Who wants to waste their time on a Hatfield-McCoy feud? (Apologies, Dill--I'm not well-versed enough in history to refer to an English rivalry.)
Guy Fawkes vs King James I was a doozy. Almost blew up in King James's face. 
Thanks, Sol.
Sol, this bug should really be fixed. It makes the author chapter note field a sloppy mess for all newly posted and edited chapters, and it makes a poor impression for new users wondering about the professionalism of the site. This should be an easy fix.
An old related bug is when a user views an inline review in x-line mode (that's probably most of us). The reply box is tiny (less than 2" by 2"), even on a large screen. I reported this about a year ago. Here, too, it affects probably everyone, should be an easy fix, and makes a poor impression.
Thanks.
The following is from the Starlanes/Time Travel Galactipedia article explaining the origins of the resurrected Acme, Inc. name that will replace Warheads Et Cetera throughout the book. Professor Hinkley is the guy who discovers the starlanes and builds a coconut-powered time machine.
Hinkley formed a company called Interstellar Corporation to commercialize his discoveries. He later executed a seemingly ill-advised but ultimately brilliant merger with a bird farming cooperative to breed roadrunners for shipment off-world. He named the combined entity Acme Corporation, a firm that still exists to this day and holds virtual monopolies in the manufacture of advanced technology ranging from warships to roboserfs to antigravity anvils.
I may add some quality control issues to Acme products. :-)
I need to spend a few days going back and doing cleanup of earlier chapters, so no new posts until late next week. One way or another, I'm going to decide the fate of Queen Aussie and Warheads Et Cetera this weekend. Until I change it again.
Based on my math, I'm less than six months away from finishing this book. Yay!
Chapter 23, Storming a Battleship, is up. It's mostly cleanup, although the epigraph is new. Some of you may have seen the epigraph appear in an earlier chapter, the Young Leader's Conference, but I decided to move it here to coincide with Joseph's attempt to kill Apollo. Since Caligula is now a devoted brother (following his massive head wound), I switched his and Joseph's roles at the end.
Quick, go read!
Dirk
Thank you, both.
Any suggestions from anyone regarding Warheads Et Cetera and Queen Aussie (see previous post)?
Thanks
Dirk
One of the nice things about editing over the existing chapter is that those who haven't reviewed it yet will still receive points for doing so. The advantage of reposting is that everyone receives points and your posted work reappears on everyone's home page.
If you repost, increment the version number for the new chapter, and hide the previous version, unless you want reviewers to see both. You can also delete the previous version, but then you lose all of the reviews associated with it (I think).
I do both. When I posted the previous version of my novel, I was still exploring where I was going with the story, and the feedback reflected the fact that I would need to make major changes, so I soon gave up trying to make the changes on the fly. For my final draft, the suggested changes are mostly minor and I'm making those as soon as they come in, then I copy and paste those changes from MS Word into my online version chapter. I only re-post a chapter using points if it involves major changes and I want the same reviewers to look at it again, otherwise I just edit over the existing online version of the chapter and carry on.
Yep... we'd very quickly reach a state where the extra credit was expected.
We did reach that stage in an earlier iteration of the site (back when you could rate reviews). People got their feathers ruffled if you didn't give them 5-stars. It came to be you lost reviewers if you didn't reward them. It ended up you kept only reviewers who said good things about your work.
Any potential problem with free points is entirely "localized". If I give you free points and you grow to expect them every time, then I haven't managed your expectations. No one besides you and me is affected. People who can't or don't want to give extra credit, aren't affected by what I do with my points.
It's like telling me I can't give my son a $20 allowance for chores because other kids in his class get nothing for doing chores.
I would love that. It would be an easy/ideal way to use up the spare points. But several people on the site are opposed to allowing this. Not sure why.
I yield to the lady with 2013 points. 
The point system is really smart to keep the site active but I wouldn't want someone to post a half-hearted review on my work just to rack up points and that's what I'm gonna watch out for as I start posting my own reviews of other works.
The points system could use tweaking. I have no use for 900 points, but they keep accumulating because I read more than I'm reviewed. I do that on purpose because my reviewers are better at it than I am, so what my reviews lack in depth/quality, I try to make up for in quantity (e.g., I'm currently reading about four chapters from someone who reads one of mine). It's my way of trying to keep good reviewers.
The main tweak to the points system that I think would be fair would be to award points based on the number of comments left. Right now, you get all of the points for a posted chapter regardless of whether you leave five comments or fifty. The person who leaves fifty deserves more points, in my opinion.
My compulsive disorder would drive me to shoot for 4000. :-)
In addition to viewing book summaries as tooltips on the homepage, it would be useful to have chapter titles appear under the book names in the New Books list. There is plenty of unused space there without lengthening the home page. Interesting chapter titles might draw in potential reviewers. Right now, all we've got to draw our interest to a book are a book icon and the book title. The book summaries and chapter titles would create a richer home page.
Does anyone have an opinion as to whether Warheads Et Cetera and Queen Aussie are working in the story?
Unlike Mama's Little Shipping, which came alive in the second half of v2 (mostly because of Mama), I don't have a good idea yet of where to go with Warheads Et Cetera. It was supposed to be my dressed up name for ACME, a running gag. However, without the ACME name, it simply isn't funny. I'm strongly considering changing it back to Acme, Inc. so that the joke is obvious. Currently Warheads Et Cetera was founded by the Professor, and there is evidence that he is sending instructions back in time on what tech to build to corner the market on all tech (much like Mama ships everything in the story).
I have a final scene in mind for Queen Aussie at the end of the book that is the payoff for her presence, but I'm not getting the mileage out of her that I had hoped for throughout the rest of the story. One idea I'm considering is having her run Warheads Et Cetera, causing chaos throughout the story to generate profits off war material sales. I set her up in the prologue as having overloaded her safeguards against homicide, so it's possible. I don't know how to slip her into that role, though, since she can't appear physically until her final scene. It would all have to be done through news stories (in epigraphs). I have yet to figure out a way to do that, though. Perhaps she founds Acme, Inc. after ejecting from the Almighty in the prologue...
Thoughts?
I just did a search on Babylon 5 docking bay images. Seems to be quite a variety of bays/hangars that match the query. Nevertheless, you're right. Mine's a hangar. Docking bay just sounds more cool... :-)
Yup, plasma thrusters it is. They're promising enough that it doesn't seem like much of a stretch for them to become the standard for spaceflight (some are already in use today). Add a fusion reactor to produce the electricity needed to power the ship's systems, including shields, and you're all set. If you want to increase thrust, simply divert your shield power to the plasma accelerator for added thrust. It's hokey, but within the realm of possibility. The fusion reactor also solves another problem for me: I need a power source that can greatly overheat due to loss of coolant later in the story.
Apparently the sci-fi standard is ion thrusters. So be it.
Thanks
K et al, do you consider the terms hangar and docking bay as synonymous? I'm curious how you picture them. I'm trying to decide which term to use throughout the book. The picture I'm trying to convey is that of the bay into which the Millenium Falcon was pulled inside the first Death Star. Essentially a large area full of small ship(s), personnel, etc. with a force field to keep air from bleeding into space.
We appear to have a new bug. The author chapter note field no longer formats correctly and, if you go in to edit it, the field contains visible formatting characters (e.g., <p> and </p>).
My latest chapter, Starfighter Battle, is up. This is a cleaned up version of the same chapter from v2. I leveraged battle chess to divide the battle into 2 rounds of starfighter combat, including some use of wingmen. My purpose for the first round is to knock out three pilots right away, leaving Christian to join the second round, for a total of five ships, which is the actual number I need for the chapter. That avoids the reader having to keep track of eight ships at once.
For this draft of the chapter, Joseph (the POV character) can tell how damaged other starfighters are based on the glow from their thrusters and cockpit. For example, if the glow from the thrusters drops considerably, then Joseph knows the ship has sustained significant (simulated) damage. Ditto if he sees cockpit lights cutting in and out. If both go out completely, that means the ship has been effectively destroyed for the duration of the exercise.
K suggested having Joseph see the status of every other ship on his instrument panel, rather then relying on the visual cues from the thrusters and cockpit lighting. Please let me know if you think seeing the status would add to the scene. I think I would still need to mention the visual cues, so I'm not sure I need a status panel, but it might be more realistic.
Yup, plasma thrusters it is. They're promising enough that it doesn't seem like much of a stretch for them to become the standard for spaceflight (some are already in use today). Add a fusion reactor to produce the electricity needed to power the ship's systems, including shields, and you're all set. If you want to increase thrust, simply divert your shield power to the plasma accelerator for added thrust. It's hokey, but within the realm of possibility. The fusion reactor also solves another problem for me: I need a power source that can greatly overheat due to loss of coolant later in the story.
I could do that, but I wanted a way to tell what was going on with both friendly and enemy ships, so I went with thruster exhaust and lighting in the cockpit. Both can drop, indicating a problem. Also, the cockpit light flickering indicates the ship's power may be cutting in and out. When the exhaust and cockpit lighting go out completely, it means the ship has been "destroyed". I'll consider using status bars for all ships in the mock combat.
The real problem is Joseph diverting power from shields to speed up the ship. For that, I think plasma may be my best bet. I still need to research that some more later today when I'm awake.
