AceNet Central Ships

Aeronautico

Aeronautico

Rear Admiral
Okay, I know I have probably brought this up before, and I'm sorry if this proves to be more of a nuisance than anything else. Anyway, I know AceNet Central has long since died for God-knows-what reasons, but is it possible to track down the starship/starfighter pages that it once hosted? Does anybody know who the original admins. were? It would be so cool to find that material again. Can somebody help me?
 
Okay, yes, I am revisiting this old issue. I am fully aware that AceNet Central is, regretfully dead. Still, I am wondering if anybody has files or links to the various ship concepts that were on that site. Does anyone know where those can be dug up, or does anyone know the administrators? It would be cool to at least bring back those ships.

Why did AceNet close anyway? What problem did they have?
 
Time, growing up, college, professions, and work schedules will always be the bane of any online social group.
 
Okay, yes, I am revisiting this old issue. I am fully aware that AceNet Central is, regretfully dead. Still, I am wondering if anybody has files or links to the various ship concepts that were on that site. Does anyone know where those can be dug up, or does anyone know the administrators? It would be cool to at least bring back those ships.
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Your best bet is searching through archive.org. The Ace's Club had a lot of different websites with a lot of different URLs; googling for Wing Commander Aces or AceNet Central will get you some broken URLs to try (sadly, Phoenix's beautiful later image-laden versions are probably the hardest to recover, since the archive stopped collecting graphics after a point.)

(You will probably find, though, that it *isn't* especially cool to 'bring back' those ships beyond the initial nostalgia kick. At best the idea was that they were for Ace's Club writers to incorporate into their fanfic... at worst they were extremely goofy.)

Why did AceNet close anyway? What problem did they have?
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There are lots of reasons, the simplest being that the people responsible for the site moved on -- grew up, got jobs, got married, etc. I can't imagine leaving the fandom, but it has happened to good people over the years. Not a day goes by when I wish we were as active as we were in the WCA days... but it happens.

In a more broad history, the Ace's Club itself was (is?) a group whose ecological niche disappeared. In the mid-1990s the internet wasn't at all about interfacing with other people... groups like the Aces cobbled together over months of hard work with mailing lists and web sites and IRC what something like a Facebook group does in three seconds today. You joined the Aces because they were the only game in town and they worked hard, as silly as some of their rules and concepts were (and they were awfully silly in many places).

(There's also a very strong movement, I think, against 'fanfic' today, which was the focus of the club. It's not that it isn't popular anymore, but it's considered... low class, I suppose. Everyone reads it and many people enjoy it, but it's something we're embarassed about instead of something we put on a pedestal.)
 
A movement against fanfics? Well, respectfully, I have to disagree with that allegation. Still, if AceNet was doomed to close down, they should have put up their work on other sites or granted the rights to associate sites. It may have been largely fanfic, but it was cool and a fair contribution to the fanbase.
 
Bandit LOAF said:
In a more broad history, the Ace's Club itself was (is?) a group whose ecological niche disappeared. In the mid-1990s the internet wasn't at all about interfacing with other people... groups like the Aces cobbled together over months of hard work with mailing lists and web sites and IRC what something like a Facebook group does in three seconds today. You joined the Aces because they were the only game in town and they worked hard, as silly as some of their rules and concepts were (and they were awfully silly in many places).
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Granted that I haven't been here as long as everyone else, but wasn't there some animosity toward the Ace's club? I remember hearing about them clashing with the members here. Not sure if these were rumors or I'm just remembering wrong.
 
A movement against fanfics? Well, respectfully, I have to disagree with that allegation.
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There's no question in my mind. In the last century, fanfic was largely the center of fan communities -- from Star Trek fanzines in the 1970s to the Aces Club's version of the Wing Commander universe in the 1990s. Fans came together in the first place to swap, enjoy and argue about their own stories in their favorite worlds.

That's *not* the case anymore, anywhere. Fan communities today are based around simple preference, flag waving stuff -- I love so and so and I'm here to show it. Fan fiction still exists, but it has been sidelined and is often spoken of in a deprecatory manner. You'll find plenty of Star Trek, Star Wars, Wing Commander, etc. fans who now look down on such writers. Sure, I own a space uniform and I painted my car like the Enterprise... but at least I don't write *fanfic*. (One element of this is that fan communities are *much* more critical today; much more interested in breaking things down.)

And I'm not praising either viewpoint, but it's how things have evolved. Wing Commander is a great example -- our communities are now hovering around a news site instead of a fanfic club.

Still, if AceNet was doomed to close down, they should have put up their work on other sites or granted the rights to associate sites. It may have been largely fanfic, but it was cool and a fair contribution to the fanbase.
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Well, it was *all* fanfic, that was the point of the organization. The Aces wrote "Play By Mail" stories where one person continued the story with a new chapter in a round-robin fashion. They traded them back and forth in e-mails.

But -- websites like AceNet Central and the rest die a slow death. It's not a matter of deciding that this isn't what you're into anymore... forgetting to pay the hosting bill, losing your backups in the inevitable upgrade, deciding not to keep up the domain anymore, a browser upgrade breaking access to X parts of the site, etc. Nobody stood up and said they were taking down AceNet Central this minute -- it just faded away.
 
Granted that I haven't been here as long as everyone else, but wasn't there some animosity toward the Ace's club? I remember hearing about them clashing with the members here. Not sure if these were rumors or I'm just remembering wrong.
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Nothing so simple as that; we don't really share the same period in internet history -- our forums went up in 1998, which was at the very tail end of the WCAC's productive years (yes, I know you can show me ten different PBMs from later on -- but that was well past the heydey.) Anyone old enough to remember that time was probably a registered member of the Aces Club (myself included).

Now, like any internet group, the Aces Club had their conflicts -- with, honestly, whoever wanted to fight. You know who the Origin's Official Wing Commander Chat Zone community fought with, back in 1995? The guys who posted at Decipher Inc.'s Star Trek the Customizable Card Game message board. Why? I have *genuinely no idea*, but we went at it tooth and nail and gosh darn if I didn't hate those sumbitches.

I can probably talk about all the fun internal strife in the WCAC for hours... and I wasn't a very good member. The whole group was originally split off from a similar AOL club when the six-or-so "founders" didn't want to play with one of the other members. You know the situation -- the one group is sure they're the most important thing since the American revolution and are finally creating a *fair*... Wing Commander... story writing... e-mail list. And then it went in cycles -- the WCAC founders were full of hot air to the *next* generation of members, who argued and battled and so on and so forth.

But that's all silly internet history. It's stuff that never mattered. It's all glowing green in our forebrains because it seemed important when we were fifteen, but it was all just community building. Community building is why the WCAC and all those other groups were so important -- getting here from there -- and why they should be remembered.

(The big thing you probably remember about the WCAC... what they will probably be best remembered for critically... was their - uh - insane ideas about continuity, compared to modern thinking. Their fanfic did stuff like kill Blair (so no one could play him!), restart the Kilrathi Empire, copy Mechwarrior down-to-the-proper-nouns for ground combat and invent a bajillion IT'S EVEN BETTER THAN AN EXCALIBUR AND ONLY MY JEDI CHARACTER HAS IT! fighters to fly around. Insisting on maintaining that stuff over the years was probably did the most damage to their credibility. I was *there*, though, and I honestly don't understand how Mustang and friends believed that there *wouldn't* be another Wing Commander game after Wing Commander 3. It was the best selling game ever! WC4 was 14 months away, announced for 12! What were they thinking?)
 
frostytheplebe said:
Granted that I haven't been here as long as everyone else, but wasn't there some animosity toward the Ace's club? I remember hearing about them clashing with the members here. Not sure if these were rumors or I'm just remembering wrong.
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Much like LOAF said, it wasn't that people here clashed with them, probably 99% of us who are around from those early days were members and sometimes writers for the Aces club.

It was some of the insane ideas that were created that helped pull the club apart. Like LOAF mentioned, Blair was killed, reborn, etc numerous times. They had fighters that were simply...ridiculous. However, that is not to say that there were not some great stories mixed in there. The club did manage to bring a lot of wingnuts together. I'm sure some of the other grizzled elders here will remember the massive mailing list update emails we used to get when new members were added (before more modern email technology was available).

It did a lot for the fandom but eventually it did pass out of light.
 
Every time you turned around in the Aces you had someone wanting to make a 'little Timmy's super ship' something so completely off the wall that it wasn't even funny. For any many writers that there were in the club in it's hey day, you had just as many people who wanted to do more than rattle off 'new tech' for no reason beyond that it was shiny and new... nevermind that it had no reason in a story. I knew more than one person who simply got tired of how some people lorded over their ships/writing groups and left, because we were there to write stories about something we enjoyed. Not to be someone's servant monkey.

Then like it's been referenced above, you hadsome PBM coordinators who'd tend to swear holy war on people because they didn't like the definition of the word 'dog' or something.

Now don't get me wrong there were plenty of good upstanding fans in the Aces, but sometimes all it takes is a handful of people to create a mass exodus.

For the most part I enjoyed my time in the Aces, and if I looked hard enough I could probably find somethings from them. I know I have an old copy of the forum we hosted for them for a while after we split off and they need forum space, but honestly I think it's best to acknowledge what they were, and let the club as a whole rest in peace. Especially when it comes to the ships.
 
We'd be happy to host any Aces stuff people come across -- it's all an interesting history.

I remember thinking the two ships they had at the original website were *so* cool (this was early 1995). There was a Confederation fighter and a Kilrathi one, and they had black and white line art sketches of each and a cool Wing Commander spec set and history. I remember having printouts of both in my locker in high school. You won't find a more embarrassing admittance than that.

The problem was that everyone wanted their own ship/carrier/superwarship/etc., which was goofy... and then they created the 'New Tech Bureau' (I forget the exact name?) that went through and approved submissions... which left the club with lots of interesting-but-dull ships, like mine-layers and transports and created yet another group of people who were a little bit too into the prestige of their job.

In retrospect, the whole thing was wrong because it was putting the cart before the horse -- people should have come up with a *need* for a new ship in their stories before they were "allowed" to invent one.

But, God, it was cool when I was 14.
 
Bandit LOAF said:
The problem was that everyone wanted their own ship/carrier/superwarship/etc., which was goofy... and then they created the 'New Tech Bureau' (I forget the exact name?) that went through and approved submissions... which left the club with lots of interesting-but-dull ships, like mine-layers and transports and created yet another group of people who were a little bit too into the prestige of their job.

But, God, it was cool when I was 14.
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I think it was New Tech and I remember the mailing list arguments over people trying to get their ubership approved. Even with the "oversight" many a crazy ass stupid designs made into their world.

I have to agree there was something very cool about seeing all these creative designs, even if I didn't yet realize they were absolutely stupid in the long run.
 
Think it was bad as an outsider... consider how bad it was when you were one of the saps suckered onto replacing someone on the 'New Tech Committee' to try to create oversite and requesting legit reasons for something to be created. I had no problem with someone making something but I'm sorry a carrier was a carrier, if say 5 light carrier classes existed because people approved them, there was no way that I'd approve a 6th just because joe writer wanted his ship to be unique. But even there you'd just be one vote and if the others liked it... All I can say is that I tried, ultimately failed but I did try...

I'll check my backups when I get home to see if there's anything worth salvaging, it's been years since I've opened up the database files from the forums.
 
There were some great concepts on that site. There was a Concordia-Class ship reconfigured as a stealth carrier, a massive battleship known as the Constitution-Class, and there was even a fictional republic known as the Republic of Andorra. I assume that is a reference to the real-life Andorra, a country in Southern France. I wish some of those fanmade ships could be dug up again.

Maybe some designs were ridiculous, but at least give the fans some credit for imagination.
 
Aeronautico said:
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These are exactly the things we were saying were a bit ridiculous. The whole Andorran thing (didn't they clone Blair or some BS?), the ridiculous ships, etc. There were a few diamonds in the rough but the vast majority of stuff was so that every single writer could have their own supership.
 
I think I visited the site once before I had Internet at home. If I had the net I probably would have created a corvette or two and a few frigates and tried a story. Maybe a heavy fighter model or two but none Excalibur level.
 
Dundradal said:
It was some of the insane ideas that were created that helped pull the club apart. Like LOAF mentioned, Blair was killed, reborn, etc numerous times. They had fighters that were simply...ridiculous. However, that is not to say that there were not some great stories mixed in there. The club did manage to bring a lot of wingnuts together. I'm sure some of the other grizzled elders here will remember the massive mailing list update emails we used to get when new members were added (before more modern email technology was available).
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I actually maintained the list for a year or two around '96 or '97. It actually took a bunch of time, and the entire concept of maintaining a list of emails that people can use to conduct their group activities will sound increasingly/interestingly archaic as time goes on.

TEOC Viper said:
Now don't get me wrong there were plenty of good upstanding fans in the Aces, but sometimes all it takes is a handful of people to create a mass exodus.
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I don't know if there ever was a mass exodus. The club faded away for the same reasons and by similar methods as the individual club websites. What I miss so much is that so many people had individual websites back then (the AceNet webring). Back in the '90s, making websites is what people did. I remember the first person who posted an online diary (8 years before anyone invented the word "blog") and everyone thought he was incredibly vain and ridiculous. People went online and did their little bit to generate/collect content, and maybe put a little "about the webmaster" blurb in the corner. In that regards, the Web 2.0 really is a different place as it's so centered around people's personal online identities. I love my Facebook and the way things are today too, but being online has a pretty different meaning in 2009 compared to 1999.

Bandit LOAF said:
The problem was that everyone wanted their own ship/carrier/superwarship/etc., which was goofy... and then they created the 'New Tech Bureau' (I forget the exact name?) that went through and approved submissions... which left the club with lots of interesting-but-dull ships, like mine-layers and transports and created yet another group of people who were a little bit too into the prestige of their job.

In retrospect, the whole thing was wrong because it was putting the cart before the horse -- people should have come up with a *need* for a new ship in their stories before they were "allowed" to invent one.
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It was more than just the writers too. Creating new technology ships became a pastime for a certain number of club members.
 
Aeronautico said:
There were some great concepts on that site. There was a Concordia-Class ship reconfigured as a stealth carrier, a massive battleship known as the Constitution-Class, and there was even a fictional republic known as the Republic of Andorra. I assume that is a reference to the real-life Andorra, a country in Southern France. I wish some of those fanmade ships could be dug up again.

Maybe some designs were ridiculous, but at least give the fans some credit for imagination.
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I was never a member of the Acenet, but I remember looking at some of their ships and I especially remember the Consitution class battleship. It sounded like the designer was trying to copy US Navy weapon system's in space. I remember it supposedly had long range attack missiles that sounded very similar to the Tomahawk cruise missile and it had a close in weapon system that was like the Vulcan Phalanx. When i read the description of these, it sounded like they just copied what the current weapon system did and put it in space.
 
By the length of that thing, I thought the Constitution was some sort of supercarrier at first. I thought that was a cool design, even if the idea probably wasn't very original.

It's been a few years and back then I was not the merciless critic I am now.
 
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