yet the case and no ETA exists.

Edit: While many NPC types have had their default Strength adjusted, HP values have not yet been updated. This will update itself for NPCs as they level or have skill points allocated, and an HP update will be forced for level 10+ NPCs in the coming days.

Edit2: I had heard reports that musician and custom npc types did not have their skills reset properly--I have reset the skills for only those two types of NPCs a second time.  

It is that time of year!  The administration will be checking factions to make sure they are in line with the requirements listed in the rules.  This includes the faction status in membership and bankruptcy.   Information will be gathered over the coming week, with the 'deadline' for meeting all required standards falling on Year 15 Day 142.  If your group does not meet the required standards, it will face fine/dissolution based on violation.   Fines will be 1,000,000 credits per violation of the following requirements:

• Horizontal Banner (468 x 60 Pixels)
• Vertical Banner (60 x 468 Pixels)
• Logo (70 x 70 Pixels)
• Faction Description (150 words in length)
• An Active Leader (Last login less than 14 days ago)

If an owner/ leader needs assistance with the checks or has any questions, please feel free to find a member of Administration on IRC or by DM.  If you feel your group cannot meet the requirements and wish it to be dissolved before the deadline, also contact a member of Administration.  

Clarification: Factions falling below the minimal requirements for capital and membership will be dissolved.  Governments will be evaluated based upon Government Requirements, not basic faction Requirements. 

UPDATE (Day 137):  The initial check on factions is complete.  There are 44 factions that currently do not meet the minimum requirements to be considered a faction.  There are also several governments that are below the minimum requirements.  I will be rechecking periodically throughout the week.  We recommend you do what you can to get your factions in order to prevent dissolution.  Dissolution is set for day 142 on the factions that do not meet requirements.    If you have any questions about your status, feel free to DM Ghost or find him on irc with any inquiries. 

Also, if you notice a factions banners, logos or descriptions violate the rules, feel free to DM Ghost with that information.  CPs will be awarded for the first received report of violation.

UPDATE (Day 139): There has been some confusion on this, so I will make it clear, regardless of "days left" on your event warnings,  all factions who fall below the line and who do not correct it will be dissolved on Day 142.  I was not going to publish any sort of list, as I saw it as a way for people to get information on the status of factions that they would not normally have access to, but since there has been such little work done by the factions still under the limit, I decided that the most fair and best practice would be to publish a list.  This way no one can claim they were not notified or were unsure of their status.   You can ask to have your faction manually dissolved before that date. Click Below to check if your faction needs to contact Ghost.

CLICK HERE FOR DOCUMENT

If your faction has a Rules Violation reported that will result in a fine, it is also listed as "Needs Attention"

(Edited to correct Dissolution date.  It is Day 142)  

Post-Sync Updates:

- Default IRC channel is once more #swc-members after the previous change caused problems.
- Bug with the admin banhammer fixed.
- NPC Market owned items can no longer be claimed. (NPC Owned items still can be, as before.)

Tweaks
- Changing divs to flash events on admin tools
- Adding an old handles check to the reset skills tool
- Quotes Database link on community sidebar
- 10 XP now awarded for city creation
- Live Chat will now default to #swc-help and faction channels
- Live Chat will now use the IRC nick in Account Settings as the default nick, if set, rather than the character's handle

Bugs
- Modded icon should be functioning properly now
- Admin tools, entityInfo tool now actually functions correctly
- NPC custom image submission fixed
- Race ID #93 number of images set to 4 (BUG:3267)
- Teleportation issue fixed from when entities were tractored or kicked. (BUGS: 3214, 3198, 3190, 2951, 3212, 3217, 2934, 3266, 2566)
- New Vein sizes will now be calculated by what is actually mined and not the max yield (BUG:3315).
- Members list modded to work with an MSD as the only HQ (BUG:3320)
- TC9 Terain Restrictions added (BUG: 3179)
- Lock XP exploit (BUG:1990)
- PGs can no longer be daisy chained causing an issue with missing power (BUG:2354)
- People can no longer delete other peoples forum posts with url injection (BUG: 3377)
- You can no longer hail items (BUG: Reported manually)
- Force training dialogue will now correctly reflect whether your master is available for a training session (cosmetic change only)
- Merchant Space Docks will now automatically be protected when built and cannot be unprotected
- "NPC Transport" button no longer appears in ineligible facilities
- Cockpit travel images will now refresh at the appropriate intervals
- Buildable squares on water and gas terrain will now revert to the appropriate image when a road is removed from them
- Entities with multiples of the same datacard assigned will no longer give an error when attempting to produce in certain circumstances
- Removed hidden system exploit
- Fixed bug allowing for arrest of persons without stuncuffs/binders if they were over weight/volume capacity

Rules
- Rules updated to reflect the ground speed cap. (BUG: 2160)
- Squad rules updated
- Batches rules updated

Web Site General
- Actions on party page moved to the top
- Owned Entities removed from the recycle list; now only entities that are commanded by the Faction can be seen
- If an entity has medical rooms it now shows in the stats page
- Reset Skills tool has been reworded to make more sense
- Reset Skills page now has auto complete for handles
- Custom NPCs have been restricted to Workers Compound and a limit of three requested in a weeks period
- Creature HP values now display on Party page!  

Unlike the pink skin change, this is not an April fool's joke. We've sync'd the latest from the dev server.

Hopefully, someone will be able to post a full report of what that involves, but until then you're invited to try to figure it out.  

 We have been studying server usage statistics, and come to the determination that the color skins for combine place a heavy burden on our resources. In an effort to streamline usage while affecting a minimum of our player base, we chose this evening to remove the lesser used color options and lock players to the most popular choice.

If you were among the <5% of players not using pink, you may notice a slight shift in appearance to combine.

Credit goes to Syn/Loki for noticing the strain on the servers, and suggesting the removal of this minimally used feature.

Arjuna Edit: It appears an unfortunate side affect of the streamlining has lead the shiny blinkys you've probably already noticed, we're working on it

Syn Edit: Happy April Fools Day! Well, happy for me. Confusing and traumatic for you.

Syn Edit #2: To the suspiciously high number of those of you who expressed interest in our seizure-inducing pink skin (we're not even a little sorry), this was already an existing theme that is still selectable for the interface in your Look and Feel settings. Enjoy!  

Our IRC hosting provider appears to be having some difficulties on their end leading to significant connectivity issues for users attempting to connect to the server. Hopefully this will be cleared up shortly.

Edit: The server is connecting properly again.  

There is a time in the year when we have to pay our bills and today is the one of the Combine. Thanks to your regular generosity and constant support since 15 years, the Combine will yet be up and running for another year.

Thank you all. Have fun.  

The timers are currently down and we are working on it. Please do not open any new support tickets regarding this issue. We will post an update when we have one. Thank you for the patience.  

It has come to our attention that people are encountering a bug that is not resetting the number of NPCs that are hireable each month as it should.  While trying to come up with a work around to help players until this is fixed, I had an idea: We can spawn players NPCs manually, allowing them to get the workers/builders they need while the system doesn't work. 

We will be happy to do this for you, but you need to follow some procedure to keep things organized.  First, to make the request for NPCs, open a support ticket with the number of NPCs you desire, the type and where you would like them (ship or station ID).  The ticket will be responded to with an order to send credits.  You will send the credits to whichever ASIM is assisting you.  We will not give a discount of the normal hire rate.  After receiving the credits, we will spawn your new workers and close your ticket.  Do not request more NPCs to be spawned then are normally available to spawn at a certain location.  Abuse will not be tolerated.  We are doing this as a favor while the bug is being repaired. 

To prevent a build up on tickets, please limit yourself and your faction to one order per month. Try to make it worth our effort. I do not want to be spawning a squad of NPCs at a time. We will not take any race/gender requests. This whole thing will create a large burden on our time, so please have patience.

Supes Edit: Submit to support.  

The server which hosts all of the staff @swcombine.com emails has gone down temporarily.

For the moment, anything being sent to those emails needs to be DMed to a member of the administration, or placed into a support ticket.

Cheers!  

A few people noticed and mentioned to me that there appeared to be a skill out of place for the Herglics.  Previously a Perception 1 existed, when in reality it was a Management 1.  The strings are bothersome and difficult to work with.  It's Gav's fault.

If anyone has any real issues over the 1 skill, feel free to toss up a ticket.

Gav: In my defence, I blame Jesfa. And those bothersome strings which are pretty much 0;0;0;0;0;0, and difficult to work with..  

As the title says the extra day is gone. Blame Khan and thank Sel and Gav  

Gregory Nautillus and Gloter Indoxtro have been banned for being the same person.  After the ban time, Gregory can open a support ticket and ask to be unbanned.  If the account holder feels he has been unfairly banned, he can look to his multi registration ticket for an explanation and evidence.  Thank you.

EDIT:  OH and I almost forgot!

Dani Red, Zeth Farlander, Sien Dune and Corsair Quadrix have all been banned for 1 month for logging into each others account.  Their Multi Registration has been voided.  I have evidence that they could very well be the same person.  As such, only the original account shall be unbanned.  If the player thinks this is incorrect, they can open up a support ticket and we can discuss, at lengths, the rules and how not to violate them. 

As for the rest of you, please feel free to report any suspicious players to a member of administration.  We are happy to investigate and sometimes reward those who assist us in our duties.  Good day!

Edit: Sorry.... I will try to handle all my business at once in the future.  Just had alot of work to check and keep stumbling upon these things.

Andrew Keyes and Walter Watts have been banned for 3 weeks for being illegal multis.  As with above, it is likely that they are being played by one person.  The original account can open a support ticket in 3 weeks to get unbanned.   

These guys are pretty much permabanned, because they are a repeat offender and they are still trying.  

Due to violation of the rules, Luke Miller has had his handle changed to Santor Spaxi. That is all.   

When I approve multi accounts, I always encourage/remind players NEVER to log into each others accounts.  Blade Starsprinter and Lu`zuck R`Qrygg have been banned a month for opening a false multi request and logging into both accounts.  The multi registration is void.  The original account can create a support ticket in 30 days to ask to be unbanned.  To prevent abuse, the second account will not be unbanned.

In this case, when I came to the player about the offenses, he was completely honest about it.  He told me everything, which is why I was lenient.  Things will always go better for you if you tell the truth and admit your mistakes.  Better to deal with the slap on the wrist and come clean then feel the full weight of the ban hammer.   If you have an illegal account, or break the law, you will be found.... one day....  

Registration in Multi-Account Registry null and void; ban lessened by one week due to their acceptance into the registry being almost entirely administrative error on the part of the ASim approving them.  

Group A is banned for one month and their Registered-Multi Status is null and void.

Group B is banned for two weeks and their active handle requests denied.

Enjoy the retro ban icon.  

As always: player's chances of returning have slimmed, and the player may submit to support regarding their ban.  

Forgive me, Combine, for I have sinned. It has been 24 days since my last use of the hammer.

Group A: Running two players within the same organization, wierd way to do it, but, whatever. 21 Day Ban, asset seizure of newest account.

Group B: Same thing, except he didn't join the same conglomerate as his first character. 21 Day Ban, asset siezure of newest account. If he keeps trying to make new ones, I start adding weeks.

[Update on Avicii Tempah: His ban has been extended by 2 months; one count of attempting a multi, one count of evading a g-line.]

EDIT: As Syn pointed out, I made a spelling mistake.  

Zerexium Dijhad, Zerexium Direth, and Zarheth Bevhallla have been banned 21 days for being the same person.  The Original account will be unbanned after 3 weeks.  They can create a support ticket at that time to request access.

Oh... and...

Supes Edit: 

After new, and indisputable, evidence surfaced, I have once again banned Davik Kaisho, Bree Kaisho, and Nicolas Linnear. The earliest-made account may be unbanned. Any funds or assets earned by the newer accounts and transferred to the older, will be deleted. Any protests made will be disregarded.

As of this moment, their registration in the Muli-Account Database is null and void. While they may have once been played by multiple people, they are no longer.

The term of this ban will be 3 months.

-----------

On that note, Derek Shado and Jade Shado have also been banned for failing to keep their accounts separate. The older account may submit to support to be unbanned after 7 weeks.

Their Database registration is also to be considered null and void.  

Avicii has been banned for having an illegal multi that he pretended was legal for a really long time.  This ban has been set at a 3-month minimum, with extra time being tacked on for any of the following: Trying to evade this ban, evading his akill on the IRC server, if we find out that the third multi on the registry is him.

As of this moment, his registration in the Muli-Account Database is null and void. If he continues to be a disturbance, punitive measures will increase exponentially rather than linearly.  

Jakane Lickry came forward to me to let me know he was playing two accounts. He was apologetic and asked to be allowed to play with his 'new' account--positing to simply kill off the original.  Unfortunately, there was more to it: He was laundering assets between accounts and was not as new as would allow an assumption of innocence. Normally, had I stumbled onto this myself, I would have given him a larger ban. Due to his voluntary surrender, he gets a reduced sentence of two weeks. His other account, Khalis Vedd, is permanently banned. I will be removing the laundered assets from Khalis' account; he may return to the ORIGINAL account at the end of his ban, by creating a support ticket at that time.

I appreciate it when you come forward, but do not expect me to look past your sending assets from the account you plan to drop to the account you wish to play with.

Supes Edit: Gentlemen.  

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

On behalve of the SWC Administration, please let me wish you a Merry Christmas.

And of course, Christmas would not be Christmas without an adeqate Christmas Tree. Let me present you mine for the occasion.

--
Veynom  

Well, the Deathmatch advances. Do you choose the ever present winner Asa, or bow to our god of coding, Zhao? We also have a selection of new grudge matches for you to vote on.

Edit:
This holiday the ASIMs should...
I'd love to see what you think we should do, I personally think throwing Loki into Asgardian prison is good enough, but how about you --Gav (Yes, I'm alive)  

As you should all be aware, we mandate that all players in this game limit themselves to a single account. However, we are aware of the fact that things sometimes happen, such as people losing access to their account, or not being totally familiar with the rules.. As such, we are offering any holder of a multi-account to come forward now, and be provided with amnesty. Any player who currently has a multi-account (whether created accidently, or purposely), will be given the next two weeks to create a support ticket, outlining their illegal multis, and which account they wish to keep. The other accounts will then be banned and their assets seized.

Please Note: This amnesty assumes that your assets are now frozen on your illegal accounts. Anyone caught trying to move assets off of these accounts before or after coming forward will lose all the assets moved, and will be fined a sum to be determined on a case by case basis.

I would also advise that any player currently sharing a connection with another player, register their status through the support base, to avoid unwanted attention.  

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

To those of you who would like to see more roleplaying in the Combine and less godmoding in the Meeting Hall, now's your chance! If you have a lot of RP experience, enjoy reading other people's creative writing, and/or know how to earn over 100 XP for a post that isn't your first in a scenario, then we could probably use your help. At this time, we need both WS Moderators and Trainers:

- WS Moderators score the posts in scenarios; awarding XP for players and CPs for GMs.

- WS Trainers take new roleplayers through a ten part training curriculum to prepare them for Meeting Hall and White Scenario roleplay. We have recently moved our training forum to the RPG Centre, with hopes of eventually running scenarios there, but we desperately need more staff to meet the demand.

These positions are awarded a generous salary of CPs every month for time spent reading and evaluating the posts of other Combine players. Prior participation in at least one White Scenario (WS) is strongly recommended, but not required to apply.

Please visit the Moderator / Trainer Sign-Up thread for a full list of requirements and application details.



(Not sure what a White Scenario even is? Check out Legend, the most recent scenario to reach completion.)

~On behalf of the WS team.

Arete's P.S.: This is also the place to go for those of you I have/will banned from the IC forums and directed towards the WS pre-scenario training.  

Edit: Year 14 Day 325

Thank you for all those who applied, my email has been pleasently beeping at me all hours of the day and night. We'll be reviewing candidates and be getting back to applicants over the next few days.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

With the 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. Willing to set aside previous IC relations, and be willing to take strong player criticisms.  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.

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

Combine Questions

1. How long have you been with the Combine?
2. What is your Combine handle?
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 any questions.   

So, another round of the Deathmatch, another round fo voting. We also have some new grudge matches as well for you to discuss. We do need new suggestions for grudge matches, as always, so go submit them.  

Hi.

I'm not going to be active much over the next couple months (except for spurts and spouts) due to college work piling up, and actual work taking the rest of my time away from me. I thought it would be curteous to give some sort of notice rather than ignoring your DMs for a couple weeks and then only getting back to you.

Chuck anything Arjuna or Jesfa's way until Arete returns (hopefully in the next week or two), and then I return! Apologies for late replies and such on my behalf so far, and I aim to get back to you!

Cheers..  

The SWCombine PR Team will be staffing a fan table at the Dallas Sci.Fi Expo Convention in the Dallas, Texas,
USA metroplex this coming weekend, Sat., Oct. 5 - Sun., October 6, 2013.

We will be signing up new players at our table. If you are going to be in the area or if you plan on attending, stop
by at the table, meet some of our players, and talk about SWCombine.

Convention guests include Anthony Daniels (C-3PO) and Peter Mayhew (Chewbacca), 501st Legion, Ron Perlman
(Hellboy, Sons of Anarchy), Katie Sakhoff (Starbuck) and Jamie Bamber (Apollo) from SyFy's Battlestar Galactica,
John Barrowman (Torchwood), Robert Patrick (Terminator 2: Judgement Day and X-Files), Tom Felton (Draco Malfoy
of Harry Potter), and many more.


More convention information here:

http://www.scifiexpo.com/dcc/fandays.html

We should be set up on both days at 1pm on the 3th floor near the 501st Legion suite in the Fan Club area
as indicated on floor plan here:

http://www.scifiexpo.com/dcc/fd-floorplan.html

Please contact Kohl Straffer via DM in game for more information.

We hope to see you there.  

A new round of Deathmatch goes on, round and round it goes, who will win? Nobody knows! Also, a new selection of grudge matches, one courtesy of Syn (hint, it's the chilli one). Interestingly, from the last batch of grudges, people would like to see a research type faction most of all.  

Dragon Con is just two days away! The bad news is that we will not have a table, we just didn't have enough volunteers this year. So if you want to meet other Combiners you will have to come to either the meeting on Thursday evening or to the panel on Friday.

- Meeting on Thursday evening: Meeting point is in the lobby of the Marriott, ground level, near the front entrance, at 7 pm. We intend to have dinner together later.

- Panel will be held in the MMO track on Friday, 7 pm as well, with possibly another group meeting right after the panel.

Edit: You can still catch us later on Friday at the brewery (Max Lager) at 8.30.

Edit II: Meeting point for Saturday is in the food court, at the CVS/Pharmacy at 5 pm. I think most of us have Vee's "Star Wars Combine" ribbons for the con badge by now, it may help to spot us.

Edit IIIa: Meeting on Sunday, NOT same time, BUT same place as Saturday. New time: 11.30 am, NOT 5 pm. My mistake.