Spuzzum

I could change my name to this!

Well, I suppose. Actually, speaking in terms of real life, I've just discovered that the name Jason Aaron Colson is a real name. Turns out, the guy's sister emails me about it, and then a week later the guy himself, unaware that his sister emailed me, also asked me about it. So, I'll probably switch identities... as far as the fake Colson (not the real one ) is concerned, he isn't much of an authority figure. [edit] Ooh, dastardly idea... Colson becomes the Combat Officer on the new Razorback! [ 09-28-2001: Message edited by: Spuzzum ]

Since there's been lots of talk lately about organisations and that sort of thing, I decided that Police also have to obey by the same rules. For example: Brinks home security versus Superior Alarms home security. Or referring to an example even closer to my home, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police versus the Port Moody Police Department, which are two very separate organisations, though they are obligated by law to work with each other. Police is an inclusive role that includes the security roles as well as the raider patrol roles. Thus, as long as a police organisation operates under the bounds of the government, who is to say that there can only be one police organisation? So, I'm starting my own organisation, but I am not the physical head; I'm just one of the pawns... or maybe a rook. I'll create some background information on the organisation when I have a chance. [ 09-27-2001: Message edited by: Spuzzum ]

Or maybe you didn't ask at all, and I got too bored with no one asking that I decided to go ahead and post it anyway. I don't remember which. --------------------------------------------- Anyway, here's how to get those debris fields on your side! It's time consuming to pull off, and you might lose a shuttle or two, but if you manage to do it, it's a lifesaver. First off, fight around in a hostile space region, until you manage to disable an enemy fighter with your PTA. Only disabled fighters work for this exploit... other ships can repair themselves. In my case, I disabled a Templon fighter. Then, tow it to some quiet space region, like the Moon, and shut off the tractor beam to let the fighter go, very soon as you enter the region. Next, hyperjump to the debris field as normal, and fly in to a distance of 150 km. Unload all of the drones and ATVs from your shuttles. They'll need the room. Now, target the disabled fighter, and hit F10 to engage the target camera. Hit F1 to return to your bridge. You'll notice there's cargo pods there. Try the same thing again; target, F10, F1. Now, there's a bunch of new cargo pods there! See where I'm going with this? Launch all of your shuttles with cargosweep orders. Intersperse them slightly so that they are spread out and target different pods... otherwise you can be there for ages. Once they nab all of the cargo pods, target, F10, F1, and you'll have anywhere from 4-10 brand spanking new cargo pods to swoop up. And if you get a measly three or so pods, you can just retarget until you get a bunch you like. You'll be amazed when your shuttles get filled to 100% capacity with expensive upgrades and spares, tow everything back to you, and then go out for another big haul! --------------------------------------------- Of course, there are some risks. If you're not careful, your shuttles might smack into a crab mine, and that's that. If there's cargo pods near mines, though, just repop the field until you get one that isn't too dangerous. Also note that all of the mines are refreshed when you refresh the cargo pods. That means that even if you clear the mines, they'll be there once more when you use the target-F10-F1 exploit. --------------------------------------------- Don't you just love obscure exploits? I'm not sure, but this might even work without the fighter-disabling mess, in Tacops. It refreshes the field based on the fact that the camera comes near when flying the BC, so its possible but I'm not sure.

Hmm, they nuked the 'Station, huh? No matter. I was growing bored of it anyway.

Ronvatar: Buy things at GalCom and then sell them at Centron station in Polaris-1 (the wormhole to there is in Jupiter). That's the even-more-mucho-cash method. You get way more payback.

Ha, I didn't see that in your signature until now, SC! Hmm, without further adieu: Here's one of my strategies. Align yourself perpendicular to the flight path of an inbound enemy ship. Then, hold the afterburner until you reach your normal top speed, then hold the retros until you reach normal maximum reverse speed, and vice versa, going back and forth. Enemies stand almost no chance of hitting you (it's a space-based variation on the "scissors" maneuver that air force pilots use), all the while two of your PTAs are happily plugging away at the enemy. The other "strategy" that I love doing is chasing down enemy fighters and ramming them to bits. It causes hull damage, but after discovering a nifty way to get as many spares as I desired in the Dione debris field, my fully-upgraded BC wasn't threatened. And it's good fun, too. (The nifty way of getting spares, you ask? It's an exploit. So only if you ask really nicely. ) My strategy for taking on enemy cruisers is simple. Set myself up on their six, power weapons to 40%-60% (depending on your mood and how much damage they caused in the initial exchange), and don't let up until you see the whites of their eyes as their corpses get splattered against your viewscreen. Works for me. Fighters I reserve for suppressing enemy incursions involving a carrier. While concentrating on "removing" a Stormcarrier I can't deal with its fighters too well. In Mercury, I tangled with three raider carriers at once. Suffice it to say, my fighters were a great aid in keeping away the gnats while I swatted the really big flies. I can't wait until BCM finally hits the shelves, so that I can have a major focus of something besides utterly decimating extremist factions, enemy troops, and aggressive castes. (As an aside, I am still proudly violation-free, with an experience of over 5000, in the span of 9 game hours.)

[RP]Not wanting to burst your poetic bubble, but you're a military cap. I have nothin' to do with you. If I did have somethin' to do with you, though, be warned that I'd proceed to perform my "somethin' to do" with extreme prejudice.[/RP]

Looks as though I'm the chief lawman in these parts, fellas.

Actually, to tell the truth, I believe the transit workers actually encouraged people to take the Skytrain free. Anyway, all the better. I can finally go swimming without bumming a ride!

Getting back on topic, I should add that this works like a charm, now. No HSD, either, and I'm forced to dock at 25 clicks rather than allowed to do so from halfway across the system!

Yup. Here's the basic scoop on the different phases of testing, though the actual definitions are lax (i.e. some people never even use a gamma). Pre-alpha. Designers are coding the product's main code base. Buggier than crap, and if you test it you can fully expect it is less feature-filled than a can opener. Plus, unless they've got really good coders you're going to get lots of illegal operations. Especially in Windoze. Alpha. Designers have now completed most of the gruntwork of creating the basic engine, and are now in progress of trying it out to see what additional features would be warranted. Lots of bugs, though, and it probably has less features than your microwave. Beta. Now that most of the features are in, beta testing begins. This is where they poll average people, either from within the company or from outside the company, to see what they want, and in addition ask them to find as many bugs as possible, and stress-test that sucker more than the Tacoma Narrows Bridge. Depending on when you arrive during a beta test, it will be anywhere from buggy to almost perfectly smooth. More features than a Ferrari with heated seats. Gamma. This is the final phase of development, though most people just skip this part and switch it over to Release right away. Gamma testing is final playtesting where they try and see how well the game fits together, and they all enjoy themselves playing their masterpiece before they publish it. Naturally, most people don't have enough time for this, what with those publishers and all. Release. The final product, with more features than a battleship. Whether that's a good thing is up to the player to decide.

Actually, wait, the Fleet C&C menu overrides it. And for some odd reason in the free version I always have Fleet C&C. Am I SOL, or not seeing something important here?

I'm confused, though, because the HSD, ENM, and TCMD icons (er, text icons) are on my HUD. Does that mean that those are debug icons?

People have been talking about this, but I haven't been able to figure out how to get them not to go beneath the ground. Is there an altitude control on the waypoint? If not, how do I go about doing this? (I'm guessing this applies to BCM too, but I haven't played the beta version, so I haven't done the stuff I've done in legacy 2.0.)

(Must have missed this thread a month ago... I don't really check out General much. ) I'm deeply surprised that Americans and Canadians dislike each other at all. As it says on both sides of the border crossing over in Sumas, WA, "The grass is greener." Anyway, getting back to the point of this topic... rubbish. Canada and the U.S. are both way better off as separate entities. It's proven; nations benefit more from international trade than they do from intranational trade. The taxes, duties, etc... all make people raise their prices to compensate, keeping the currency worthwhile. I assure you, if Canada became one with the U.S., the economy would go apes***. And I'm not saying that we'd take down their economy, I'm saying that we'd mutually take down both economies. I.e. the American dollar would be valued at most half of what it is now. So would the Canadian dollar, but there wouldn't be any difference between the two after the switch. Believe me, the U.S. needs Canada and Canada needs the U.S. It's a mutual thing. Plus, we'd screw over the immigration. Canada is building population through immigration. The U.S. has uh, more natural means of building population. If Canada became part of the U.S., Canadians would gravitate southward and all of the water, uranium deposits, iron mines, copper mines... everything would go to hell. That would suck arse, believe me. Now to address particular topics. quote:My Worst Nightmare, the US taking on a bunch of socialist momma government whiners, we can barely keep the socialists here at bay, if we ever took in Canada to save them from themselves, We would be buried in their problems too. I say, ship all of our socialists up there, all thier libertarians and Conservatives can come down here, and we will all be happy campers!! Socialism is nothing to be afraid of. Theoretically it works. In practice, it doesn't, but if it were done without the bloodthirsty struggle to be on top, it would be fine. The main issue is that humanity isn't suited to socialism or communism. We'd much rather murder a fellow man than give up our possessions (or, murder a fellow man for our possessions). That worries me. Also, don't forget that sending people somewhere means that you'll get different opinions. Our "Libertarians" (we don't actually have any because Libertarianism is an American concept) and Conservatives are nothing like your Libertarians and Conservatives. quote:Canada will not become part of the US unless they find lots more oil. Canada has tons of oil in the Hibernia Oil Fields off the coast of Newfoundland. We're just more interested in harvesting any fish we have left there rather than pollute the sea. If we needed to extract it, we'd have no need to worry about oil. quote:I actually believe that a more long-term likelyhood (50-100 years) is that the USA, Canada and Mexico all become the United States of North America. I agree entirely, but the prospect still worries me. Plus, you can't possibly say that Canada would revert back to the Imperial system. We'd stay metric. It's almost impossible to go back to Imperial, because the entire teaching system in Canada is now mathematically based off of metric. And Americans would definitely not wish to give up their Imperial system. (I wonder if they really are going to invent metric time eventually. Reinventing the wheel, granted, but it's a possibility nonetheless.) And Mexico... Suffice it to say, there'd be even more contests over who has rights to the water at the California-Mexico border. Because there would be no border!

Wow, that freaks me out too...

What would I give? A twelve-month paid subscription to VaporWare Magazine. If you get the magazine, you don't get the demo disc, because the demos have been delayed. And if you don't get the magazine, well, they don't call it VaporWare for nothing. Hmm... what would I like? A POLICE SCENARIO! Seriously, though, I'd be interested in a large battle scenario, with a bunch of Gammulan and Terran capital ships duking it out around Oliran or something. Ooh, wait, belay that! A THREE-WAY capital ship battle! Terrans vs. Gammulans... er, vs. Galaxians. I'm not sure which the third would be... Terrans are friends with a lot of people. But you can always make friends into enemies with GBS, right?

quote:p.s.: today i managed to 1. get 3dfx to work with the game, (and IT ROCKS ) I probably have no idea what I'm missing. quote:and 2. get to hear sound (had to buy a new soundcard for that), but that rather doesn┬┤t rock... I find the sound effects quaint, actually. And I love the MIDI, but with a Roland Sound Canvas it's rather hard for any song to sound bad... There's a lot more babble going on, too, and it's easy to get confused when in the middle of a 10 ship furball. Especially when the bridgeviewer is going haywire from the EMD. [ 07-24-2001: Message edited by: Spuzzum ]

Thanks! (Too bad I forgot to save the game before I let him go, or I could have collected that bounty. Seriously, two pages of expensive upgrades, weapons, and spares... )

Since there ain't any babble forum here, and I'd get in trouble for posting a BC3K issue on the General board, that's my story and I'm sticking to it. I decided to install a defense force around Starpath in Mars, since that became a hotspot pretty quickly. Damned intruders stole two shuttles and blew apart my cargo bays . I had also managed to find a Numega drive in Earth's debris field, too, and was almost tearing my hair out when the shuttle docked and was stolen three seconds later by that intruder who hadn't been killed yet. Too bad my Voodoo 2 is stuck inside my brother's machine, or I'd be playing with better graphics than poor ol' 640x480 software. (I'd yank it out, but my conscience bothers me. Besides, if I did that, I'd have to swap my Maxi Gamer Xentor 32 (Riva TNT2 Ultra chipset), and that'd screw me over for BCM. Sigh, sibling politics...) Anyway, I heard people talking about "sending my shuttles to 'mug' the ship and steal the cargo". Can you do that, or am I hallucinating? I had a cargo pod in my sights after blasting apart a fairly well-executed Insurgent raid on Starpath, and it was sheerly loaded with dozens of wonderful goodies (as the Cargo Manifest told me, two pages of expensive spare parts and upgrades), and just as soon as my shuttle got to it a commercial ship swooped in front of the two marines and snagged it. I shot him twice, and caught him in a tractor beam, both with myself and with my shuttle, but effectively out of ideas I had to let him go (I'd have blown him up, but I had a violation-free reputation to live up to...). There was a good $20 or $30 million of stuff in there!

The most efficient way is to grab your PC and drop it off a five storey building. Then, if it is 3dfx compatible, the special collision sensor built into every chip will say: "This is an authentic 3dfx PC! Thank you for purchasing our overpriced and overrated hardware."

I could imagine it too. [RP] "We want military soldiers to be forced to protect us diplomats!" Then the police designates chime in. "And we want more power to the police!" The raider designates look at them. "We don't want more power for you! We want uncontested territory for traders to fly through!" The traders look at the raiders in fury. "You do that, and we'll RAM you!" The workers and colonists look appalled. "Do you have any idea how much a starship costs?" A commercial shipper looks up. "About a 1.24 million Galcreds." The mercenaries yell back at everyone. "Shut up! Everyone, just shut up!" The assassin nudges the mercenary designates. "That can be arranged." A GALCOM commander steps out. "Geez, don't you people have anything better to do?" [/RP]

Gah... I'm so... so... utterly happy... that I'm going to... ...explode. [RP]Our ship is at 900 milliconniptions and rising! If you don't get us out of here now, we'll hit 1000 and have a conniption for God's sake![/RP] I'm honestly dumbfounded... I think I like Derek more than my girlfriend. (Not to be interpreted as that sounds beneath the surface, though.) The best part of all? I just reformatted my HDD, hence my absence for the past few days. Which means that this puppy is going to run better than, er, a puppy. (Now I'm seriously wondering if I'll be the one that starts the BCM Cult and burns ancient space-sims in effigy to the Chosen One.)

quote:Originally posted by $iLk: ( I just got a 19 inch monitor and Battlecruiser Millenium Demo Two Looks AWSOME!!! Never thought the new monitor would make all the difference. 19 inch... * Spuzzum drools.