Greetings,

I wanted to contribute to the community, and while I hope to see you all shortly in MP in a bit, having spent a dozen or so games in SP, I had a desire to participate in other ways.

My impression was there are 3-4 obvious gaps in explanatory material and verbal lore accessibility, including:

  more high-quality replays

  a collection of micro techniques

  documentation of assorted rules / mechanics

wherein I was thinking that the offering of $5 bounties might be a way of gathering up and incentivizing the pertinent info (edit: clarity: I provide that, community experts provide the knowledge), in various waves of this or that (say, hundred dollar) set.  As a rough approximation.  Individual bounties and pool size might vary, etc, etc.  This thread was not per se to announce let's go on a particular of the three just yet, but to seek advice on how to time and structure that.  Feedback is welcome.

There are probably other areas that might benefit, those would be my top three - if you have another, I'm open-minded.  I come to SINS from a recent whirl with a CCG, among other games, and for better or worse the cash outlay facet is not the particular sticking point.  (On an aside, gaming budget comes after donation budget, so heifer and sevra (mainly) are getting love before the ludicrous indulgence of gaming luxuries, before you flame for sheer uppidityness of the general concept of this post.)

(edit: clarity: the results being posted for the public community, not me.)

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So...

With respect to gathering in replays with some bounty incentives:

 * Patches and expansions not being backwards compatible is pretty killer.  So I assume the best time to do this is several times... perhaps the near-term opportune being after...diplomacy?  The first patch for diplomacy?  Perhaps someone around for a year can shed some light on patch frequency and offer some insight.  They are likely to release diplomacy on time?  Likely to immediately patch it?  Am 2 weeks new here, so history is not familiar yet.

 * I'd like to be able to watch them myself, although that is not strictly necessary.  I'm not clear if I could watch any vanilla if upgraded to entrench or diplo, so if the masters know the right startup technique, that would be nice to know of.  If not, I'd still sponser some vanillas, so no biggie.

* How to judge quality / fairly allocate / etc is possibly a problem.  The classic judgement of fine art problem.  I think that's solvable with the classic solution - a little community chat.  If you don't know if fine art is good, polling fine art experts helps; I'd take it on sufficient blind faith if darvin/volt/cykur said a given replay was good or sketchy if I got overwhelmed with quantity or stuck judging one.

* Avoiding resubmission of existings is in theorycraft a problem, but in practice seems rather tractable, there aren't many replays really, on forums currently, and I think I've seen most of them.

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With respect to micros tips, I think that's easier in some regards, in the sense of perhaps being one to sponser first / soonest.

The main issues here seems to be ones of judgement (trivial or brilliant) and verification (actually works or imaginary theorycraft), establishing some thresholds of quality/obviousness/variants/focus (yes, some advent cap abilities combine.  yes, one can rebind keys), and of fairness of awarding when dealing with innumerable dupes (any of the masters could probably overwhelm with a couple dozen micros at once in a single mega-submission - how would one fairly allocate then), etc.

I'm likely to simply rule by fiat; it won't be a democracy, and to try spreading the wealth, but the more I think it through the more I think I'd to have to mull considerably on the best way to structure the judging / selection / etc, to avoid disappointment of submitters who share and end up not choosen or duplication competed or so forth.  (Optimistically assuming lots of micro submissions, of course, although i find that for a tidbit of cash to put towards a pizza or game, peeps will just come out of the 'can i haz fr33 stuffs' woodwork like lunatics.)

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With respect to assembling the missing manual on sins, the biggest advice-seeking issues, i think, may be how to best identify the gap topics in an outline cleanly, bounty on each, and then allocate fairly vs peeps that did not author in any significant way simply zombie resurrecting threads.  The point is not so much to dupe some of the existing stickies, but to gather gap areas together and possible to sponser update of some of the stickies.  It would be nice, of course, wherever plausible to kick back a little to the original authors who labored in love to find the details out. 

The intent is not to replace, say, the most excellent threads on caps / cap abilities (I love that thread, very useful, thx!), but to get in one place the 20 or so missing bits on how things work, from the claiming of nuetrals to what the hell extractor quotas are (etc, etc)) so that players have a nice basis for grasping them, getting acclimated, and not asking innumerable similiar basic questions on forums.

Where to park the manual is another bit, I'd rather not overly maintain it, and have a dim view of wikis.  As sins forum threads seem to have no post limit, a thread with a few reserved first posts, edited up, for all that it's simplistic, has advantages of being obviously located and eventually sticky-able, imho.

I could seriously considering doing two waves, one bounty wave for sketching the outline topics and the bounties and soliciting first submissions, and then a second wave that includes a respectable upkeep bounty for a worthy forum member to sift and edit and maintain the thread / do some of the eval.  I'm open-minded there, I'm a doc hound myself, but I know that my zeal for maintaince over time can fade.

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Lastly, rounding it out, I assume I can adequately figure out some way of combining paypal, with the mailing of gift cards / cash, and work out a delivery of the bounties scheme. 

Gets a little tricky with international peeps, who lack paypal, as mailing checks around to strangers is a little problematic in this modern age.  If there are clever tricks or alternates there, welcome hearing.  The cleverest I know is the sending of generic gift cards, redeemable online anywhere, though one still deals with the postal system and the general issue of imchat or email to convey address, and the main problem there, is that those cards usually have a lower limit higher than $5 for acquisition, though works great for a multiple bounty winner, perhaps.

I'm US-based, northern Virgina, myself.

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Advice very welcome. 

(Misc: Please forgive spelling / grammar errors in the post, I haven't proofread this yet.)

-evoke