The following are draft guidelines for submitting papers, fiction, and artwork for publication on the Digital Gamers' Starfire Online Community web site. The guidelines below are presented for community review and comment. These guidelines are draft pending community feedback and final legal review. Please feel free to provide us with your comments via email.

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The Academy is a forum for publishing tactics and strategy for the Starfire game, along with game reports that serve to illustrate particularly good - or bad - play in action.

The Schools

The Academy is organized into four schools serving different purposes. Each school publishes papers once a month, drawn from the submissions to that school in previous months. A paper submitted to the Academy may be revised based on review, and may be held for publication for several months after its submission.

Squadron Officers' School

The purpose of the Squadron Officers' School is to teach commanders of single ships and small squadrons or datagroups how to effectively fight their ships. Papers submitted for publication by this school should focus on individual weapons systems or tactics, effective use of a single unit, or effective use of small groups.

Space Command & Staff College

The purpose of the Space Command & Staff College is to teach theatre commanders how to organize and manage large-scale operations. Papers submitted for publication by this school should teach how to make effective use of command and control, how to effectively deploy squadrons and fleets to maintain the flexibility to respond to multiple possible threats, and how to conduct large scale military operations.

Space War College

The purpose of the Space War College is to teach policymakers how to achieve strategic objectives. Papers submitted for publication by this school should teach how to set economic, political, and military priorities in order to make better decisions about economic expansion, research and development, colonization, political negotiation, and military procurement, in order to achieve an interstellar state's goals.

After Action Reports

While the other three schools publish theoretical papers dissecting ideas, this school publishes the results of theory in action - warts and all. The purpose of an after action report is to teach others through example. The example may illustrate a particularly effective application of theory, or may illustrate a particularly egregious error - often the best teaching experience.

Promotion Points

Each paper which is published will be attributed to the author who submitted it. If multiple authors submit virtually identical papers, we will attribute the paper to the author whose email message enters our email system first. If we receive overlapping but not identical papers from two authors within one day of each other, we will combine the papers into a single paper and give a joint attribution; otherwise we will credit the second author with the unique portion of the submission.

Authors earn promotion points for each paper accepted by the Academy. Based on the number of promotion points an author has earned, the author is awarded a rank used in the attribution published with their paper. Authors are credited with promotion points when a paper is accepted, not when it is published, and consequently may receive promotions before their papers see print.

Submission Guidelines

The Academy accepts submissions from any Digital Gamers member who is registered for the Starfire service. Papers may be submitted by email. Only one paper should be included per email, but subscribers may submit an unlimited number of papers per month. Each paper submitted must include the following information prior to the body of the paper:

• submitter's name - the real-world name of the submitter
• submitter's login - the login name used by the submitter to access Digital Gamers' online services
• school - the school for which the paper is being submitted

Papers submitted to SOS, SCSC, and SWC need not be exhaustive explorations of every theoretical concept surrounding a system or tactic, but should be non-trivial. If an idea can be expressed in fewer than 100 words, it probably is not going to rise above the level of trivial. An example of a (laughably) trivial paper submitted to SOS would be:

Lasers are a good weapon to use, because they skip shields.

The preceeding example does nothing beyond state a fact that will be obvious to anyone who has carefully perused the Starfire rules. A (perhaps) better paper, submitted to SCSC, would be:

Certain beam weapons ignore shields or armor. Resist the urge to use a single class of weapon exclusively in all your hull designs. Instead, build similar classes of ships, armed exclusively with weapons that ignore shields or weapons that ignore armor. Do not mix the different weapon systems on the same hull, and do not mix the different classes in datagroups or fleets; instead build datagroups and fleets of identical hull classes but differing weapons systems. Keep both classes deployed on enemy borders and use them interchangeably. By keeping your enemy off balence with regard to which weapon system he will be facing, you force him to employ a mix of shields and armor on his ships, reducing the effectiveness of each against both your systems (as in general only half of his defensive systems will be effective against your offensive systems).

This paper adds to the obvious fact that lasers are more effective against shields a technique to exploit the weaknesses of certain defensive systems.

For after action reports, a higher standard of completeness must be applied. As the after-action report is intended to teach through example, enough detail must be provided to allow readers to understand the example. For tactical actions, this means starting forces and positions, a detailed account of movement and firing orders, and commentary on plans at key points in the battle. For operations at higher time scales, provide a correspondingly complete level of information.

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