COL Kessler Questions

I think we all know who you are, but can you confirm that you are who you say you are with a brief history of your career?

Sure.  I'm Colonel Kyle Cantor Kessler, currently serving as a Flight Member in Tornado Squadron, Wing X, ISD Challenge.

I first signed up to an online Star Wars club as LT Wedge, of Green Squadron (yes, a rebel).  I was with them for about a week when I found out about the EH and defected just about instantly.  My first assignment was to Nun Squadron in Wing V under Major Darkstar.  I joined Aggressor Wing for multiplayer combat training at about the same time, and changed my name to the now infamous "Kessler".  A lot of people ask me why I chose that name, but despite the appearance of Pierce Brosnan in "Mars Attacks" as Doctor Kessler, I simply chose it because I thought it sounded cool.  (And Piett was already taken :P)

It was in Aggressor Wing (now expanded to the ASF) that I ran into Colonel Stretch, who was the Wing Commander of Wing X.  Shortly afterwards, he asked me to take over command of Tornado Squadron as their current Commander had gone AWOL.

This was the start of Wing X's rise to dominance in the Fleet.  Shortly afterwards, Colonel Stretch became the COM of the Challenge and asked me to be the next Wing Commander, which I accepted.  I was also second in command of the Aggressor Wing and had risen to Lieutenant Colonel by that time too, and set about building on the work that Stretch had started by maintaining an aggressive and highly motivated group of CMDRs in the Wing that I could rely on to make things runs smoothly, and above all, make the Wing X experience FUN for her pilots.

I was forced into retirement shortly after making it to Colonel, but returned to active duty three months later.  Lots of things had changed, but there was only one place I really wanted to go - back to Tornado Squadron as a Flight Member again.  I had fun as a FM, refused the CMDR position once to let one of the less-experienced guys have a shot at it, then became CMDR again when he had to step down.  Then I was selected to replace Admiral Piett as the next Battlegroup Commander of the TIE Corps Battlegroups.  I picked up a promotion to Vice Admiral, and set about doing what I could to make things fun not just for Wing X, but the whole Battlegroup.  I picked up a promotion to Admiral after about three months, but didn't really achieve everything I wanted to do as BGCOM, but at least I can say I was instrumental in getting that lazy good-for-nothing FA Dev kicked out of the Tactical Office and bugged HA Kawolski to come out of retirement and take his place :)

Kawolski got his revenge, however.  When AD Eric went AWOL, he kept pestering me to apply to become the next FO.  I lasted about a week before giving in and accepting.  That was eight months ago.  The rest is history…

How long have you been in the EH now, and what keeps you here?

Two and a half years.  Why do I stay?  I'm still having fun, really.  It's that simple.  I've always said that the second you're not having fun anymore, either get out or make it fun.

You’ve been the Flight Officer for quite a while now, so why choose now to stand down? And is it true that you’ve done it out of fear of being abducted by aliens or some such thing like that last batch of FOs?

LOL!  It's actually a pretty boring and simple reason.  I'm due to be sent back to sea with the Royal Navy in December, and was planning to retire then anyway, but I've now got Real Life promotion exams coming up, and putting three hours a day into the Flight Office isn't compatible with passing those exams and getting promoted (and paid more) in Real Life.  So now seemed as good a time as any to step down.

You’ve been in a lot of command positions, but why do you keep on returning to Tornado Squadron? What’s the draw of the squadron?

Tornado was my first Command experience.  When I took over, the Squad was in a bad state.  In fact the whole of the ISD Challenge was in a pitiful condition.  It was in this period when the ISD Relentless (Commanded by a certain Rear Admiral Kawolski, which with the Challenge formed Battlegroup II at that time) coined the nickname "ISD Challenged". I really didn't like this, so I set out to make sure that anyone who called us that to our face had better say it with a smile on their faces or not say it all.  It took about a month, but through some pretty underhand recruiting tactics (all of which are illegal today :P), I'd built up a core of highly skilled and motivated pilots from my friends amongst the Fleet.  I'd also encouraged the other Wing X CMDRs to get a sustained message board offensive going, to boost our morale and give us a little pride in our name.  This all culminated with a contest against the Relentless which we were fully expected to lose.

We kicked serious butt instead.  The Relentless never called us the "Challenged" again.

I basically took a bunch of depressed inactives and AWOLs and turned them into one of the best Squadrons in the Fleet, and they stayed one of the best.  More importantly, we all had a hell of a lot of fun doing it.

Is the CMDR of Tornado not worried that you’re after his job? You’ve had a nasty habit in the past of jumping into that position in next to no time.

Captain Aven Kronn is an exceptionally good CMDR, and I don't have time right now to take over as CMDR again.  If I wasn't going to have to go into full retirement again in December, I'd be seriously thinking about taking a shot when he gets promoted out, but his job's safe for now :P

Why did you become a Flight Member again? Could you not have moved down into a lower command position?

Well for the reasons stated above, and because that would have meant some poor sucker would have had to lose his position to make way for me.  I'm not going to be around forever, and the only way to breed the next generation of WCs, COMs and BGCOMs is to let the new guys get experience at CMDR level, so a Flight Member position suits me just fine.  Flight Members have all the real fun anyway; the entire TIE Corps Command structure from Flight Leader up is there to make sure Flight Members have fun.  All you have to do is fly missions to your hearts' content and answer some emails!  Who could ask for anything more?

Do you think that Nighthawk is the right officer for the job of FO? What tips from your experience would you give Nighthawk to make his life that little bit easier in the FO position?

AD Nighthawk was the Master at Arms in the Dark Brotherhood, he helped FA Ricaud build the Corporate Division and he founded the Imperial Senate.  If there's anyone in the TIE Corps who has more experience with command-level operations I've yet to meet him or her. (He's also a Wing X'er so he MUST be good :P)

Any tips?  Answer ALL of your emails, don't let your work pile up.  Deal with stuff as and when it comes to you, and trust your Battlegroup Commanders to deal with problems for you.  That's what they're there for, and he's got three VERY good BGCOMs to work with :)

When you were FO, you had to do a hell of a lot of work, but which of your tasks did you enjoy the most? And of course, which did you hate the most?

Granting promotions was always good, but the best part was easily granting promotions to Sublieutenant and getting those Cadets off Daedalus!  Sending that email saying someone had been promoted and assigned to their first Squadron gave me a real buzz, because I still remember how excited I was back when I got mine :)

The worst part was disciplinary problems.  They were few and far between, and most should really have never gotten as far as me in the first place.  I saw too many problems that should have been dealt with by Commanders and Wing Commanders, but by the time it gets to me, it's too late.  I think I managed to sort out most problems and saved more people from the Inquisition than I sent TO the Inquisition, but it's never fun.  Generally speaking, we're all here to have fun, and if you insist on spoiling it for other people, you'll get no sympathy from me.  People I have zero tolerance for are cheaters.  I quite simply despise people who fake their pilot files and rob honest, hard working pilots of fair high scores.  I'm quite happy to say that between myself and the TAC, we caught a record number of these scumbags and didn't shed a single tear when they were convicted and punished.

Why did you never take on Command Attaches?

Well, I took my responsibilities as FO pretty seriously.  It is a hellishly busy job, but unlike other Command Officers who have little to do and more Attaches and Assistants than you could shake a stick at, I didn't believe in taking someone away from a perfectly useful pilot's job, promoting them to Vice Admiral and asking them to push some buttons on my behalf a couple of times a day.

If a job's worth doing, it's worth doing yourself.  If it's not worth doing, give it to Major Mooks :P

Is there anything that you wish that you had done before leaving your position of FO?

Not really.  I'm just glad I made it out before anyone promoted me to High Admiral!  Is it just me, or does that rank sound really lame?

After such a long time, AD Val Ricaud, is technically in a higher rank than you. It’s well known that you’ve always been one step above him, but now you’re not, does that worry you?

What do you mean?  I'm in a Colonel in the TIE Corps!  He's only a Subgroup Commander!  Of course I still outrank him!!

Seriously, Ricaud is an exceptional officer.  I spotted his leadership talent early on when the Colossus needed a new CMDR for Mu Squadron.  The COM and WC asked me what I thought of him and I told them in no uncertain terms that if they didn't pick him they'd regret it forever.  Mu Squadron went from an empty, dead Squadron to one of the best in the whole Battlegroup after he'd been CMDR for a mere month.  He was then top of my list to become the next COM of the ISD Relentless after it had fallen on hard times.  Again he took a deadbeat ship and gave the ISD Challenge a serious scare in the Battlegroup Flagship Championship contest I organised.  When I took over as Flight Officer, it was generally accepted that Vice Admiral Torres would replace me as BGCOM.  Torres was a fine officer, but Ricaud was exceptional.  He had a few problems as BGCOM, it's a totally different job to WC or COM after all, but he proved my faith in him there too.  When he applied to rebuild the Corporate Division I gave him my strongest recommendation to the Fleet Commander, and once again, he's proven that he can work miracles.

Ricaud's speciality is taking deadbeats and making winners out of them.  I think that might be why he didn't do quite as well as BGCOM as he has as a CMDR, COM and SGCOM.  The thing I valued most about him was that he almost never agreed with me, and wasn't afraid of telling me so, either!  We'd have some ferocious (and mostly private) arguments, but I needed that little voice of dissent to let me know when I was talking out of my ass so I could take a step back, try to see things from his point of view, and reassess what I was trying to do.  More often than not I'd still disagree with him, but it's important to have that reality check from someone who isn't afraid of all your medals :)

You’ve just got an Order of the Renegade medal? Do you feel proud just because you got this esteemed medal, or were you more proud of the fact you got it because it was one of the few medals that you hadn’t picked up in your career?

A little of both actually.  Getting the Imperial Cross and Medal of Honour were both great, but the Order of the Renegade...  well, we OoR holders are a pretty select bunch :)

Is it true that now you’re a Colonel again, you’re going to open a fast food restaurant that caters to people who are partial to chicken?

Nope, I'm going to open a bar on the ISD Challenge called "The Colonel's Club".  It'll be open to full Colonels only, and we'll have an endless stream of Majors and Captains to serve us drinks.  Colonel Callista and Colonel Manitsas have already signed up for membership, and any Majors and Captains in every Squadron that Tornado whups ass on will have to spend a week serving us drinks as penance. 

Who wants to be first?

You spent ages, and put in a lot of effort into setting up the Naval Corps, so are you not a tad peeved that you only run it for a short time?

Very peeved, actually.  We had an almost fatal blow when VA Pierce was forced to retire just before we opened, but I was lucky enough to convince VA Freelancer to leave his beloved Rho Squadron and take over for me.  Freelancer has a lot of experience with the Project Faithful wargame system, and both Pierce and I trusted his ability to lead the Naval Corps.  I just wish I'd had a few more weeks to oversee its start, but things appear to be going well, despite my absence :)

What will you do now that you’re a Flight Member? I know that you had to stand down because of a lack of time due to RL, but will you be able to remain active?

Flying a couple of battles a week is no problem, and it's fun too!  I plan to make FCHG Knight by the end of July :)

As a Naval man (personally I prefer legs…no, that joke was crap…carry on!!!…), How close do you think the EH structure is to the real thing?

It's not even close, but that's a good thing.  We need more ranks and positions than a real military organisation otherwise everyone would be stuck in the same ranks for FAR too long.  The Naval Corps on the other hand....  that's as close in structure to a real Navy as it's possible to be and still be playable.  That's one of the main things I tried to do when I set it all up, and it seems to be working just fine :)

How did you get into the pages of PC Zone? Did you bug them, or did they bug you for the interview?

PC Zone were running a regular article about gaming obsessions.  They'd done "Obsessed with Quake" and "Obsessed with Star Trek" and I thought - "Why not?"  So I sent Paul Mallinson (features editor) an email and got a reply almost instantly.  They loved the idea and wanted to interview me as soon as possible.  The actual interview was done via email, but they sent a photographer down to take the pictures, promising some kind of costume when he arrived.  I was expecting the usual lame Darth Vader costume, but when he arrived and pulled this totally authentic TIE Pilot costume out of its box, I thought all my birthdays had arrived at once.

That was a VERY nice costume.  It even had an authentic belt buckle!  I nearly cried when they took it away at the end of the photoshoot, but as soon as I save up £800, I'm going to get me one!  I've got a Darth Maul costume made by a local seamstress, but it's just not the same :(

If you can, do you ever plan to take a command position again?

There's only position I ever wanted but never got, and that's Commodore of the ISD Challenge.  Vice Admiral Corran Force - when I return after my forthcoming retirement, I'm after your job!  Watch your back :)

MoH/IC/OoR/GOE/GSx2/SSx4/BSx7/PCx2/ISMx10/MoI-DC/ISx3/LoC-PSx34/OV-2E [GALL]
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