Locutus701

A little late to the party (again), I know... MP is, by and large, the reason I play 'action' related games. While other types (the Master of Orion series, or Civ 3 for example) lend themselves better to single-player play, games like BCM get 'old' quickly even with the best AI (and yours is up there)... It's the one thing that has never been dilivered yet by anyone (although the fan-organized 'Alliegence Wars' came close to giving this to the old MS Allegiance): combining the MP action of a 'simple' 1st person space game like X-Wing v TIE with the strategy of a simple 'MP space strategy game' like Netrek. The level of detail possible with a BC related MP game (fight over individual systems, instead of 'bases' ala BF42, etc), and the ability to operate something BESIDES a small fighter would create a completely unique MP experience. And due to the nature of this game's player-base, there would be alot less trouble with the miscreants found in BF1942 and Tribes2... From what I'm reading, BCMG will have the oft-discussed MP mode, being somewhat like an 'expansion' pack for BCM Original... With this being the case, BCM multiplayer becomes an 'I wish it had got there, but now I'll get BCMG for it...' Just as long as BCMG:MP doesn't becaome a promised-but-delayed feature in that title too... That would be very disapointing...

As for SOS, it has another usefull function: it shows up on the radar which of your ships are still healthy... i.e. if your buddies are turning grey fast, it might be time to lock tractors on the survivors and jump out...

Heh... Death Star... Now I gotta figure that trick out so I can load in my cubeship... Then we can answer the long standing question: who would win - Vader or the Borg... heh heh...

I've had DSL before, but I'm 56k now... As for connection filtering, it's a bad idea, since there's no real reliable way to do it. You can set min/max pings, but then what happens if you get a lag spike in the middle of a game? Booted because my sister logged onto AIM?? Not fun... You can't really tell by IP address, since some smaller DSL ISPs use the same pool for DialUp and DSL. And of course, if you rely on the honesty of the players, there's allways the few who will get a kick out of lying about their connection... Also, as someone who's played many MP games at 56k, I can say that most games with a reasonable amount of depth (like BCM) have roles for laggy players built in (like the Engineer in TFC, or the commander of a huge, iceberg-slow carrier in BCM). I, for one, will just play the role that fits my connection...

I got the PM before I posted that, and I would have used the short handle when I re-registered if I had known about the displayed-name thing... Oh well... Whatever works for you... [ 03-06-2002, 00:48: Message edited by: Locutus ]

One question SC... If I want to lop the 701 off my publicly displayed name, is that ok, or should I keep it the same as my EBT profile??

Heh... Shuttletowing... Maybe the SC should factor in the weight of what the shuttle is towing when calculating power drain (i.e. tow a stormcarrier, run out o juice in 2-3 jumps)...

First PC game: Tetris (Spectrum Holobyte, on a Zenith 80286 laptop with a CGA-mono LCD) First 'real' PC game: F-19A (Microprose)

Heh... SC a redshirt??? Well, he's gotta be a pretty good one, seing as how he's still here to post...