Name explains it all.

Just out of curiosity...

When is the HSC Story expected to get up and going again?

Sorry for the delay...the story is unlocked

Thank you for holding, the HSC is now open again.  Enjoy.

It should remain unlocked now.  I personally appologize for all the locking.

I'm gonna go out on a limb here and express my feelings about the HSC, whether or not people agree with then isn't my problem.

For the past week, since the HSC started it has been locked a handful of times which has severely hampered the ability (In this case my ability) to post...

I get back from work, jump on, open the thread... and to my surprise, its locked again.

The first question I'm asking is "Why".

Sure I get the whole "Where tweaking the story" or "We've just got change a few things". But surely this could of (And as logic would dictate, should of) been finalized before the HSC actually started...

So far only a small selection of people have actually been able to post, because from what I can see its;

"Threads unlocked"

then twenty minutes later

"Threads locked for the next few days"

Seriously, from Riqimo's post at

- December 3, 2008 9:48:19 AM  -

the story remained open until

- December 3, 2008 1:11:59 PM -

Do the math, works out to roughly three hours...

How can you possibly run a successful story with that?

--=--

The second question I'm asking is, "Was there any planning involved at all, and if so... is everyone who should be in on the plan, actually in on the plan?"

sure the questions a bit long, to put it bluntly... is there a plan at all? Spread sheet?, Story outline?, some sort of diagram?

I ask this because the OOC snippets warrant some sort of explanation. Lets take the first one... Which says to me

"We dont have a story, Post filler"

OOC:

    And you have your orders... relax in your bunk, visit the quartermaster, whatever.  You have 8ish hours in story to do some character development posts, either with your squad or other members, or just yourself.  The story should be advanced out of hyperspace tomorrow morning.  Remember you are ON the Dominion, not a planet.

     December 1, 2008 11:38:02 AM

But then we get the following

OOC:

    I hereby declare the HSC Officially re-opened! Let's try and keep the filler down and focus on the mission. As such, any quote-posting will be deleted on sight.

     December 1, 2008 3:10:32 PM

Can you spot the contradiction?, because our mission is to post filler... No offense to the people who posted after this was said, but what they posted up was, in essance, filler. As most stories go, you have a bit of prep and CD before you actually get to the mission... but in this case when Snipes went to advance the mission they deleted it, then told everyone a few posts later that

"new objectives, we're being boarded."

Now. Since the SL's are usually the ones who launch the squad into the mission, wouldn't it have made sense to tell them not to leave the ship?

Now, I could just be totally confused... hell if that's the case someone explain it to me, but it seems that there are a handful of different people who are in control of the story... yet no ones talking to one another and there is no game plan.


Then we move along to Cosmic's latest

OOC:

The HSC story is halted for the rest of this week. Look for it re-opening this weekend.

Frankly, I believe a better explanation is in order...

Something like, "Stories getting retooled" or something. Other then, what is basically, a closed sign on the front door.

To warrant closing a story for a whole week, it must of been fairly serious... What could of possibly happened in the space of three hours that would call for the story to be shut down for a week?

The entire point of this post is, I want some kind of answers... Hell I think we deserve some kind of answers, because we're the ones who have to deal with this crap. It feels as if this entire Comp was poorly planned, and its now being poorly executed... yet no one is willing to stand up and point it out. 


-On a side note-
I find it sort of funny that, usually the Comps start out pretty cool then lose direction and end up stagnating... but this time we started with (from what I can see) little to no direction and we're using the locking feature to speed up the stagnation. Does this mean the story will get awesome towards the end? or are we just now deciding to cut out the middleman?

Also agreed. All this secret behind closed doors stuff is really taking away my initiative to take part in it. I have a cold and feel crappy enough as it is, but alas when I actually have half an hour when I feel I can write up a post, I see the story locked. When it's unlocked, I'm normally up to my eyes in cough medicine.

Personally, I see no problem with how the story has been going, it's been successful whenever we've actually been able to use it. Sure, filler has emerged, but if an individual/squad/whatever is responsible for it, let's take it up privately with those guys, not close the entire story.

Well then.  I guess I'm free in the meantime to finish editing posts on other stories time and comp issues kept me from.  In as much as my busted shoulder will let me

Would it be to much to ask them to tell us exactly what's going on? If we knew what said problems were and were assured that they're doing their best to fix it, patience would be a lot easier.

Okay I should probably make a statement seeing as you are all wondering what is going on. There has been a BIG line of miscommunication between Cosmic/myself and Riqimo. Without going into too much detail, yes the story was progressing at a decent rate but some things were brought to attention that contradicted facts in Star Wars AND there was the fact that the plot of HSC was never officially ironed-out as such.

Granted, things were handed a bit too overzealous with the locking of the topic on and off as it was but it was felt that it would prevent further decay based on facts / events that could not be allowed to remain. I personally apologize for the troubles that this has all caused you and I assure you that there will be no repeated efforts of this week to continue.

I have heard both sides of your complaints in this issue...some of you blame Doc....some of you blame us (The AHC). When it comes down to I am afraid it is a failure on both ends both the AHC and Riqmo. No party is more or less right/wrong than the other. The story as promised will reopen most likely tomorrow (for most of you) and tonight for the rest of you depending on your time zone.

So as Ron and Snipes have been kind enough to say. There have been communications problems and it is getting itself sorted out. The problem was majorly communications related and things will be fixed. None of you should ever feel bad about expressing your feelings provided its done civilly and properly (as it has been done here). Thank you for your continued patience and support.

Just a quick reminder:

Writing holds the majority of percentage (points) you can obtain from this competition. However, this doesn't mean that the more posts your squad has, the more points you'll obtain. The writing aspect of this competition will primarily be judged on the quality of the post. In other words, if your squad posted 30 semi-good quality posts and another squad posted 18-23 very good quality posts, they'll probably end up with more overall points than you. :P

So, be sure to keep an eye on the quality of your posts, this means:

1) Try and avoid "filler/fluff"
2) Your posts should progress the story
3) Your posts shouldn't be "skimpy" - include the details of everything! (Environment, what your character's thinking, his/her actions - thumbs twiddling, eyebrows raising, chest heaving, etc.)

Anywho, have fun.

Just a supplement (http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Cortosis)

Cortosis ore was a very rare, brittle, fibrous material whose conductive properties caused lightsabers to temporarily short out upon contact. This effect made cortosis a useful material for anti-lightsaber melee weapons, though with repeated strikes, a lightsaber could still cut through it. Due to its conductive properties however, it had the ability to short circuit lightsabers, although the wielder could solve this problem by turning the blade back on after a couple of seconds.

FYI.

The "Exodus now" command has set in motion a small merc force to try and cave-in the base right on top of us. They will accomplish this in approximately 20-30 minutes storytime. They cannot be stopped as we have no idea where they are planting the charges. (If anyone posts about "oh they must be going to blow the generators" after reading Jager's post, I will personally shit-kick you.

Finish your objective quickly, and get the crap out of the base and evac to the Dominion for HSC phase II.

*** Reminders ***

- There are only 4 Noghri (http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Noghri). They are with J'ak Frozt. The Noghri are the ones who have decimated our defenses (and not some huge enemy force as Tadath intel assumes). As such, don't count on being able to injure them. They are an elite unit.

- There are only 20 mercs dressed as civilians on Tadath (downtown). They are to cause a distraction to help J'ak Frozt and the Noghri escape. They will shoot anyone at will and take hostages if need be. Though they are only two squad sizes in number, they are very well trained and heavily armed (with whatever can effectively hide beneath civilian robes.)

- Since they can't really arm themselves to the teeth, expect the mercs to be using a lot of traps and strategically-placed explosive devices.

You lack an understanding of just how deadly the Noghri are. One Noghri could probably take out a squad. Two Noghri are exponentially more effective than one, and four are exponentially more effective than two.

Their advantage is that they're trained from birth to infiltrate and kill. Our advantage is numbers. The police and security forces were caught unawares, and hence the Noghri went through them like a knife through butter.


And now that I'm done making stuff up, I think that sounds rather good :P