This is a gonna be a doozy, so grab your popcorn, a drink, and some reading glasses. Since joining the Regent Staff as my Praetor (a choice I was admittedly, a little cautious about given my expectations) on 21-10-21 Thran Palpatine has been nothing short of a machine. For the uninitiated, the Regent Staff has one of the steepest learning curves of any staff. You're thrown right in with the wolves, and often (as was the case with myself) have to adjust your thinking from a member/clan's point of view to that of the possessions system, a system that is custom tailored to our club, has its own nuances and inner workings and processes, and is a beast in its own right. It isn't always an easy transition, and can be overwhelming at first at the sheer volume of new information and processes hitting you in the face like a bat over and over again. Thran took this transition in stride, diving right into the material to move past the member/clan line of thinking and aligning himself with the possessions thought process quicker than most.
It's not far-fetched to say that without Thran, there's no way all of the content I'll detail in this recommendation, the releases, and the speed at which we are doing things would be the same. When Thran joined the staff as my Praetor, I told him he would need to put aside any bias he had towards his or any other Clan, and since then he has conducted himself with the utmost integrity in regards to his duties.
Thran's been involved in every single conversation we've had regarding staff projects since he joined us, and often contributed to every single one. He's offered his on everything opinions whether I've agreed with them or not, and has always tried to back up what he says with data (a staple of a Regent Staffer). He reminds me a lot of myself when I was Praetor to the Regent, having dived right into the work without expectation of reward or recognition, and although I've told him repeatedly not to burn himself out and take it easy, keeps on running through things to do.
Although he's only been on my staff a short time, I've gotten to know Thran quite well in our staff discussions and beyond. For project work, he's accomplished the same amount if not more in the same time span than I had as Praetor. Thran worked alongside Teebu on the Lightsaber Store, helping come up with both the name and description in our staff discussion, which was partial to yet still separate from Weapon Upgrades, his efforts for which I'll detail later on. After his work on the lightsaber store, Thran jumped right into helping me with the Clan Dominions project. Although he wasn't able to help with actual site implementation due to restrictions on his possessions admin access, Thran assisted in reviewing the details of all seven clan dominion. He hunted down inconsistencies and applied comments for additional clarification that even I didn't catch, and once we had all the information necessary, took it upon himself to transpose most of them (five clan dominions, each with multiple planets and moons) into a consistent possessions system language that ensured they all fit nicely and adhered to the policy details. He was a major contributor to that project, and the biggest reason why it was completed in such a timely fashion.
Thran didn't stop there, though. Following the implementation of Clan Dominions, he immediately jumped head first into the next task, a review of the now-implemented Artifact Policy. He checked it for dumb, made sure it was sensible, and proposed several edits to the document for additional clarification to ensure things would be more clear and easy to understand for the clans. Although he hasn't taken it upon himself just yet to jump into Clan Artifacts (which is mostly being handled through myself and Idris), I have zero doubt that it'll be any time now that Thran offers to help.
For Weapon Upgrades specifically, Thran assisted me in changing over all seven types of weapon categories from the modification aspects to new upgrade aspects. This involved going into every individual item prototype, deleting all of the old slots, and adding new ones for each type of upgrades. If you've never seen the list of aspect types to choose from, it's massive. It's a lot of scrolling, a lot of checking specific checkboxes that are tiny in a massive list, making it easy to make a mistake or two throughout the process. Thran made these changes to hundreds of weapon item prototypes across several categories, a painstaking effort that took the two of us several hours to accomplish in what was one of the biggest deploys of Regent content since possessions first launched. He stayed on point, asked clarifications where he needed to, and did an exemplary job considering it was his first release of any kind, doing a quick quality control check to double check his work.
This Palpatine has been working tirelessly on a major project that will be the biggest release to Clans in several years, the Planetary Assets project. Pretty well starting the project over from scratch, Thran has completed nearly every item prototype (including descriptions) present in our working document, everything from planetary defenses to orbital weapons to new space stations and shields. With consultation from Slagar to check for dumb and make sure his ideas are on track, Thran has proposed (and I have accepted) a slotting mechanic and its values for each prototype, set preliminary rarities, and is now working to come up with the pricing scheme for this major release of items. Pricing alone requires a lot of tweaking and consideration, finding the right medium that still remains in-line with the possessions system but sets the values at something the Clans will still want to purchase and make use of. While not implemented yet, I would solidly consider this project to be more than 80% completed and almost all of that is owed to Thran.
Even though his main focus right now is Planetary Assets, Thran hasn't let other projects sit or go un-worked during this time. He's been consistently contributing across everything he can. Thran has proposed seven new item prototypes and completed the descriptions and details for each one for our first real Booster Pack release even though the release is still a month out, helping speed along the process any way he can. On Armor Upgrades, Thran has already begun adding proposed upgrades and filling in their details, and is always on the hunt for new ideas.
In addition to all this work, Thran just recently co-organized the Regent Holiday Series with me, judging one competition on his own and three additional competitions as a co-organizer, and is pushing to have competitions from our office be a regular thing as a unique way of incentivizing activity and promoting the possessions system.
Thran is one of the most active and dedicated staff members I've ever witnessed, and at this time one of the most active members of the club in general. I'll let his Consul get into the nitty gritty of his achievements as a regular member, but will say since I can see his credit account: In the months since he's been back (under a year), Thran has amassed over 200,000 fresh credits into his account. That's almost a third of some people's net worth, and he's done it in months. Months. I am more than proud to be recommending Thran for this achievement, and I can't wait to see what else he has in store for the club as a whole.
Anubis, 2022-01-03 18:40:59 UTC