hoolaman

Damn, I was a big fan. I was surprised to see his age, I guess when he isn't in the public eye for a while you start to think he still looks like he didi in his movies. But I guess now that's the only Paul Newman we have.

Good post.

is the Javelin simulator system video I was talking about. Probably the same thing Steve refers to.

Yes it would seem so. The sight is IR based not NVG style light enhanced. That makes sense because the missile locks on on this basis. There is a video linked in the right "similar videos" panel for a Javelin training system which shows a similar screen view. It is interesting to see how a real armoured target gets hit by a Javelin, it seems to do a good job of penetrating but the explosion is far from catastrophic (allowing for the fact that no ammo or fuel is stowed in those hulks). It is nothing like the famous T72 full of C4 launch that has been shown around the place. I still think the tanks are M60s based on the angular turret sides, but my familiarity with either tank is shorter than the posting of this video.

They aren't short of stock, it just takes time to distribute them to their correct positions.

Yeah it's pretty sweet. Are the targets old M-60s?

That is a beautiful bug (fixed in the patch next patch I believe). I never knew orbital bombardment was modelled.

Found on youtube, US Military video of training at Grafenwoehr.

It's pretty nasty, but spam makes a pretty good sandwich meat when you can't pop down to the deli every two days. Its a relic from an era when everything came in cans and not everyone had fridges, and is probably only still sold because people have a nostalgia for it. A bit like offal really. Nasty stuff but people eat it because grandma used to serve it to them. Any recipe which includes "spam chunks" does not stoke my appetite.

I don't really understand what Steve is talking about there either. I think the outcry over the CMSF qb system is proof enough that the people who are still around playing combat mission like the old system. The only complaining I remember was a bit of "tank x should be worth more than tank y" but I think almost everyone enjoyed the qb system even allowing for a bit of grumbling about some things. Anything that was lacking could be overcome by agreements with your opponent. The qb force selection is really just a FOW device, allowing opponents to set up a decent game of a known size without discussing in detail what they are going to get. It is the predictability thing that is critical as stikkypixie mentions above, if you want a tiny quick (in real life terms) quick battle and get a stryker battalion to control that is a problem.

I think the QB menu would benefit from a few extra options: Firstly, the top bit of the menu could be changed so Battle Size equates to Map size. This would enable the player to finetune the map that they play on independant of force size. A new option could be added "force size" to that effect. The options could be "battalion size" "company size" "platoon size" "byte size". The force modifier % could then be applied to this, giving you a depleted platoon, a reinforced company etc. etc. An extra option on top of this could be "support". So levering off the "force size" option you could select things that are outside of the organic OOB for smaller formations by category such as arty, air, armour, ATGM, heavy weapons. This would then give you an appropriate amount of that asset in addition to your core forces. What is the end result of this? You can fight with any size force on any size map. You can give your core formation support that can be balanced against your opponent eg. if one gets "armour" one gets "ATGM".

I believe a dud RPG or one defeated by slat armour will just disappear, that is the most likely explanation I think. The bug might be there is no feedback for the player. Detailed hit text would be the go "round failed to detonate" or something.

I'm pretty sure acrobat has options to label different sections with different sets of page numbers. The pages not synching up with the index on scanned PDFs drives me crazy too, and BFC is far from the only guilty party.

Your posts can be very cryptic sometimes. What is the question? Play a game of CMSF and you will see how these things interact. Infantry die a lot, but they don't have real world advantages in CMSF like prepared covered positions, tunnels etc. etc.

CHEATING SPOILER WARNING: When I got the game the first time around, I would save and reload to save EVERY man, and even save and reload after I landed on a crash site to make sure the Elerium and the power source were intact. You could get a randomly generated UFO crash each time so I just reloaded until I got the power source. Another cheat, the mouse cursor shows up the sprites even on blacked out tiles like whether a UFO has an intact power source or a whether a door has been opened by a mystery creature (hint: aliens were born in a barn). In my current game I just couldn't be assed with that kind of cheating. Hanging on by the skin of your teeth has an appeal of its own. There's actually an interesting rock paper scissors thing going on if you stick with the early weapons, and read the UFOpaedia. AP and Incendiary ammo is good against certain aliens and weapon platforms. When you get to the harder races you kind of have to abandon this sort of stuff for heavy plasmas all round. The only trick I can recommend is shooting out walls to get LOF, and a bit of haste to make sure not too many civilians get killed.

Having now lost most of the last 3 days to Xcom I can add a few more tips. If you don't move your fire support guys during the turn, have them kneel and they can take full aimed shots at enemies. Your soldiers have a short spotting range even in broad daylight, but once spotted by your scouts aliens can be shot by these distant fire positions. Long distances don't seem to adversely effect accuracy. No matter how good your soldiers are, they are going to get nailed D-Day style when the ramp goes down. Sending out some rookies to scout out the land and pay the ultimate sacrifice is a good way to go. The initial rifles are pretty weak. Research and build laser rifles ASAP, and then get into the alien heavy rifles to make sure you kill first shot preventing a return opportunity shot. Cool little extras like flares and proximity grenades can give you a bit more tactical flexibility, and don't neglect the motion detector. One of the hardest things I find is SWAT style opening the door of a ufo and facing 3 aliens inside. You have to step into the room to open the door, and if you fire, the other aliens opportunity fire will get you, same if you try to turn around and walk out to clear a LOF for your mates. So Rookies are good to be first in the door too on what is usually a suicide mission. I've been taking a very Darwinian approach to combat, I regularly go home with only one or two men out of an original 12, and I have to make sure the next roster of cannon fodder is ready to go when my ship gets back. Once your tech level gets up though your guys have a better chance of killing and surviving hits with body armour, medikits etc.

Actually after my post above I downloaded the game and guess what, I played until 1am last night! The underdogs has the original game X-COM "gold" available which runs perfectly with sound in windows XP. So get it on Steam, or get it there, it is still regularly voted the best PC game of all time.

Good ole UFO:Enemy Unknown. I was 14 and I got a demo on the cover of a PC Format magazine. The demo had one jungle mission and the explosion effects at that time were weird skull cloud animations. Needless to say I was obsessed by it and bought the game from some mail order company ASAP. It had such an immersive story, tying in with that X-Files meme that was going around at the time. The suspense of seeing the aliens creeping around in the dark or rounding a corner and seeing one there was awesome. Picking up weapons and using them against the aliens, but only if you'd done the research, so much fun. Not to mention night and day missions and landing literally anywhere on earth and having some believable battlefield to fight over with smoke, fire, endlessly destructible terrain. Last I tried the original version worked on XP but with no sound. I might try dosbox. The game is available for donwload from the underdogs too.

There's a big article about it in New Scientist magazine, and apparently there is a very good possibility that nothing new at all will be observed. If that were the case I would laugh pretty hard.

Google is the new Microsoft, only Google is probably collecting more info about you than a MS hater's worst nightmare.

Is it the v1.06 demo? I've never heard of the issues you mention, but there have been some performance problems with the 8800 series.

Validating theoretical propositions that have no practical application whatsoever is an expensive waste of time. They should be spending all that money on some kind of Doctor Evil style doomsday cannon. Or is that what they are doing?

Took me about 10 sec in Firefox 2. Loads ok but does this weird "waiting for" loop while loading.

There must be a few dodge dealerships around. Last car I bought I took quotes from other dealers around to the next place, made it clear I was keen to buy, they will beat each other down. Some refused to make a deal, don't be afraid to walk away. Also the end of the month/quarter/financial year is a good time to go, they will know how their profits and quotas are going for the month and may be a bit desperate. As far as how much they will take off, free options are a good thing to try for, most of their fees are just made up, but I don't really know.

Holding out posting about bugs is a bad way to ensure they are on the fix list, whether it is released early or not.