And so we finally begin the Holiday Squad Competion for the 2008 holiday season.  While the prelude may still be going on, and ya'll are waiting on that, I thought I get the scoring categories and the rules out there.

The channel #HSC on irc.vastempire.com has been created for you all to discuss the competition and plot storyline advancements when the story starts.

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First off, there will be NO WORD MINIMUM. The only rule for this is simply going be that you need to advance the story in some manner and include an official signature (ID Line and all) or your post won't count.  A good aim is at least a paragraph or two, but as long as your post contributes to and advances the story to a reasonable extent, you should be fine.

Duration: The HSC scoring officially starts today, November 18, 2008 and will end January, 5th 2009. The story however will continue until it is finished and no prizes will be awarded until after that.

Squad Banners/Avatars: Quite a popular thing, and not only will these count for graphics submissions, but the top three banner's creaters will recieve an extra prize (which will be revealed at a later date, trust me that it's cool though).

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Now for the actual scoring categories:

Writing - 35%
The heart of the HSC is the HSC storyline, upon which you post with your squad to earn squad points that will be 35% of your total score.  Let's reclarify: NO WORD COUNT!  As long as it moves the story along and makes sense, it's a valid post.  I may not delete every invalid post, and instead simply just not count them, so therefore the post count on the story does not necesarily promise a lead in this category.  Some very well done posts may even count for addition points.  Remember our empasis is quality over quantity.

Gaming - 30%
We will be done using the same means as last year, all the games listed under "Games Owned" topic on the Army Main and linked in the quote are valid.

Quote:Gaming 30% Aside from writing this is the most controversal category! Usually we hear A LOT of whining from players who don't want to have MP Gaming count so much if people with no games can't participate. Well, GOOD NEWS! I have some non-platform games for ya. No...this isn't pool! However, there is a popular version of pictionary with some Star Wars categories....feel free to use that with my blessing. iSketch There's also a version of Sabaac available for those who'd rather play solo! Sabaac . Now for those that DO have platform games, I'll ask that you use official battleboard challenges and post victory screenshots in a seperate thread.

Graphics - 20%
One of our most popular things during the HSC.  Basically any canvas or medium is accepted.  As long as it retains a Star Wars and Christmas theme you can use it. IT MUST BE YOUR OWN WORK THOUGH! There will be a seperate thread for you to post them in. Like the past 2 years, there will be seperate awards for Graphics, but they will also count towards official activity.

Imperial Holiday Ball - 5%
Sniping101 should be starting this sometime soon to my understanding, and will count as HSC activity.  It should end around December 1st and lead into the actual HSC story/campaign.  Keep your eyes peeled for it.  I'm sure Snipes will post more details as soon as he can.

Recruiting - 5%
A new category to the HSC this year.  The Army always wants to see new members to the Vast Empire and desires to see them become an active contributer to the Corps.  To reflect this, 5% of your total score can be earned by recruiting new members.  You will only recieve points for a trooper that graduates the academy before  January, 5th 2009.  If they do exceptionally well, we may reward extra points for the recruit (so help them out, don't just let them stumble around the academy ).  In addition these recruits will recieve an additional 10,000 ICs upon graduation of the Academy, obtain placement into a squad and posted their "Hello" post on the squad topic.  ALL recruits must have selected your name at time of application under "Recruited By:" in order to give you points.  The top recruiters should recieve awesome prizes.  (If your recruit recruits someone else, you get half points for that recruit, and if that recruit recruited by the recruit you recruited recruits another recruit [try saying that fast], you get a quarter of a points, and so on)

Miscellaneous - 5%
Miscellaneous stuff often goes unnoticed. Whether it be wiki editing, the squad tags, whatever...anything that is activity that doesn't have an official category will go here. For most of you, this can be an easy 5 points, but those squads that have troopers bitching and raising riots will lose points. So yes, good teamwork also gets you points.

The squad with the most points at the end will win a special reward.  Best of luck to all the squads.  Any questions may be posted here, or answered by myself when I am on IRC.

Be sure to join #HSC on irc.vastempire.com in order to keep up with the competition!

Scoring starts.... NOW!

Gaming Ammendment 2:
RPG games from #VERPG on IRC will count for points to a degree.  Darr has plans for an Iron Heroes game to possibly start this weekend, and he should have more information up on that later.  I will also attempt to host a d20 Star Wars game during weekday afternoons when I find a little extra time.  Keep your eyes peeled upon the RPGNet for more details on these.  If you wish to DM a game, please contact both Darr-Rann and myself via comnet PM.

Hey, Doc, Ball starts on the seventh of December. It's not even Thanksgiving yet, can't very well have the Holiday Ball before that. :P

It's our plot to destroy every other squad. They will look at our sigs and be blinded, unable to write or read.

We, of course, are immune. Therefore, we win.

Looking forward to this years ball.

lol the ball should be exciting

Geez, and I was just recently promoted to ASL....dammit....I mean, great!

I have one question about recruiting. If we get a recruit, how will you know? Do we post someplace or what?

VERPG has an RPG that will earn you gaming points for participating in.  So give it a considerment if you lack the console or PC for many of the other games we have. 

i may, (and probably have) misread this but are you saying that even if we play authorized games, NOT multiplayer and online we can still get points for it?

EG: Battlefront II campaign mode; galactic conquest.

okay that's what i thought, ohwell i had to ask

Yeah on that note: I have another misc to enter for the HSC...

I did major wiki work yesterday, I made three new templates:
http://www.vastempire.com/wiki/index.php?title=Template:Wraithbox template:wraithbox
http://www.vastempire.com/wiki/index.php?title=Template:Raiderbox template:raidersbox
http://www.vastempire.com/wiki/index.php?title=Template:Raiderbox template:userbox

I also modified the template:cquote (which I originally added to VEwiki) and made template:cquote/green

I also modified the template:squad roster, and made template:wraithroster which has a different color scheme to fit the wraith "green"

And finally I used those templates to give the Wraith Squad page a big makeover, namely I completely made up the top banner, the logo in the wraithbox, and the custom userbox.
http://www.vastempire.com/wiki/index.php?title=Wraith

As a side note, I did put the template:raidersbox in the RAIDERS Squad wiki page, upon request.