JediMaster

I've not started it yet. I just finished Millenium Falcon, which I found a decent read as it really wove together things from all across the SW universe from prequel era thru the stuff between the trilogies and then out into the EU in a believable way.

I must admit the direction the EU is taking in general seems to be confusing, too. After the whole NJO thing ends, they have a multi-year gap until that Swarm Nest trilogy. It was ok, nothing major goes on. Then you have another multi-year gap and this Legacy of the Force thing just didn't live up to what I hoped. I was expecting to see more of the "shadow Sith" or whoever that Alema finds and let THEM be where the thing leads to. After Mara died, though, I knew it wouldn't end well for "Darth Caedus"...whatever THAT means.

MF is defniitely setting things up for later, though. I guess they're trying to work out how to get from there to the comics taking place a century later with Cade Skywalker where the Jedi are again wiped out and another Sith joins with the Imperial Remnant to make a new Empire.

Well, there IS SW:TOR MMO coming out, which is double irritating. I wanted a KOTOR 3 by Bioware that wasn't rushed like KOTOR 2 was. Instead they make it an MMO. So the only SW games they make for the PC now are MMOs. Before that, Empire at War was the last, and that was probably just because it was an RTS which still just suck on consoles.

If you use a program that needs a lot of RAM, it will move Windows stuff into the PF and keep it there until it needs it again and the main RAM is free.

Are you talking about usage when you first boot, or after it's been on awhile?

Frankly, in F4 the IR missiles are 10x deadlier than the radar ones because of the lack of warnings combined with their shorter range giving you less time to react. I find my best bet is to make sure no enemy plane gets into range to use an IR missile in the first place, take em all out BVR!

I'd say my survival rate against IR missiles is 20% at best. That's including times when I've suddenly exploded without warning and I assumed it was an IR missile launched at me that I had no radio callout or visual on.

My survival rate against radar missiles is probably 90%. I think the only time I get killed by one is when I either A) am fixated on a target (air or ground) and try and rely on jamming and chaff alone to break the lock or B) they have 2 coming at me spaced out just right so that as I defeat the first one I'm left with no time to spoof the 2nd. Those warnings and RWR blips make all the difference.

Actually, that's probably more realistic than most sims. Even those of us simmers who rate ourselves as "poor" will get dozens of kills in a campaign. How many pilots in real life ever did that? I'm not talking about the ones that died (as all of us have at one time or another in a sim), but pilots that fought a whole tour, or in the case of some Axis pilots the entire war, and never even got 5 kills?

More often than not there were long stretches without air combat, where planes would tangle and maybe one plane would take some damage, where over a dozen planes could engage and there would be NO kills, followed by them breaking off and going home. Only in sims do AI always pursue you until they die or you do.

If you get in a massive furball like that, and neither die nor get a kill, I'd say that's a great recreation of the actual war right there!

If you call the split between Adama and Roslin a "holy crusade" you have a strange definition of the term. That was early 2nd season I think. The New Caprica eps and the later eps with the flashbacks were season 3. Other than the first season of 13 eps, all the others have been 20.

So it sounds like you haven't liked it since the end of the 1st season, yet you continued watching it for the 40 eps of the next 2 seasons?

I honestly don't understand people most of the time. There's like 2-3 good shows on TV at any one time (the rest are total crap) and BSG is one of them. If you haven't liked BSG since S2 I guess you just don't watch any TV.

If I see one more person complain about how BSG is "too soapy" (because they focus on the characters? This is a bad thing??) or "too complicated" (the people who claim they want intelligent entertainment then disprove it by liking the crud) or has "not enough space battles" (which are very expensive to do and they can't do more then a few each season), I'm going to scream.

Sure there were weak episodes, every series has them. On average however they're quite good and they have several every season that are just excellent.

They're ending it now because after the way season 3 ended it became apparent to them the story was ending. They're only as good as they are because they're wrapping up everything in this final year. If they stretched it into 40 eps instead of 20 people would probably complain even more about weak eps again.

BSG is a serial with a beginning, middle, and end. It's not a "planet of the week" show like Star Trek was or Stargate often was. It's telling one large story like Babylon 5 did. That's the story of the search for Earth and relationship between the humans and Cylons. It hasn't stumbled at all compared to shows like Heroes!

The major advantage of board games is also the major drawback...you need to have a group of people willing to play in one location with the time to do it.

This is why online gaming is so popular...people can be literally anywhere!

I can do it!

Twilight is every cliche ever seen in vampire stories done for teenagers. No laughing!

I hardly think the C-27J qualifies as COTS! It's the same thing as the C-130J...new engines and cockpit in a proven airframe.

While C-27s are cheaper than 130s, I think they should only supplement them not replace them. The 40mm guns are good, but sometimes you need that 100+ punch.

Whatever.

This has to be a marketing case study. "Let's make people pay US to advertise our product to them!"

Would you spend $50 for one ticket to see a movie? How about a play on Broadway? A hamburger? A watch? A pair of shoes? A mortgage payment?

I think few would argue $50 for a brand new WWI sim with modern graphics and MP and a great campaign was too much. This is not that. It's still using the 6+ yr old CFS3 engine, a DX7 engine at that. Il-2 came out the year before but even it had "real" water not just textures moving along. It took until later patches for TK to get good looking water in his sims, but he did. CFS3 was dumped after one small patch and CFS4 was cancelled, so that never happened.

CFS3 can give great FMs and DM's. The AI can be tinkered with. You can add any plane you want and make it fly like you want. You can make any textures you want for ground, sky, planes, ground objects, etc. You can create a whole new front end for the campaign engine to feed the game with the missions you want. There's no doubt this is a good 1/2 of what a sim requires. Yet it also needs an engine to run on, and CFS3 doesn't have a great one.

OFF is like spending a lot of time and money putting a new coat of paint, redone interior with great sound system and GPS, fancy new rims and tires, and improved shocks and struts on a Pinto. Sure it looks and feels great, it's better than any Pinto to have come before it by a mile, but when you drive it you can't hide that it's a Pinto.

I'd spend $25 to make my Pinto look better, no question. I spent $30 for FE's expansion pack I think. I'm not going to spend $50.

I like the AI in LOMAC and TW's sims just fine. There are BS moments, but they're occasional.

Il-2's AI is apparently incapable of handling the flight models they were given, so they're given a ton of cheats to help them cope which turn them into...well, things you've read about happening in WWII won't work because every single AI pilot is an expert marksman capable of hitting you with impossible deflection shots every time (no such thing as crossing the nose too fast for them to react) and they will never lose control unless they're already damaged.

What are the odds that in an 8v8 engagement, you would have all 8 planes on one side chasing a lone plane on the other? Happens in Il-2 all the time because human players are given a priority, so friendly AI will be ignored.

I've been shot down by the tail gunners on planes broken in pieces spiralling down to their death more often than I can remember...

Pretty much no relationship with anyone in college or before will last. You're just too young to know what you want out of life yet, and someone to marry is definitely not in the cards.

Unless you've got no problems with getting a divorce, that is.

I wish they could have done better w/the story the past few seasons it seemed like they are trying to hurry up and end the series just as it was starting to get good again. After the crazy religouse crusade 3 or 4 seasons ago. I am not alone I wanted to see more battles.

Seeing as this is only the 4th (and final) season are you referring to the 1st season or the miniseries? I've got the whole thing on DVD but the ones airing now and I've got no idea what you're talking about.

So, they killed themselves out of stupidity? Are they protesting the gov't or that the gov't has allowed such stupidity??

How about an AC-5??

Maybe you need to PS yourself into aforementioned screenshot with your mouth wide open and pointing at said bird.

After all, a picture is worth 1k words, and a PS'd one is worth at least 2k.

I fly coop MP a lot, so I find WOI and FE w/exp pack are the 2 getting the most time right now. Prior to WOI it was WOE/V/NF2 merged, but when one of us went and applied the 10/08 patch to their install and fubar'd it that got put aside. Waiting for NF3 now to resume that arena!

Done a little straight WOV, too.

I'd say I put the most offline time into SFP1 over the years, with FE w/o exp pack coming in 2nd, but SF2 is getting the most time lately.

So Dave is telling everyone he got Blazing Angels for the Wii???

The AI in Il-2 ruins my life every time I play it.

Yes, that's another thing. When it's free, you can just say "stop whining, it's free" as long as it doesn't trash people's PCs. As soon as you charge for it you have to deal with support because people want something that works PERFECT for their cash.

LA gave a BS reason about PC's not being uniformly powerful enough or something. Since they released it on PSP and PS2, though, which pretty much EVERY PC have more power than, it was obviously crap.

There's the idea they didn't want to deal with piracy, as well as the profound feeling that they don't want to do stuff for the PC ever again.

I'd say pretty much the entire year except for the birth of my daughter!

Computers are cheaper than cars!

So the question is...WTF is up with Starbuck anyway??

Funny seeing Leoben run away from her...she scares Cylons now!