air805ronin

Grand Theft Auto V, Prison Architect, and .22.

In an epic conflict of hundreds of thousands crashing into lines of hundreds of thousands, you may find that your allotted spare magazines don't last that long. In the close in fighting, when ammunition is scarce and a rifle could be more of a hindrance than a blessing, a sword can come in handy. Also worth nothing is space marines are roughly the equivalent of an order of knights on the medieval battlefield. If they get in close with a power sword an entire unit can die (in fluff and on the tabletop). I have had one squad leader with a power weapon carve a hole in an enemy line allowing for the capturing of a victory point. That said, this is 40k not Afghanistan. In general the conflict and types of fighting are different, and you cannot apply what will work today with what will work in that universe. Implying a modern day battle is over if you run out of ammunition ignores some significant battles from World War I and II where entire units got down to fixing bayonets and praying the enemy didn't attack that night. The last United States bayonet charge I know of was in the Korean War, and it succeeded in saving a fellow unit and taking a hilltop through sheer courage. Edit: "Capt. Millett, Company E, distinguished himself by conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity above and beyond the call of duty in action. While personally leading his company in an attack against a strongly held position he noted that the 1st Platoon was pinned down by small-arms, automatic, and antitank fire. Capt. Millett ordered the 3d Platoon forward, placed himself at the head of the 2 platoons, and, with fixed bayonet, led the assault up the fire-swept hill. In the fierce charge Capt. Millett bayoneted 2 enemy soldiers and boldly continued on, throwing grenades, clubbing and bayoneting the enemy, while urging his men forward by shouting encouragement. Despite vicious opposing fire, the whirlwind hand-to-hand assault carried to the crest of the hill. His dauntless leadership and personal courage so inspired his men that they stormed into the hostile position and used their bayonets with such lethal effect that the enemy fled in wild disorder. During this fierce onslaught Capt. Millett was wounded by grenade fragments but refused evacuation until the objective was taken and firmly secured. The superb leadership, conspicuous courage, and consummate devotion to duty demonstrated by Capt. Millett were directly responsible for the successful accomplishment of a hazardous mission and reflect the highest credit on himself and the heroic traditions of the military service"

Big patch coming, Beta patch available on Steam:http://wiki.totalwar.com/w/Total_War_ROME_II:_Patch_2

Fukushima might have had an easier time as well if they hadn't of ignored certain industry suggestions regarding the construction of their plant, especially a suggestion to extend their sea wall from 13 feet to 15. GE was one of the companies that issued that warning, but unlike the U.S. and many European countries these suggestions can be ignored in Japan. Regulatory agencies in the U.S. and Europe make it mandatory to fix these things. If you look at the safety record of that particular plant you'll see a history of issues. Both investigations have shown that as well. Both investigations also showed that a better response from the local and national government would have made the situation a lot better than it is now. Being scared of radiation is normal. I was trained to be able to continue fighting a war in a post nuclear, biological, or chemical attack world and I'm still scared of all three. However the realities of this incident is that it is bad, and there were massive screw ups, but largely the situation is under control at the moment. The people most against nuclear power plants are the same ones who understand them the least. Once you learn more about them you'll start seeing how most massive issues at these plants have been a result of a lack of knowledge, negligence, and a lack of threat recognition. Now excuse me while I strap a seat onto a nuclear rocket and see how far I can get Jeb.

I posted on the first page, this is sort of an update: I'm still not having the significant bugs or issues others are reporting. Personally finding the game fun and the enemy AI somewhat intelligent. Morale, especially of the enemy, breaks entirely too quickly still. The enemy also isn't very aggressive on the campaign map just yet. I've played 19 hours thus far completing the prologue and roughly 70 turns of the singleplayer campaign. I'm playing as Rome because...well....I love all things Rome. Started out taking Sicily, then Sardinia and that other island over there. Then I decided to follow in History's footsteps and annihilate Carthage. That done my legions took the rest of North Africa as well. I'm now moving on the Cisapline region. the African regions I haven't taken belong to defensive allies Athens and Nova Carthage. In North Africa I faced my first truly huge enemy unit stacks and it was nerve wracking. they completely encircled my units and only my better morale kept my units (some brought down to only 5 men) from breaking. One battle was 6000 of them vs 2000 of me and their arrows really did block the sun! Unlike seemingly everyone, I'm having a good experience with Rome 2.

Main army is Imperial Guard, my other armies are my original Space Marine army and Grey Knights. Warhammer 40k has plenty of scifi involved, but its a future where science fiction happened and then mankind went into a sort of dark ages. So the scifi is there, but its not well understood. Technical procedures are now a religion with its own cult. Its kind of an interesting concept that touches on Europe's own time after the fall of the Roman Empire.

I prefer this time because I live in the U.S. and previously I missed every one of these because I can't watch stuff like this at work. Silly grown up jobs expecting me to be professional.

I don't doubt this will wind up closed for that very reason. I am American, I used to be in the military. I have served in some way supporting 3 of the following conflicts of the current century. Bear in mind what follows is my opinion. I don't necessarily agree with all of our uses of force, but I don't think that everything we do is an act of an Empire trying to maintain its hold on influence, power, and our Empire. Afghanistan - justified, but was probably a bad decision Iraq - Unjustified, definately a bad decision Drug interdiction in South America - multiple generational waste of money Training/peacekeeping in Djibouti - Requested, good humanitarian mission Libya - Our presence was requested and it wasn't a unilateral decision, we didn't play a combat role. Largely the rebels won their own war, the NATO presence was largely to keep the Laws of Armed Conflict in place. Syria - We don't know enough to justify boots on the ground, the rebels are begging for our help. If it can be completely proven that chemical weapons were used it is a breach of the Laws of Armed Conflict When I say something is justified, I mean there is a Causus Belli. Example, Afghanistan harboured and helped the group that attacked us. This justifies our initial action, but we should have thought twice before doing it.

I like it, personally. I'm one of the lucky people who has had it work perfectly on his machine so far. To me it will feel less arcade-like if they would make some modifications to the morale system. As it is, units can lose morale in a matter of seconds. I could see this happening for a peasant unit, but trained soldiers shouldn't turn tail and run. I've broken an entire line by flanking one unit till it routs and moving the principes unit on to the next for more flank bonuses. 1 minute and a line of 8 enemy melee units is fleeing. Fixing morale along would at least double or triple how long battles last for people, which seems to be about five minutes for posts I've seen. I don't run into a lot of the AI glitches people have reported. I don't have the graphical issues. My AI isn't acting stupid. I can see a lot of people's complaints but to me it is still a good game and people don't seem to like change (and Rome 2 has included some radical change). most of the changes don't bother me.

Prison Architect implemented contraband last update and Prisoners digging tunnels in this update. Combined they're a complete game changer, imo. We'll get K9 units in the next update as a method for actively searching for tunnels and contraband.

Order pizza for the squad offices? Just kidding! Edit: Squad's corporate page doesn't really list game development slots. Most hirings seem to have been through direct contact. Most recent hirings I noticed have been mod makers who have shown they have the skills to further the game's development. This is the same trend that most studios have used in that they want see proof you know what you're doing. So get modding, get active in the community, show passion for the game, maybe make some technical demos that don't have anything to do with KSP, and in general show you have what it takes. Since I don't work for squad, though, this is all conjecture.

Diablo 3 did kind of suck, more for me because of the number of times I wanted to play but couldn't connect to the server. I was a big fan of the first two and their writers really "jumped the shark" in Diablo 3. Oh and the game was just kind of boring. Skyrim - I thought it had pretty nice graphics. Especially comparing against Morrowwind and Oblivion. Admittedly graphics don't equal gameplay but they made some strides in making combat feel more and more like your actions mattered versus the obvious dice rolling of Morrowwind (hitting something with a sword 30 times to get a hit is not very fun). Was it perfect? No. Was it boring, probably to some people. I myself quite enjoyed it a lot and still do. i have friends who have put 300 hours into it. Clearing a bandit cave, walking down a road and stopping a wolf attacking someone on the road, followed by stealthing by a giant to steal his treasure. I remember doing all of that in one half hour. Witcher 2 - While the writing was excellent and the world looked great, I didn't really care for the game at all. I played it about 5 hours and really didn't care what happened to him, to the world, to anyone he met. It just didn't catch my attention at all. see my previous note about some people loving games other people hate.

Complaints about AAA titles can be valid, but looking at a shelf right now I can say that I have enjoyed many AAA titles. My most recent ones I played, not necessarily released recently? *favorite recent* The Last of Us (only game I ever played on the Fiancee's PS3) FarCry 4 Grand Theft Auto 4 (playing through right now in prep of 5 releasing soon) This month, the AAA games I'm getting are: Total War: Rome 2 Grand Theft Auto 5 Are there AAA games that suck? Of course. There are also tons of indie games that suck horribly. You may not like aspects of some of them, but to others they may be treasured games. All of us enjoy games, and on this thread we at least all enjoy KSP. That doesn't mean we're going to like other people's favorites.

Devs fill out a form and the priority on free kits goes to companies that have previously shipped console games, then those who have shipped games, and then to those with proven development experience. Squad would probably fall pretty far down that list with only KSP to their name. Also regarding your patch question from earlier, yes all consoles require validation and testing of patches. This stems from the fact that console games, in theory, are not supposed to be patched regularly. Nintendo created their validation program back in the NES days to make sure only high quality games were released, helping improve public opinion after the debacle of crap-ware from the commodore 64 and atari days. This has continued to present day where they try to enforce quality standards on console games. Interesting article on the Fez debacle: http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2012/07/microsoft-comes-under-fire-for-five-figure-xbox-360-patch-fee/ (pushing updates is now free, as of about a month ago)

Since the thread is primarily about why Squad should get a dev kit while they're free (and I guess the questions of "should KSP be ported?"), I'll offer that if you want to discuss about your concerns about the Xbox One I can do it via private message. as it is I get the feeling that you are operating off of old news, old rumours, and general security paranoia.

Personally, and it may have just been the combo of my TV at the time and my xbox, but I had no issues at all playing Morrowind on the xbox aside from the normal ones like taking 10 minutes to kill something with a sword or trying for an hour to find the right place to go for a quest. Take that with a grain of salt. I had a 27 inch CRT TV at the time. Interestingly I play a lot of games on my TV via HDMI cable. I just did a flight with KSP while controlling with a wireless mouse and keyboard. Indeed you are correct, the UI is abysmal on a television. Other such games that have abysmal UI settings for my television are Shogun Total War 2 and Prison Architect. I may have been able to fix some of this by dropping to a lower resolution. A better solution would be a UI scaling slider in the game options (which may have been available in Total War, i didn't look).

Since you originally thought it was Greek...well..I can only assume this is your chance to learn the phrase. I took 6 years of Latin and I'm relatively amused he used it. You don't see people use Latin very often. Still though you are being pretty rabidly anti-Microsoft in the manner in which you're making your points, and admitting to the hypocrisy even. I, on the other hand, am one of like 20 people who actually thought the original pitch during E3 that they have since rolled back almost every interesting facet of. It seemed like they were really trying to promote something very different, as opposed to what we had during the 360 vs PS3 years where the boxes were roughly similar. Now, with all their policy retractions, we are back to the status quo. Boxes of roughly equal power duking it out and relying upon exlusive content. Now we're likely to get a free game because they want to show similar value to the PS4. I'm still trying to figure out what is so anti-consumerist of a company willing to walk back all of their policies because the hard core on the internet complained about it. They didn't get the preorders they wanted, so they changed policies. Last I checked thier preorders are still selling out, and the PS4 is selling 4 times as many at some retailers. I'm fortelling this Christmas season that PS4 will not be able to keep up with demand, and many people will notice that the only difference between the two is exclusive games. Some will switch. And I think KSP could easily be mapped to a dual stick controller like the Ps4 and Xbox, and the new generation has the same amount of power as many who post to these very forums. Many people already play with xbox controllers on many PC games. When they finish this game, I wouldn't blame them if they experimented with an xbox or Ps4 release. edit: and regarding patching, they are automatic like Steam. A developer pushes it out and it goes to everyone the next time they fire the game up. Both Microsoft and Sony used to make developers pay to release patches (an old trick to try to keep the number of patches down) but recently that was retracted. As evidence, Phil Fish finally fixed his game breaking bug in Fez and promptly quit the industry...

Greenhouse module. Using C02 scrubbers is dandy and all for a few days, but a mini balanced ecosystem would make longer flights and long term bases possible.

I think, when it winds up being added to the game officially, that life support should have stuff in the tech tree to add greenhouse modules to our crafts. X modules per kerbin.

As a guy who plays racing games and FIFA games where this type of replay is common, I have to say I don't consider it a neccessary feature. Its a "its nice to have" feature. The number of times I've actually used a replay to figure something out is..well...none. Yep...never. I'm more likely to keep racing around the track until I get it right (or as is usual in anything, just keep getting better). In FIFA, I'm more likely to just play on instead of try to analyze how the computer scored a goal on me. In KSP I'd be more likely to just revert to pad and launch again or revert to save and launch again because nothing that ever goes wrong happens without me being fully aware of it. When I crash into the Mun, I know why. When I bash into solar panels while docking, I know I did it and how it happened. The only things I don't know are happening are usually things that are reported bugs, and those have been getting less common for me.

I've actually ready everything the man has ever written and sought out as much of it as I could in hardback. He's my favorite author (or roughly in a tie with Patrick O'Brian who sadly doesn't fit with this thread). I've found I have the best luck recommending him when I suggest the juveniles, as those seem to be nice introductions to his writing style and stories. edit: I was recommending books that in particular features aspects of things we see in KSP such as building a rocket to go to the Moon, navigation, etc. Being Heinlein novels they weren't the absolute focus of the books mostly, but rather a vehicle for a human story. If I were to recommend my absolute favorite Heinlein books it would be Starship Troopers (I count myself in the dedication), the short story collection you mentioned, and Tunnel in the Sky.

If you want to see the movie adaptation (with added father vs son drama...groan) one of the studios put out October Sky.

For those, like me, who may get confused. The picture you see above is just the key to the bigger picture. Its actually pretty impressive

I have to say, I think the main reason I dislike COD is a problem of scale. I say this because I really love BF3 multiplayer. The difference? COD levels are rather tiny. They don't tend to have the nooks and crannies that you find in BF3. The time it takes to run from one side to the other is usually measure in seconds. When levels are so small, you don't have snipers firing from 300-400 yards or further instead they are firing from 25 yards or less. The levels are designed to have contact between opposing players within 5-10 seconds of spawning or less. There is almost no use of cover or terrain for protection or to move into position. Battlefield 3 the levels take minutes to slog across if you elect to spawn further back. Snipers are generally hitting from hundreds of yards away. Even if you take the closest spawn it can be anywhere from 20-40 seconds to run into the enemy. If you don't utilize cover or terrain to advance you may be playing Battlefield wrong. Oh, and vehicles. While still not very realistic (realistic combat no one would find fun because its hours of boredom followed by minutes of pure terror), battlefield does have a sense of scale that COD multiplayer will never have. Sadly, the BF3 playerbase has been going downhill since launch...the Close Combat update really didn't help as it essentially put out maps designed for COD type scale. I wouldn't be suprised at death threats after seeing how mad people get when the stats on their favorite weapon is altered. edit: I guess this kind of stuff is happening more and more in communities. It almost seems like a byproduct of the anonymity of the internet. These kids think that what they say is completely anonymous and they can't be held responsible for it. One kid playing League of Legends found out the hard way that it can come back to get you.

Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson is one of my favorite books. I met him in Iowa City at a book reading for Reamde and he signed both my copy of that and Cryptonomicon. I can also say that Heinlein is a good source of interesting and SHORT books. Compared to Neal Stephenson, you can read 5 early Heinlein novels in the timespan it takes to read Reamde. Heinlein books for the KSP junkie? (bear in mind most were written before we knew the atmospheres and suitability of life for Mars and Venus..) Rocket Ship Galileo - 4 teens and a scientist build a rocket, go to the moon. Suprises happen there. Bear in mine it was written in the 40's! Space Cadet - a young man joins the Space Patrol Between Planets - my favorite Heinlein novel. Seriously. Go read it. The Venus colony launches a revolution and a young boy is caught in the middle of it on the way to Mars. Starman Jones - a boy runs away from home, stows away on board a space luxury liner, and eventually makes it to the bridge. For some excellent Heinlein with very little to do with space voyaging but everything to do with colonising new worlds, read Tunnel in the Sky.