User talk:Frabby

Revision as of 03:57, 28 February 2018 by Frabby (talk | contribs) (1992 Update Flyer)
Archive 1 (created 04 January 2012)
Archive 2 (created 01 January 2013)
Archive 3 (created 03 January 2014)
Archive 4 (created 04 January 2018)

Hunan

I'm glad that you found the wrong co-ordinates for Gotterdammerung. I was wondering if you could take a look in your atlas of the Inner Sphere for Hunan. It's placed on the map here to the northeast of New Avalon, but it's listed as being part of the Capellan confederation and as having been part of the Terran Hegemony. I think this must be wrong, but I have no way of checking it. If it's possible, could you take a look?

Follow up: The co-ordinates are listed as: (X: 333.04 Y: 333.04)

Thanks, --Workerbee 09:41, 30 May 2008 (CDT)

It is located in the triangle formed by New Aragon, St. Andre and Foochow, fairly exactly "north" of Zaurak and Kaifeng. The Atlas gives the coordinates as X: 73,04 Y: 96,76
Btw it is a known problem that the planet's X/Y coordinates are wrong. When the entries were auto-generated, the X-coordinate were erroneously put into both the X and Y slot. Nic is aware of this and it will hopefully be corrected in a future update. (See Category talk:Planets# Major Problem with Coords). Frabby 13:10, 30 May 2008 (CDT)

Thanks again. --Workerbee 15:24, 30 May 2008 (CDT)

Wouldn't that be (73.04, -96.76?), as Hunan is "south" of Terra? Since you've become the planetary coordinate guru, would you be able to check and make sure that the master file has as that data correct? I've already corrected Menkent, Blue Diamond, Gotterdammerung, and Hunan. Specifically, could you check out Sakhalin, Scituate, Cartago, and Chamdo? Thanks! --Scaletail 17:42, 1 June 2008 (CDT)

Yes, you are absolutely right: Hunan is at Y -96.76, sorry! Regarding the others:

  • There are in fact two systems by the name of Sakhalin: One is a CapCon/Sarna Supremacy world at X: 62.33 Y: -142.92, the other a Lyran world at X: -24.25 Y: 153.09. The one on this wiki is the CapCon world, Sakhalin (LC) is missing as of yet. I had already noted it on the article some time ago (CC/SS world is spelled Sachalin in German material, but not in the original English sources).
  • Scituate has X: 88.67 Y: -221.94 in my Atlas. The wiki apparently used a positive Y coord, as it is erroneously shown at approximately the same altitude as Mannedorf (which is Y: 228.98).
  • Cartago placement seems to be correct (at X: 141.09 Y: -10.17)
  • Chamdo placement also seems to be correct (at X: 10.43 Y: -153.61); however, in the immediate vicinity Yunnah seems to be slightly misplaced. The correct coordinates for Yunnah are X: 27.67 Y: -124.13. It should be halfway between Corey and Second Try but here it is erroneously shown on the same altitude as Tsinghai and Chamdo, at Y: -153.61.

Checking the big file? I am honored, but it is a daunting task. It will take time. (Add the fact that some names were actually translated into German, i.e. Second Try is named Zweitversuch (lit.: Second Try) in German. That one could be guessed, but it literally took me a year to figure that Rand is meant to be The Edge...

Oh, and then there is that issue with "missing planets". It grew to quite a collection on the CBT forum, and there are other cases. This wiki, for example, has Ferris (Outworld Alliance) but there seems to be another Ferris in the Oberon Confederation which as of yet is not mentioned here. Frabby 18:17, 1 June 2008 (CDT)

The file does have Sakhalin (LC) at the correct coordinates. It has Scituate at 88.67,221.94 so that is incorrect. Yunnah is a tad off at 27.64,-154.13. Both have been corrected. It is daunting, I agree... but something does need to be done about the planets that are not represented, especially the planets of the Marian Hegemony and Circinus Federation. I also feel like Clan planets should be added, as well as those in the Deep Periphery, but that's a whole separate issue. --Scaletail 18:46, 1 June 2008 (CDT)

Coordinates

Frabby, please review the discussion that developed after your opposition statement in regards to doing away with coordinates. The question needs to be settled as to from where these coordinates should reliably come. It's not as clear as simply providing printed canon coordinates.--Rev (talk|contribs) 14:56, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

Planets Project

Hi Frabby,

Following on from the poll results, I'd like to get the Planets Project moving again. Rev's life has clearly kept him from being able to push the project forward, and the current state of play is that I posted up the revised proposed template here here two-and-a-half years ago, and the result was just three of us commenting. Do you still have a fundamental objection to the affiliation list with dates remaining in the article? Only since you and I had that conversation, the editing history of planets is basically Doneve/me adding more data points, me adding narrative detail when I work through books, and nobody else really doing anything specific to planets, so at the moment we're not getting the narrative you want, the narrative and data points I want or much participation beyond the normal jogging. BrokenMnemonic (talk) 10:01, 19 November 2014 (PST)

Good question BM. Iam in work to update the owner history, but very slow, i hope we can found a clear consensus.--Doneve (talk) 10:06, 19 November 2014 (PST)
Frabby, I've started testing the new article layout by working through the planets starting with A. I think I've managed to get half a dozen or so done this afternoon. The new article layout has the interesting side effect of turning a lot of planet articles into system articles. One of the problems I'm running into is lack of detail, though; if you look at an article like the one for Abbadiyah, you'll see that the required text for the article overview encompasses almost everything known about the system - I had to scratch around to find anything to put in the system history section. It might be worth thinking about whether the requirements for each narrative section need tweaking, given that the vast majority of the planet articles on here will probably have very little detail in them to begin with. BrokenMnemonic (talk) 07:16, 16 December 2014 (PST)
Turning the planet articles into system articles was the whole idea behind the exercise, wasn't it? ;) I don't mind the lack of detail at all. Changing planet articles into system articles is a huge and important change to boot, and it doesn't make much difference if the item you're lacking detail on is a planet or a system. Also, look at it this way: Unimportant, un-detailed systems are bound to be less interesting to users whereas high-profile systems tend to have a lot of detail on them available. It's really systems like Hesperus that should shape the article layout. That said, if certain text headers remain empty then you don't have to have them in the article. Think of the layout as a tool to make your life easier, not a form to make your life miserable. Ignore it where it doesn't help you. Frabby (talk) 00:36, 18 December 2014 (PST)
It seems to be working fairly well at the moment - Doneve and I have started rolling the template out, and I've changed a few minor things as I get more practised. Where there's nothing in print about the system, I've started marking them as having one habitable world or construct rather than simply at least one habitable planet, because I don't think we can be certain that they aren't significant systems in the same way that the Gulf Breeze system is, with it's inhabited mining station, or the Periphery system where the settlement is built around a recharging station with DropShips stuck on it. I'm not entirely comfortable with having an "as at -current year-" statement in the header, but it does make it easier for casual readers to work out where the world is, particularly for those that we don't have maps for yet - although in practise, I'm using either 2750, 2765 or 3145 as the current year. One specific problem I hit is Achernar, though - there's a lot of information in the planetary info section in the current article with no citations. Some of the detail looks sort of right from what I could find in texts like Dark Age Republic Worlds (3130), but there's a lot of information I can't find a source for. I don't have a lot of the novels though (or any of the Dark Age novels) and I've only got a small percentage of the BattleCorps shorts. Could you take a look and see if you can identify the source information? I've checked and it doesn't look like it comes from BattleTechnology, which was my first thought, but I think that the Call to Arms novel might be set on Achernar, and I think there's a Decision at Achernar short that I don't have a copy of that may have supplied the detail. BrokenMnemonic (talk) 00:49, 18 December 2014 (PST)
The Chaos Irregulars short story is actually titled Decision at Acamar and has nothing to do with Achernar. A Call to Arms is indeed set on Achernar, but I haven't read most of the DA novels yet including this one. I suspect most information comes from this novel though. Frabby (talk) 01:18, 18 December 2014 (PST)
I checked A Call to Arms, and you are right Frabby, the most info comes from the Novel, but i know iam not a fluff writer i hope any other can step in and add some infos and references from the source.--Doneve (talk) 01:34, 18 December 2014 (PST)
I hate to say it, but I'm not going to rush out, buy A Call to Arms and read it for the sake of the article. I know my commitment is lacking, but so is money... and I'd rather buy the new Succession Wars books that are coming up ;) BrokenMnemonic (talk) 03:58, 18 December 2014 (PST)
I can added the info from A Call to Arms (but from the german novel), i hope anyone can check the speeling and grammers ;).--Doneve (talk) 04:40, 18 December 2014 (PST)
I can do that! I'm off out to a Christmas lunch (and have been drinking a very agreeable Cabernet Merlot blend all morning) but I'll take a look at the article tonight or tomorrow. Remind me to give you an award for assisting an admin in a time of need (and intoxication!) BrokenMnemonic (talk) 05:15, 18 December 2014 (PST)
I think I have the english Epub version of A Call to Arms on my HD (I got a bunch of DA novels in print and an even bigger bunch as Epub, and legit I may add but like I said I didn't read them all yet). Maybe I'll make that book my next novel project then.
BrokenMnemonic, what new Succession Wars era novels are you talking about? Did I miss anything? Frabby (talk) 05:18, 18 December 2014 (PST)
Not novels, I'm afraid - I'm thinking of Historical: First Succession War (and hopefully others to follow). I love their Historicals series with a passion, and now we're getting ones for the Succession Wars, so it's going to be like Christmas over and over again. BrokenMnemonic (talk) 11:48, 18 December 2014 (PST)

Planet/System article names

Evening, Frabby. Volt has a favor to ask. I told him about how articles will be named after the most prominent system member (such as Sol redirects to Terra). He's asking if there might be some master list you have that he could peek at, so that he could change the names in the impending SUC Kit to match. --Revanche (talk|contribs) 21:26, 7 August 2017 (EDT)

If there's a master list, I'd like a copy of it too - I'm going by what I find in the text of the articles as I'm updating them when it comes to renaming the articles. BrokenMnemonic (talk) 10:00, 8 August 2017 (EDT)
That's great to hear, because Nic just informed me he's very willing to run a script to replace all current coordinates with the ones from the...ahem...Sarna Unified Cartography Kit. So, we'll need to make sure every entry in the...Sarna Unified Cartography Kit...lines up with an article name. I figure you and I can finish off the Phase 0s (get the coordinate templates added) and go from there.
But, yeah, if there is a master list, that would rock.--Revanche (talk|contribs) 16:58, 8 August 2017 (EDT)
Hi guys, sorry for being off the radar - I just returned from a four-day trip to Denmark. (And I'll be travelling abroad again for the entire upcoming week.)
Rev, nice to see you're back and bringing the band together. [Insert favorite quote here - among literally dozens, at this time it's a tie between "Fix the cigarette lighter" and "No Ma'am, we're musicians" for me.]
About the issue at hand, sorry, there is no master list. All I ever did was jump on the bandwagon of cool projects like Volt's. But I'll gladly help compiling a list of systems with multiple names, or names different from the name of the primary inhabited world or construct. Frabby (talk) 17:55, 8 August 2017 (EDT)
Would you please? That would be excellent: one effort to update the kit and then all of the articles will benefit via script. Thanks, mate.
I announced the release on gruese's HBS thread. Fo you have a recommendation as to which section of CGL's forums I should do the same?
Enjoy Denmark!--Revanche (talk|contribs) 18:03, 8 August 2017 (EDT)
Denmark was great (including a short rowing and sailing trip on a viking ship at Roskilde - Yarr!) - and now I have three days to do the last two weeks' work, plus the upcoming week where I'll be traveling to Austria. So don't expect too much contribution from me until after the 21st of August.
That said, where shall be keep the master list and where should I add the list of alias names for systems as I work on it? User talk:Gruese#Coordinates looks like a good place to begin. Frabby (talk) 09:53, 10 August 2017 (EDT)
Sounds like a plan. I know Volt is looking forward to those. After he incorporates your changes, we'll ship them off to Nic, who will run a script updating the system articles, and then Gruese will be able to scrap those to update the map. Voila! Collaboration! --Revanche (talk|contribs) 16:05, 10 August 2017 (EDT)
Welcome back, Frabby. If you haven't started already, just a reminder, several of us are definitely interested in your work on this. Ill keep an eye on User talk:Gruese#Coordinates. As a reminder, Volt will take your completed report and updated the SUC Kit. From there, we'll share this with Gruese and Nic. Nic will then run a script updating all coordinates to the latest and then ("there's more!") he's going to see if he can create new local map images based on that. Additionally, Gruese is looking into possibly updating his code to enable us to create more traditional images based on 30 & 60 lys, centered on the systems in question.--Revanche (talk|contribs) 14:56, 25 August 2017 (EDT)
Don't wait for me. I only find time for a few odd bits here and there at the moment, and the next week is going to be murder; don't expect me to have much time for Sarna until the week after at the earliest.
Gruese has created fantastically helpful scripts and the results can be seen here. Looks like the Clan Homeworlds are all shifted by a dozen or so light-years. I'd like Volt to look over the data; I presume one of the two projects used an outdated set of data and Volt should easily be able to tell which data set is more up-to-date. Frabby (talk) 15:16, 27 August 2017 (EDT)
The thing is, Volt needs your names, so that his list matches up with the right article names. He's going to modify his planet names from what you compile. Nic's script will require parity. However, we are also not time-dependent...when you can get it done (or make headway), Volt will progress. I will share Gruese's results with him right now. Thanks, Frabby.--Revanche (talk|contribs) 16:01, 27 August 2017 (EDT)

Pserratv Articles of Solaris Champions

Question, do we need quanity of empty articles about Champions? I know i'm as active recent years i used to be, but won't it be better unless these characters had fiction behind them or some kind write up somewhere to be just on a large list of Solaris Champions instead? -- Wrangler (talk) 11:27, 20 February 2018 (EST)

I am for the articles, they may be stubs but as with many things on this wiki, smaller details often weave together to create a greater picture over time. Previously the Solaris games section of the wiki has been left alone. Thanks to Pserratv there has been a burst of activity in the area from various authors. In addition I believe this has been well timed with MWO releasing their Solaris expansion soon, instead of deleting the stubs crack open your Solaris box, re-read those BattleCorps stories set on Solaris or even break out your MW:DA minis sets and join in the action. On the front page of this very site right now we have an interview with the man in charge of getting BattleTech things done stating the writers use our site. That stub with a one liner about some former champion could be the catalyst for the next book set on Solaris! Just my thoughts obviously. But I believe Sarna should be EVERYTHING BattleTech, your thoughts might be different. Dmon (talk) 14:06, 20 February 2018 (EST)
The articles have been completed. I hope all the champions names are correct... the font of the champions has a letter type I dislike and I might have made mistakes on them. I'm only pending a small review on links to ensure they link back to the Solaris VII Champions list so they can be used to go back to that list. I know most of the articles are not giving much, indeed my original idea was to create the list and also the articles of the big champions (4 championships at least; which have at least some info on Solaris VII boxed set, plus maybe some of the ones that have some (if not much) info, but once I was in, I could not stop, and then decided to create an article for them all, regardless of information under the assumption that better a stub than nothing.--Pserratv (talk) 18:31, 20 February 2018 (EST)
I tend to agree with what Dmon wrote. Stub articles aren't inherently problematic, and the Solaris Campions are certainly important in-universe even if only a handful of them ever got mentioned in another source. This wiki does track individual starships even when they were only mentioned once in a single source; I don't see why characters should be treated differently. Frabby (talk) 07:42, 21 February 2018 (EST)
For me the most enduring thing about working on the wiki is the weaving of the threads into something larger. Due to Pserratvs articles I recently discovered that the chief instructor of the Banshee Stables in 3054 was the last commanding officer of one of the planetary militias destroyed in the early stages of the Clan Invasion (Another bunch of notouriously spartan stubs). I would never think to go looking for unit commander names in a Solaris book and vice versa looking for Solaris characters in a book about the Clan Invasion. So to me that little bit of story weaving is exactly what this wiki is for and that is the value it holds above just copying out the information presented in the books. Dmon (talk) 09:14, 21 February 2018 (EST)
I was told by the previous editors that unless it has content, it should only be listed. To save space was what they were looking at. Empty articles do look bad. I can understand Regiments or large military formations having stub articles since they will eventually do something. Then you have significant ships, like Warships, which are almost unique units in BattleTech universe, since what they do sometimes effect things even in later days. However, you have warriors, champions who may not have anything written up on them or maybe ever. I am minority in this view, but List of Solaris Champions in chronological order in same vein as List of minor Mercenary units, would be better way show them until they're given fluff to warrant a article. If their on a list, they happen to get fluff a link can be made to the individual article. It would make bit easier to search through sarna at glance. -- Wrangler (talk) 07:26, 22 February 2018 (EST)

1992 Update Flyer

Any reason why there is no article on this product?? It is not even in the list... is it non cannon maybe?--Pserratv (talk) 17:54, 27 February 2018 (EST)

Oh, it absolutely meets the criteria for canon. Problem is, I haven't been able to get my hands on one so far, and apparently nobody else has. So no article could be writte. If you happen to have one, feel free to create the article, using the 1993 Update Flyer article as a template. As for why it's not in the product list, basically same reason - I know it supposedly existed, but without actually seeing one I wasn't going to feed the rumor mill by putting a ghost item into the lists. Frabby (talk) 02:57, 28 February 2018 (EST)