alanschu

One of my destroyers had heavy "Float" damage, and he sunk while returning to Pearl Harbour. I should have thought to have gotten one of the Destroyer Tenders (a boat that helps repair, as well as reload, Destroyers) out to him, though he only lasted a day so it may not have arrived. The Phillipines is about to fall, and I'm worried the CPU automation may be losing it way ahead of schedule (I'm still in the first month of the war). But then I saw they have a ton of units loaded up in the final base there, so they may actually hold out for a while. Still biding my time, not really doing a whole lot. Reinforcing Wake Island so I can safely get Catalinas doing naval recon out there. Much like real life, it seems as though ship to ship combat will be a relatively rare thing. You can set your Combat Task Forces to intercept within a particular hex radius, but you need to detect them first. Those land base air forces seem like they'll be important. I'm also garrisoning some of the islands in the South Pacific and am planning on throwing Catalinas in there as well. It's tough, because few places can support a large naval base, which greatly speeds up transfering supplies at port. Pearl Harbour is freaking amazing, but I imagine it will be a bit cumbersome (and slow) to have everyone coming and going from there once I move on to the counter attack. On the plus side, most single transports can stockpile a small base pretty well, so for smaller garrisons and construction it's not too much of a problem. Maybe I'll just have to spread out my forces. Though the bigger ships will still need bigger harbours if I need to do repairs. Part of the reason why I'm moving to Guadalcanal is because it can support a large airfield and a large port, especially compared to most of those islands. Turk looks nice too, but it's currently a Japanese port. I was considering moving along Alaska, but there are issues with the northern areas during winter (and southern areas in the Northern summer). One thing I wish was possible was to set a patrol radius for ships. While surface combat missions have the option of intercepting enemy task forces in a certain radius, they don't actually move around. With ASW TFs, they just stay in the same hex. Sub patrols in the same hex, and stuff like that. I haven't seem to have figured out a way to have them follow some sort of waypoint or area, so I may have to micromanage things a bit. I always had to order my ASW ships to go to the hex where the subs were detected. It's not hard to do that, but it'd be nice if I didn't have to. Subs not patrolling is a bit less of an issue, as I'd tend to put them in a choke point anyways. Plus, it's really easy to give the computer control over sub task forces, which will have him giving orders to do so. The 20 or so subs in the Phillipines are covering the area just east of Singapore and south of Indochina quite nicely while on automatic. I was able to pick off and damage a few cargo ships, and troop transports, which is just what I need. Set fire to some as well, which can continue to cause damage if they aren't able to repair it, so maybe I'll get some additional casualties. It is neat that ships have a chance to sink based on their Float damage. The more there is, the greater the chance of sinking. I guess some people have had CVs and BBs listing heavily and kick the bucket a few hexes away from port. Makes the Repair ships more useful, as they can help put out fires and decrease the chance of the ship sinking. The idea that fires can spread out of control is also something I liked in Distant Guns. The fact that my sub doesn't need an instantly fatal hit to sink a ship is a nice bonus. Speaking of subs, I got lucky and was able to place a random sub fleet shortly after the start of the war just north of Midway. It turns out that that is where one of the BB fleets near Pearl Harbour was going, and I was able to get a shot in (and a hit!) on their BB. I took some minor damage from the counter attack, but it was just simple system damage, and not much of it. I've noticed with my BBs from Pearl Harbour (of which I didn't actually lose any) are taking a looooong time to repair. In fact, I sent most of the minor ones to San Francisco (which has a better ship repair yard), and repair ships to Pearl Harbour to help out in the repairs. There is 4 battleships that have suffered greater than 80% system damage, and repairs are going slow. I'm working on creating a secondary port with some Destroyer Tenders on the Hawaiian Islands to deal with smaller ships that have taken heavier damage. I'm thinking once things get going, I'll probably just ship them back to the West Coast, and keep the Hawaiian Islands ready for minor repairs. Problem is, one of my BBs has 98% system damage, and a speed of 0. So he's in it for the long haul. It was at 99% system damage (and like 70% float damage with 50% fires...I think I'm lucky to still have it). It's an older Colorado class BB, so it's not like it's the end of the world. But it'll be nice to have it around for naval bombardments in the future. And I'm sure its 16" guns will still hurt any other ships it may come across. It's not very fast, but it's tough enough that it might work out as a decent flagship for a convoy raider. A max speed of 20 knots is still almost twice as fast as most cargo ships. And most things that are faster than it aren't as powerful (though may have torpedoes. But that's what the DD/CL/CA escort is for!). They have float planes on them, which help in finding enemy task forces as well. They did some interesting things with the industrial might of the US. First, they made a city in central US called "United States" that has killer resources and a lot of Oil. It also produces a lot of supplies and fuel (though not as much as San Francisco, which is easily the Hub of operations. Insane supply/Fuel production, and most ships seem to appear there. "United States" feeds it the resources to work though). I was a bit disappointed that I didn't get any say in building factories or units as the US. It seems as though when a ship is sunk, the US allocates resources to build another one (it's a bit of an abstraction. The manual mentions it can also be seen as reinforcements from the Atlantic Theatre). It comes with an appropriate delay, which I think averages around 550 days (so losing a ship is still a big deal). But in essence, it seems as though the US has almost an unlimited supply of ships, since it'll just build new ones. Of course, if you get your butt waxed, waiting a couple years for a replacement carrier is still going to help Japan immensely). Seems like the production for Japan is quite a bit different. You have more control over your factories, and have to be more aware of feeding them resources (as the Allies, you also need to be aware of feeding resources to industry in Australia and India as well). You can also expand your factories, and can determine what they build. Changing the focus of the factories results in a retooling penalty that puts the factory at 50% damage, to simulate a Gearing bonus for focused factories. You'll also need to worry about garrisoning Manchuria, otherwise you make awake the Soviet Union (which is inactive until 1945). Garrisons wil also be required for keeping Chinese partisans under control. I haven't looked at Japan's construction too in depth yet, but it is certainly more involved than the USAs. While the US has to worry about building aircraft engines and stuff for its planes as well, managing which factories are building those engines is certainly different. It also sounds like if a Japanese ship is sunk, it's kaput. If you want a new one, you better place the order. There's also various flavour things about the game as well. The Allies have superior damage control systems, making it more likely for the crew to fix repairs at sea, and to help keep fires under control (heavy duty fires seem like a real bitch). The Japanese also have their specific sub doctrine, which is to engage warships, not transports. I've noticed that my submarines, if they hit, tend to hit the ships I want them too (big capital ships, or a type of transport ship). Of course, I haven't encountered any subs with anything other than ASW DD/DE groups, so I haven't really seen this in effect. Most of my transports are still east of Hawaii, which doesn't seem to be too occupied with enemy subs.

MacTavish had Samsonov blocking shots too.

I finally found the bugger. He took out a destroyer and damaged two others before I finally got him. I don't have confirmation that he's sunk, but I followed this up with another 3 or 4 hits. I still have a smaller patrol out there, but I have lost him on my radar, so I think he may have buggered off/sunk. I also just got my first huge resupply from the West Coast, so I'm going to look to resupply and garrison Wake Island, as well as Midway. Just sort of biding my time. I set most regions to AI control, so I can just focus on the North and East sections. Moving armies to Pearl Harbour, as well as supplies. Building up the infrastructure on some of the neighbouring islands. THere's a constant stream of new transports becoming available in San Francisco, so I have a healthy stream of supplies in coming. I've also sent some up to Anchorage and some of the Alaskan islands. I did take control of some armies in Brisbane, and am moving to garrison Guadalcanal so I can start building forts, airfields, and ports there.

I'd give it a whirl. It can't be much worse than if you dropped a loonie somewhere.

Loyal followings are nice and all. There's a lot of people that still play MUDs with ASCII text as well. As for Counterstrike, 6 years can be argued to not really be all that old, especially seeing as the game still runs natively on modern platforms. You'd be better served to use Starcraft as your example, which is still getting patched by Blizzard 8 years after its release. I won't dispute that a Multiplayer game will differ with its longevity than a single player game. As for it not being nostalgia, would people go out and buy a game that was a clone of say Mario 3, or Mario 64? From graphical quality to gameplay, it's as similar as it can get without just copying the story. Would the next Final Fantasy game still sell just as well if it looked and played similar to Final Fantasy 7? It probably would because of the franchise, but what if it wasn't called Final Fantasy. I will agree that progress has become somewhat of an illusion, though only recently. This is in part due to the fact that developing games is insanely expensive. And please, explain the trivilization. Since you brought it up, you might as well try explaining it. Unless they keep moving Star Wars to new media types, it'll probably happen. Besides, I'm not sure if I still agree. All of my old consoles still work (including the 16 year old NES). If I want to go and play FF7, I can load up my PSX (which I just tested, and it still works). Yes, you'll get some people who's hardware has died out on them. But you'll find the same for your favourite movie that's only on VHS for instance. Games are coded for the specific hardware (or at least, Operating System). Rereleasing them is probably quite a bit more time consuming than rereleasing a video, especially since newer games have many more lines of code. It still happens on occasion though. The Sierra "Quest" games all just got rereleased. I never did play the King's Quest games so maybe I'll pick that one up. I'd be surprised if they are flying off the shelf as fast as Company of Heroes though. I know I won't be getting the Police Quest box set, as I've already beaten those games on numerous occasions. On the other hand, a game like Sid Meier's pirates did do fairly well as a rerelease, and the original Pirates was a popular game from my estimation. It also offers a game experience that is not directed soley by a story, which I think would help. Though I wonder if it would have done as well if they straight up rereleased it in its original form, rather than essentially making a new game based on the original premise. This is a good point. I have sort have always interpretted it as Company X seeing that Company Y is offering it, so Company X will be damned if they're going to be caught not offering a similar feature, but that could just be me being cynical. At the same time though, if backwards compatibility was so important, I'd think that Microsoft would have made a bigger push to make sure more games were backwards compatible. Doesn't the PS3 have backwards compatibility issues as well? Furthermore, we as gamers always insist how future graphical improvements don't mean as much as gameplay improvements, yet the focus from all but one of the console developers is still heavily slanted towards graphics.

If I felt you were calling me a canine, you'd call me dog, not dawg. The interface seems all right. There are places where it'd probably be nice to be able to type in a number rather than using arrows, but the numbers are never that big that it's that big of a problem. Changing missions and stuff for your units is straight forward. Getting reinforcements for planes is straightforward. Still getting the hang of reinforcements for land units though. Need to have appropriate supplies (as well as units in the pool), but I think I also need HQ units in the area too. Or maybe HQ units just speed things up. The manual unfortunately seems to have errors, so the fora are coming in handy.

Believe it or not, I am actually familiar with the WW2 history of Jap as a derogatory term. Posting the cover of a comic book is not necessary. It's just a mistake that I frequently do since Jap is a quick abbreviation of the term Japan when I am writing typing on a keyboard. Much in the same way I'll use a term like Brit. It's also, for better or worse, a term I hear a lot when playing WW2 games. When everyone else is saying it, it's easy to let it out yourself. I'd recommend staying away from War in the Pacific official forums however. The racism flying around there is rampant.

Heh, I never got any of that really from the originals personally. At the time (I was 12-13 years old) it was just a whole bunch of badguys for me to kill

Point taken.

Terrbily sorry if I offended you. I'll use Japn as an abbrevieation instead. Or perhaps JPN. EDIT: On second thought, if you don't want to come off as a disparaging twit, maybe you should just state straight up "Hey, the term "Jap" is a derogatory term" rather than being witty and going "ahem." It was an innocent mistake.

Meh, people also don't find faking deaths funny, nor attention whoring.

It wasn't a criticism, just an observation. Oh noes, north phillipines has fallen. It also seems as though my failure to move the Prince of Wales has effectively neutralized it, since it's now taken about 50% system damage after the first day. Whoops. Still sucking at the game, but my P-40s were able to shoot down/damage a few Japn bombers today, so I feel a bit better.

How many people replay games as often as that? I loved playing Rescue Raiders on my Apple IIe, but I don't particularly long to play it. I did get an option to play it again not too long ago and did. It was fun because of the nostalgia, but I doubt I'd be disappointed if that opportunity never presented itself again. I played through Metal Gear Solid probably about 3 or 4 times. I started to replay it again with a friend on his PS2, but we didn't make it past Raven in his tank before moving on. The unfortunate thing is that these games are not new. The thrill of playing them rarely comes close to the excitement of playing it the first time. Every now and then a kick of nostalgia will build up and my friends and I will play some old NES and stuff, but it's hardly the end of the day if we would not be able to play them. I see backwards compatibility as added fluff.

It's a much slower paced game that I have historically played, but so far it seems pretty neat.

TOFTT = Take one for the Team. So yes. I zipped through the manual and the tutorials, and thought it was a good idea to just dive into the main campaign! I think I'm going to start a smaller scale one now. A lot of stuff to think about, and I'm still learning the game. Although I did whoop-ass on a submarine with a ASW taskforce I created out of pearl harbour. That felt cool!

It's not a sidestep. I have doubts as to how important backwards compatibility really is for most people. It's just an opinion, since I don't have the facts nearby (nor does anyone else). It's nice the Oerwinde values it. I'm sure there are other people that genuinely do as well. But that doesn't mean that he is (or is not) part of a small minority.

Heh, this game is pretty deep.

That's nice. I'm sure you're not the only one. I was never debating how much Oerwinde likes the backwards compatibility option though.

No, I was asking a question. Actually, it has everything to do with what you believe. You believe that executing them is a more effective form of justice than something like life without parole. You've written quite a bit here, but said nothing. What have I said in previous posts goes against anything you just wrote here? I agree that people have a legitimate right and a claim not to be harmed or molested. I also recognize that others have the right to not be killed as well. You comment about how if we take these rights seriously, we have to enforce them. No kidding. I've never said otherwise. Based on what? You interpretation of the Social Contract? It's funny that you criticized me for thinking all killing is equal, when you're doing the same here (and yes, I have read your part on intent below...more on that later though). It's simple, when a man murders, he denies the right to his own life. If he doesn't like it, tough bananas. He should have thought about that first. The thing is, to "purge" the murderer, you don't need to execute him. You certainly seem to be giving off the impression that all murderers are equal. But your assessment of murderers is too general, and too absolute. You say that it's "tough ****" because they should have thought about the consequences before they murdered someone. Ignoring the fact that murders are often crimes of circumstance, and in a situation when people are no longer rational. To say that the guy that murdered someone that he caught As a final question, if a Person A murders Person B, and Person B is later found out to have been a murderer himself, would you let Person A off the hook? And more importantly, does the current judicial system? Because of our society's legal system does not see things that way, I question the validity of your interpretation of the Social Contract. Because the way you describe it, Person A should be free to go, because Person B's life was forfeit and he no longer had any right to his life. Well, accidental killings aren't murders, so I'm not sure what the point of bringing that into a discussion about capital punishment for capital crimes has to do with anything (unless you're discussing the isolated incident of the original post, which this thread has evolved quite a ways past, and I certainly wasn't referring to in the post you quoted). As for homicidal negligence and accidental killings deserving some sort of restitution, no kidding. You're just writing words, without contributing anything. No one here thinks that the guy in the first post should not receive some sort of punishment, nor have any of the people against the death penalty felt that murderers (since the topic shifted more to the death penalty) should avoid any type of restitution. Saying that they should be punished is just stating the obvious. Now back to intent, obviously intent has to be taken into account (another statement of the obvious). Unfortunately, our judicial system does not punish people because they committed a crime. They punish people because evidence leads to "proof" that they committed the crime. Intent is exactly the same. Concluding intent is based upon interpretation. Interpretation made by falliable people. People that get emotional, irrational, fatigued. People that have latent biases and even prejudices. And sometimes, even malicious people seeking personal gain at the expense of others. In other words, determining intent is not an easy thing to do. And despite all you've said in your recent post, you still haven't provided me with a good reason why execution serves justice better than life without parole. All you said was a bunch of philosophy about how you feel the world should be. So, I'll ask again: What good reason is there for executing someone, rather than putting them in prison for life without parole? I think it's a straight forward question personally. And you have mentioned Slobodan Milosevic (which I'm not sure necessarily parallels well to a discussion about capital punishment and domestic law, though I assume you mention him as an example of someone that you can safely feel deserves to die) a couple of times now. I have no doubt that he probably would have received the death penalty (had he not died prior to sentencing). You talk about how there's a difference between him an John Q Public, because he's a murderer and John Q Public isn't. Is there any difference though, between John Spenkelink and Milosevic? A man that commits mass genocide, and a petty criminal that happened to kill a man. And finally, to go back to my post that you quoted, what purpose would executing a man that "deserves to die" like Milosevic have? Killing him does not undo the damage that he has done. I'm going to assume he probably wouldn't have much opportunity to commit genocide in the future. How much difference in closure would their really be. I can see some initial public outcry, but how many people even know someone like Charles Manson (whom I feel would be executed today) is even still alive. Is there a significant number of people that were affected by the actions of his family that still want him dead? Would people still be clamouring for the life of Milosevic in 20 years if he was put in prison for life without parole? Maybe they do. I don't know. I am sketpical as to whether or not it offers significant long term benefits to the victims if the criminal is executed rather than put in prison and forgotten about. I doubt I'll really ever be able to find evidence one way or the other.

There's always going to be exceptions. It wasn't so much a query as to who here still plays old games. The thing is, if you were the only person that still played old games (which I doubt), then I'd suspect backwards compatibility would be a moot point for companies to provide. So, as I said, it depends on how often people on the whole keep wanting to play their old games or as angshuman pointed out, are interested in the older library of a games if you don't own the older console (though I wonder how much impact these people would have. Sure you might have some people that might as well fill out their game library with some of the PS2 games, especially when the game library is still small at release. But if the PS2 game isn't worth buying a much cheaper PS2 for to play, would it really impact someone that doesn't own the original system? The only people I see really making up this part are those that wish to hold of buying a system because a new one is around the corner). It's good that you like FFT (I love that game) and the Suikodens. I still play Ultima VII (a 1993 game) on occasion. But I rarely miss the lack of backwards compatibility for old DOS games. Maybe if I am trying to play an old game that I missed out back in the day. Even then I require an emulator because my computer is a million times way to fast for it. The thing is, if your current console didn't support it with backwards compatibility, would you actually stop playing those games? Or would you just put up with the inconvenience of having two consoles?

That makes sense to me. I can understand that. I used to be in favour of the death penalty because I used to think that prisons were ineffective and murderers didn't deserve to live. Even now, if we could have 100% guarantee that only the most vile of murderers would be executed, I'd probably be in favour of it. Or at least not mind. But when people can be awarded public defenders that refer to their defendants as a "niggerman" and fall asleep during their trials, I'm a bit skeptical about the whole ordeal. According to that Nation article I posted earlier, funding was granted for Death Penalty Resource Centers, which meant that they were able to afford quality lawyers. Much of the work done by the lawyers from these centers focused on corrupt cases that the prosecution was presenting. Heck, there was a guy on Penn & Teller's Bull**** who's public defender didn't bother notifying the court that his client was in prison for a different crime when the murders occurred, and hence could not have committed the murders. Now I don't think that the defense attorney necessarily withheld that information, but rather that he was just a subpar attorney and didn't bother investigating little details like that.

Fair enough, there is that sample as well. I don't own a PS2 (nor an XBOX), so I could see some value added. But I still feel it's overrated.

I was hoping for a response to my post. That's too bad. In any case, what is a good reason for killing someone. It can't be to protect others, since life without parole effectively does the same thing. It can't be cost, since it's much cheaper than death row (for good reason too). You spout off fatuity about how it should be made more efficient and should only take 5 years. Why five years? Why the short time span for an innocent person to prove his guilt? What good reason is there for executing someone, outside of a your concept of "justice?" How is "justice" not served in a lifetime without parole, but is served if you decide to execute someone?

That was a goofy game.

I'm named alanschu! And what I mean by that is I am TOFTT.