Eclipse

good read. Glad to hear most of the changes will be fairly transparent to us BC'rs; Can't wait to get my hads on it.

definately NOT GOOD! Some folks have no descency. I don't think I've heard of source codes being leaked very often.

heh I got one of those too... would have come out to something like 15 bucks I would have gotten. Not reallyworth the effort IMO.

No. In fact I don't believe anything less than a GeForce 3 will run UC.

quote: Originally posted by frumple2: Thank you, thank you for the earnest reply; I was beginning to lose hope for honest discussions. My definition of balance is an economic one. An lower monetary and time expenditure will lose to a higher monetary and time expenditure, unless the unit has equal added weakness to balance out the added strength. Skill is a control that isn't factored in here, as it of course is and should be independent from the hardware utilized by the skill. Now what I refer to is say a fighter armed with 2 titanic torpedoes. Those torps are rather costly, and together they will decently damage a battlecruiser. But the fighter has no weapons to combat other fighters or fast moving corvettes expect or its laser beam. But I assume that having fighter to fighter missiles will make the fight pretty darned one way. I must tell you that I just started playing the desert combat extended mod for BF 1942. The balance smells of rotten uterus. Stinger missiles are good for one thing: killing helos and planes. They suck my butt to that end. For hours on end I battled the same helo pilot coming on over me to rocket pod my ass into oblivion. Oh, same fate with designated AA vehicles. Sooo agravating. No skill or ping differential, especially since even rom cover I couldn't hit the helo or plane, and after the first shot it would figure out where I was and the pilot would unload on me. Oh, and infantry vs vehicles is a joke as the designated AT soldier takes 3 closeranged cumbersome shots to kill the tank. And tanks are good at pointblank and long ranges too; they are superweapons. Infantry suck, end of story. No fun for a lover of shoulder mounted weapons like myself. Heh, and I've seen other players ganked all over the place when they try to run AT/AA. Thats why everyone teamkills for the good vehicles. It's madness, its retardation. But of course in UC we have an economics model. So if it takes 2 skilled bazooka toting soldiers to kill a tank, so be it if and only if it costs a lot more than 3 or 4 bazooka soldiers to kill a tank, since tanks have more overall worth than Bazookas and because you wanna penalize the tank player economically for going up against strategically equiped bazooka men. Thats my essay on game balance right there. What I meant by anomolies were unique and strange galactic sightings, perhaps easter eggs if you will, but that fit into the bc mythos. I read a post a long time ago about some guy who found a ship or fighter that when targeted it showed as unknown race and unknown make. They arent bugs, just unique thing to discover in the galaxy that SC and the world builder have artfully crafted. to steal a word from Derek... Wot?

Very nice, can't wait to try it.

quote: Originally posted by Supreme Cmdr: The new AI kernel has better and more advanced SA attributes. The new kernel also provides support for Intelligent Terrain Analysis. Its rubbish-speak that says characters know how to use assets that are within the game world. e.g. a marine will no longer try to run you down and kill you with bad breath. If there is a vehicle closeby, judging by the distance, he will grab it and give chase in it. Weird stuff like that. very cool. This is gonna be fun

Interesting articles. It will be interesting to see how the changes affect the game. Not to happy about losing manual shift from FOTL to VOTL though... I get over it in time.

After that try installing the indeo drivers.

quote: Originally posted by $iLk: As long as the computer can see your forces, it will adjust strategy to match. Send out squads of fighters to keep their prying eyes away and you will find that the computer's strategy and build orders suffer immensely. It's like they are lazy if they don't know what you have. But I took on 3 computer AI opponents on the Medium level and was able to annihalate all 3 within 45 min. Build lots of harvesters and set them to collecting, and use your fighters and bombers as primary forces until you get up a sizeable force of Ion and flak frigates (I don't even touch torpedo frigates). Focus on the goal of creating a huge capital fleet, and a huge support fleet. Send your main fleet in on a quick destroy mission of as much as you can, while the support fleet stays in reserve to defend yourself. I was able to simultaneously carry out a devastating attack on the enemy forces of one Computer opponent, while destroying the attacking fleet of another. And turning my victorious forces against the 3rd. it seems that upgraded torp frigates have a faster firetime, heavier damage, and much longer range than ions. I agree with you though once the comp can see your forces it adjusts itself pretty fast.

well single, double and staff sabers are in it, but I find a few of the puzzles to be a little arcane and buggy. especially the final puzzle at the end of the Jedi Master tomb level. For some reason there was no visual que in this section.

I also noticed that the AI tends to send ships on specific missions. after I started building Ion Cannon frigates and flack frigates the AI attacked with fighters and bombers and promply got annihilated. The next attack completely ignored my frontlines and targeted only the frigate module of my mothership. I destroyed the attackers but they still got the module. I also like how resource collectors can repair ships when you upgrade.

Ran smooth with all the settings at max, SP start mission was reminescent of the HW1 start mission, Nifty little graphics enhancements like the high res textures, damage textures, and shadows on units. THere seemed to be more ingame cutscenes than with HW1 and the intro did an awsome fade from 2d to ingame, was almost imperceptible where the transition came in. Music was fitting for the game, seemed to have a heavy indian influence. other than that the gameplay seems more streamlined with the better interface and there are alot more options in the development of your fleet with all the various modules you can build. Haven't tried the MP or IA portions, but will do so. I've read of the AI doing some nice counters. overall I'd say that the demo does a nice job whetting the appetite for the full release. I'll probably be picking this up when it comes out or a month or two after.

Just played through the demo. quite interesting to say the least, most obvious change is the new interface and the "squads" of units. Graphically there has been some improvement though the big area seems to be texture resolution and the inclusion of shadows. Intro cutscene was nice liked the fade in from hand drawn to realtime.

I would guess that with enough time and coding just about anything is possible and you should just take the statement at face value meaning: "as it stand in the game right now you cannot(not allowed, unable to, etc) set the Y (or Z depending on which axis is "up") height of a waypoint in space."

quote: Originally posted by Scrivener: For the most part, I believe in the sovereignty of the individual. That noone has the right to force an ideal (or anything else for that matter) on another person. If *I* come to a conclusion I accept ALL of the implications. Please do not take this the wrong way but this seems a dangerous stance to take. You may be using it in moderation but do remember that the law does forces ideals on individuals. It tells us it is wrong to steal or murder, for instance, and enforces consequences on those who do not comply by the ideals it has set forth.

No they aren't used, and if you look at the stations you will see tehy have docking bays... and they aren't used either. They are holdovers from some features that never got implemented.

NP, and yeah that is basically the idea. Of course you could just fly the shuttle yourself and transfer them to the shuttle team and deploy manually.

quote: Originally posted by Cmdr Nova: Going in Star Wars/Star Trek terms, GalCOM is like the Federation or the rebellion/New Republic. You're definitely in for that, I believe. Federation yes, Rebellion/NR I think not. That would fall to the Insrugents.

You can deploy and retrieve them from shuttles but they won't deploy to planets and you cannot deploy to enemy SS or ships.

Hve you thought much about joining the Insurgents?

quote: Originally posted by Race Bannon IV: I have a wonderful idea! The economy has gone to shit and cities are laying off firemen, policemen and paramedics, we are spending 70 million a month in Afghanistan and Iraq, 44 states are operating at budget deficit and the president' approval rating is in the crapper, lets PICK ON THE LIBERALS! Cant pick on the French since we now need them to help in Iraq, so liberals are easy targets. They care for causes that are easily marginalized , most of them aren't " Real Americans" anyway. We should do this because as all Conservatives know it is more important to appear right than to be right. At a time when our country needs us most, the "Big Brained" conservatives are preparing for thier most important battle! No not in Iraq, or North Korea. We are preparing for ... REELECTION! Cause I must agree, conservatives know how to stea.. ah., win an election. It helps that they can usually outspend thier liberal opponents 2-1 but with all that rich folks money its no wonder. I wish I could sit here and make sweeping generalizations regarding conservatives, I really do. But in good conscience I cannot. You see I don't KNOW most conservatives and if I attempted to base it on generalization it would be unfair. I could say that most conservatives don't give a rats ass about the environment, or that most of them are racist and or that they are war mongers, ot that they profit from the sweat of the working man while holding such people in the lowest esteem, but that would simply not be the case. We are facing a critical time and making light of someone elses political beliefs is small minded and mean spirited. Worse it is a waste of intellectual capital. It is an example of partisan politics at its worst. Based on whats going on in Iraq, I could have had a field day taking potshots at the Administration. I declined because as much as disdain as I have for Bush, those are MY countrymen dying over there and I pray that we can find a solution. If I were to counter the premise of the original post I might say , How to be a good conservative..make fun of those who dont think as you do. It seems then that liberals know how to whine...

I have CDR's I recorded around 98, 99 and so far I've not had any problems reading them. Did these guys stick the things in the microwave or leave them outside?

quote: FDR made the depression worse?? When he was elected, the unemployment rate was 23%, by the time the next Republican president took over, it was down to 2.5%Unemployement rates do not necessarily reflect economic growth. FDR simply created a massive number of government organizations and absorbed the unemployed into them and thus redueced the unemployement rate, this doesn't mean that things were better than before because the money to pay these people had to come from somewhere: either higher taxes or borrowing money from foreign soruces. What this resulted in was a deficit and eventually the debt probelm we have today. In the short term what he did jumpstarted the economic cycle but in the long run it just created more problems.

I believe the max number of FC the game allows is 16 per ship. As to your other questions, no you can't have other crew piloting the ships or create more pilots. (could be wrong but I'm pretty sure you can't)