Jump to content

ToxicFrog

Members
  • Posts

    50
  • Joined

  • Last visited

    Never

Everything posted by ToxicFrog

  1. You, sir, are an Incredibly Sadistic Bastard. I would take my hat off to you, but it has been vaporized, along with myself and the rest of the GCV Troika. I launched from Starpath and plotted a course for Barnard's Star (although I actually came across Pixan in Lennen). When I arrived, there was a Ter/Mil cruiser already attacking it, so I sat back and watched. The fight didn't last long. Once the friendly cruiser was dispatched, it sortied two S-24 Ravens at me; I immediately cloaked and jumped across-system. Interestingly, the cloak system doesn't seem to consume iridium while in hyper, although the radiation meter did increase. The ravens, losing their lock on me, immediately returned to base. After emerging from hyper, I drifted for a few minutes while the hyperdrive recharged and the radiation from the cloaking system dissipated. I then reactivated the cloak and jumped directly towards Pixan, emerging 77km from it. The rest was over fairly quickly. At 50km I launched a missile salvo at it and immediately changed course; it launched another pair of Ravens, but they couldn't see me and went home. At 30km, I launched another salvo and opened fire with my main guns. I caught a glimpse of several PDS turrets locking on to my missiles before the rest of the turrets (it looked like at least 6-8) converged on my Nightstar and blasted it into superheated gas instantly.
  2. Patch seems to be working fine so far, although I don't know about the savegames since I purged them myself...I was only ten hours in or so. ("Only" ten hours in? That would be a serious fraction of the game in anything else!) quote:VCFRevised the NPC threat assessment and prosecution matrix. What the hell does this mean? You'll see....I am suddenly very afraid. quote:VCFNPC carriers and stations can once again launch Space Force Marines Yay! Time to dust off those marine kill-marking templates for my shuttles... quote:Originally posted by Patrik Vanda:Anyway now everythings ok I'll start a new game and practice my skills for all the multiplayer mayhem thats coming up shortly I have yet to see anyone else on the server at the same time I am, unfortunately; it's a pity we don't have some way of setting up multiplayer events in realtime.
  3. I apologize; I thought the F10 camera issues applied only to objects on another map, not your current location as well. In any case, if I find a solution I'll edit it in here in case someone else is having the same issues; until then, I'll cease cluttering this thread.
  4. quote:Originally posted by Supreme Cmdr: Whats so hard to fathom that when the FPA changes from HS to your current speed or VTOL and you get the message that you are no longer in hyperspace, then guess what - YOU ARE NO LONGER IN HYPERSPACE - and are now radar visible - regardless - of when the specialfx which decloaks the ship, completes? *sheesh* I realize that, and I also realize (having died this way many times) that it is perfectly possible to die while the hyper SFX are still being played. The phenomenon I'm talking about occurs when you are still fully in HS. For example, if you plot a course that takes you through an enemy station in hyper at a relatively low speed. The hyper meter is still counting down, the speed is still well above anything the ship's realspace engines can attain, and no-one has yet said "emerging from hyperspace". [ 06-12-2004, 03:49 PM: Message edited by: ToxicFrog ]
  5. quote:Originally posted by cdrhardboot: (long, pointless rant snipped)Remember, kids: read the manual, or this could be you. There is one thing that caught my eye, though, as perhaps having a point. quote:Originally posted by cdrhardboot: you still have a good 5 seconds where the ship cant fire but can easily be destroyed. I thought nothing is real, you can pass through a planet but lasers wont pass through you? quote:The UC manual, p56 In hyperspace, nothing is real and even though you may seem to fly into things, you cannot collide with them.The manual text seems to be at odds with how the game actually behaves; that is to say, before you start emerging from hyperspace (the timer is still >0:00), you can be targeted on radar and even fired upon. For example, take a Firestorm (hyper transition time of 180s), hunt down an enemy starstation, and tell the CC to fly-to it (you may want to leave the ship in a fighter or shuttle so that you can target the CC and see the hyper time remaining indicator). Typically, when there's still 5-15 seconds left on the timer, the ship will start taking massive amounts of damage as the station opens fire on it. Alternatively, take a Raven out and hyper at the station yourself. My experiments in this area have always resulted in destruction or disabling of the fighter with 8-12% still left on the hyper indicator. The fact that it behaved like this in BCM, too, implies that this is by design (perhaps the no-collisions rule refers only to physical objects, not energy?), but the manual text can be confusing if you see this effect in action.
  6. Both the desktop and the game are running in 32bit, and the JPGs look identical to the original TGAs. What I meant about the altitude is that all three of those images were taken with the ship in exactly the same place, only the camera angle changed, but the altitude is variously reported as 896333 MSL (with the ship floating in a white void), 0 AGL (with the ship appearing to be in midair), and 3611 MSL (with the ship appearing to be resting on the ground). What I meant about the wobbling is that the ship's position only seems to be modified by the detail mesh when the mesh is rendered - so if I zoom out, the ship lies flat, but if I zoom in so that the detail mesh appears, the ship suddenly jumps up and reorients to be lying on the now-sloped terrain. As I pan the camera around the ship and the mesh vanishes and reappears to follow the camera, the ship gets tossed around as the ground shape changes underneath it. I can't see any visible change between 32-bit and 16-bit rendering; perhaps it won't/can't enter 32-bit mode on my system regardless of what it's set up to try?
  7. I followed your instructions - although I'm using an R9200, so there's likely to be at least some difference considering how much more powerful your card is, and cata-4.6 rather than cata-4.4. Desktop is 1280x1024x32, by the way. Apart from the fact that it's now running 800x600, it looks identical. I'll try installing cata-4.4 next, in case they broke something in 4.5. It's good to know, at least, that it's a driver issue and not a game one; I've got a decent chance of finding one that works. [EDIT] Playing with it a bit more...it seems that my ships are sometimes on a slope when they land, hovering in the air, and the camera behaves as though the ground level changes, even when detail mesh is off. Is there a hill mesh there that it's landing on (even with detail meshes off), that the video card isn't rendering? I assumed that the ground was flat if detailed meshes were disabled... [EDIT] 4.4 didn't fix the terrain, and introduced a few new graphical issues. That makes it either a video card problem, or some other aspect of my system. Back on the 4.6 side of things, I've uncovered a few more peculiar graphical glitches that seem to be futzing with the ship's altitude, too. [ 06-11-2004, 01:00 AM: Message edited by: ToxicFrog ]
  8. The AI has started showing its true colors once again... I'm wandering around Midae4 in a brand shiny new Firestorm when I get jumped by a pair of cruisers and get a bit charred around the edges. A moment later I've retrieved my fighters and jumped back towards base. As I enter hyperspace, Tac informs me that we're being targeted...but there's nothing showing on the screens. The bridge MFDs, showing a sense of the dramatic, chose that moment to flicker with static. Clearly there was something lurking around the system...but it was too late to abort the jump, even if that were the right thing to do. Three minutes later, I'm meshing back into realspace, watching the simulated external view as usual...which meant that I had a perfect view of what happened next. An enemy Stormcarrier rippled into visibility right next to ship - as in, I could have hit it by throwing rocks out the airlock - and tore into me with its turrets. Fortunately, homebase sortied a wing of fighters to help me, and between them and my fast reflexes I was able to get out alive and limp back to base. I spent a lot of time in drydock after that adventure. As a side note, I saw something rather odd just before that. I was tracking a Warmonger and a Spacestar that had gotten into a skirmish, with the Warmonger lying in wait as the Spacestar approached it in hyper. With the Spacestar still ten seconds or so away from emerging from hyper, the Warmonger opened fire on it - and hit! It took away half the Spacestar's shields before it even started meshing back in. Despite this, the eventual victor was the Spacestar, aftera short bout of turret tag. ------------------------------- I now have a note pinned to my command console, reading "DO NOT LET MARINES PILOT SHUTTLES". Having finally made planetfall on Centris without slamming my Nightstar into the surface at lethal speed, I prepared to deploy drones. Taking up station 7km above a desolate area of the planet, I ordered four marines to the shuttles, gave them drone deployment waypoints, and launched them. That was when it started to go horribly wrong. Shuttles 1, 2, and 4 deployed normally, although they seemed to spend more time than normal circling my carrier. SC-3, however, promptly shot up to 16km, blatantly violating the accel tolerances of the ship. I suppose what happened next should have come as no suprise; at the g that ship had to pull to climb so fast, the pilot had surely blacked out. SC-3 tipped over, and even faster, it seemed, plummeted into the planet surface and immolated itself in a giant fireball. Perhaps the fate of their comrade instilled a greater than normal sense of caution in the other three marines, for they spent far longer than normal circling the landing sites, darting in for a landing before changing their minds and pulling up, and suchlike...but eventually, all three of the remaining shuttles had landed and deployed their mining drones. In the meantime, I had shed 6km of altitude, in the hopes that if one of them screwed up while landing on the carrier, the shorter fall would increase everyone's chances of survival. SC-1 and SC-2 made it back intact. I have no idea what happened to SC-4, but the comms uplink registered a sudden increase in engine power, then nothing. I can only surmise that, made overconfident by his successful landing, the pilot gunned the engines for takeoff and promptly embedded his craft in a rock at 700mps. I suspect that the marines' flight training, if indeed they have had any, involved extended sessions with Lt. Jim Beam. [ 06-11-2004, 03:25 AM: Message edited by: ToxicFrog ]
  9. 1. Oops. Sorry. 2. Hmm...perhaps I was firing from inside its shields. 3. The contrails were at full v; it would generate a 'lump' of particles, and then stop, and then start generating them again, etc...as though my FO were tapping his foot on the accelerator or something. I'll see if I can grab a screenshot, if you like.
  10. I'm having the same problem in 2.00.10 - four drones deployed, but three of them are missing (and my incompetent shuttle pilots can't seem to retrieve the last one). I've got the savegames handy if you want them, SC.
  11. Dropped onto S4 for a few minutes this morning...no-one else was on, but I had fun anyways getting myself killed. Apart from the station jumping about slightly, it was surprisingly smooth - indistinguishable from singleplayer. Nice netcode this game has.
  12. (SC, I'd like to apologize for wasting your time with my earlier posts. I wasn't thinking entirely clearly, but that's no excuse.) Initial thoughts... First of all, the overhauled graphics look gorgeous, and I like the new soundtrack, too. On the other hand, I concur with DrugCheese WRT the GUI beeps: they seem incongrously loud. The mouse control is nice and smooth, allowing me to finally retire my less-than-entirely-functional Cyclone 3d. I initially found the new HUD rather distracting, but adapted to it quickly - although, the status bars and their labels on the left are misaligned at 1280x1024; I don't know if this is a game issue or a gfx driver issue, but it's a bug in something. It works fine (and silky smooth) at 1280x960, though. The slight alterations to the controls have claimed their first casualty; while engaging Zerin Station (I launched from it, then spun around and salvoed all my missiles at it), I managed to eject from my CC while trying to activate ECM rather than Jamming. I had a great view of the following battle, though, and my leaderless crew aquitted themselves well before they were killed. It also gave me a chance to ogle the new shield effects. The one major gripe I have is the new speeds. It takes years just to get back to the station you launched from - or at least, it seems that way after BCM. I can't even express my speeds in kps any more without looking silly, let alone fractions of c. It's also somewhat bizarre to see a missile slam into a station's hull, followed by the station's shields - quite some distance beyond the hull - lighting up. On the whole, though...I like it. I like it a lot. Further thoughts now that I've played it for a while: The long pauses in bridge crew speech break the immersion somewhat, although I can just imagine them consulting their script as they give reports. The drive trails also seem to be intermittent at times; perhaps I'm hitting some kind of particle limit? On the plus side, I just found a shiny new Crumicron and 1200k worth of ground-defence hardware in a cargo pod. [ 06-10-2004, 01:08 AM: Message edited by: ToxicFrog ]
  13. Yes, actually - the cave of university. I blame BCM for my low English grade. I tend to operate on the assumption that if it's still on the front page, it's not dead...
  14. Part of my inner geek is now whimpering in the corner, something about 'betrayal'. On the other hand... *waves around his hardcopy BCM manual* No search function, but nice fast load times and no alt-tabbing!
  15. Just expanding on the info in the posts above a bit... DaemonTools doesn't appear to cause this problem either. Adaptec CD Creator also appears to be unaffecting, which is rather suprising to me as it seems to break everything else. CloneCD can coexist peacefully with it, and it also seems (after some experimentation) that turning off autorun can lead to a number of other problems, but not this one. More games seem to have "safedisc barf" on NT-based windowses than on win32s, but I've seen it on both. Laptop drives also seem to be a serious sticking point; I once had a laptop running 2k that wouldn't play any of my safedisc'd games. It never ceases to amuse me that the copy protection scheme in my old copy of Wing Commander not only is faster and takes less CPU time than safedisc, but is also more effective at dissuading piracy.
  16. @EbonyKnight: Not having played UC to any great extent myself, I can't exactly give you an informed decision, but if you look up reviews for BCM, BCMG, and BC3K, you'll note that they tended to get ripped apart as well. I blame this on the fact that most reviewers don't play it for long enough to get past the initial settling-in period, which is much longer (and tends to be proportionately more rewarding) than in other games. Either that or they just wouldn't know a good space combat sim if it flew up and nuked them from orbit. @Kenworthy: I'd actually prefer faster ships myself. Even 3kps is barely over 0.001% of c. On the other hand, it is "A Derek Smart Simulation", and not "A Brutally Realistic Zero-Drag Newtonian-Physics Simulation"; it may actually be more fun this way. I'm holding back judgement until I actually snag a copy of UC for my own.
  17. As SC said...the only way to get a replacement for that handy keyboard chart is to buy another copy of the game, or find your own somewhere. I sympathize, having been in this situation (it turned out to be only misplaced, not lost), but offering up copies in PDF or image format opens up a potential nest of starved ferrets.* Given SC's authorization, however, I would be willing to type up a summary of the keyboard commands; at least the C&C, Tac-Ops, and Misc controls. The rest I have no doubt you can figure out for yourself with a minimum risk of accidentally scuttling your ship, running it into the moon at c-frac, etc. * I suspect that the steep learning curve and lack of digitized documentation has done more to discourage piracy of BCM than those annoying and CPU-sucking CD checks; a safedisc wrapper can be patched away in minutes and the patch itself probably takes no more than an hour to fabricate, but even someone willing to distribute burned discs of the game would likely balk at the prospect of scanning and reprinting the entirety of the manual.
  18. quote:Originally posted by Capt. Anarchist: ...that there is a game, most of us ever dreamt of and so few people just know about its quality.Welcome to the world of System Shock fans, too. Really, why is it that all the really good games are either ignored or misjudged, while the likes of :shudder: The Sims: Overpriced Expansion Pack #8902 and Generic Doom Clone #65535: Now With Extra Gore proliferate? Niven was right; there truly ain't no justice. In the meantime, though, at least we can dream of a day when games are judged solely on their quality. Perhaps we'll have world peace, cold fusion, and a Microsloth product that doesn't suck by then, too.
  19. On a related note... (although this pertains to BCM at the moment; I'm unsure on whether to get BCMG or just wait for the local game stores to get a clue and realize that UC is out) How are the checksums calculated? It appears to be a standard 32-digit MD5 checksum, but I've spent a while trying to figure out what the 'original' file looks like so that I can recalculate the checksum myself, and have had no luck. It doesn't appear to be the file with the MD5sum removed, nor with that space replaced with spaces, nulls, 0xFFs, dashes, hashes, underscores, or the space-padded phrase "Battlecruiser Millenium". For all I know it's calculated after first replacing all CRs with LFs and vice versa just to foil modding efforts such as my own. While it is understandable if you don't wish to tell me how to do this, and my assurances that I won't use this power for evil really won't count for much, I would greatly appreciate the ability to play with files other than assets.ini. I'm also curious as to why this additional layer of security was implemented when a comparison of checksums with the server should (I believe) suffice, but that's a question for another day.
  20. This thread is unsettlingly quiet. This is something that happened to me shortly after I started playing. I was flying a Firestorm around, patrolling Sol, when I came across an enemy carrier near a jump node. We scrambled our fighters, and I closed to energy range and blew it away without too much difficulty, but two of its fighters - both S24 Ravens - escaped into the node and longjumped out. Thinking I had seen the last of them, I powered down my weapons and moved closer to the jump node to look for salvage. Little did I know what was in store for me. I was recalling my fighters, with my Firestorm facing the node, when it happened. "Two hyper footprints, dead ahead!" I watched in shock as the two Ravens that I had thought fled reemerged from the jump node and burned straight towards my ship. I had no time to react; before I even realized what was going on, their missiles had stripped away my shields and their main guns were blasting pieces off my ship. I desperately reached for my control panel to bring the PTA system back up and began to rotate the ship, but I was too late. Both Ravens dodged between the 'arms' of the Firestorm and slammed into the main hull at top speed. The ship was blasted away from the jump node by the force of the explosions; gouts of vapour and plasma poured from the rent hull. I recovered my footing amid what was left of the bridge, staggered over to the nearest console, and asked for a damage report. Nothing. Further experimentation relvealed that pretty much everything, including the engines, were offline; it was hard to be sure, though, due to the complete lack of any help from the Logistics system. One of the Ravens must have hit at exactly the wrong place; my computer systems were gutted. Time to leave...although, with launch control offline, the reactor crippled, and a smoking hole where the Tactical computer should be, that might prove to be tricky. One cranking-open of an emergency airlock later, I was wandering around on the hull of my ship. Then, I saw my way out - FC-3. It had been crippled in the battle, but the drives were still online...or had been earlier. I detached from the hull and latched myself to FC-3, but in vain. I couldn't get it open, and the pilot wasn't responding...poor taffer must have been more badly wounded than I thought. Resigning myself to a slow death in deep space as the residual lifesupport ran out, I turned around to gaze at my Firestorm...just as the enemy Aestrom emerged from the jump node behind it. Guess those fighters called for reinforcements before returning on their suicide run.
  21. This thread seems strangely dormant. Anyways, I just upgaded and reinstalled BCM, and decided to try flying a cruiser rather than my usual Firestorm. I chose a Questar and launched from Orion, dropped my drones on Centris, and started flying patrols. At this point I should proabably point out that I've been playing around with the assets.ini, so my Questar had slightly diminished cargo bays but four shuttles. Yeah, I'm a cheating bastard. I intended to to change it back before starting a new game, but never got around to it...still, fate decided to punish me in the end. I fly two circuits of Alpha Centauri, running into and destroying a few enemy ships - nothing too dramatic, though. On my third run, though, I'm two jumps away from Centris (in a system with no station) when I hear "Radine level critical". I check the reactor status - I've got 49 left! I lay in a course for Centris...and hear "unable to compute jump profile". No matter what I try, the same message. So I decide to go with plan B: land the CC somewhere safe and fly to Centris in a shuttle to get some radine from Orion. 40 left - I turn towards the planet and make an emergency planetfall (interestingly, it doesn't seem to render the 'flare' that you normally get behind ships when they enter atmosphere for the Questar. It does for my shuttles, though, and I haven't tried it with other ships). About 3km up, I power down everything but launch control, the engines, and lifesupport, and head for SC-4. Just before I launch, I order the AI to land. As my cruiser settles to the ground behind me, I engage the afterburners and burn towards space. A few minutes later, I'm on final approach to Orion. I switch to a tail view (I like docking at stations with an external view) and aim for the center of Orion. As the range drops, I hit alt-d...and nothing happens. I tap F1 to return to the cockpit - nothing. A few seconds of experimentation later show that I can pitch and yaw the shuttle, and pan the view, and use the RRs and ABs, and that's it. So here I am, my shuttle refusing to listen to me (and gently bouncing off the side of Orion), desperately hitting keys in an effort to get it to respond. Eventually, it responds to alt-d again and I dock. Odd. I quickly load up with radine and launch again. Two jumps later, and I'm entering the atmosphere to return to my Questar. I'd never made planetfall in a shuttle before, and it was intense - plummeting towards the ground, pulling up at the last minute and screaming towards the cruiser just above ground level at a speed that is clearly Way Too Fast. There's probably a large dent in the back wall of the shuttle bay. Anyways, I arrived with 3 units of radine left. Close one. I offloaded my cargo, powered my CC back on, and set course for Centris to retrieve my drones. After picking them up, I decided to forgo Orion and sell them elsewhere in Alpha Centauri where I could get a better price. One jump later I'm near a planet with an enemy station - pretty much routine by now; turn on ECM and jump across to the next jump node. Well, it wasn't routine this time. A BCmk3 jumped in right behind me. I tore it apart, but by then the station had sent fighters to support it. My PTA did a good job of picking them off, and a check of the scanners after things quieted down revealed three disabled fighters, one SOSing, and two cargo pods. I quickly ordered four marines to the shuttles and launched them. I gave SC-1 through 3 orders to tractor the disabled fighters, and SC-4 orders to grab the pods. All this time, the station had been launching shuttles to pick up the fighters, and I kept shooting them down. Here's where I made a terrible mistake. I didn't check the location of the fighters or the pods before sending my shuttles out. As it turned out, the station had launched enough shuttles that they had actually gotten the fighters back. SC-2 was ok; before it could engage hyperdrive, the shuttle it was targeted on had been delivered to the station. The others were not so lucky. The fighters were in tow to the station, so of course that's where the shuttles went. As for SC-4, I just assumed that the cargo pods were from my engagement with the BCmk3...big mistake. Three of my shuttles meshed in within spitting distance of an enemy station, and one by one, their indicators on my HUD turned red. Admitting defeat, I recalled SC-2 and headed for the jump node. As I headed into dock, I realized the true magnitude of my folly: I had never unloaded the mining drones. Not only had I lost three shuttles and marines, and their OCs and drones...I had also lost the money that would enable me to replace them. So far, I have 1/6th of what it would cost to replace one of the shuttles and its drone, and that's not even counting the cost of another marine and the OC. Oh, and Weapons Pod 1 was destroyed by intruders. This is clearly not my day.
  22. One thing that I've seen a few times is that if a fighter is moving quickly and is disabled, it will sometimes keep on moving, right out of the area if left alone long enough. If you find a disabled fighter that's moving at a constant course and speed, take a look at it with target view (or inverse tactical). If it's flying away with no engine emissions (and frequently not even facing in the right direction), then it's fully disabled - it just isn't /stopped/. My guess is that the engines are needed to stop, so if they get shot out too quickly it just goes flying off, helpless. Retrieving these things can be a chore - typically, it involves taking a shuttle ahead of it in hyperspace and doing a nose-on intercept with the tractor beam. What makes it even more interesting is that if you turn off the tractor beam, it will keep flying away - so forget about handing it off to the CC! I've had a few incidents where I was tractoring one of these "runaways", and shut down the tractor beam by accident. Usually it just goes streaking away into space, but once it slammed right into my CC. Something that I haven't tried yet, but intend to, is to amass a collection of "runaway" ships, jump to a system with an enemy station, and place them so that when the tractor beams are shut off, they'll be on a collision course.
  23. Now that I've gotten back into BCM, I've been pondering joining a fleet. I've been considering either Orion or Wraith; both Big Guns and Black Ops are to my liking, and would dovetail nicely with my role in another Fleet outside the BCM universe. So, what's the procedure for joining a fleet, and what are the prerequisites?
  24. quote:Originally posted by Supreme Cmdr: You cannot change or add any personnel classes. That should be obvious by now.That's why I'm not trying to anymore. I'm guessing from the general tenor of your comment, however, that my other plan (adding multiple pilots of the same class to the crew list) is also untenable. quote:Originally posted by Supreme Cmdr: And having 16 fighters and 8 pilots is not moot. Where does it say that you must have 16 pilots in order to have 16 fighters? What if you have 16 different fighters and want to launch 4 of the best ones? I never said that having more fighters was generally useless, merely that it was for my purposes - which were to be able to have carriers launching up to 16 fighters at once, thus leading to even more epic (albeit CPU-crushing) battles. At least I can give myself a personal Raven to fly around without needing to drag the pilots out of it first. I appreciate the help, and apologize for wasting your time.
  25. A thousand thanks, SC. Thinking on it a bit more, I'm starting to think that the only way to do this would be to somehow get it to allow multiple instances of the same pilot, since I doubt that I have the tools or the ability to create new pilot classes from scratch. Once I get home from work I should be able to put some serious time into this. Based on what I've seen in the GBS2 threads, if this would require GBS to implement I'm pretty much doomed and I might as well drop those extra 8 Ravens on Jupiter...but I'm hoping that's not the case. On the plus side, massive ground-assault forces are probably quite doable, since engies and marines are nonclassed. My ultimate goal is still a dedicated carrier, though - designed to launch large numbers of fighters into the battle from afar while it lurks around a jump node ready to retreat if things go bad.
×
×
  • Create New...