Zane_Marlowe

Hey, I have the ISS site started. With some crucial help from Remo (thanks again man!) I have the portal software installed. I've got a theme up, and some basic graphics to get us started. Drop me some emails and let me know what you think. We'll begin using it shortly. ZM out. [ 07-26-2004, 02:03 PM: Message edited by: Zane Marlowe ]

Overall verdict, I liked it. I think Julia Stiles was underused, and I liked the way that Joan Allen and Brian Cox played off one another, but I thought I was going to see Bourne do more killing than he did. Overall, good pace though, kept me interested. ZM out.

Have a great time Nick, ZM out.

Are we waiting for Rip to sound off or do we have enough consensus to carry the motion? ZM out.

Okay, this is really wierd. That's my name too. CIOPS is now beginning to suspect a conspiracy.... ZM out.

Hi friends. Lately I've been seeing people use "covert action" or "black ops" or all their possible variations and seeing people both in ISS and Wraith talking about this as being the focus of their fleet. I wanted to perhaps attempt to distinguish between the respective roles of CIOPS within ISS, and the special forces elements within Wraith Fleet. An intelligence agency's role is to gather, analyze, and disseminate information to political leadership. This is what CIOPS does. That they are responsible for analysis is obvious. Sources and methods for intelligence gathering consist of (basically) human intelligence (agents) and signals intelligence (electronic surveillance). While the second of those two sources is also clearly CIOPS, I'm going to try to carefully distinguish the latter from the kind of work Wraith does because I think that's where some of the confusion between the roles of these two units. What CIOPS does operationally with its agents consists of covert activity to gather information. When CIOPS recommends to GALCOM leadership that covert actions be sanctioned against an enemy government, then GALCOM would most likely use Wraith fleet for missions where they would insert commandos who can 1) train the local civilian population to overthrow their government, 2) disrupt enemy supply and communication lines, or 3) perform sneak attacks against high value military targets, or other paramilitary actions as deemed appropriate. If, on the other hand, GALCOM uses CIOPS to act against an enemy government, then the mission would be one where CIOPS agents would be operating in full view of that enemy government, disguised as a foreign citizen or a harmless resident alien (a diplomat or trader perhaps). The distinction between the two is that CIOPS requires cover identities for its operatives. CIOPS would specialize in missions such as 1) VIP extraction, 2) cultivating foreign nationals as agents to spy on their own government, or perhaps 3) gathering intelligence from from within the enemy government's society. CIOPS is of course also responsible for counter-espionage, and would task its field operatives appropriately to deal with that. (For counter-Insurgent activities, CIOPS would of course be acting in conjunction with SCID at EarthCOM's request.) Does that distinction seem helpful and clarifying? I hope so. ZM out.

At Commander Jamont's request, I'm reposting an edited selection of text from a recent email I sent to Commander Zwycky on the state of ISS. +++++ TRANSMISSION BEGINS +++++ Do we have enough people to actually staff four flight groups? For recruiting and coordination, I'd suggest that we trim ourselves down to one wing and (maybe) rename it something related to its home system defense role--maybe something like "Aegis" (the shield of Athena or Zeus, I can't remember, but it's an appropriate metaphor)--and let further wings grow organically as we gain and train recruits. We need to have an academy set up, with people from Europe and the US to train recruits when they come from those places. My sense is that we need to let our organization reflect the fact that we're not a large organization that is mostly empty of its former members, but a tight organization that is composed of active current members. That means trimming down what's not being used, and right now we're not using everything that's in the fleet db. As regards the Marine battalions, do we have any marine players on board? +++++ TRANSMISSION ENDS +++++ Commander Jamont wanted me to repost this for the benefit of all ISS members so they could then comment. ISS Commanders and cadets, on behalf of Commander Jamont, please do so. ZM out.

Welcome back Medivh, you and I are both newly domesticated men! Hope everything went well on your honeymoon. Nick's on vacation at some point soon here, but Ben and I have been emailing a bit. ISS is rising fast

Okay, so now I need some ideas for scenarios. These would be missions that a fleet commander would issue as an "order" that would enhance some aspect of his fleet. Currently I'm imagining things like resupply, training, attacking or defending a planet, etc. Suggestions? ZM out.

As I said before Nick, I'm more than happy to work on another phpnuke site if you want that. It seems to be a pretty easy to setup solution right out of the box, and Ben and I have been collaborating on images and stuff for a little bit now (see the emails I sent to your ms email). Let me know how and what you'd like me to do. ZM out.

Somebody posted there that they weren't sure if SC was going to make a "light" sim or whether it would approach the complexity of BC/UC. Now I honestly love UC for its complexity, although it's been my opinion that I'd trade some away some of the scale for a little performance boost (I'm a notebook user, so it's my pet gripe, I'll get over it). However, I do have that same question myself. If this heads off topic, I'll leave it to the moderators, but I'm proceeding in good faith with the question here. What would be the minimum number of features SC would have to drop or constrain (from the existing UC model let's say) to get a "light" sim out of the possible Freespace title? If it were modeled after the pilot careers in UC, then I'd have to say not a whole lot. On the other hand, if it were going to include player controlled capital ships (as I think the SC mentioned at one point), I think I would have much simplified repair routines, simplified crew control, and perhaps target packaging and friendly asset grouping. Now I'm not making this into a wishlist (for which I would most assuredly be banned ), but I am rather interested in what makes the difference between a "light" sim and a...what, "full" sim? Perhaps you think the list would include or exclude different things, but as others said on the linked forum topic above, if it's SC or nothing, then I'd have SC do it, light or full sim. ZM out.

Can you PM me with a current email address if that domain is down then?

What's with the website? I have been getting bounced emails and a 404 error when I try to visit it.

Alright, let's see who's here and who's into it. All of you who are current members of CIOPS or who are interested in joining the galaxy's premier intelligence agency, report in here. Those who do not do so by next Friday will be marked inactive. We have work to do gentlemen, the shadow wars begin here. ZM out.

Thanks for the welcome Denny! Mordax, I've been trying to keep the rules as simple as possible since people have been suggesting a simple beginning that adds rules only as necessary and as people desire, so I'd be reluctant to add something like move points unless it was absolutely necessary. Wouldn't the map be too crowded if we tried to use the MP map in the same manner as the SP map? GALCOM has only four systems on the MP map and I don't have the ability (at present) to have more than one fleet in the same system. The insurgents have only two systems, and what, 3-4 fleets? What if we did something like my original idea to use the MP map strictly to setup battle scenarios between two fleets? In that case, it would show where fleets need to deploy initially, and perhaps what they need to accomplish. When that is settled, then the SP map could be updated with the success or failure of the scenario, and planets could change hands or whatever. Let me know what you think. ZM out.

Hey question, if we're using the MP map, because we don't have a lot of space to spread out on it an I have to position the fleets on that map, what if I didn't position the fleets, but rather just showed the allegiances of the systems and participating fleet commanders could choose to attack any sector that was adjacent to one they owned? It would be kind of like the other map-based link I posted above (the Natural Selection link I think it was called). I'm curious to know how we might usefully format the MP map. Let me know what you think. ZM out.

Excellent 3 Round! Do you know what wing you're interested in? The persons to talk to about this would be Nick Jamont or Ben Zwycky, our resident FC's. For starters though, get on the MP servers as a habit, and get yourself an XFire ID (check the forum posts on that topic). Be seeing you! ZM out.

Have a look at your email box, I sent you some files. I haven't animated them beyond the most basic necessary for the forum, so have a look and tell me what you think. ZM out.

quote:Originally posted by Supreme Cmdr: Welcome back. To your nightmare. Au contraire my friend, I'm a man with a dream! Nontheless, thanks for the welcome.

Okay, I'm back. The honeymoon was fantastic (as honeymoons should be) and while I was out there I got an open-water diving certification (that was fantastic too!) However, to business. There are three news items of note. First, I've asked ShoHashi if he wanted to have an XO spot to basically superintend the Fleet Action idea while I'm away or if I'm not present with others when they have questions. He has accepted, and we are getting coordinated currently. Second, I'm going to appoint someone to do coordinate the european contingent in Fleet Action MP since they are a few timezones off and we need someone to be present at those battles who isn't either asleep or at work (or both ). I have a candidate in mind, but I haven't seen him yet since I got back. Feel free to PM me if you think there is someone eminently qualified. Thirdly, I'm in the process of implementing the MP map for use in this game. The people have spoken, and I'm listening, so I'm going to be putting both maps up and we can experiment until we find out what we like--enough talking about it in the abstract. That's all for now, battle begins shortly. ZM out.

Hey friends, I'm back. Great work on the logos Ben, I especially like the CIOPS text that comes in around the edges. I was thinking of experimenting a little with the logo, when I get a couple ideas together I'll drop a link and you can let me know what you think--no "pressure to buy," but I thought I'd add a touch of my own and see if you liked it. If not, no big deal. I'll give you the rundown on the last few weeks shortly, have to dash for now though. Glad to be back! ZM out.

My comment about this in private (and very humble) emails to FC's Jamont and Zwycky was just that we need someone to coordinate our fleet in realtime activities (training, or other MP activities for instance) on this side of the pond since the only time we would otherwise have our FC's available for them is during the wee hours of our morning or the working hours of our day. How we solve that issue I leave open since I've involved myself in fleet politics enough of late and won't be around for this discussion in the next couple weeks. Hope that clarifies. Later friends, ZM

Coming to the rescue soon Nick--of course I can't really get going until we get back from Hawaii, but because you're working on a nuke site, check out this link and this link for some themes. I'll create a topic graphic for the CIOPS wing (so we can post news topics for each wing in the fleet), and I would suggest that we get the wing structures in line, and tasked with specific roles in the fleet. Are our commanders present? If not, then let's get them back in the game or get new ones. If so, then let's get them to organize their wing personnel and issue a readiness report. (Could we have the wings organized by people who are local to one another and start scheduling wing MP exercises?) For the nuke site, we should have wing commanders generate graphics (or graphic elements) for their wings, and perhaps create a kind of template for ISS wings to use so it's apparent they're part of the same fleet. I like how Prime has theirs set up, and I was thinking of something like the Eagle / Shield combination that we're using currently, but perhaps with the GALCOM eagle instead. What do you think? If you can, you should drop me any printed ISS documents you have. If we don't have any documents detailing our command structure, training practices, etc., then we should create those procedures and put them in the "content" section of the site. You say you don't know much about PHP, but are you having problems using the admin control panel? Let me know, ZM out.

Hi friends, couple of notes. First of all, I'm getting married on Saturday, so the two weeks after that I'll be thinking of you all fondly while I enjoy the sunshine in Hawaii--and I won't obviously be here. (Okay, actually I won't be thinking of you at all while I enjoy the sun, the sand, and the surf there. But I'll let you know how it went ). The Fleet Action stuff will obviously take a little break, but I thought you'd all like to know that we're ready to begin playtesting. Some have said, "what's to playtest?" because it's not like we're talking about actual bug testing for software code. Nonetheless, structuring and organizing the use of the map (and choosing which map) in coordination with the MP element of the game will reveal a set of "best practices" that will help us figure out what's best to do. I'm going to get the people who've signed up on the Fleet Action site to help me do that when I get back. Now I've noticed that many of the people who have expressed interest have been actually located in Europe or (in one case), Japan. I'm glad to have those players, but because it's hard to coordinate MP games with folks who are on the GMT+ side of the world, I'm going to end up deputizing one of the european players to help coordinate those players since they're in the same time zone. In the meantime, I need to get more stateside players involved, so to those of you who are interested, get registerd at http://fleetaction.onthequest.com , and we'll get set up so we can get started when I get back. By the way, her name's Kari, we met in grad school (we've now both got M.A. degrees in philosophy, so our fights are subtle and precise), and we've been together for about 3 1/2 years. I promise I won't gush, but I can definitely tell you that she's someone I won't mind getting old with All the best friends, my posting this week will be intermittent at best as we tie up last minute details. We'll see you promptly on or after the 12th of July when we'll begin the next phase, the first has been basically finished. ZM out. Edit: Moved comma so Zane's forum link would work [ 06-21-2004, 05:25 PM: Message edited by: Cmdr Chavik ]

Well, if it matters, the Fleet Action project I've been finishing is undergoing playtesting right now, and I could use playtesters. I mention it here because that's going to keep status for us too, and it's specially designed for UC. When I visited the battlestats site, nobody had put UC in there, so I think we'd be the only ones as yet. Would ISS like to playtest this new thing I've created? Have you guys seen it? It's at http://fleetaction.onthequest.com.. Let me know what you think. ZM out.