Banquet

I tried my first base attack last night.. boy, was I nervous - with good reason, cause it all went pear shaped through my bad planning, and I died! Soo.. live and learn.. I tried it again and loaded marines into the Shuttles (they can hold loads of marines!!) and into the ground vehicles in the shuttles. Then I beamed meself down to a hillside near the base and sussed out some good attack points.. from there I called in Fighter support to take out some of the buildings.. that was so cool, standing on the ground.. ordering fighters to attack from space.. when they finally dived in and took out the buildings it was damn satisfying to watch Anyway, I'm vearing off the subject, sorry.. Once I had the lay of the terrain I ordered the shuttles down at safe distance.. ordered the marines and APV out of SC1 to attack. The other 3 shuttles I held in reserve.. everything can be ordered from tacaps in FP view so you can get marines moved about fast (in the shuttles) without having to teleport them. Beware enemy fighters tho.. air superiority helps or they go picking off your shuttles. As far as using the CC to strafe the base, I didn't try this, but I wonder if you could still order it down from orbit to attack (if you trust the AI officers that would be commanding it) Or else you could watch it all in tacops from the bridge.. still using shuttles to move men around fast, and going planetside to stafe if the need arose. Or you could park the CC somewhere safe, but close.. Disclaimer : these are all the idea's of a noob who's been playing the game for about 4 days.. so your safest bet for staying alive would be to ignore everything I say Bloomin marvellous that you can plan, and do, all this in one game.. the downside being that I don't sleep so good anymore.. I left the computer running last night.. woke up at 4am and, rather than curse and try to get back to sleep, first thing I did was check my CC and crew were ok. The one's still on duty were pretty fatigued but my AE was at 0 fatigue.. 0 fatigue!! I'm bleedin shattered!! Must be a bug!!

VLAD, I would think it's normal. If you're going to land, they may as well just walk out the door! I just tried it too and it works perfectly from orbit (where I'd imagine it was designed to be used)

Quoted from GhengiX; "if i see a ship, any ship,(or any entity) on my scope, i know it will respond to stimulus. and that... my friend... is super coooool... " hehe, what he said

I have say in all the instances I've seen of flaming and rudeness, it's other people that seem to be doing the flaming and being generally unpleasant to Mr Smart, rather than the other way around. (On other forums mainly) Maybe SC doesn't 'tolerate fools gladly' but this is his board and his series of games.. he can do what the hell he likes, surely. And while I have seen instances of him being, lets say 'short' with people.. I can often see why. Maybe people need to not be so thin skinned. He controls his forum strictly and that at least stops it descending into the mayhem many other forums end up in. This certainly isn't the only forum where if you ask stupid questions you get a RTFM response.. what is all the fuss about? And finally, the initial poster didn't make any sense, one minute he 'fell in love with the game' and the next moment he's 'donated my copy of BCMG to the local house for the retarded' How charming.. I would peronally rather SC spent some time writing BCG than answered every question on this board that's been asked a thousand times. It's nice to come here and not have to wade through thousands of duplicated or troll topics to find anything decent to read.

I know it's me being thick, but I can't find it to tow it back. But it doesn't matter, I can live without the drone. I was being stupid to tow it to orbit anyway.. I do know the correct procedure for extracting drones, but in this game there's always more than one way to do things (that's one of the things I love about it) It seemed like a plan at the time because, from the TACOPS screen I could zoom in real close to the drone and from the 'right click' menu, order a shuttle to launch and fly to the drone. After that I couldn't see a menu for collect drone, but there was a menu for tow, so I thought I'd try it out It occurred to me afterwards that I could have just clicked on the 'waypoint' button and arranged the whole extraction from there.. live and learn, hehe Anyway, no matter about the drone.. this game I'm playing is simply to test as much as possible before I start the game again and play seriously.. I figure if I'm going to make a tit of everything, best do it before I really get going. In actual fact it's not that hard to learn.. everything is very logically done.. the whole interface is superb. Thanks for the help

I don't suppose, anywhere in your beta plans for BCG, you have a requirement for a keen but green noobie? (for testing things are idiot proof, etc) "just what is the blast radius of that starbase when it blows?" "I dunno, send in the idiot and we'll detonate!" Something like that.. guess not.. I've just been looking through the screenshots and it really does look wonderful. If real life had a time accelerate button I'd be clicking it from now to September Ooh, but then I'd miss out on playing BCMG.. Argh!!

"oh you could just do what normal people do ----> go to Tactical, pick a shuttle, then select the drone. It'll tell you where its deployed. Then fly to the region, observe the planet and use the Tacops/Zoom-To/Support Units to find it. " Cool, that worked for drone 1(as did the rotating around in observe mode) Thanks But.. the 2nd drone that I tractor towed up to the CC is still lost. I can't see it in TACOPS either on the earth view, or the space view, nor does it appear in the support units menu. I last saw it spinning around above earth after my shuttle let it go and docked with the CC. But it's no longer visible now (Either it fell back to earth or my CC has moved) Tactical shows it as being on earth, and it's still filling up with minerals! And me Mum always used to say I lose me head if it wasn't screwed on

Speaking of drones, I've lost mine too! To be exact, one of them is somewhere on earth, the other is spinning around in front of the bridge view, giving me a trance feeling.. I won't even go into how it all happened (long story involving a gaming epiphany, a bottle of red wine and a bloody bad hangover) but can someone explain to me how to 'find' a mining drone somewhere on earth, and how to retrieve one that your shuttle somehow towed from the planet on a tractor beam? Also, if someone can explain how to turn this game off? I've tried, but I can't! SC, do me a favour.. stop making such addictive games! please!!

I can't wait for BCG to be released, from what I've read it sounds fantastic! I also couldn't wait to get home today to get back to BCMG, hehe During the course of the day, when I was concentrating solely on work *cough*, I've planned various training exercises for my crew and myself.. all in the relative safety of the Sol system.. EVA's, shuttle and APV deployment, Fighter CAP, probe launching.. and, best so far.. I just have see the Shuttle deploy a team planetside and watch the.. "dust off in, 5..4..3..2..1.. " how cool is that? (when I saw that for the first time last night I couldn't help watching just to check an alien hadn't grabbed onto the ship.. do I have anyone on board that answers to the name Ripley?! You might be needed! Just get the APV out of the flight path of the shuttle!!) - Err.. sorry, getting a bit carried away there! I really hope BCG sells by the bucketload.. If there was any fairness in the world BCMG would have outsold Freelancer (space invaders with a starsystem tacked on) by ten to one. Right, must go.. my crew are anxiously awaiting their brilliant and capable captain to beam aboard, but I plan to get there first, hehe Good hunting chaps!

Just bought BCMG and wanted to post here to say how much I love it It's rare that I feel the need to come to a forum to congratulate game developers but this is a rare game. Derek Smart has stuck with his dream and I owe him a debt of gratitude for that. I just managed to tour the solar system, deploy a shuttle to earth and get myself and a couple of marines out the craft for a wander.. very nice! Then off to Saturn, made planetfall only to see dense atmosphere and frightening storms. This accompanied by crew telling me how this alien gravity was damaging my system.. the subsequent struggle to escape the brain thumping pull of the planet was enough to convince me I was experiencing a game like no other. The next attempt at planetfall led me to initiate a nice controlled approach to Mars, only to hit the 9 key by accident (I was aiming for 0!!) Hence a nice bumpy ride along the rocks.. finally coming to a halt in rather bad shape. My officer's calling out all sort of damage. Switching to external view while listening to endless calls of damage to hull and systems reminded me of the best scenes of a sci-fi film.. bloody marvellous!! I could go on for ages about all the things about this that I love but I'm just a noob and all the vets will be rolling their eyes thinking.. "yeah, tell me something I don't know!" All I'll say is, if I was a millionaire I would pay someone to write a game to my exact specifications.. if I was a millionaire I would pay someone to write THIS GAME, hehe So, thanks Derek and team for this.. you saved me a million! (that I don't have!) Seriously though.. respect.. never stop