Welcome Comrades to the 60th edition of the Dispatch
[spoiler=just in case you didnt get the reference]
[/spoiler]Hello, hello! The Dispatch is going through some changes! You may have noticed one already: the reinstitution of Ask A Mod! Well, our format around here has changed slightly - I've moved up to "Chief Executive" with the beloved [player]samuelc812[/player]'s departure and will therefore be sort of 'running the place' (with the Executives by my side) and I hope to make the CC Dispatch more expansive and exciting
One way we're achieving this is through the new "Subscriber of the Issue" feature, where a a subscriber is randomly chosen to receive a General Achievement medal - the only catch is that the chosen player must PM me in order to receive his or her medal, so be on the lookout for your name! That is, if you're a Subscriber to the CC Dispatch
This issue, our lucky winner is [player]darth emperor[/player]! To receive your medal, PM me with the title of this issue as the title, and the new Foundry Executive's name in the body.I've mentioned it already, but it is with a heavy heart that we say goodbye to our dear Team Leader and founder of the Newsletter, [player]samuelc812[/player]. We quite literally would not be here without all of the hard work and effort he put into this. With his leaving, we would like to say a big, pink
THANK YOU!
to Sam for everything he's done, from events to the Newsletter and beyond. We also say a hearty hello to new Team Leader, [player]Gilligan[/player], as he takes the reigns of the Entertainment Team. He has big shoes to fill, as I'm sure we're all aware, but I have faith in him, as the rest of you should, too
True, Sam's leaving may leave a bitter taste in the mouths of many, but we look forward to the things ahead. Who knows? Maybe he'll be back some day... Also, the Dispatch could really use some Reporters and Writers! [player]safariguy5[/player] is actively looking for more Freestyle Writers, and with the leaving of long-time Tournament Reporter, [player]angola[/player], I'm sure [player]Dukasaur[/player] could use a hand! And let's not forget Clans and Foundry! I bet [player]Leehar[/player] and [player]thehippo8[/player] would love to have more help
Just send the appropriate Executive a brief application! If you don't know what section you'd like to write for, or if you're still not sure who to PM, you are always welcome to PM me, and I can fit you with an Executive Now that I've effectively written an essay, onto the issue! We have a special, exciting interview with Support Volunteer Administrator, king achilles, [player]shieldgenerator7[/player] continues his pieced novella, Dukasaur breaks down Game 10000000, hippo talks Turkey, and [player]alt1978[/player] talks upsets and underdogs in the clan world. Oh yes, and make sure to check out the early release of Ask A Mod! in the Mess Hall
Enjoy the fruits of our laboring fingers!
Victor Sullivan
Chief Executive
If you would like to apply to join the news team, please visit the thread below for more details!
Click here for Recruitment Details...
Hello again readers, to another edition of the freestyle section. shield has brought us another chapter of his ongoing story about a post-apocalyptic CC world, Sully starts his "Ask A Mod!" series, and we have another Scum Insider to all you mafia aficionados out there.
Also, [player]king achilles[/player] riffs about his job, the Philippines, and some of the behind-the-scenes legwork that goes into running the website.
Enjoy!
-[player]safariguy5[/player]
Freestyle Executive
Ask A Mod! by Victor Sullivan
Epic CC Story: Chapter 1: Four Shots by shieldgenerator7
The Scum Insider by safariguy5
[spoiler=Interrogation of king achilles]Q. What does a daily routine look like for you with regard to Conquer Club?
Check pm's, check for any posts that needs my attention and then check the tickets.
Q. What all are you in charge of on Conquer Club?
Basically I look after the C&A department, the tickets and whatever issues that can be handled.
Q. How would you describe your being an administrator on Conquer Club?
It's like I take care of the holes of a ship so that the others can do the rowing and sailing to move forward.
Q. Clearly, you have to deal with difficult situations regarding Cheating & Abuse, plus the wrath of the forum-goers that may disagree with verdicts you reach. What makes this all worth it?
God.
Q. What is your favorite admin "task"?
I don't really have a favorite task.
Q. What is your favorite thing to do on Conquer Club?
When I get to help people. Also, reading when something new comes up in the C&A HQ forum. Besides from Andy and Lack, I also learn a lot from the C&A mods, past and present.
Q. What is your favorite memory on Conquer Club?
I've got some good CC memories but they are all personal and private stuff.
Q. Why do you always have creepy avatars? How did that come about?
Are they? They look just fine to me.
Q. Which avatar of yours has been your favorite?
My favorite is what I am using right now. I used this avatar years ago and I really like the flaming sword effect and because of this question, I am using it again.
Q. Why do you wear the "Conquer the World" signature from the 2010 World Cup event 24/7?
It looks simple and it's green, which represents life.
Q. How do you manage to maintain such a cool head?
I am very human and sometimes I do also lose my cool.
Q. If there was one thing you could change about CC, what would it be?
Maybe the way that people get points from new recruits. Maybe a fixed number of points like 1 or 2 points. So if I set up a 5 player game and I get 4 NR's(who usually deadbeats) the most points I would get would be 4 or 8 points. But if I lose, the regular computation will still take place. I still don't know if this is doable or agreed upon.
Q. If you had the power to forum or perma ban one constant poster on the forums without any consequences, who would you pick?
No comment.
Q. Where am I (TheForgivenOne) in line to become a hunter
Aha, just kidding, don't answer this one.Maybe in time.
Q. Have you ever made a decision while being Admin that you wish you could take back?
So far, no.
Q. On a scale of 1 to 10, how much do you enjoy laying down the banhammer on a multi?
For repeat offenders - 8.
Q. I'm curious about the timeline. How long were you an ordinary member before you became a volunteer? What was your first volunteer position? How long did you stay in that position?
I wasn't a volunteer. My first position was to answer the tickets, particularly the ratings department since they were piling up. Gradually, I was also put in as C&A moderator and hunter to help the hunters at the time.
Q. When Manny Pacquiao is fighting someone, do you call in sick for the day?
Never.
Q. Have you ever considered posting outside of Cheating & Abuse just to post in threads that interest you? If so, what holds you back? If not, why?
I do, when I have the time but answering tickets and helping investigating C&A cases takes up most of my time. I would not have the time needed to really get entangled in any forum discussion.
Q. What is it like to live in the Philippines?
It's a third world country so you try to manage things or get by up to the next day.
Q. If Andy is a monkey, and lack is a turtle, what does that make you?
King.
Q. Did you personally know newtonboy and/or sw0rdf!sh?
No. I also just "met" them when they were taken in by the webmaster.
Q. Fondest memory of being an admin?
Personal stuff but let's say when Lack and Andy gave me some encouraging talk.
Q. Most complicated cheating/abuse case you have ever come across?
No comment.
Q. Do you ever get annoyed with all the many pms(im sure you get millions!) you get?
Not really but there are times when some just don't get it or refuse to listen.
Q. Do you have a favorite map to play on, or are there any maps that you find appealing?
So far, they are still the Classic and Midgard maps.
Q. Are you looking forward to the next Whac-A-Mod competition, so you can be in another Whac-An-Admin game?
Maybe. When are we going to have a Bust-A-Mod competition where we bust the mod who whacs an admin in a game?
Q. Because you're in the Philippines, do you ever have problems with the cultural differences between there and the US or Canada (where most of the members are from)?
Not really. I expect to see many differences but this is also the Internet so I am also seeing some Internet behavior, I guess.
Q. Okay, time for some personal flavour: Favourite food? Favourite alcoholic drink? Favourite non-alcoholic drink?
Favourite food: adobo
Favourite alcoholic drink: Jack Daniel's
Favourite non-alcoholic drink: Fit n right 4 seasons
Q. What do you enjoy doing on CC that does NOT involve any official duties? And what games do you play besides CC?
- Playing CC games if time permits.
- Counterstrike and Starcraft 2 (but not really a hardcore gamer)
Q. What do you think makes a good Multi Hunter?
Levelheaded, follows what the evidence shows, does not get easily pressured or influenced by peers and does what is expected of the position.
Q. What is one TeamCC position you think you'd never be able to handle and why?
Let's just say, maybe in the other departments that I rarely go into.
Q. What is one TeamCC position you think you'd like have, if it couldn't be C&A-related?
Wishful thinking, maybe being a cartographer just because I admire how people make quality maps but I think what they do is a whole different world from where I am.
Q. What kinds of maps do you think Conquer Club still needs?
Maybe maps that are made particularly for team games, if possible?
Q. How has CC affected you as a person - being the "Support Volunteer" and what have you?
It made me see how different the people in my country are compared to the people in CC.
Q. What do you think CC would be like if you and Andy swapped roles?
Chaos.
Q. Was Hyasri a "sock puppet"? More specifically, was he a fictional person introduced for the purpose of getting rid of the Flame Wars forum? He came out of nowhere, Flame Wars got removed, and then he disappeared. All within mere days. It's no wonder there've been speculations about him and I (MeDeFe) for one would like some details, I think most forumites would.
All I can say is that he is a real person. Removing Flame Wars was not his primary concern as he really had plans to do a lot of stuff when he gets settled in. Things just didn't work out for him eventually.
Q. Why did you do it?
Whatever it is, I did not.
Q. Do you get to polish lack's golden auto-mobile?
No.
Q. No interview is complete without a mention of SirSebstar. How would you like to mention hem?
For SirSebstar, I see hem as a good moderator. Seriously.
Q. When do you quit?
Why?
Between you and me...
Q. What gives you pleasure if you look at the forums?
It is always a pleasure to see some people who make sensible posts and not always trying to be cynical comedian.
Q. Do you enjoy running the Live Chat Volunteer Appreciation Day events, or is it more of a hassle?
I like seeing you all enjoy the live event everytime.
Q. Describe yourself in a brief paragraph that is at least 100 words.
No comment. I'm just a boring, simple, regular person.
Q. Do you believe a notorious rule-breaker can ever redeem him or herself? If so, how do you think they should go about doing so?
I would always like to believe that people can change for the better in real life. It can also be easy to promise anything. Unfortunately, some do not follow the rules until they receive that final disciplinary action or when it's too late. Some people will not listen until you let them realize that you will no longer tolerate their repeat violations. Some may support giving these people a chance but do not forget that there will also be support for the disciplinary measure that was given as well. It is hard for us to implement the rules if we always let good intentions or good excuses/promises to prevail or be granted some exemption as it becomes impossible to regulate people with bad intentions who will take advantage of a situation.
Q. Name a hidden talent that you have that no one would suspect you have.
None.[/spoiler]
Hello again my friends, and welcome to your favorite part of the Newsletter, "War Games", where you can find information about CC Tournaments! In this issue, I have presented an analysis of Game 10 Million, which is now in its second round. (It may be only one game, but it has enough players that it could easily qualify as a tournament, and it will last longer than many tournaments do!) [player]Sonicsteve[/player] presents Join This? Or Not!, our regular look at tournaments currently recruiting. We have the third installment in [player]DaveH[/player]'s Tournament Tips -- this series continues to impress me, and I hope it impresses you too!
We say goodbye to long-time War Games reporter [player]angola[/player], who has become too busy to continue his work on the newsletter. Many thanks for all your work in the past, angola, and best wishes for the future. We are definitely interested in filling the vacancy as soon as possible, so if you're interested in writing about tourneys, and specifically about the TPA, drop me a line!
The big news in the tournament world is the Fantasy/Sci-Fi contest being presented by Tournament Directors and Tournament Organisers Usergroup (as personified by DJ Teflon and our own sonicsteve.) If you fancy yourself a creative person, if you love Sci-Fi and fantasy, and if you've always wanted to create an interesting tournament, then I definitely suggest you should put something together and enter this contest!
Last but not least, in a shameless act of self-promotion, I would like to invite you to check out my First Anniversary Tournament, which celebrates my first few victories when I joined CC a year ago...
[player]Dukasaur[/player]
Tournament Executive
Game 10 Million by Dukasaur
Tournament Tips by DaveH
[spoiler=inviting your players]Once your tournament is full; you have tournament rights; you have created the blank games and randomised your player list. Now you need to invite players to join their games.
If there is one game per round, you can invite them easily enough, but it is less work for you to send them a personal message and let them join the games themselves. With several games per player, the pm saves a lot of additional work. For instance if you have 16 players, then you need 16 invitations or 8 pm's. If there are three games per pairing, then you either need to make 48 invitations or just 8 pm's.
To keep it simple, let's firstly compose a pm for 1 game that allows players to join their game.
Column B is the randomised player list and column C the RAND(0) function which was used to randomise the player list (and has changed its values once again!). The password (don't forget the password - as I did recently!) is in D2.
Into column D are copied the game numbers - a tip here is that when you create the games you end up with numbers that are mostly in sequence. You can therefore copy the largest game number into the first game - say that is cell D4. You can then put formulae into the other cells that refer to cell D4 minus 1 (or 2 etc if the numbers are not quite sequential) and so on.
The code in column E is:
Code: Select all
="[to]"&D4&" "&$D$2&"[/to]"View Game 1234567 (Auto-Join Game)
You can aso add a greeting message in your spreadsheet. "Welcome to my Fantastic First Tournament! We can now get under way and your first round game is as follows. Good Luck! ". Let's say you write this into cell G3 and change the code to:
Code: Select all
=G$3&"[list][to]"&D4&" "&$D$2&"[/to][/list]"- tag puts the game information on the next line (which looks a bit better!).
- [player]Victor Sullivan[/player] - Chief Executive
- [player]Dukasaur[/player] - Tournament Executive
- [player]sonicsteve[/player] - Tournament Reporter
- [player]WorldCup4James[/player] - Tournament Reporter
- [player]DaveH[/player] - Tournament Reporter
- [player]sonicsteve[/player] - Tournament Reporter
- [player]thehippo8[/player] - Foundry Executive
- [player]OliverFA[/player] - Foundry Reporter
- [player]koontz1973[/player] - Foundry Reporter
- [player]isaiah40[/player] - Foundry Reporter
- [player]lostatlimbo[/player] - Foundry Reporter
- [player]Leehar[/player] - Clan Executive
- [player]Master Fenrir[/player] - Clan Reporter
- [player]skillfusniper33[/player] - Clan Reporter
- [player]BoganGod[/player] - Clan Reporter
- [player]alt1978[/player] - Clan Reporter
- [player]safariguy5[/player] - Freestyle Executive
- [player]shieldgenerator7[/player] - Freestyle Writer
This then creates the following message and game information:
Welcome to my Fantastic First Tournament! We can now get under way and your first round game is as follows. Good Luck!
View Game 1234567 (Auto-Join Game)
OK - so now we can expand that for, say, three games:
[bigimg]http://img502.imageshack.us/img502/4074/tt32.jpg[/bigimg]
The code is three concatenated formulae (i.e. 3 x single invites as above):
Code: Select all
="[to]"&D4&" "&$D$2&"[/to]"&"; "&"[to]"&E4&" "&$D$2&"[/to]"&"; "&"[to]"&F4&" "&$D$2&"[/to]"Note that you can cut and paste these as required, but remember that they only relate to the column and row numbers that I have specified in my examples, so you need to change them to suit your layout.
OK, so this code translates into 3 game invites that can be copied into the player's pm;
View Game 1234567 (Auto-Join Game); View Game 1234566 (Auto-Join Game); View Game 1234565 (Auto-Join Game)
As before, you can add a greeting. Also, to tidy up the formatting, you can add the
- tag;
Code: Select all
="[list][to]"&D4&" "&$D$2&"[/to][/list][list][to]"&E4&" "&$D$2&"[/to][/list][list][to]"&F4&" "&$D$2&"[/to][/list]"This process is slightly different when you have team entries, but the basic process is the same.
Now the invites are out, you just need to sit back - apart from checking that the players have all joined and, of course, keeping up with result reporting.....
(These "tips" are ones that I have tried to make it a bit easier in managing my own tournaments. I am sure there are different and better methods than these, so please let me know. Any queries on the above I'll be glad to respond to!)[/spoiler]
Join This? Or Not! by [player]sonicsteve[/player]
We are all so used to seeing [player]Victor Sullivan[/player]'s name associated as Newsletter Foundry Executive that it seems just plain weird to see anything else. Anything else other than his promotion to Grand Poobah that is! Congrats Sully on the promotion! So now it is my fifteen minutes of fame. But as my dinghy is firmly attached to the ship, I am not afraid at all. I also want to acknowledge all the hard work and effort that has gone into this section before me and the tireless efforts of those beavering away behind the scenes today!! So from that high-flaluten beginning, let's get down to business. This issue sees [player]OliverFA[/player] delving into whether special game mechanics could provide new map opportunities, [player]koontz1973[/player] talks about what you can do to help the map makers, I pursue that with a look at Death Race Mojave as a practical example and then give Thanksgiving to the Turkey Hunt (pun intended!). So enjoy! Thanks and regards!
thehippo8
Foundry Executive
Should every map be playable in every setting? by OliverFA
How to help mapmakers by koontz1973
Map-in-focus: Death Race Mojave by thehippo8
Thanksgiving: Or let’s get the Turkeys! by thehippo8
This edition for clans we have Alt musing on the recent spate of upsets in the clan scene (and they are so many that it's tough to call some clans underdogs any longer as they pack some big punches), [player]Skillfusniper33[/player] joins our dispatch team with an in-depth look at the 2nd stanza of the exciting Newcomers Cup competition and Bogan somehow avoids mentioning his clans close loss to Tofu in his rum-filled contemplation of that inexplicable element that can often split the die in tense clan matches. We have been using more and more abbreviations and acronyms of clan names lately, so remember to peruse the [Official] List of Clans to decipher any quandary's you may be in.
Elsewhere in clan news, the Semi-finals of the Conquerors Cup reach their conclusion as the 2 clans that were split by only 1 game in a previous 80 game encounter, and tied each other in this 60 game edition, are again 3-3 near the end of their tiebreak. Looks like after months of agonizing, the outcome now just rests on Game 10077607 where the monkies have seemed to finally taken the lead.
Methinks all this headache could have been avoided if they just played 1 game at the beginning, or better yet a coin toss since that may be the only way to ever split these quite brilliant clans that are the stalwarts of elite gaming on CC. Even if TSM do win this World 2.1 showdown, there are 153 games highly competitive clan games between TSM and Thota, and quite simply nothing separates them.
We also have the ACC semi's between Memento Mori/Dynasty and Bofm/Foed, as well as the RST finals between Bofm/Empire commencing soon, while Foed leads the standings in the Random League as the only team still unbeaten after 4 matches, so there's still a lot of action exhibiting the competitiveness of Clans. More news on the latest developments can also always be found in Active Challenges.
Also note that there is now an Open Application Callout for Clan Directors, so pm [player]Masli[/player] if you'd like to contribute to the development of clans going forward, while the CLA is expected to release the format of it's eagerly anticipated Clan League 4 soon.
[player]Leehar[/player]
Clan Executive
Upsetting Trend by Alt1978
Newcomers Cup 2 by Skillfusniper33 (IGNI)
Just Lucky by Bogan's God (Bofm)
Stay Tuned for the next issue of the ConquerClub Dispatch for an interrogation of [player]rdsrds2120[/player]. Post any questions you may have for them here --> Interrogation with rdsrds2120
Submitting Your Own Articles
If you have a story you think the ConquerClub Community would find interesting, you can submit your articles to [player]nagerous[/player] and you may just see your article published in the Newsletter!
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ConquerClub Dispatch Team
