It was a strange debate this time around. You see, people weren’t shouting at each other, disagreeing over every point and other such things that would help me make this article more interesting. What happened was, people had their say, offered suggestions and took everyone else’s ideas to mind.

This kind of destroys the whole concept of debate. There was no such thing as opposing sides "debating" on the subject, which could mean one of two things, either Imp Storm was a great success and there were no problems, or there was a lot of problems and everyone had things to say against it and suggestions of how to make it better.

Luckily for you, dear reader, that there were a lot of problems, or else this article would be deathly dull with nothing else but Flag Officers patting each other on the back.

Operation: Imperial Storm was not the major success that everyone was hoping for. While it shows a lot of promise, and the Project faithful rules seem to be working well, the actual competition was not quite right.

Now I know that this is an article about how fair Imp Strom was. Was it biased towards one team in particular, were the sides evenly matched, was it organized well enough to give everyone a good game, and so on.

The first thing that was looked at was the two sides and how well the ships were shared out. Although different, the two sides did have a fair balance of ships. The blue side had the more powerful ships, but the red team had more ships, even if they were technically weaker. It appeared the "Either side is capable of winning this conflict; it just depends on who has the most skill, and who has the most "luck" as VA IQ Pierce said.

LCM Phoenix had to point out that "Saying these balance each other out, however may be oversimplifying the situation" and that the red sides forces were far weaker, not only with their Capital Ships but their starfighters. The blue side were "stocked to the gills" with T/D’s and missileboats, which prove superior against the red side in battle.

Most people seemed to think that the sides were fair, give or take a squadron here and there. In the end, the red side won, proving that either side would have won, no matter who had the biggest ship.

The next thing that was debated was the fact that the competition was not only multiplayer only, but also X-wing Alliance only. It does seem a bit weird as only a small fraction of members actually own XWA, and a few can’t get it due to machine limitations. This has been debated not only for this article, but also in other message boards around the TC. LT Jakar Streng believed that something should have been done to "include the non-multiplayer users".

Project Faithful, from where Operation: Imperial Storm was able to be designed, was made around XWA. The way the game worked, it would be very hard to make single-player missions for it. So it was decided that it would stay multiplayer for the time being, with the possibility of singleplayer in the future. As of yet, the rules for offline Project Faithful have not been released yet. Also, XWA allows you to make missions quickly in skirmish mode, unlike XvT and TIE Fighter. A mission has to be made in a matter of hours for Project Faithful games, so couldn’t have been done for other games.

I do feel sorry for those who were left out though, but it seemed incredibly hard, if not impossible, to allow singleplayer in Imp Storm. There are plenty of other competitions on for singleplayer that are as large as Imp Storm on right now, so I suggest that you all have a look at the Training Office Competition #5 to take part in a large, important singleplayer competition.

Some people believed that the way the battles were shared out between pilots were unfair. It was very tough to get a game during the competition. Not only was it rare that there was a battle, due to the red sides tactics of evading the blue team, but when there was a battle only a few pilots could play.

A lot of pilots had to sit out of the battles making actually attending the competition worthless (I know it happened to me). Seggybop, although was able to get a game, points out "there were tons of other people there that should have been able to go too."

As I said before, this was less of a debate this time around. Points were made, discussed and taken into account for Imp Storm II. Perhaps we now live in a perfect world where all opinions are heard and used. Doubtful, but at least our club’s okay!

By the looks of things, Imp Storm is going to have more than 2 sides, which would make more battles occur, and give pilots more chance to fly in the competition. The rules of Project faithful may be looked at again to decide if more or less details and rules should be used. Sadly, it will stay an X-Wing Alliance only game, as it would be too hard to use any other game. You never know though, as it is a long way off and a way could be found.