Simparadox

Alright, I think I've found what possibly maybe might be a bug. Just to get a few things out of the way... First I thought it might be a heat/overclocking issue. So I set my cpu and video card back to the stock frequencies. The other thing that I'm thinking is that it might be related to the beta 22.80 Detonator XP drivers I'm using. I'm reluctant to uninstall them just for BCM (and for a relatively minor problem) since they've provided a fair performance boost across the board for me. Now, here's my problem... Occasionally moons (only moons, never planets) will appear as un-textured, opaque (although when extremely close to them they're sometimes translucent) circles. To be honest, there hasn't been a single time I've played where I haven't seen this happen. There also doesn't seem to be any specific case where it happens. I might be approaching a moon and looking at it from a certain angle and it'll appear fully textured and perfect. Then I'll move the joystick a hair and the view will barely shift at all when suddenly the planet is just a looming gray circle. At distances it's not too serious, but when I'm very close to the moons it causes problems. I'll turn slightly and the moon's entire position will appear to shift, filling my view with a huge, semi-opaque grayish white circle. I have screenshots showing this if you need to see them. I generally took two shots in each case, one when the planet was fully textured and one that was clearly taken after I moved the viewpoint just a tiny bit. So any idea what's going on? Is this some sort of odd "feature" I'm unaware of? A known problem? Any help would be appreciated, because it really causes a problem when I'm caught in a fight near a moon. (Btw, all of my system specs are in my profile linked below - I've had the problem with both the overclocked "normal" settings for my computer and with the stock settings... and in neither case was my video card or cpu overheating or even running hot enough to cause concern)

quote:Originally posted by Steve Conley: 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 Hehe, yeah... I know. She had pretty high AI, though, so I wasn't too interested in losing her. Plus I wanted to get the fighter back. I figured I could repair it en route to a space station and that way I'd have some extra defense on my way home. Oh, well... too late now. quote:Originally posted by Tyrn: Even ships with no live crew will do an RTB if you order it (that assumes, of course, that the fighter is capable of returning). Your shuttle should be able to tow your other support craft back to the CC but as I haven't had to do that I can't give you directions...yet. Hmm. I didn't pay too much attention to the actual damage on the fighter. Again, this is the first time I've ever had a fighter with any dead crew at all that wasn't completely destroyed - so I'm not experienced here. I just assumed it wasn't responding to my RTB because of the lack of pilot. It's possible that the engines were severely damaged/destroyed, though...

Here's an odd little story that just happened to me... I decided to take my brand new Mk3 Battlecruiser (the GCV-Savant) out for a spin in the Tau Ceti system near Arima. My plans were to attack the Tulon situation, but as I arrived in system and sat waiting for my hyperdrive to recharge I ran into a little problem. My combat alert comes on as two zenstar fighters jump in right next to me (for some reason they didn't show up on my radar until a few seconds before they dropped from hyperspace - any reason why this would happen? Were they just really close to me when they jumped...?). I was caught completely off-guard, and before I could get the ship up to speed they were already pounding on my shields. Luckily, I was able to begin evading and launch my fighters before I took any damage. After a little while the zenstars were destroyed, I escaped unharmed, and my fighters were doing fine. My hyperdrive was recharged and I was just about to recall the fighters (last time I attacked a station I managed to destroy it, but it cut my fighters to pieces in the first few seconds) when I noticed three (!!!) more red fighters sitting out by the station. I was a little nervous at this point, and really nervous when I saw them all jump. So I sat and waited. I figured I could handle just three more fighters and didn't want them hanging around while I was fighting the station. Eventually I took them out, but with a lot more damage this time. FC Bay 1 was almost totally destroyed and a lot of other systems were heavily damaged. One of my interceptors was destroyed and another was beat up pretty bad. About this time I figured it'd be best to just run and do repairs somewhere safe. So I start calling back fighters, but FC-1 can't dock because of the damage. FC-3 makes it back aboard, but just as I'm about to recall FC-2 I notice more fighters (two of them)! I have no idea where all of these things were coming from, I didn't notice a single carrier or other hostile ship in the area (if I did I would've went after it). As luck would have it, FC-3 was in perfect condition and now it was out of the fight while it was readied for launch. FC-2 was damn near crippled and FC-1 had its fair share of damage. This last fight was definetly not pretty. The enemy fighters made a beeline for my ship and started pounding on me. Again, it took me a minute to get up to speed and by the time I made it my shields were down and they were doing a bit of damage to my systems. I could barely even pay attention to what my fighters were doing, I was too busy evading and lobbing missiles whenever I got the chance. Somehow, the damage was still piling up and systems started failing. Finally, the first fighter exploded as I flew by it and my PTA's strafed. The second fighter vanished a few seconds later when FC-1 finally managed to get some good hits on it. All in all, it was an interesting fight. My ship wasn't quite crippled, but it'd definetly seen better days. Lucky for me, no more damage had to been done to the first fighter launch bay and my engineers had repaired it enough for FC-1 to dock. But then I noticed something odd... FC-2 didn't appear to be responding to my return orders. I switched on the logistix computer to take a look - and I saw how bad the damage were. Lots of systems, including life support, were either nearly gone or completely destroyed. I checked the tactical computer and that's when I noticed the pilot was dead. Leaving nightwing trapped and dying because of the lack of life support. This is the first time I've been caught in the situation of having a fighter stranded less than 2km (distance is measured in km, right?) in front of me with no way to get home. I didn't want to leave Nightwing there to die and I definetly didn't want to leave my fighter behind. I had no idea what to do, so I tried launching a shuttle, tractoring it, and then docking. I guess that didn't work - even, though I thought it did. To be honest, I just wasn't paying attention. Once the shuttle docked I assumed the fighter was aboard. Seeing another red dot on my TACSCAN my first thought was to just get through the wormhole and leave. Of course, once I was through I noticed that my fighter was still missing. I didn't know what else to try, but I figured at the very least I could tractor and pull it with me until I figured out something to do. My luck being the way it is, though, that never happened. I got back into the system just in time to see the disabled fighter blown away . EDIT: I was just told that not having a pilot doesn't prevent a ship from coming home, so I'm assuming that its engines were either destroyed or heavily damaged too... [ 12-01-2001: Message edited by: Simparadox ]

quote:Originally posted by Steve Conley: Anyway ... if anyone else has had success, please post! Steve If I'm exceptionally bored (which I probably will be) I might set this computer up to dual boot with Linux (my original set-up, but I never reinstalled after my most recent reformat) again tommorow. If I do I'll install WINE and try BCM out. Maybe with some good hardware it'll actually work.

Heheh... I just found myself in a pretty bad situation. After fighting off what seemed like endless waves of fighters (coming from... I dunno?) I found that I had lost two of my interceptors. One of the remaining ones made it home, but Nightwing was trapped on the other one - stranded with her pilot dead. My ship had taken a horrible amount of damage in all the fighting (once I started losing fighters it became harder to avoid it..) so I really just wanted to get out of there. Problem is, I didn't want to leave my fighter and pilot behind. So how could I pick the nearly dead fighter up? Or is there a way to at least get Nightwing back? I launched a shuttle and tried to tow her in, but that didn't seem to work. Unfortunetly, I thought it did work (well, more accurately I just assumed it would and jumped the second the shuttle docked). Anyway, once I realized I didn't pick her up I turned around and started back - but her fighter was destroyed before I got there (sniff sniff poor Nightwing..). I'm curious as to how I would've gone about getting the fighter back, though. My thought was to tractor it and go to a friendly station. Would that work? Is there another way?

quote:Originally posted by 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 I gave it a shot, but couldn't get it working. Then again, my Linux box has a pretty odd hardware set up (crappy ram and not much of it and a p3-500mhz with a voodoo5 - there are any number of reasons it wouldn't have worked ). If you do get it working, though, say something. I'd be interested in knowing whether or not it's worth swapping some better hardware in there. I'd love to see BCM running under Linux.

quote:Originally posted by Jigoku San: Celerons curently go up to 1.1ghz. 1.1ghz to 533mhz are FCPGA, 533mhz-down are PPGA(533mhz have both versions). You have to find out about your motherboard, if it accepts FCPGA is upgradable to 1.1Ghz... if its PPGA its upgradable to 533mhz.. like my old box... Edit: I would go with a athlon though for a totaly new rig. [ 12-01-2001: Message edited by: Jigoku San ] Or a Pentium 4, or even a Pentium 3 depending on how much you're willing to pay. Definetly don't get another Celeron if you're building/buying a completely new computer, though. If you're short on cash a Duron (or an Athlon, they're fairly cheap) is definetly a better choice.

I'm having a little bit of trouble accepting the "lack of self control" argument regarding people who are overweight or obese. I remember reading something a while ago that claimed a large number of overweight people actually have one or more serious physical illnesses that lead to their condition. People with an unusually slow metabolic rate, for example, can gain a lot of weight if they either don't eat extraordinarily lean foods or have a very small amount every day. The point is... you can't stereotype someone who's overweight (or fat or obese or whatever) as being so just because they can't control themselves. And from what I've heard, medical problems like this can be genetic - so basically kids of people who are overweight because of a physical problem are probably going to have a pretty hard time staying fit. I'm definetly not saying that acceptance is good. There's no way I can agree with the attitude "Hey, so what if you're a little overweight? That's perfectly fine" because it's not okay and it can be unhealthy. But I guess if someone makes a conscious choice not to lose weight that there's own decision. Oh, and by the way... a rerun of that episode of Seinfeld with Kramer smoking is one right now

quote:Originally posted by Gamesniped: I have a ATI Radeon32SDR PCI. Hmm... you might want to consider an upgrade, although I can't say for sure you'll have problems. My old Radeon 64mb DDR (that I had before I got my GeForce3 that I had before I got my Radeon 8500 ) generally worked pretty good, but BCM even chokes up my newer cards sometimes. quote:ya I guess this really doesn't belong in this forum:/ I wouldn't worry about it. I'd imagine if SC didn't like it here he'd move it... [ 12-01-2001: Message edited by: Simparadox ]

quote:Originally posted by Melanie650: If you upgrade to a Pentium 4, yes you have to change the motherboard. If your upgrading to a faster celeron, I think you can use the same board. This definetly isn't always the case. As a matter of fact, with a 500mhz Celeron you may be near the upper range for your motherboard. Don't run out and buy a new cpu until you know for sure. Do you know what kind of motherboard is in your computer now? If you do, look up some information on it and find the fastest speed cpu it can handle. If you can't got much higher then it's probably better to upgrade your motherboard than just take a 100mhz or so increase. Also, what kind of video card are you using? If you're using something fairly old you'll definetly want a new one. EDIT: Shouldn't this be in the general discussion forum instead of here? [ 12-01-2001: Message edited by: Simparadox ]

quote:Originally posted by Menchise: Well, my holidays have begun, which means that I am finally going to finish (read: remake from scratch for the third time) my game review site. This will be my first website developed with 0% WYSIWYG (to hell with Dreamweaver! ). This thread is for user feedback on the various test pages I'll be developing, which will determine how the entire site will look in the end (if I ever get to the end ). The first of these is a test page for an early version of the main CSS I'm writing for the site. I'm looking for feedback on the colour scheme, type face (paragraphs only), and whether your web browser is configured to override the document's font and colour settings. First test page. I like the idea of going with a non-white background. Anything that breaks the boring design standards is good, but a slightly darker blue might look a bit better. As it stands, the blue you're using looks a bit too soft and I always associate softer colors with less tech-savvy sites. The sharper, darker blue color scheme on the BCM forum, for instance, gives a high-tech feeling and as an added bonus it's easy on the eyes. As far as fonts go, verdana is always nice looking. I'd recommend not using times new roman anywhere, though, even on the headings. Anyway, just my opinion. Good luck with the site, looking forward to seeing what you decide on for a layout. [ 12-01-2001: Message edited by: Simparadox ]

Hmm... has anyone here thought about making a pure descriptive appendix? Something that describes the different units and weapons in the game with text instead of just stats? I was thinking of doing something like that, but I was curious if anyone beat me to it. It seems like it'd be helpful to people new to the game who aren't interested in pouring over a lot of statistics and figuring out what they all mean. EDIT: And if no one more experienced has or plans to, I just might (that is, unless lots of people think it's a terrible idea). [ 12-01-2001: Message edited by: Simparadox ]

quote:Originally posted by - PzY -: Now I do have a source for it but I really do not feel like sharing and the point of this post is the NFO. I am only trying to prove to you, Mr. Smart, that no matter WHAT you do your software WILL be pirated. Everyone knows about piracy. Note I do not wish to be banned for this, but it is the truth. Good day. [ 12-01-2001: Message edited by: Supreme Cmdr ] ...how old are you? Twelve? This really has to be one of the most moronic posts I've ever read on any message board. And I really don't understand why you act like it takes talent to copy a CD image and what the hell kind of crack would you make for it? All I can think of is something to get past safedisc... ...anyway, it doesn't really matter. The game is going to be un-patchable and useless for multiplayer. I really don't get why you people even bother with this. There's no challenge, no skill required, and the kind of "cracking" you're talking about certainly doesn't require any degree of intelligence (and since, based on the quality of the grammar, spelling, and cohesion of your original post, I'd imagine your response is going to be along the lines of "lol u r so wrng"... so I think you can save everyone the trouble and just not respond to this). Uh.. sorry for the flame-ish post, SC. I'm guessing it'll be deleted, I just hope Pzy sees it first . Shuts up and stands back EDIT: Shouldn't it be "Warez DO exist for this game"? Or something... [ 12-01-2001: Message edited by: Simparadox ]

quote:Originally posted by Gomez: Well...for one thing. Sell back all your pieces and parts. Repairs are free if you are military, and you don't have the spare part...(unless that's a small bug)... That's what I figured and that's generally what I've been doing up until this point, but when I couldn't repair any of my systems at all I thought maybe I was wrong. Oh, well. I guess I'll just try re-docking a few more times.

Alright, I've just run into a kind of odd situation. For the first time since I've started playing I've actually found myself in the situation of having my ship crippled. Don't feel bad for me, though, because this is definetly a good thing. Most of the time I just get blown away outright . Anyway, I was tangling with two insurgent ships near Saturn while my fighters kept theirs away. I destroyed the first one pretty easily, but by then the second one was bearing down on me and about the only thing I could do was turn in and go head to head with him. Turns out that wasn't so smart, even though watching two massive ships heading straight for eachother with weapons blazing was an awesome sight. When all was said and done I came out on top, but just barely. Every system aboard my ship was basically down, except (Woohoo!) my engines. Since I had a good deal of cash from mining I figured everything would be okay, so I jumped to the nearest space station. Once I got there I started buying replacement parts. My first priorities were the computers and life support system, but once I bought a shiny new mainframe to replace my old one I found that I didn't even have the option to replace it. I had similiar trouble with the life support and a few other systems. Is there something I'm missing here? This is the first time I've ever had any trouble doing repairs and I'm not sure what the problem is. I've gone through the manual a few (more) times, but there doesn't seem to be an obvious reason why I can't get my systems online. What am I missing?

Maybe this is kind of off-topic for this particular thread, but it doesn't seem worth starting a new one over... Am I the only one who's really not looking forward to seeing major reviews of BCM? Almost every large site or popular magazine that reviews games doesn't put in enough time to really appreciate whatever it is they're reviewing (in most cases this means they give exceptionally high scores to games that get boring pretty quickly) and somehow I doubt anyone except a Battlecruiser series junkie is going to be immediatly impressed with BCM. Or even incredibly impressed after a few hours of play. On top of that, a lot of the "big reviewers" take lots of points off of their overall score because of graphics. As a matter of fact, it usually seems to me that reviewers take a "well, I didn't bother playing much since this game is barely worth my time" attitude if the graphics and eye candy don't completely blow them away from the second they start playing. Anyway, I just hope that negative or semi-negative reviews on major sites or in big magazines don't scare too many people away. Also, has anyone else noticed that almost every even slightly positive review on PC Gamer Review has been rated incredibly low while the (sometimes unintelligible) reviews bashing the game are rated pretty high? Seemed kind of odd to me. Oh, well.. I'm done ranting. Sorry about that.

quote:Originally posted by G E C K O: Why I want the manual? Because I get flinged "see p9999" at my head everytime I ask something. I'd like to be able to PREPARE for getting this game, y'know? It took me some time to get through the BC3k one.. Honestly, I haven't seen many "see page x" comments when asking about features and such. And I can't imagine why you'd ask how to do something without the game. And besides, I haven't seen many games with online manuals... I'm not sure why people expect one.

quote:Originally posted by Akira: Just remember to pick up Arctic Silver II Thermal GREASE not epoxy as that will perm. glue the HSF to your CPU... not a good idea. Er... what can I say? D'oh? Must've been looking at epoxy or something when I made the post. Anyway, yeah.. definetly wouldn't want to glue the heat sink to your cpu. That would be bad ... "Ahhh! How do I get this damn thing off! Arggh..." *Crack* "D'oh." [ 11-30-2001: Message edited by: Simparadox ]

quote:Originally posted by Barron Morris: Ok I give up, I have the game and its registerd..can someone please tell me how to put a hyperlink in my signature so I can play the game....I can put the url in there but how do I link it to text ..ie sys profile info? Something like this: code: System Information

quote:Originally posted by Supreme Cmdr: OK, I'll add it to the very bottom of the pile - right down there with Tac's request for 3D dice for his BridgeViewer. That was back in '97. Uhm... yay?

quote:Originally posted by Supreme Cmdr: Yes Heheh, thanks... and I'd just deleted my post because I thought it seemed kind of out of place in this thread.

Remember something - the heat sink you choose and how it contacts the cpu is just as important as the fan. Probably more so. I'd recommend picking up some Arctic Silver II Thermal Epoxy (any cooling site should sell it and I've seen it at CompUSA and Circuit City). It'll help the heat sink contact the cpu and result in better heat transfer (ie, better cooling). The thermal goop alone made about a 3 C difference over the thermal pad I was using. You have lots of heat sink choices. Right now I'm using a MCX370 heat sink along with a Delta 50CFM fan. The combination keeps my cpu pretty cool even when overclocked almost 200mhz over its stock setting. Still, I wouldn't recommend the fan unless you have an insane tolerance for noise. It's no exaggeration when I say my computer sounds a lot like a train when I turn it on . Good luck, and enjoy the new computer.

quote:Originally posted by Soback: How about before you even go into the control panel to delete it, you go into BCM folder first and back up the save file. Isn't that easier. Think about something you are about to do before you do it. Trust me, it will also pay off in your personal lifes, so start practicing. I think the problem is that they don't want to delete the file in the first place, just restore it. They're complaining that they accidently click delete instead of restore. So even if they thought for a long time about what they intended to do, backing up the file still wouldn't seem like an appropriate action . Personally, I like to see delete confirmations in any game. I make that mistake a lot too, but it wouldn't be at the top of my list for a patch. But y'know, if SC's ever bored I wouldn't mind seeing it as a new feature sometime... hehe... Oh, and since when can you make back-up copies in real life? I sure would've liked to know I could do that the day before I crashed my car .

quote:Originally posted by Sunanta: "...it should go like silk on a PII 300" LOL! That's the bare minimum. Someone didn't read the system requirements... [ 11-29-2001: Message edited by: Sunanta ] Well, I think he was more referring to the quality of the graphics. Although he was really just showing his ignorance if that was the case - there aren't a whole lot of games that look nearly as good as Battlecruiser Millennium that'll run on a Pentium 2-300mhz. As a matter of fact, you'd be hard-pressed to even get a "lower-end" game like Half-life to run on that kind of system with an adequete level of detail and fair frame rates. Not to mention that there seem to be a whole lot of objects on the screen from time to time and I'd imagine this has a lot to do with the moderately low polygon models. Anyway, I can understand some of the gripes people have with the game. It's pretty complex and there is a steep learning curve. After defending BCM for almost an hour to a friend of mine I came to realize that a vast majority of gamers just want to relax and enjoy a game without spending an inordinate amount of time learning to play. There's really nothing wrong with that and I think that's the source of a good deal of complaints on pcgamerreview.com. A few people seem to be a little too focused on the lack of eye candy, though, and that's a bit upsetting. I also don't agree with the reviewer who complained about the lack of "help" on this forum. My feelings about the helpfulness of the moderators or members in terms of gameplay issues aside, there isn't any statement on the box that says "Free and total use of an online message forum to answer all of your most insignificant gameplay questions included with every purchase!". About the only thing I'd say the average buyer is entitled to is some form of tech support, and I've seen technical issues responded to and dealt with pretty promptly. Anyway, I posted my own (mostly positive) review of BCM on pcgamerreview.com.. so if you're exceptionally bored check it out . [ 11-29-2001: Message edited by: Simparadox ]

quote:Originally posted by Akira: You are correct... the ti is a nudge faster than the gf2-pro... however, that doesn't change my argument in the slightest. Get the gf3-ti200, you'll be better off Not to mention that with some replacement cooling on the card you can get it running close to (if not above) the normal core/memory frequency of a non-titanium GeForce3. I just helped a friend of mine install a new heatsink/fan and some ramsinks on his GF3 ti200 and overclock it to 195mhz core. It runs almost as fast as my regular GeForce3 did stock. Anyway, if you get the extra cash I'd also recommend the Radeon 8500. I bought one a few weeks ago and it's a great card.