alanschu

Well, those Ruskies and their 3 bullets per soldier made things difficult.

Jung was a crackpot

Which sections of the Qur'an would this be? Seems like a pretty bold claim. That's a rather simple outlook. There were indeed anti-Semites that were able to recreate Jesus as a fighter against the Jews, in what is called Positive Christianity. This particular Christian outlook is what the Nazi Party sought to impose in Germany. It is a myth that Nazi Germany was anti-Christian. They just had a different perspective on the religion, and like had been experienced in the past, someone was trying to use religion to influence the people. They used it to fuel anti-Semitism. The whole persecution of the Jews was religiously motivated. Your statement also overlooks the rather obvious fact that Hitler was exceptionally charismatic and very persuasive. I doubt reading the Bible would have made a significant difference, because they probably were reading it. Or at least some form of it. The statement is also shakey because in the predominantly Christian South, Blacks were persecuted. There's the idea that Hitler used this as an example of how he can persecute the jews.

Skinner was big on all of our actions being because of some type of previous learning. Even the seemingly completely random, because whatever we "randomly" chose to do, we still chose based on something.

Victoria: Revolutions has a scenario set up to mimic The Great War. And not too surprisingly, it's a big giant war of attrition in the West, and a War of "We're better trained, better equipped, and just plain better than you" in the East.

Yup, the Yamato was one such ship. The biggest in fact. Has 18.1 inch batteries that could shoot 42 km! I have been fortunate enough to have NOT encountered the Yamato so far, though I would love to put a torpedo into her side! I remember reading an assessment between the two big boys, the Yamato and the Iowa Class Battleship. It seemed as though the Japanese still used radar assisted visual spotting for where the shells were landing, and it was suspected it would not fare as well in a long range naval battle, as it could not accurately tell where the shells were landing relative to the ship. The Iowa on the other hand, had a superior RADAR, which could also be used to train the guns, and it could also accurate detect the tops of the splashes from long range shells falling over the horizon. For it's time, it sounds like a pretty impressive boat. In fact, the Americans were pretty smart with incorporating radar assisted fire control for both their main batteries, as well as their AA guns. I'm an Iowa fanboy, and I get my first one in 617 days! :D

Each hex represents 60 miles, so I think it'd be pretty good to shoot 60 miles :D The big 18.1" guns on the Yamato I believe have a range of 30-40k on them, not that hitting anything would really be possible (outside of a shore bombardment) given the curvature of the Earth.

My first time was always my favourite, because I didn't think to crush him in the doors, I just used it as an alternative way to get around. Having him chase me all over, including the mad dash to the Gondola, was intense!

That's always the case. When I worked in a restaurant, it was particularly hilarious. The dishwasher bitched about how he was alone in the dishpit, and had to deal with dirty dishes and whiny waitresses saying they need clean cups or whatever. Waitresses hated dealing with people, and even though they only had a small part of the restaurant, they had to deal with customers multiple times (the cooks just had to deal with each customer once), had to put up with annoying people, and had to do damage control whenever anything goes wrong. And if anything went wrong, it was taken out of their tip. Cooks had to work in the hot kitchen, put up with annoying waitresses who think the world centers around them and their tables, cook food for virtually every table, in addition to take out and delivery orders. They had to deal with waitresses allowing bizarre customer requests, as well as allowing customers to order something that was on the menu 12 years prior to the most senior person on the staff. And if someone screws up an order, they have to try to deal with making a rush order on top of everything else. As someone who was a cook, and then a manager, it was all rather entertaining.

The Troika games were hardly perfect. I really enjoyed Bloodlines, but annoying memory leaks and potential game breaking bugs can be rather irritating.

If they don't profess it openly, how can we be certain it's so popular?

Not that I can tell. You can only attack targets in the same hex it seems. Though I still hold New Guinea at this time, so it wouldn't be an issue. Was it possible to actually shoot artillery across into new guinea?

Then he probably should have said that, rather than supporting people that lie the most effectively. Lets see what the public opinion of these liars are like if it gets exposed that they aren't deeply religious.

Was it really the dynamic campaign that made the game so cool?

If you look at the map in the very first post, the map is cut into regions, and you can set those regions to computer control if you want. It seems to do okay from a land campaign, and the air campaign is okay, but outside of submarines, I think the game still wanted me to take control of the boats, since they didn't really seem to do anything. As I learned the game, I slowly unlocked parts of the campaign. That's for the grand campaign though. There are smaller campaigns that only take part in certain regions, and over smaller timeframes, which may be what you're looking for. I'm not too worried about needing ASW near India. All of the subs seem to be near Australia, and I have a fair bit of Airforce in the area, and have scored a few hits on ASW patrols. I also have some American and Australia DDs, and some Patrol Boats and mine sweepers, patrolling the area aggressively. I've killed 5 subs there in the past month. The British Sea Force in India is still pretty beefy. They don't do withdrawl requests too often, so I still have 3 Battleships, 1 Battlecruiser, 2 Fleet Carriers, 1 Escort Carrier, and a host of heavy/light cruisers and destroyers. They routinely do a bombardment mission at Aykab, on the east side of the Bay of Bengal on the India/Burma border. Some of my Carriers are damaged (plus the British Carriers have way, way, way smaller detachments than the USA does....34 planes versus 90!), and undergoing repairs, as well as the BC Repluse and the very excellent BB Prince of Wales. I'm a bit too scared to do too much, without knowing precisely where the enemy Carrier Fleet is. I do have 3 or 4 older Battleships at Australia. The BB Colorado was limping into Brisbane after all. I just relocated her to Sydney (has a larger port and naval repair factories), and there's a Tennessee class undergoing a refit to have better AA and Radar installed. I am sending a large amount of troops, air force and boats to Sydney via the South South South Pacific The Soviets are inactive in the game until August 1945, since they signed a 5 year Non Aggression Pact with Japan (and are focusing on Germany anyways). If Japan invades Russia, then all bets are off, though I doubt the AI will do that. As a human player, Japan also needs to keep an appropriate strength Garrison in Manchuria in the area, otherwise the Soviets will wake up early. Stuff like this is usually exempt as the AI, though at the same time the AI is probably also exempt from taking troops out of Manchuria. Right now I just have everyone set to accept reinforcements (so they'll get upgrades for their guns....that 37mm AT gun can change into a 76mm AT gun for example), and have their airforce set to maximum training. It does not look like it (though Pacific Storm does). I think the only superweapon is the Atomic Bomb.

BTW, I wasn't kidding when I inquired how much your research was.

I did have that. When I was worried about the shore bombardments, I had a fleet of heavy ships in the area warding them off. They had decent AA coverage. Then the USS Colorado took a few torpedoes because the Japanese figured that they were a juicier target than my airfield. So I got them the heck out of there. The problem with trying to rely on boats is that if he chooses to attack my airfield, I don't know how effective the AA fire will be from boats in the harbour, or in a nearby task force. Boats in harbours directly can be sitting ducks. I also do have a fair bit of ground based AA emplacements, which help out on the raids. I'd prefer it if they didn't get a chance to drop their bombs though It's less of an issue now though, as I seem to have obtained air superiority over Guadalcanal. A few days of thunderstorms halted air strikes, and let me get additional planes servicable. After slowly wearing down the Japanese squadrons, I was able to get back to back days where I had a net +20 kills, and Japan has since slowed/ceased its attacks. I also just recently upgraded the airfield to level 4, which lets smaller level bombers take off without penalty. The Hudsons taking off from there didn't waste much time, scoring two hits on two different transports in the first two days they were operational. As for my boats hitting land, I'm assuming you're talking about the base I'm sieging in China. Unfortunately, to the east is mainland Japan, to the south is the Philippines (which as valiant the remaining forces have been to hold out until May 1942...they're going to be kaput soon and most of the island isn't mine), to the west is Indochina, and the entire area is what I would call "Japanese Waters," there's no way I'd risk it. Some plane would spot me, and he'd sent out the ships and planes, and sink me good! Furthermore, most of them are still finishing up their repairs from Pearl Harbour on the West Coast of the USA. Most of them are pretty close, but the USS Maryland is still at 65% systems damage. A bit more at Pearl Harbour, and then I'll send her back to San Francisco which has a huge naval repair yard (plus not a constant stream of ships with minor damages that take away from time to work on the Maryland). Other places like Los Angeles, San Diego, and Seattle are also capable of speeding along repairs. The Colorado, and a few other BBs and CAs are in the Australia area, which would probably be an even tougher gauntlet to run to get to China for a bombardment mission. The island chains of the South Pacific are swarming with Japanese vessels and land based aircraft. I have been doing a steady stream of bombardments in India with some of the capital ships sent to me from Britain. Unfortunately, they just requested a withdrawl of a Battleship (and two destroyers) to recall them to the European Theatre. Also, since it is May, I am able to upgrade British planes now, so some of the poorer planes have been replaced with slightly better ones. They don't have as long range, so it's a bit more defensive, but they are the Hurricane Fighter Bombers and are significantly better at air combat than the Wirraways they replaced. They're more maneuverable, faster, more armored, and better equipped. They'll be key for when I make my push back into India.

Like all games I'll wait and see, but naturally I'll hope it is good. I'd rather a small chance of having a good Jagged Alliance sequel, then no chance.

Doctors get chicks and parents brag about it, thus those two qualifiers. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> To be fair, I think a lot of people (how many is a lot?) that want to get into computer games think that it'd be more something that people think would be "kewl" to do. Even then, a lot of people may want to do it, but like many professions the number that want to and the number that do probably aren't that similar.

That it is. I'd still be playing it, if my favourite theatre (WW2) hadn't sprouted up

I didn't encounter many in my playthrough as well, though I did have the passive AI bug during a siege one time, where the enemy just sat there. I just let time expire a x3 time, but it was a boring wait

News from the Chinese front. 150k Chinese troops have laid seige to Canton, near Hong Kong. Both parties have commenced launching artillery barrages back and forth. I'm hoping on having some units sneak around and cut off their direct supply line to mainland Japanese occupied cities. Make them support it from sea, and hopefully distract attention from the South Pacific. It's a city tile, with size 9 fortifications. This one is going to take a while!

What attitude is that pretell? That some of us feel that Jade Empire underperformed, and that the underperforming Jade Empire still outsold all of Troika's games combined? Or just Volourn's passionate fervour? A big part of the decline of small time independent companies is the fact that the cost of developing games as risen exponentially. Small studios still exist, but you won't see them release games in the mainstream anymore. It's too expensive. You're a smart guy. You should know that simply stating this is an open invitation for him to start talking about it some more. Well, a lot of people want to become Doctors too

That's what I figured. They may have been added as tough bad guys later, but the only thing you need Knights of the Round if you want to defeat those weapons, otherwise the game is quite beatable (with good reason, given the hoops you have to jump through to get Knights of the Round).

Wooo, some bad weather grounded much of the Japanese airforce, so I had some days to get some planes built, and now am consistently able to shoot down more planes than they can shoot down of mine. The Zero escort has been particularly beaten up, which should making shooting the Bettys fish in a barrel!