alanschu

I have loved each and every single one of the Splinter Cell games. Double Agent (even on teh PC Bokishi....I guess I'm just lucky again because I never had any real issues with bugs in it, though I know they exist. The only one I had was fixed by using AMD's dual core optimizer to help with the timing of dual core chips). The only disappointment I had in the series was that Double Agent didn't continue the trend of every successive game being better than the previous one. I think it was a bit of a step down from Chaos Theory (which I loved immensely....I actually missed Sam's chatter with Grimsdotter. Given what happens in DA, I bet he would have loved to have had a chat with Grimsdotter again), but the idea behind the game was promising. The story was still pretty solid IMO.

CC2 limits the tanks by only allowing a small number of support units, which tanks are included under. I think you can have at most 6 tanks. But that also comes at the expense of mortars, heavy machine guns, and snipers. The Russian Front was definitely more tank oriented than A Bridge Too Far. I think it's because there are some operations that are literally out in the fields. They removed the distinction between standard units and support units, and allowed you to mix and match in any way. But if you're coming into any town area, you'd be best having some infantry. Last thing you want is to have some anti-tank rifle shooting holes in you, or worse yet, a flamethrower at close quarters (lost a King Tiger to one once. I was pissed). The tanks are very expensive for unit acquisition points though. I don't necessarily mind a preconceived outcome, just not given some of the operations that existed in the grand campaign. I don't mind the preconceived outcome in Silent Hunter III for example. I'm just one sub, and even if I sink some huge tonnage, I don't expect to single-handedly change the course of the war.

What do you expect Shadowstrider to say?

Superman had alraedy been done. It's not at all uncommon for comicbook superheroes to be used in patriotic means.

I was a huge fan of the second one. I loved the quasi-dynamic campaign along Hell's Highway in Belgium. Basically the grand campaign is split into 3 regions, with 3 operations happening in each one. Each operation has a few predefinied battlemaps. The regions, IIRC, are Son, Eindhoven, and Arnhem. There's about 5 or 6 bridges that need to be captured by the Allies, in order to bypass the Siegfried line and zoom into the industrial core of Germany (a "war is over by Christmas" plan). The Germans are typically on defense, with some offensive areas behind the main line to retake landing zones and cut off XXX Corps (the Armoured column that has just left from Antwerp and will get to the first bridge along the Son River in about a day. While you can't decide to attack along different fronts or anything, the impact of your battles makes an impact. You get to keep your troops from previous battles, and if you can cut off the Allies, you can prevent Armoured reinforcements and dwindle their supply lines. One region can be airdropped supplies a day, so if you can capture Landing Zones, it makes life easier. And if you are about to lose some of the smaller bridges, you can blow them up. This delays XXX corps by 14 hours. In between battles, you can choose for 1, 4, or 7 hour ceasefires (until night time gets too close, at which point you can wait overnight). The Allies have a week (or maybe 10 days) to capture Arnhem, or the operation is a failure. Unit availability is historically accurate. For example, after a few days, one of the local SS Panzerkorps divisions in the area is made available to the Germans. A bit less stuff like this for the Allies, as their historical unit available is influenced by how well you do in the campaign (i.e. the progress of XXX Corps). The third one improved on the battle dynamic, though the campaign was made up of a ton of small operations. Ultimately, given it's scale, the outcome was preconceived. A bit silly, as I successfully captured the Kremlin and held of the IS-2 tanks at the outskirts of Berlin, but oh well. I got "Total Success" for the campaign, though Germany Still loses. Kind of funny. The combat model was better though, and it also introduced artillery strikes. The 4th one allowed for a more dynamic campaign, about the Ardennes Offensive. You had to make pushes up through the forest, and logistics are a mess. Only 1 division can occupy a region at a time, so if you can stall the German offensive, you can limit the amount of divisions they get in the area. It has a small map, where you can direct your divisions to go. Holding Bastogne is huge, as it's a central hub that lets you move in a large variety of directions. It also introduced air strikes. Usually they were unavailable due to bad weather, but they were another thing to call in in addition to artillery. I never played the 5th one (nor the first one), but it sounded quite similar in its play dynamic of the 4th one, except it was around D-Day. The Allies needed to capture a few places like Cherbourg, Caen, and St. Lo. I believe you also had control over which division came in as reinforcements (which made lots of people happy. People like to play with TIger tanks, but the only way to get them in CC4 was to have many of your divisions lose battles and fall back to the back of the line).

8

I blast formations of swordsmen with legions of the Knights Hospitaller.

Unfortunately, it seems ingrained that admitting mistake is a very, very bad thing. Because once you confess your mistake, you can't possibly deny it any more. Which means, depending on the situation, you may have also just opened yourself up to a hefty payout via lawsuit. At least that's the thinking. I hear about it a lot in the medical profession, where admitting a mistake makes a malpractice suit easier to win. The funny thing though, was reading up on an article about a hospital that had an open policy about admitting mistakes. I think it was in MacLean's. Basically, the hospital felt it was bad for the mental health of both doctors and patients (or those related to the patient) to try to obsfucate the issue when something goes wrong. If doctors make a mistake, they are encouraged to have an open discourse with the patient. Interestingly, the discourse made the doctors seem less arrogant and more human, and they typically received less malpractice claims against them. The idea was that perhaps keeping patients out of the loop helped foster feelings of animosity.

I have heard about that too. I believe the TIME Magazine 60th Anniversary magazine mentioned it. The one that was particularly neat was when the US Navy had Destroyers nearby one of the beaches (likely Omaha, since that's where they were having the most trouble). Apparently the destroyers broke protocol, and aggressively approached the beaches to make their fire support much more accurate, relying on their own visual spotting rather than from radio teams on the beach. They got as close as they possibly could (I think one even bottomed out) to provide maximum fire support. It's a bit shakey since I read it a while ago (2004), but I do remember one of the command ships picking up a radio signal from the beach stating "Thank god for the United States Navy" But for much, much worse, Hitler had assumed pretty much absolute control of his armed forces by that time. Ironically, when Germany was achieving a lot of military successes, it was when more open thinkers such as Guderian and Manstein that encouraged initiative had more control over their forces.

This solution is a bit less draconian than mine. And undermines my Xenophobic desires to scare new users away

Then perhaps you should have chosen your words a bit more carefully. And there are no penguins in Canada.

The impression I got from reading up on many things about D-Day was that the Allies gained the advantage because their NCOs and Junior Officers had much more freedom to show initiative than the Wermacht did.

No other studios from any other country have made movies about courage, honor, and sacrifice? Man, sounds like a market waiting to be tapped!

This is about Thermopylae right? Didn't know it was a comic book, which explained some of the art style in the trailer.

Medieval II: Total War

Well, the 'Hawks are really on a roll right now. Getting Havlat back doesn't hurt either.

Well, Company of Heroes never really claimed to be anything like Close Combat as far as I know.

Craig MacTavish was fined for his questionable comments towards Mick McGeough. Bobby Clarke seemed to be fined every other week.

Alternatively, and this is something I have seen other threads do, is to not let new users start new threads until they hit a nominal post count like 50 or so. At least as a stop gap. Some may seem it's a bit draconian, but I think any legit user will not have that much of a hard time getting to 50 posts, especially if they're active enough to be starting new threads. Heck, you could probably make it 5 posts. Or even 1.

predictable. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> The ^_^ face implied it was a joke. If I was being more serious, I probably would have said something along the lines of: "Says the guy that kept arguing with me about how crappy the radial menu was in NWN, when I was talking about pause in Multiplayer" or "Says the guy that kept arguing with me how pause would not work in a persistent world, when I already acknowledged the point numerous times over (despite never making such a claim either)" or "Says the guy that compares the athletic ability of people he's never met before to that of people with polio, because of what he's seen in photographs" (Oh wait...you were probably joking. Hopefully my sense of humour wasn't that far off!) or "Says the guy that thinks I'm making stuff up just to 'be contrary,' (when ironically, the only mistake I really made was their food preference. I forgot about their love for the small Japanese food place across the street from their office. I don't usually go with them to that so I overlooked it). Sorry if my experiences dealing with the few people at Bioware I actually hang out with doesn't echo the impressions you get from a picture. I can't really help you there. or "Says the guy that starts talking accusing me of believing that Biowarians 'not snack at work [sic]' when I never made such a statement. I said that when I'm visiting them they don't snack." or "Says the guy that criticizes people for their anecdotal evidence, despite using his own" or "Says the guy that thinks having an OPTION for providing functionality in a game such as NWN for pausing in multiplayer (I cannot stress enough, how OPTION was stated again and again) somehow means that the 'interface' doesn't work for everyone (I particularly enjoyed that one)" or "Says the guy that, once shown he was misinterpreting someone's original post, continues attacking a point with the original interpretation despite numerous clarifications from the other side that you're reading things the wrong way." And this isn't from discussions with me, but from discussions I have seen you have with other people. For instance, an issue with you and a certain Bethesda employee had him saying the term 'more realistic' whereas you took it purely as 'realistic' and proceeded to mock him continuously alleging that his claim was absolute realism, which he never did. If I didn't know any better, I'd say you were a lawyer. or "Says the guy that tells me to 'get over it' (and then conveniently shrugs it aside when asked what exactly I should get over), but had no problems making off topic asides in this thread." That thread is precisely the reason why after verifying the incident with other people, I opted on just leaving the conversation about Casavir attacking party NPCs, rather than mention I was wrong. To come in later and see you taking a thread off topic simply because I posted a statement that went against your absolute truth of the "idiocy" of MP in a D&D style game (btw, you also conveniently ignored the references I made to playing MP in games such as IWD, since you were such a stickler for the MP experience being a D&D MP experience, which may have predisposed me to being okay with pausing in MP since we did it a lot there. I take it back, maybe you ARE a lawyer). "Get over it" indeed. I could continue going on, but that'd probably just be predictable. Says the guy that quoted himself. ^_^

Bit of a blah game, but some excellent shot blocking by the team.

Says the guy that posts in character for many years ^_^

He's been all over the place it seems. I remember him being in both the UK, and later Saudi Arabia.

Get over what?

am guessing that pizza counts as a resteuraunt food. in any event, you was talking 'bout going to bio... now you is talking 'bout going out to eat. you gots a hard time staying focused on stuff lately. HA! Good Fun! <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Well, you suggested bringing snacks, which no one does. Instead of getting snacks, we just go for something to eat when we get hungry. We do go to Boston Pizza on occassion, but typically do not order pizza. Usually pasta or an entree salad. A couple of the guys really like Olive Garden, but that can be a bit rich for my lowly intern blood. I hardly know everyone at Bioware, but the people I visit fit more the skinny nerd than the fat nerd.