What’s happened so far
March was definitely a getting back on track month. Both in starfire and out.
Work has been bringing everything back online (I feel for our IS team), and with Covid not quite in remission, but not quite on the resurgence (where I live at least), things are in an interesting kind of stasis. Things are returning to a not quite normal process, even for our “new normal” but things are at least happening. I admit that I nuked my sleep schedule quite badly last month, and it’s only been the time off over the Easter weekend that has helped me get it bent towards something that resembles right.
Even through that though, I’ve worked to try and maintain some level of cadence on Sundays, and that’s resulted in some more writing (soon to come) as well as some more bureaucratic paperwork happening at the same time. Which is good all on its own. Getting that schedule set and actually followed has been a kind of wonderful thing, really. It’s been an anchor of sanity.
Next month’s task: Start doing these sitreps at the beginning of the month instead of midway!
What’s happening next?
Following up on my conversation regarding conventions and the like, nothing much has been announced locally for summer or fall yet. There’s usually one event in the fall, but I think they’re playing cards close to their chest if they want to run it or not. Given how capacity for exhibition space is, I think they’ll be fine to get the space on short term notice. So here’s hoping I’ll have that one to attend at the least.
I’ve been knocking out a couple more things on the side that are part and parcel of getting turns running, and I expect to be rolling turns this month (yay!) in a pretty steady pace. A few design hurdles were taken care of (mentioned below) that will help getting turns done. They weren’t needed immediately, but they would’ve been needed in 1-3 turns anyhow. So done now, done later, same difference really. I’ve also started picking up the paperwork on the Scenario Book (again) so that can start becoming a forward-moving process. Had to fix my printer as a part of that. Checklists are a lot easier to do on paper to be honest.
2022 Goals
These goals are approximately in order of priority and in order of precedence (IE have to do #1 before you can do #2). There’s some goals from 2021 that are coming back, but a some of them are going to be brand new ones as well. As before, some of them are one-and-done, while others are big projects. There’s a couple more tasks on it this year compared to last, but a bunch of them are more housekeeping tasks; easier one-and done things that can be pounded out sometime in the year.
So enough banter. On to the list!
1) Complete turn processing for all empires up to turn 175
A little progress has been made on this. The big one has been doing a fleet redesign for the deWulf. As hinted, the fleet is getting a re-design and rebuild before going into mothballs. This means a dozen designs need to get evaluated and upgraded, and then have rebuild plans costed and spaced out before the work can begin. Non-combat ships will also need this review to be done, but that will be a more stretched out process that will likely result in older designs simply being scrapped instead of being refitted.
2) Update/Archive all the Sketch Sunday Worldbuilding
No progress on this one yet either.
3) Finish playtesting and balancing for Scenario Book 1 – The First Contact War
I’m working on getting this organized so I can post the request sometime in April.
4) Finish the writing work for Scenario Book 1 – The First Contact War
Not started yet.
5) Introduce and post completed artwork
Two pictures missed have been identified. Aiming to have these set up for posting in April.
6) Go do a second pass on the artwork for Scenario Book 1, incorporating new details and design concepts over the past year
Contract request has been sent, waiting for response.
7) Start fishing in my contacts to find someone who can do proofreading for Scenario Book
This task is sitting low on the to-do list for fairly obvious reasons. Need to be done writing and my own edit pass before the work can get handed off to an editor. Need to reach out to some of my friends/contacts, see if they know anyone.
8) Rename systems/planets that do not fit the universe setting
Not started yet.
9) Look at the Solar Starfire Freight Handling Rules
Not started yet.
10) Set up a redundant deWulf data backup
At this time I’m setting up for going back to Gencon, but once that’s done I’ll be looking to shift some cash towards setting up and having a NAS hooked up to my network for regular data updates. So this realistically has a fall timeline for completion.
11) Update the deWulf Story Document
The currently available deWulf story document on the website is, to be honest, really old. It was originally done as just a backup log, but with it out and on the website it does have some amount of actual attention. So the plan is to split it into three parts and then give it some short synopsizes on the website to explain (and more importantly warn) readers what’s going on in each of them. Mind you that’s not warn them of anything really questionable…. it’s more like my early writing is kinda… rough.
Which is another reason why this is so far down the to-do list.
12) Review Sketch Sunday
I’ve been doing some more thinking on this one, and I think at least for the immediate future I’ll be doing some sketches to tie them into sort of theme “arcs” where I look at a specific place or group of places. I’ve done this a few times where I grouped already done sketches together, but I’ll be trying to make some new sketches as a series. A new thing; we’ll see how it works.
13) Designing a Space Navy series
First article is more or less done and completed. I’m thinking that it will be a “First of the month” kind of posting cycle. So first Sunday of the month, every month going forward until completion.
Dollarton Proxima Shipyards 