Actual question: are you guys planning to do any combat tactics rebalancing going into the future? I'm putting a substantial amount of effort into my tactics mod, and I'd like to make sure I'm not competing with a broader attempt.
Combat tactics are actually one of the few things I've no plans to touch. However, if things were to work-out in an ideal way, I'd be interested in bringing somebody on to the team to work upon them. They would also need to have interest in other work once combat tactics were overhauled, be quick studies, and demonstrate modding proficiency in at least a few specific domains. Otherwise, I may also be interested in an official, integrated sub-mod regarding high-quality combat tactics. If you'd like to hash-out details with me and pitch some form of official integration of your combat tactics work into HIP (or if using Google Hangouts, potentially Meneth and I at the same time), add me to your Google+ circle at
azrinon@gmail.com for Google Hangouts and email, email me at
zijistark@gmail.com (leads to the same place), or, least preferred as I only run Skype occasionally to get queued messages and thus am unlikely to actually happen upon chatting with you in real-time, add starksq as a Skype contact.
Also, I forgot to address your previous question regarding a closed beta:
Yes, that is actually the plan. Upon official announcement of the new mod project, I plan to also call for volunteers to collect into a small retinue of "Friends of HIP" or "Hippolytes" whom will have access to closed betas, a private discussion forum for feedback / beta announcements amongst each other and with the HIP team. Though there's no interview process, the group will be small and vetted for level of contribution quality expected. To the extent that they participate constructively, they'll have a lot of relative influence over the design, quality assurance, balance, and features present in HIP products.
This is not unlike how Paradox manages its closed beta clearance for the working development version of the game, except that we will not work purely invite-only but consider folks that actively volunteer. We're simply not the scale of Paradox. You, for example, are a person that I'd consider for inclusion, if you were interested in the minor commitment that it does imply, due to your work on the Better Armies maybe-soon-to-be sub-mod, your recent GitHub contribution to Project Balance, your general candor, etc.
If they happen to have modding or writing skills, they can contribute fixes/tweaks/flavor directly via GitHub to [some] HIP mods, quite possibly leading to our attempts to try to recruit them into the HIP team
de jure. Either way, as they make contributions to betas and QA cycles, they will be publicly credited for their impact upon HIP. Although the first closed beta will focus upon preparations for the initial release of the as-yet-unannounced, next-gen mod in development, they will also be a continual source of directed, high-quality feedback which we can more easily digest and will have access to all internal QA cycles for major HIP releases via a special installer that automatically downloads the latest beta snapshot, patches a base download's source code with it, and then performs a beta install.
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