State of the Rebel Squadrons

March 2017

I. Foreword
II. Squadron and Academy Updates
III. Awards and Recognition
IV. Mission Briefing
V. Conclusion

I. Foreword

Greetings,

After a short break, we are back to our regularly scheduled programming. I hope everyone had a nice February. Not much has happened in the past few weeks, so without too much fanfare onto the important bits.


II. Squadron and Academy Updates

Academy News: This session saw no changes with the Academy. We had no graduations and no new recruits

Squadron News: Overall, there wasn’t much to report with the short session.

Resurrection Squadron: According to their CO, GEN Eric Skrevski, Rza will be starting a squad fiction. Subject unknown at this time.

Diamond Squadron: Short session caused a lot of unmotivated members. They’re looking forward to that changing with the resumption of the RS campaign against Titan.

Red Dagger Squadron: Waiting for the next move against Titan. Most of the unit kept their powder dry.

As this was a short, placeholder session, and with the authorization of the FC, the standard AWOL rules were suspended until the end of the March/April session.


III. Awards and Recognition

RS Activity Top Gun for FA Michael Raven


RS Top Squadron


Squadron MVP


Have a special medal to award this session. FA Danny "David Lee Japan" Qatar please step forward! For your efforts in organizing and getting out a weekly Newsletter to keep the club informed on what is happening each week throughout the RS you are here by being awarded the Dagger of Courage! Congrats Cody!

Feb 18th, 2017 - 10 Year Service Medal for BGN Naesa Draw.

IV. Mission Briefing - Phoenix Rising - The Battle of Lithra

Primary Conference Room, Imperial I-class Star Destroyer Redemption, 1 hour before the Invasion of Lithra

Admiral Kaz Falcion, commander of the mighty Redemption Fleet, sat down at the large conference table, alone. He’d just arrived back on the Redemption after finishing a briefing with the various commanders of the huge combined fleet that was being dispatched to liberate Lithra. Several items weighed heavily on his mind, while the briefing had instilled him with confidence that their attack plan would give them a fighting chance; it was the aftermath of the battle that he was concerned with. The self-branded ‘Lithran Resistance’ on the planet was proving to be bigger problems than they were assets. In exchange for their help, which admittedly was paramount to the overall liberation of the planet, they were demanding that their leaders be given important positions in the reformed government; to the point that they would have majority control of the day to day operations, and could foil the Rebel Squadrons’ plans to integrate the world back into their fold. Worse still, it seemed like their allies had acquiesced to the Resistance’s demands; virtually handing the world over.

Kaz wasn’t about to tolerate that.

Reaching out to his control console, he locked the conference room door, and disabled the recording devices and cameras which usually kept track of everything that happened in the room for record. When he was satisfied, Kaz tapped in a COMM frequency which he’d memorized years ago, but only seldom used. After several minutes of waiting, a shimmering blue hologram of Director Cody Qel-Droma, the commander of the Rebel Squadrons’ special forces division, appeared in front of him.

“Cody,” Kaz said with a nod, before dispensing with the pleasantries and getting to business. “How much do you know about the Lithran Resistance?”

“Terrorists, most of them, but effective. They’ve been assisting the ABG since the start of the liberation effort. Led by a council of seven. Leader’s fairly enigmatic, goes by the name Darrik. Financed by several ABG members, they’ve got modern tech, vehicles, training, a lot of explosives, and the will to use them. Why?”

“They’re a problem.” Kaz responded, and transmitted a datafile that he’d been provided by Director Hawkins, head of their intelligence division over to Cody. “Based on the briefing we just had, it looks like the Resistance isn’t going to play nice once the invasion is over. That could cause quite a few problems for us, and the Republic as a whole. We’re about an hour from jumping to hyperspace and setting this thing off, and we need to make sure the Resistance is going to play nice once we’re done. I’ve sent you what intel we have on the Resistance leaders.”

Cody’s hologram nodded, and several light years away on the Liberator-class cruiser Zealot, he quickly looked over the data.

“It’ll be close, but I can get my guys in.” He said, already tapping commands into his own console to get the Zealot moving ahead of the combined fleet. “What are you thinking?”

“Assassinate and supplant.” Kaz said simply, they needed to thin the Lithran Resistance leadership, and get someone more malleable into place; otherwise all of this would be for nothing.

“Fine,” Cody said without hesitation, “After that debacle with the dam, and the school, they’ve got it coming.” He was referencing the Resistance’s bombing of two locations, one to destroy a garrison which also took out a small town, and the other to kill a Titan General, which killed dozens of school children.

“Bonus points if you can make it look like they were taken out internally or by Titan. Either way it can’t be traced to us.”

“Understood,” Cody said, “We’ll get moving immediately.”

“Good luck,” Kaz responded, before cutting the COMM feed to a nod by his counterpart. He sat there silent for a few moments before reinitializing the recording devices and resetting everything. Standing, he walked out of the briefing room and into the bridge of the Redemption, looking at the flurry of activity going on in preparation. He walked to the front viewports, and looked out across the dozens of ships surrounding his own, all poised in the same direction awaiting orders. Hundreds of hyperspace capable fighters swarmed like bees around their command vessels, and several support ships had been launched already to be ready for the first moments of the battle.

“Tactical, charge all weapon arrays and get the shields on standby. Comms, signal all vessels to prepare for hyperspace.” He paused for a moment, and drew in a breath.

“Helm. Set your course for Lithra…”

Activities:

Empire at War

"After recent difficulties it our campaign against the Titan Fleet, orders have come down from Headquarters to begin the full scale invasion of Lithra. However, in order to begin landing troops on the planet, we need to punch a hole in their defenses.

That's where you come in, Commander. We've identified what we believe to be a weak point in the planetary defenses. Your mission is to lead a small task force to destroy a Titan defense station and supporting ships so that we can begin landing troops on the surface."

1 point for a victory
1 additional point for a victory on Hard difficulty
1 point for a mission review.

Instructions for loading the mission:
Place the .ted file in the location Star Wars Empire at War\GameData\Data\CustomMaps
In-game, select: single player > skirmish battles > custom maps > space > Invasion of Lithra
Finally, click "Advanced..." and set the win condition to "Destroy Enemy". The mission can be found here: http://www.rebelsquadrons.org/itod/mission.php?id=1176

Star Wars: Force Arena (SWFA)

Briefing: The invasion of Lithra is on! Help support our troops on the ground by taking out an enemy outpost that is guarding one of the landing zones for the our troops!

Objective Instructions: Get in there and play!

1 point for a solo match victory
1 point for a co-op match victory with another RSer
1 point for posting your preferred deck on the forums and discussing its positives/negatives

Instructions: The game can be downloaded onto your mobile device here: http://www.starwarsforcearena.com/en. At level 3, our guild can be joined. Search for "rebelsquadrons"

X-Wing Alliance

While a portion of our fleet performs a strong-arm smash on the core-side of Lithra in order to punch a hole to land ground commandos, we're simultaneously going in with a smaller force to hit the back-side of the planet with a surgical strike in an attempt to commandeer one of the orbital defense platforms. There's a Golan 2 that seems to be lightly defended, and we think a small raiding party should be able to take it. Fighter wings will fly cover for the assault shuttles, but be careful as you'll have no capital ship support!

1 point for flying the mission
1 point for successful completion
1 point for no losses of any RS mission craft.

Modern Gaming Cooperative

Briefing: As the invasion is starting to begin, Command has set forth a final series of training missions that will test to see if members are able to complete objectives successfully.

Objectives:
1.) Play a game with another RSer and win.
2.) Kill at least 100 'enemies' in a game, that tracks enemy kills. This can be any game that tracks kills.
3.) Games of the month: Play one of the following games with another RSer and report it. 7daystodie, Minecraft or Star Wars the Old Republic.

Fiction Writing (General Writing):

While the invasion of Lithra is underway, several supporting operations have been launched in order to draw away elements of Titan so that the invasion at Lithra can succeed.

Objectives: Write about a battle, either on land or in space, where you give support to RS or NR forces fighting outside of the Lithra campaign to help divert Titan reinforcements from arriving at Lithra.

1 point for a 500 worded post.
1 point for a 1000 worded post.
1 point for writing with another RSer.

Fiction Writing (Zealot Special Operations)

Briefing: Zealot Special Operations forces have been inserted on Lithra to “assist” the Lithra Resistance. Assist of course means eliminating terrorist elements of the Lithran Resistance too dangerous to bring into the Republic Shield fold and better connecting its efforts to Republic Shield activities to liberate the planet and system. Zealot has been recommissioned for this task, as what better team to tackle off-the-grid terror agents than a bunch of off-the-grid terror agents?

Objective Instructions: The mission itself, which will be “101,” is posted here:: http://rebelsquadrons.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=147&t=3671

1 point for at least 500 words written
1 point for two posts of at least 500 words
1 point for a post authored with another Zealot participant

Instructions: The rules for writing in an interactive forum can be found here: http://wiki.rebelsquadrons.org/index.php?title=Zealot#Rules. For help on characters, writing, etc., pop on discord and chat with any of the other participants.

Simming

After months of operations fighting to weaken Titan’s defenses on and around Lithra, the invasion has finally arrived. Gather up your gear, grab your weapons and let's strike a vital blow against Titan!

1 point for precipitation in a Sim.
1 point for precipitation in a Character Sim.
1 point for precipitation in a Lithra Invasion Sim.


Conclusion

Let’s go out there and kick some Titan butts. Have fun! Until next time.

Regards,


The Command Team


GEN Eric Skrevski
Rebel Squadrons Operations Officer
Contact the Operations Officer


FA Michael Raven
Rebel Squadrons Logistics Officer
Contact the Logistics Officer


VA Kirghy Lommax
Rebel Squadrons Executive Officer
Contact the XO


BGN Teu Veld
Rebel Squadrons Fleet Commander
Contact the FC