Bullethead

Well, that makes me feel better. Not that I can finally kill that damn dog, but that I didn't offend you with my tirade about it. I know Brits are dog-worshippers and you seem especially devout, so I was worried there . Glad to know you were as annoyed with that damned thing as I was. Proper dogs should be seen and not heard, felt, or especially smelt. And I must say that in the UK, while there are dogs literally everywhere, you hardly ever notice them even when they've been sitting between you and the local you've been drinking with at the pub for the last few hours. That's how dogs should behave. But that possessed dog is a total disgrace!

Remember how when HDTV 1st came out, you sudddenly noticed all the zits and wrinkles on the faces of TV chicks whom you previously thought were smokin' hot? Well, I'm afraid the same thing has happened to the Elder Scrolls with the upgraded engine of Skyrim compared to Oblivion. Now, given that 200 years have passed between the games, it's hard to find the same characters in both games to make a proper comparison. But I managed to find one, and being immortal, I doubt the passing of time has had any effect on him. But look what a difference seeing things in more detail has done to him In Oblivion, Sheogorath passed himself off as (as the Stones would say) "a man of wealth and taste". He was a dashing, debonair bon vivant. But with the HD vision of Skyrim, he's revealed as a withered zombie. Poor Sheogorath, the years have not been kind....

I still vote for "Where Angels Fear to Tread" in keeping with the BHAH theme of the original.

Don't forget that arty spotting was also used for counterbattery. In fact, I think that was its main purpose. The plane was watching for enemy guns to fire and then marking their position on the map, so they could be dealt with by friendly arty at the appropriate time. I'd rather do that than try to adjust fire in real time from the air. I real life I can do it from the ground no problem, but aerial observers were way out of my league.

I dunno. I play games to escape for this world. When I encounter in games the same sort of people I detest in real life, it's a buzzkill, unless I can play out in the game how I want to treat them here . And that damn dog was the same way only worse. No dog of mine has ever been nor will ever be such an undisciplined ignoramcus. If it hadn't been unkillable due to being "essential" for a quest, I've have made a pair of gauntlets out of its hide. And used them to slap Lydia around with, if I hadn't dumped her soon thereafter anyway. My main guy's been doing the Companions and Main quests and is about to really get into the Civil War. But to be honest, I don't do that many quests. I make a point of talking to everybody to get as many quests started as possible, pick one, and then usually get distracted en route by some intriguing ruin or a chance meeting with folks along the road. Very recently, however, I imposed some discipline on myself by starting to take the carriage instead of walking everywhere, and forcing myself to complete the Companions story before doing anything else. Funny thing is, like everybody else, I've had that "Visit the Shrine of Azura" on my to-do list since I talked to the innkeeper in Riverwood at the start of the game. Several times I've set out after it only to get sidetracked by other things. And it had been bugging me that here I was, 26th level, and hadn't had anything to do with the Daedra yet at all. Then I just stumbled into 5 of them via random encounters, one after the other. And for most of these, I didn't even know it was a Daedra quest until well into them. They all just seemed like intriguing little sidequests with little travel needed. So be careful about hoping to get into Deadra quests. Apparently the Daedra can read your mind . Well, it's a bit on the cold side for scorpions and snakes up in Skyrim. Draugr do get old, but the ones you meet at high level are pretty nasty. I don't like being Shouted at, and the Dragon Priests are even worse than hagravens :). Definitely spectactular. I found an actual scenic overlook purposely built as such, looking out over Ilinalta Vale from the top of a mountain. I was annoyed at first because it didn't provide a quick way down so I had to backtrack through the whole multi-level dungeon. But the view was worth it.

And hopefully the 2-seater squadrons do those types of jobs more than anything else ;). So if you want to be a bomber pilot, you can be pretty sure you'll be doing more of that than arty observation and recon.

Have you ever made the mistake of feeding a stray dog just once, and then the damn thing keeps hanging around no matter how often you kick and throw rocks at it? Lydia's like that. I kept telling her, usually with the back of my hand, that I didn't like her juvenile attitude. Finally, I had enough and broke up with her. And instead of going back to the palace, the whining bitch started squatting in my house in Whiterun, like she thinks we're married. We're not and never will be. As I keep telling her, my heart belongs to that horny little priestess of Dibella at the temple in Markarth, whom I plan to marry as soon as I get through the necessary quest. But still she stays, and I must admit it's nice to have available when I come home after a long trip. So I guess we're co-dependents now. She apparently likes being abused and I definitely like abusing her. So perhaps the future holds threesomes once I get married. My bride-to-be would definitely be up for that For killing stuff, I've recently teamed up with a wily old Dunmer named Erandur. He's quite a good hunting buddy, what with a mace in 1 hand and destruction magic in the other. He's very effective at knocking dragons out of the sky so I can chop them up. In addition, being about 500 years old, he's got a mature personality (with a cynical, evil tinge to it that I appreciate) and is always dropping interesting tidbits of lore when we walk by something he knows about. But for all the bad things I say about Lydia, she's not the worst groupie I've had. That dubious honor goes to a demon-possessed dog. Not that I have anything against demons. Hell, I've become one of Sheogorath's drinking buddies. But this damn dog was a total pain in the ass. It just HAD to be in physical contact with me, so I'd be trying to talk to somebody and that damn dog would keep rubbing up against me and pushing me sideways. Plus of course it was always knocking over all loose items in my vicinity. And it never stopped panting, sniffing, licking, and barking, no matter how often I belted it. EXTREMELY annoying! Finally I told it to get lost and I'll be damned if I finish its quest any time soon. I think that you can actually be any sort of character provided you focus on it. Perks are what it's all about. Put your perks in the right place and you can be death incarnate regardless of your basic style.

I didn't know they had the internet up in Skyrim :).

That was indeed an ugly time. It happened right as P3 was being released so is ancient history now. Like I said, the SOH guys ain't very bright It's been about 15 years since you've had to worry about joysticks supporting games and vice versa. Now, back in DOS days, sure, but not since Win95 or thereabouts. Anyway, for many years now, games have all been made to run under Windows. Part of that is that all inputs reach the game by way of Windows. IOW, the game isn't looking at the stick directly, but is looking to Windows. The game doesn't care where Windows gets its info--if Windows is happy, the game is happy. So, all you need is a joystick that works under Windows, which has also been universal for about 15 years. What happens is, when you install your stick under Windows, you're basically telling Windows that when it's running a game that it needs to give stick inputs to, to get them from this particular stick. The stick calibration you do in Windows goes along with the inputs, which is why games no longer have their own joystick calibration screen like they did back in DOS days. With programmable sticks like the X52, the installation of the stick and its programming software also tells Windows that the stick buttons are an additional keyboard attached to your system. Thus, Windows does exactly the same thing with the keystrokes whether they come from the buttons or the real keyboard. So, it passes them on to the game as keystrokes and the game uses them as keystrokes. The game can't tell and doesn't care where the keystroke came from, it just activates the command triggered by that keystroke. If you don't believe that, do this test. With your profile loaded in your stick, open up Notepad and start pushing buttons. You'll see the keystrokes appearing as text. See, all Windows apps work the same way when it comes to inputs, so they'll all accept keystroke inputs from your stick. To them all, it's just another keyboard. NOTE: This can sometimes cause problems outside of games. If your stick is loaded with a profile and one of the buttons is stuck, or a rotary is off its center dead zone, it will spam Windows with whatever keystroke is programmed on that button. So you'll be wondering why you're getting all these spurious characters when you're trying to type a forum message . The way to avoid this is to clear your profile when you're not using your stick, and to be careful when setting, making sure the rotaries are centered. It's always best to let apps install into their default folders. They work better that way.

But each time you do that, you increase your enchanting skill, plus perhaps your smithing skill if you make/improve the dagger itself. All well and good if you want to grind those skills up, but as before, always try to balance such non-combat skill increases with combat skill increases or you'll be sorry :).

Well, it depends. Stealing gold is no problem but other stolen stuff can only be disposed of at a fence. And good luck finding a fence unless you're in the Thieves' Guild.

Talk to all the NPCs you meet. Many of them give very simple MISC quests like delivering something to somebody else in town, which usually get you 100 or more. Then go crawl dungeons, kill stuff, take the loot, and sell it. That's where the big money is. If you're after the Whiterun house, I recommend not buying until you've got about 6600 in your pocket. This is because the place is a rat-infested ruin until you buy various upgrades. Only 1 chest, although it holds a lot and you CAN just dump the other stuff on the floor. However, it's way better to have more containers to sort stuff by type, so upgrades are worth it. All the upgrades cost about 1500, but you don't have to spend 500 on the alchemy lab unless you're too lazy to walk up the hill to the alchemy shop or the wizard's room in Dragonsreach.

Well, SOH drove away OBD and banned my humble self, so they can't be so bright over there Seriously, the whole point of owning a programmable stick is to program it using its own software, so you can't have to much around with game files. But as I said, be SURE to download the newest version from Saitek. Just throw the included disc away. Lord knows how old that disc version is and the old versions definitely had massive bugs.

I don't understand your problem. Why are you mucking about in various game files? I never had a reason to do that. Just start the game and open up the screen that lets you assign keys to commands. Don't bother changing any of them unless they've got a bunch of SHF and CTRL additions to them. In such cases, most likely the base key itself is used by a command you won't use in OFF, so just remap the key to the command you actually want. Anyway, just write down what key goes with which command, then exit the game. Then open the Saitek profiling software and start assigning commands to buttons. I find it easier to do the commands as macros, so I can give them all names like "Trim Aileron Left". That way, if you want to change things around later, you can select from your list of macros instead of having to remember what the actual keystroke is. Anyway, also in the Saitek software, you can set up your null bands and such for all your axes and do all that sort of thing without having to mess with anything in the game. So put all that in your profile, save it, then load it into your stick. Then start OFF and away you go.

Yup. Go to any blacksmith and ask to help out around the forge. This will begin an in-game tutorial where you make and improve some items with materials provided by the smith. You get no money out of it but you don't spend any, either, and you get a few smith skill increases. It's really very simple, though. Click on one of the devices at the shop, select the recipe you want to make, and hit R. Poof, there it is. If the recipe is gray, it means you're missing 1 or more ingredients, but by selecting it you can see what they are and go shopping/hunting for them. The various devices at the shop do the following things: Smelter: converts ore into ingots Tanning rack: converts hides into leather, and converts leather into leather strips Forge: converts ingots, leather, and leather strips into weapons/armor, and converts ingots and jewels into jewelry Grindstone: improves the damage rating of weapons Workbench: improves the armor rating of armor Most shops don't have the full set of devices (Warmaiden's in Whiterun does, though). However, the shops sell ingots, leather, and leather strips, so you usually don't need the smelter or tanning rack. The important things are the forge, the grindstone, and the workbench. If you have these, you can easily grind up your smithing skill by making scads of iron daggers and sharpening them. So, actually making stuff is no problem. What IS a problem is learning the recipes. The only way to learn recipes is to spend perks on the smithing tree, and that requires having a high enough smithing skill. So if you want to do more than just the occasional sharpening of your latest sword upgrade, you have to treat smithing as a major part of your character and carefully balance skill increases there with your combat skills. If you pursue smithing, you have to limit what else you do. However, smithing does have a real benefit, it just takes a while to show up. The benefit is that if you have the perk to make something exotic, you can SERIOUSLY improve it on the grindstone or workbench. This improvement is like a permanent enchantment. For example, you might find an enchanted weapon that does X base damage plus Y fire damage on top. But you can make a weapon whose base damage is at least equal (if not better) to the total of the enchanted weapon, and doesn't need to be refueled with soul gems. And if you spend the perk, you can improve the enchanted weapon to have the higher base damage AND its enchantment. With armor, you end up with an armor rating the same or better than the next higher level of stock armor, which you probably can't find enough of as loot or in stores. All well and good. However, this only really comes into effect once you've increased smithing enough to take the exotic perks. If you're carefully managing your smithing increases, you won't start reaping the true benefit of smithing until you're about 15th level or so.

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One of my dad's 1st cousins flew Jugs. One of the guys in his squadron was strafing a flak position and flew through a telephone pole. He came home with the center 6 feet of the pole, still vertical, embedded about 3 feet into the leading edge of his wing.

Something I'd never noticed before.... Giants have pointy ears, as you can see in the pic. That brings up all sorts of fodder for elf jokes BTW, that's Lydia in the full set of steel plate. Her armor, elf bow, and elf war axe are all (exquisite) thanks to my forge work. The only thing she has that I haven't pimped is her new-found ebony shield, which is at present beyond my skill. As Rob Zombie says, "there's only 1 sure way to bring the giant..........down" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qcO_FyG1ilg

It would have been an interesting place to have been stationed. OT1H, perhaps there was easy access to the excellent beer that all Belgian momks make. But OTOH, LOOK AT THE SIZE OF THAT SPIDER IN THE YARD!!! If the spider is that big, the mosquitos must be capable of flying off with small children

Outstanding! I also noticed a shot showing squadron aircraft under repair. Thus, I assume that the squadron's total aircraft are also tracked, and that if you've suffered a lot of losses lately, you'll be flying short-handed for a while, even if you've got the pilots available. Again, much coolness. I remeber RB2/3D did that sort of thing and it really brought home the severity of the war

That guy with 3 props feathered in the Lanc was OUT OF HIS FRIGGIN' MIND!!! I saw some interesting low-level stuff at an airshow a while back. I suppose the ballsiest was this guy cutting ribbons while inverted:

That's not really austere because you'd need so damn many of them (and all their pilots and support staff) to do the same thing as 1 modern plane. But what's going to happen is, they'll be replacing all manned planes with drones before too long.

Yup, that's her. When you meet her, she's fightin' drunk due to having just failed at her lifelong goal of joining the Companions, so there's no talking to her without either punching her out or having the whole bar call you a milkdrinking snowback wuss for not doing so. Time to man up This new character of mine is also a Nord so is tall for a human, but she's at least a head taller than he is. I always think I'm in sneak mode when I'm talking to her

I leave that to the ossifers of the club to explain. They can do a better job of it than I can. I'd go hardware first, then games.

He's no doubt blaming Michelin for making a crappy tire, causing his groundloop :)