Off-topic, but appreciate any feedback.

[Charlie]

This is not Swarm related, but I hope for a little forbearance from the moderators🙂.

I've started posting in a new Universe on SOL, titled The Integration Era.  The premise: 

One hundred years ago, a colonial expedition cracked open something ancient on a frontier world. The Integration ignited — an alien system of unknown origin that swept across known space like a shockwave, writing itself into the mind of every sentient being it touched. Stats. Designations. A neural overlay that measures what you are in six numbers and doesn't ask permission.

Overnight, the rules changed. Soldiers became Vanguards and Sentinels. Engineers became Technicians. Leaders became Commanders. Conventional weapons still fire, starships still fly — but the Integration introduced something beyond engineering: abilities that bend physics, materials forged in alien geometries, and a progression system where every point spent reshapes what's possible and what's irreversible. The deeper you go, the more the system invests in keeping you alive. The question is what it wants in return.

The Architects who built it are gone. Whether they're extinct, ascended, or watching through the system they left behind is the mystery no one has solved in a century of trying. The Vethari — an alien species six centuries ahead of humanity in Integration development — won't say what they know. And at the edges of mapped space, the Unintegrated wait: entities from beyond the system's reach that it cannot classify, cannot quantify, and cannot stop.

Now the galaxy runs on two kinds of power. The old kind — oligarch dynasties and corporate empires fighting a cold war for territory and resources. And the new kind — Integration levels, designation tiers, and a prime-number cost curve that makes deep specialization a lifetime commitment and true mastery a generational bet. Between them, the Fringe: the frontier where the system's rules thin out, where people who don't fit go to disappear, and where the Integration is still deciding what the rules are.

The Integration Era follows soldiers and civilians, operatives and outcasts, across a galaxy where everyone carries a stat screen and nobody agrees on what the numbers mean. From the moment the system first activated to the present day — where a disgraced operative carrying a corrupted skill slot and an anomalous Flux score is about to discover that the mission that destroyed him was never supposed to succeed — these are the stories of what happens when an alien intelligence decides to measure humanity and humanity has to decide how to answer.

The system is always watching. It has opinions about what it sees.

I've been putting up background content that helps explain the universe through short narrative stories.  My scores are far below my own self-expectations.

For any of the folks here who were around as the Swarm universe got established, are low scores for early stories common?

I've got almost a dozen background stories that I plan on posting twice a week, then get into the longer form tales: a 20k word novella and a 90k word novel.  

I think it's going to become a really cool universe to tell stories in, but would appreciate any input or feedback.

Please feel free to send any thoughts directly to me at charlief...@gmail.com so we don't pollute this list with off-topic comments.

Thanks,

-Charlie

[Mike Omelanuk]

Charlie -  As long as I've been a member of the Swarm Cycle Authors, our folks have felt free to ask others to beta read/edit/proofread stories outside the Cycle, and I've not seen it abused nor take up an inordinate amount of time from the group's core purpose. Those discussions usually take place off line as Charlie requested this time). I've asked for help with my own stories and have had some significant input. Coming soon - my request for help with my in-progress Damsels In Distress story. (Lou, one of the new members here has been beta reading and commenting on it for over a year. Bless him!) 

I read your first story and rated it a little higher than the average you are getting. I looked back at those early stories on SOL in the Swarm Cycle and they range mid-6 to mid-7. I'm not sure that's a good comparison. Maybe the Axeman Universe would be better. That's sorta the objective view.

My thoughts. 1) The two intro stories are too short and basically establish score keeping without really giving some meat to hang the scores on. All your stories that rate well are longer. 2) I'm not into the gamelit scene and really don't give a damn about the score keeping. I like the Axeman stories (have proofed some for ZM) but skip the score stuff entirely. I feel the numbers and letters could be put to better use. 3) There must be a lot of folks for whom the scores mean something but they detract for me. 4) I haven't read your 2nd in the series, but it is short and could suffer from the same lack of engagement as the 1st. 

So write a longer story and see what kind of reception you get. 

Mike

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