The stuff the Staff sent in for CL53 showed no learning curve at all from stuff they sent in three years ago. This created days of extra work for ADB.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Wednesday, March 09, 2016 - 09:54 pm: Edit

Here are, for purposes of all of you learning, some examples of consistent problems in rules and scenarios we received.

1. ALL CAPS; Long ago I used this for emphasis, as in:
"You MUST pay 2 EPs for this."
Perhaps following my pattern, the F&E staff did a metric asteroid ton of this all over. Jean long ago ordered all of these (except victory condition definitions) changed to lower case italics.

2. AMPERSANDS: I rarely used a few of these and the F&E staff used multiple metric asteroid tons of them. Jean long ago ordered them all removed except for F&E and E&S.

3. COLON AFTER BOLD: One of the most punishing mistakes and the F&E staff made four metric asteroid tons of them was to turn a title bold and forget to turn the colon after them bold. Zeroing in the cursor on that tiny little colon to fix the problem was tedious and aggravating.

4. PRODUCT ABBREVIATIONS: The way things are done, we sometimes lose all of the italic in an incoming document and I have to do it over so maybe some of these is my doing (or not) but if you ty;e "This product assumes you are using Planetary Operations (PO)." then the word planetary, the word operations, the PO, and the parentheses all get put into italics.

5. RESOURCES: if there is only one ship/unit then use the word "resource' not the plural form. Jean makes me delete the S and going after one character gets tedious after a few hundred times.

6. ORDERS OF BATTLE (NUMBERS OF SHIPS): I am not sure where this started, maybe me, but the F&E staff does a metric asteroid ton of it and Jean long ago ordered them all deleted. So if you have:
Lyran Order of Battle
Warships (7): DN, CC, 2xCA, 2xDD, FF
Jean is going tomake me remove the (7) because about 25% of those numbers are just wrong (the staff cannot add or doesn't recheck the total when they edit the list) and they add nothign. I've been deleting these forever but the staff keeps putting them in. Please stop.

7. AUXILIARY: In order of battle lists, the F&E staff sometimes puts Aux, sometimes Auxiliary, and sometimes Auxiliary ships. You need to pick one (Jean picked Auxiliaries for you) and go with it and nothing else. Also, if there is only one auxiliary then use the word auxiliary not auxiliaries.

8. SPRING AND FALL: Years ago Jean declared that we shall use Spring Y171 instead of Y171S but the staff never noticed and her making me correct this (guess how many times 60 pages of F&E rules mention a date?) a metric asteroid ton of times gets really annoying.

9. TWO OF THESE: Every F&E scenario and sector includes in the victory conditions a list of conditions with levels of victory dependant on achieving some of the list. If two or three both get you a victory then use "at least two" instead of "two". Do not use "at least two" if three gets you a different level.

10. SPECIAL SCHEDULES: A consistent mistake repeatedin every empire of every sector is "select ships taken from the special schedule." Since the special schedule in question is literally the next line then use the phrase "select ships taken from this special schedule."

11. THE FOLLOWING HEXES ARE IN-PLAY does not need a hyphen and removing it as Jean makes me do is tedious and annoying.

12. COMPLETE SENTENCES: Not saying I'm perfect but when writing formal rules use complete sentences.

13. SUBJECT VERB AGREEMENT: The subject and verb need to match. "The Klingons and Lyrans is in a state of war" doesn't match. They ARE in a state of war. This mistake seems to happen when they go back and edit previous text and don't notice that different subject requires a different verb. This covers a lot of ground. Tense, plurality, and other issues abound and even high school students are taught to make sure these match so there is no excuse.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Wednesday, March 09, 2016 - 10:24 pm: Edit

Remember that those items are just the ones from FO16 that cropped up in the last three days. This does not count the innumerable problems which were fixed in original editing or previous editions. The infamous "30 mistakes per page" was BEFORE the current edition of FO15/FO16 and before the latest in-house edition of ME.

Often, there is so much wrong with the original document that it takes five or six passes through it to find everything. Jean discovered the Aux, Auxiliary, and Auxiliary Ship inconsistency only by accident and only an hour before the book was finished. As she says, you get the boulders out of the way first, then the rocks, then the pebbles, then the sand, then the dust. You can't even see the pebbles when the boulders are all over the place.

And to be fair, Jean has "tightened the rules" over time. (She did not change them. She just got far enough along enforcing rules #1-#30 that she could finally start enforcing rules #31-#40 with even more yet to be enforced.)