How reports should be written <- aka "Zeta Squadron

[Vortagh]

Greetings!

I figure, that after all those lame reports I have seen posted by unit commanders, I will show you the way a *real* report should look like.
This is what my people get from me.... ;-)
(no wonder they are active - by the time they finished reading it, the next one got released! :P):

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Greetings everyone!

Time for a new status report from my office, seeing how the last one was a few days ago. This one will start a new kind of reports from my office that are meant to combine the goodness of all kinds of reports I have yet seen in my long career. Here we go:



Current Personal Activity:

Let's see. There were quite a few hours spent on Free Worlds together with more and more people from the GE.
Other than that I am still working hard on a growing number of things and I need to get my butt of the ground. At the moment, my "to do" list is about one page of paper of notes. Currently planned (I picked the most important) are:
- Finish GE DOM II - I found all the stuff, except for the emails on my backup tapes. If I find the emails, too, I can count again and FINALLY give out medals for the campaign I started years ago. Shame on me.
- Actually start adding my stuff to the GE IRC course (first part) by Jagged Fel.
- Finish making a few banners for La Forge and for Jansen (army competition)
- Actually start writing a little story for Jansen (army competition)
- Recruiting two more members to get my MoX-BG
- Actually starting the work on converting my XvT missions/battles
- Actually starting the design process of the Zeta squadron page.

This is just the tip of the iceberg on that list and the more important stuff. I figure that I could actually finish a few of the things today. We'll see. Problem is getting stuff organized to a point where you can start actually DOING something. :P

Other than that I started talking to more people about Free Worlds. Both my friends who I mentioned in earlier emails have agreed to join the GE, now that they flew missions with me in Free Worlds. P-Boy (one of them) even flew a number of missions with Steel and me already. :D

The main thing on my list - after GE DOM II - is getting the office of TC (Tactical Coordinator) up and running again. I have been assiged that task by Admiral Polanski, allthough I will NOT move to another office, rank or position. It is simply a "side task".

Oh - I have something planned for the next month. Stay tuned! :D




Current Squadron Activity:

Besides Steel and me flying with a new member, there was of course a lot more done in the past few days.
We (Stee l, Zwib and I) were joined by Laithlis, Hunter and a new cadet who goes by the name of "BoMinsi".
We all have a lot of fun and we still haven't managed to finish a Dreadnought-killing mission. Allthough this time, we managed to kill one before our "group lives" went out (you get one "life" for the group by each member joining the group and every death of any member takes away one of those). We had great fun, though and just continued doing quite a number of "normal" missions.
Finances are great in the group (allthough mine never rise above 15 million, due to paying for many people. :P) - I think Steel has over 25 Million now.

Our Faction should FINALLY FINALLY go active in the next days. The voting is supposed to end after one week (or when a majority has been reached) and that date is tomorrow. We already have 5 judges who voted and each of them supports us with his/her vote. That means we should definitely GET the faction, the only question is when.
Mr Burnout, the server admin, is still very busy and even though many tasks have been assigned to other people, I do not know when we actually will be "active" as our own Strike Fleet of the Empire. Might be almost immedeately or might take another few days.
I also have heard nothing about what our exact shiplist will look like, or if we will be granted any Ãœber Ships (Ships like TIE/D, GUN and MIS are examples of those).

When you read this lines I will have sent a message to Fel, asking about the removal of Ensign Deadly_Sinn. He still hasn't messaged me a single time, so I am sure he is either no longer interested in the GE (a pity, he seemed to be quite active in the beginning) or has some issue at hand that requires his full time.
Either way - I don't want spots in my squad taken up by people of whose status I have no idea about.




Current GE activity/competitions:

There are currently a few things going on in the GE that are interesting to us:
- First of all, General Jansen of the Army still has two competitions going on. We have a competition creating banners for the army units
(I Corps, 1st Brigade, Dragon, Hornet, Raider, Spearhead), as well as a competition for writing a little story about an ewok hunt.
Links:
http://empirereborn.net/holonet/viewtopic.php?t=555
http://empirereborn.net/holonet/viewtopic.php?t=427

- We also have a recruiting drive going on on the Academy. You can read about it here:
http://empirereborn.net/holonet/viewtopic.php?t=574
As you can see, there are still a few weeks left until it ends and there are nice medals to get in addition to the normal medals you would get. That also means possibly more people to fly with if we succeed in that.

- There is a new campaign coming up. Keep your eyes on the forums these days. Fleet Admiral Polanski currently hinted that this campaign *CAN* have *bad* effects on our own GE - i.e. we can lose ships, squadrons and so on. I hope the GE will not lose anything important - Zeta Squadron. :P




Orders:

The infamous orders section, now let's what we have here:
- I would like some more status updates. Best would be every three or four days. The reason is not that *I* know what you are doing at the moment (because I see you online everyday anyways), but I want you to send me these with a CC to Commander La Forge. That should show him how active a squadron can be. ;-)
Oh btw - use english when writing said reports. The poor Commander is not able to speak German. Yet. (Syrt and I are still busy teaching everybody in the channel german and we are making progress: As of now, Tuomo knows various military terms, Fel would make a good "extremist" - let's put it that way [he is an autodidact - don't look at *me* :P] and La Forge is busy learning personal pronouns :P)

- Keep the messageboards in sight. I would like Zeta to rock this campaign away and allthough many unit leaders claim something like this for their group, we know that 100% of our members are active - and highly active aswell! :D

- I would like you to remind you of the competitions mentioned in the "GE competitions" section, above. It would be great to see stuff handed in from some of you. I am sure some of you are capable of doing that. :)

- I signed up for the ladders earlier and I would like to see you on them as well. I think we could show those people what our old, rusty bones can do. :P

- Tell me how you liked this report. Tell me what you think could be improved and what might be added! A MoM goes to you, if you come up with any great ideas I have not yet thought of!

- I would like everyone to fly Combat Chamber missions he still hasn't completed. The following people still need to fly said missions:

Vortagh:
ERS-1, ERS-2, ERS-3, ERS-4, ERS-5, ERS-6, ERS-7, ERS-8, ERS-9, ERS-10, ERS-18, ERS-21, ERS-22, ERS-23, ERS-24, ERS-25, ERS-26, ERS-27, ERS-28, ERS-29, ERS-30, ERS-31, ERS-39, ERS-40, ERS-41, ERS-43, ERS-44, ERS-45, ERS-46, ERS-48, ERS-50, ERS-52, ERS-55, ERS-56, ERS-57, ERS-58, ERS-59, ERS-60, ERS-61;

Steel:
ERS-4, ERS-6, ERS-14, ERS-16, ERS-17, ERS-21, ERS-22, ERS-23, ERS-25, ERS-27, ERS-31, ERS-33, ERS-39, ERS-40
ERS-42, ERS-43, ERS-44, ERS-45, ERS-46, ERS-47, ERS-48, ERS-49, ERS-50, ERS-52, ERS-55, ERS-59, ERS-60;

Splatter:
ERS-23, ERS-30, ERS-39, ERS-40, ERS-43, ERS-56, ERS-57, ERS-58, ERS-59;

Zwibble:
ERS-1, ERS-3, ERS-7, ERS-11, ERS-12, ERS-13, ERS-17, ERS-19, ERS-20, ERS-22, ERS-25, ERS-30, ERS-32, ERS-33, ERS-34, ERS-35, ERS-36, ERS-37, ERS-38, ERS-39, ERS-40, ERS-41, ERS-42, ERS-43, ERS-46, ERS-47, ERS-48, ERS-49, ERS-50, ERS-51, ERS-52, ERS-53, ERS-54, ERS-55, ERS-56, ERS-57, ERS-58, ERS-60, ERS-61;

Yes, I can see I am not that far into the combat chamber, either. :P
However, I guess I have to test these missions anyways for TC. Urgh.
Well, as we say in German: "Divided suffering is half the suffering" - or a more fitting translation: "If *I* have to suffer, so do you, my beloved subordinates." :P




Praise and Criticism:

I am poised to drag out Syrtaras' "Sith of the week" and "Gungan of the week", but I never liked Sith OR Gungans, so I will just steal the concept of it. :P

Praise goes to First Lieutenant Steel this week.
He managed to not only pull in gigantic ammounts of cash in Free Worlds, but also took the initiative of getting almost the entire squadrons (and some of the "non squadron members" as well) equipped with top-of-the-line goodies.
These goodies are not available for purchase to players who are not in an Imperial faction, so he just contacted somebody from the Empire and asked if he could buy it directly from him. It worked fine and so now we have brand-spanking-new equipment for our TIE/Interceptors and YT-1300 freighters.

The Criticism of the week goes to the Archive team.
A few days ago, I discovered by pure coincidence, that our Imperial Database contained lots of copyright protected stuff - we are talking about roughly 80% here. A group containing La Forge, Jagged Fel and me then had to spend an hour going through the DB and deleting all the copyrighted stuff.
Note to Archive team: You don't just copy stuff from other pages - BAD! BAD Archive team!




Current Squadron Roster:

1-1: LC George Hellaeron Vortagh
1-2: EF It Zwibble
2-1: 2LT Steel
2-2: EN Deadly Sinn
2-3: EN Tomax Drachen
3-1: 2LT Splatter

As you can see it still lists Drachen and Deadly_Sinn, but I was assured they will leave us soon. I guess I will put the two new ensigns (my friends who I recruited) in the 2-2 and 3-2 positions. That way each of them has a german-speaking flightleader. Afterall their english isn't the best, allthough they DO try.




Medals, Awards, Promotions, Demotions, New Cadets:

None at this moment, more next time (hopefully)




Vortagh's rules of being a Supreme Commander:

#1 Never-EVER end an announcement with "It will be done by the end of this weekend". Trust me on this one.



That was it, hope you enjoyed the show. Until next time,

Lieutenant Commander George Hellaeron "Raptor" Vortagh
LC Vortagh / Zeta 1-1 / ISD Chimaera / Imperial Navy
[GS] [BS]x2 [ICC] [LSM-6S] [MoC-2S] [MoX]



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The reports before that were also long, but not as long. ;-)

Hope you liked it and take it as a reason to go and kick some ass with your squadron! :D

[LC La Forge]

Yes, people, this is what a squadron report should look like. All these reports which are copy/pasted from last week, contain nothing new, and say things like "You know what to do": Bad things. Be creative, be fun, and tell it how it is. Mr. Vortagh did an excellent job with all that in this report, and it is a model to be followed (though maybe not as long ).

[Jacob Jansen]

Longer than my COA report..

[Wedge]

It even a little longer than my Nemisis Newsletters. Bravo Vort, always nice to see a good report.

[Splatter]

- Tell me how you liked this report. Tell me what you think could be improved and what might be added! A MoM goes to you, if you come up with any great ideas I have not yet thought of!

i´d like to make a suggestion: shorten it by 75% so people don´t need 1 hour to read it

Splatter:
ERS-23, ERS-30, ERS-39, ERS-40, ERS-43, ERS-56, ERS-57, ERS-58, ERS-59;

where do that missions come from?? i thought i flew all missions back in my early navy times
well if they are XvT missions i´ll see to it that they get finished BY THE END OF THIS WEEK

[GE Branet]

Yes. The report of Vortagh is excellent. Like it must be the report of someone with great experience and leadership in the GE.
But personally, it is not possible to say either that my reports should not be sufficient good. At least they support a certain structure and continuity in the time. Nevertheless they lack more originality
I hope that Vortagh should be an example for other leaders of squadron.
Congratulations, Vortagh!
LT Branet

[drazhar]

well bugger you vort, just when we had La Forge happy with PDF reports you have to come out with this.....No more of my Vigilant Special Brew for you

[Vortagh]

You want those in PDF? No problem, it's just one more click in Open Office :P

[Fel]

Maybe I'll start doing mine in PDF.

[LC La Forge]

Vort: Yeah, go PDF if you want. I love them that way, Captain Calder almost jumped for joy when Muscat sent him his first PDF, and unlike most formats, these are easy to read.

So yeah, people, PDF is the way to go.

[Vortagh]

I will still keep sending them out in normal text for people who don't want to bother with pdf. I guess I will add a pdf'ed version as attachment for those who do want them.

Hmm, that gives a new layout idea...