Gorth

The tiny symbols at B:13 and N:3 are airports. That means you can get supplies from online stores flown in and distribute to your mercs. Also, there is a freelance helicopter pilot in the game that can operate out of the airport and airlift your squads, either to or from where they want to go. Saves a lot of walking time. Not to mention if one of your squads have been beaten up badly, you might to evacuate them to a safe spot as fast as possible. The San Mona mine is a bit special, because it doesn't really have any gold, but is used by a mafia boss (Kingpin) to hide his cash in. You can grab it, but an otherwise useful, neutral town might end up being hostile. I do take a childish delight in, late in the game, to fill his house with C4, both inside and outside against the walls, then start pushing remote control buttons to see him and his goons turn into something akin to spaghetti bolognese that escapes a blender. But that is late in the game Drassen and Chitzena have the two easiest mines to take. Chitzena also has a couple of small quests, save the tourists and reposess the chalice (I've never tried the option of giving it to Kingpin). I seem to remember that one of your headhunting (literally) marks sometimes hides out there too. The only thing I remember in Drassen is to establish the food supply to Miguels rebels in Omerta with the help of the drunk priest. Edit: Red = health (hitpoints). If you take enough damage, you start bleeding and lose health automatically until bandaged. Blue = Energy. Activity requires energy and there is only so much to go around. If gets low enough, your merc will collapse on the ground after uttering sometimes rather funny comments. If they spend a lot of time running, they need short breaks to catch their breath again Green = Morale. Various things affect morale, the presence of old enemies in the team, deaths of team members and some mercs are just abject cowards. If the going gets too tough, some of them might pack up and run away.

Wow, I've never had more than 5 mercs in total in the initial drop Yeah, Airport (to give us access to Bobby Rays Guns-n-Things), the mine, Skyrider, North East SAM sort of. It's almost a ritual

Maybe they aren't literally hotels, but symbolises something? Like places where you stay, but don't really belong to?

I've been busy reading maps. My "Atlas of True Names" arrived in the mail today. Maybe there was a kender amongst my ancestors.

Medic Candidates... I only consider 70+ "proper" medics Depending on how you are going to deploy and use them. When playing myself, I usually don't expect my medics in assault roles, more like hanging back taking care of the wounded and in a pinch provide short range cover fire for the wounded and dying. Which agan means, as a preference, medics that can hit the side of a barn, but not necessarily the stamina and speed of frontline soldier. Numbers in brackets are their marksman skills, not medic skills. All are good medics. Dr.Q (60) - Night Ops Spider (90) - Night Ops Thor (74) - Stealth MD (66) - Teaching Fox (70) - Teaching Danny (61) - ? Cliff (84) - ?

You've only missed out on the greatest squad based, tactical combat game ever (and thats coming from an x-com lover) Short background: The president of a small island nation has been ousted by the self proclaimed "Queen" (the villain). The now ex-president has gone overseas and spent his savings on hiring mercenaries to liberate his country from the unelected, dictatorial queen. The goal of the game is to kill the queen. To do this, you start by creating the protagonist and hire mercenaries to help you do the fighting. Since the country is full of hostile troops, patrols and garrisons, you need to fight your way from your starting point to the queens palace. No idea what the speed record is, but I think most players do it by occupying territory, capturing mines (generates daily income to pay your mercs) and by solving mini quests (bounty hunting), selling trophies from endangered species and sometimes by just selling loot to merchants. Your protagonist and mercs level up and become better along the way. Unlike Oblivion, this game has a working "increase skill by using" system. Crack the whip over your mercs and make them sweat for their pay. Running around with heavy load increases strength, practising knife throwing increases dexterity, training local militia gives better leadership etc. In many ways, it plays like a crpg with a very large party (up to 3 squads with 6 members each + 20 militias against hordes of regular army troppers in some situations). It features destructible landscape, mustard gas grenades, heavy weapons, rocks, crafting system that makes a mockery of anything I've seen since, best tactical combat anywhere etc. In short, one awesome, regrettably way overlooked and underrated game Edit: Not to mention some of the most fun, hilarious, morbid, curious and facepalming npcs you can imagine (and more than 60 of them). Some of them get along, some don't. You need to manage your parties.

I think you are up against stiff competition from Scope (in case you hadn't noticed Crashgirls avatar) for the sniper role A few agreements and lots of diversity in the suggestions. Since we can't hire everybody, how do we go about it? Sort them in categories and vote (similar to what Hurlshot suggested), or just start out with the consensus ones first and see if we can hammer out the details? Or do we leave it to the gamemaster to do fair arbitration?

Wouldn't our main protagonist be responsible for the leadership part? I think he/she should stay put in a safe place and train militias if we auto-lose the game by said persons death Ira is free and a decent teacher (can teach the grunts some basic medics). Dimitri is also free and a fair mechanic. A couple of personal favourites for positions are Vicki, Wolf & Trevor for mechanic, Barry & Red & Fidel for explosives and Cliff, MD & Spider for medics. Generally, Wolf seems to offer the best jack of all trades for the money (imho).

Just for convenience, the starting numbers hiding behind the pretty faces: If anybody wants it sorted or colour coded in a particular way, just tell me.

Ok, so it gets zero points for realism, but it sure looks like fun in a comic book action kind of way

Waiting for the budget

How long do you usually hire mercs for? Just thinking about the budget. I never leave home without Grunty. ... On a side note - If budget allows, I try to fit in Igor too as a second gun besides a medic and a mechanic (Steroid be damned). Some day, Igor and Ivan shall fight together and together immortalise the Dolvich name

You can almost hear him talking very, very fast One is probably FO:NV, but "couple" implies more than one?... *initiate speculashun*

Isn't there something about it not being a hot idea to select tons of guns in 1.13? I seem to remember that I got proverbially flooded with guns. The normal setting is the equivalent of tons of guns in the 1.12 game

But, that was sort of my point. You don't have to buy it, you get it for free if you already have the game. It is aimed at those who haven't bought it yet. In case anybody wondered, I meant to say they are not the only company that rerelease existing games, not that they are. I shouldn't post that late at night

Wrong... you are stating your opinion, not a fact. Poor Ramza, somebody gives something away for free and you get all upset. Why? It's not like it is something that could have taken a lot of resources away from CD Project RED. Removing the DRM is a nice touch Besides, they are the only company that repackage and rerelease older titles.

I will always remember him as the hero Kain in The Warrior and the Sorceress R.I.P.

I'll share first impressions after tonight (it's only mid-afternoon here now) I want to know too! If you love it, remember I posted the trailer. If you hate it, blame Nick_I_Am. For Aristes and You... I got to install it and play for 30-45 minutes so far. Observations: Tech stuff: Comes on a single DVD, simple install, enter Key along the way, it supposedly phones home and does online activation, but since I'd suspended my Kaspersky for the install, I never even noticed it. It got some sound and visual configuration options. I picked a lowish resolution (1600x1200) but set everything else on high. Sound configuration was a bummer. Stereo or 5.1, but the 5.1 didn't use my rear speakers, only the 3 front and 2 side speakers. I have to fiddle around a bit with my control panel and see if I can redirect the sound from that game to the front and rear speakers. Visually, it runs as smooth as election year lies Oddity: On the settings and menu screens, your mouse pointer seems to suffer from some weird physics, like being constantly affected by inertia. You start moving it from right to left and it accellerates, but it doesn't stop right away when you stop your mouse movement Gameplay: I picked easy difficulty without knowing what the difference is in the various settings. I didn't really want to play the game for its twitch factor. Negative first. Save Points ('nuff said) Perspective is confounding. It isn't really third person perspective, as the camera is sort of floating *beside* you, having Isaac (i.e. You) blocking your view and giving you a blind angle on the left hand side of the screen. Makes for an odd feeling when rotating left and right. Might take a while to get used to, if ever. Enemies spawn rather predictably in places where no enemy should be, but I suppose that is sort of standard fare for the genre. The 3D map takes a bit to get used to, but I think it is rather neat and will probably get used to it with a bit of practise (unlike the player perspective). No pause when accessing quest list, map nor inventory Positive stuff. The story is interesting enough so far. Has a distinct "Event Horison" vibe to it (which is a good thing in my book). You try to peek around corners and you listen for the tell tale noise that reveals incoming trouble. I've only got a simple ranged weapon so far, but it does its job sufficiently well. Plenty of ammo so far, but I suspect it might change later when the game (presumably) picks up in difficulty. This is after all the beginning. Spotting collectibles and things you need to interact with has been painless so far. Voice acting has been good, but then I've only met 2.5 characters so far (two fellow crew members and "Nicole" who plays messages on my screen). Overall: Good stuff so far, despite the few negatives. Still way too early to evaluate the story and the overall pacing through the game (i've only met two different kinds of creepy crawlies, although they do seem to pick up in number if not in variety at the beginning). You do get that feeling of being trapped in a hostile environment and the vulnerability that comes from not having any safe places. Disclaimer: I am not a seasoned Survival Horror player Unfortunately, that was all I could get time for tonight. Time to catch some Z's. I'll add an update on impressions once I've gotten some hours into the game.

Well, with family like that Sad that two men had to die because of a system failure. They didn't bring him in after his first post-release offense, which is where the alarm bells should have gone off.

Geek Craft allright. That TNO was spot on I wonder if the washing instructions are printed on his back? Edit: *Groan*

I'll share first impressions after tonight (it's only mid-afternoon here now)

Bought Dead Space during my lunch break. I'll probably play that one instead of getting sleep tonight. I'll blame Maria Caliban for posting the trailer.

Each to their own tastes and speculations on the whys and wherefores. The input is appreciated, but it seems like we have drifted from the original topic into familiar territory

Start of old thread End of old thread Going shopping today. If I can find Dead Space, I'll be playing that, if not, I'll continue my current game of STALKER - Clear Sky

Queen - Ogre Battle