alanschu

The mass evacuation of Soerabaja and middle Baja Island. I'm keeping troops station at Batavia on the north side for now, since there are still important flight ops going on out there.

If it wasn't for War in the Pacific, I would. All this talk of Deus Ex always has me wanting to play more Deus Ex :D

I doubt it'd be 1914 Total War. The Great War is a boring war. I wouldn't be as surprised if it was something Napoleonic though.

Not that safe of an assumption, really. In Realistic, hostile perception is somewhat more accurate than on lower difficulty levels. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I only ever played the game on Realistic difficulty. If you're getting close to the enemy, you're either using ballistic armor, chewing through medkits like they are going out of style, or coming up to him unaware. Even medkits might not be an option, as there are some rifles that will do over 100 pts of damage to JC. So if they hit you in the chest or the head, you're instantly dead. Even still, with the "player skill" adjusting for the wobbling scope, is that any different than say a turn based game allowing players to spend extra AP on aiming? And for adjusting the recoil of the SMG, that's nice and all, but there's still the fact that your gun's spray is going to be much wilder than had you had a high skill in the weapon. And my Expert Rifle skill guy can pull of headshots from the hip while jumping consistently After a while, there's no point in using the scope, as JC is just as accurate from the hip. And I can do this while engaged in a firefight with multiple badguys. While running around with low skill (and hence the wide crosshairs), you'll score some hits, but not nearly as much as when the things are so tight that the "moving" crosshairs are as tight as an untrained person is after waiting 5 seconds for the crosshairs to converge.

Mr. MacArthur will indeed! And no, this is just against the AI. If he were to get the game, I'd probably play as Japan since they have the historical disadvantage, and more micromanagement with industries and whatnot, and I've already played the game a bit. Though I believe he was commenting on it being too much time investment.

I think he's referring to your close range shots. If you get the close, it's a safe assumption that the guy is probably unaware, especially if you're playing on Realistic difficulty.

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. No, it's because I was stating how poorly conceived Mortis Nai's argument was about Hell Kitty talking about how it should not contradict our "skill" at casting magic in real life. Look closely, I made no statement in that post about how things should or should not be in an RPG. So no, I'm not looking at them as action games. For reference, here's the post you two quoted: You can't seriously be that daft. Talk about taking things way too literally, especially considering the rest of Hell Kitty's post. Hell Kitty is talking about your skills as a game player, and the skills of the character. For example, a classic point of a contradiction was in Morrowind, when you could shoot someone with a bow and arrow point blank, but then your character's skill determined after the fact whether or not it actually was a hit. I can't really shoot a compound longbow, but if my skill as a player has me shoot an arrow (not a real arrow, but one in a video game, by using a mouse or some other form of input) and I see that arrow hit someone, but some bizarro mechanic says "nope, your skill wasn't good enough" then that's not a good thing. Mortis Nai somehow thought that Hell Kitty was talking about our skill as magic casters, not as gameplayers. That's just baffling.

All sorts of updates going on now. After the IJN bombarded Guadalcanal a few times, I sucked it up and brought those 4 battleships + change as I mentioned earlier. And a couple months later, the Japanese tried raiding it again, only to meet 16" and 14" batteries! While the Colorado (with the 16" guns) took heavy system damage, I didn't suffere a whole lot of flooding. I sunk one of their DDs, and made mincemeat out of one of the Japanese Battleships. I had hit it 4 times and caused heavy damage in the first encounter, and in the second encounter of the night, I got in another 3 hits and a torpedo as well. Many of the escort cruisers and destroyers had heavy fire damage and suffered many hits as well. Easily a tactical victory for the Allies. I also did another probe to the Marshall Islands, this time with 4 different aircraft carriers. Unfortunately, right when I got there, there were severe thunderstorms suspending flight operations. Since there were no flights either way, I stuck around, though I ended up losing my element of surprise that I would get from zooming in at high speed with the carriers. The Yorktown took 5 torpedo hits and was at 80% flooding. I switched all of my fighters to Combat Air Patrol (CAP), and covered the Yorktown as it limped away, dispatching the 3 repair ships from Pearl. The fire damages were quickly put out, but the flooding damage, while dipping at first, steadily started to increase, even with the repair ships attached to it. When it finally made it to Pearl, it was at 92% flooding. Now that it's at Pearl though, the flooding is going down by about 5 points per day. After that, it's off to San Francisco for heavy repairs. I have also been pushed completely out of Burma, and have Chinese Forces on the East Border, and Indian/British forces at the North Border. The big problem is that the only way to get decent supply lines if from the south through Malaya and Siam, both owned and operated by the IJN. I'm hoping on cutting through the middle of Burma with the Chinese troops (and the Burmaese troops that retreated over the Burma road) to cut the supply lines of any troops to the North. Unfortunately supplies are an issue, so I started flying supplies in over the blockaded Burma road into Yunan directly. These transport craft will be instrumental to my operation in Burma, which is not able to be supplied directly from either China or India. The roads are too crappy, and just mere trails. Optimally I'd love to take back Rangoon, as all supplies north must go through the hex just north of it. But Recon missions over Rangoon show 12 infantry divisions. I guess that's not happening any time soon. I have also started the full evacuation of planes from south Java Island. The Japanese have landed significant troops there, and the air units are just too precious. Unfortunately I can't get too much to India, but I can get most of them to Australia. I also found the upgrade aircraft function, and apparently I checked off "User Defined Aircraft Upgrades" which is nice, as it allows me to replace some of the really obsolete units in Australia. Australia also got a squadron of Kittyhawk fighters, which I zipped over to Guadalcanal, and have been instrumental in turning back Japanese air raids and protecting convoys at port unloading their supplies. It's now April 1st, and the Philippines is still holding off. Though their time is numbered. They are significantly entrenched, so I can cause casualties to the Japanese fights, but most of their casualties are just disablements, rather than outright kills. Since they are now completely out of supply, every hit against me results essentially in a death, since I do not have the supplies to return disabled units to the battle. This is on top of the natural attrition I get from being out of supply. GG guys, you put up a valiant fight and helped buy me some time. Perhaps keeping those troops occupied is what will help me hold Guadalcanal.

Let's not kid ourselves, Sony would LOVE to have WoW's numbers. Or even Lineage's or Final Fantasy XI's. Considering WOW pretty much was released head-to-head against the company with the reigning MMORPG champion and their EQ2, I don't think it's a stretch to say EQ2 was a failure. Unless Sony was content with EQ2 not having as many players as EQ1. Somehow I doubt that. Guaranteed that WOW's success has other MMO makers green with envy. And when people start tossing out the "Lowest Common Denominator" it (as other people have stated) makes them elitist. It seriously sounds a lot like sour grapes. They're favourite MMORPG isn't the biggest. People that liked the SEGA Genesis used to nitpick small details of how crappy the Super Nintendo was, and vice versa. As for the "challenge," the biggest "challenge" I typically received in EQ was waiting for a mob to spawn and hoping there wasn't a party wipe. Because if we died and someone else got the mob, we're waiting virtually for days. Unfortunately, I was unable (and unwilling) to bring glass jars into the room with me to defacate into so I wouldn't miss the spawn while I was in the bathroom. Besides, it's not like Kel'Thuzad is a slouch. And it should even satisfy the "hardcore" that love the time investment since you need to spend assloads of time finding the consumables in order to stay alive during the raid.

You can't seriously be that daft. Talk about taking things way too literally, especially considering the rest of Hell Kitty's post. Hell Kitty is talking about your skills as a game player, and the skills of the character. For example, a classic point of a contradiction was in Morrowind, when you could shoot someone with a bow and arrow point blank, but then your character's skill determined after the fact whether or not it actually was a hit. I can't really shoot a compound longbow, but if my skill as a player has me shoot an arrow (not a real arrow, but one in a video game, by using a mouse or some other form of input) and I see that arrow hit someone, but some bizarro mechanic says "nope, your skill wasn't good enough" then that's not a good thing.

Excellent points.

Check out that FAQ I linked to earlier. It has a way to unlock the factions.

That makes sense though. I'm a half-wit with a firearm as well, but I can still walk up behind you and shoot you in the back of the head and kill you. It's the shooting rapidly while moving that I'd not be so good at, and that's where his skill improvements came in.

I used the sniper rifle almost exclusively, given it's accuracy was 102% by the time I was done with it. I'm not familiar with the lag though. When I clicked, I shot. Given how much I would snipe moving targets, I would have noticed it otherwise.

I speak English, so I refer to it as Japan.

Not a fan of Silent Storm? I thought it had a phenomenal squad based combat engine personally.

If you're going to nitpick, you could argue that the phrase "Meridian 59 came first" when used as a comparison to EQ, means little more than Meridian 59 was out before EQ. Also, given the exposure the original Neverwinter Nights had, it's hardly a huge gaffe to overlook it.

Yes I know. You've stated this several times. I figure since you seem be free wheeling in stating your preferences, I figure I'd state mine.

The bigger events are scripted via the date. And if you're playing the Turks, as a counterpoint to "build up" for the Turks (which I hear are a pain anyways, even at the slower rate), you'll also have to suffer against the Catholic factions that do more build up themselves, and go on Crusades. And if you play with the latest patch, I hear the level of naval assaults flies through the roof. I'd also strongly recommend playing on "Very Hard" for the battle difficulty. The AI no longer gets fake bonuses to morale and attack power, but rather actually tries to use its units more effectively (charge with units that have high charge, and so on), and it makes morale a bigger issue for the battle on the whole.

The only time I usually have a preference to third person is when there is melee combat. Though at the same time, I played through Morrowind and Oblivion entirely in first person, so it's obviously not a deal breaker for me. A lot of the time I prefer the perspective through the camera of FPS.

I think it was more of a length issue. It takes significantly longer to get to many landmarks in the game such as Gunpowder and the New World otherwise.

But looking behind you is A-OK!

You can edit the turn cycle so that every turn is a half-season, if you are finding the ages of the people to be a distractor. I haven't played with the new patch yet (been distracted by a War in the Pacific!!!), but open up desc_strat.txt and change the time scale from 2.00 to 0.50. Here's the FAQ from Total War Center. Be careful about making things too expensive though, as it may affect the way the AI plays the game (may opt to just buy units, rather than saving up for buildings or something like that). Also, look for Shaga Wangby's diplomacy mod. It helps override some of the inherent bloodthirstyness that the AI typically has. But don't be a jerk and become untrustworthy (by executing prisoners, executing/sacking too many towns), lest you want people to always be at war with you.

^_^

I'm guessing the MiSTLand idea has been scrapped? Appropriate that they use the Silent Storm engine. The whole time while playing Silent Storm, I was thinking how awesome it would be for Jagged Alliance. And yes, I remember Mike. A C7 Full Auto Burst was his undoing.