Bullethead

Apologies in advance for the compacted nature of this post but it's that IE 10 carriage return problem. So all I can do is put breaks within lines to separate things.*************** @ Olham: If the whiteman is an illegal alien in the US, then Germans are illegal aliens in Germany :). I mean, Homo erectus was the 1st guy there, but he was replaced by H. heidelbergensis, who was replaced by H. neanderthal, who was replaced by H. sapiens. And within the latter group alone you've had the "native" Mesolithic folks replaced by Neolithic farmers coming up the river valleys from the Middle East and Asia Minor. Then Indo-European folks came in off the steppes and seem eventually to have become Celts. Finally, another group of Indo-Europeans became Germans and chased the Celts not only out of Germany but most of Europe in general.******As to my own ancestors, modern genetics have shown I'm a total mutt, so I had ancestors on both sides of pretty much every migration and invasion, ever. I got my ribcage, shinbones, and various parts of my skull from a Neanderthal. My Y-chromosome goes back to the 1st wave of Indo-Europeans coming into Europe, my mtDNA comes from North Africa, my ass comes from West Africa, and my shovel-shaped teeth, which came from China via Beringia as the glaciers melted, met up all these other parts in the New World.***********@ Tranquillo: Of course it's not their fault they're armadillos, but it's not the fault of smallpox, anthrax, or any other disease that they're what they are, either. Still, they're all in the same general category of living things that cause nothing but problems and should be exterminated. Nobody has any sympathy for the microbes so why feel sorry for armadillos?

And you say armadillos are a pest?

I wonder what armadillos would say about us, if they could only speak.

Thanks for the info, although it is rather depressing.

For the last couple of days, this forum is not recognizing carriage returns when typing in posts. Thus, it's impossible to separate paragraphs. What's up with that?

Some armadillos carry leprosy but don't suffer from it themselves, although they can pass it to people and apparently each other. Dogs don't get leprosy so I have no fear for Ofilosa from chewing one up. This has been known for like 30 years so I'm surprised at the 2011 date of that article, acting as if it was a new discovery. 35 years ago in Texas, armadillo races (with the losers being barbequed and eaten) was a popular small-town community event all over the state. But all that disappeared overnight once the link with leprosy was discovered. All too bad because the races were fun and armadillos taste good. But armadillos are horrible pests. While it's true they do eat fireants (a fellow illegal alien from south of the border), they spend most of their time totally destroying your yard, leaving ankle-twisting holes all over the place. This is why most armadillos got eaten at the races; the whole point was to kill them off.

My collie dog just killed an armadillo. GOOD DOG! I hate armadillos and kill every one I get a shot at, so was glad to see the dog finally earning her keep. And I was quite impressed. Years ago she chased and caught an armadillo but chipped a tooth on the armor and AFAIK hadn't messed with them since. Probably got clawed up, too. I've got scars from those wicked claws. But I the dog's been thinking about what went wrong back then because she sure got it right today. This is the 1st time I know of a dog managing the trick and armadillo invulnerability to coyotes and such is probably why they've spread like they have. I'd post a pic but they're pretty graphic. Anyway, anybody else's dog ever manage an armadillo?

Bullethead invested in a new computer for this. I've recently done the same. His is now outdated (a year-and-a-half is an eternity in computer advancements). I have to wonder if mine will be by the time WOFF is released (or whatever it's called by then). How many others will spend money on new or upgraded rigs primarily, if not specifically, for WOFF only to have them become obsolete while waiting.

Who thinks you must have 8 controllers for flightsims? Some marketing suit at a joystick company?

If you're a serious simmer, whether online or off, you MUST have a fully programmable stick/throttle HOTAS system with enough buttons and hats to have every essential command for combat at your fingertips in 1 click. Thus, any "all in 1" stick with only a few buttons and a slider for the throttle is a non-starter. And because Saitek STUPIDLY quit putting a rocker bar for the rudder on their throttles (best rudder controller ever) a couple generations ago, you also now need a separate set of pedals. Twisty sticks for rudders just suck, end of story. So that's 3 pieces of gear--stick, throttle, pedals--although some brands sell the stick and throttle as a set so if you go that way it's only buying 2 items.

If your game supports TrackIR, then that's also a required controller. It's the greatest thing since canned beer. Scratch that; it's the greatest thing since bottled whiskey. There has never been a better way to do views in a flightsim. Which, unfortunately, a lot of developers now use as a crutch and implement assinine view systems totally unworkable in combat without TIR (OFF's base of CFS3 is a classic example).

That's all the must-haves. Top-end HOTAS stick, top-end HOTAS throttle, rudder pedals, and TrackIR. Everything after that is just conspicuous consumption. The market provides extras like separate throttles for multiple engines and/or mixture and pitch controls. There are various gizmos that are just extra buttons, which you don't really need if you have a decent stick/throttle HOTAS system. And if you go online, a headset with a mic is pretty much required, although that's not technically a controller.

The only way to must-have more than this is if your teacher is talking about control axes instead of controllers. In that case, obviously you need 4 axes at a minimum: yaw, pitch, roll, throttle. But having 3 more for trim of elevator, rudder, and aileron really helps, which any modern HOTAS will also provide. For #8, a built-in mouse CAN be helpful if you're into sims of modern aircraft with MFDs on the instrument panel you actually have to use. However, usually you don't need this because there are keyboard commands for all the MFD fucntions, which you can program on your HOTAS without having to mouse the MFDs.

Bullethead - man, this time you had me worried! This leave was a bit too long, Sir!

Yeah, I missed you all, too. Still no WOFF I see, and the computer I bought for it is 1.5 years old now . Oh well, still a great rig for other things .

I keep wondering why OBD doesn't take pre-orders for WOFF. All I can do to hurry things along from where I sit is throw money at them and I'm quite happy to do so.

Hey, Flyby, I meant to send the same: seasoned with a little blink of the eye.

A pity we can't post incl. "emotional timbre". I knew you were only joking.

Well, having been a game dev in my day, I think Flyby's view is entirely accurate :). The first game I did, I had both legs in casts so could do anything but sit there and write code and test it on a laptop while consuming insane amounts of nicotine and caffiene to counter the painkillers. By the time we released it, the casts were off, no more pain killers, and I was in physical therapy, so there was nothing for it but to drink heavily while answering all the support questions.

Being a game dev takes decades off your life. I'm glad I'm out of that racket and I have nothing but respect for those who keep at it.

A few quotes may be apropriate:

...

Lord, that there were a better way.

"It is good that war is so terrible, otherwise we'd become too fond of it."

General Robert E. Lee

"Next to a battle lost, the saddest thing is a battle won."

Duke Wellington

But there's always some jerk who makes it necessary. So always remember: He who has nothing to die for has nothing to live for. Keep your bayonet sharp and your powder dry.

I forget whether the US was reluctant to share turbocharger/supercharger technology, or whether the Brits thought it too complicated. There was something about it, but I forget. I recall it as the US not sharing the tech, but can't place the information.

Mostly it was an unwillingness to share prior to the US getting in the war itself.

The end to the war to end all wars... words sometimes are not enough.

Especially when it's followed by the "peace to end all peace".

I think if I remember correctly the Mossie had one of the best survivability odds of the war. For a long time it was the fastest thing in the air. I'm sure I recall one veteran saying that flying at ground level, you had about 5mph on a FW 190. You were fine, unless of course he went into a dive. Not sure how seriously he meant it.

The Allies had a significant advantage over their enemies in having more powerful engines and better turbochargers. Part of this, perhaps a large part, was from using gasoline with significantly higher octane, but the bottom line was that standard Allied planes could generally fly faster and higher than standard. The Mossie was definitely in this category, being able both to fly very high and go very fast while up there, so it took specially modified German planes, available only in small numbers and with very limited endurance, to catch them.

Having said that, I think the Brits were years ahead of the US and indeed Germany in bomber design. A Wellington could still carry 4,500lbs. Even the Halifax could carry 12,000lbs and the Stirling 18,000lbs. There were clearly some very different theories about bomber designs. Even the B29 could only match the 22,000lbs of the Lanc. I suppose the RAF had the benefit of evolutionary designs, whereas the US had to catch up quick.

The main difference was that all the RAF bombers you list were designed from the get-go as night bombers. As such, they expected to face minimal opposition (mostly flak) so had little defenses. This allowed them to be essentially dumptrucks for bombs. The only daylight bombers the RAF had at that time were the Battle and Blenheim, both of which were slow and inadequately armed with both bombs and defensive MGs, so got slaughtered. The Mossie just happened by pure chance to have become available right at this point (it was a private venture and was initially rejected by the RAF, and only reconsidered once the Blenheims and Battles were no more).

The US OTOH built all their bombers for daylight precision attacks. Thus, they put a lot more of their available weight into armor and defensive MGs, which limited their bombload, but they were also reasonably fast. Their medium and light bombers (B-25, B-26, A-20, and A-26) were all quite successful. The A-26, in fact, might have been superior to the Mossie in several respects.

Pointless conjecture, but I do wonder however what a few Lancasters (or B29s) dropping 12,000lb Tallboy or 22,000lb Grandslam 'earthquake' bombs would have done to the japanese tunnel systems at Iwo Jima and other Pacific strongholds. To the best of my knowledge, they never did but I feel sure they'd have done a lot of damage.

Well, the USN had a dozen or so battleships for such occasions and they seem to have worked reasonably well. But I agree, those earthquake bombs might have done a better job on some targets.

Thanks for the tip :)

I have a feeling it probably had something to do with massive east coast power outages from Sandy.

Best wishes to all downrange of Sandy. I know what you're going through, having seen it often enough myself.

As a Gulf Coast native, I was raised to be a student of hurricanes, their immediate effects, and how the aftermath plays out. But down here, the scenario is pretty much the same every time. We have a pretty low average population density except in the major cities, and even those are small compared to all the metropoli in the NE. Even our biggest Gulf Coast cities have on average only 2 or 3 major roads leading into them, and because of the low average population, we have few resources immediately at hand to cope with the disaster. So, please forgive me for having a morbid curiosity in how things play out up north. Up there, the population density is huge so way more people are in trouble and there are way more problems to solve for them. But there's also a much greater amount of recovery resources immediately at hand and way more major roads to bring in more. I hope that helps folks recover quicker.

I'm mostly passed out drunk under yonder table... The move of the "official" forum banner from this penthouse to that DOS-era relic called Sim HQ is a blow I fear the community will never recover from.

So, when I have something to say, I say it here. But usually being drunk under yonder table, I don't have much to say.

I drink to his shade

BTW, here's a nice tech tree put together by a guy called xd00d in the Steam forums:

http://xdude.com/images/xcom-enemy-unknown-2012-tech-tree-research-chart.png

After playing a few more hours, I've got some more observations.

1. New Movement System

I really like this. It's a lot simpler and more intuitive than the old "time units" thing while accomplishing pretty much the same result. There are a couple of difference that might seem important at 1st glance but are no big deal in practice. I really haven't found myself wishing I could specify the exact path my guys follow between thier current positions and their destinations. This is because they mostly go the way I'd send them myself. The biggest difference is that you can't creep all your guys forward in the same turn using "interrupted moves" (i.e., moving Guy A a few steps, then Guy B, then back to Guy A). The new game only lets you move each guy 1 time per turn, regardless of how far he does. I actually think this is a change for the better because the new system is more realistic, leap-frogging your guys with fire and maneuver elements. So, I never did much "interrupted moving" anyway because I considered it a great way to get all your guys caught in the open at once, and don't miss it now :).

Another nice thing about the new game is that there are no more "gotcha" missions. You know, where aliens just outside your ship toss grenades in as soon as the door opens. That happened all too often and always infuriated me because my ship should have seen the aliens before landing. Thankfully, in the new game, your guys start outside your ship and can get into cover before making contact. Yay! Life in XCOM is hard enough without such unrealistic and game-ruining events.

2. Time and Money

The old games were rather frenetic. From Day 1 and every day thereafter, you could expect at least 1, usually several, alien actions to confront. This high-intensity warfare ALWAYS meant your monthly paycheck from the world's governments was nowhere near sufficient to cover 1 week's combat expenditures, let alone build up your force. So, you were FORCED to devote a huge amount of effort into becoming financially independent, building factories just to make items you could sell for a profit. Only then did you have enough money to both cover operating expenses AND get ahead in the game. But the result of this was losing focus on the whole purpose of XCOM as Earth's defenders. When you no longer needed the world's money, national panic levels ceased to be a strategic consideration. As long as you preserved the bare minimum number of countries to keep the game from ending in defeat, you could, and usually did, let the rest of the world burn. At this point, the war became a personal contest between XCOM and the aliens with Earth losing either way and you not caring about that.

The new game is just the opposite, at least so far as I've gotten to date. You often go a week between alien events, so your monthly paycheck goes a lot further. Also, it doesn't seem possible to sell gear on the open market; everything I've made so far goes into my arsenal and I can only sell alien corpses and such. This provides a little beer money but the vast bulk of your funds come from the world. So now world panic levels are VITALLY important, meaning XCOM HAS to be the defender of as much of the Earth as possible. I think I prefer it this way.

BUT, this (IMHO desirable) state of affairs comes with a big catch: you can't hire scientists and engineers directly. Instead, you only get them as rewards for completing missions. This adds a lot to the decision-making complexity because you're often presented with 3 or more simultaneous threats in different parts of the world, and you can only respond to 1. Each offers a different reward (combinations of money, leveled-up soldiers, scientists, or engineers) and they often have different difficulty levels. So, IF you succeed, you get the reward of the chosen mission, but the panic levels in the countries you ignore will increase. Thus, do you pick missions based on your short-term needs (the reward), what you think you can handle (the difficulty), or long-term income and game longevity (panic levels)?

On a related note, the fast pace of the old games meant everything happened in unbelievably short periods of time. The whole war only lasted a couple of months and saying you'd survived the 1st month was a major accomplishment. In the new game, however, things happen much more slowly. I just lost my latest "Classic/Ironman" game (see Difficutly below) 6 weeks in and my guys didn't even have lasers yet. IOW, I was roughtly equivalent to being 5-10 days into the old games.

3. Difficulty Levels

I've only tried the "Normal" and "Classic" levels so can't comment on the others. There's a HUGE difference between them, at least when starting out, but I haven't played "Normal" long enough to tell if this changes as the game advances. I started my 1st game on "Normal" just to get the hang of it and, when I thought things were going too well, I restarted in "Classic", quickly getting my ass kicked ;).

According to the game menu, "Classic" is "an extreme challenge for experienced XCOM players only." And it's pretty much what its name implies: much like the original. You start with a totally inadequate, bare-bones base and your troops (those few that survive a mission or 2) don't level up very fast at all. Also, the world panics very easily, seemingly in chain reaction to neighboring countries being attacked. IOW, it's like XCOM was an idea that was kicked around for years but nothing substantial had been done to get it up and running before the aliens showed up. Research is slow, fabrication is slower, and in each mission there are more aliens and the more powerful types show up earlier in the game.

"Normal" is described as "for players familiar with tactical games, challenging but fair". Here, XCOM is ready and waiting when the aliens appear so you've got a fairly decent starting base. Research and production are thus much quicker and your troops also level up with fewer missions and kills than in "Classic". There are also fewer aliens, the stronger types take longer to show up, and they don't seem as tactically adept. Finally, the world in general has much more sang-froid about the aliens; individual countries don't seem to be bothered if their neighbors are attacked.

Bottom line: "Normal" gives you better troops with better gear sooner, facing weaker opposition with more of a financial safety net. I found it rather easy, at least in the early going. But I'll go back to it, having been quite humbled by "Classic". See, I THOUGHT I was an "experienced XCOM player". Guess I'm not :). Here's a comparison of results obtained:

In my 1st game on "Normal", it's 9 April, 5 weeks in. The body count is 40-4 in my favor, but 3 of my losses were the unavoidable, scripted ones in the tutorial mission at the start of the game. Since then, it's been 37-1 in my favor, although I usually have 1 or 2 guys wounded. Still, only 7 of my starting 13 guys (I get a free one from a pre-order deal) have seen any action at all. So all my active guys are getting up in rank and perks and are all about to receive lasers, even though I haven't yet considered myself out-gunned. The world is pretty much calm and I'm doing well enough to get bonus money.

In my 3rd (and longest-lived) "Classic" game, I conceded on 17 April, 6 weeks in. The body count is 48-12 with my only surviving initial trooper in the hospital for 2 weeks. While I've researched better armor and lasers, I can't build either due to a lack of engineers and money. Several nations have already bailed on XCOM and several more are on the verge. My highest-ranking guy WAS a sergeant; I had a lot of guys who remained rookies even with 3 each kills and missions. Brutal! But still quite fun :).

If you're like me, you are a huge fan of the original couple of XCOM games from 20 years ago or so. In fact, you've gotten them from Steam so you can still play them. And so, you've probably regarded the new Firaxis version of Enemy Unknown with a mixture of hope (from memories of the past and the Firaxis/Sid Meier brand) and fear (given the sordid history of the franchise since the first couple of games and then the various knock-offs). If you're still on the fence here, I can say at this point that you should really give it a try. This new thing is a very good game.

Is it the original game with new, modern paint? NO, the new game is its own thing. But it's a variation that remains true to the original theme and the changes from the original I've seen so far are all to the good. I mean, when you played the old games, you expected things to be difficult, well-nigh impossible, but there were a bunch of things that were far worse than necessary. And while I haven't played far enough yet to see if the advent of psionics is as much of a bitch as it was in the original (which was probably the worst thing ever in any game), so far things are quite acceptable. Your troops die a lot and you never have enough money, scientists, or enginers, or troops to cover all the bases at once. So you face the same challenges as in original. They just play out differently and on the whole, better.

For instance, in the original, despite XCOM supposedly being the best of the best of the best, 75-90% of all your new recruits were totally unacceptable, so you were always wasting tons of money hiring large batches of recruits and then firing most of them to get the 2 or 3 qualified noobs you needed. In the new game, your recruits are pretty much all what you'd expect if Earth's nations pooled their resources and sent their best guys to fight off the alien menace. And they come with Earth's finest current technology instead of being naked and you having to pay for everything that should be standard issue. To compensate for this, you don't have as much money to play with. So, financially, it's pretty much a wash while eliminating all the unrealistic and totally aggravating micro-management. Bravo!

At the same time, you still have the same old (and realistic) problem of not always getting the type of troops you want and need at the time. In the originals, after going through the mass culling process outlined above, the guys you had left often didn't have the traits you wanted, but you had to keep them because you'd just blown all your money on the mass hiring. The new game keeps this frustration going by randomly assigning soldier classes to noobs once they've survived a mission or 2, so you might end up with too many of 1 type and too few of another. But that's XCOM :).

Anyway, I could go on but in general, the other parts of the game are similar. Where the original was needlessly tedious, that's been removed and something more streamlined and believable has been put in its place, with the same overall result. So far, I'm thinking the changes are all to the good and really like the new game.

Hey NS, sorry for the lag.

What's the longest hose run you've had to do when fighting a fire? Up here we just had one that took 1,700 feet to draw water into the pumper.

Egad! That's a total bitch (thinking of picking it up afterwards).

The longest I've ever been involved with was 1 mile of hose, although the distance on the ground was only about 1/2 a mile, thanks to totally careless hose-laying that zig-zagged it all over instead of laying it straight. This was about 10 years ago when we had a 40' stakebed truck carrying 72 chlorine gas cylinders (for municipal water wells) flip over and burn. At that time, my department owned zero 5" hose so this came from 2 hose tenders (1/2 mile each) we got from big cities 20 and 40 miles away via mutual aid.

The worst part was, this massive hose lay was totally unnecessary. The fire had been out for about 3 hours by then and we were only using water to spray a cooling mist over the scene (it was 104^F, and ) and a couple of garden hoses for decon. This entailed moving a tanker up to dump about every 1/2 hour. No big deal. But then a new chief showed up and he thought this was unsafe, there being about 150 people on the scene by then, so he ordered we lay a line instead. And we've never let him forget it to this day

There is a happy ending, however. At that time, the hose tender from the closer big city had its hose on a huge, hydraulically powered reel, which was not only a total pain to deal with, but also highly dangerous. And it had to be loaded exactly right or not all the hose would fit. Needless to say, after an 8-hour incident in extreme heat, thos of us reloading the reel were too stumbly to do it right, so a few days later (when it was 102^F) I had to go down there and help reload the reel correctly, which entailed laying all the hose out again on the asphault of the parking lot of an abandoned shopping center. While reeling up the hose this time, the hydraylic system burned up and the department considered it not worth repairing. So, they converted the truck into a stakebed with the hose laid flat, and everybody lived happily ever after :)

Welcome aboard, FDA! New guys buys the drinks! I'll have a triple absinthe with cartridge-worth of gunpowder dissolved in it.

Anyway, as HD said, no telling how the WOFF campaign will be, except for a few vague hints. For instance, it's been said that 2-seater squadrons are more specialized for a certain mission type instead of doing them all at random like now. But that's about all the devs have let slip. I HOPE it now allows for squadron transfers, and that pilots will live long enough to remove all such issues from the realm of mootnsss :)

Continued hopes for the best.