Intercepted Transmission

This transmission was intercepted yesterday by VGL operatives who have infiltrated Comstar. VGL intelligence officers have authorized its release today in hopes that MechWarriors in the vicinity will not be caught by surprise.

January 7, 3064
---HPG messages indicate that Star Colonel Darkton has led his Clan Jade Falcon forces in a successful raid against the garrison of Barcelona. Civilian casualties are light but the garrison was completely wiped out.
January 23, 3064
---HPG relays have informed us that Star Colonel Darkton has raided Newton’s Square for fresh supplies. Immediate help is requested Elementals are trying to break into the HPG relay station.
February 16, 3064
---HPG messages tell us that once again the fearless Star Colonel Darkton has raided another Lyran Alliance planet. No other information is known at this time about Kikuyu’s status.

April 12, 3064
--Clan Jade Flacon led by Star Colonel Darkton has renewed hostilities along the Lyran Alliance border. Skirmishes have been fought on Barcelona, Newton Square, and Kikuyu. It is believed that the Falcons will raid Blue Hole next in an attempt to capture the vast fresh water supplies the planet has. The local forces consist of a reinforced company led by Hauptmann Uglyman. The winner of this battle will control the largest source of fresh water for 15parsecs. Star Colonel Darkton has announced that he plans to land near the polar ice cap and march onto the capital city.

a)Hauptmann Uglyman secretly plans his defense of the capital city via CBT

b)Star Colonel Darkton or his subordinate will lead the Jade Falcon forces to the capital city via CBT

c)Remaining forces will be used to fight armor mode on no return games in the pods to determine who wins the day.

New hours! Members night is every night!

Hello everybody,
As I have mentioned a couple of times we learned a lot from the BBQ. I talked to a lot of you before, during, and after that event and asked what would work better for everybody schedule wise. The schedule we have kept here was something that evolved to serve a customer base suffering from a recession. Staying out late on a weeknight was not a big deal for the unemployed, and members night passes really are cheap entertainment when you consider cost per hour. I have seen people walk out with over 30 missions after a long night of playing and running no returns one night, Mauler got 63!

I understand that the economy is still not awesome, and a lot of you are still suffering from lack of work out there, but after talking to people at the BBQ it is obvious that things are somewhat better than they were. At least in this area, and certainly in the tech, game, and aerospace industries, things have improved dramatically since we opened in January of 2010. I am seeing people posting from their desk at 2am when they are normally here at The Airlock by 7pm...

We lost some key members last fall to classes and work stuff (*cough* SEC *cough*) and it has been painfully dwindling ever since. I keep hearing people say things like "I am working late tonight so I will see you next week for members night... maybe". This is not a problem with people being busy, this is a problem with The Airlock sticking to scheduling and pricing methods that were created in a different time, at a different location, for people living different lifestyles. It is just not flexible enough now that people are working longer hours out there. We originally only offered the pass one night because we didn't have enough people out there to fill multiple nights, after 2.5 years maybe we do. I am hoping that by being a little more flexible more people can fit a visit into their week... at the very least I hope some of you can help us get things rolling again and make time in the short term.

$4.30 gas hasn't helped matters, and the first good weather of the year may have been more disruptive after last year's weak summer. I have even been out mountain biking on some of the afternoons. Diablo 3 has hurt us obviously, but things were slow before that, so that isn't really the whole issue.

In the early days we tried being open on Sundays and it didn't really work in the long run. Sunday just seemed to be the empty day. I know that a few people wish we were here on Sundays but from asking around I don't believe we have enough support to be open every Sunday. Sunday is also often booked for private events and I can't afford to give that up either. So what I plan to do is a couple of special event Sundays per month. This might be a Martian Football night, another BBQ, A tournament, A bootcamp... could be anything. This way we can leg into it. If Sunday emerges as an always busy day we will do more and more of these as the summer progresses. This will require people to pay a little bit more attention to the events schedule, and I will have to be better about posting in advance, which is a constant battle that has often defeated me in the past.

So here is whats new:

Until further notice The Airlock will be closed on Tuesdays. [edited to fix typo here -->] Our normal hours will be 5pm to midnight Wednesday through Saturday.

Sunday events a couple of times a month.

The Members pass is now available any night we are open. So a member can buy a pass for $25 (including tax!) and play from open to close. Members buying the $100 pass can use their 5 passes any day we are open. The members pass does NOT include entry into any special events such as tournaments, but can be purchased for play before and after.

Wednesday will continue to be beginners night.
Thursday will continue to be RedPlanet night
Friday will continue to be BattleTech board game night (Chinook is working up a pod/board hybrid campaign for this week!)

Tuesday nights will now be available for private events at the lower (outside of business hours) rates.

We really need your support right now. May was just plain ugly. Selling 4 parties per week in April was doing wonders for digging us out of the move mess, but in all of May I only sold one or two parties... It is important to note that this is a normal slump that always happens in May, but it was much more severe this year. It is also important to note that June has always been much better than May. So we can predict that things should get a little bit better now as school is ending and SRGE rolls around again, but there is absolutely no safety net this time. If people don't fill the place up for the next couple of weeks we will most definitely be out of business. Sales have been better this year overall than we have ever seen before in the spring season, but it has not rebuilt any kind of emergency fund after the move, and May sales would definitely qualify as an emergency.

I hope that the change in rules allowing Members passes any night will make the $100 a month package for members more attractive to those who cannot make weeknights on a regular basis. If anybody has any suggestions to make this better drop me an email.

The T-Shirt presale has been going good and I just got info from one of my vendors about getting them printed.  There is still time to buy them but remember, when this presale is over we will not ever print this particular shirt again, so jump on it now! You can call the shop after we open tonight if you would like to order 425-823-9999 leave a message if I miss you.

Thank you all for your support, I hope we can keep this all going, this could be a very fun summer in the pods!

--ugh

Memorial Day Weekend At the Airlock!

We learned a lot last weekend at our BBQ, we had such a huge turnout (54 people!) for a Sunday event. Talking to people we learned how much people's lives have changed over the past few months. Many people are working longer hours and can't stay out late during the week these days. We are looking at how to best juggle the private events business and still letting people come out and play on Sundays sometimes.

We also learned a lot about the personality of the new location. We have more space to spread out and do more things. We saw some people we hadn't seen in a long time and it was kind of one big happy family. Some of our players have been involved with the pods in Seattle since the mid 1990s, and some only since the Airlock opened, some even more recent than that. But after two and a half years here we have a lot of history between us and it is a lot of fun to just get together and hang out. We are still going to have our tournaments and all of that kind of stuff, but we are also going to have more BBQs and other free form hangout nights.

I have been clearing out some space and unpacking some more boxes. I have had a lot of behind the scenes stuff I have been working on that have been preventing me from doing the visible things. Thanks for being patient, hopefully we can make it better and better as the Summer rolls on, with some new space freed up let us know if you have any fun ideas for how to use it, but please keep in mind we do have some plans already, so some of the space is more or less spoken for.

It seems our new location calls for less formal events, and that is just fine with me. Lets kick it off this weekend with special hours and special pricing! Info below:


Laid back fun all weekend, we will be open 5pm to midnight (maybe later as usual) Saturday and Sunday.

Monday we will close after 10:00pm unless there is still a crowd.

Special prices to spend the whole weekend with us:
(These prices are available between now and when we close on Memorial Day!)

One night unlimited pass: $30 + tax
Two nights unlimited pass: $55 + tax
Three nights unlimited pass $65 + tax
Friday - Monday unlimited pass $70 + tax

We will be doing some sort of fun BattleTech tournament Saturday night. Nothing too serious, just for fun.

We will probably grill up some brats at some point this weekend, order in some pizza, watch some movies, etc.

If you are on the pass feel free to play BattleTech board game in the front room or play some nintendo64 (we could use another controller to get some 4 player going because I lost one of mine) for no additional charge, and we will be looking for some other things to do too. Not everybody is going out of town this weekend and some people are coming into town looking for things to do so look no further, it is going to be fun!

https://www.facebook.com/events/154666897991695/

The "I Saved The Airlock" T-shirt presale details!

I have just received some artwork done by Jason "Solstice" Olsan than I asked for the other day. Most of you already know that we are struggling to keep The Airlock going after the move and the other drama of the last few months. Account balances are dangerously low and it is only a matter of time before something puts us over the edge.

So here is your chance to help! We are offering a presale of a special T-shirt. We will not ever be making this particular shirt again, so this is your one chance to own it! The artwork will be something like below (thanks Jason!). Please note this is only a mock-up and the actual colors may vary when we take it to print. We are looking to have these printed about a month from now. The sooner you buy the more it helps us 

The price is $25 plus tax per shirt. Please remember this is supposed to be a fundraiser and not an awesome deal on a cheap T-Shirt! For a few dollars shipping I would be happy to ship these anywhere in the world! If you would like to pay more than $25 to help us out that is also appreciated, but certainly not required! I can accept payment by phone during our business hours (425-823-9999), so no need to make a special trip if you don't want to, or don't live around here!

If The Airlock ever fails you will be left with a very unique and ironic addition to your wardrobe! Thanks to all those who have already jumped on this, this could make a huge difference as we try to roll out some new fun stuff this Summer!

Thank you all for your support, the last three years have certainly been the most fun of my life, lets keep the pods in Washington where they belong!

--kelly

The First Ever Airlock T-Shirt! PRESALE NOW!

Hi Everybody,
First of all I want to thank you all so much for making the BBQ great on sunday! We counted 54 people total! We look forward to doing lots more fun events like that in the future!

I am sorry to say that we are facing a financial crunch as we finally kickoff the busy arcade season with Memorial day weekend. I will be offering a special T-Shirt Presale starting today for anybody who would like to help out!

For those who would like to know the details of our current situation read on, for those who just want to know about the T-shirt skip ahead to the heading "T-Shirt Info" below and read there.

This has been a very exciting and stressful few months. We escaped a very bad landlord-tenant relationship that nearly ended our run. We survived 2 failed commercial real estate deals, zoning problems in 2 cities and an endless list of other problems. RedPlanet was finally released officially which meant we had to pay for that license, and there was an endless list of other expenses to get setup and moved into the new place. If you had told me in January how much money we were going to have to bring in to keep this all going I would have thought there was no way. The amount of deposits that have needed to be laid out to get things fired up at the new place are approximately equal to an entire month of expenses, and we have had to produce that money in what has always been a very slow time of year between Christmas and Spring Break.

We once again proved just how much love there is for the pods in Seattle! Sales increased and we paid off a huge backlog of bills, some of them dating back well before the move. The main area of sales growth was in the private events we were booking. We have had so much fun with everything from bachelor parties to birthday parties to team building events to customer appreciation events. All of them have been unique, but all of them have been fun! Thanks so much to everybody who booked an event here.

Sales were so good in fact that it looked like we were going to be just fine... but there is always a catch I suppose. May is always a little bit of a mess. Anybody in school is making the final push toward Summer, anybody who likes to play outside gets their first good weather, and anybody planning something for memorial day weekend gets busy too! So things were cranking along just fine through most of April and then it stopped. As if somebody turned off a light switch somewhere the phone quit ringing and the night business struggled. Tournaments and similar events have been amazing, we have even tied the record here for most entries in a single tournament since we opened almost two and a half years ago, but members nights have been at least as slow as they usually are in May. It seems we have lost some people to overtime too. I often pop on facebook or google+ wondering where the regulars are and I see them posting in the middle of the night from their office. It is exciting to see the economy showing signs of life, but we are going to need to make some adjustments to adapt.

I fully expect June to be busy, but the bank accounts are dangerously low. There has long been demand for a line of merchandise... T-shirts, hats, etc. I would love to see that happen, but since the day we opened there has not been money to do a stocking order. We need money in the bank immediately and memorial day weekend is very unpredictable. Starting today we will be doing a T-Shirt Presale for those who would like to help out. This is *not* meant to be a great deal on a T-Shirt, this is hopefully a way that we can roll out a special limited run of shirts and hopefully bring in enough money to get us over the current crunch and do a small print run of the next merch so we can get the ball rolling. After this fundraiser we really want to roll out the line of "I Shot Soto At the Airlock" clothing so help us by getting in on the presale for this first shirt!

T-Shirt Info:

The shirt will be a simple black T-shirt that says "I Saved The Airlock" on it. We are only going to make as many as are pre ordered, and then that is all we will ever make of this particular shirt. This will be your only chance to ever get this shirt. We will be offering this presale for the next few weeks, but it would be a huge help if people buy it very soon.

The Price will be $25 + tax and for an extra few dollars shipping, I would be happy to send them to anyone in the world who would like to buy them. If people would like to pay more, to help us refill the rainy day fund that is very much appreciated, but certainly not required. I am happy to take orders over the phone if people call in the evenings with credit card info and T-Shirt Size. Please keep in mind that we will be taking this order to the printer about a month from now so it is going to take some time to be delivered.

If we sell enough of these to put a little bit back in the rainy day fund and do a stocking order on more merchandise for the summer we will hopefully be able to offer better deals. Please keep in mind this is meant to be an emergency fundraiser and not some claim that a T-Shirt with my logo is somehow magically worth $25... I am hoping rather that people will look at The Airlock itself as being worth an extra $25 this month. That could set us up for an amazing summer here!

We will have some special prices and some special hours for memorial day weekend which I will be posting shortly. It is going to be a great weekend here and I am going to be open lots of extra hours for anybody who wants to visit on the long weekend! I will deal with the new store hours in another post soon and we will also be expanding the benefits of the $100 monthly members pass!

Thank you all for your support, we will have mockup artwork for the shirt soon.

--ugh

Airlock Homecoming BBQ! And a question for the pilots.

Hi Everybody,

Hope you are all enjoying the good weather and server timeouts! Also hope you will all take a break and play at The Airlock this week, we really need the support. As most of you know we really took a hit we couldn't afford when we moved. We need another busy month or two to really solidify our new situation here.

A few months back it was feeling like there was some significant recovery happening in the economy. It would be foolish to expect anything too big in an election year I suppose, but I was starting to feel very hopeful for the future. A couple of weeks back we slowed down again. I have heard many different theories why this might be, but I have a unique view of the tech industry from the various social networking feeds here. My initial reaction was that maybe the economic move had been derailed somehow, or maybe the weather or any number of other things I considered.

From catching up with a bunch of people on facebook, twitter, google plus, some phone calls, etc it seems to me like what is actually happening is that people are suddenly working more hours. Whether that be somebody who was unemployed getting a job, or somebody who was already working, now getting called in for overtime, it seems like the common theme is more hours being worked out there. There isn't much I can do to help you have more free time, but we definitely can re-evaluate the hours here and see if there is something we can do to be open when you are not all working.

From talking to some people I am finding many of them are working later on weeknights, and even Saturday, but it sounds like some of those people working OT are available on Sunday. The reason we closed on Sunday was just lack of interest before. I can't go back to 6 days a week at this point for a regular schedule, I am already working most days and have been all along, if I add another 8 hours of customer service a week some very important stuff is going to stop getting done. 

So in the meantime while we figure this out I am looking at running a few Sunday events to see how much support there is, starting with this Sunday's BBQ! We can consider trading Tuesday for Sunday maybe, or maybe we need to start over and do something completely different. I have contacted a bunch of people that I haven't heard from in a while and invited them. The response has been overwhelmingly positive so far! I hope you will all join us, whether it is your first time, your first time in a while, or you are several times a week, I hope to see you on Sunday.

It would be helpful if those of you reading this would stop and think for a minute. I know that a lot of you have been very busy, and I know that there have been some major life events and career changes that have turned your schedules upside down. If you have any thoughts about this please drop me an email at pilotinfo@the-airlock.com. Let us know what is going on out there, and let me know if there is something we can do to schedule things more conveniently for you. This is your chance to vote if you would like us open earlier, later, Sundays, Mondays, lunchtime, etc. You can also let us know if you would like to see tournaments and boot camps on days other than Saturday. If I see any sort of a pattern to the responses we will start working on a new schedule.

We have a boot camp Saturday so I hope we will get the usual army of teachers and I hope we will see lots of new players who want to learn the game. Please let your friends know about that. Hearing back from lots of people who said Sunday is better right now we are getting geared up for the homecoming BBQ on Sunday. It will be a laid back chance for some old friends to get together, play some games in the pods and relax. I will paste the details below.

I am very excited at the response so far, if it turns out as good as I think it will, we will start doing stuff like this on a regular basis.

Thanks everybody,

Please send me those emails!

--ugh

Everybody is welcome to join us as we welcome back those pilots we haven't seen in a while! 

No Alcohol, but anything goes otherwise:

Potluck, Bring anything you would like, if you want to contribute

Bring something to BBQ!

Bring your family and friends!

Its free to join us for the BBQ, and if you would like to play in the pods we will be offering a pass from 2-8pm for just $10!

I know that a lot of people have been working late nights lately, a lot of people have been away for other reasons. Many of you haven't even seen the new place yet! So this Sunday we will fire up the grill, and fire up the pods! We will mix and match a bunch of different types of games from silly to serious, BattleTech or RedPlanet, feel free to request a game!

If anybody would like to run BattleTech board game in the front room they are more than welcome to. We are hoping to see some old friends show up for this one! Feel free to pass on the invite if you know somebody who should be here!

https://www.facebook.com/events/380411068661108/

Clarifications and NEW members pass sponsorship program!

Continuing the grueling process of reworking the pricing here, and reworking how we do business to better suit what is going on at the new location. I have long been frustrated by the idea that on advanced BattleTech night or on RedPlanet night the members get a pass, but if they bring a friend who wants to spend the same amount of money the friend either needs to stop playing sooner, or the member needs to bail out early on the pass... this isn't right and the way that I have worked around it in the past was usually to offer up the pass if the non member wanted to play longer. This was sloppy and not published anywhere. It has long been on my list to address this in some sort of sane way. 

The important thing to remember is that Advanced night exists not to be the ONLY advanced game time of the week, and not to be an exclusive members ONLY thing either... it exists to carve out a little safe harbor for people who take this game seriously and have played a lot, and simply aren't happy playing basic stuff anymore. Most of the advanced players are fine to play basic games for a while, but it becomes frustrating when the entire night goes this way, or when I have to continually reject mech choices to make it sane for the new players. We have lots of new players at any given time that don't mind losing, and don't mind being over their head in a heat on game in the lava field. Certainly it would be great for these players to show up on Advanced night (Currently Tuesdays for BT and Thursdays for RP). 

We also have players that do not find it fun to get in a hopeless game. They don't want to spend their hard earned money for a 10 minute ride down a blue tunnel. This makes sense to me too, and for that reason Beginners night exists, and has served us well. I am not very happy with the current structure of that night, and that is on my list to rework also, but I am very happy that it exists, and I am glad to see some of these quite busy lately.

We can of course always handle the odd handful of people who show up on the "wrong" night. Like a small group of people who show up on Advanced night and don't want to play with the members could probably be accommodated most of the time, but if we get a couple of those groups, or a very large group like that then we have a big problem. The members don't get their money's worth out of the pass and it is less fun for everybody.

I am now ready to lay out a new way we can solve this problem and hopefully bring some new faces to advanced night. From now on a member may sponsor one non-member per members night, so that they also may buy the members night pass! There will be some restrictions on this which I will get to in a minute, but let me describe how this could work... Let's say that R2D2 wants to bring a non-member friend on Thursday night to play RedPlanet. No problem! They show up and they can both buy the pass for member's price and play all night!. If R2D2's friend needs help getting up to speed R2D2 will be there to help teach, and it is up to R2D2 to warn his friend about the level of play to expect. R2D2 knows his friend better than we do, so he can make an effort to suggest beginners night if his friend is not up to the challenge. 

Restrictions on members pass sponsorship:

The member must be present to help teach his/her friend how to play

A member may only sponsor one non-member per members night

A Member may not sponsor the same non-member twice in a row

    (What I mean is you must find a different non-member to bring before you can bring the same person a second time)

These restrictions might change if we find the balance is broken in some way, but I am happy with them for the time being.

We have a handful of regulars who will be missing this month for sports, travel, moving, school, etc. So I want to ask that the members PLEASE make an effort to show up for an advanced night this month, and if possible, please take advantage of this new program and bring a friend.

I would also like to offer a special deal right now, the first 5 non-members that email me with the subject line "Sponsorship Special" at pilotinfo@the-airlock.com will be sponsored by ME next Tuesday for advanced BattleTech Night! No prior experience necessary, but a willingness to laugh when you lose is required!

 If there are any groups out there who don't fit this mold but would like to join us for an Advanced night this month, drop me an email and I will see what I can do. We have a rare shot at accommodating groups like this in May this year due to quite a few people being out for part of this month. I will try to coordinate so we keep the balance sane. This should be groups that don't mind getting beat on and are looking for a challenge.

Thanks everybody, hope to see you all soon!

--ugh

Specials available this week!

As many of you know by now, Pharaoh and HarborBomber will be visiting from Denver this Friday and Saturday. They said they were pretty sure there isn't anybody in Seattle who has even the slightest chance of beating them.

So we want to make sure you can all be good and warmed up for this one! Just like when we had Deadeye and Thunderbear up from CA we will be offering a pass for the whole week!

Unlimited play pass for 5pm to at least midnight, Tuesday through Saturday this week only:
Non-members: $100 + tax
Members: $80 + tax
Members who buy the monthly package for May: $20 + tax!

Thats right! Members can get the monthly package described in this blog post from a couple of days ago for just $100 and add on a pass for this entire week for just $20! (I had said earlier members on the monthly package would get this week pass for half price, but I changed my mind... it is 1/4 the price!)

We kick it off tonight with advanced BattleTech night, hope to see you all!

see you soon
--ugh