So, there...
We are going back to the promotion day procedure for accepting new members. The system which is currently in place was fine until the introcution of DP, RES and especially Intensifier stims. Reaching the old limits of 5k fXP and 10k fXP has become much much easier nowadays, so that the time was not enough to judge on new members. Additionally Red Cell is attracting more and more high level players, which can be attributed to our faction rank (12th at the moment) and the general rise in player levels.
All other system based on fXP are too inflexible and a hassle to maintain, at least if you want to judge on new members on a individual basis.

So therefore we have decided to reintroduce the promotion days!

How it works:
If you are a Initiate for at least 5 days before the weekend (saturday) the agents will vote on your further rank. You can be accepted as a regular member, or the decision can be postponed to the next weekend. Or the decision can be to kick you ;). You will only get one second chance.

So what happens if you join on monday? The decision will be made on saturday, as described above. And joining on thursday? Sorry, you have to be a member for at least 5 days, so your promotion day will be in the next week.

As we see that being in a faction without the right to recall is hard, and all our gear is tagged we will also grant the initiates the right to recall gear from day one. This should enable you to get a feel for RC with all its benefits (hey, in fact you only pay 5% tax instead of the regular 10% ;), and at the same time grant us enough time to get to know you.

For the current initiates: nothing will change for you, your decision will be made through the old system, as that was the knowledge when you first joined.

-Nestor-

After a longer time another blog entry here. The implementation of the new ranking system worked like a charm, and everybody likes it (as far as i know ;). We also upgraded our structures, first the energy silos which give all our members a +50 energy storage and today the target analyser (according to the vote on the forum). Great!

Red Cell is slowly developing as a truly mature and stable faction, gaining more and more mature and senior members. I hope we are recognized as one of the most interesting top (currently 28th) factions on sigmastorm2.

Speaking about members: Im really proud of all of our members, from the Agents to the Apprentices. We got (and still get) a good bunch of players and mates together, taking the game to a new dimension. A new dimension? Yes, i think for most of us here in RC the faction is more than a simple warehouse for all the fluxxed gear we are offering. Instead we all appreciate the friendship and relaxed, while still ambitious atmosphere.

Sure we too got these odd new initiates who didnt make it into our ranks, but thats exactly what the initiation is for: finding out if a player matches the rest of us. In the end we want to stay together as a community of good friends and players.

While talking about new players, it seems another faction is heavily on the way to the top. Recruiting only the top players from all other factions. I think i dont like that attitude, only focussing on getting on top without thinking about the community. It seems to be a random aquisition of players, unified by the simple goal of just being elite. And all that through poaching. Yes, now im sure i dont like it, and as far as im concerned i will not buy buffs from them, nor buff members or sell drops to them...

Hi all fellow readers (hellllooooo? are there any???),

Red Cell has a new ranking system! The former system prooved to be not suitable for this type of game. And (and this is something i did wrong) the promotion to Agent was done on wrong base lately. Initially it was thought to only have active Agents who acively pursuit bringing RC forward.
Lately this promotion was taken for granted when hitting the minimum requirements - and was also done (see, this was the part i did wrong).

To overcome this we implemented a new ranking system with basically two levels of play:

1) The Command ranks
These ranks are for the members who want to actively participate in the faction. Agents, Sentinels and all the other stuff ;)

2) The Regular ranks
This is the former "Members" level of Red Cell. It is now divided into different ranks by fXP. Its meant for the players who like to play and level, but dont have the time or interest to participate in the faction at an intensity expected from the Command Ranks. It is STILL important to show presence, but at this level we dont expect participation in the forums.
While we changed the system to fXP, it is still true that RC only accepts players who deem suitable for RC (system of trust), but see below:

3) Initiates
Initiates will basically stay as they were before. Every new player apllying for membership at RC will be put in as an initiate. Then you have the chance to get voted in by the Command Ranks, or you will be rejected if we think you dont fit into our nice, cozy faction ;). This process has also been changed slightly to reflect the new system.

4) Special Ranks
...and there are the special ranks. Like before On Probation, On Leave and Covert Operation.

Thats it! I hope everybody likes this new system. We think it now provides places for every kind of playstyle for our members.

Let me know what you think,
Nestor

Yes, once more we implemented a new feature to our faction Red Cell. Medals and Trophies. As you can see on the Members page  Naomi holds the job of "Award Management", and she did and does an excellent job on this.
The first medals and trophies implemented are as follows:

Long time medals:
Medal of Excellence - XP contributed
Medal of Victory - PvP Rating
Medal of Contribution - Credits contributed
Medal of Sponsoring - FC contributed
Medal of Skillcaster - Skills cast
Medal of Teamplayer - Squads joined

Weekly Trophies:
Trophy of Evolution
Trophy of Victory
Trophy of Consolation

Graphical representations for these awards are coming shortly, and will be presented here on this webpage :)

So for the future i not only have to update the the members page for the ranks, but also the medals and trophies - a job im fine with :)
~Nestor~

Hi once more from me. There has been the first official promotion day in the year 2009, and once more a few changes happened. As before some Initiates didnt make it to the ranks, some because of their own decision, some were put down for some reason. Sadly it was also the first promotion day that a member got kicked, but obviously he went inactive. So lets see what happened:

New Agents: Kearon
New Members: Draggo, Piurivar
On Probation: Fenix
Leaves: Culak, Didize, henkalex, skibade

So once more some seats are available in Red Cell (currently four).

What else?
We are in the process of installing some special jobs on the Agents rank, the first of it is the 'Awards Management' Chair held by NaomiAzzet. One more secondary rank is the Armorers job, who MrDorian thankfully took over. Special thanks to you, since this takes a lot of work off of my shoulders. And since my holidays are nearing its end i won't have the time on my hand as i have now.

Hi all you out there,
i dont know who is actually reading all this, but i will continue. So, today is promotion day. Unusually the promotions happened yesterday due to some..., yeah, ... , bottles of wine ;) Anyways, since all decisions have been made allready in conjunction with the Agents i only had to inform the members. And it looks like this: five promotions to Agent (conquerer7, fred123qwe, Natemck, NaomiAzzet, LuBo), two promotions to member (Kearon, NonnoNaz), and some kicks of Initiates. After all a very successful week for Red Cell.

Yep, we did it again: more investments in the form of new members slots. We offer currently a home for 25 members, of which at the time of this posting 21 are occupied. Great times, and i think with 25 permanent members we will have reached the final members count. Not trying to get the biggest faction, but the best. Yes, the best. Maybe not in terms of XP or what, but in terms of overall game experience. We will stay the tight group of players we are now, focussing not only on the sheer numbers of the game, but on the fun aspects. For some its leveling, for some its communication. For all its Red Cell!
And we have started another recruiting drive for players without faction at the moment. We don't do poaching. Having reached 21/25 players we will now calm down on recruiting and see what the new initiates are about, who will stay and who has to go.
Furthermore, with the enabling of tagging we will most probably change our ranking system. Basically it will stay the same with Initiates-Members-Agents but tweaked a little bit behind the curtains.

Yes, now we also have item tagging! Quite expensive, but i hope its worth the investment in further smoothing our handling of fluxed gear. And since we are at this topic, namely upgrading, we also installed a Faction Advisor. This tool offers the ability to have closer look at the financial situation of the alliance without the need of torturing googlespreadsheet or excel like hell ;).
Yep, quite expensive, especially since item tagging only makes really sense when you have a Faction Registrar - so this one had also be installed, L2 of course (doesnt make it cheaper...). And a new slot for a structure had also to be installed for exactly that reason...

Speaking about manuals: it may obvious for the old FS player how tagging works and so on, but did HCS also think about all the new players with no existing FS experiance? I want to have at least a small manual which covers the basic things like this. Don't get me wrong, i don't want to have everything about this game revealed (I hate spoilers), like mechanisms and so on, but playing infos.

After the influx of all the new members the first big promotion day is over. Overall only two Initiates have been rejected (kicked) and one stayed at Initiate level. The others were promoted to full Members of Red Cell!

New Members: henkalex, Lubo, mxok, NaomiAzzet, Natemck, ShuShu.
Kicked Initiates: Dzorgo, NightHawk

Together with this two new seats are available at Red Cell and we are trying to fill them until next promotion day, where maybe also Agent ranks will be granted.
Also some changes in the faction forums, we made a spread sheet on all publicly available faction gear, for greater versatility.