Zekk turned off his holographic projector, and the lights in the auditorium came up. He leaned forward over the podium. "Now, ladies and gentlemen and aliens, we come to the less fun part of the job--filling out your paperwork and managing your squadron on a day-to-day basis. We are Imperials, as you know, and bureaucracy is important to us. For this we present none other than the master of tedium, General Gilbert H. Frown, as a guest lecturer!"

Zekk stepped to the side and began to applaud. There was very muted applause from the audience for General Frown as a hush fell over the crowd; General Frown was well-known in the TIE Corps. He is the only person to have risen from the rank of Sub-Lieutenant all the way to General due entirely to his proficiency with filling out paperwork in triplicate. He had never flown a combat tour. Rumor has it he piloted a tug to pick up a cargo container. Once.

General Frown lived up to his namesake. He scowled at the young, impressionable pilots with derision. What did they know? They had never filled out a form in their lives. They didn't know the sacrifices he made in paperwork to keep the TIE Corps running efficiently.

He put his hands out, palms down. "Alright alright, relax. Everyone sit down," he said. No one was standing. He turned to Terrik. "Colonel, get me a glass of room temperature tap water, if you would."

Zekk sighed and nodded. "Yes, sir," said Zekk, and began to trudge the other way. General Frown turned to the crowd.

"Now, if you will open your books to page 121, we will discuss how to assist your pilots in enrolling in the TIE Corps' 401(k) and dental insurance plans...." said General Frown, in a dry tone of voice. The crowd visibly slumped in their seats with many audible groans.

1. Completing your MSE spreadsheet

Well, it's that time of month again. Another page on the calendar has been turned, and it is time for your pilots to earn some shinies. But exactly how do you do that? In the early days of the TIE Corps, Squadron Commanders were expected to manually keep track of their pilots' activity. Now, thankfully, a lot of it is automated, and every squadron of the TIE Corps has a Google Docs spreadsheet, and every pilot has their own sheet. This is why it is so highly recommended that every commander have a Gmail account.

The spreadsheet helps CMDRs determine which pilots should receive a Merit Award and which Merit Award they should receive. Certain activities, such as flying missions, uploading uniforms, or setting highscores, earn a certain number of points, and points are used to determine awards. We will use the example below during this lesson.

(click to enlarge)

Let's imagine we are updating the MSE spreadsheet for July 2020. The first step is to create a new row for the new month for each pilot. Simply copy an entire row, formulas and all, and paste it to the next line below June 2020. Do this for each sheet (e.g. each pilot) in the spreadsheet.

The columns are labeled at the top. The first inputs should be obvious--you will fill out the month and year, the pilot's rank, position, and their squadron.

Next up, do you believe this pilot earned a Medal of Communication (or MoC)? This is entirely up to you. The definition of the MoC is for "contributions to Fleet communications." I generally set a pretty low bar for the medal as I feel this engages your pilots, but it is up to you. Generally, I will only not award one if I don't see or hear from them at all--either in the Discord or on the email group.

Is your pilot at maximum rank? This information can be found in the TIE Corps Pilot Manual. The maximum rank for Flight Members is Major, for Flight Leaders it's Colonel, and for Squadron Commanders it's General. If they are at max rank, this adds five points as an incentive.

The next columns address your pilot's flying activity--flying single player missions in TIE Fighter, X-wing vs TIE Fighter, and X-wing Alliance, as well as any Legions of Combat or Skirmish they earned playing any of these, or Star Conflict as well. To enter the appropriate data in each cell, you will need to check your pilots' activity. Go to TIE Corps webpage and open up your squadron roster, the Kill Board, the Multiplayer Kill Board, and the Multiplayer Coop Kill Board in separate tabs. Make sure they are set to display the correct month. Keep those four tabs open as you do your MSE.

On each page, open up the search function in your browser and search for your pilot's name. The Kill Board is for SP missions, the Multiplayer Kill Board is for Legions of Combat, and the Multiplayer Coop Kill Board is for Legions of Skirmish. Simply search for your pilot's name, and enter however many legions or single player missions flown in the appropriate column.

The next area is competition participation. This can get a bit tricky but it all boils to keeping track of your pilots and encouraging them to communicate with you. The TIE Corps Commander shares a spreadsheet with all the CMDRs indicating which fleet wide competitions pilots participated in, however this will not be all-encompassing. Another officer may be running a fleet wide competition. This is where you must encourage your pilots to communicate with you so they can receive credit for their participation. Don't hesitate to ask for proof of participation or contact the person running the competition. You are not a mind reader! It is also helpful to log this information in your Google Drive records. Here you will also notate which squadron competitions your own pilots participated in. Please note that even if you run a weekly competition (like trivia for instance) it only counts ONCE per month on their MSE. You will also do this for the next part--highscores earned. Simply search for the word "highscore" and enter how many SP highscores your pilot obtained that month.

The next part, from reports to comps run daily/weekly/biweekly, is mostly for Squadron Commanders, although it is not uncommon for Flight Leaders to submit reports as well, and is in fact encouraged. You will enter how many reports you did during that month. When you are a commander you will also have the option to upload reports in the TIE Corps database--this makes it automatically generate on the TIE Corps news site as well, which makes it easy to find for your pilots. You want to make sure you always database your reports. A lot of Squadron Commanders like to also include art or a bit of fiction with their reports. This is what the column labeled "Reports with OC" (original content) covers. Generally, a lot of leeway is given to this area; if you have done anything original to your report, it will count. The competitions run area is pretty obvious--enter the number of competitions you ran this month and then how many were run on a weekly, daily, or biweekly basis. Also enter the number of Medals of Instruction your pilot earned that month--with the renewed focus on recruiting and swelling membership in the TIE Corps, these are heavily weighted.

The miscellaneous column gets a bit tricky and it has changed much over time. Can you think of anything extra your pilot has done that wasn't covered here? We are talking INPR updates, uniform uploads, Imperial University courses completed, fiction runon participation--anything that you think constitutes activity. Considerable leeway is often given here. If you can make a case for something being activity, then do it!

Next comes the notes section. The CMDR column is where you should summarize the pilot's activity. You may want to specify what exactly you awarded points for in the miscellaneous.

Now, it's time to award LT ZekkIsGreat a medal. You may have noticed that as you were entering these values, the Total column and other columns were generating different numerical values. All you need to pay attention to in this case is the Budget column.

After you have fully completed the spreadsheet of every pilot, head over to the Medal/Promotion tracker tab. You will enter one line for every pilot receiving something this month. So for instance you would write LT ZekkIsGreat in one column, PC in the next column, the month in the next column, and the current status of their award in the final column (always write Pending here, then update it later after all awards have been processed). If your pilot is earning a medal and promotion this month, add another line for their promotion and write that in where the medal would typically go.

To make a medal recommendation, go to your administration page on the TIE Corps website and click "Recommend a medal." Select your pilot and the Merit Award from the dropdown menu. In the "Reason for this recommendation" box, include a summary of the pilot's activity (this is where the CMDR notes cell from the MSE comes in handy). Pilots are excited to receive medals, so I always try to make my comments sincere and personalized. After all, the CMDR's comments appear in the email and on the pilot's Historic Record.

2. Your Flight Leaders

The glorious squadrons of the Empire are made up of 12 pilots divided into 3 flights of 4 people. While you as the commander will lead the first flight, you can think of your Flight Leaders as the top pilots in your squadron, to assist you in running things. While Flight Leaders do not have any official duties and their duties vary from commander to commander, I truly believe that strong and communicative Flight Leaders are vital to running a successful squadron. You generally want your Flight Leaders to be the most active pilots in your squadron. I personally have immensely high expectations of my Flight Leaders and tend to choose those I think have potential as future commanders.

Continue to VI. Issues you may face as a Squadron Commander