User talk:Admiral Obvious

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Again, welcome to Sarna's BattleTechWiki!

*******Be Bold*******

-- New user message (talk) 18:44, 6 December 2018 (EST)

Take caution when handling rules[edit]

Hey AO, Just want to say be very, VERY careful with stuff like your Character Attributes (RPG) article. I know this being a wiki everything we do is by the good graces of the various owners of the IP, but with the universe being as huge and expansive as it is the wiki is an invaluable resource in linking everything together lore wise in one place (several writers have stated they use Sarna when writing new stuff for the BTU), BUT I personally feel that articles that have the sole purpose of handling rules or rules related topics are possibly going too far and would be very hard to justify. On a skim through of your article it looks ok, it simply explains what the stats mean but I would be very cautious about getting any closer than that. I personally write everything as in universe and believe that we should not have any "rules specific" articles at all but I know that some people appreciate that information being here.--Dmon (talk) 19:08, 30 December 2018 (EST)

Got it. I'm not trying to copy the books to the letter and transpose, but, in regards to the Infantry weapons section, it's an entirely new "type" of way to present information. Like, a normal vehicular MG in Total Warfare has a damage value of 1, but a RPG MG has a damage value of 4B5D. I'm just going to try and add in what I can without wholesale copying the book, so people can reference that as "what it means". 5D is different than 5 because of the scale the different games work on. That's all I'm aiming for. I plan on doing one more article on how RPG damage and the armor types work when compared to Total Warfare rules, but that's all I had planned. Admiral Obvious (talk) 20:33, 30 December 2018 (EST)
I have been meaning to follow up the conversations about Infantry and the mess of the Weapons section with you anyway, but I have been quite busy with work and all the holidays lately. I will leave you to it for now and follow up at a later date. You have been doing good work, I just wanted to keep you going in the right direction. Have a nice new year AO :-)--Dmon (talk) 21:32, 30 December 2018 (EST)

Essay style articles[edit]

Hi AO,
I've noticed your articles, specifically Mechanized Battle Armor but also RPG damage, Character Attributes (RPG) and Walking Fire. I wasn't previously aware of Sarna.net BTW's Category:Game Aids nor Category:CBT Tactics, as I'm personally more concerned with the lore aspect on Sarna. Looks like both of these are poorly defined and need a serious cleanup. Anyways, the point(s) I wanted to raise with you are twofold:
1 - Category:Battle Armor is definitely wrong for the Mechanized Battle Armor article, as it is not a type of battle armor. I've tentatively re-categorized the article into Game Aids.
2 - The names are a bit misleading imho. "Mechanized Battle Armor" reads as if this was an article about a specific type of battle armor, which it isn't. When I read "RPG Damage" I think of the damage caused by Rocket Propelled Grenades. And "Walking Fire" could be the name of a merc unit. Perhaps appending "tactics" to the first and last could help, and renaming "RPG Damage" to "Weapon Damage (RPG)" might help clarify the subject matter? Frabby (talk) 03:59, 4 January 2019 (EST)

I'd be perfectly happy to have the names changed/moved. I didn't really think that the articles could be mistaken, but I see how that could be the case now. I'm not too sure how to "move" articles, or rename them though. I won't mind if you, or someone else did though. There's quite few capabilities of units that aren't mentioned on the wiki here, like how Mechanized BA worked (I didn't even note the "lock in place" function for manipulators that most have), or before I added it, rapid fire basic autocannons, assuming you take the risk of the gun detonating. I think that adding an appendage to the end in Parentheses, like Tactics for BA and walking fire would be fine. As mentioned on my user page, basically everything I have is a rulebook, not a source book, though I'm looking into getting some of the actual lore oriented books. Feel free to move/rename the pages as needed. I was trying to create a seperate category for Battle Armor Tactics, not add it to the same page as the armor itself. In fact a whole seperate category for tactics might be a good idea. Admiral Obvious (talk) 12:06, 4 January 2019 (EST)

Small Arms categories[edit]

Hey AO,

Just want to ask, is there a grand plan for what you want to do with the various Small Arms categories as they do really need sorting out BUT I have never done anything towards it myself as I have no real knowledge of the subject from a rules point of view... And most of the pages seem to be 100% dedicated to rules and nothing else.--Dmon (talk) 18:06, 2 October 2019 (EDT)

Right now i'm just trying to get rid of pointless/empty categories, and try to merge all the same-name articles together, since that's a major issue with the clutter we have. I recognize most of the articles are based on rules, however if there's any fluff that can be done of the individual items, it would be much easier for people if the articles were all under the same name. As of right now, there's, like 5 separate pages for a gauss pistol for example. As for re-categorization, we don't need "long arms" since it's literally the same thing as the "rifle" category. Top down sort, from general weapons, to weapon class, to the type of thing it fires can be helpful, but there's around 2-300 pages to sift through. I don't really know where to begin on making the articles "lore friendly" without source material on my end, I just want to clean up the mess we have there. --Admiral Obvious (talk) 18:13, 2 October 2019 (EDT)
Edit: I'm also stuck on whether or not to/how to merge the categories we have right now without intruding into the other categories we currently have. Such as Ballistic weapons (Infantry) and Ballistic weapons (Sub Machine Guns) They ideally should be merged, or SMGs should be under ballistics, but not at the same level. That probably makes more sense on what i'm trying to fix. --Admiral Obvious (talk) 18:16, 2 October 2019 (EDT)
Edit 2: I'm looking for something along the lines of how the Special Weapons Category currently works, nice, cleanly nested. We could arguably merge them all together into one category, but the mess of Support Weapons needs looking at. --Admiral Obvious (talk) 18:20, 2 October 2019 (EDT)

Nomination.[edit]

I just want you to know that I have nominated you for an award in the 2019 Founder's Awards for your work on the wiki last year. Dmon (talk) 09:35, 16 February 2020 (EST)