Tarquelne

Noted! I guess the rocks I scraped across were gaseous rocks. Hmm... There must be some sort of high energy density (thus the need for AM in the vehicle) manipulation of atomic bonds to induce strong EM repulsion between the hovercraft and whatever is under it. The hydrogen bonds in water get messed up by this manipulation, though. When there's enough water you get a high-energy/high-density concentration of hydrogen and oxygen... and thus an explosion. That explains both the repulsion and hydrophobia-but-not-"lithophobia." That "fine AM particles" thing... that's just to obscure the real secret of the technology. Don't trust everything you read! _Y: Maybe I just paid attention in Lit. class and remembered. It's occurred to me that, as a frothy alcoholic beverage, a beer could be considered an "airy spirit". It'd be unsafe for anyone other than the spirit's proper master to consume it.

I wouldn't drink with anyone who named it after the little mermaid. Even if I drank, I mean. I've tried it out. Nice! Speedy. I like it being low to the ground. In my laps around the Archipelago the only thing that struck me as a candidate for change was the fragility of the vehicle when moving from land to water. Without considerably more care than I thought would be necessary the Ariel goes "Boom!"... it's when the nose dips under the water? Too bad it can't submerge... whoops. I should try it when at rest as opposed to top speed. I think I'll try some races between the Ariel and the Paladin, to highlight differences in how they perform.

Is it something that makes the Tempest much more interesting? Is it because it seeks to do whatever be our pleasure, whether it is to fly, to swim, to dive into the fire, or ride on the clouds above?

I've been pleasantly surprised at how helpful the experienced players have been during game. I've often been given tips even when on the other team. I do think this thread is a very good idea. I'm just pleased it isn't absolutely necessary. Sensors are more useful than all the other units combined. I can beat any number of players using only jammed sensors. I win! That surprises me quite a bit. A bot in a Mercury feeds targets to mortar-bots without human intervention?

I think DT's "no lines" battles and easy spotting makes TDs much less useful. But a TD would still be cool. Were I making one I'd probably base it off the Hertzer, in that it'd emphasize a low-profile. Is the mod mentioned above the "Ramses"? That struck me as being more like a Stug on steriods than a dedicated TD, especially given it's intended use against ion defenses. An "assault gun." Not that there's anything wrong with being "Stuggy". The Ramses sounds great. No MG is fun. Hmm... can the Paladins really transport infantry? I keep forgetting to check. If so then something like a towed AT-gun unit should be possible to make.

What is it? Well, they're really about [CENSORED] [CENSORED] goats and [CENSORED]. Not that anyone will ever actually talk about it.

I think it's quite possible all the units have great thermal camo. They might have some really fantastic internal heatsinks, for example. OTOH, it sounds like more fun if they don't. Maybe, for example, the vehicles have just a few "hot spots" that show up on thermal. (The underside would be a favorite... though that might leave a trail. There could be a component that, if damaged, has the unit show more heat. If that component is destroyed the unit "lights up." I wonder what's supposed to be burning in the vehicles. It might all be very hot smoke. OTOH, there's dust. (I used the smoke launcher on a Thor for the first time last night. I'm very proud that I remembered it after only three ATGM strikes! Yay for me.) Timestamped? That'd be nice. It'd be good if the computer keeps track of the names, so that old traces of "Juda", for example, can be removed when Juda shows up again.

Reverse the facing of the Apollo chassis with regard to movement and armor. It's much easier to go hull-down with the chassis behind the Apollo rather than in front. If the armor is reversed then you've got your strongest armor toward the enemy when you aren't 100% hull-down. Same thing for edging around corners. Alternatively, I wish someone would explain the present Apollo's chassis/turret arrangement to me.

I've been wondering what the Tempest's point is. Maybe it wouldn´t unbalance the game,but I think the purpose of this unit should be its visibility, or better its ability to distract. </font>

It makes sense to the bots. What we need is a bot-training sub-game. Feed them, pet them, and coach them not to deploy incontinently. Also: Updated documentation. [ November 15, 2006, 05:54 AM: Message edited by: Tarquelne ]

I found the Paladin far more likely to survive a jump, which is fun. Overall, it seems like an improvement to me.

Nice flick. I'll just run away should I see you in a game. I'm reminded, though, of one of the most blatant missing features in DT: External speaker mounts for the tanks.

Thread title changed. Now you've been co-opted.

The "Library" went down the other day, but after having a trim and it's feet rubbed the computer seems much better now. So, I'll try PalFest: All squirrelly ACs, all the time! All the deployable are in but for the 90mm AT gun. The Merc. and Cutter are in, but other than that the only vehicles allowed are the Paladins and the Shrike. Counting crashes: Two. (One a power failure. Sorry, Ith.) It seemed rather pointless to run a server that did the same thing Delta_P does, but slower and less reliably. OTOH, as Clay was such a huge help getting DT running here, it was nice to put it to use beyond the LAN. If anyone else has ideas for something different - (hmm... a Demolition Derby?) - go ahead and post it here. [ November 11, 2006, 11:20 AM: Message edited by: Tarquelne ]

This post is simply here to occupy the space where a lame "in Russia...!" joke would naturally fit. You all owe me one.

I played around with Paladins tonight online. A big HEYA to everyone who put a 120mm round into me last night. And now I have an arch-enemy! You know who you are. I also got to learn about arty strikes, EMP strikes, and mines. All within 30 seconds of dropping into the game. :eek: The Pal. moved great in "urban" terrain and in the desert canyon. I found the wooded/hilly maps killers. Not just the longish LOS, but lots of terrain features that were too small to give cover but big enough to cause movement problems. The traction seemed to be far lower than I expected. Anyway, how the suspension felt to me depended more on the map than anything else. I'm going to try some wood/hill maps with the "Tuned" suspension on the LAN and see what happens. [ November 07, 2006, 08:11 PM: Message edited by: Tarquelne ]

Thanks for the feedback. It seems to have choked tonight, so I'm taking it offline. I'll probably upgrade the connection and/or the hardware in the not-too-distant future. I'll try it again, then.

Last three lines: Removing the section for the new Shrike in the Inventory file prevents the game from crashing. The new Paladin shows up in the inventory. I re-copied the Shrike section from the "base" Inventory and the game still crashes. The game runs fine if "Shrike.physisicalobjectgroup" is copied over the "Shikep" version. A quick comparison between Shrike and Shrikep didn't turn up anything obviously wrong.

The game's crashing when I try to play with the Tuning mod. (At Caching Objects 52%.) Maybe I didn't install it correctly: The zip file contains a "Tuning" directory. Put that in the "mods" directory? Select "Tuning" on the mods screen and restart?

After a little practice I tried a Paladin in an online game. I felt I could travel around at a decent clip, and _usually_ down the street I intended to drive down. I had no damaging crashes, no flips. While the steering seemed strange at times, it wasn't really a problem. The only thing I missed was better brakes. That was the base suspension. Now I'm going to try poesel71's.

I keep getting spooked when a sudden stop has the rear end of an Apollo lift like the thing's going to flip end-over-end. Even the tracked vehicles are less stable than I expected. Are these AFVs supposed to be a lot lighter than the "real world" modern versions? The Paladin - and especially the Shrike - strike me as remarkably unforgiving for fighting vehicles. I dunno... maybe at the high end of the learning curve you can really use their advantages. Could be realistic - in the fits-with-the-sci-fi-world sense - if the vehicles have some sort of drive-by-wire system that condenses a complicated operation to a few simple controls. An excuse to make the vehicles more forgiving. Make it a damage-able component (Knocked out with "yellow" on the dirver?) and I wouldn't think it at all gamey. After spending much of the day rolling Paladins - attempts to use that potential speed for armor - I'd love to see the wheeled-ones able to survive a roll intact and keep going. Either they strongly tend to land right-side-up, or auto-jacks put them upright. And with the turret intact. That way you could have a hoot zipping around the battlefield, but without hitting control-K or \ every 45 seconds. Or at least _I_ could.

I'm playing the second campaign scenario. I can't get the 120mm bots to engage fire at targets beyond the range of the 20mm guns... and even that seems rare. Putting them on the hill behind the objective, for example, where under human control numerous attackers can be picked off as they approach, results in the bots either doing nothing. Or, if given an attack/defend/advance command with a target near the objective, they charge forward and rarely fire before getting killed. What am I missing?

EDIT: Looks like my information was out of date. I'll try running a server. It's up - well, should be up - with the name "Library." It's got vanilla settings. If anyone wants different ones just post here. Post here if there's a problem, too. I've no idea if my connection/hardware can consistently support a decent server. Thank you. And thank you for putting the above about as well as could be expected. Though I suppose anything that avoided "nailing" would be OK. [ November 03, 2006, 11:46 PM: Message edited by: Tarquelne ]

So after getting the game Sunday I eagerly booted up the game to play... A day or two later, after Clay provided some invaluable help - THANKS! - I was all set to go! Except for a little visit to the hospital that suddenly seemed necessary... Ok, the medical stuff is over with and _probably_ isn't DropTeam's fault. So no lawsuit. And tonight I finally got to play. Yay! First: I started up a LAN game. LAN so my SO and I would inflict our cluelessness on each other only. It was not to be, as we soon found strange intelligences dropping out of the sky and blowing the hell out of us. Well, blowing the hell out of me. They seemed to leave _her_ alone. :mad: :mad: :mad: Thanks to everyone who Dropped in. We had a good time! (That IMG review sucks.) Second: I was surprised to see anyone show up. Is there call for more servers in the DT community? My connection seems like it's been a little flaky lately, but the ISP says that should be over with. If a new server would be appreciated it seems I can host it. The computer it was on tonight is up most of the time. (Though, come to think of it, it's a Dell and the warranty just ran out...) [ November 08, 2006, 05:56 PM: Message edited by: Tarquelne ]

I think it's on purpose, to annoy people here. At least that's why I do it. (And ya gotta figure a newer poster will have less to loose. Excuse me: "too loose.")