IRSWalker

First time with BCM...... I get home, after reading the manual through four times at work. Train is cancelled, everything is conspiring to stop me from playing BCM...... Install DX 8.1, install the game, install the patch, install recommended video card driver......reboot reboot reboot reboot......argh I want to play! But I want to play it at its best...... Start the game...logo...menu...New button works! And so I play my first game. And I die, quickly. So I play another game, and I die quickly. What's going on? Play another game, die quickly. I am beginning to get disillusioned when...... I play another game. And this time I stop trying to do everything at once. Yes, Battlecruisers CAN go atmospheric, but in a real world, would they ever? No. And the commander wouldn't pilot them unless there were execptional circumstances. He would get his minions to do so. So I stop playing Kirk, and start playing Picard. All of a sudden, the challenge of organising a mining operation from an orbiting spacecraft becomes better than flying the shuttle there myself. While my shuttles are deploying their drones, the klaxon sounds, and an enemy cruiser is heading for the system's starstation. I'm military, and it's my job to defend these people. But I can't just abandon my people. So I assign a fighter to defend the shuttles and I head for the station. The fight is short - its a complete mismatch. Another shuttle tows the enemy cruiser to the station and I get experience points. I head back to the moon to collect the mining drones. I laugh out loud when I see one is full of diamonds! Dock at the base, trade, buy some spares for the trip. But I don't go mining again. All of a sudden I feel like I am letting my people down if I don't do what I am paid for. I fire up the navitron and set a course for another system - perhaps I might be needed there. The ship starts to wend its way to my destination. Meanwhile, I check my shuttles and sure enough one has been damaged by the plank marine that was flying it, so I assign some engineers to repair the damage...... ......and then I save the game and go to bed. I was so nearly disillusioned, but the problem was not the game, it was me. Once I started to believe, it all flowed so naturally. What a fantastic game. There simply is no other experience like it on a computer. All the best, SC. Smiley

quote:Originally posted by Eihort: So when are you going to do the Battlestar Galactica MOD and the Space: Above and Beyond MOD? Just some little remarks from little ol me. OMG! Space: Above and Beyond would be SOOOOOO cool! And the technologies would just about fit too That's a series that should never have died. Or maybe it will always be excellent because it did.

Heh heh - looks like it'll have top be "the bloke who falls asleep and snores loudly and grossly for an hour on his train into work causing much disgust among his fellow passengers" Unfortunately, the following equation doesn't appear to have a solution in the real world: x = 24 hours / (BCM + newborn baby + job + sleep)

Out of interest, mine arrived this morning, and I never received a confirmation email. So I had a very happy surprise......until I realised that my idiot boss had scheduled me to work late today. Still, no-one will ever accuse me of not reading the manual - I have read it through 4 times already today! BTW, if anyone is wondering, my idiot boss is......myself! Smiley, UK Battlecruiserer (has anyone got any good words meaning Battlecruiser player?)

quote:Originally posted by $iLk: I may be wrong but we have MASSIVE amounts of air traffic compared to the UK and thus have to have some expediency. I remembered being told that Heathrow was the world's busiest airport, but it turns out it is not (see The world's busiest airports). Although if you add together the figures for Heathrow and Gatwick (24 in the list) then the combined London airports go to the top. Regards, Smiley

"Affirmative action" sounds a bit like the policy of "Positive Discrimination" that was the vogue amongst left-wing local governments here a few years back. "Positive Discrimination" was used more in the case of sex than race (women-only shortlists etc.) but there was a racial element too. As a politician of the time remarked: "There is only one word worth noting in 'positive discrimination' and it isn't 'positive'!" Back on topic - in the UK a few years back there was a murder of a young boy (Stephen Lawrence) in London by a gang of white youths. The police botched the investigation, and the inquiry into this reported back that the Metropolitan Police were guilty of "Institutional Racism", and that this was backed up by very clear statistics. As a result of this finding, the police's policy of "stop and search" was halted, to appease the anger of the black community, since the "stop and searches" were almost always of black youths. Once this happened, the stabbings and robberies that were being held in check by this policy began to increase again. Of course many of these crimes were against the self-same community, so in the end, no-one came out any better except the criminals. Any police force is expected to perform two duties - crime investigation, and crime prevention. Racial profiling, whether an official policy or a personal bias, is very relevant to the prevention part, as it allows resources to be targetted effectively. However, it has no place whatsoever in the investigation part. Meaningness comments along the lines of "the police should be colour-blind" are ignoring this dual role. Once a crime is being investigated, then all suspects should be treated the same way. But to prevent crime, the police should use all the methods they possibly can, as this is the invisible part of their work that most people really feel the benefit of. As part of my job, I often have to quantify soft benefits. Our offical police statistics have many figures of successful prosecutions for committed crimes. However, there are no statistics that tell you how bad your neighbourhood would be if the police were not there, because an experiment to establish this "baseline" fingure would probably not be very popular! Apologies for the rant. I'll sit down now!

quote:Originally posted by Adam Thomas: I sent an order to BMT some time ago but never recieved a confirmation! Is anyone else in the same boat? Yes, I'm in the same boat. And getting worrieder by the minute. Smiley

Their mail to me was only in response to a query I sent in regarding whether they had my correct order details (my email address changed......) I haven't had confirmation of shipping yet, either.

quote:Originally posted by Cmdr Jeffery Eu: You lucky SOB, what the heck is BMT doing? BMT sent me a mail that they received the units this morning and are processing orders at the moment How long will it take to get across the pond? Argh! I can't wait!

No smiley required, S3 made the GyroMouse a couple of years back. Dunno if you can still get one.

I know I'm a bit late on the scene, but can I go for... Alternate Reality Simulation (please ignore the dodgy acronym!) Alternate Future Simulation Love and kisses, Smiley

I have a rather odd problem. I can run the E2 demo fine on my machine. If I quit the program, and run it again, then it's fine. But if I quit a second time and run it again, I get an access violation. Reboot, and of course it runs fine, so it is not causing me a problem, but I wondered if anyone else had had a similar problem? Cheers, Smiley

Micro-typo in the appendix, in the "Alien Nations" page, description of the Vesperons, the phrase "...no one would really gain from annexing Omicron except the Vesperons and site GALCOM directives that prohibit interference..." should use the word "cite" for "site" (see Merriam-Webster online dictionary, senses 2/4) Good luck with the project - this is going to be the best game ever. Smiley [ 09-03-2001: Message edited by: SmileyMan ]

My Firewall/NAT/Router is a P133 laptop(!) plugged into my cable modem. It uses a completely "from scratch" kernel, for two reasons: 1) The Debian installation would not work from a linux-only partition on this particular hardware, and to boot from an MS-DOS micropartition first (urgh!) 2) Because I wanted to see if I could do it. In terms of performance, it totally rocks. As a small aside, anyone who owns a laptop, should try installing Linux and the APM software. The battery life for my other laptop went from 1.5 hours under Win98 to 2.25 hours under Linux - ie 50% longer. A friend of mine asked me why I had a Linux firewall, because he had an NT firewall that worked fine. I pointed out to him that "NT firewall" is actually an oxymoron . Regards, Smiley

If you are looking for a space-based game, and a bit of RTS, why not try Homeworld? It's available on Budget now, at least in the UK. Very good game, although the single player campaign gets a bit dull (the last two missions depend on how you played the third last mission, and you generally have to go back and play it in an increbidbly tedious way). The AI in the skirmish mode is not very imaginative (build as big a force as possible, attack en masse) but if you can find a friend and multiplayer, it is awesome. Also, the graphics are super cool, and the scales are reasonably accurate (mothership is about 200 times size of fighter craft). I think the sequel, Homeworld Cataclysm is also reduced in price, sort of semi-budget (about £18 in UK) Regards, Smiley