alanschu

Might as well toss in the Annotated Book of Mormon as well.

I wouldn't be surprised if much of the mores, norms, conventions, and whatnot that even the secular take part in have influences from religion. No it doesn't. It gives credit to an institution, not a diety. And I don't see the implication that all good comes from it, nor do I see the implication that all blame for the bad goes is because of a lack of belief in the deity. Especially in the context that Hurlshot used it. Whether or not there actually is a diety that is being worshipped (and not just an idea of one) is irrelevant.

I sent in some Kamikaze PT boats, but the best they could do what get a torpedo hit on a destroyer. Though if I'm lucky he'll fall behind and be a juicy target all by himself. I'm making a bold move with the CVL Hermes, and trying to do a night time Swordfish Torpedo run to hopefully catch them with their pants down.

Heh, my recon planes say there's about 8-12 CVs in that area. Based on what attacked me, I think he has mostly torpedo bombers on it wreacking havoc. I'm going to send a ton of subs that are nearby, as well as my own bombers. Hopefully I just have to deal with the AA from the ships. Or maybe he left most of his fighter escort at home so I'm running into a trap! I keep telling myself not to worry about it, I'm just biding time. If I can damage/sink a CV, all the losses are worth it.

Ack, I bumped into one of his carrier fleets!

I just found out a new frustrated (but in a good way) game mechanic. I moved a whole bunch of planes in Singapore to a base on Borneo. Turns out, there's not enough Aviator Support people there, and as a result most just sit on the runway unused! It's something I never had to worry about in HOI2. What's that, plop 40 Heavy Bombers on that random island with an airbase, noooo problem. It will definitely slow me down (which is probably a good thing, since the war has still only just begun, and I probably shouldn't rush into things to fast, lest the Imperial Japanese Navy whoop my butt). Most base divisions provide 30 or so aviator support troops (need 1 per plane), but there is some Aviator divisions that provide over 300. There's a few of those in India, so I figure I'll go provide air support to the Indian push into Burma (which is probably still about 3 years down the road from my original planning haha). Moving troops from Western India to Burma as we speak. The Japanese are still sieging Singapore. My planes and boats are gone, but there's going to be a lot of troops surviving I suspect. Supplies are starting to wane. Same goes for Bataan and the Philippines. It's a large force, but I'm not thinking I'll last as long as history (March). I was able to get the Prince of Wales and the Repulse (A BC) out of Singapore. I had to go around through some of the Dutch East Indies (DEI) rather than just head up north. Too many Japanese air patrols. I've now cleared them and am heading up to India. As it turns out, the HMS Indominatble just arrived as well, and it will rendezvous with the Repulse and the Prince of Wales (which is what was supposed to happen in history, but the PoW and Repulse were sunk by Torpedo bombers). The CVL - HMS Hermes is biding its time around Singapore. I'm staying out of range of the air units, and having the Swordfish Torpedo Bombers wreak havoc on the shipping in the DEI. Remember that exchange where I had 7 damaged Swordfish, in exchange for 2 Torpedo hits. Well, my Swordfish are repaired. I'm guessing that the heavily damaged BB Ise will be out of commission for quite some time, assuming it can make it back to an appropriate port. I don't know how much flooding damage I did to it, but the WERE torpedoes. If I had gotten a critical hit, I may have put her on the slow lane to the bottom of the ocean! Though realistically, she's probably just going to be out of commission for a year or so. Which is good enough for me! Anything to buy me some time! I got some new cruisers from Australia as well. The bad thing about Australia is that it doesn't have the supply deposits that America and India have (since both of those places get huge amount of "free supplies" to simulate the offmap production). But, I can take a trip from India to Australia without getting close to Japan, but it's going to take a while. And my Catalinas off of Wake Island have found another submarine! I think this one may have been damaged from the assault at Pearl Harbour. One of my floatplanes had made a successful attack on one, and after a month it still seems to be slowly limping towards the Philippines. I just sent out 3 Hunter Killer groups to hunt that thing down and send it to the bottom of the Pacific. Nowhere to hide out there now. I have two carriers in the area to help keep tabs on them. I'm curious who will sink it first, one of the Bombers from the carriers, or the destroyers!

What is WTF?!? They are ship abbreviations. If you think about it, I'll bet you'll figure some of them out. Some are more obscure, but I'm less likely to drop them around as often as BB, CA, CL, DD, and so on. In any case, here they are: AD

Why carriers rock:

Was the US actually founded on a separation of religion and the state? Is the "church" in "church and state" literal, as in keeping the official bureaucracy of the churches (the Pope for example). I'd be surprised if the Founding Fathers were truly thinking on keeping the government secular, as I'd also be surprised if any of them weren't fairly religious chaps to being with.

A big fan of ALF I imagine? Give this a few for some very entertaining biased commentary EDIT: Hahaha, watching that again, I love the random video splices. It was also editted unfortunately. I wonder if YouTube isn't too keen on the Nazi footage they were showing, because I think they compare the two, since the Peta dude did.

Woo, I was scrambling a cruiser to get it the heck out of the Philippines before all is lost, and he stumbled on a small transport fleet! I have recon on some carrier fleets in the area though, so I'm going to continue on my way to Australia. I also had some excitement with an assault force off the Dutch East Indies. The base had a couple of CLs and DDs, so I figured I'd send them out to help bombard the enemy (by casualty estimates, it seemed like a good idea). Day 2 of bombarding, had them bump into a Japanese fleet with 2 BBs, 2 CAs, and 4 DDs. While I only have one ship critically sunk, I'm not going to stick around for much longer. That base is on its own. I record 5 and 3 hits on the BBs, but I have a feeling my shots just bounced off, given the size of the weapons. Maybe some minor system damage. Fortunately, I have 4 subs in the area, so I figured I'd move them in and around those hexes. Maybe I'll get lucky. I'm sure a torpedo hit on the BB will be a pleasant surprise. And given how long they seem to take to repair their system damage, hopefully I can take one out of commission for a bit. The Light Carrier Hermes is now near Singapore, helping with the extraction. I'm not sure how I'm going to get those troops out of there, but I have to find a way. Their holding up, but I won't be able to supply them as well as the Japanese. I'm flying planes out slowly but surely, and pulled the ships out of the harbour (man would it suck to lose the Prince of Wales, an awesome King George V Battleship, because I had to scuttle it!). Right now those ships are bombarding the japanese forces in Singapore. I plan on pulling them back to either India or Australia, not sure which at the moment. I'm leaning towards India however. I also had some submarines lay some mines near the island base of Turk. Here's hoping! I believe a transport hit two mines just off of Bataan, the last place I hold in the Philippines. They seem screwed like Singapore, Hopefully I can take out a fair number of Japanese soldiers with me! Supplies are starting to grow scarce though.

I don't mind the schedule changes for the most part. I prefer a 4 division setup. A bit of me wouldn't mind going back to the old school Top 4 in each division make the playoffs, and play each other to the Division Finals, and the winners of the division play for the winners of the conference. Though at the same time, it does lend itself to the possibility that a better team in a different division wouldn't make the playoffs, though I'm not sure how often stuff like that actually happens.

It certainly is slower. Fortunately I found out that I could speed up turns by setting the message delay to 0.1 seconds instead of 1.0 seconds. I don't need a delay telling me that the CPU is planning it's moves with its barges. For any big event, it slows down. For instance, most ASW attacks zip by at 1000 mph, but if there's actual hits, it slows it down a bit. Plus there's the combat report at the end which you can read. I guess some people have been playing PBEM games for a year on their forum.

I wouldn't say a game like WoW wasn't filled with much of the "dregs of society" either. Anyone who's seen Barrens chat can attest to this.

As for how I'd compare Distant Guns. I'd say this game would probably play quite similar to Distant Guns as if you just simulated every battle in Distant Guns. Ships are slow to repair, and quite inaccurate except at closer ranges. Fire damage also seems to play a big impact, though I don't know if it's as big as Distant Guns. The weapons in WW2 could actually get through armor, especially if you're using a main naval gun. So you'll find flooding a bit more common. There's also a Systems damage, in addition to Flooding and Fire. The more systems are damaged, the less efficient your ship will run. Some specialty ships require the system damage to be less than 50% to operate. These ships are ships like repair ships, supply ships, and the various boat tenders. The oversea supply mechanism, while not perfect, is lightyears ahead of HOI2s though. Sinking convoy ships actually hinders the movement of supplies! It's actually possible to starve out Japan's industrial base, which is impossible to do in HOI2, given the large stockpiles on the capital. Japan needs to worry about ferrying resources and Oil to it's factories, so it can refine fuel and generate heavy industry points. The US, not so much. Though it's technically possible for Japan to start bombing US industry and screwing things up from that perspective. Good luck with that though. You'll have better success bombing the industries of Australia, India, and New Zealand. And I just got a message the IS-5, a submarine that I had been fighting for a long time and never officially sunk, sunk the other day. Yay!

Woo, my first real naval surface encounter. I moved some ships out of Singapore to see if I could do some damage to the transports my planes keep spotting. Unfortunately the Prince of Wales took some Torpedo hits and had to return to port, but not before shooting down 7 of their planes. The thing is a mobile AAA platform! But here was the results! That's got to hurt! SO anyways, I was talking about land combat. Here's a screenie of an infantry division: You can see clearly the unit composition. If you click on Show Unit TOE, you can see what a standard infantry division is composed of. I'm not sure how it all works yet, but the standard inf division doesn't include those 17 M3 Stuart Light tanks. I'm not sure exactly how they got there. I've noticed that sometimes I have more artillery guns than my TOE as well. I think maybe since I have Allow Replacements (in the lower left) checked, and I have an overabundance of supplies on Pearl Harbour, an HQ, and no other place for an M3 Stuart to go, maybe it just grabs the odd one from the supply pool. Oh well. Along the left are your unit characteristics. The division is lead by Major General Millins, who has 71 leadership and 76 inspiration. It's attached to the Central Pacific Command HQ, and is a US Army (important for what type of reinforcements it will get) division, station in Pearl Harbour which has 6 forts. Leadership is a mod for your attack efficiency, and inspiration helps with troop morale. Just below that is Experience and Morale (both of which are mods for your attack efficiency). Those are pretty straight forward. This unit is actually really good, with values in the 80s. Experience is super, super nice to have! You can see how many supplies it has, and how many it requires. Unless you're low on supplies, this is usually identical (or really close). If you get caught up in battle, apparently if you have sufficient supplies you can see them take on double the requirement, and they end up with a 200% attack efficiency base. Sweet deal! You can see that this unit has 510 support, and requires 611. It's green because the support is being managed by another unit that has surplus support units. And then there's the assault strength. Assault strength seems to be more related to just the number of infantry units, as you can have artillery brigades that have lots of guns, but no assault value. You need assault value to actually fight in battles, so I imagine the guns just work as a modifier and do extra damage in battles. Just below is the cost in cargo room it would take to load it onto an AP ship (troop transport), AK ship (cargo ship), or a Landing Ship. Most APs have a capacity of around 6000, so I'll need at least 3 AP ships to carry this beast. Most AK cargo ships hold 7000, so this wouldn't work so hot for them, quantity wise. Though you typically have a million AK ships lying around, and I'm only a month into the war. I get a new one almost daily. On the right hand side are orders. You can set a destination hex for this unit. If you want to engage in combat, you have to be in the same hex as an enemy unit. From there, you can choose to defend, bombard (use your big guns with certain ranges), a deliberate attack (just a standard engagement), and a Shock Attack (more aggressive. I believe the defense gets two chances to fire back on defense. But you'll overtake positions and cause more disruption in the enemy). If you have it set to Pursue enemy, you'll start off the next turn 15 miles towards the enemy in their new hex (each hex is 60 miles, so 1/4 of the way there). 30 miles if you're an armoured unit. Below the orders are the ability to set all to do the command listed. Pretty straightforward. The Set future objective is the next part, and it's pretty neat. By specifying an objective, your division prepares for an attack on that spot. So you'll end up with a bonus to your assault value when attacking in that hex. Units gain 1-2 points a day, and it sounds like it's instrumental in amphibious assaults. So it prevents ridiculously stupid fast island hopping. You can also use it for defense, so if you prepare for the town you're fighting in, you'll get additional bonuses. Once the Objective bonus is at 100, the unit trains instead, moving it's experience up to a number determined by the unit type (US Army cap is 50 or so, with the USMC being 60. So this unit wouldn't benefit from the training). The supply model is neat too. There's essentially 4 different land tile types as far as supply is concerned: highway/rail, road, trail, and cross country. Highways have a cost of 2, roads cost 5, trails cost 25, and cross country cost 50. Essentially, if your value doesn't pass 50 to a base that has more than double it's required supplies, it can push supplies to a land unit not at a base. So yes, if you're cross country and not beside a base, you're not getting fresh supplies.

I'm still willing to play that MP game!!! The games are pretty different naturally. I'm more familiar with HOI2, but it's mechanics are much, much simpler. You don't deal with the small parts of your army, it's just a division, with a strength and organization rating. While you don't directly deal out who gets what rifle unit and so forth, keeping tabs on the composition of your ground units is important. You'll want to check it's TOE with it's current stats (which is done with a button that toggles between the two), to see if it is missing equipment. I'll post some screens to explain in a minute. Right now it's crunching the turn as type this. The pacing of War in the Pacific is significantly slower. I was reading up that it's not uncommon for sieges against Chinese towns to take upwards of a month of near daily fighting. Supply is immensely important, as units that aren't properly supplied take a 50% hit to their assault rating before other modifiers are taken into consideration (such as fatigue, morale, disruption of the unit, unit experience, leader experience, the presence of a Command HQ, the presence of a Corps HQ). Units with no supply start at 25% assault rating. I'll post a bit more in a moment, as my turn just finished crunching.

Well, 'me' was supposed to be 'mean,' so that probably screwed a lot of stuff up.

How else would they be done? From what little I understand, I thought it was not uncommon for actors to respeak many lines of text that they say in the movie again in a recording studio during post production. Including the live actors. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> For cartoons and CG films like Shrek, the voices are done before the animation. Of course this doesnt preclude post prod "touch-up" work. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Ah yes, I guess that would make sense. But wouldn't the voices still be dubbed in? I mean, James Earl Jones was dubbed in. The actual Vader actor spoke his lines (with a british accent to boot!) and just went a long with it. When they did Dragonheart, they had some chap speaking the lines off camera IIRC, and then Mr. Connery added his likeness afterwards. This isn't actually an animated film, it's live action with CG added post-production. As for Hell Kitty and Astr0creep, I imagine it'd be to sync up body language and any type of animation. But I'd be surprised if there wasn't some stand in speaking those lines to begin with, and they could do sync work with that. I'm also not sure how much time it would take to sync up that sort of stuff post-production. I know historically rendering is a slow process. It's possible that they could modify the syncronization with the CG as they need to for the finer detail parts.

EU2 doesn't cost $1

I was speaking relatively.

Oooo, I just figured out all the HQ structure of the land units. That will help.

Well ok, but the point was that they're not truly self-aware. At least, I don't think so. I don't think so because no one really knows what self-awareness actually *means*. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Am I the only person that found this statement somewhat...odd?

How else would they be done? From what little I understand, I thought it was not uncommon for actors to respeak many lines of text that they say in the movie again in a recording studio during post production. Including the live actors.

There's no smiley face. Therefore, it's impossible that it's a bot.