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Badger
Stripey Forest Dweller
Joined: 18 Mar 2002
Posts: 924
Location: UK |
| This Path Leads to the Dark Side! |
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Arghghghgh me hearties.
My current system can run X2, but she can't really ruuuuuun X2, y'll know what ah mean??
You don't?
Ok, I have enough wellie to happily trade, but when it comes to combat my rig throws a little stutter into the play. Not much... but juuuust enough to make single combat best avoided where possible and mass melee a distinct improbability.
1.4 helped a lot! in fact without it's sublime tweaking I would not have bothered to make my return to the "X2" fold.
This is not too much of a problem right now to be honest. I've never fired a missile in anger in my game proper and have only tinkered with combat during the odd experiment, before swiftly returning to the safe haven of the last save point and tradings gentle harbour.
Recently though "CM" suggested that I "adjust the virtual memory" and being as I am technically challenged, (as you know well) she provided a handy step by step on how to do just that.
Whether or it made a difference is difficult to say. It might have... but if so then it's so very slight that I can barely tell.
But in any case, when it came to testing the framerate, I could not think of a better test than to hurl myself and the "Heart of Gold" out of the warm bosom of the station where I was docked and into the frenzy of combat in the cold vacuum of space.
Or.... and this was probably a more prudent plan... attack a passing Mercury.
Thing is, I'm thinking nippy Discoverer (starter ship) v's fat old transport with only one rear gun should be no contest. My steely will and nimble paws, pitted against an overwieght underpaid spacebum at the controls of an overworked overclocked cargo carrier? I should be brushing it's debris off my dash in seconds!
Many of you will doubtless be less then surprised to hear that I got my stripey behind kicked all over the sector! As was also the case on the second attempt, and the third...etc etc.
This got me to thinking...
I have a fleet of two at the moment. "Heart of Gold" my trusty Discoverer and "Hobbling Boris" my own mercury. I currently have Boris in moorage at an "Advanced Satelite Station" near "Herons Nebula" (North West somewhere or other I think) stuffed to the gills with silicone wafers which currently represent my entire ingame fortune and waiting for the prices to rise so that I can sell them and make a killing! (Even a little one would be nice...but I want a big one!)
I was hoping to use this hard earned revenue, to buy a second Mercury (I love that they look like "Eagles" from "Space 1999"! One for us Anderson fans) and put that to work as well. Thus sowing the seeds for the future and I hope dragging your Badger from obscurity to galaxy wide renoun at the head of a vast trading empire.
But... what if ... just what if mind you.. what if I allowed myself to stray to the darkside? After all, why save up for my "Eagles" if I can pursuade the local traders to..erm.."donate" them to me.
Based on my recent experiments though it seems unlikely that I'm going to be able to do this in a discoverer. So I turned to the net in the hopes of finding a thread or two about "capturing".
Well I found a thread or two alright.. or three or four...dozen! But they all seemed to be either pitched at the gnarled and space weathered professional, or they claimed to be newbie guides but quickly decended into technobabble fests with sporadic episodes of unintelligible acronym juggling for the entertainment of the assembled "in the know"crowds.
What's a G.I.R.E anyway? That's a gun! I know it..it's a gun...right?
So here's the challenge for you fountains of spacelore and wisdom. Tell me in terms that the Badger straight out of the forest can understand, what is the best way to either boost "Heart of Gold" to a point where she is feared, or which will be the first suitable ship I can afford to do the job.
Then suitably equipped and terrifying... how best to take what is mine! Erm..theirs!. .... Mine!
Of course as I am a law abiding Badger I would never use this information to cause harm or distress and I fully intend to continue along the straight and narrow path......... or do I?
Oh..by the way. Much is made amoung the many texts, of reducing the shield of your prey to "x" percentage and his hull to "y" percentage. I can see this info about my target if I press "I".. but I couldn't fight with that on screen! What am I missing??
Badger Out.
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"Ducks are Dumb!" Badger-2005. Go ahead... quote me! |
Tue May 24, 2005 10:37 am |
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dteowner
Shoegazer
Joined: 21 Mar 2002
Posts: 7570
Location: Third Hero of Erathia |
A gamma IRE is a pea shooter, Badger, and the Heart O' Gold will never ever be an effective combat vehicle.
For those of us that find dog fighting best left to illegal third world betting parlors, combat is wisely delayed to much later in the game. Here's what I'd recommend to you. Xen would clearly disagree, but let's just say he's a slightly better combat pilot (in other words, he actually flies the ship instead of picking a target and autodocking).
1 Argon Nova
3 5MW shields
2 ion distruptors
2 beta PACs (beta HEPTs would be preferred)
Max speed
Around 20% rudder control
Total investment: around 1.3million credits
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=Proud Member of the Non-Flamers Guild=
=Benevolent Dictator, X2/X3 and Morrowind/Oblivion Forums=
Sorry. No pearls of wisdom in this oyster.
RIP Red Wings How 'Bout Dem Cowboys! |
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Wed May 25, 2005 12:13 am |
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Badger
Stripey Forest Dweller
Joined: 18 Mar 2002
Posts: 924
Location: UK |
Total investment: around................. 1.3MILLIO...... <splutter!>
A ways off yet then as all I have just now is bus fare! I'm still waiting on that Satelite Factory to stump up a decent return for all Boris's hard work. The station wants to play hard to get eh? Keeping me waiting for a decent price?? ok, I can wait, lets just see who rusts first!
badger
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"Ducks are Dumb!" Badger-2005. Go ahead... quote me! |
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Wed May 25, 2005 1:09 pm |
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EverythingXen
Arch-villain
Joined: 01 Feb 2002
Posts: 4342
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Well, a disco with two GIRE *can* shoot down a transport... but it's really not that fun (and involves a lot of dodging and a stategically launched missile or three).
Transports have large shields and those PAC are disco-killers. Of course being sneezed on is a disco-killer.
DTE went on to the glory of the Nova... and indeed it is a little gunstar (has ANYONE else seen the Last Starfighter? anyone? anyone? sigh...). There's little risk in a fully shielded Nova with full weapons array... any pilot with one can safely say 'alright, pirate... it's you and me'. Only swarms of enemies or repeated missile hits will harm a nova (as well as being run over by anything bigger).
Combat is all about the Strafe drive. You don't have one yet. Without a strafe drive you spend as much time dodging frantically as the enemies do and nothing gets done. No, the marvelous strafe drive introduces such concepts of 'up' 'down' and 'move to the side without losing sight of the target'. Frankly, I feel bad using one... but since it would take an hour to take out 12 attackers (instead of 3 minutes) without it... I get over it. Strafe mastery will see you playing chicken with xenon battlecruisers in a Nova, laughing maniacally while weaving between thousands of pulses capable of destroying you with three solid hits per second, all the while frying their shields with twin ion disruptors before dumping a salvo of hornet missiles into their bridge at point blank range and listening to the toasters wail.
(Oh, advanced combat tip for everyone .... you know how if you fire two missiles in rapid succession the second blows the first up? Strafe... you can unleash a dozen hornet missiles in six seconds. Missiles track, after all, and don't get messed up like your weapons do by strafing.)
Erm... yes... glories of the strafe drive aside (strafe tip: pressing the strafe button without a direction instantly cancels your strafe momentum. This is how you maintain a 50% accuracy rate even while strafing heavily: Strafe out of the way of incoming fire, keeping your target in sight, hit strafe again to cancel momentum (or your energy weapons will miss horribly as they do not track a target on their own), and continue to rain death on your foe.) ...
Erm ... yes... glories of the strafe drive aside (strafe tip: strafing is the only way to even consider using a cruiser in combat. Turning about takes 30 seconds or so... dodging isn't an option like that. Strafing, however, is instant... and the only way to walk away without the paint job ruined when fighting an enemy battlecruiser.)
Erm ... yes... glories of the strafe drive aside (strafing large targets is brutally effective because your weapons can't miss... argh... enough!)
Right. Moving on then...
Point? Oh yes. If you're feeling cocky you can use a M4 fighter instead of a M3. The boron one in particular will only set you back 600k to be fully loaded. Of course, you're not a nova with its potential shields of 75k and are dead as soon as someone gets a solid lock on you (unless you... strafe drive!). All in all a Disco with twice the shielding, half the speed, and 10 times the firepower. I used mine to capture a fleet of traders and a nova or three.
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Estuans interius, Ira vehementi
"The old world dies and with it the old ways. We will rebuild it as it should be, MUST be... Immortal!"
=Member of the Nonflamers Guild=
=Worshipper of the Written Word= |
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Wed May 25, 2005 3:57 pm |
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Badger
Stripey Forest Dweller
Joined: 18 Mar 2002
Posts: 924
Location: UK |
Yes, I am also a “Last Starfighter” refugee. Decent enough film for a kiddies flick but then my Sci-fi standards are notoriously low and I’ll sit through any old tosh and forgive it, as long as it can boast pulse cannons, battlecruisers and a cause almost lost. Of course a space babe sporting something skimpy never hurts either.
Having upgraded to “Sky TV” last year we found ourselves in the middle of a number of Sci-Fi series that we pointedly avoided because we wanted to see them from the beginning. Now six months on they have come around again and we have recently been treated to the Pilot for the remake of “Battlestar Galactica” which we very much enjoyed once we got past the seemingly pointless gender changes among the cast. “Starbuck” is certainly easier on the eye now (despite cigar) although some might argue that Dirk Benedict is still the more feminine acting of the two.
Wednesday nights now sees us with places booked at the sofa from 8pm which is when we finally get to see “Firefly” which we’re really enjoying. Trouble is I know in advance that the series was cancelled!!! Bah!
Anyway, I digress… sorry.
“Strafe Drive” eh? Are they hard to come by? I’ve not seen one yet in my travels.
Badger
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"Ducks are Dumb!" Badger-2005. Go ahead... quote me! |
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Thu May 26, 2005 8:07 am |
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EverythingXen
Arch-villain
Joined: 01 Feb 2002
Posts: 4342
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If I'm not mistaken they're sold in Split and Paranid space... neither of which will let you dock without killing at least one hostile in one of their sectors. I used a transport and ran over a Pirate Bayomon that was busy fighting. The element of surprise when combined with hundreds of tonnes of moving metal is brutally effective.
"Oh, you're really going to get it no --- aaauuuuuggghhh!!"
*activate space winshield wipers*
Hmm... perhaps the Moron sell them as well. Check their equipment docks ... in the story later on it tells you to buy one but really the sooner you do the happier you'll be in a firefight (or avoiding one).
Oh, and about the last starfighter... heh... well... actually with a Nova with a high enough rudder optimization you CAN "Death Blossom". I've done it in a swarm of alien scout ships.. spun wildly in all directions while holding fire. Half of them crashed into each other trying to get away from the completely daffy weapon fire spread and a third of them got hit by a beta plasma cannon and exploded spectacularly. It will get you killed against any real threat, of course.. sitting still in a firefight typically will.
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Estuans interius, Ira vehementi
"The old world dies and with it the old ways. We will rebuild it as it should be, MUST be... Immortal!"
=Member of the Nonflamers Guild=
=Worshipper of the Written Word= |
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Thu May 26, 2005 12:51 pm |
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Val
Risen From Ashes
Joined: 18 Feb 2002
Posts: 14724
Location: Utah, USA |
quote:
Originally posted by Badger
Wednesday nights now sees us with places booked at the sofa from 8pm which is when we finally get to see “Firefly” which we’re really enjoying. Trouble is I know in advance that the series was cancelled!!! Bah!
http://serenitymovie.com/
Download the high definition trailer and enjoy. 
_________________
Freeeeeeedom! Thank heavens it's summer!
What do I have to show for my hard work? A piece of paper! Wee!
=Guardian, Moderator, UltimaDot Newshound=  |
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Thu May 26, 2005 6:36 pm |
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Badger
Stripey Forest Dweller
Joined: 18 Mar 2002
Posts: 924
Location: UK |
Thanks Val 
For some reason I was not notified of this reply, so I have only just now stumbled on it  But I'll look forward to watching the trailer.
We already saw a two part "Serenity" which we assumed was the pilot for the "Firefly" Series. Usually it's just a case of finding the website and looking at an episode guide to confirm, but I found the website for this pretty confusing.
I actually logged on to see if the Captain of Serenity is the same actor who played the evil preacher (erm... nope..name escapes me...Caleb? Something like that.) in Buffy. But I left the site none the wiser as to the cast or to the order of episodes.
But anyway I guess the "Serenity" of the clip, is another one planned for a future release?
Badger
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"Ducks are Dumb!" Badger-2005. Go ahead... quote me! |
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Tue May 31, 2005 9:17 am |
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Val
Risen From Ashes
Joined: 18 Feb 2002
Posts: 14724
Location: Utah, USA |
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0379786/
Perhaps this site will prove more helpful. This will be a theatrical release that ties up the loose ends that the tv series left.
_________________
Freeeeeeedom! Thank heavens it's summer!
What do I have to show for my hard work? A piece of paper! Wee!
=Guardian, Moderator, UltimaDot Newshound= |
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Tue May 31, 2005 9:14 pm |
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Badger
Stripey Forest Dweller
Joined: 18 Mar 2002
Posts: 924
Location: UK |
Much clearer thanks 
It is the same actor! I just won a bet. Oh... he was also in "Dracula 2000", oooops... that is one seriously Naff film. 
Badger
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"Ducks are Dumb!" Badger-2005. Go ahead... quote me! |
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Wed Jun 01, 2005 5:53 am |
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Dhruin
Stranger In A Strange Land
Joined: 20 May 2002
Posts: 1825
Location: Sydney, Australia |
Nathan Fillion? Caleb was my favourite Buffy character. I believe the original US release of Firefly screwed it up by showing episodes out of order (and even missing a couple) -- hopefully your Sky widgy gets it right.
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Editor @ RPGDot |
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Thu Jun 02, 2005 10:02 am |
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Badger
Stripey Forest Dweller
Joined: 18 Mar 2002
Posts: 924
Location: UK |
I'm really enjoying it so far
I'm affraid that I approach any new SF series with a sinking feeling these days, so much of it barely qualifies as being any good.
Prior to having the Sky Box we were limited to the meagre rations served up to us by the five terrestrial channels. Pickings were slim and the "any port in a storm" rule meant that we were pretty forgiving with what we actually gave viewing time to. (Why else would we have contined to watch "Space Precinct.")
But now we have access to much more sci-fi we are an awful lot more choosy about what we'll watch and I'm pleased to say that "Firefly" (at least in my opinion) is top class SF and I think that JW out did himself.
Of course my opinion may not be trustworthy. I maintain to this day that "Enterprise" is a great show and round these here parts that's not the prevailing opinion. But I stand fast.
Badger
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"Ducks are Dumb!" Badger-2005. Go ahead... quote me! |
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Thu Jun 02, 2005 2:19 pm |
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Dhruin
Stranger In A Strange Land
Joined: 20 May 2002
Posts: 1825
Location: Sydney, Australia |
Well, you certainly have good taste in this one. In my opinion, Firefly is simply the best TV series ever. Ever.
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Editor @ RPGDot |
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Sat Jun 04, 2005 8:26 am |
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TheCleric
Fearless Paladin
Joined: 11 Jan 2002
Posts: 230
Location: Upstate NY, USA |
Hey Badger.
For help with capping I'd reccomend Al's capping guide. I don't have a link but if you look around a little on the Egosoft forums you should find it. Pay particular attention to the section about capping with missiles. You may need to adjust + or - 1 missile, but it worked pretty good for me. Just save before you try it. That way if they don't bail, or things head south you can reload and try again.
Good Luck! |
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Fri Mar 10, 2006 2:40 am |
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Badger
Stripey Forest Dweller
Joined: 18 Mar 2002
Posts: 924
Location: UK |
Well thank’s for the wisdom Cleric Even the latest late comers are welcome to the party (as long as they bring booze) but in this case I don’t have a gaming PC anymore so I’ll have to bear your advice in mind against the day I get one again and can resume my spacebound career.
All the best
Badger
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"Ducks are Dumb!" Badger-2005. Go ahead... quote me! |
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Fri Mar 10, 2006 1:31 pm |
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