Starship Crew Connector

[Sidhe Drac Mac Gillean]

It appears in its worthy efforts to draw traffic to Imperium News Network, INN has begun offering organizational services to its visitors. In acting like an organization with open membership, INN has instituted its Starship Crew Connector. Which promises to do much of what our own Operations division expects to do, only with less support as our Operations team is larger and naturally better in all measurable and conceivable ways

One primary advantage that our Operations department offers multi-crew ship captains over INN SCC users is Operational Security. Advertising on INN is a great way to communicate to nefarious parties your vulnerabilities and plans. By keeping such details within the confines of Imperium, vital details concerning crew compliment and mission details are more secure.

Competition breeds creativity they say, so there may be valuable ideas to steal from INN to aid our own Operations and tech team in building automation tools to aid us in assuring Imperium is crewed, capable, and committed to fun and excitement in the best damn spacesim community ever.

[AstroJak]

I took a look and its a cool idea but your absolutely right  that someone could just as easily be data mining all this info for future use.

AJ

 

[Donut]

FYI INN is no more. Most of the members who actually cared about it and made it what it became left to create their own. This could have literally been the reason why they abandoned the owner and left. 

I think we should just wait for Spectrum since it's made by CIG for this function in game. Here is the new website https://relay.sc/

3 hours ago, Sidhe Drac Mac Gillean said:

o there may be valuable ideas to steal from INN to aid our own Operations 

Also, we probably shouldn't discuss stealing from someone else, especially since this is posted in the public part of the forums  We're Imperium, we create things, that people try to steal from us because we're just THAT good

[Tom Villder]

1 hour ago, Donut said:

FYI INN is no more

Damn, that's sad.  When I couldn't watch AtV I would go to there for a TL:DW because they made them so soon after the episode.

 

[Donut]

1 minute ago, Tom Villder said:

Damn, that's sad.  When I couldn't watch AtV I would go to there for a TL:DW because they made them so soon after the episode.

 

The new website has all of their content already

[Rellim]

fyi, INN still exists. The entire team except for one moved over to Relay.sc. The actual owner still has INN in hands and periodically still posts stuff on that website. He's managed to gather a couple of new content writers to post on there as well. 

Most of the content you might be used to will be on Relay, since those were the actual writers of the previous team. It's hard to say who still owns what content. 

[Nerubi]

1 hour ago, Rellim said:

fyi, INN still exists. The entire team except for one moved over to Relay.sc. The actual owner still has INN in hands and periodically still posts stuff on that website. He's managed to gather a couple of new content writers to post on there as well. 

Most of the content you might be used to will be on Relay, since those were the actual writers of the previous team. It's hard to say who still owns what content. 

So in other words... There dead af.

[Donut]

INN is dead. All new content will be from the "Relay Team" writers

[Rellim]

Please don't bend my words like that. 

I get what you mean, but it's too early to say that. 

[Donut]

6 hours ago, Rellim said:

Please don't bend my words like that. 

I get what you mean, but it's too early to say that. 

I didn't bend your words lol I stated a fact and this was discussed already in another thread. When your entire staff leave and its only the owner left, there is no more of that entity. The name is still there but that's all. All of the content will be from Relay transcripts now, and I have no problem stating that. It would be different if it were half or less than, but no one can say INN is still INN when only a single person is left.

[Sidhe Drac Mac Gillean]

I was intentionally trying not to throw dirt on a grave not yet dug by speculating on the fate of INN. WolfLarsen is still a Star Citizen and is sacrificing his time and effort to the enrichment of our larger community. I am more concerned with whether he is currently making valuable contributions. Less so with whether his fellows saw eye to eye and what led to the creation of Relay.sc, as I see it as as much my concern as my dirty laundry is to them. I wish them all luck and Relay.sc is my destination for a great deal of content. I still check to see if there are valuable things on INN. So far this is the most interesting thing I have found there since the split.

As to stealing ideas, ideas are not sacrosanct and the service of aiding large ship captains to find crewmen hasn't been patented. Progress is made by taking the ideas we find and mashing them together until a new useful idea can be found in the jumble. I appreciate the umbrage taken by the use of the word "steal" though @Donut, as it marks you as the kind of wingman a fellow can trust.

The idea that Spectrum will be a tool to replace Starship Crew Connect and that can be a valuable asset to our Operations department is one I wholeheartedly agree with. 

[Doopsums]

Lets try not to derail this thread. OP was referring to the Crew Connector tool and how that compares to that of Imperium's mission system, not whether INN is dead or not.

As far as I'm aware, the only functionality that cig has spoken of in regards to spectrum relating to finding crew was that of being able to view "where" players are located in game and the voip functions.....Those were long term goals. 

As it stands now, it basically is an updated forum with more social media functions and the beginnings of tying in with the game. Where that leads.....who knows? This is why Imperium tends to try and build its own tools since we would rather be prepared than to wait for something that CIG may or may not do, especially when considering the type of functionality we would require.

Looking at the crew connector (which has been discussed here before), it has many of the same concepts that we have already considered but lacks some key components. As an example, every scb member (therefore Imperium members) have their own unique profiles which include things like ships, preferred play style, Unit membership, fleet ranking, play time, etc. Other items include things like peer review/player feedback  and Academy certifications. These aspects then tie into mission sign up as well as mission creation.

There is also the needed functionality of being able to link multiple missions together fromantic various divisions and ways to create both organically and scripted mission sets. Let's all  not forget features like being able to have alerts to all members for certain situations. The list goes on and on and on...

Now keep in mind that there are over 35,000 organizations with the majority of them being less than 5 members. With that in mind, I am not nearly as optimistic about cig creating all the functions we would need as an organization as they would be creating something that most players/organization will not end up utilizing. Whatever mission system CIG decide to create, I am of the opinion that it will be lacking in terms of features that Imperium would need, hence the reason for such a heavy investment into our Portal, Mission, and Academy systems.

Mentioning the Operations team in case they want to chime in on it.

@Operations Officer

@Operations Specialist

 

 

[Nerubi]

I doubt any of these tools would have any kinda of large demand to be used. Crew Connector? Might as well say friend connector. I don't think anyone would have such a need to find a crew using third party tools like this. This naturally happens in game and people meet each other. Nothing they would make would ever beat simply using the in game chat or making an in-game contract for a spot on your crew.

If this was a product it would only be marketed to people who "Can't Find Crews" Which Isn't a very large market. Especially in a game so immersive like this were actually piloting the ship won't be the most fun part. It don't think this game will be filled with people who only want to use there own ship and get people on there ship only. The progress of you character doesn't revolved around your ship and whats on it. This was what people used to think early on but that has changed so much.

[TheOnly]

As @Doopsums just said, Imperium has been building and preparing it's own tool(s) for a long time. We hope to get more usable org tools from CIG in SC, but we preparing as we would get none. The Imperium portal, in addition to being a great org tool , will allow Imperium to run live complex org missions with the aid of the divisions and Operations. All missions an Imperium member would need support for like crew, escort etc, can also with easy be created, maintained, edited etc via the portal.

The icing on the cake is that the portal will also be accessible for other org and SC players that wishes to use it. No need borrow or "steal" anything.

[Sidhe Drac Mac Gillean]

It is a relief to hear that our teams efforts in building our Portal and associated tools aren't expected to be supplanted by Spectrum any time soon. It is clear as @Doopsumslays out for us that the Starship Crew Connector; or aptly summed up by @Nerubi as friend connector, won't be at risk of drawing users away from our Portal. I appreciate the reminder that the Portal will be a tool available to other orgs and players as well. 

As Spectrum and Portal grow as the game matures I am excited to see the ways the two systems can integrate to further propel Imperium into prominence as the greatest organization available. I don't consider the SCC of INN very valuable in the near term as it is essentially a readily available tool presented to a shrinking audience. Still, it may be worth watching from a distance.  

The only advantage that INN currently retains that our Portal arguably has no need of yet, is in branding or marketing. INN is still a destination and a source that some have relied on. Once the Portal is fully operational, how will we advertise it to the player base without testing it on Alderaan?