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League Update

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Nov-16-3068

NBT-Solaris / MW3 RPG Online Character Creator Announcement:

The History: Since 1997, NetBattleTech has provided gaming enthusiasts with an exemplary gaming environment, a dedicated Admin staff and solid competition for all who join our community. Through the course of 5 successful NBT leagues we have worked with units and pilots alike in the continued evolution of NBT. In 2004, NBT took on the project of creating a new league concept, an in-depth online conversion of the MW3 RPG character creation system combined with ladder league style play in a Solaris City style dueling environment. A great amount of time and effort was put into the setup of this project, resulting in a completed website and MW3 RPG Online Character Creation system (Stage 1). Sadly, this remainder of the project never reached the point where it was able to be fully launched.

Recently though, interest has been shown in having Stage 1 of this league made public access, so that anyone could make use of the Online Character Creation system that was put together for league use. In line with these requests, NBT has made some coding changes to the existing system, allowing this system to be used by anyone with a HPG (forum) account, rather than requiring membership in another NBT league. If you would like to see a host of examples of the characters that have already been created by previous members of the NBT leagues using this system, please reference the following link:

Solaris Characters
NPC Characters

The League (Stage 1): The first stage of NBT-Solaris was designed as a comprehensive conversion of the MW3 RPG character creation system. This includes affiliations, life paths, skills, traits and so forth. Over the course of many months of coding time, this portion of the league was actually brought to near completion, allowing for the creation of a great variety of MW3 RPG characters.

There are still some bugs in the system, and as you create various characters you will occasionally run across a Field Skill Group or Skill Handler that has some coding issues. If you find a serious bug in the system, please report it on the NBT forums for us. Some things we will be able to address, while others may require coding outside of our current ability to correct.

The vast majority of the system is fully up and running though. As you make use of the system, you will find that the primary affiliations, life paths, events, skills and traits of the MW3 RPG have been included, as well as a variety from other source books: Covert Ops, Steiner Handbook and so forth. The system is such that a near infinite number of characters can be created and is able to be easily expanded to include additional source material from CBT.

Some “minor” changes have been made to various LP’s and event rolls to allow them to work within the online environment we have created, though most of these changes are minor in nature. The vast majority of the system remains amazingly true to its MW3 RPG roots, something we are quite proud of.

Gaining Access: If you would be interested in making use of this system, or just seeing what in the world I’m talking about, signing up for access if very easy. The only requirement is a forum account on the NBT HPG Uplink. After that, go to the NBT-Solaris Pilot Login page and use the same username/password to login. You may then make use of the system as you please.

The Future: While we are making this resource public access at this time, we do have somewhat of an ulterior motive in doing so. Though the coder originally in charge of completing the project is no longer available (real life concerns) we would love to be able to complete the necessary coding on all 3 stages of NBT-Solaris. Hopefully this public access will eventually attract such a coder, one with not only the skills, but the time and interest in bringing the project to completion.

If you have any questions/comments you can join the NBT HPG Uplink (and post in the NBT-Solaris forum Thor’s Shieldhall) present there. Feel free to review the NBT-Solaris website to see what the overall goal of this project is. Regardless, we offer this Online Character Creator to all who wish to make use of it as a gift to the Classic BattleTech community. CBT has been the basis of the NBT system of leagues for 10 years now, and a game that I personally have played for almost 2 decades. For that, if nothing else, I say thank you and hope that all who wish to enjoy the fruits of our labor.

Dark Phoenix

Nov-11-3068

New Solaris City PDF Maps: Courtesy of Doug Glendower's Solaris VII GIS, several excellent PDF's have been provided with an excellent breakdown and visualization of Solaris City and its primary locations. Thanks very much to Doug for bringing these to our attention and making them available for our use.

They can be found within the Encyclopedia: Tour of Solaris City pages.

Dark Phoenix

Mar-14-3068

NBT-Solaris Stage 2 Progress Update: A brief but important update thread has been posted on the HPG regarding picking back up the NBT-Solaris project. Please review and post your thoughts on the subject. We are looking to determine the level of potential support for this pending project and bringing it to completion.

HPG Solaris Thread

Dark Phoenix

Sep-06-3067

NBT-Solaris Stage 1 Linkage Online: The login linkage between NBT-HC and NBT-Solaris (Stage 1) has been reactivated. This means that you can now login to the NBT-Solaris site and create new MW RPG characters.

Stage 2 of NBT-Solaris is still on the drawing board, planned, but no specific timeline at present. Hopefully someday soon we will be able to start on the coding portion of that project.

Previously made characters will be set to Retired and Archived. They will still be available for review, but will not be attached to particular logins (as the old logins are no longer part of the HC system).

Dark Phoenix

Dec-13-3066

New Sector Administrators Online: Three new Solaris Sector Administrators have been brought online this afternoon. All three made excellent applications to the Kobe SA contest, and since 3 positions were in need of being filled, we have agreed to bring all 3 online.

Black Hills Sector will now be run by Vanguard as Gravedancer has asked to step down; Kobe Sector will now be run by Viper; Montenegro will be run by Bear Steele, with Taisho's status as reserve for the time being.

Adding these 3 to our existing team of Sun_Cobra, Corran and England will bring us up to 6 fully active Sector Administrators to help with character creation and role-play.

Dark Phoenix

Nov-28-3066

Trait Listings Overhauled: With the extensive help of Badass, the Trait Listings have been almost completely overhauled and updated. The vast majority of traits now have detailed descriptions applied to them.

Also, the Quirks and Stigmas have been moved to their own Encyclopedia pages, thus cleaning up the main Trait Listing. We will eventually be adding detailed descriptions for each of those traits as well.

Dark Phoenix

Nov-14-3066

Character Creation Options Expanded: We have expanded the ability of characters to become Mercenaries during their creation. The Life Path Join a Mercenary Unit has been entered into the system. This LP is available after most Tour of Duty paths, as well as few others. Choosing this path will change your affiliation to Mercenary, and send you through the new Tour below. Please note that it is not possible at this time to easily return to your previous affiliation.

New Life Path: The LP Tour of Duty: Mercenary has been entered and activated into the league system.

Dark Phoenix

Nov-10-3066

Real Life Solaris Path Access Expanded: The Solaris VII Games Intern path has been added as options to several Tour of Duty paths to make it easier to at least have some contact with Solaris before closing out a character.

Dark Phoenix

Nov-10-3066

Character Creation Options Expanded: Two new additions have been brought online. These are just the first of many for the Mercenary type characters. We have added these 2 as a preview of what is to come, as well as to give the many Mercs of the league a viable option for creating some basic Mercenary characters. If you would like more details on the upcoming options available for Mercenaries, or to volunteer to help enter the additional information, please reference the following sourcebook: Field Manual: Mercenaries Revised.

New Affiliation: The Affiliation Mercenary has been entered and activated into the league system.

New Life Path: The LP Born Mercenary Brat has been entered and activated into the league system.

Dark Phoenix

Nov-09-3066

Encyclopedia Expansion: The Field Skill Group Encyclopedia listings have been activated at this time. They detail each FSG, the skills attained with each, as well as which class they fall under, Miliatary or Civilian.

Dark Phoenix

Nov-09-3066

Trouble Ticket Reporting: At the bottom of each page during Character Creation, you will notice a Trouble Ticket Reporting option. To use, simply describe the problem you are having on the current page, copy/paste any displayed errors and submit the ticket. A snapshot will then be taken of your character and the progress made so far for the developers to review and track the reported bug.

Please make use of this system whenever possible. Thank you.

Dark Phoenix

Nov-09-3066

New Clan Path Option Available: We have activated the option for a Clan character to Wash Out of Clan Service during character creation. In some cases this is forced by an event, or a character may choose to do so and proceed down the new path.

After choosing this path, your character will have to choose a new caste (Scientist, Technician, Laborer, Merchant), proceed through an apprenticeship and then into civilian life in the Clans.

This was added to give characters another alternative to regular Clan service, other than joining the Dark Caste.

Dark Phoenix

Nov-08-3066

League Economy Updated: All league money values have been updated to a new system. Generally speaking this is a 50% reduction across all values, though some are slightly different. 'Mech prices in NBT-Solaris (and in NBT-HC) will be much less than in NBT-Mercs, so the economy scale had to be updated accordingly.

Dark Phoenix

Nov-08-3066

Character Creation Options Expanded: As we work on finishing the timeline switch to 3067, several new LP's will become available based on changes within that timeline. Future paths include Clan-Sphere Liason and Harvest Trials.

New Life Path: The LP Tour of Duty: Joint CNC/DCM Exercises has been entered and activated into the league system.

Dark Phoenix

Nov-08-3066

Character Limits Temporarily Expanded: We have expanded the Character Limits for the time being to give you more room to work within the system. This will not be a permanant change, and it will revert once the Stage 2 league goes live.

The new limits are: 4 Active Characters, 6 Private NPC and 10 Public NPCs.

Dark Phoenix

Nov-05-3066

New Character Process Modified: We have changed the status of newly created characters in the database, from Pending to Rejected. In order to have your character reviewed by your Sector Administrator, simply go to your Character Display Page and select Submit Changes for Review.

Before submitting your character, please do a final review, verifying that everything is as you want it, and that valid role-play has been written for each stage of your character's development. If you have not written all your RP development yet, you can still do so on the Character Display Page.

This was changed due to the fact that many people wait to write their RP after their character is actually created, and with them going direct to Pending, the Sector Admins were spending their time reviewing and rejecting incomplete characters. This way, they sit in the pilot's box until they are officially ready to submit them for review.

Dark Phoenix

Nov-05-3066

League Timeline References Updated: In preperation for NBT-HardCore, as well as freeing up the ability to use a whole host of additional Life Paths and Affiliations, the rules and website have been updated to reflect a circa 3067 timeline, rather than the current 3059 from NBT-Mercs.

This means that role-play written for created characters should also revolve around this time period. For more information please refer to the Encyclopedia pages.

Dark Phoenix

Nov-03-3066

NBT-Solaris Stage 1 Launch / Stage 2 Rules Revelation

NBT is pleased to announce the launching of Stage 1 of NBT-Solaris, allowing league-wide access to this portion of the Solaris project. While not up and running 100%, it has reached a point now that we feel comfortable with allowing the league to play with the current design project, providing input and suggestions on the end result.

Stage 1 of NBT-Solaris is a conversion of the Classic BattleTech MechWarrior RPG (3rd Edition) rules into an online format, bringing it into line with the NBT league system. We are making it accessible to those pilots who are members of units within NBT-Mercs. Suthendale has coded over 25,000 lines of code to bring this system online for our use. It is a very in-depth system, covering a wealth of affiliations, life paths, skills, traits and much, much more. We are sure that the avid role-players among the league will enjoy using this new system in their Mercs RP, as well as introducing others to the MW RP system and how it can be used in our league. Once Stage 2 of NBT-Solaris launches, the characters created from this system will have a full share in that league, making an impact on their pilots and the others that play within the league.

In order to gain access to the NBT-Solaris Stage 1, contact your Unit Command, requesting that they activate your Solaris account through the Unit Roster, setting your password. Your login is the Callsign listed on your unit’s roster (exactly as typed). This will be your account during your stay with NBT. If you switch teams and wish to retain your created characters, you may request that your account be transferred by League Administration to your new team.

Stage 1 is not fully complete at this point, as we still have some affiliations and life paths to complete, as well as there probably are still a few bugs present in the system. These may be reported on in the Solaris forums. Also, if you have suggestions for improvements to the system (ease of use, eye candy and the like), please make those as well. The NBT-Solaris forum group is being brought online at this time as well. This includes Thor’s Shieldhall (Player’s Lounge), Solaris Broadcasting Corporation (RP forum), ComStar Relay Station (Suggestions), Solaris Council Hall (Rules Questions) and Devall’s Scrapyard (Technical Help).

Helping in the administration of this league is a group of Solaris Sector Administrators. Their primary responsibilities revolve around forum moderation and role play development. Each Sector Administrator is in charge of a specific sector of Solaris City. As you create your characters, you will choose a specific sector. The Sector Administrator of that sector will be your RP admin for your character. They will help with RP development, creation of valid BattleTech characters, as well as settling disputes that may arise within NBT-Solaris.

That is the basic overview of Stage 1 of NBT-Solaris. We hope that all of you make use of and enjoy access to these additional features of the NBT league system. A lot of work has gone into the creation of this system, and we look forward to making fuller use of it in the future.

But wait, there’s more!

We are also excited to unveil to the public the official rules and website for Stage 2 of NBT-Solaris. Stage 2 is the actual ladder/RP league that will make extensive use of the Stage 1 characters. Rules for league matches, duels, an internal economy and ‘Mech management system are all included. Please bear in mind that these are just the initial rules, and still have to be fleshed out somewhat. Actual numbers are very much subject to change as the project progresses.

Stage 2 has not had any major coding work done on it as of yet. We are looking for someone willing and able to work with us on the coding of the next stage of this extensive project. Hopefully now that the rules have been publicly released, excitement over the possibilities of this league will enable us to find someone to help. If you are interested, please look over the rules for the new league, and contact NBT Administration for further information.

Thanks goes out to all those that have made the above possible to date. Our league coders, especially Suthendale, have put many hours (read: months) into the coding to date. We have had many testers involved with finding and reporting bugs in the system, as well as quite a number of people entering pages upon pages of information into the database, providing the system with the documentation necessary in order to work. Your hard work has been very much appreciated throughout this project. Without all of you, we would never have gotten this far.

We hope you enjoy these additions to our league, as well as the many future expansions still planned.

Dark Phoenix