STEVE COLE’S PRIORITY WORK LIST
I thought you'd like to see this.
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Fires, disasters, emergencies, and other things that must be done right now. This includes working the assembly line when I stupidly schedule too many products at one time, and going to the doctor when I break my leg. This also includes any "short" project that anybody else in the building wants, such as SPP wanting me to check the battle group rules or Leanna wanting me to find some PDF for her.
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Every Day’s Email
In theory, I want to answer every email the day I get it. That doesn’t always happen but I do try, and more than that, I try to go back and get a couple I missed earlier every day. There is a PBEM project floating around which is actually considered Email not a project because I’m just watching Brooks and Franz do it. This also includes some pirate checking as sometimes I have to go look at them before sending "sink on sight" orders to Joel.
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Daily routine
The BBS, the forum, the facebook page, Jean’s reports and requests, my daily web crawl, the Wednesday staff meeting, Customer Request Wednesday, Marketing Monday, Business Friday.
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Update Wall of Honor for the day.
I do four per day which takes about 10-20 minutes. I consider it a debt of honor to make progress on displaying the medals awarded to hard working people.
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BIGGER REQUESTS
Anything Leanna, Mike, Jean, or Steve Petrick want that takes more than five minutes. For example, Mike wanting to discuss quality control on 2500s or have me QC a box of maps.
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TOP OF THE LIST
When something "goes to the top of the list" this is where it goes.
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Fleet Doctrine Rules for ACTASF
Should be ready for review today.
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LENINGRAD MAP
Another game company may or may not do a computer version of a game I did for JagdPanther a million years ago. Every now and then they ask me to approve something which takes five minutes. So while responding to them is a very high priority, they don’t ask for much of my time.
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LAST STAND MAP:
I have sent this to Xander and have nothing to do until he writes back.
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paperwork for computer game negotiations
Assuming the lawyer approves it, this will be done soon.
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CL46 FLAP list.
This is two or three entire days of work and includes things like updating the index of Captain’s Log, finishing the Supplemental File, the FC Master Ship Chart, the FC Scenario index, back up the computer files, and do a video for Youtube.
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KLINGON SHIP CARD PACK #2 and #3
This will take one entire day of work but I promised Jean that if she did Fed-2 that I would do Klingon-2. As we cannot decide between two choices for Klingon-2 I may well end up doing both K2 and K3 which will actually take less time than doing them a month apart.
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ACTASF CARDS: Roms ready for checking. Kzintis, Orions, Tholians, and generics after that.
I will check them when I get that far down the list. In theory, these should automatically go to the top of the list but only one Mongoose project does that at a time and right now that’s the fleet doctrine rules. Once Matthew and I come to a text we can both publish, this goes to the "top of the list".
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FIX CL47 STORY.
If this isn't at the top of the list by 15 March it automatically jumps there, passing everything else.
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Traveller Deck plans
Two or three days of work are needed to get this project on track.
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POINT BLANK
A guy named Ron is doing this project and I really need to look into just what Point Blank is and how we can best make it happen.
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TRAVELLER FINAL PAGES
a week of work.
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STAR FLEET ADMIRAL
Do four pages a week.
I want this to be higher on the list but Leanna says I have to clear out some near term projects first.
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COMMUNIQUE 87 (March 10)
If I haven't gotten to it by 1 March it jumps to the top.
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COMMUNIQUE 88 (April 10)
If I haven't gotten to it by 1 April it jumps to the top.
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FUTURE PROJECTS
Such as CL#47. Some will jump to the top of the list at key trigger dates.

By Daniel Glenn Knipfer (Dgknipfer) on Wednesday, July 24, 2013 - 08:04 pm: Edit

I have a question. Is it possible for older Captain's Logs to be published in the large print formats? I know that the oldest ones wouldn't be realistic as they would take way too much time, but possibly newer ones where you still have all the files in a modern file format.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Wednesday, July 24, 2013 - 08:22 pm: Edit

That could, in theory, be done from 30 forward.

However, it takes SVC time, and we don't sell very many. (I'm betting only one or two of things that old.) Doesn't justify the use of the most limited resource of the company.

By Daniel Glenn Knipfer (Dgknipfer) on Wednesday, July 24, 2013 - 11:29 pm: Edit

That's what I thought, but you never know until you ask.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Thursday, July 25, 2013 - 04:27 am: Edit

I am here to answer

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Wednesday, July 31, 2013 - 05:03 pm: Edit

Recently, in a topic way down the stack, two people were talking about a project. One of them observed that I might be interested in projects as long as these conditions did not apply...

1. He has to spend a lot of time on, or
2. Violates any Paramount agreement, or
3. Violates any internal SFU "canon", or
4. Won't make him any money at best, or make him lose money at worst, or
5. Is just plum stoopid.

I thought that was an interesting observation and wanted to comment on it.

"1. He has to spend a lot of time on"

Well, it depends on the work-reward ratio. Something that will make me a ton of money gets all my time. Something that won't make any money cannot get more than an hour because I just don't have a lot of hours. For that matter, not every idea even gets an hour.

Another element is that if I don't have time to do it and it would take more work to check what you did than it would take to do it, I'm not going to check it OR do it.

"2. Violates any Paramount agreement"

Absolutely not going to let that happen. However, nobody seems to understand what can and cannot be done. I've had people who have never seen my contract with Paramount argue with me over what is in it. (How would they know?) Some parts of that contract are sort of vague and if I don't want to take the risk, it doesn't happen. Very few projects produce enough money to gamble the entire company and SFU.

"3. Violates any internal SFU canon"

Yes, but...
Not everybody knows every canon, and I hate to see people waste a lot of time on something.
There are sometimes ways around the canon (Olivette Roche springs to mind).

"4. Won't make him any money at best, or make him lose money at worst"

Well, that's generally true but case by case, depending on that work-vs-reward ratio. Something that takes a days work and makes $100 is probably pretty marginal, unless it produces some other intangible benefit. I try to do one of those every now and then just to inspire others and let everyone know there "is a slight chance" of their idea being done.

"5. Is just plum stoopid."

Yeah, but I have to be in a really bad mood to actually call someone stupid. It happens, but I try to control it. On Saturday I really should have told someone "Here is why that idea is not workable" instead of "That's a stupid idea." Functionally, stupid and unworkable aren't much different.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Friday, November 15, 2013 - 03:09 pm: Edit

From the vacation, here I am as Chef Steve cutting up meat for the wolves. Yes, I am wearing a tablecloth as a serape to keep the blood off of my clothes. (You do NOT want to be walking around wolves -- or Leanna -- in blood-soaked clothing. Trust me.)

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Thursday, November 28, 2013 - 05:00 pm: Edit

THE REAL STORY

We use the Fed BC more than the CA because we like it more; the CA does not cost us extra royalties.

I often reject Kickstarter for small projects not because they get a share of the money (that IS a minor factor) but because those projects won't sell to non-current customers so there is no benefit to the extra costs in prepping a project for Kickstarter (graphics, videos, etc). In many cases I think the odds of failure are very high with such projects and do not want to ruin our batting average.

By Randy Blair (Randyblair) on Friday, December 13, 2013 - 06:04 am: Edit

SVC, here are the rules in question...

(D17.4) LEVELS OF INFORMATION
There are several specific levels of information, each providing a more complete description of the enemy unit.

STRATEGIC LEVELS
These levels are not used within SFB; they are used only in strategic level games. They are noted here to indicate the information available on ships entering the map.

S1: A force (a ship or group of ships) is present, but you cannot tell how many ships or what type they are. Explosions (mines, combat) can be detected somewhat farther away. A base using special sensors to sweep its sector would be detected at this level. A base trying to hide (e.g., an Orion base) would not be found at strategic levels and would be found only by the same means (below) as finding a ship. Active duty naval bases are well known (location, size) but tactical details (e.g., damage, refits, weapons arming) are found by tactical means (below).
S2: The total movement cost (per hex) of all of the ships (not the cost of individual ships) and the current speed of the force is known. Tugs are reported at their basic movement cost without pods regardless of pods carried.
S3: The total number of ships in the force is known.
S4: The movement cost of each ship in the force is known; tugs are reported at their basic movement cost without pods regardless of pods carried. Shuttles are simply listed as “an unknown number of shuttles.”
S5: The location of all units within a radius of twice the level A radius is known within five hexes. Thus, a unit 217 hexes from a base (on a large map) would actually be somewhere within five hexes of the hex that the counter was in. This is more than enough accuracy to plan strategy or fire long-range type-IIIXX drones, but not enough to use direct-fire weapons. From this point, all targets can be tracked as individual units, except as provided in (F2.6). If, for example, several cloaked ships entered the scenario, the opposing player would always know which was #1 and which was #2, and if he learned some information about “cloaked ship #4,” he would always know which cloaked target this information was associated with (regardless of which cloak rules were in effect).

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Friday, December 13, 2013 - 11:03 am: Edit

The first three are definitely F&E next hex (two for scouts).

S4 is iffy

S5 is clearly in the same F&E hex,

So I'd say S4 is inside the same F&E hex but maybe ten times the Level A radius, or maybe 20.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Friday, December 13, 2013 - 03:06 pm: Edit

There is no middle ground. S3 is outside the F&E hex, S4 is inside the F&E hex.