It's that time of year again. Brace yourselves.

This thread will cover only scoring and rules and what not. If you want an overview of the story itself, please go look at the actual story. Any questions you have can be PMed to Garryll, Havock, or myself, or posted here. We promise to try and answer them as quickly as we can.

Without further ado, I give you the rules and regulations for this year's Holiday Squad Competition.


Writing

As the mainstay of our organization, writing is going to be where the most points are earned. In general, all posts are graded on the following matrix:

Length (250+ words)
Mechanics/Grammar (talk the english real good)
Plot Advancement (Fluff is bad)
Content (If a rancor shows up in your post, your squad loses)

There is also some room for the grader to inject his or her opinion into the grading, so make the post fun to read. In an effort to avoid biases, Garryll and I will both be grading all of the posts separately, and then we'll average our scores together to come up with a total.

The other thing that is important to note here is that throughout this competition each squad will be receiving multiple objectives to choose from at each stage of the story. Failure to successfully complete an objective will directly influence the objectives that you receive next. Also, if a squad successfully completes an objective then that squad gets a reasonable sum of bonus points. The successful completion of an objective will depend solely on whether or not each squad meets a set number of posts, decided in advance for each objective. This may be confusing now, but I think it'll become clearer later on. I'll be posting on your squad threads with your available missions later this evening.

Overall, there will be three stages of this story, three missions that you must complete. I urge you to start strong, as the ending stories will not be pleasant if you fail to complete one or both of your first two objectives.


Gaming/Graphics

Our resident XO, Havock, has offered her services in grading this section of our competition. As such she'll have some pretty wide discretion over this section of the grading. Separate threads for gaming and graphics submissions will be created in the future, but for now there are a few rules to keep in mind:

Works of art must be original. If we find out that an individual has plagiarized someone else's work, there will be a crippling score deduction assessed to that individual's squad. Don't do it. It's not worth it.

Gaming includes any games played the VE members, including SWTOR. However, there has to be some significant achievement or time investment involved in order to gain points. For example, in SWTOR I would consider heroics or flashpoint missions done with VE members adequate to fulfill this requirement. Screenshots must be provided.


Recruitment

We're a bit low on people right now, if you all couldn't tell. For that very reason, there will be a massive point incentive for recruitment. Anyone who refers a recruit to the Academy will receive ten points for their squad per recruit. If that recruit graduates basic while the HSC is still ongoing, an additional twenty points will be awarded to the recruiting trooper. These are pretty sizable point totals, so I suggest that you seriously consider going out and doing some recruiting for us during the course of this competition. However, if I find out that people have been creating accounts for quick and easy points, or have been scamming the system in some other way, there will be some serious trouble, including but not limited to massive point deductions and other administrative punishment.


That's all I can think of for now. I'm attempting to get this out to you guys ASAP so that you can start planning your strategies, so I'm sure I'm missing something. I'll keep updating this thread as I think of more things, or as I answer people's questions. Don't forget to post here if there's anything you need to know.