With the latest sync, we are happy to announce a new feature that many of you have requested: Asteroid Mining!

You can find the rules for the current implementation here: Asteroid Mining Rules

Additionally, a new, related ship has arrived! Introducing the Y-8 Mining Vessel:

For now, please consider this feature in Open Beta; as such, values and mechanics are subject to change. To begin, we have released the ability to prospect for materials in asteroid fields. The ability to actually mine the found resources will be released in a future sync, but we wanted to give you all a chance to get started finding your precious, precious RMs!

As outlined in the Asteroid Mining Rules, only ships equipped with Mining Sensors are capable of prospecting for raw materials in asteroid fields. To help people jump into this new features, we have TEMPORARILY given mining sensors to all generic light freighters. On or about February 1st, 2020, the mining sensors may or may not be removed from those generic light freighters. For now, the only ship guaranteed to have mining sensors after February 1st is the Y-8 Mining Vessel.

Again, the mining sensors for the generic light freighters are temporary!

For those that like to plan ahead, you should expect the Y-8 Mining Vessel to play a critical role in the actual mining operations of asteroid fields, as well as the use of depot stations. More details will be released later, but hopefully that's enough to get your ol' noggin churning for now.

Special thanks to Clarr for his work on this, please send him all your love.

- Recruitment liaison field is now stored differently, so leaders and 2ic can remove themselves as liaisons without being readded. Faction recruitment liaison is set from the dedicated faction screen.
- The autocomplete box on privilege page was fixed to only autocomplete within faction (when character has appropriate privs to view memberlist)
- Cockpit and Travel planner now show sector when in deep space (this is purely cosmetic)
- Fixed alazhi refining pile selecting ownership issue
- Skill point category minimums are enforced when allocating character skill points
- Added link to NPC Inventory skill points icon
- a target="_blank" is allowed on forum html now.
- Fixed issue where repair was granting XP twice in transaction log, and repair now generates better events and error messages.
- Fixed combat hooks not being fired correctly (affecting force quest)

There is no longer a free skill reset when changing to a newly discovered race.

For future race changes, each skill from your base skillset will be modified as follows when changing race:

skill = max(oldSkill - oldRaceBonus, newRaceBonus)

In general, this will sometimes give you some skill points back when changing race, and changing races will never spend any unallocated skill points you have.

There is a minimum allocated skill point amount per skill group that must still be met (14 points, 10 points, 8 points, 6 points, 4 points). If your race change puts you below any category minimums, you will be required to allocate within particular skill categories until the minimums are met. This requirement will be enforced when allocating new skill points.

Forums:
- Added an overview page for which faction forums you have access to. If you have special access to any faction forums they will show up on this page.
- Added checkbox to disable forum automatic linebreaks, to allow easier html things in forum posts like tables. When checked, you will need to add <br> or <p> tags manually to your post. This is accessible from the Add Post page (not via quick post).
- Added more audit events for faction forum modification.
- Increased length of forum name, description fields
- Fix bug with "factionPriv" forum permission, and forum permission strings are now mostly case insensitive.

Facility Constructions:
- There were a number of old facility construction actions under an old system that will be removed.
- Generally, these are ones that are started over 12 months ago and had not been completed.
- These were migrated to the new system. Due to some incompatabilities, anything that was migrated will currently be paused and the builder will have been reset.

Bugs:
- Fix issue where some item crates without max uses would crash when repackaging.
- Fix issue where the disabled overlay would not show up on combat report.
- Improved error messages when conditions to process alazhi into bacta are not met.
- Fix crash when no sensors available from cockpit.

Changes:
- Hostile ships/droids that have been disabled will now no longer start travel. Currently, they may still continue travelling if they were previously travelling.
- Vehicle cockpits on the rules pages has had their background updated.
- Added quick link within the dropdown area to directly disembark when inside something you can directly exit from.
- Some look and feel changes: more fonts added, and selected fonts are more pervasive. Verdana is now the default font.
- You will get a (slightly wonky) live preview of skins and fonts when changing them.

Web Services:
- Events list resource changed.

Features

- Faction forums: Faction leaders and 2IC can create a board for your faction on the SWC forums.
- There are instructions available on how to set up and configure permissions for faction forums.

- Alazhi Refining (Turning Alazhi into Bacta at a Bacta Refinement Facility) has had a UI makeover and had its code updated.
- The equations have been tweaked slightly to make it take slightly more time to yield, and to put more emphasis on using NPCs.
- Now always requires the source materials to be aboard the Refinery. (Previously had some code with silos, etc. Cannot use silos anymore).

- Browser Notifications have been reworked. (As such, you will need to re-enable them from the settings screen if you want to use them).
- Browser notifications now keep track of unread events separately from the events screens, and do not reset the notification flashers when received.
- You can enable browser notifications for DMs.
- Browser notifications will now only prompt for browser permissions if they are first enabled in the settings screen, and browser notifications are disabled by default for new players.

- You can now block certain characters from sending you DMs. You can find the blocking controls on the settings page.

- Sensor blocking in asteroid fields have changed. Asteroid squares now reduce sensor power by half for each asteroid encountered. Previously asteroids blocked sensors.

- When you are within in a hidden system, you can view the galaxy map rules pages for that hidden system, previously this was not allowed. A tag has been added to hidden system rules pages.
- Travel planner: Manually plotting destinations within hidden systems using the coordinates should work. You can not browse hidden systems from within travel planner.

- Require items to have maximum uses when repackaging
- Fixed a bug where recycling a mine kept mining.
- Fixed an issue with faction dissolution caused unrelated event spam about warrants.
- Fixed an issue with bacta tank usage not resetting NPC Fitout Equip status
- Faction privileges page updated to work better on mobiles

D344 Hotfix:
- Fixed some errors that generate links showing incorrectly (kicking passengers, cockpit quick assign)
- Fixed regression with crating droids
- Fixed crash when hiring NPCs of new race.
- Fixed missing link back to faction forums in forum top menu when you aren't in that faction.

For the first time since galaxy 2.0 a new sector has been added to the galaxy, happy hunting

HTTPS Enabled:

- The core of the website and the static images are sent via HTTPS now, and the website will redirect you into HTTPS most of the time. Update your bookmarks.
- Now would be a good time to consider changing your password to the website especially if like me you have used the same password for SWC for over 17 years. Reminder to always use a unique password for every website you use, and consider using a password manager (such as Keepass, Lastpass, 1Password, pass, etc). Account passwords are stored on our server with a unique salt and hashed using bcrypt.
- User submitted content may still be submitted via http, so the website will remain "mixed content" (for example: images in forum posts, images in descriptions and links to external sites)
- If you are having issues with parts of the page rendering, please whitelist this website in any security extensions you are running (such as ghostery, firefox tracking protection, etc), and disable "mixed passive content blocking" if you have it enabled for this website.
- Huge thankyou to Sel who did a lot of work over many weekends to update our software to be able to do this change.

Live Chat

- The IRC Live Chat applet has been discontinued, in its place is a page with connection instructions to IRC and an invite link to the discord server (discord link only shows to logged in accounts).
- Faction profiles with discord links in the "Chat" field will show up as discord invite on their faction profile.

Bugs/Features:

- A number of bugs relating to duplicate travel actions and other duplicate actions have been fixed, in particular duplicate travel actions should no longer cause timers to pause for the entire game.
- Added custom item names to scanner
- Adding range select to summary credit view
- Fix display of uses on items without uses
- Fix missing zeros on rules pages
- Fix medical menu headings
- Fix inventory tooltip html being shown
- Market: make total bid count update on bid placed
- CP Exchange image submission field now only accepts numeric IDs
- Fix XSS in makeover confirm box
- Fix XSS in boarding events
- Fix XSS in hail screen
- Fix export cockpit scanner when focused on a single square (#5349)
- Travel planner: changing pilot now causes the travel plan to cancel at the next segment. Include events for travel planner into the ship event log (viewable in cockpit).
- Travel planner: when in hyperspace visiting the travel planner will show your hyperspace destination as the default location if no plan is set (previously it showed you 0, 0).
- Travel planner: When in a ship that cannot fly in atmosphere, travel planner will not show planet view after clicking on a planet

Javascript:

- Add justify plugin to CKEditor (simnews/gns editor), update from 4.10.0 to 4.12.1, make title field required on sim news and gns posting page
- Fix missing jquery-ui css file (and overwrite weird looking autocomplete css), remove unused colourPicker.php, slider.js, slider.css files
- Upgrade less.js to 3.10.3
- Hide jquery-ui accessibility text that shows up when you used autocomplete fields

The Great Baugrems has deemed you all worthy of receiving a most benevolent gift!

From this day forward, Zoo Stations are now available for construction by Information Factions.

But wait, there's more!

Zoo Stations also come with a brand new Incubator! Now you can cook your eggs in the comfort of the vacuum of space!

Remember to send all sacrifices to Baugrems!

The Combine may be slow or have issues like occasional error messages or looping timers for the next 48 hours (at most) while some upgrades are performed on the server.

We will advise when all issues should be resolved.

Y20 D281 Edit: issues should have been resolved for a few days, we had to change a setting though that may make the site slower. If you notice any significant slowdowns please note the page and what you were doing and advise in the help channel on IRC/Discord. 

Y20 D283 Edit: We're aware of the errors preventing players from initiating various actions or loading certain pages and working on a fix. Please bear with us as we get it fixed; thanks!

Regressions from previous sync:
- Installing locks fixed, and timers for them are re-enabled.
- Forum Mark As Read issue fixed (mark as read was not applying correctly).
- Forum bans issue fixed (individual forum bans were incorrectly applying against entire board).
- Forum board spelling made consistent again.
- An issue where you could not remove more than one item from an NPC fitout has been fixed (jquery update issue).
- Fixed missing confirm on starting location screen (jquery update issue).
- Fixed drag/drop not working on touch enabled browsers (jquery update issue). In particular, drag/drop is required in character creation to change skill group priorities.

Bugs:
- Several issues that caused long server recovery time after an extended outage have been addressed, future outages that affect server processing of actions (such as travel) will now recover more quickly.
- Most fields where you enter "names" have been limited to their correct length: in most cases 50 characters is the maximum length for names.
- Production missing materials error now shows the quantity of materials missing.
- The following pages have been improved for mobiles/narrow screens:
 - Members index page can draw as a single column when narrow
 - Character creation can draw as a single column when narrow
 - Achievements can draw as a single column when narrow

There are currently a number of known bugs that forum users are likely to encounter. This includes the inability to mark forums read, and an issue where users banned from individual forums may find themselves banned from the entire board. These are in the process of being fixed.

A variety of other bugs have sprung up in SWC since the last sync as well. Should you encounter an issue, please check the Bug Base for a status update, or report it there if it has not already been reported. The #swc-help channel on SWC's unofficial discord server also has some pinned messages detailing known issues, and users there or in the Question Centre forums may be able to advise you further.

---

Y20D265 Edit: Timers for installing/uninstalling doors have been disabled due to an issue from the last sync. This results in the timer counting down but never finishing. We'll let you know when you may resume fortifying your assets. :)

PHP:
- We upgraded from php 7.1 to 7.3, this wasn't planned in advance, so YOLO.

Javascript:
- We were running on a very old version of some javascript libraries (jquery/jquery-ui), we have updated these through many major versions (from 2011 to 2019) and some javascript code will stop working. Please report any weird javascript UI issues.
- The following lines are some pages that used backwards incompatible jquery code and had to be updated:
- Fix crash on character templates rules page when viewing some templates (jquery update)
- Fix jquery error on CP exchange page
- Fix checkbox toggle selection

Forum:
- The Forum code has been cleaned up and updated, this won't be visible for most people but some admin screens have been redone. Some code may be broken hopefully it's not critical to memeing.
- Some updates to fix some forum code exploits.
- Remove forum password checking code (it didn't work)

Messages:
- Some large backend changes to how messages between players are stored.

Bugs:
- Fix production screen error (attempt number 2)
- Fix issue where vehicles were not showing up on room summary when in a hangar
- Workaround issue with NPC Transport not working well while certain actions (crafting, force training) are active
- Fix undersized under construction images on scanner
- Fix issue where wrecks would show up as loading locations
- Fix issue where building has blank name causing confusing events
- Fix inventory confirm box having multiple entries when cancelled
- Fix issue with Facility Construction when target facility is destroyed, leaving orphaned action
- Fix issue with Hook Timers
- Remove transaction around hook invocation code (causes bad hooks to crash instead of silently ignoring them)
- Fix issue where multiple faction creation member invitations can be sent to the same person
- Fix crash on shield generator page when inside something that does not have shield generators
- Prevent tractoring things under construction
- Fix an exploit with the error handler
- Fix issue where non-logged in players would not see some input validation errors (making character creation and account signup very confusing)
- Fix an issue where certain errors occurring as part of the tick were not showing up in the error handler
- Character skill sheet, NPC skill sheet, and skill distribute page has been redone to work better on mobile (column view only when wide enough)
- Fix issue where lightsaber parts would not show up in correct category after dropping in rooms
- Fix issue where the None field for inventory filter deposits does not work
- Fix issue with squad patrol routes when you leave a field blank
- Fix issue where unbuildable square in roads corner causes facility construction failure
- Fix issue where space bandit spawns would always be the same ship types
- Avoid crashing if unknown event type exists in database
- Avoid crashing in the failed action tool encountering an unknown action
- Arrested NPCs are not being removed from working status correctly
- Fix crash when ordering squad to follow while they have another active command
- Fix issue where build permission without valid orientation would crash construction page
- Make build permissions submission crash if supplied with invalid data
- Fix wrecks blocking station construction

Web Services:
- Regex issue preventing /Inventory/ WS resource from loading (#5318)

 1 Year 21 Day 12, 12:51 Noctis banned player Jen Fantora providing the following reason: Multi Ban; Accounts coming under control of a single player. Failing to register as multis.

 2 Year 21 Day 12, 12:50 Noctis banned player Pei Torin providing the following reason: Multi Ban; Accounts coming under control of a single player. Failing to register as multis.

Oldest account can request an uban in 3 weeks. Assets laundered will be removed.

 4 Year 21 Day 12, 12:46

Noctis banned player Warren Sullivan providing the following reason: Multi Ban; Accounts coming under control of a single player. Failing to register as multis.

 5 Year 21 Day 12, 12:46

Noctis banned player Beriothien Angelis providing the following reason: Multi Ban; Accounts coming under control of a single player. Failing to register as multis.

 6 Year 21 Day 12, 12:46

Noctis banned player Jacob Mcloed providing the following reason: Multi Ban; Accounts coming under control of a single player. Failing to register as multis.

Oldest account can request an uban in 3 weeks.

Kevin Fontana is now known as Kane Starlight.

1	Year 20 Day 359, 16:57	Noctis banned player Emil Everett providing the following reason: Multi Ban - Nero Wren remake.
2	Year 20 Day 359, 16:56	Noctis banned player Des Arre providing the following reason: Bug Exploit - Mos Gresquarda remake.

The bans are still permanent; no help ticket needed.

1

Year 20 Day 350, 18:47

Noctis banned player Vod Valkfire providing the following reason: Attempting to sell combine assets for RL money.

Disregarded previous warning.  Player can submit a help ticket requesting reinstatement in 6 weeks.

Remember, it is against the rules to sell in-game assets such as credits for real currency.

1

Year 20 Day 345, 19:52

Noctis banned player Lister O`Smeg providing the following reason: Golden Rule Violation

Golden Rule: Use the Combine features in the spirit in which they have been designed. Don't try to exploit the features, use your common sense when using them. Ask yourself what is the purpose of the feature you are using and as such, what is the normal use for it. Abuses will be punished.

Player can request an unban in 3 months, along with forfeiture of exploited gains.

1

Year 20 Day 338, 18:22

Noctis banned player Qard Sharq providing the following reason: Abuse of DMs despite previous warning.

Can submit a help ticket in 3 weeks to be reinstated.  Don't abuse the DM system, folks.

The following characters are banned for being controlled by a single player. Oldest account can submit a ticket to request to be unbanned in 3 weeks.

The following characters are banned for failing to register as multis and for being controlled by a single player. Oldest account can submit a ticket to request to be unbanned in 3 weeks.

Friendly reminder that every player is only allowed to control a single character. Additionally, if you share a connection with another player, you must register as multi accounts by clicking on "Settings" in the upper right and linking the other character by filling out the information in the "Multi-Accounts Information" box (this process must be done by both players). If you have a question about this process, poke an ASim on Discord or submit a ticket.

Additionally, we know that mid-terms are coming up for many of you. So if anyone needs help with chemistry homework, you should go to Baugrems. If you need help with Lua scripting, Noctis is your guy. Good luck!

EDIT:

It appears I was mistaken. Vladimir and Azura were registered in the old multi-registration system that was replaced in Year 16 and that link didn't make it into our new system. I'd like to apologize to both of them for my error.

Additionally, I'd like to take this humble opportunity to ask everyone to check their multi-registration status via the Settings link in the upper-right to confirm that any multi-accounts are appropriately linked. As always, please don't hesitate to reach out if you have any questions.

Diallo Delavegas

Grace Munna

Goldie Elegance

Edwin Roger

Allen Shapiro

Gerard Townsend

Bleu Shiba

The above characters have been banned due to coming under the control of a single player.  The oldest account can submit a help ticket in 3 weeks (from today), to request reinstatement.

For any questions or concerns please contact the nice asim.

1

Year 20 Day 319, 18:55

Baugrems banned player Sol Savrek providing the following reason: Harassment

Paying people to annoy someone is blatant harassment. Sol can request unban in 1 month.

1	Year 20 Day 313, 9:12	Noctis banned player Ulylavar Salnerivoj providing the following reason: Multi Ban; Multiple accounts being accessed by the same player.
2	Year 20 Day 313, 9:12	Noctis banned player Stinno Poacprum providing the following reason: Multi Ban; Multiple accounts being accessed by the same player.
3	Year 20 Day 313, 9:12	Noctis banned player Praadroees Kepplinght providing the following reason: Multi Ban; Multiple accounts being accessed by the same player.
4	Year 20 Day 313, 9:12	Noctis banned player Nessprestonay Aquarralectius providing the following reason: Multi Ban; Multiple accounts being accessed by the same player.
5	Year 20 Day 313, 9:12	Noctis banned player Bripjost Knitfedlam providing the following reason: Multi Ban; Multiple accounts being accessed by the same player.

The oldest account can submit a help ticket in 6 weeks.

1	Year 20 Day 312, 8:23	Evan banned player Aabra Doom providing the following reason: Multi Ban
2	Year 20 Day 312, 8:23	Evan banned player Anaxu Namun providing the following reason: Multi Ban

Banned for illegal multis. Oldest account can submit a ticket to request to be unbanned in 6 weeks.

Please send the extra cookies to Noctis; he's hungry.

If your faction has broken banner/logo images please update them.  It's one of the few information requirements.  24 hours should be sufficient time.

Edit>> Well, you got 48 hours.  Thank you to those that fixed your banners/logos.  Those that did not, I have fixed the broken images*.

I'd also like to take this time to remind everyone what the faction requirements are:

• An Original Name
• 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)

In 2 weeks (14 days), I'll go through the check for these requirements.  Those with my custom artwork should be replaced by then to something more fitting of your faction.

As always, please feel free to reach out to Evan for questions, concerns, or complaints.

*Custom artwork costs have gone through the roof.

Your vote matters, get out there, people!

Deathmatch

GRUDGE MATCHES!

WINNER!!!

Congrats to Kez for just scraping out a win against Dac in the latest Deathmatch. You may claim your free hug from your nearest Baugrems.

A whole new tournament has begun! And some fun grudge matches are up, too. Be sure to vote and submit new ideas for grudge matches!

Death Match

GRUDGE MATCHES!

Starting November 1st October 25th, I will be moving back to the player side of the game. It's been a good 3 years but it is time for a break to go play. I'm wrapping up all my tickets/work these last 2 weeks so don't expect me to pick up new things for you. Check with the rest of the team instead (please). 

For any LISP/Quest related questions speak to Noctis.

Otherwise bug Evan/Erek directly. And repeatedly.

Rounds advanced! The winner gets a free hug from Baugrems! May the Force be with you all...

Go vote! Or else! Submit more matches too! 

Death Match

GRUDGE MATCHES!

1 Year 20 Day 245, 16:02 Baugrems banned player Kyota Navic providing the following reason: Spying

6 month ban for using and encouraging others to use a script to pull discord channel logs and info. This resulted in massive sharing of ooc info and is not an acceptable way to use communication mediums. It is NOT and never has been approved by the swc administration. If you feel pressured to use a program to spy, don’t do it.

Hi everyone,

As of today, I've decided to step down as art team director. For the time being, Jic will be acting as the art team director.

Thanks!

Now that the Zookeepers have won the Zoo Feud Quest, the design contest is open! Anyone can participate. Even if you did not participate in the quest, you can submit a design.

You can submit up to 2 designs per person. Winner will be decided by members of the Zookeeper team.

See this link for full rules and to post your submissions: http://www.swcombine.com/forum/thread.php?thread=77251&page=0

The long journey has come to an end. The Zookeepers have come out on top! This means that soon we will open a community design competition for a new Security/Military droid to be added to the game. Rules and links for that will be posted in a separate news soon.

Want to leave feedback or give suggestions for future quests? Want to see some code examples on how to build these?

Feedback/Code Thread is open: http://www.swcombine.com/forum/thread.php?thread=77247&page=0

Phase 3 is here!

In this news post from before, you saw that we would be doing a bit of space combat for phase 3 of the Zoo Feud. The day has arrived so get ready to rumble! A few pieces of important news and some rules should be read ahead of time though!

Teams

Dissolved teams may join one of the other two teams for phase 3

Sport hunters unfortunately did not find enough support to gain any victories. They have been dissolved.

Tech Lovers did their best to come out over the other teams, but fell short of reaching the final round. They have been dissolved.

DNA Bashers held a solid second place despite being outnumbers by Tech Lovers. They are in the final round.

Zookeeper Alliance dominated the field, so far. Can they be defeated by DNA in this final round?

Rules

• Commander Bob at the entrance of Zoo Stations is your only contact for phase 3.
• Spawning your ships adds 10 points.
• All ships for both teams will be Hostile owned, pay attention to the name of the ship.
• Shoot down ships with the OTHER team's name.
• Destroying an enemy ship adds 1 point
• Destroying your own ships will give 1 point each to the enemy team.
• No datapads or admins will give score updates. The score will remain unknown.
• The phase will end on Y20 Day 201.
• Renaming your ship to try to fool others into arrest is against the rules for this event.
• The administration can add to these rules or punish for the golden rule as well. Don't try to cheat the system.

Dangers

In Space Combat it is possible to disable/become disabled. A disabled ship can be boarded. While this is usually not an issue for your own ship, the hostile ships can be captured. This means if you board one and someone else captures it, you might be captured/killed. Be aware that capturing is NOT required or recommended for Phase 3, but is allowed.

Sometimes, a hostile ship will spawn on a sun. Do not fly into the sun to chase it. Shoot it from afar. You will die if you fly into a sun.

edit: Slicing became an issue so it was temporarily disabled. It’ll be back at the end of the event. 

edit2: Bandit capture is back! But it now earns 2 points. Capturing your own ships gives 2 points to the enemy.

edit3: Player spawned ships are now turned off, but a new enemy has appeared! These powerful ships at 0,0 in each of the event systems are worth 200 points to whatever team gets the final blow. Plus the individual who kills it gets a generic (not modded) version.

In the interest of helping people prepare for the next phases, I am releasing the action plan with a few redactions. Here you go!

Phase One:

Tags Returned:	DNA Bashers	Sport Hunters	Tech Lovers	Zoo Keepers
1
5
10
50
100

Individual tag turn-ins beyond 100 may yield additional rewards but will not be announced ahead of time.

2000 tags will need to be collected to end phase one. If it ends up taking too long it will become a running total rather than a team total. We will see where we are in 2 weeks time.

Phase Two:

Terminal Hack Mini-Game

Participation in phase two will result in a Firespray (Gunboat) being spawned for your use in phase 3 if needed. Keep it nearby.

• 100 xp per point scored
• 1000 xp per match won
• 15 max points, 3 max wins per character

Winning team for phase two will get an additional reward that is not being announced ahead of time.

At the end of phase 2, the two losing* teams will be eliminated. Members will be prompted to choose one of the two remaining teams instead.

* Losing teams meaning lowest placement within phase one and lowest within phase two. If the same team places last both times, the next lowest score will be eliminated.

Phase Three:

Space Combat

In this phase you will be fighting hostile ships owned by the other teams. Shoot them down to stop them from claiming victory!

Individual rewards will not be rewarded this phase. Winning team wins the Feud and will get a team reward at the end. Losing team will get a consolation prize.

The winning team will have the entity-type of their choice added to a community design competition.:

• DNA: Medium Creature with good attack
• Sport Hunters: Large Creature with High HP
• Tech Lovers: New Projectile Weapon
• Zoo Keeper: New Military/Security Droid

Edit: Phase 3 will be at the Zoo Stations mentioned for phase 2. See GNS about the event for locations. Also, phase 1 is ending soon so turn in your tags ASAP. Top turn-in for each team gets the first iterations of a new creature.

Edit 2: A one week break will be given between phase 1 and the start of phase 2. Phase 1 is coming to a close either at 2000 tags or a week from today at the latest. (Day 174 at 20:00 Combine Time)

Edit 3: Phase 2 has begun! It will last 2 week! Get to a zoo station to get started. Pelgrin, Derra, Nimban, Serroco, and Gravlex Med have one.

It is time once more for ASIM applications! One to Three potential slots are open.

Here are the rules:

• Newly hired asims are not required to irrevocably drop their character. Instead, their characters are suspended for the duration of being an asim.
• Asims have no IC activity related to their character while working for the administration.
• Asims will have a defined period of service of six months after which a new group of asims will be hired. There is no limit on the number of terms if reselected.
• Applications will be in January and July, with asims working from February through the end of July and then August through January of next year.
• Applications open Until May 14th. Then asims will work from June 1st until the new year.
• Compensation in the form of Combine Points will be provided for asims who remain active and effective throughout their service period.
• Asims are required to use IRC and must be active in staff channels as that is how the majority of decisions are made.
• Asims duties center around helping players affected by bugs, handling support tickets, and dealing with rules violations. There will be opportunities for asims to assist in designing RP opportunities for SWC at large, along with participating in discussion on game features before they are announced or implemented.

Remember that current asims are allowed to re-apply and may be re-selected.

Applications should be submitted via Darkness Message to Arjuna, Kyle, and Baugrems. Please answer the following questions in your application.
SWC-specific questions:

• What is your Combine handle?
• How long have you played SWC?
• What have you done IC so far (including previous characters)? What are you working on currently, and what is your position with your faction?
• Why do you want to become an asim?
• Are you involved in any other online games or RPGs of a similar nature? If so please describe your position and responsibilities
• Please provide three references of SWC members who are not on the administration team that have been in the game for at least two years.

Real-life questions:

• Where do you live?
• How old are you?
• What is your occupation?
• How much time would you like to volunteer per week on improving SWC?
• Have you performed administrative duties in the past or organized groups/events?
• What is your favorite D&D class?

Applications will be open until May 14th with new asims starting their term on June 1st.

Edit: 3 days left to get your applications in!

edit2: Congrats to Evan Bluvius for becoming the newest asim! He will begin in a couple weeks. For those who did not get in this time, thanks for applying and don’t be discouraged from applying in the future :)

The next stage of the feud will begin soon! Zoos, Ranches, and Wildlife Preserves will all have connections for you to get started on FRIDAY of this week. If you go now, it might look a bit empty.

Don't fret if you can't make it by Friday, there will be plenty of time to participate.

More details and storyline will be released soon. For now, this is your official warning to get ready. Below is a map of Darkness/Quest owned locations to get started.

edit: Join discord here if you like: https://discord.gg/WjcrVkg

edit2: Team selection added. You will be able to begin hunting creatures and bandits for quest items in 4 hours.

edit3: Medium creatures added to hunt. Anything medium or larger will potentially drop tags. Bandits are unchanged.

edit4: 12 of the bandit fitouts have been modified to include tags. This should make them drop tags more frequent