Mark IV

Overheard in mega-grog thread: Has Simon been lurking here too long? Or is the Outer Board rising to our standards? Thanks all for the turns. I am deeply grateful that you have decided to fulfill your obligations to die. Except Pawbroon, who may have taken these suggestions too literally... Où êtes-vous?

So it's come to Sweden. This is one of the more promising developments, as with the suicide rate here, we'll be rid of at least some of the riff-raff in short order. Speaking of Swedes... one of the world's slower starting scenarios is Bogged, and near Immobilized, with the perpetrator more interested in hosting miscreants, than being one. It sucks but it's all we've got, so lock and load. Have some expensive booze and plot that turn, there's a nice little fishy. Yum. von Schkrewed feels my wrath in the Afterlife... suicide won't do either of us any good, we're already in Hell... Elvis prepares for the hammer he knows must fall... Peng returned a turn, a while back, did I mention that?... Pawbroom is still trying to crack the V-chip Emma put on his computer... Hamsters fled at my mere notice of them, harharharhar. Har. Harhar. ...perhaps the weekend will bring Turns. We can only hope... worthless wankers. TCP/IP sluts. Pacifists. Bah.

Some opponents do not rename the turns, and mistakenly send the wrong file (my old one, or their old one, I've had both). File numbering helps to jog old memories, or at least start over where you left off. It also helps to prove to some recalcitrants that the really, really are on the wrong turn. Sometimes long lags due to RL occur during a game. You can replay old files to get caught up. Sometimes a Thing happens and when the war is over you want to go back and see how it came about. And reason #1 to save and sequentially number old files... ...to save them all into one big long movie so you can play the whole battle back. God, I love that.

I've used buried AT mines with good effect, picturing the "funnel" that will eventually bring the AFVs into an area. Even if they don't hit them there is some peace of mind associated with at least partially protecting an approach. This allows you to allocate other AT assets more efficiently. Daisy chains are pretty much useless, except that if you are saddled with them by an auto-purchase, you can use them in the same way. At least you deny some access to the enemy. I have never seen a vehicle harmed by them and agree about the visibility depriving them of most of their value.

I would have to agree with Mr. Clark. I do not watch television at all, except for Red Wings games and X Files. But I might watch this. More importantly, I assume BTS lawyers are looking at possible infringements (Combat Missions)? Or maybe free TV ad slots as a settlement? Obviously, the show's name is capitalizing on the success of the wildly popular 3D war game...

What version of Windows are you using? ME? 2000? In ME you can usually just click View, then Details, to set it back to normal. If the thumbnails are persistent, Pud is probably on the right track.

Things you could step in, borrowing liberally from the only worthwhile notion that the revolting peasant, chrisl, has ever had: Priest DekeFentel Egbert Naja CATguy (oops) A minefield. A network Survivor clone. A TRP for 14" shells. Australia. Any thread started by Gunny Bunny. There are more, but you get the idea. Or do you? Please read the last 6000 posts, finance a dime, and buy a clue.

Let me clarify: Elvis is a dangerous, heavily-armed child. Elvis opposes the sequential numbering system. Now I could extrapolate about some of you by extending this analogy, but the most important thing to understand is that the elvisisapansy0167.txt naming system ONLY WORKS if you are playing only one such maroon. That is because his files stand out on their own "merits" like a digital sore thumb from all the other games you might have going, with educated people. It is easy to sort the MeYou01 and YouMe01 files from the singular dolt unable to master the lastfile+1 concept. Therefore, the success of the Elvine Method is in its uniqueness to one individual. Others hoping to adopt this system will be required to play Elvis. He might as well invent his own operating system while he's at it, then only users of ElvOs could read his posts. Thanks for the opportunity to clarify things.

It is easily grasped, and thus much simpler to eschew, loathe, and denounce as an abomination. It is redundant and unnecessary. It is easy for people to screw up. There are people having difficulty with mere sequential numbering, especially those who send the file back under the same name AND number. Because Elvis is "special" we have a completely different naming convention, where each filename consists of a lengthy pejorative remark followed by a random 1-5 digit number (this is for real). It is actually more practical than this a,b,m sin against nature. I often don't know what turn # I just completed when prompted for the filename (BTS: hint), halfway through the battle. Who bloody cares? It's the next one you're gonna see, if you're the opponent, and the last one I did, if you're me. That's all the keep-trackin' I need. I feel that you should retract your endorsement of the abm system, edit your post, and apologize to the wargaming community on national television. I am being reasonable. Why can't you meet me half way on this?

For the record: The system demonstrated above by Mannheim Tanker and Mattias is the One True Holy and Apostolic PBEM File Naming convention. It has been, since cavemen first chipped 3D wargames from bits of flint. No others should be tolerated, experimented with, or even looked at. Sequential numbering is vital to file management, disaster recovery, archival investigations, and most mathematical functions. It is the very fabric of the universe. Other information in the filename is utterly unnecessary and deprives the term "contents" of significance. One more time: MeYou01.txt MeYou02.txt etc. I urge all of you to write your congressmen, commissar, or mullah to get this passed into law.

Hi, Croda!

Hiram, it's not the same without you. Excrement seems so... wasted, without you here to target. None of us ever wore it better. Please, won't you come back home?

OK, this thread is splitting faster than a plutonium isotope, so I repost the salient info from one of the soon-to-be-stillborn other threads: Mark IV, Terror of the Internet: 80 Moriarty, modem-fodder: 20... This actually would open a slot for a loathsome gamey cheating pissant convict scum, if anyone knew such a beast... but surely none such would sully such halls as these... Lorak has done fine work updating the stats already, and a better fellow than I would be grateful. I felt that the last bit needed boldening up, as any such riff-raff might have eyes like little expatriate raisins from the desert sun. I may also have been challenged in some form by some sort of rodent collective. How tedious, to whittle all those kitchen matches into tiny wooden stakes to drive through all their squirming little hearts, pinning them to a stained old mattress, loading it on the pickup, and speeding down a bumpy California freeway until it falls off to join all the other stained old mattresses until it is run over by vacationeers in a Winnebago resulting in a fluffy, delightfully textured Compote Rodentine for the benefit of the filthy crows. Unfortunately the challenge was incoherently worded and may not have been for me at all, in which case, my deepest apologies to the crows.

Oh, goodie, another Peng Thread schism. I love religious wars. And now (patriotic music)... O, 'twas a perilous storming of a village, in snow at dawn, and my Ami lads just wanted to Rest. But to stand still was to die, and I drove them relentlessly forward to their rendezvous with Victory. The entopplee, Herr More-Arty, inflicted the cruelest blows at the last, mostly via some sour grapes, gotcha-last artillery, plus a sneak attack on me Shermie (quickly avenged) and then... manfully, surrendered. Lorak! Schreiben Sie another one for the Mark IV killing machine: Mark IV, Terror of the Internet: 80 Moriarty, modem-fodder: 20 He is such a gentleman, it's a shame to whack him about so. I hope he uses the many valuable lessons of this battle to kill someone deserving, i.e., the rest of you. This actually would open a slot for a loathsome gamey cheating pissant convict scum, if anyone knew such a beast... but surely none such would sully such halls as these...

And I don't, and therein lies the rub, for BTS. Because whether I'm right or wrong (and there isn't a right or wrong here) they are ska-rewed in either case, 'cause one of us is sure it ought to be the other way 'round. No offense meant; this is a matter of pure opinion, and that's what game designers are for. They have carried a cocktail napkin vision through to fruition, with outrageous success, and now they're out to top it. How many of us bozos have solved the world's problems and made a billion on a cocktail napkin, but trudged into work the next day same as usual? So with most of the groggier points taken care of, unless there are documentable bugs (maybe the HTs are, dunno, no one seems to have any problem killing mine), no reason to spend another minute on anything not related to the Eastern Front... this user interface/combat sim/game is DONE-Done-done and off to the Next Plateau, says I. IMHO.

Why isn't killing yourself one of the options? Why should the rest of us have to keep doing it for you? My fear is that if you advertise the Alternate Cesspool to the Outer Board, they will all see that stuff, realize how sick some of us really are, and close this one down for good. Plus, they'll call their legislators and demand forced sterilization for Meeks. So that's one pro and one con, assuming killing yourself is really off the table...

"...no move against Pearl Harbor appears imminent or planned for in the foreseeable future." -Naval Intelligence assessment to Admiral Kimmel, Feb. 1941.

Originally posted by Colonel_Deadmarsh: How many times do I have to bump this before I get an answer? Oh-oh, that counts as two questions, back to the beginning of the line. I have tanks waiting on ascending a hill based on the question I am asking. Please respond BTS. They refuse to advance to the top until they know they have the advantage.

I still think the easiest and least gamey approach to stopping the last minute flag rush is the randomly variable game length, by 3 or 4 turns. Since you never know which turn is actually the penultimate turn, the last minute squad-fragment rush either never happens, or can be dealt with. Worked great in SP and sounds easy to implement... compared to some of the other suggestions I've heard. Re: defending bridges and other victory assessment issues, I don't think the length of time a defender occupies a VL in the context of a game is relevant. Since we are talking about 20-120 minutes of real time, the defense of a VL is sort of boolean- you either held it, or you didn't. A stubborn defense which is eventually forced off a VL has its own reward, in the number of casualties it inflicted in the process (counting directly toward victory assessment), and the time and resources it consumed of the attacker's clock and assets. But the VL itself has passed to enemy control within the specified time, so by definition the attacker has achieved that part of his mission, and should be credited for so doing. If the goal of the scenario is to model a delaying action, this is simulated now with a succession of flags of increasing value leading to the defending map edge. Otherwise, blocking a bridge or holding a pass has an intrinsic value that cannot be directly offset by a spirited, but ultimately unsuccessful, defense. In the context of a couple hours, tops, the Fuehrer isn't going to care if you held the bridge for an hour and a half; at the end of the day the Allies are pouring over the bridge and he's screwed again. If you whacked so many Allies in the process that their casualties offset the loss of the bridge VL, great; the more successful commander gets the win. There were certainly objectives deemed valuable enough to expend a company or a battalion for. Those are the VLs, or benefits. The casualties incurred in the process (costs) are the mark of the commander's skill, and the modifier to the simple tally of controlled VLs at the end of the game. The guy with the lower cost/benefit ratio (in the local, CM, tactical sense) is the winner. [This message has been edited by Mark IV (edited 03-04-2001).]

Some things must be pursued in the appropriate venue, that is, here. Yep, this really made me stop and think. What do we have, here? Gandhi? Kant? Khalil Ghibran? The Rainbow People's Manifesto? Why no, it's a noted philosopher and patron saint of feelin' alright, making an impassioned plea for alternative literacy. "You shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of grammar!", he as much as crows, as though to expunge the awful metaphor to which his wagon is now euphemistically hitched, though his cart is before his horse, be it of another color, or not. Well, now let's see whose ox is gored, as I must take this one by the horns. A world revolving around either art or word would still be a cold and dreary place, would it not? I am perfectly satisfied with the heliocentric thing, and language as a medium for the exchange of ideas, and grammar and spelling as the metaphorical dollars and cents of the international idea economy, and art as laughable scraps of colored fabric framed on the walls of Marriotts' where I check in. Yeah, you guessed it. I am otherly-abled when it comes to art, being hung up on Vermeer, Tintoretto, and Velasquez. Treepuff/155 wasn't here when his newly adopted pet/1 was urging the closing of our fair 'pool, so I urge calm and forgiveness upon my foul, dank, and slimy brethren. No, really, I do. But isn't encouraging the illiterate to post like shooing one-legged chickens across a busy highway? Are you doing right by the little tyke? Wouldn't a brick upside the head reinforce attention to detail, or at least the common courtesy of using the little "Spell Check" button, so much like the linguistic equivalent of a turn signal, in that its use represents a courtesy to other drivers? Thoughtfully Yours, Mark/IV out of my little box

30 posts. Or in your case, 27. The dimensions of your membership (I'm sure that's what you meant) can be seen by clicking the profile icon next to your name. Also, Members pass a rigorous examination and must succesfully navigate a treacherous obstacle course for time. Those meeting the 30-post requirement, but failing the latter, are set to work on new features for the user interface.

Poor Mr. Clark. Such a nice fellow on the Outer Board, dissembling, conciliatory, apologetic... now utterly confused and lost in the Bad Part of Town. Patting the sleeping Beast on the nose and cooing "nice doggie". I give ya a day or two. There was another nice guy here, once... we played soccer with his mother's head. menschy picked out the eyes and then we had to bowl, instead. I hate bowling. Speaking of Hate... elvis has a Tactic! He has parked a Panzer battalion in a neat line so he can admire his little parade. I think he has lines painted and the vehicle number of each one stencilled in it's place on the asphalt. And that is where they're going to die. In other news... Peng has returned a turn! Moriarty's death rattle seems to have shaken the track off one of my Shermies. He has a Gun. I'm a-gonna kill it. And everybody around it and their families, too. Kitty, thanks for the mod, quite the most dashing of the lot, though that's like being the cutest pig in the pen. Not sure what the royalties are per download, but as soon as my lawyers are done with the Metallica case they'll be contacting you. I was killing some others but I'm too busy to remember you. Try sending a turn, it jogs the memory.

Have you seen the posts from all the people whose relationships are jeopardized by this game? Seen how many hundreds of man-hours individuals have into making mods for it? Wargame of the Year? It is totally worth the $45. It is the best game I ever bought. An interesting exercise in research would be to compare the posts (and responses) here, to the posts on other game boards. Also note that whenever I agree with Maximus you have the broadest possible consensus of opinion. Therefore, your research is now concluded and it is time to get out the old credit card.