Korgmeister

Why waste a perfectly good Marine? There's always way more flight engineers than are nescessary anyway, they make good cheap expendable shuttle pilots. (Just get them the hell out of the shuttles if you get boarded)

No idea, myself. I'm the captain of the ship, it's the job of the fighter pilots to take down the enemy fighters, not mine. I'm too busy trying to make sure Resnig doesn't do something stupid. If those pesky enemy fighters are silly enough to come close to me they'll be sucking vaccum pretty quickly thanks to my PTA lasers.

Ah yes, Hardwar. Alot of BCM players would like Hardwar. It's not as detailed, admittedly, but the combat is great fun and it's got the mercantile thing going on, too. If you want to see the game with videos Captain Zedo can get you in touch with people willing to burn a copy of the game for you. Since it's Abandonware and any company associated with it has long since been dissolved, there's really nobody to give you a hard time about it. That said, I prefer playing the game entirely in freeform mode, without getting involved in the plot at all. And frankly unless you want to get involved in the plot the videos are no great loss. Unfortunately the game's economic engine gets screwed up if you start playing in the real plot. Hence why I prefer remaining uninvolved. Captain Zedo's page will give you a veritable treasure trove of hints and playing strategies. But I will tell you this one for free - forget the Hawk. It sucks. Go with the Moon Moth if you like to dogfight or the Neo Tiger if you prefer to run away. Me? I'm a craven coward thank you very much. I've got too much riches to bother fighting every no-good pilot who wants a piece of them. I'm fond of using Trojans just to teach those looting low-lives a lesson. If I ever get in trouble it's just a matter of hitting the afterburners and enjoying the Gs.

I'm not sure how many people here are into the business angle of things. But I had a discussion on how the principles behind these sorts of lawsuits are bad business practise: Link: discussion in a friend's LJ. (Warning: Colourful language used by me. Ph33r) Admittedly my explanations are rather simplified (and thus rather easily ripped apart). But the trouble with this whole RIAA furore is that it's not so much a new thing as a return of a cyclic phenomenon. It's quite common for organisations that deal in intellectual property to run into a problem when a more efficient method of delivery is developed. When radio first came out, there was a panic by record manufacturers that people would stop buying records. That didn't happen. When the VCR was invented, movie theatre operators were frightened they'd lose all their business. Again, that didn't happen. The nightmare scenario of record companies going broke isn't happening. Yes, their profits are down, but that is because instead of embracing a new technology of distribution they are demanding that the market stay still for their benefit. Frankly if the RIAA had put the amount of money it has put into legal action towards the creation of a marketing team who could figure out a way to make MP3 profitable for them, they probably would have done it by now. The way a business survives these days is by regularly having strategy teams figure out how a competitor could do them out of business - and then doing exactly that before anyone else does! Considering that most MP3s are encoded from badly scratched discs with an outdated codec (or at least sound like they do!) I imagine many consumers would be willing to pay money to buy 'official' MP3s rather than put up with 2nd rate copies. Are there ways to get round the filesharing dilemma with this? Not entirely sure. A combination of Read Only ID3 tags containing a special notice of officialdom along with an agreement for filesharing programs not to distribute files with that code would work well. Yes, it wouldn't work perfectly. But y'see the solution doesn't have to be perfect, just "good enough". The idea isn't to stop filesharing as much as encourage consumers to buy official MP3s created from Master copies. If the RIAA can make just as much (or more!) money from that than the irritating logistical nightmare of shipping physical CDs around, that's what really matters. All that's nescessary is to make the bypass process sufficiently niggly that Joe Six Pack has an easier time just buying the songs for 50 cents a pop instead of filesharing then RIAA makes a profit, woohoo! Any thoughts on this matter? I'm just a Biz/Jap student who frankly is woeful at computer programming, and as such not entirely savvy with the feasibility of certain operations.

Update: Well, I used the transporter for the first time, beamed down and killed both Resnig and the Comms Officer. I ordered their cloning (Which was oddly completed within a minute) and their clones, in addition to being a good deal dumber were carrying only a medipack and a nutripack. So this problem appears to occur with all cloneable personnell.

In response to SC query: Not sure if this happens with other crew. So far the only crew members who have ever died on me are pilots. Cloned pilots do indeed possess a medipack and a nutripack but nothing else. I'll see about loading up a save game and executing one of my officers (probably not Resnig, since he's more combat oriented) and seeing if they still possess a sidearm when cloned. For the record I am playing BCM with the v 1.09.01 patch.

Hmm, I noticed an interesting situation on my carrier. As tends to happen, some of my pilots died and I cloned them as per standard procedure. What's unusual is that when I checked their inventory, these cloned pilots are now unarmed. This is decidedly not fun when intruders meet them on the flight deck and they are forced to responding with colourful language rather than returning fire. I've been unable to find a reference to this problem within the forum archives or the manual, and find this rather mystifying. Pilots, unlike Marines, cannot be Prepped for Combat. So how do I see about giving my newly cloned pilots their sidearms back? [ 10-11-2003, 12:30 PM: Message edited by: Supreme Cmdr ]

Testing out the PTA systems for the Cruisers is proving more difficult than expected. Their lack of cloaking systems gives them the annoying habit of getting immediately blown up by nearby station defenses. If it weren't for the odd position of the ODS in Rinaal I'd be totally buggered. One thing that's giving me problems: The Starcarrier. It's PTA system just damn well refuses to operate from any angle or range that I've tried. Can any Starcarrier fans shed some light on the situation? What's that craft's sweet spot and at what range does it work best? I'm a bit tired of having that thing blown to bits by Insurgents before I can figure out where the hell it's PTA sweetspot is.

One day I aim going to find out what the Japanese equivalent for "smartarse" is. (and no, it's not "baka" that means idiot)

You know, times like this I'm tempted to post some of my stories of Telemarketer revenge. Only I was the telemarketer from hell! Anyone who tried to smartmouth me got one hell of a comeback, and got marked on my callback list with the note reading: REVENGE I'm also the master of insults: Victim: (Smarmy) "Why don't you give me your number and I'll call YOU back during your favourite TV program." Typical comebacks: "Who do you think you are? Jerry Seinfeld?" "That wasn't funny when Jerry Seinfeld said it 10 years ago and it's definately not funny when YOU do it." "Sure: 1-900-you're not funny. Call charges are $5.00 per minute, higher for payphones and landlines." "How about I give you the number for my other part time job: Gay phone sex." And that's without going into the wonderful world of answering machine pranks. Back when I was a telemarketer I learned to hate answering machines with a burning passion. If I got three or so in a row I started getting nasty. If impersonating a police officer wasn't so heinously illegal I'd have tried: "This is senior sergeant McCallister, I'm afraid one of your relatives has been in a road accident and we need you to come down to the station so you can identify the body." But I don't think I should go into it. SC has my home address and everything =P Oh and for the record, XOR, flirting is entirely professional telemarketer behaviour. Telemarketers who don't flirt regularly don't meet KPI. Even in my most recent gig where I call businesses you have to flirt your ass off to get the secretary to transfer you.

Much thanks, Dennymala. Once I've got the whole set done for all armed craft and I make them look a bit nicer (right now for instance you can see I've been a bit sloppy on colours and geometric symmetry) then I'll consider PMing Gallion and seeing if he wants them in the appendix. I'll probably see about documenting the PTA systems of Cruisers and Transports (and *sigh* the freaking Stormcarrier) later today. Might work on making the images look a wee bit nicer as well. Considering that you've brought up the possibility of Appendix inclusion, I think I'll also need to see about whipping up Lossless PNG versions. I've deliberately coded these images with maximum lossiness which makes them tiny but creates a few compression artifacts.

OK, so far I've only done the carriers, because their cloaking system makes it easier to sneak up on ODS systems and engage in target practise without being vapourised. Keep in mind that not all sweetspots are created equal and that in most cases where there is more than one sweetspot location there is almost always one particular location that's a whole lot more destructive than the others. Obviously, PTA 'sweetspots' are marked by the blue circles. I'm only pointing that out because if I don't someone will show how incapable of intuitive reasoning someone will be while still retaining the ability to draw breath and ask "What do those blue circles mean?" Sweetspot Type 1: PTA system fires on targets which are 45 degrees up, port & starboard ahead Battlecruiser Mk I & II http://korgy.kokoyashi.net/static/images/sweetspottopsides.png> Sweetspot Type 2: PTA system fires on targets which are 45 degrees port & starboard ahead Megaron (although really the port sweetspot is the only one worth bothering with) http://korgy.kokoyashi.net/static/images/sweetspotmegaron.png> Sweetspot Type 3: PTA system fires on targets which are 45 degrees port and starboard ahead and 45 degrees port and starboard astern Violon http://korgy.kokoyashi.net/static/images/sweetspothoriz.png> Sweetspot Type 4: PTA system fires on targets which are dead ahead Battlecruiser MkIII Aestrom http://korgy.kokoyashi.net/static/images/sweetspotcentre.png> Sweetspot Type 5: PTA system fires on targets dead ahead and 45 degrees port ahead Nightstar http://korgy.kokoyashi.net/static/images/sweetspotnightstar.png> Sweetspot Type 6: PTA system fires on targets dead ahead, 45 degrees port and starboard ahead and 45 degrees up or down. Firestorm. http://korgy.kokoyashi.net/static/images/sweetspotfirestorm.png> AFAIK that has the carriers covered. I might like to say after doing this and figuring out how to properly operate the Aestrom's PTA system I am truly awed by that thing's destructive capability. Just for fun I decided to level Pixan station. With cloak on they didn't even know what hit them, buwahahahaa! I thinkie I'm going to start me a new Insurgent Commander at Syganstar and blow up some Galcommies! Anyway, hopefully these little visual aids will be handy. Anyone who can be bothered figuring out the PTA sweetspots for Carriers and Transports (oh yeah and the Stormcarrier) that would be nice, and I'll whip up some more visual aids as nescessary.

Ah, nuts! I guess I'll have to wait until I get a new computer. That's probably going to have to wait until after graduation, though. And if I end up going to Japan soon after I graduate it'll probably have to be a laptop, too (eeeyew!). Anyone who can figure out how to fit a computer desk AND a bed into an 8 tatami mat room is smarter than I am

Ah well yes the PTA systems of most craft usually do operate at ranges between 20 and 30 kilometres. But it's not entirely reliable, so I erred on the safe side with the estimates for effective range.

Ja, thank for the tip. I should have realised that with the turrets placed at the range they were, that they would only be effective at medium range. No, I was being silly and trying to take out fighters at point blank (less than 2km) range. This will definately be food for thought. If I'm going to produce visual aids to help new Commanders to identify the sweet spots, I will need to include effective range. All Commanders, your help will allow me to compile this sooner. Please list the effective turret ranges (and sweetspot) positions of all craft that you are familiar with. I'm currently Familar with: Canlon: Sweet Spot is straight above, effective range is from 0.5-20km Generis: Straight above or straght below, effective range from 0.5-20 km Straight ahead, effective range from 5-20km Megaron: First recticle from centre on port (left) side. effective range from 0.5 - 20km Anything else you know will be handy. I'll see about whipping up a few graphics later on in the afternoon, hopefully.