In what I have stated several times was the worst hyped up Star Wars game to help lead the downward trend of more low-quality games from LucasArts (with the possible exception of Rebellion, some may debate), Gamespot has awarded this awful game 2000's Most Disappointing Game of the Year! Congratulations, Force Commander!

I need a few people with high end (i.e.. can run XWA at full detail options smoothly) to take screenshots of a large number of craft. If it sounds mind numbingly easy, its because it is, however there are a lot of craft :P So just to give a bit of warning, this could be a little time consuming and not just easy medals.

Additionally, I will be after a person or two who knows their way around 3DS max, and is familiar with rendering meshes taken from the SWMA site. Of course, anyone rendering assistance in either way will be rewarded appropriately.

Submissions for Newsletter #70 are due to Sector Admiral Compton before or on January 3.

Due to real life circumstances, the IWATS TIE Tactics course is now *closed*. I will attempt to send marks to all those who have been waiting so very very long. You have my deepest apologies for my lapse.

If you or anyone you know would be interested in running an IWATS TIE Tactics course, e-mail myself and TO Astatine. Thank you again for your patience in this difficult time.

Outer Rim nights will be returning as of next week! There are several changes. One is that the clubs participating include: the RS, the SV, the VE, the LSF, the NR and now us! The rules are posted at: http://www.rebelsquadrons.org/outerrim/rules.htm. The games supported are: XvT, XWA, and JK! For more information on OR check: http://www.rebelsquadrons.org/outerrim/. Check for updates here for more information!

stomped.com has an interview with Larry Holland, founder and lead designer of Totally Games and part of the design team for LucasArts that made games such as Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe, X-Wing, TIE Fighter, XvT and X-Wing Alliance. You can check out the interview at http://www.stomped.com/published/jcal977930929_1_1.html.

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (Reuters) - Science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke, author of "2001: A Space Odyssey," urged the world in a New Year message Wednesday to celebrate "the real beginning" of the new millennium on Jan. 1.

"The intelligent minority of this world will mark 1 January 2001 as the real beginning of the 21 century and the Third Millennium," British-born Clarke said in a statement from his home in Colombo.

After three weeks of captivity, Tactical Officer Fleet Admiral Striker managed to escape from Rebel forces, after the hijacking of his shuttle earlier this month. Torture didn't manage to get a word from the Sith Battlelord, who suffers anyway from many injuries. Medical staff has taken care of the Fleet Admiral since his return, he will probably need several weeks to recover.

Due to a previously undiscovered bug in the XWA Pilot File BSF form, some pilots have received undeserved high scores if their CMDR was clumsy and uploaded the wrong pilot file. The form has been updated to fix this.

If you notice any strange high scores (like high scores for mission 6 when there are only 5 missions in the battle), please report them to Sector Admiral Kawolski.

From now until New Years, if you want to hear some nice Christmas tunes, just click the "Music On" button on the news page!

Fleet Manual: The Fleet Manual v5.0 pre-1 is complete. This version contains all of the material from the 4.0 version with only minor changes, with a different design and a database to store the data. Any and all comments or suggestion are most welcome at sco@emperorshammer.org, however please hold reports of inaccuracies in the ship data other than in the descriptions.

The Fleet Manual v5.0 pre-1 is viewable at http://sco.ehnet.org/fleet-man/. I'm looking at making a downloadable version available shortly.

The long awaited Issue 6 is now available at http://www.darklord.ukshells.co.uk/cosmo/cosmo6/. Big thank yous go out to all those who contributed things and helped out.

Most of the Fiction Compendium has been complete. However, it is not open for public viewing as of yet. You may see works of fiction listed on some profiles, but it's currently for testing purposes only.

After being on the IO Projects page for well over 6 months, it is finally here. Yes, it's the Emperor's Hammer: Greeting Card Centre. Go check it out, and send some of your EH friends some cards.

I need some holiday themed card graphics ASAP, so email them to io@absolutek.com.

Squadron rosters now have a link to show Combat Ratings for their individual squadron.

Grand Admiral Ronin has updated the EH Imperial News Center with the latest fleet news and reports.

Mark Hamill and Lucas Arts are giving away 31 copies of X-Wing Trilogy, the new packaged release of X-Wing, Tie, and XWA. Sign up at: FragCity

The EH should be the recipients of at least one copy shouldn't we?

Members of the EH may find themselves receiving emails from other EH personnel entitled "where is my juliet?". If you are the recipient of an email like this and your anti-virus programme doesn't detect a problem, you've been infected with the W32.Navidad virus (also known as W32.Blebla.worm).

W32.Navidad is a mass mailing worm program. The worm replies using MAPI to all Inbox messages that contain a single attachment. This worm is able to distribute itself via any MAPI-compliant email client, including Microsoft Outlook. However, emails that are infected with this worm can be received by any email client. The worm utilizes the existing email subject line and body and attaches itself as NAVIDAD.EXE. Due to the bugs in the code, after being executed, the worm causes your system to be unusable.

This is a new virus, discovered on November 3rd this year, and is highly dangerous to your computer. If infected, you can download a tool from here http://www.symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/w32.navidad.fix.html to repair the damage.

A new AlliED has been released for registered users! Here's what Troy Dangerfield has to say about the new version:

This update is mainly thanks to the never ending work of Sheldon, who has discovered the functions of some more of the unknown Statuses and Orders. He discovered that Orders have a third parameter, which I have added along with descriptions for the new orders. Sheldon has got some of the new orders to work sometimes, but not others, so for those of you who like to experiment, there may be more to find out about them. I've added the new default lists to this release.

Also thanks to Cloud for working out which unknown was the flag for turning the Global Unit numbering on/off (i.e. whether a ship in a non-zero Global Unit will have a number after it's name.) I've moved this flag next to the Global Unit setting on the Ship page.

I've also added another couple of options: One is to Number the km lines of the grid which can be toggled from the Map menu, the other is to toggle the Error Checking on/off from the Options menu. I've also added the option there to check that the filename has a valid format.

An XWA Skirmish Editor beta version is also available for free at Troy's website: http://homepages.picknowl.com.au/troyd/

Thanks to Colonel Samuel Shadd III for submitting the info.

This months edition features: -

• Interview with SA Compton
• Preview Of Star Wars: A Call To Arms MOD
• Article on the cancellation of SWE1:Obi-Wan
• BIG Competition, including original missions to fly, graphics, fiction and mission design contests, and lots of medals on offer for the winners
• Writing Contest still running
• IRC Fun
• Think Tank Article
• Also, there is a very high number of pilot submissions of Fiction and Graphics this month.

Battlecry 10 can be found at a new URL, which is http://www.emperorshammer.ca/battlecry/

I'm looking for responsible message board moderators for the main TIE Corps forums, particularly with the Training/Help Forum where some members seem to enjoy breaking the rules and recruit for their squadrons or wing or ship on there. The requirements are simple: Be a TIE Corps member, be able to check the message boards at least once or twice a day, and hold the rank of Commander or higher.

If you'd like to apply, please e-mail Sector Admiral Kawolski with your application and PIN #.

Grand Admiral Ronin needs a good and enthusiastic artist to create his uniforms for the Skye Rangers (GA Ronin's MechWarrior club). The uniforms components are all ready, but they must be assembled in a form that the Fleet Commander finds to his liking - mainly from the information you will receive. You will be rewarded in the Emperor's Hammer for the work. The object is to do a quick and good job. If you are interested please e-mail Grand Admiral Ronin and his Attaché Admiral Keiran Idanian. Thank you!

Captain Brucmack of the ISD Grey Wolf is the first Pilot to achieve the FCHG rank of Templar. Congrats to him and his extraordinary flying ability.

I've finished processing all 350+ backlogged BSFs and I'll continue to do any more incoming ones until Fleet Admiral Striker returns.

With the mysterious and sudden disappearance of Fleet Admiral Striker, I will be taking over reviewing the huge amount of backlogged Battle Submission Forms. Audits, however, will still be handled by FA Striker upon his return, so please do not e-mail pilot files to me.

Over the last few days, the imperialacademy.org domain has had a few problems. It seems that two of the connectivity providers that link to the domain were fighting over who should serve traffic requests. This resulted in the original problem of not being able to access the site and later turned into the domain name not even resolving for people. The problem was resolved early this morning Australian time and the site now seems accessable to all users. Sorry for any problems this might have caused.

As of 3:52am (EST) this morning, all accounts that have requested continued hosting have been transfered to the new server. If you requested a new web hosting account via http://www.absolutek.com, and have not recieved the email with your new username/password details, please email me at io@absolutek.com ASAP. I have transferred all domains with the exception of the following:

squadron.org (problems with NSI)

thebhg.org and corporatedivision.com (awaiting password resets)

ehsenate.org and krath.org (the owners of these domains have been contacted to alter their domains DNS servers)

I hope to have the problems with the above mentioned domains, resolved within a week.
All accounts that have been setup, are accessible through http://www.emperorshammer.ca/username/ where "username" is the name of the site you wish to visit. This makes it possible to still view/work with sites that don't yet have a working DNS. For example, if i wanted to visit the Lambda Squadron website (normally at http://lambda.squadron.org), i would go to http://www.emperorshammer.ca/lambda/.

Since I have had shut down the DNS daemon on my server, pages on my server will only be accessable through http://207.210.171.77/~username, where "username" is the username for your account on my server. For example, the Lambda Squadron website has a username of "lambda", therefore, it is accessable through http://207.210.171.77/~lambda. The purpose of this, is to allow anybody who has not yet grabbed their stuff off my server, to do so.

I haven't gotten all the mysql databases setup yet, so please email me at io@absolutek.com if yours hasn't been setup yet.

The Internet Office website is temporarily available at http://io.emperorshammer.ca

I would again like to ask for people to be patient during this transition to the new hosting service.<

AOL AIM versions prior to 4.3.2229 have several exploits contained in them. They are described in an @Stake.com advisory here: http://www.atstake.com/research/advisories/2000/a121200-1.txt.

You can find out what version of AIM you are running by opening up your AIM window, clicking the help menu, and selecting "About AOL Instant Messenger...". A small box will pop up, and in it, you can find the exact version of AIM that you are using. You can download the latest version of AOL AIM from: http://www.aol.com/aim/download.html. Of course, you could always just do yourself a favour and delete AIM altogether, and install ICQ & mIRC.

I've set up all the new @emperorshammer.org email accounts, and email lists from #1 - #32 as shown on http://www.absolutek.com/emailaccounts.php. If you have not yet recieved the email regarding your account being setup, please notify me asap by an email to io@absolutek.com.

I'm now beginning the process of transferring website accounts and will be sending out logins & passwords for web accounts during the process. Once I have transferred all of the accounts that I can fit onto my hosting account, I will switch the DNS for my domains to point to my new hosting account IP address. I expect that there may some downtime due to this switch for some people, so I ask for people to please be patient for the next week.

Also, I have some bad news for you. Before I signed up for my new hosting account, I was misled through a poorly explained email from my hosting companie's sales department about adding extra domains. I was informed last night that I must pay a $15(USD) setup fee, plus an additional $5(USD) per month fee on top of my already $39.99(USD) hosting per month. I'm pretty broke right now, and I will not be paying the extra charges to host all the domains currently on my server. However, there is a hopefully acceptable solution to this problem. I will setup all the domains not in my hosting companies DNS servers, on the www.granitecanyon.com DNS Service to point to my dedicated IP for my hosting account. This will enable me to do TSX.org style redirects.

For example:
http://lambda.squadron.org would redirect to http://www.emperorshammer.ca/lambda
http://www.thebhg.org would redirect to http://www.emperorshammer.ca/thebhg

I know this is far from ideal, and it isn't what I wanted at all (I'm really pissed off about this to tell you the truth), but it's the best solution I can come up with at this time. Also, I will be offering redirects to other servers so if you want to be hosted on geocities, I can redirect a url to that destination just like TSX.org.

After seeing what a certain squadron commander (who will remain nameless) has done, I need to clarify more specifically what "Report Date" means. This is supposed to be for the date the report was written, NOT the date the report was posted to tiecorps.org! Hence posting 18 historical reports with today's date is NOT the proper way to use the system. If you wrote your report on 12/5/00 and you're posting it today (12/12/00), put "12/5/00" down for the report date.

Just to remind everyone using the new report system: The date format is MM/DD/YYYY. If you have been using DD/MM/YYYY, please change them to the proper format or your reports will be listed out of chronological order. I've also added a text reminder to the report submission pages.

An experimental TIE Corps report system has been up for Squadron Commanders, Wing Commanders, Commodores, Battlegroup Commanders, Task Force Commanders, and Task Unit Commanders. Simply log in at the Administration section and click "Add New TC Report" and you can add reports of the past and present. Links to the reports are on the rosters.

It has only been fully tested for Squadron Commanders only. If you spot any problems using the system at all, please notify Sector Admiral Kawolski immediately.

Members of Emperor's Hammer. Here are some details about next year meeting.

Time: June/July. Meeting will last for 3-4 days.
Place: Wojszki, near city of Bialystok. North-East region of Poland, near Narew river.

Requirements: Cause I'm only poor student, I won't be able to provide any food, etc. You'll have to take cash with you to buy food and such. You'll have to take your tent and sleeping-bags, clothes, anything you need. I'll try to get few computers and connect them to small network, so we'll be able to arrange little competition. And of course we'll be drinking beer, watchin movies, etc.

Every EH member is invited, although I can understand it maybe difficult to arrive to Poland, so I think we'll have only Polish pilots there, but I'll be glad to see others.

Would you like to know more??? Contact me: pbmike@klub.chip.pl

There's a German Star Wars site running a campaign to get the next Star Wars movie released simultaneously worldwide (as opposed to the farce that was the release schedule for Episode 1). Given all the talk of the "Global village" and global economics we've been hearing the last 5 or so years, it would seem that simultaneous world-wide releases would be a logical extension. Recently, Blizzard performed a world-wide release of Diablo 2, and as a non-American (I'm an Australian) I can say I personally appreciated the move, helping place all players of the game on the same starting line as the Americans. Why should movies be any different? Surely they don't still transport them by sailing ship. Anyway, the site URL is here.

Sub-Lieutenants and above can now show off on their profiles what extra talents they have and their proficiency in them just by logging in the Administration Section! Skills will appear on your personnel profile.

If you have suggestions for new skills that aren't listed there, please feel free to e-mail Sector Admiral Kawolski.

Dude Studios has created the 3rd film in the Star Wars Trilogy: Star Dudes: Return of the Dude. Check it out for six full minutes and 1.5 megs of excellent Flash Animation!

I've neglected this project for the last couple months. However, it's going to start up again. If you are interested in helping with this project, email me at jpboyce@indigo.net.au If you wish to know more, you can also email that address.

All command officers (CMDRs/TUCs and up) need to check the latest OPS Office report for information on Commendation of Loyalty recommendations and start getting yours compiled and sent up the command ladder. Now, get to it!

Now you can search rosters by name, e-mail, rank, IGZone name, AIM, ICQ, or any combination of them.

I have updated the EH Internet Office website to include the latest IO Report for (2000-12-08), and a new poll on the topic of EH IRC bots.

Also, I would like to remind all EH members that have a website, email, or email list on my server, that i will begin transferring accounts to my new hosting account. If you have not done so already, please go to http://www.absolutek.com and fill out the appropriate form to let me know that you wish to have your account transferred. Those who do not fill out the form, will not have their account transferred.

With my appointment of Lord Ambassador, I need to have two full time Ambassadors to help me run the Advanced Guard. If you wish to apply for this position, please email guyquake@btinternet.com with the subject: Application for Ambassador. The position needs minimal qualifications, although I do insist that you are a Lieutenant or above.

The Flight Officer, AD Theodore, will be on short leave until Saturday morning est. He is on-line and is receiving his mail and will be doing some administration, but is unable to complete all requests at this time. The Flight Office will return to normal operation on Saturday.

The medals pictures on the Medal Board have been updated to the lastest photos from the Operations Office.

Sector Admiral Compton has released Newsletter #69 to the fleet. This issue has been named the special edition "EH Primer." While there are no reports or submissions from members, it does contain a digested version of the Emperor's Hammer Training Manual with some added commentary from the Executive Officer on each command-level position and subgroup.

You can download it at: http://www.tiecorps.org/files/nl/hammer69.zip (~0.4 MB).

The Star Wars Mod for Homeworld is now at Beta 4.2. I really suggest you Homeworld players check it out. All of the models are done, and it looks extremely impressive. Not all the ships from Homeworld are implemented, so there's less ships and less research. All in all, though, this looks to be a whole new side of Homeworld. Take a look at http://www.strategyplanet.com/homeworld/zeelich/

The Icon Factory has released a set of desktop icons based on the Star Wars Lego characters! (Macintosh only, sorry!) You can download them or see the incredibly cute preview at http://www.iconfactory.com/Preview.asp?type=search&id=2&query=starwars. Macupdate shows more of the Lego characters at http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/3539

The Icon Factory has several other sets of Star Wars icons as well. http://www.iconfactory.com/SearchListing.asp?searchid=3760&query=starwars

In other news, a hack utility for Star Wars Racer has been made and is available for download from Macupdate.com. The hack allows you to eliminate sound, background, textures, etc, making it possible to play Racer on older machines. It says "Use at your own risk" on the file description, though... http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/4150

There is also an application available to convert Mac icons to Wintel, in case any PC people are dying to get their hands on the Lego icons--Iconshop 1.14 at http://users.pandora.be/liontech/

The Shockwave Trojan aka the W32.Prolin.Worm virus is spreading with the subject line "A great Shockwave Flash movie" with an infected file attachment. Make sure your virus definitions are updated and delete any such e-mails with that subject! Supposedly, it doesn't do any permanent damage to your files, but cleaning up can be annoying. Find out more information at:
http://www.mcafee.com/anti-virus/viruses/prolin/default.asp

The number of competitions approved under the automated system has hit 200. Yipee.

I've added a new poll to the Internet Office website titled: "What is the best EH ship?". I had to reset the poll earlier and recode it so that it's much harder for you people to stuff the ballot. This will of course mean that you have to revote if you voted yesterday before ~10pm EST. Make sure to post some comments too, on why you think the EH Ship you chose is the best. :-)

Grand Admiral Ronin has updated the EH Imperial News Center with the latest fleet news and reports.

If you want to see your profile online, there's a new shortcut to it! Just use your TIE Corps PIN instead of "www"! For example, my PIN is #691. So if I wanted to look at my record, I would go to http://691.tiecorps.org/ Try it with yours!

Also, if you want to look at a squadron roster, you can put the squadron name then .squadron.tiecorps.org to take you right to the squadron's roster. For example, if I wanted to look at Alpha squadron, I would go to http://alpha.squadron.tiecorps.org and it would display Alpha Squadron's roster.

The Internet Office is proud to present the new General Manager, and Program Director of WEHR. Please welcome RA Slicer, and COL Devin.

I have high hopes for them to take WEHR to new, and more glorious heights! Go check out the latest WEHR sessions by CPT Quake, and AD AbsoluteK on the IO Website at http://www.ehnet.org, and all the previous WEHR sessions at http://wehr.ehnet.org.

The Star WArs Galaxies site has opened at http://www.starwarsgalaxies.com.

Register at the site now and you may have a chance to be picked as a beta tester in the future! You can also read the FAQ about the game and aspects of it and participate on community message boards which have close to a thousand messages on them already!