Ceiu

In this particular case, is the extra overhead that goes into creating the string object worth any time you might save by using the lcase method (which has probably been optimized like no other)? Would it be more efficient to simply copy the array and do the lowercasing at the same time? Is the string used elsewhere in the function or is it promptly thrown out? I can see what Jake is saying, but as Bak said, is the extra work going to be worth the savings? Five times/sec is kind of a lot and that time will add up after a while, but it certainly won't be a bottleneck. Meh, just my two cents.

Indeed. Infact, last night I threw about 30-35k at Sention in the form of fields. The only thing I accomplished was that I severely annoyed him and his team for about 20 minutes before giving them the win. Fields can be annoying, but that's all they are. They can be clutch if you can get in the perfect position at the perfect time -- but that in itself is a challenge and is rarely done. In most cases it just creates a region that both teams will hover around and occasionally try to rocket through, without giving it a whole lot of thought.

I disagree. Not only does it require a special trip to sector 4 to purchase another field, but it means the launcher can be removed from battle for 3+ seconds when killed (rather than of 1.5 thanks to AD) AND requires a safe lanc to return on. Because of those reasons, I've never seen any team actually spam fields unless they were just messing around. Serious teams may have one player dedicated to using them, but since AD tends to be more generally useful in basing, that's typically about it. Plus, as I said before: Each trip to sector 4 is more time spent not supporting your team -- which is simply not possible for an entire team to do en mass

You seemed to have left out the part about how to fix these problems. Look at it this way: For each person spamming a field, that's one less person with the following: AD, Cobalt or a 10m item.

Well, I can kill everyone else without trouble. So, I would assume that once you have enough money for some decent equipment, anyone else can do the same.

How are "vets" benefiting? Killing "newbs" nets us minimal cash and 0 experience. The only reasons to even kill them are (a) raises jackpot and ( stop someone from firing at you. @Relos: I agree, new players ARE at a disadvantage. But THAT'S THE POINT. You shouldn't come into the zone and be able to take out some established squads on your first day -- that's not what HS is about. Regardless, with most vets having as much money as they do it's easy to come by someone willing to ?give some cash. In a worst case scenario, you simply have to sit on a populated public freq and leach money for a while. In either case, you can get the low-end upgrades within an hour or so. After that, you just need to get exp. At 5-6 exp/kill, it works out to be like 40-50 kills -- a simple task for ANYONE who spends an hour or so in pub. @DK: I'm not addressing the issue, because there isn't an issue here. Yeah it's harder for newbies to rush in and take on pros, but that's the point. They have to follow the same steps everyone else did to get to where we are. No one granted us 5 million and 50k exp -- we had to earn it (Except for a few players who need to die in fires).

I really wish the Ex utilities would become standard +1 or +2 additions. Frowny face.

Then explain to me how several players have surp!@#$%^&*ed me in funding and ship equipment even though I started the day of the last reset... It's not as impossible as you're making it sound. I've got a secondary name I use periodically that was capable of killing people who I know have decent equipment. I'm not saying you're on even ground, but it's certainly not as hard as you're making it out to be. Plus, with the exp/money scaling and the shared money you get from flagging and allied kills, you make money real quick in this zone. Also, if all else fails, you can use always use the failsafe method of pretending to be a grrl on teh internets 4 pz $$. But in any event, quit !@#$%^&*ing.

Uhh, how could you not kill a terrier with a jav? Even if he wasn't AFK, they're not tanks; three to four bombs could take down one easily -- five if they have bomb-specific armor. I call bravo sierra on your post.

MAKE SURE TO REMEMBER THE FRAME THIS TIME, WUB.

The best firing rate a weapon can have is only slightly faster than that of the shredder, so you'd still have a stream of bullets unless you started firing at top speed and maintained a perfectly straight course.

Ok..?

In both cases, at the moment, getting Continuum to work on any next-gen console involves the user either installing linux in favor of the default OS (PS3), or setting up the system for homebrew applications (360). Neither case is going to be worth the effort for the 1 or 2 people who do it.

Why do you have slipstream on a lanc?

See: Shredder

Again, this seems to be straight out of Escape Velocity. Due to the similarities of HS to EV, I'm going to run through the process of downloading the game and installing it (since it was an old Mac game, not a simple point-and-click install). A lot of ideas could be implemented quite well in HS...

That's what repels are for, friend.

Roommates (They're alcoholics)

System Restore doesn't backup the entire registry. My machine makes nightly backup points and keeps no less than 30 at a time. I went back 7 days, and only managed to undo my summer power-settings, and a few other trivial things. But hey, at least Microsoft's marketing team managed to convince one person that System Restore is teh best repair tool EVAR!!!!!11! Let's see, My super-cool internet domain starts with a C, it's a workstation and it's the first one on the network. Therefore, C-WORKSTATION-1. There's also C-SERVER-1 and 2, and C-GAMESTATION-1. Again, how does this make me a "wannabe?" Feel free to justify your comment.

Ugh... I was the main pusher of this so this is rather bothersome to say... What were you smoking when you added maxspeed/maxthrust upgrades to items? On reactors I can see it being reasonable, but on the new utilities and on slip/fins -- it's excessive. When achieving 5 speed/thrust was somewhat rare before, you're now considered slow unless you can pull 12/12. I'm usually all for speed, but this isn't a super-zone. With the recent falcon+shrap booster combo, this just makes most center ships designed for boom + zoom tactics and extreme running. Worse yet, even if you can keep up, the insane thrust makes it hard to follow someone long enough to kill them. Basically, I wish for the days before you left, where maxing out speed didn't negate the usefulness of rockets and ht bonuses (but keep the new utilities, just bump them down to +1 speed/thrust/rotation and NO MAX INCREASE).

He probably didn't realize he was doing anything wrong. It'd be one thing if he was byp!@#$%^&*ing their authentication to get it for free (and therefore, stealing), but I'm willing to bet he just happened to notice that there was an unsecured network there probably provided by the coffee shop and !@#$%^&*umed he would be in the clear.

Definitely.

@Gravitron: "Wannabe"? What exactly am I trying to be? Some Level 0 technician who's answer to everything is to "reinstall the operating system." Meh, I'll just chalk it up to one of your many complexes. In any event, a restore didn't even fix the problem. The LibUSB driver installer edited the registry directly without bothering to let the restore utility know what it was doing. @Drake: Reinstalling Windows is such a !@#$%^&*ty way to approach issues. Half the reason it took me as long as it did is because I deleted a critical trunk of the registry before realizing it would disable every form of input I had. I had to use my laptop to get a BartPE CD so I could re-insert the entries I deleted. After that, it was as simple as fixing (Removing) the entries LibUSB added. On top of that, I learned a couple of things about windows as well as a neat way to intercept driver messages and I've got some new administrative utilities to boot. @Dav: In theory that's a good idea and is what I did when I first put XP on this (back when it was released). The problem is, I'd have to periodically make new images so I could have backups for updated drivers and new software. After about three months, I got sick of doing it -- takes forever to do and wastes CDs. I'm sure there are better utilities now, but I'm almost to the point where I'm going to be turning this machine into another server anyway. @Audry: If anything, this should make you less scared -- It's another windows quirk that I understand how to deal with.

Clearly, DeathPlus is involved.

Chronic... just shut up already, you're making a complete !@#$%^&* of yourself.