alanschu

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).

What exactly do you think Morgoth was saying? I'm pretty sure he was talking about how if one dies, 1000 more take its place, not 1000 more die.

What if the computer is able to modify it's own programming code? <{POST_SNAPBACK}> If it did so because of the capabilities given it under some existing program, that still wouldn't be free will, technically. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> What exactly is free will? And does it actually exist? Skinner wasn't convinced.

I was under the impression that it was for school. How much would you like for it? Meta, Genera is also an OS for LISP machines. I was very confused when I read it :D And the one thing I thought Blizzard contributed quite nicely was the streamlining of the process. In WoW, it's possible to play for an hour, and actually accomplish something, at least until the end game. The need to wait with jars to poo into for an important mob was no longer necessary. I think it's just a joke, alluding to the human wave that the Soviets employed in WW2.

I'm not sure exactly what you mean. I know if you had high Lore you could answer things straight up, but otherwise I remember having to read a book, and get the details from the book, so that I could answer the question posed by the tome.

Says the guy that, at one point, tried to sidestep the issue I presented to you in the death penalty thread by calling me a hypocrite, and thinking I actually wanted you dead. I don't know. I didn't know it was like that. I'm not the one that started posting snide post script remarks at the end of a post when someone disagreed with me. If you look back through this thread, when I've disagreed with you, I've posted how I disagreed with you. Most people on this forum have seen me get pissed off and snap, and this isn't it. And I certainly am not offended. You, after all, where the one that felt it was prudent to add in a post script to your message taking the shot at me. When I try addressing points that you make, and you ignore them, then later add a snide post script in your message talking about how I just say "irrelevant" when I'm wrong and can't discuss what you said (ironically in a post where I did discuss what you said), in addition to previous examples of your posting history, forgive me if I'm not all friendly with you. And much like the death penalty thread, when people started countering the points you made in your discussion, you either found some obscure point and took it out of context, and tried to drag attention away from the discussion. First it was when you started calling me a hypocrite and alleging that I actually wanted you dead, when I presented a situation that I had hoped you could use to present some form of perspective on the issue. You attacked me, instead of discussing the issue. When I called you on it, you disappeared (and later said you enjoyed the discussion we were having, when there wasn't any discussion between you and me because you weren't saying anything). Then there's your bizarre interpretation of Hell Kitty's player skills. And now, you're going on about how this became "OMG you disagree with me then you must hate me" comments. You continue to write words, without saying much. I have not done any actions that could be labelled as "OMG you disagree with me then you must hate me" type actions. I disagreed with you, stated where the disagreement was, and you responded with a snide remark about how I had nothing to say about what you posted, when in fact I actually did. I suppose my previous post about you being daft was rather hostile, but when you've made it a trend of obfuscating the issue, misinterpreting posts, and following it up with strawman arguments, it gets hard to take what you say seriously. I think for one reason it's tolerable, because it's something that really cannot be removed from the equation meta. It's possible to remove direct player input for combat, but we can't just shut down our brains.

Better than the odds of a lowly trained character whose aiming is controlled by a player with slow reflexes and overall poor marksmanship Seriously though, I see where you are coming from. The thing I guess is how much do you just let the computer make the decisions, and how much input do you really like. You commented on dropping Atomic Bombs in Hearts of Iron, but that's a game that puts me more in the role of being the Commander in Chief of a country. I place production orders, determine where units move, and so on. I'm not the one fighting the battles, some grunt is. The thing is, I'd not mind at all if it was a hybrid. I love the Total War games, and how I can be both leader of a faction, as well as lead armies directly in battle. If HOI2 offered, say, a Combat Mission or Close Combat style system of fighting the battles, I'd still be delighted (assuming of course that this monster of product was actually able to bring everything together naturally). One game that I enjoy for this is Pacific Storm. If I want to go and drop The Bomb on Nagasaki, I can. And you can still run into issues about how other attributes of yourself influence the impact of the game. While fighting a particularly tough battle, you as the player may notice a weakpoint to make the game easier. But it's you that figure it out, not the character. So how much is too much when it comes to requiring some player input, compared to letting the character figure things out. Conceptually, it almost seems like you'd be happy with a game where many of the decisions are made for you, based on the attributes of your character. The only real influence you may have is how you talk to a character, of which the dialogue options would only be appropriate for the attributes of the character of course. I'm pretty sure that this isn't necessarily what you want (essentially have an AI traverse through the game for you dependent on your attributes), but it's just sort of the impression that I'm getting. I guess it's just that I don't necessarily see that as a bad thing. With poor skill, the player must try to counter the recoil of the gun, which will (even if you are really good) affect where JC is actually pointing the gun). As the skill improves, the player no longer needs to compensate for such things, and accuracy greatly improves, both in the intrinsic crosshairs, as well as the removal of the wobble. I'd bet that if the only thing that was different between the skill levels was the wobble, you'd still find yourself performing much, much better with a higher skill in rifles.

It was the one that Yamamoto was shot down by P-38s in. http://www.diggerhistory.info/pages-air-su...enemy/betty.htm

A lot of what you just described was in Deus Ex and System Shock 2, among other games. Both of these games are some of the best games ever made in my opinion. There's also games like Dark Messiah of Might and Magic, and it's not uncommon for FPS games to hint at a romantic interest. What are you talking about? I immediately addressed the point you brought up right after I said irrelevant. In case you have forgotten, here's the statement: "Irrelevant. I was assessing your asinine interpretation that Hell Kitty was referring to our skills as magic casters when stating the term player skill. Look closely at what I wrote, I made no statement as to how things should or should not be. I'm not sure if it was strawman and obfuscation, or just some sort of mind boggling deduction on how you thought his comments about player skill referred to Furthermore, the fact that weapons aren't precisely accurate isn't a contradiction of player skill, even if you use your messed up interpretation of Hell Kitty's post. In fact, when dealing with a RPG elements such as in System Shock and Deus Ex, it demonstrates an excellent way to combine both player skill and character skill in a game. And in no way is this contradictory. Since my character has poor skill with a bow, it should take that into account with more random shot placement. Not "it only looks like you hit the opponent, but you actually didn't" that a game like Morrowind has. And this was after you already went off on your own little world by either intentionally misconstruing Hell Kitty's post to think he was talking about making sure there wasn't a contradiction between the skills the character uses and the supposed magic casting skills of the actual player, rather than the skills of the player actually playing the game, or if you just dropped the ball altogether. The fact that you went ranting on about how different game characters in a game like Day of Defeat Source have different accuracy ratings is somehow a contradiction when it's not. You were grasping at straws, and unfortunately came away with nothing. On a final note, if you wish to continue with your remarkable displays of maturity, do not bother with Post Scripts at the end of your message about how I allegedly cannot admit I am wrong and hence use the word irrelevant. Particularly seeing as you failed to respond to my post in kind, so it just makes you look that much more absurd. If you have any particular issue with me, don't be a coward bring it up in a post directly (preferably addressing the post in question), rather than as a footnote at the end of an unrelated post. Or use private messages.

Well, if you're using the environment for cover, then you'd be sneaking up on people unaware. The problem with that is scale though, and I'm not even sure it appropriately compares to the example I used. I still don't see the giant difference between you spending more time to aim because your skill is low (a consequence of having low skill), and spending more AP points to get an accurate shot. In both instances, you're spending more time in the game mechanics term. In Deus Ex, if I improve my skill with the gun, my likelihood of hitting stuff goes up, to the point where I can run around and accurately pick people off without spending much time aiming (I'm using less AP then). Just like how in a game like Jagged Alliance 2, where I don't need to spend as many action points to shoot someone in the head when running out of the corner. Or, like in Jagged Alliance 2, if I'm already shooting at someone, I need less AP to pull off an aimed shot, since I'm already aiming at my target. In moving your mouse to counteract the recoil though, you're going to have inconsistencies with your accuracy. Compare it to the recoiless full auto that you have with expert skill, and it's a world of difference (ignoring the damage bonuses you also get with improved skill).

Elitism is also saying stuff like "This is why I hate WoW" because of something a WoW player said regarding the alleged death of someone and somehow associating the blame of said event with WoW. You'd have been better off saying "This is why I hate stupid people with bad senses of humour" Nor does it mean otherwise. Volourn is quite correct with the people saying Game X sucks because it only has mass appeal is just as silly as Game X is good simply because it sold a lot. Driv3r sold a lot, but the consensus is that the game sucked, and cashed in on the franchise. World of Warcraft though, seems to be getting more positive recognition for its quality than negative people. Granted, these same people also awarded a game like Black & White a ton of praise when it was first released, but the "WOW factor" of World of Warcraft has worn off, and the word of mouth and critical success doesn't really seem to be waning. And these same people that have given out these awards are the same people that have given out critical acclaim to games like Neverwinter Nights, Baldur's Gate, and Planescape: Torment, all the while bashing the crap out of a game like Driv3r for being the cheesy cash-in that it was. Since you did research on it, could you give a quick description of the fundamental differences of a game like World of Warcraft and Everquest? Hopefully you still have your research project handy, as you could just copy-paste exceprts from it. And I don't know if I'd necessarily consider Navy Field to be an MMO.

What if the computer is able to modify it's own programming code?

Hahaha. The details are a bit hard to see, but most of those are single units of submarines. I also split up each transport evacuating from Java Island to make it harder for Japan's airforce (including these retarded Bettys that have either AP bombs or torpedos and a range of like 1000 miles....I'm guessing the Americans were crying for Nerf of it and the Zero to start the war). to isolate them. They were able to get one task force, a transport with a minesweeper. They're limping their way to Darwin, but I don't think they are going to make it. In other news, April marks the milestone of a refit for many ships. So a lot of my ships just got upgraded. Most upgrades consist of just upgraded AA weaponry, and many of my ships now have some form of RADAR, which I imagine will only help immensely. Unfortunately, I just had the ships set to auto update, and updating the ship causes a small amount of system damage, so most of my destroyers have about 15 system damage. Since I prefer to not send things out with more than 5 system damage, it means i have to repair these. Which means that the repairs on the BB Maryland, which had 99 system damage at Pearl Harbour, and is now only at 88 System Damage, is going to take even longer to update. Oh well. On the plus side, the extra AA from the fast cruisers and the Aircraft Carriers is only a bonus. Anything to stop those pesky Bettys!!!

That screenshot is also my submarine "minefield." It's a bit less useful now, but there was a ton of transport ships moving around in that area, as well as the main Japanese Carrier Task Force (though I don't think I ever got a submarine shot against. My commanders don't have high enough aggression to risk fighting through the picket of ASW escorts).