Bravo Fleet
Today, Bravo Fleet ended support for Nova roleplaying games.
Bravo Fleet has utilized Nova and its predecessors as our primary means of storytelling for over a decade. The current version of Nova was released in 2013 and has failed to keep up with the needs of our organization. When we reported a major security flaw that compromised the passwords of everyone who’s ever had a Nova account, Anodyne Productions scolded us for alerting our members to change their passwords. Later this year, all Nova 2 websites have the potential to break once security updates for PHP 7 end. It’s clear that the Nova 2 is no longer a reliable piece of software. We also cannot and will not depend on the promise of a new Nova that’s been in development for over 6 years.
Since 2019, we’ve worked hard to build Bravo Fleet a better alternative that will provide us a secure and centralized method of storytelling. Over the course of its development, the Bravo Fleet Management System became so much more than a writing software. It houses our competitions, member progression, gaming achievements, and, most importantly, it serves as an archive of the world we’ve all worked so hard to build together. Now, if a game closes, all of that history – stories, missions, and characters – remains accessible. Our members have a way of writing without the need to learn a single line of code or configure a database. Our game managers no longer need to worry about designing a theme or spending hours building a website from the ground up.
All of our previous Nova-based games voluntarily migrated to BFMS once we added support for RPGs a few months ago, so the move away from Nova has become a question of policy. A full brief on the policy changes will be coming soon from the Operations Office. We know that transitioning to a new system comes with a learning curve, especially because many of us have used Nova for so long, but Nova created an even more challenging process for our new members. We’ve seen other fleets and organizations stagnate over the years, and this is due in large part to Nova’s decentralized nature. New members using Nova were forced to access different websites with different accounts for their writing, and we’ve learned that the process deters many people from remaining in our hobby.
To everyone who gave the Bravo Fleet Management System a chance, thank you for your patience and for making all of this possible! We know it isn’t perfect, but it’s certainly better than the alternative and we’re constantly working hard to improve what it can do! With that, I’m happy to announce some more updates!
New Updates to BFMS
In case you missed my messages on Discord earlier this week, there are some new changes to character biographies! BFMS characters now supports both a built-in image gallery and a dynamic table of contents. To add an image gallery, scroll down to the bottom of the page while editing your character and you’ll find a section to add images. You can even add a caption to the images by editing the image’s metadata (click the image once it’s uploaded and the option will popup). For the table of contents, simply add header elements to your character’s history. Due to the structure of the page, the supported header elements are <h3>, <h4> and <h5>, with h3 being the largest and h5 being the smallest (keep in mind that a h4 below an h3 will be associated with the h3 element and an h5 below a h4 will be associated with the h4).
For those of you with your own commands, we have also added support for a tour page and a rules page. The tour page will allow you to upload images of your ship or its interior for members to experience. The rules page, available only to our roleplaying games, allows you to define standards for your game. In addition, game managers can now establish other game managers for a command, who will have access to your game’s player application. All of these new settings are available when editing your command.
We’ve also added the ability for members to comment on news announcements and stories! Further guidance on comments will be coming soon from the Lore Office, but the gist of it is: be respectful. The purpose of a comment is to encourage and support the writing of your fellow members. Once you post a comment, you will not be able to delete or edit it. The comment will exist publicly for anyone to view. The Lore Office will have the ability to delete or edit a comment as needed, but they will only do so if they feel it is inappropriate. Use this new ability wisely, and feel free to test it out in the section below!
