Greetings,

I'm well aware that we have had many problems getting Outer Rim War 3: The Subterrel Conflict running smoothly. I apologize for that, but these things rarely run perfectly right off the gate, so we're busy fine-tuning. However, a lot of improvements are underway to make the competition better. Please read on to find out what new stuff is happening.

Most importantly, we will have some new faces at ORW3 starting on Saturday, February 17th. The Tie Fighter Alliance (TFA) has agreed to join the competition and will hopefully provide our XvT pilots with some opponents. In addition, I fully expect The Rebel Alliance (TRA) to join as well, although they have not quite yet made it official. Lastly, DS, a club that we often play against in Ecliptical Realms' competitions, has been invited and is considering joining the competition. With any luck, the addition of these clubs will provide more competition in the games the RS likes to play: XvT, XWA, and EaW. For now, however, only TFA is official.

We are also making efforts to improve the way ORW3 is run. JaggedFel of the GE is recoding the ORW3 bot so that it will recognize the difference between factions and more intelligently arrange matches. Hopefully this will make signing up for matches much easier. The way matches are reported will also change this coming weekend. Orv of the DB has been working on coding a web-based match entry system. This will allow participants to report their match directly to the ORW3 webpage and see its effect on the total score for the weekend immediately. The system will be very easy to understand and will ease the task of the moderators as well as allow quicker score updates. You can see the beta version of this system on the ORW3 webpage now.

A few other brief comments: Raven has released the Battle 2 Results NL, you can view it here. Also, the Outer Rim Times, a fictional newsletter detailing the events of ORW3 battles, is online and running now.

In short, ORW3 is still changing and, I hope, improving as well. Pilots should be able to get matches in flight sim games this weekend, since we will have new opponents. As always, there will continue to be plenty of JO and JA matches as well. Battle 3 starts Saturday, the 17th, at 9am EST and will run all weekend.

":)
Dave Trebonious-Astoris
Fleet Commander

=The Rebel Squadrons=
A H.I.E.R. Organization: Honesty, Integrity, Equanimity, Respect