alanschu

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!

I just had some fun with conversions, and converted about 10 large transports into various auxillary ships. A few repair ships (always invaluable, since it reduces down time), as well as some Submarine tenders (I can reload torpedoes at a size 3 port instead of a size 8 port), and Mine Layer Tenders (as long as there are supplies, I can load mines, rather than needing a size 9 (!) port. I also just commissioned a transport fleet, to be escorted by 6 Flush Deck class Destroyers, from Pearl Harbour to Brisbane. I mostly just want to get the Flush Decks down to Australia for the extra ASW, and they aren't much use for a fleet navy (crappy AA ratings, as well as mediocre gun capabilities). It does have 2x2 depth charge racks though, which will come in handy. My air patrols just spotted another 3 submarines off the coast of Australia, and while I've sunk at least one and likely another, I'm a bit worried how many of them may be running around. Right now all I have in Australia are 3 destroyers, and a handful of Minesweepers (which happen to have depth charge racks on them).

Awwwww, here I am thinking I'm the creative one.

What do you mean? How can I have anything backwards when all I did was state that Knights of the Round was only needed for Emerald and Ruby Weapon?

I don't even know if the first world war would make that much of a strategy game either.

I haven't played the game long enough to really know how the AI is doing. I don't see most of the stuff they are doing. Like any large scale wargame, there's likely going to be issues because of ahistoric things I try doing. I guess the "dumbest" thing I have seen him do so far is throw a lot of planes at Guadalcanal, with me slowly wearing him down. But I don'tk now how much the Zeroes and Bettys cost, so meh.

Yeah, I remember reading up on neural networks. Pretty cool stuff.

Well, Knights of the Round was only needed for the super weapons, Emerald and Ruby.

Unfortunately I have none near Australia. Though the idea of sending one of the ones near Pearl (which I kept there since Pearl is still my main base of operations, and I was running Carrier probes out of it) has certainly occurred to me now! There's not a whole lot of AR repair ships coming up in the cues, but I can convert large AK transport ships into a variety of ships, ARs being one of them. I just recently made one of those conversions (and had accidentally made one a while back as I played with the game). The only problem is that it takes 180 days to refit the transport. I have a rather insanely large amount of AK ships near India, that aren't doing nearly as much as my Pacific Transport fleets, so I will probably convert some of them. On the plus side, the USS Colorado just reported that she had made it into the harbour. The first day saw a drastic decrease in flooding damages from 90% to 81%, so I think she's going to be okay. I've also sunk two of the subs floating around in the area. Once she's been patched up a bit, I'll send her to Sydney, which has a slightly large port (port size 10 rather than 9, and the only way to get a 10 is by starting the game with it, so Brisbane is maxed at 9...which is still excellent), and it also has dedicated ship repair yards. This provide a small (but given the repair time of a Battleship, quite helpful) boost to repairs, and is also required for the upgrade she has planned. The upgrade I suspect will include replacing the crappy .50 cal AA guns with the 20 mm Oerlikon, which is just superior in every way. And it will probably place a radar on it, which will help with my naval detection and naval accuracy. In other news, much of the "damage" from upgrading ships at Pearl Harbour and the West Coast is done, so many of my ships have significantly improved AAA, as well as Radar units. Not very effective radars, but I'll take something over nothing! Many of the destroyers have also gone from 2 Depth Charge racks to 6, so the few subs I have seen will pay the price! Man I can't wait for the Destroyer Escorts and their insanely accurate Hedgehogs when dealing with those things! And the Philippines is still holding on! It's been a constant stream of deliberate attacks by the Japanese to wear me down. I know most of my damage isn't permanent (I'm not destroying as many units, but I am disabling them), it should slow down their advances as they'l have to recuperate. I've also moved Chinese forces to the mainland base that's connected to Hong Kong. Two HUGE armies of over 100k troops each (most troops are 'just' support troops, not all infantry). Almost 1000 guns per side as well. If the Philippines is going to last 5 months, I expect this one to be quite a doozy as well. I may try to sneak a squad (since China has a million of them, and if a division gets destroyed, they immediately get it replaced to simulate their ability to have pretty much infinite men, relatively speaking) around back and onto the rail line to cut off the supplies, and then let logistics take care of the rest, but it has a port, so they could just get supplied by sea. Time to bring in the submarines! The few troops in Burma are slowly trickling into Yunan now as well, where they can finally have a warm bed to sleep in an recover and regroup. I've also slowly withered down the persistent airstrikes against Guadalcanal. In the 1/2 month that my 3 fighter capable squadrons have been there, they have shot down over 100 planes, including many of those damned bettys!!! The Zero is losing it's effectiveness, as the Early War advantage that they get (due to the Allies not respecting its effectiveness) to their maneuverability will reach 0 (starts at +5 in December) come May. As a result, the airstrikes are less extreme, allowing me to finally rebuild and repair grounded airplanes. With help from the AA guns below, I've effectively held off airstrikes with usually around 15-20 fighters (with excellent commanders) and 10 or so Fighter Bombers (which aren't very good, as they don't have super charger engines and lose maneuverability every 1000 feet above 10000 feet. Given the bombers attack at 12-14k, it's a bit of problem. As a result, they have only accounted for 20 of the 100 kills). I have them run combat air patrols at 29k feet (even with the poor high altitude ability of the P-39D Aircobra Fighter Bomber, I'll still take my chances with the speed gain of striking in from above). I usually trade kills, but have plenty of aircraft in reserve on the base below (they just need to be built haha). The Kittyhawks and P-40E Warhawks are virtually identical planes, and they both have around 40 kills so far. The Kittyhawk caps at 16 planes, but the P-40E (and the Aircobras) are full 72 plane fighter groups, so once I can get those up high, I'll feel very comfortable with my air superiority over Guadalcanal.

I was reading up on the SBD Dauntless, and came across this. Seems as though it was the TBD Devastator Torpedo Bomber that drew the attention of the Japanese Escorts, allowing the Dauntlesses to have free attack vectors to the ships relatively unhindered.

I know just what that's like. I had a simple bug and gave an estimate of a week. Turns out it wasn't so simple, and 3 weeks later, I finally had it nicked. Those extra two weeks weren't exactly happy times (though my job is a very laid back atmosphere), but you feel sheepish when you give a time and you miss it by two whole weeks. On the plus side, my boss bleeds grant money, and he understands it's a learning experience for me, so he's not overly worked up about it. I can only imagine what it'd be like when businesses and jobs are on the line

Well, now the Japanese are airstriking Guadalcanal from Rabaul. 100+ Bettys with about 40 Zeros as an escort. I have planes at the base, but they had to be crated to be shipped there, so they aren't built. And they keep bombing the airfield and damaging/destroying planes before they can be built. I'm trying to do some night raids with my long range patrol boats (who'd never survive during the day), but the best they've done is a single Betty. And given the range of those beasts, they can fly them in from almost anywhere it seems. At the same time though, it's bound to be more expensive for him than for me. Or so I hope! Here's more bad news. Those evil Bettys made a port raid on my bombardment defense task force, and got a few torpedo strikes against the USS Colorado. It's been limping its way back to Brisbane, but suddenly my crews were unable to slow the flooding, and it's steadily gone from 50% to 80%. Only just now has it taken a bit of a dip. I'm a bit worried if she's going to make it back to port. She's due for an upgrade too, if she can make it back. Gets better AA guns and RADAR. Given the 16" guns she has, I'd rather not lose her. For a bit the flooding was going up by 5% a day, and I'm still 7 days away from port! Plus there are enemy submarines lurking in the area!!! Come on you can do it!!

There are ways that a dexterity rating can make an impact too of course. YOu can loose more arrows, have those arrows fire more accurately, and can aim faster when you have the bow drawn (maybe more a strength thing). Does an abstracted notion of dexterity necessarily have to get in the way of your reflexes? While similar, for some reason I prefer the Deus Ex gameplay experience significantly more than the Bloodlines implementation. Maybe it's just because it was first, or I am biased because I like other aspects of Deus Ex quite a bit more than Bloodlines (not that I don't like Bloodlines. Very fun game).