Mikey and I were able to spend some time working on the ship list today at the build session. We added 72 new ship classes, about 30 being PDNs and rest protected or armored cruisers launched before 1895. There are some interesting ships in the mix, for those that want to join in the pre-Dreadnaught mania. Edit: an updated Battlestations list for 2017 was added. It contains updated formulas for speed and gun caliber to reflect recent rule changes.
I've always thought this would be very helpful, especially for the new guys. IMO, it should be stickied to be the first post in each club section, but can we upload Word DOCs or Notepad files??
I agree that they should be easily accessible. The perks of the Resource Manager, and why I suggested it though... You can still have a stickied post in the subforum pointing to the resource. Because you manage the resource and not the post, the post doesnt have to get changed every update. The link the the resource remains constant and easy to share, no need to worry about updating peoples links to new threads. The RM also keeps previous versions, so your history is easy to pull up. Members can watch the resource and be alerted of updates, and I believe its default action is to alert individuals who have downloaded the attached resource when there is an update (useful again I have found). Resources have automatically generated threads for discussion of the resource. Neatly separated from the body of the resource it still allows discussion without the resource itself or updates to it getting lost.
Currently the list of allowed extensions are Code: zip txt pdf png jpg jpeg jpe gif bmp I could add the office file extensions for XLS, XLSX, DOC and DOCX too it as well, but for the most part agree with @absolutek and like to encourage the use of PDFs You can attach any of the above to a message, I relabeled the 'Upload Files' button to 'Add Images' to help people with attaching images but you can still attach the non-image types to it.
The reason I like PDF is because the document viewing is more consistent among different programs. Although there are many programs that open ms doc formats, they aren't always displayed in a consistent manner.
I would certainly prefer PDF as well. Is there a free program out there to create them?? The need for full version Acrobat to create them has kept me from using them very often, but I'm sure that by now there is a more cost effective means to create them.
I added the PDF files. Obviously I didn't find that not being able to upload an excel file was a problem. Anyone should be able to create zip file of the file format they want share and that also keeps the need for storage space low. I see a couple of issues with centralized lists and rules. First, are they really current? Unless someone is assigned to keep them up to date, they could easily contain outdated information. Second, the people most likely to use the central repository are newbies. They could spend a lot of time looking through rules to find the one they want to play with, and then building a ship to that rule set, only to find everyone in the local area uses a different rule set. There are also benefits to a central repository, so I'll leave the ultimate decision up to someone else.
I agree w/ RCENG, sticky them at the top of the respective subforums. But OTOH, maybe something that ties into the new nifty mapping feature? IE, someone goes to the map and sees nothing but "IRC" in his area vice big gun or treaty? Not sure how to implement. Maybe have the map sortable by format?
They'd be as current as the current system where we rely on someone to upload them to a new post. Only instead of a post edit or a new post and a mod to unstick the old and sticky the new it's a resource update. Well, I think it already happens that they do that, but it would be nice if newbies actually posted an intro thread and got pointed the right direction before setting their hearts on a format. I don't think we can count on that happening consistently though in any case. I considered trying to display captain's format preference on the map. The big problem crops up with how you address folk with multiple formats they play. Do they make themselves a marker for each? That seems excessive. The map currently cant filter by anything unfortunately, but that is something I intend to improve upon as it gets more use. (And again there is the question "would a new person look at ____ before deciding they want to play BigGun because the turrets rotate when there isn't a BigGun group within 2000 miles?"
