Agiel

I get the feeling. In the run-up to its release there was a lot of hoopla raised about the individual modules on capital ships, as well as the fact that the Mothership was upgradeable with new armament and such throughout the campaign (to say nothing of the hugely ambitious new direction Relic had initially planned for the sequel, which involved bases and defenses being built on the huge derelict space debris you saw in the skyboxes). The former was rather underwhelming and the latter seemed to have been cut. Nonetheless, though I can't say it was the revelatory experience the first Homeworld was (it still boggles the mind how a rookie studio had so thoroughly knocked it out of the park), I immensely enjoyed it and I hope Gearbox takes the feedback to heart and really makes this remaster shine (as well as the Homeworld 2: Complex guys).

Reminds me of the "Your World" Kickstarter that was around a while back. Maybe we all should pitch in $1. That way if it ends up getting funded we can get in on a good 'ol class-action lawsuit against the guy.

The toy I dreamed of getting as a kid (I eventually had to settle with the regular action figure that had limbs that articulated very poorly, and the skin browned with time).

Some tweets I've found in some defence watcher circles:

What can I say? The fun for me starts at 500 knots and 9 Gs

Honestly how into this I will get will be entirely dependent if it takes off with my friends since my life barely has room for one and a half F2P games as it is without me spending obscene amounts of cash, which I've largely been able to avoid ("obscene amounts of cash" being defined by any more than what I paid for a 3-month subscription period for an MMO of yore in that same time period). Hell, I already put down a season's gaming allowance on this as it is.

Fascinating piece you might be interested in from Pavel Podvig, perhaps one of the great Jedi Masters of strategic arms and strategy, in light of the recent "Bear Runs" into Europe:

Apparently Gearbox brought over the ridiculous dynamic difficulty of Homeworld 2 (one of the biggest gripes of the game; it would in some missions pit your maximum of two battlecruisers against the AI's 10!) to Homeworld 1. Hoping that that gets remedied in due course before I go too deep into Homeworld 1. It would also appear for some mystical reason that Gearbox hasn't put in the "auto-gather" remaining resources on map upon completion of all mission objectives into Homeworld 1 Remastered. Also somewhat disappointed there wasn't an option for the voice acting of Jennifer Graveness for Karan in Homeworld 2 (it was apparently entirely redone by Heidi Ernst; though I liked the work both had done for the character, options would have been nice).

It occurred to me that the tutorial used for Homeworld 1 Remastered is the one from Homeworld 2, which may lead to some confusion to new players or for those whose memory fails them. Homeworld 1 Remastered has strike craft controllable as individual units rather than wings and that they had limited fuel. Some players may be in for a rude surprise when they're sending an Alpha Strike package at a distant enemy fleet formation, only for it to turn back at the last moment to replenish.

Playing Homeworld: Remastered right now. The original is easily my favourite game of all time (if not necessarily my top strategy game; that goes to another Relic joint, Company of Heroes). Gearbox has done a great job improving the look of a game (of which the original still holds up reasonably well), though I'm somewhat disappointed in them not bringing in the squad system for strike craft that was in Homeworld 2.

I'm more partial to the "Love and Krieg" stories, to be honest.

Sort of why the A2/AD dilemma and the "AirSea Battle" concept has taken primacy in today's military: http://youtu.be/5Pu_PKpEhqU I don't think the US should have them either, for both moral and practical reasons (practical ones being that nuclear weapons are sure destructive, but everything they do *is* destructive, and by that very nature are extremely inflexible weapons). General Chuck Horner, lead planner of Operation Desert Storm agrees:

Mesa encourages you to be 'Murkin'. Couldn't resist with a cowgirl-themed suit.

For the second book, my cat definitely thinks it's the latter. If I leave a room he's in I have to have either a spray bottle with water or a rolled up newspaper to ward him away from attacking my leg.

I keep visiting the DA: I Nexus in the hope that someone finally made something worthwhile. So far the only thing that seems to be worth downloading amongst the sheer amount of "PJ retexture" mods is a cheatengine app that helps eliminate the RNG of getting armour blueprints.

I suspect Hollande hopes the recent truce gives him the excuse to complete the Mistral-carrier delivery, even if it doesn't hold. A Russian military watcher (meaning, someone who is both actually Russian and is an enthusiast of military affairs) confided in me he half hoped the Russian navy never got the Mistral. Reasons being two-fold: 1. Lack of BVR-capable, fixed wing complement means against a peer or near-peer adversary makes it, what US naval aviators like to call "a Navy Cross waiting to happen". 2. The Russian Navy had plans of constructing their own license built versions of the vessel upon delivery. If the Mistral never comes, then the funds and rather limited dry-dock space would (hopefully) go towards the proposed "Leader-class" destroyers, which would be among the first surface combatants of that tonnage to be produced since the Cold War and would actually be useful against the aforementioned peer or near-pear adversary.

I think it best not to argue with the man with General Buck Turgidson as his avatar

It's not going to last... like the other half-dozen before it... Apparently with the arrival of Russian troops on vacation with their T-72s and SA-22 Greyhound "rental vehicles" (I suppose for the latter some are incapable of learning lessons), there has been a crackdown of on rebel militias that were wont to act on their own, particularly the ones who were most active during the previous "cease fire", with a number of the leaders being captured or killed. Some were also killed by pro-Kiev artillery, with them blaming the Russian leadership for deliberately pushing them into "firetraps" in an effort to put the kibosh on their efforts to act independently in the future (not entirely dissimilar to when the Red Army on entering Ukraine in 1944 leaving the anti-German partisans to the devices of the NKVD or using them as cannon fodder). The reason is obvious. Putin wants a deal that lasts. He expected Donbass to go the way of Crimea, but in this he gravely miscalculated and he got a conflict lasting the better part of a year and thousands killed (including nearly 300 innocent people on a Triple Seven) instead. Putin may enjoy record approval ratings now in spite of the onset of a severe recession, but even that may prove fleeting without any effort to change gears (recall the fever pitch support behind Bush in the aftermath of 9/11). And as Rostere has said so many times before, the economic penalties would severely compromise Russia's ability to modernise its conventional military forces. Sure Russia has a credible nuclear deterrent (and spends ample effort in reminding the world of that fact, most notably the recent Tu-95 transit to the English Channel), but nuclear weapons are politically inflexible weapons, and there's zero evidence out there that suggests there are things outside of Russia's borders that Putin is willing to blow up the whole world up for.

The flight path of the bombers were even in cases of live exercises, unlike reconnaissance flights that have the potential to yield useful intelligence, totally unnecessary for the purpose of practicing nuclear bombing runs given that the Russian Air Force already has a myriad of ways of delivering "instant sunshine" from well outside of the area they had flown through (to say nothing of the Delta SSBNs holed up in strategic bastions in Kola and the Sea of Japan or the land-based missiles in silos and on mobile TELs hidden from satellites in "the Lungs of Europe"). It was a flight merely for the purpose of strutting their stuff, and in doing so for the reasons I mentioned put themselves, their country, and thousands of people who are likely totally disinterested or even ignorant to the travails in Ukraine.

Difference being this is through among the world's busiest airspace, not responding to civilian ATC, transponders off so they wouldn't have shown up on TCAS, with aircraft probably equipped with nuclear warheads, flown by pilots and aircrew who meet the bare minimum flight hours to qualified aviators, and the airframes not being the most well-maintained in the world. A recipe for a disaster with casualties potentially in the thousands.

"Oh, I feel pretty! Oh, so pretty!" My consolation after they nerfed Nova hard. Then there's my 3 Forma'd death machine:

The current Flaming Cliffs 3 modules for DCS have more simplified controls and avionics than the full-on "study sims" like the A-10C and the upcoming F/A-18C, making them substantially easier to learn. A third-party developer for DCS: World are investigating the possibility of bringing the F-15C to the study sim level (meaning near 1:1 fidelity "to the switch").