Tanabi

How's this for a crazy intruder story? My ship is TOTALLY crippled. I'm basically waiting to die as I figure out how to do the self destruct, thumbing through the manual. I mean, TOTALLY crippled. The only reason my ship isn't destroyed is because I had the titanium V armour upgrade; my reactor's dead, every system's dead, life support is gone, everyone on the ship is slowly suffocating. I've got it on PERSCAN, watching the life leach from my men ... I can't even ALT-E or CTRL-E out of the ship, that's how bad things are. And while the bad guys watch me die (... it's been like, 5 minutes now. Can't they finish the job?! >:-) ) ... what do I hear? "WE HAVE INTRUDERS ON BOARD!" LOL!! Stupid intruders. Now I'm watching -them- slowly suffocate on my ship without life support. Not a good day to be an intruder! They can't even leave the cargo bay they beamed into because it was destroyed. So .... while my crew scambles for the medibay and the galley (? To get a last snack?! Seriously, about 75% of the crew went ot the galley, and the rest went to the medibay), the intruders who knowingly beamed on a dead ship, are slowly suffocating to death trapped in the cargo bay. NOT a good day to be an intruder. :-) Steve

I give up!

*grumble* Let's try that again :-)

Hi there and welcome! :-) Mostly testing to see if my sys info's in the signature now ;-P Woo! Steve

Well that would be a very good reason for it to not work :-D Oh well ... maybe someday! :-)

You can clone your pilots back to life. page 58 of the manual, just above Team Deployment Operations. Now, I haven't actually tried cloning yet ... haven't had a need to, I haven't played with the carriers yet and my officers haven't bitten the dust :-) BTW, your pilots lose their gained AI when they're recloned back to life, and you cannot clone "grunts" (marines/medics/engineers). As for regaining ships ... oy. I haven't a clue. You could tractor it with your main ship and deliver it to a station, but I don't know if they'd give it back to you! They might just give you the reward experience/money and keep yer fighter :-P Steve

Oh, so sad :-( I guess I'll have to return the stuff I bought. Not necessarily, read those threads. [ 12-01-2001: Message edited by: Tyrn ]

If BCM is as 100%-computer-utilizing as SC says, then I'd imagine it would be quite a test of WINE's functionality ;-) I actually haven't got a WINE-capable Linux machine right yet. I've been contemplating going all-Linux, though, since XP annoys me. :-) So hense why I'm wondering if my favorite games (...which of course includes BCM...) will work. Half-life works like a dream, and there's actually a Linux-native version of the Wolfenstein client. That just leaves BCM ... :-D Anyway ... if anyone else has had success, please post! Steve

Hey everybody; I'm playing as a terran raider in roam mode. I've really gotten rather rich at this point (MINING RULES! :-D ) and I've bought some "special items". However, all of them require a research engineer to investigate them .... However, I don't HAVE a research engineer! :-( Where do you get one? Or do I never get one? I know she didn't die ... I distinctly remember never having one! If anyone knows how to get a research engineer, or how to use artifacts without studying them ... lemmie know! Thanks! Steve Conley

Hey there! Out of curiosity, has anyone tried to run BCM on Linux using WINE? And if so, did it actually work? .... And don't worry, not asking for a Linux version of BCM or WINE support! ;-) Steve Conley

Okay, I'll follow the instructions in the link you gave me. Though I did see the station image, which is why I thought maybe it was something new :-) And I did register! >:-( You've been so helpful, it's the least I could do. I'll try again if it didn't stick for some reason. Thanks for the help! P.S. I think I figured why you didn't see my registration ... it's under my full name, "Stephen Conley". :-) [ 11-30-2001: Message edited by: Steve Conley ]

VERY sorry if this has already been posted, but I've looked over this thread and it doesn't seem to have this issue. It's extremely repeatable. I've tried it three times; my ship is in chaos, full of intruders, taking damage from them. I'm approaching a station so I can repair and get these darned intruders nabbed. I dock on the station (my save game has my ship RIGHT outside the station, you just have to hit yer ALT-D to dock), and when I click "Login", crash to desktop. I have applied the patch. I'm not using my old save games -- in fact, this happened after playing for many hours. And I did reboot after the crash; I still get the problem, every time I try. My system: Athlon 4 (AKA "XP") 1.2GHz 256 M of RAM GeForce 3 (VisionTek, detonator "XP" drivers) DirectX 8.1 SoundBlaster 512 Win98 SE Thanks a lot, and again, sorry if this is already posted somewhere...! Steve Conley [ 11-30-2001: Message edited by: Steve Conley ] [ 11-30-2001: Message edited by: Steve Conley ]

About the XP1 intruder use of transporters ... you can always turn transporters off, too! (in fact, I keep mine off unless I'm using them ... I thought I read somewhere that intruders could use transporters to leave your ship -currently-. It's on page 60 of the manual, in fact, where it says they can "beam off"). Any way to check to see if your Marines are geared up and ready to go? And if not, does setting them to prep to combat when they're already prepped for combat eat another combat kit? I also wish marines were a little more responsive when you tell them to run ... sometimes they'll run when you tell them, and sometimes they'll let themselves get creamed :-( A most memorable occasion was where all my marines ran as ordered ... except one. FEH! Died in about 2 seconds. For people so stupid, they're sure expensive to replace :-)

Here's another cool trick; Dock at a station and all your intruders will automatically become prisoners (... at least it seems that way to me, anyone else notice this?) And yes, turning off launch control is a must. In fact, I usually have my launch control turned off unless I'm actually launching something (at least on my non-carrier ships :-) ). In fact ... it seems to me once your intruders go onto your shuttles to escape, they stay in there rather than attempt further mayhem, so long as your launch control is off. I usually let them stay there and beeline for a station, especially if my marines are hurt :-D Sorry if all this is documented/said elsewhere! :-) Steve Conley

Here's another idea for trading; Maybe there could be a guild or in-game service where you pay credits to access trade information across an area of the galaxy. Of course it would have to be expensive because this would be a very powerful trading tool, maybe too powerful. Oh well, just a thought :-) Steve

That would be a nice addition to some electronic method, but still, who wants a big stack of dead trees by their computer? :-) Steve

Well, at least I'm not begging for this to be in a patch of the current game! :-) That would be evil, mwahahaha :-) As for the trade thing, that would work great. I must say, I've never seen a game where you can save the manafests of the stations/seaports/whateverOutpostAppliesToGame. As it stands, trade's pretty difficult. Love all the goods, but geez that's a lot of stuff to write down! :-D Any kind of auto-record would be a great help. As for the ships, I was more thinking along the lines of 2-D deckplans or cutaways posted on the web or something, not actually adding a graphic display to perscan (even though that would sure be cool ;-) ). Especially if you guys already have some drawings lying around. It's partially curiosity factor, though it's also useful. In the manual it mentions when you have intruders, you should move your AE around when they get close to him ... but how do you know if they're close, if ya don't know what your ship's laid out like? :-) Though admittedly the deck plans are more curiosity factor than useful, I just figured I'd throw the idea out there on the off chance you already had them or something :-) Thanks again! Steve

Hello there; I've been lurking around and haven't seen a suggestion board, so I suppose I'll post this here. :-) There's a couple things I think would be cool for BCM expansion packs; firstly, something to make trade easier. I think it's reasonable to say that in the future when this all takes place, being able to record a station's trade manifest would be possible. It would really assist trade if you could go to a station, get it's current manifest, and check your computers to see where you get the best prices for the various items. Of course, the price may change at the station by the time you get back with goods to buy/sell, but at least it's something better than writing all the countless BCM trade items down on paper :-) Secondly, it would be really cool if you guys would release the deck plans for the various ships. It seems like there's some kind of rhyme or reason to the layout of the ships, as obviously people are moving around on it as you can see on Perscan. I think it would be cool if we could see the actual maps, if not in the actual game, than at least through the web browser or something. I'm sort of a ship design geek, I was so happy when I got cutaway diagrams of the Star Trek ships ;-) That's really it; great game guys! Steve Conley

I think this is fixed, thanks very much for the help. :-)

I just sent the stuff, and I looked at the dxdiag and saw that I can upgrade my direct X. I'm doing so right now. I'll let you know if that improves my situation.

Okay; I did as you asked and whiped out my config by deleting that file. I played for quite a long time, got all the way to Alteris and I got my ship badly damaged in a scuffle on the way so it took me an extra-long time. However, the game crashed just as I hit ALT-L to pull up the logistics screen, soon after ariving at Alteris. I got this: BCM caused an invalid page fault in module at 0000:b017d003. Registers: EAX=00000000 CS=017f EIP=b017d003 EFLGS=00010246 EBX=00000000 SS=0187 ESP=00c6f2e8 EBP=00000000 ECX=dd30de04 DS=0187 ESI=000000f0 FS=2d67 EDX=00000000 ES=0187 EDI=dd2f1040 GS=0000 Bytes at CS:EIP: 8a 10 8b 04 95 a8 81 30 b0 85 c0 74 15 6a 00 6a Stack dump: 00a4ffb0 00c6f324 00000000 b0179ec2 b0179e50 dd2f1040 b012ad2b 00a4ffe4 836223e0 00000009 00a4c71c 836323c8 00000000 00c6f3ac 00000000 00a4ffb0

This may be of interest; I can't play another game after BCM crashes. I tried to fire up Max Payne to blow some stuff away for a bit, and I got a similar crash and Max Payne complained that DX 8 isn't installed (seeing as I've played Max Payne plenty of times before, it -is- installed). I updated my drivers yesterday in fact; that was my first thought, when I got crash 1. In any case, I'll reboot and do as you ask, and let you know how it goes, though it's looking like a video problem of some kind to me.

I played it for awhile; quite awhile in fact, I got all the way to Droia in Vega Eridani. However, just as I was aproaching the Flux Field to go to Alteris, I got a "This program has performed an illegal operation and will be shut down box". Here's what was in the box: BCM caused an invalid page fault in module BCM.EXE at 017f:005ca36a. Registers: EAX=08256008 CS=017f EIP=005ca36a EFLGS=00010202 EBX=0108258e SS=0187 ESP=00c6ee80 EBP=00c6ee9c ECX=0108258e DS=0187 ESI=01d9239c FS=39bf EDX=0000000d ES=0187 EDI=00000016 GS=0000 Bytes at CS:EIP: 89 71 08 8b 4e 04 3b 4e 08 75 60 8a 4c 02 04 83 Stack dump: 00000020 01d923a0 00000020 08258da4 00000001 00000031 000000e0 00c6eeb4 005c3a03 019d0110 01d9247c 01d923a0 01d923a0 019989aa 0043b869 01d923a0

Spoke too soon. I think I got destroyed; I'm not sure. An intruder got on board and was wrecking havoc (I HATE INTRUDERS >:-( ) and a few missiles hit and ... Windows desktop. Woo ...

Oh, it was EarthCom, not GalCom, though I think you understood. Sorry for the mixup :-) I'm doing it now (woo, the joys of two computers). I'm hanging out at Pluto and thus far nothing's going wrong. An enemy arrived soon after I did, I engaged and destroyed it. Now I'm buzzing the station ... Another enemy has arrived, and they pretty much regularly are streaming in at this point. I've been playing for quite awhile (longer than I EVER have been able to in campeign mode) now with no problems, so I'm guessing it's all good in roam mode. Anything else you'd like me to try?