I have a question? Can I still finish up my post, as long as I don't add anything?

Definitely could have been a little more definition to the story. It sorta became up to anyone willing to post to just throw whatever they felt like it out there. I understand that the freedom to kill etc. as we pleased was part of the point, but maybe a bit more "structure, routine, and discipline".

it was planned.
i just couldnt get any of you to understand it...even w/74 emails and countles hours on IRC

that, and some folks kept yipping about it being overly controlled

IT's been a long while since we last did a story together, and I suspect barely a hamdful of us were there last time, so it's natural for us to have not have gotten used to the format as easily.

A lack of clear planning at the beginning by all parties led to some extra micro-managing during the story in order to compensate and try to give some structure.

Micro-managing isn't nessecarily a bad thing, as I used that command style myself and had no complaints, but it only really works if you lay out the rules before hand so that people don't have to keep changing their posts.

Regardless, it was still a good story, with some truly inspired efforts from all who participated - well done guys!

The story were there, it was epic. Those the other thing that was there was general confusion. S&M (still... great title) falls prey to the same thing that all wing stories do, multiple groups having to coordinate a single story while each having separate jobs/parts. The only way that I have seen to solve the confusion would be to move slower, though that has the exact opposite effect that people want, as it makes it exactly that; slow.
S&M did a good job of keeping action going. It honestly had the elements of a good story; epic story, action, and it was open-ended (with the exception of the ending) whereas there was no real list telling you what exactly to do in each post.

S&M suffered from miscommunication and people not taking into account what had been posted in the story prior to their own post.

Despite that the squadron commanders and wing commander where able to patch over any discrepancies and allow the pilots to build upon their commander's posts.

It was an extremely open ended story with the unusual condition that we would lose badly and suffer a high death count. Although I think we might have struggled with the concept initially most pilots reflected this objective well in their post.

We could have done with better communication in the S&M discussion topic. This might have been the place to discuss mini-objectives on a squadron or even wing basis. I know, for myself, I tried to coordinate my wing through this way.

I also didn't think it was easy to understand where the big captial ships where in the battle and this probably caused some confusion in the writing. I think we did manage to get on top of the squadron numbers and kudos to Wilt and Slash for keeping track of those figures. Wilt suggestion of pointing out any deaths in your post was a suggestion that should be de-facto for all future missions.

The real positive for me that came out of S&M was the implication of NPC's. I think everyone concerned really rose to the challenge of taking into account NPC and indeed writing from their perspective. This definitely allowed the story to have a larger sense of scale. It should give us confidence when tackling large scale battle in the future.

The story might have benefited from agreed beat points. Not necessarily a firm structure but key beat points maybe lead by the SC and WC by a specific date. This would prevent the story from stagnating in anyway.

Now we have all reshuffled - are the next squadron stories coming up linked or indeed a wing story?

I have ideas but wanted to know what the Wing line was on this matter.

Cali

I never got a chance to put my post on. I have one though.

Maybe something like this could help us be a bit more organized?  We could have someone update the grid every other day or so and each person could be responsible for editing the page to reflect their own changes?  Obviously, the type of map, symbols, parameters, etc could be changed per squadron, but this could be something we could work off of? 

http://www.vastempire.com/wiki/index.php?title=RSU_example

Pah... maps are for people with no imagination :P

Thanks, Summit.  SCs/WC: I'd appreciate some feedback on that idea from you folks in particular.  You might not see this, so I might bring your attention to it on IRC?

(To the moderator: I've unlocked it for their feedback in particular.)