themocaw

Don't give Homsar a hard time, guys. Feel free to ask questions, just don't expect answers

Try using spore ships as offensive weapons, not as conquest ones. The goal is to kill the enemy population, toxify their planets (if they don't have extreme colonization that alone can screw them) and carry out terror attacks using high speed ships against their high-value planets. Their fringe worlds, I'll use traditional invasion to get it on its feet right away. . . unless they don't have toxic reductors, in which case I'll spore it anyway and drop off some crew >XD. In other words, the go

Why do I keep hearing that Fallout 3 will be a first person shooter? Where has that actually been stated? All I've seen is a screenshot of a conversation screen.

Come up with a good reason why it should be used. For example, I think in the Vorkosigan universe, what happened is that defense technology leaped ahead of weapon technology with the Sword Swallower and Plasma Mirror systems, that reflect laser and plasma fire away from the ship, often back in the direction of the ship that did the shooting. For that reason, missiles vs. point defense usually becomes the combat style and one person speculates they might wind up resorting to using rams

Spore Ships, also known as "yoink! My planet now."

Or just don't use races with Super Manipulator.

February 25, 2229 Somewhere in a goddamn swamp on a backwater planet in the armpit of the galaxy. Hovertruck broke down at last this morning. One whole night and most of a morning driving through swamps, and the hover pads finally overloaded and shorted out. We buried Jenkins the best we could: laid him in the front seat and pushes the truck into the swamp. Wish we could do more for him, but Graves Registration will just have to pick him up later after we capture the planet.

Fighting for the Orbital High Guard should be the big point of the fight. I do agree that planet defenses need to be better, but I get the feeling the designers wanted the major planetary defense option to be those Orbital Fleet Controllers (I think that's what they're called, I can never remember the exact name, I never built them because it was better, for me, to get the enemy to waste turns shooting down by little fighters one by one instead.)

How about this one: MEGA EVENT: Those Who Go Before One minor race suddenly vanishes off the face of the map, and their homeworld turns into a PQ 26 world. The player later recieves an emissary appearing as a being of pure light, speaking incoherently about something they call "That Which Lies Beyond Mortality," and is penalized or rewarded based on their relationship with that minor race. Examples of results could be: Ally: the player immediately gets the Greater Kn

********** February 24, 2229 6 pm Lentzlandians I Military has an acronym, FUBAR. It stands for "Fouled" Up Beyond All Recognition. It's used for those situations that are screwed up in a militarily efficient manner. So your flivvery breaking down is not FUBAR. FUBAR is your flivver breaking down two hundred yards above ground on terminal approach. FUBAR is a major getting lost and leading a light infantry regiment smack into a column of mechanized cavalry. FUBAR is a gene

Hearing you guys talk about thrashing the enemy's buttocks one way and the other doesn't make me feel so good about the fact that, in my current game, the Krynn and I are locked in a stalemate that the Krynn are slowly winning with superior numbers, to the point that I'm considering refocusing to research and running for a Tech Victory. Either that or see if I can flip my weapons tech over to Beam Weapons fast enough to survive the coming onslaught of Battleships against my poor Frigates.

Steven Baxter: If you want an example of just how mind-bending his books can get, check out the Manifold Trilogy: "Manifold: Time," "Manifold: Space," and "Manifold: Origin." It's basically Baxter exploring the Fermi Paradox: that is to say, "If there is intelligent life out there, why don't we see it?" and coming up with three different, equally mind-bending answers. For more down-to-earth science fiction, Coalescent and Evolution are good: the prior talks about hive behavior, the lat

Terror Stars could work as modules for military starbases: one would allow it to move, the other would allow it to fire on and destroy a star: turn it into a white dwarf, destroy all planetary improvements, kill all civilians, and convert all its habitable planets to Barren PQ1. Horrifically expensive (like 5000 bc) and would probably be at the end of Battle Stations upgrade tree or some such. Only available to Evil civilizations. Uses up the same Logistics cost as a Huge. Nasty Bugger.

I'd rather MS fix their darn boxes and keep them at the price they are instead of cutting prices on a shoddily built device.

The price drop for the PS3 moves me from "Not in a million years, buddy" to "maybe if they release incredibly good games and I don't already own a Wii and a 360 and Sony kisses my butt as an apology."

********** February 23, 2229 Lentzlandians I I'm alive, I'm alive, I'm alive. I'm goddamn alive. Shit. . . I'm alive. Damn damn damn damn damn. . . shit. . . goddamn. . . Christ. . . *End of Journal Entry*

********** February 22, 2229 The other troops woke up out of cryo today. They were greeted with the news that we'd just lost our escort cruisers. Lentzlandians I used to be home to a small civilization called the Lentzlandians, guys who looked a lot like the Monopoly mascot and talked a lot like Jeeves. The Yor took them over a couple of years ago, and now there's nothing but Yor cities, Yor factories, and Yor themselves walking along the ruins of those quaint little hous

********** February 20, 2229 Might as well tell you a bit about my crew. CATs flivvers have three-man crews: a driver, a commander, and an engineer. The driver is usually the low man on the totem pole because he doesn't get to shoot back: that's me, by the way, the FNG. My job is to make sure the flivver goes where it's supposed to go and doesn't flip over. That's bad, by the way: anti-grav craft have a tendency to do that, especially in a high wind, and the hover-field

Here's an example from real life: in World War II, the Allied invasion of France and Germany basically won from several different factors, but one of the most important was this: America established air superiority over the Luftwaffe early on. A German soldier heard an airplane coming, he ran and took cover because it was probably an American P-51 or B-17 heading over to deliver some whoop-ass. An American soldier heard the same thing, he relaxed, because there was an angel over his shoulder w

I wince when I hear "make old weapons cheaper," being reminded of the fusion beam cheese from Master of Orion where you could shove about six banks of 99 of those things on a ship at a time. . . maybe if it were carefully implemented, it would be good. I also hesitate with any suggestion that goes "rework the entire combat system" especially to the extent you're talking about, because at that point, you may as well make an entirely new game. DL to DA changed by having ships attack weap

Rule 1: don't start off on a large map. I suggest starting off on a small or medium map with two other races: one (like the altarians) whome you can ally with and one (like the Drengins) whom you can fight. The first rule for the first year is this: your focus is on establishing colonies, claiming territory, not on building up said territory. I usually don't build more than maybe a starport and a couple of factories to start out, until that planet's population reaches at least one bil

It's really annoying, however, when you start right next to them, have also colonized hard trying to beat them in the colony rush and then you slowly start seeing your worlds and mining bases flipping over because the Iconians had colonized all the !@#$ extreme worlds that you couldn't and built up influence deep in your own territory. . .

********** February 17, 2229 Location Classified I sometimes wish my damn flivver would break down already. The thing's already on its way out: the antigrav is shot, and the microfusion reactor hiccups every time I rev it up into combat mode. The thing is, the military doesn't like to retire equipment until it's truly dead, and so I can't get a replacement until the thing breaks down. I'm tempted to throw a wrench into the goddamn transmission stream and kill it entirely, but

********** February 14, 2229 Somewhere in Hyperspace So this is my first journal entry, and the only reason I started keeping one was because Jenkins had one too many beers and got philosophical. See, we were sitting in mess hall 7117 after training, kicking back and having a couple of beers, and we started reflecting on just how great the ol' "Valley Forge" is. Biggest troop transport in its class, powerful as hell and faster than shit on skates. Anyway, Jenkins star

How about just being able to set a starbase as a rally point? Then you can have a nearby planet set the base as a rally point. When the constructors arrive, it automatically goes to the upgrade screen, you choose your upgrade, move on.