TACTICAL OFFICER REPORT #1

Date: 14 July 2026
From: VA Jagged Fell III

DESK OF THE TAC OFFICER

I am honored to be trusted with the position of Tactical Officer for the Emperor's Hammer. While I joined the Emperor's Hammer only a few years ago, my journey was a long one. I first got X-Wing Alliance back in 2000 (I believe) and as I kid I loved playing it, but never even knew of the predecessor games as it was about that time that my family got a modern computer. And I didn't know that you could install custom missions for the game at all, so after beating it I put it away. Until in 2011 I discovered X-Wing Alliance Upgrade Project. I then set about learning how to modify the hex code of the game to allow it to run on my 16:9 TV and played it in the living room of my new home. It was a short lived thing as I still didn't know about the other games in the series or that custom missions were a thing so the game and joystick were once again placed back in the attic. Then more than a decade later, in the Epic Games give away in 2022 I got a copy of Star Wars Squadrons for my PC. While playing the game I was reminded of my love for XWA, so once I finished Squadrons, I climbed back in my attic for my XWA CDs and then downloaded XWAU2020 and relived my childhood. But this time, when I finished the game I went looking to see if you could make your own missions for the game as I wanted to play the X-Wing book series missions in game, if possible. My Google search led me to the Emperor's Hammer and the VAST collection of custom missions here. I immediately joined and haven't looked back since.

I tell all this story so that you might know how important/integral the Mission Database is to me and how much the honor of it being placed in my stewardship means to me.

RETROSPECTIVE

I wanted to take a short moment to remember and honor the dedicated service of HA Pickled Yoda. He is now our club's longest serving Tactical Officer, having held the post for a total of 8 years and 4 days, making him one (6th) of the longest tenured Command Staff officers in the history of the Emperor's Hammer. Under his leadership a total of 188 EH produced missions were added to the Compendium, but he also championed the addition to the Emperor's Hammer the ability to play full campaigns from our supported games, both those which were made by Totally Games and shipped with the games and those made by fans in the community afterwards. In total, if you include the campaign missions that EH members can now submit for flight credit and those which were made by EH members for the club directly, a total of 540 missions have been added while he was TAC.

However, much of HA Yoda's work was behind the scenes. He has been instrumental in developing, and implementing, systems for the processing of all manor of things on the Emperor's Hammer website, not the least of which are the improvements to the BSF system. It was his improvements to the backend of this core function of the website that allowed for the processing of campaigns, with their multiple battles per pilot file, in the first place. He also has implemented many tools to allow pilot files to be examined to allow the verification of High Scores with much greater ease and speed. And this is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the contributions he has had in his tenure as TAC and his work in the Internet Office.

I hope in my time as TAC I can continue the expansion of our community leading database to have even more content for our members to enjoy.

TACTICAL OFFICE NEWS

On the subject of expanding the Mission Database, one of the things the Tactical Office has been working on these last months was the adoption of the community mod X-Wing Virtual Machine (XWVM). XWVM requires the original X-Wing game (in any of its different forms) to be installed but then is a complete ground up rebuild of the game in Unity which allows for modern graphics and controls. Also allows for the game to be played in Linux, for those who wish to escape the Windows ecosphere. EH members may now submit their XWVM pilot files for full flight credit. And not only for the original, Totally Games, campaign, but we have also ported all Emperor's Hammer X-Wing missions to XWVM and they can now be played in all their high definition glory. As a note, the installation process and pilot file locations are different for XWVM than that for X-Wing so please carefully read the instructions in the readme for the battles/frees you are installing. All told, this addition adds another 227 missions that can be flown by our members for years to come.

In the coming weeks I will also be posting a survey/questionnaire as I am wanting to gather feedback on what areas the Tactical Office could be working to improve in the future and what areas we have been doing well in so far.

IN CLOSING

So that was my first report as Tactical Officer. I do not feel like I will be posting reports monthly for this position, but plan to attempt a report every 3 months moving forward...but this has also been said by nearly every TAC before me and sooner or later they fell silent. Here's hoping that fate doesn't befall me.

And as a final comment, I would like to encourage all who have any interest in these classic X-Wing games to consider creating your own content for them. We have a core team of experienced mission designers in the Tactical Office, but we can never make every mission and we would love to help any who are interested in learning how to make a mission do so. There are Imperial University requirements to be able to formally release a battle/free mission, but if you are someone who learns best by doing, jump on in and we will do our best to help guide you towards making your first (or second) battle and once you have gotten the hang of it, the IU tests will be easy.

Vice Admiral Jagged Fell III

TAC/VA Jagged Fell III/CS-5/VSDII Sinister
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