Welcome!
This clan was a big part of my late childhood and I'd like a place to write about it so that I don't forget sometime in the future. I've come back to this site in order to add a bit of a memorial to The Delta Squad.
Delta Squad Retrospective
In this section I'll look at the setup of various parts of Delta Squad's structure and reflect on what worked and what didn't. When I was cast out into Halo: Reach I wasn't given a blueprint for what the clan should look like so I ended up inventing the layout as I went when I was 10 years old. And most of what I came up with, never got changed. This makes for some fairly odd design decisions that I'll be able to outline here.
Ranks
The original Delta Squad ranking structure relied on a large number of basic "filler" ranks designed to sort out members by their level of contribution to the squad. It was fairly effective at having the most loyal people near or at the top. The ranks were given names based on the Halo 3 ranking system and were made to correspond to the armor colors available in Halo Reach so that a member could change their secondary color to indicate their rank.
Above the original ranks were the "Delta Ranks" in which advancement unlocked various command opportunities to members of the squad. However, I honestly have no idea why they were called that.
This system was pretty effective at "time gating" new members so that they couldn't do much administrative damage early in their career. However, being based on the Halo 3 ranking system was a mistake since it had everyone running around as Lieutenants and Force Colonels in their first month being in the clan.
If I had to redesign this part of the clan I think I would better organize the distribution of privileges throughout the ranks as well as change the names of the ranks to better correspond with the privileges they grant rather than having everyone be officers from rank 9. The last change I would make is to the method of ranking up. Originally, attaining the same number of attendances, recruits, alliances, or meetings would guarantee a rank up at any rank, but it makes more sense to scale the requirements higher as you move up through the ranks.
Trainings
The original Delta Squad training structure was exceedingly front heavy. The quip about "not many" passing on the information page was a wild understatement. When the squad was doing well, we would have around 10-20 people playing with the squad on a daily basis that had not yet passed training having failed it over 10 times and we had members that had been trying to pass for multiple years. That's not a failure of personnel, that's a failure of administration.
I would move the current "basic training" to be the graduation exam for the recruit ranks. This would give the members in this category a reason to be more studious and learn from the experienced members around them rather than start off in the clan believing they already are experts due to having passed the first training. In the 6 years of Delta Squad's operation, we only had two graduates from the advanced training program. I believe this was a result of the exhaustion members experienced from basic combined with both a lack of incentive and an excess of rigor. Moving the trainings to be graduation requirements lowers the barrier to entry to the squad and should in theory produce a more dedicated and receptive body of lower enlisted members.
Specializations
The original Delta Squad specialization system was fairly solid to begin with and provided members with varied experiences within a single clan. Specializations could have their own ranking structure, trainings, and certifications that they could offer to other squad mates. The only issue I can see with this system is that there were entirely too many specializations for the number of squad members that were expected to fill them. There were specializations for everything from CQC, explosive ordinance, piloting falcons, and driving warthogs, to completing legendary campaigns.
The change I would make here is to both reduce the total number of allowed specializations by collapsing similar categories like "weapons" or "vehicles" and converting certain specializations into "roles" so that they can be occupied while being a member of another specialization to provide overlap so that less members can populate more positions.
Governance
The original Delta Squad relied on a council, I believe this system was put in place so that I could keep my close friends with me in the "front end" of the clan and not have to tell them about the other part of Delta Squad. If "collections" came through, I could claim that they were helping me run the agent processing module. And I wouldn't have been lying either, as these members often helped keep the clan active while I was away. In practice though, the Delta Squad was a monarchy with occasional input from advisors. If I had to redesign the system, I'd do it with that in mind as the end goal though I probably wouldn't see any efficiency benefits from the change.
Misc
Finally, the last thing I would change about Delta Squad is the fact that we ran an intelligence division. I believe the thing that held us back the most is that all the most talented and devoted members of the squad were whisked away to another division that did little to assist the actual clan part of the Squad. Once these members were isolated it was only a matter of time before they became unresponsive, so in order to keep up our reporting we had to continually sacrifice top members of the clan. This was not a recipe for success.
Ranks
The original Delta Squad ranking structure relied on a large number of basic "filler" ranks designed to sort out members by their level of contribution to the squad. It was fairly effective at having the most loyal people near or at the top. The ranks were given names based on the Halo 3 ranking system and were made to correspond to the armor colors available in Halo Reach so that a member could change their secondary color to indicate their rank.
Above the original ranks were the "Delta Ranks" in which advancement unlocked various command opportunities to members of the squad. However, I honestly have no idea why they were called that.
This system was pretty effective at "time gating" new members so that they couldn't do much administrative damage early in their career. However, being based on the Halo 3 ranking system was a mistake since it had everyone running around as Lieutenants and Force Colonels in their first month being in the clan.
If I had to redesign this part of the clan I think I would better organize the distribution of privileges throughout the ranks as well as change the names of the ranks to better correspond with the privileges they grant rather than having everyone be officers from rank 9. The last change I would make is to the method of ranking up. Originally, attaining the same number of attendances, recruits, alliances, or meetings would guarantee a rank up at any rank, but it makes more sense to scale the requirements higher as you move up through the ranks.
Trainings
The original Delta Squad training structure was exceedingly front heavy. The quip about "not many" passing on the information page was a wild understatement. When the squad was doing well, we would have around 10-20 people playing with the squad on a daily basis that had not yet passed training having failed it over 10 times and we had members that had been trying to pass for multiple years. That's not a failure of personnel, that's a failure of administration.
I would move the current "basic training" to be the graduation exam for the recruit ranks. This would give the members in this category a reason to be more studious and learn from the experienced members around them rather than start off in the clan believing they already are experts due to having passed the first training. In the 6 years of Delta Squad's operation, we only had two graduates from the advanced training program. I believe this was a result of the exhaustion members experienced from basic combined with both a lack of incentive and an excess of rigor. Moving the trainings to be graduation requirements lowers the barrier to entry to the squad and should in theory produce a more dedicated and receptive body of lower enlisted members.
Specializations
The original Delta Squad specialization system was fairly solid to begin with and provided members with varied experiences within a single clan. Specializations could have their own ranking structure, trainings, and certifications that they could offer to other squad mates. The only issue I can see with this system is that there were entirely too many specializations for the number of squad members that were expected to fill them. There were specializations for everything from CQC, explosive ordinance, piloting falcons, and driving warthogs, to completing legendary campaigns.
The change I would make here is to both reduce the total number of allowed specializations by collapsing similar categories like "weapons" or "vehicles" and converting certain specializations into "roles" so that they can be occupied while being a member of another specialization to provide overlap so that less members can populate more positions.
Governance
The original Delta Squad relied on a council, I believe this system was put in place so that I could keep my close friends with me in the "front end" of the clan and not have to tell them about the other part of Delta Squad. If "collections" came through, I could claim that they were helping me run the agent processing module. And I wouldn't have been lying either, as these members often helped keep the clan active while I was away. In practice though, the Delta Squad was a monarchy with occasional input from advisors. If I had to redesign the system, I'd do it with that in mind as the end goal though I probably wouldn't see any efficiency benefits from the change.
Misc
Finally, the last thing I would change about Delta Squad is the fact that we ran an intelligence division. I believe the thing that held us back the most is that all the most talented and devoted members of the squad were whisked away to another division that did little to assist the actual clan part of the Squad. Once these members were isolated it was only a matter of time before they became unresponsive, so in order to keep up our reporting we had to continually sacrifice top members of the clan. This was not a recipe for success.
Timeline
2008 is the year I would claim as my start date in the Halo Clan Community. Before this, I hadn't joined a real clan that was larger than just one group of friends. Around this time, I was collecting information on Halo 3 clans on sheets of paper for the purpose of implementing systems from other groups in my own failed clan: Phoenix. I would join a clan, go through their "try-outs" phase and leave to find a new one taking what I learned along with me.
One of the clans I joined was larger and more established than the rest and when I informed them that I was leaving, it came out that I was taking notes on them. One of the leaders was amused that such a young member was acting as a spy on his own behalf and decided to take me under his wing. He convinced me that continuing work on my own failed clan was not worth my time and that because I was so young no one would take my clan seriously for quite a while. He named quite an impressive list of reasons why I should stay in his clan and do work under him along with the promise of a future leadership position when he felt I was ready. I agreed and learned under him for about two years.
During this time I learned a lot from being around people much older than me. I was also however, pretty marginalized even in this clan for being so young. I didn't mind however as the leader and his friends were past the age where they made fun of kids just for being young. (I think he must of been 19 when I joined)
When Halo Reach launched in 2010, I finally got what I had been promised: a leadership position. I was sent into the new game as "Delta Squad" one of four groups with orders to survey and report back information to the parent clan based on Halo 3. At the time I was absolutely thrilled that they had trusted me to lead my own Squad, but looking back I realized they trusted my leadership over no one, as unlike the other squads, I was told I had to get my own members. The Squad's names also generally aligned with their "closeness" to the parent clan with Alpha Squad even fostering some of the clan's leaders that wanted to try out Halo: Reach. My squad, the fourth in the list, was likely regarded as a throwaway unit initially.
At the time, however, these considerations were over my head and I was content to run my squad even with minimal support and thorough skepticism from my superiors. And in the first two years of operation, I began to seek out and recruit the friends that would stay with the organization for its entire lifespan.
Delta Squad was divided into two groups, the first was "agent processing" where I got to run the clan like any other and have fun all while serving as a filter to the members who were truly committed to the Squad. These "truly committed members" would attain the highest rank in the clan at which point they were made privy to its other half who's existence was mandated by our parent organization: TAC.FI. Which is an acronym standing for "Tactical Field Infiltration" a name referring to the clan's practice of joining other clans for the purpose of reconnaissance or offensive intelligence operations.
These operations were the domain of The Delta Intelligence Division which was comprised of Delta assets liaison to TAC.FI's own intelligence headquarters: The Cortex. Agents "on assignment" were originally tasked with gathering specific kernels of information or answering specific questions by our "Cortex Operator, 0-Juliet-00" However, intelligence collection is difficult to separate from covert action and Juliet began coaching Delta assets through more and more complicated operations based on intelligence collected earlier that was later deemed "actionable" once our operational standards were incrementally modified following the completion of increasingly daring objectives.
By 2012, however, agents began contacting me about difficulty reaching Juliet and shortly after I was informed of her resignation. This was also around the time that I launched The Delta Squad's first website on Wix, it had become quite bloated however and I ended up deleting it (I regret that today) and replacing it with this site in 2014.
Along with the information on Juliet's resignation was a promotion to Cortex Operator for Delta Squad. I had, rather humorously, effectively been made my own clan's intelligence commander and correspondent. It was now my responsibility to assign and manage intelligence operations for TAC.FI's central command as well as more closely interface with our reporting framework. This framework was in the form of a media-fire download which launched a CLI meant to emulate an ONI terminal connected to what I assume was a primitive forum and IRC channel. (I later found out that it was hosted by the clan leader's university before being transferred to a paid hosting for a short time after he graduated) Prior to this promotion, I had sent and received messages on the program in a manner similar to email. But after I had been granted elevated access, I saw that what I had formerly regarded as practically a fancy messenger client was in reality a sort of operating system for what appeared to be a remote file server archive full of, in addition to other things, reports submitted by Delta agents addressed to Juliet. Looking back, messages were likely not "sent" rather just written to a file on the server and "read" from them when it was accessed. Selective display of information from text files could reproduce the functionality of the program, given enough complexity... at least the parts I had access to.
At this point I was rather intrigued with how much I didn't know and could potentially access. There were a few other squads, but contact with them was discouraged. Although I never did get the chance to see it, I imagine they had their own archives full of reports addressed to their own cortex operator.
I believe it was ultimately seeing the potential utility of this central management server that inspired me to build the first generation of the Delta Squad website for the "front end" of the clan now that I think about it. And for the roster, I started listing entries in the format they were written in the Cortex Database: 4-Alpha-17 for DELTA A17. Finally, after two years the name 0-Juliet-00 made sense.
Adjusting to my new additional role managing intelligence operations was easier than I expected, especially with the availability of a large library of past operational reports to read over. By this point, agents were typically interested in doing or learning one thing or another and simply came up with their own assignments to report on. Occasionally I would organize a team to assist with an operation involving the "front end" of Delta Squad but that was rare and the majority of the operations pursued by Delta Intelligence were self assigned.
Over the next few years, the community on Halo 3 had gotten to a point where the remnants of TAC.FI could no longer find anything to do. Delta Squad's self reliance bred through lack of support would come to serve me in the long run as the members of the original clan began to grow older and the population of Halo 3 dwindled. TAC.FI began to decay into a skeleton crew which worked to keep the illusion of their organization's health alive. Right before the end, they attempted to move onto Halo: Reach without much success as the members didn't agree with changes that the title made to the sandbox and simply didn't enjoy playing the game leading to inactivity. By 2014, I was fairly sure that neither Alpha nor Bravo Squad were active anymore even with TAC.FI's merge into Alpha a little under year prior. Delta Squad though, was still entertaining for me, the front end was hosting games everyday and I had agents submitting reports from the field, we were virtually operating as a standalone clan from this point onwards.
The end, however, came suddenly. In July of 2016 the file server that the desktop application was accessing went offline. I wasn't there to see the login message but apparently there was only a few hours warning for the shutdown. Agent X32 who had seen it while I was sleeping in that day, informed me that the clan leader had decided to stop paying for the hosting after not interacting with the clan since 2013. All of the reports submitted for the entire 6 year period that we had access were gone without a trace. I decided that this was probably a good place to stop and shut down the clan.
I was not done with Halo clans however, I left in search of a new parent organization, a new database for reports, and a new independent operating unit. I had heard rumors of a clan without equal for a few years and I left in order to find it.
A fairly lengthy investigation ensued, culminating in the divination of a URL: The application page for The Office of Naval Intelligence.
One of the clans I joined was larger and more established than the rest and when I informed them that I was leaving, it came out that I was taking notes on them. One of the leaders was amused that such a young member was acting as a spy on his own behalf and decided to take me under his wing. He convinced me that continuing work on my own failed clan was not worth my time and that because I was so young no one would take my clan seriously for quite a while. He named quite an impressive list of reasons why I should stay in his clan and do work under him along with the promise of a future leadership position when he felt I was ready. I agreed and learned under him for about two years.
During this time I learned a lot from being around people much older than me. I was also however, pretty marginalized even in this clan for being so young. I didn't mind however as the leader and his friends were past the age where they made fun of kids just for being young. (I think he must of been 19 when I joined)
When Halo Reach launched in 2010, I finally got what I had been promised: a leadership position. I was sent into the new game as "Delta Squad" one of four groups with orders to survey and report back information to the parent clan based on Halo 3. At the time I was absolutely thrilled that they had trusted me to lead my own Squad, but looking back I realized they trusted my leadership over no one, as unlike the other squads, I was told I had to get my own members. The Squad's names also generally aligned with their "closeness" to the parent clan with Alpha Squad even fostering some of the clan's leaders that wanted to try out Halo: Reach. My squad, the fourth in the list, was likely regarded as a throwaway unit initially.
At the time, however, these considerations were over my head and I was content to run my squad even with minimal support and thorough skepticism from my superiors. And in the first two years of operation, I began to seek out and recruit the friends that would stay with the organization for its entire lifespan.
Delta Squad was divided into two groups, the first was "agent processing" where I got to run the clan like any other and have fun all while serving as a filter to the members who were truly committed to the Squad. These "truly committed members" would attain the highest rank in the clan at which point they were made privy to its other half who's existence was mandated by our parent organization: TAC.FI. Which is an acronym standing for "Tactical Field Infiltration" a name referring to the clan's practice of joining other clans for the purpose of reconnaissance or offensive intelligence operations.
These operations were the domain of The Delta Intelligence Division which was comprised of Delta assets liaison to TAC.FI's own intelligence headquarters: The Cortex. Agents "on assignment" were originally tasked with gathering specific kernels of information or answering specific questions by our "Cortex Operator, 0-Juliet-00" However, intelligence collection is difficult to separate from covert action and Juliet began coaching Delta assets through more and more complicated operations based on intelligence collected earlier that was later deemed "actionable" once our operational standards were incrementally modified following the completion of increasingly daring objectives.
By 2012, however, agents began contacting me about difficulty reaching Juliet and shortly after I was informed of her resignation. This was also around the time that I launched The Delta Squad's first website on Wix, it had become quite bloated however and I ended up deleting it (I regret that today) and replacing it with this site in 2014.
Along with the information on Juliet's resignation was a promotion to Cortex Operator for Delta Squad. I had, rather humorously, effectively been made my own clan's intelligence commander and correspondent. It was now my responsibility to assign and manage intelligence operations for TAC.FI's central command as well as more closely interface with our reporting framework. This framework was in the form of a media-fire download which launched a CLI meant to emulate an ONI terminal connected to what I assume was a primitive forum and IRC channel. (I later found out that it was hosted by the clan leader's university before being transferred to a paid hosting for a short time after he graduated) Prior to this promotion, I had sent and received messages on the program in a manner similar to email. But after I had been granted elevated access, I saw that what I had formerly regarded as practically a fancy messenger client was in reality a sort of operating system for what appeared to be a remote file server archive full of, in addition to other things, reports submitted by Delta agents addressed to Juliet. Looking back, messages were likely not "sent" rather just written to a file on the server and "read" from them when it was accessed. Selective display of information from text files could reproduce the functionality of the program, given enough complexity... at least the parts I had access to.
At this point I was rather intrigued with how much I didn't know and could potentially access. There were a few other squads, but contact with them was discouraged. Although I never did get the chance to see it, I imagine they had their own archives full of reports addressed to their own cortex operator.
I believe it was ultimately seeing the potential utility of this central management server that inspired me to build the first generation of the Delta Squad website for the "front end" of the clan now that I think about it. And for the roster, I started listing entries in the format they were written in the Cortex Database: 4-Alpha-17 for DELTA A17. Finally, after two years the name 0-Juliet-00 made sense.
Adjusting to my new additional role managing intelligence operations was easier than I expected, especially with the availability of a large library of past operational reports to read over. By this point, agents were typically interested in doing or learning one thing or another and simply came up with their own assignments to report on. Occasionally I would organize a team to assist with an operation involving the "front end" of Delta Squad but that was rare and the majority of the operations pursued by Delta Intelligence were self assigned.
Over the next few years, the community on Halo 3 had gotten to a point where the remnants of TAC.FI could no longer find anything to do. Delta Squad's self reliance bred through lack of support would come to serve me in the long run as the members of the original clan began to grow older and the population of Halo 3 dwindled. TAC.FI began to decay into a skeleton crew which worked to keep the illusion of their organization's health alive. Right before the end, they attempted to move onto Halo: Reach without much success as the members didn't agree with changes that the title made to the sandbox and simply didn't enjoy playing the game leading to inactivity. By 2014, I was fairly sure that neither Alpha nor Bravo Squad were active anymore even with TAC.FI's merge into Alpha a little under year prior. Delta Squad though, was still entertaining for me, the front end was hosting games everyday and I had agents submitting reports from the field, we were virtually operating as a standalone clan from this point onwards.
The end, however, came suddenly. In July of 2016 the file server that the desktop application was accessing went offline. I wasn't there to see the login message but apparently there was only a few hours warning for the shutdown. Agent X32 who had seen it while I was sleeping in that day, informed me that the clan leader had decided to stop paying for the hosting after not interacting with the clan since 2013. All of the reports submitted for the entire 6 year period that we had access were gone without a trace. I decided that this was probably a good place to stop and shut down the clan.
I was not done with Halo clans however, I left in search of a new parent organization, a new database for reports, and a new independent operating unit. I had heard rumors of a clan without equal for a few years and I left in order to find it.
A fairly lengthy investigation ensued, culminating in the divination of a URL: The application page for The Office of Naval Intelligence.