Aileron

To even the teams, I would suggest a system that has worked in other zones. When the teams become unbalanced, the bot picks somebody on the larger team and puts them on the smaller team. To target the hoppers, track or limit the number of times somebody changes teams. Personally, I hate it when people rage staff for this. They are only resorting to such drastic measures because hopping is such a problem.

I am writing this one for the sake of the newbs who ignore multi, using the argument that if their aim is accurate, they don't need multi. The truth of the matter is that even if your aim is perfect, you can *still* miss the target. Subspace was made in the 90s and is a sprite-based game, which is unlike modern games which uses a 3D model that can face any angle. In subspace, there is a finite number of directions your ship can be facing, a number which happens to be 40. Just for fun, I made the following image. The red lines show all 40 directions you can face, and therefore all 40 directions you can shoot with non-multi, non-double guns. Anything in black is dead-space that the player cannot shoot without moving. The distance from the ship to the side is 300 pixels. You can clearly see that at the edge of the image, the dead space between the red lines is big enough that a 2 tile wide ship can fit in it. Pros will dodge your bullets by instinctively getting in your dead-space. Now, if you add movement and timing, it does get more complicated, but the jist of it is, the farther away they are, the lower the probability you have of hitting them even with a perfectly aimed shot, because depending upon your positions, a hit might be *impossible*. Keep in mind that 300 pixels is a pretty short distance. Now enter multi-fire. Imagine if each of those red lines had two other red lines a few degrees in both directions. Instead of 40 red lines, now you have 120. Now, your dead-space becomes narrower, so it takes a longer distance until ships can actually start fitting into it. Instead of gaps big enough to fit ships showing up at 300 pixels, you have about 900 pixels until perfectly aimed shots start missing. I could go into the whole thing concerning multi, double guns, and prox bombs, with detailed diagrams of each including at what ranges do the different sized ships become hittable with hit-miss probability equations all along the way, but I won't. I think you understand the important aspects of it. You can only shoot 40 directions, and at longer distances you might not be able to hit your target. So, if you are flying a javelin with a phaser and you continually are getting pwned because you can't hit crap, and then I come flying in with my terrier equipped with double-multi plasma cannons and kill you quickly, I don't want to hear any more complaining and accusations about multi-users being 'unskilled'. The reality is that non-multi gun users (and non-prox bomb users if they are planning on direct hits) are morons who don't realize just how old Subspace really is. Now, if you have a phaser because you want to kill lancs at close range and know that your dead-space is small enough to allow that, by all means go for it. There is a time and place for everything. I'm attacking the myth that skill can make single-fire weapons hit all the time.

yeah... It's still entertainment.

Yeah, that came out wrong. I'll admit I was drunk at the time of that particular post. I think you got the jist of it though. Something about p_____g contests and skunks. Hmm...now I remember why. SeVeR, I worry for you. Step back and look at yourself. You are advocating sending a group of accountants to jail because they are perceived as rich, powerful, and happen to work for an oil company which is involved in a spill. The Jews were perceived as being rich, powerful, and being involved in causing the Great Depression when Hitler had them imprisoned. How close are you to advocating imprisonment of political opponents because those in government feel like it? I do not mean to imply that they are the same thing. There is a fine line dividing them, which I don't think you have crossed. You have not entirely abandoned the law. But, I am quite convinced that some of the left's leadership: congressmen, college professors, media leaders, have crossed that line. Mr. Obama played golf four times over the course of the oil spill. Rightfully so. As a politician, the best thing he can do in a disaster like this is appoint an expert to handle it and stay 2000 miles away from it. As someone who doesn't know jack about drilling, his influence couldn't help things on the ground, and his presence would only get in everyone else's way. So, he of all people understands that his counterparts at the tippy-top of BP should have probably been teeing off with him, because they need to appoint an expert and stay 2000 miles away too. Point being, I used to think the left's leadership made an honest mistake of demonizing groups like rich people, corporations, etc. I'm starting to realize that no, this is a deliberate act on their part. They have been around long enough to know that when an organization's membership numbers in the millions and it spans the globe, there is a 'telephone game' between the leadership and the guys on the ground and that can't be defeated entirely by policy letters. Some of the advocates pushing this RICO case *know* the defendants are innocent and are pressing the charges *anyway*. I doubt the president falls into that category, but some of those who influence him do. Please, be careful of who you listen to. Some of your 'heroes' can indeed be described in no other way but evil.

Look, I don't even know why I waste time arguing with you. You are clearly too stupid to understand the difference between BP's failure and Enron's failure. Usually I end up making myself look stupid arguing with you. So, you know what? I'll just leave you to your own devices. Everyone else here can figure out that I wasn't making a left vs right point, I was making a 'smarten up, analyze the problem, and then take action' statement. But, you are too busy defending the anointed one to understand the distinction.

And hence why I said those punitive fines were analogous to 'hitting a river with a stick after a flood'. Here it happened 5 times over. The fines were not insufficient as you claim, they were ineffective. Getting a bigger stick will not solve the problem. Look, when a guy from the board of directors steps on to a rig, the workers do know who has the power to fire him, and that man is the captain of the rig, not the suit from the company. All that happens is that the rig performs a dog and pony show for a day until the suit leaves, and the suit pretends he doesn't know they just performed a dog and pony show but goes on with it anyway because as a finance guy he can't tell a properly running rig from a hole in the water. Result: everyone got a day older and nothing got done. They have the power to ensure that the company puts safety measures in its doctrine. They do *not* have the power to ensure that doctrine is followed on the ground level. They certainly have a policy to comply with all applicable laws and systems in doctrine to ensure that the laws are followed. Their subordinates simply did not comply with company policy, and upper management can only react with a firing. They can't prevent with inspection because the company is too big for a handful of people to inspect everything. Punitive fines, when applied about 4 levels above the problem, work. If this were a case of fraud or embezzlement they would be appropriate. However, when you apply them 20 levels above the problem, they don't properly transmit down the layers of management the way you want them to. In this case, what you need to do is to require high professional standards for a person to have positive control of the rigs on the ground level.

I assumed nothing. The justice department under the guidance of Mr. Obama is bringing forward RICO charges. That means they believe a criminal conspiracy is involved. Granted I added the part about them smoking cubans, but... The Board of Directors doesn't have the power to 'hire and fire' the guys on the rig. They have the power to allocate the budget for the man who runs the department of the man who hires the man who hires the man who hires the man who hires the man who hires the man who works the contract with the other company who hires the man who hires the man who runs the rig. (sorry for the sexism) After two or three steps down, the board of directors really don't have any positive control. They can write policy, but they can't enforce it, and they can only supervise so many supervisors before running into micromanagement issues. After three or four levels above the screwup, there is no justice in it any more.

I bought this game and honestly have some mixed feelings. The single player campaign was good, but cuts off after the Terran campaign at which point the extortionists promise a zerg and protoss campaign in upcoming expansion packs. It is clear by the story that they have a trilogy planned, but atleast the first chapter did not end on a cliffhanger. The multiplayer has been markedly improve by Blizzard's experience with WOW. They have a lot of newbie protection features in place that will help you learn the game away from the pros that will cream you. This works great for me because my experience with multiplayer in Starcraft 1 lasted about 10 minutes before I gave up on it. However, the strange thing is a lot of the units in single player, including some which were in the first Starcraft, such as vulchers and goliaths, do not appear to be available in multiplayer. This seems to make protoss overpowered verses terrans because terrans can't build the units which counter some of the protoss units.

Well, I'm far from a guru on this, so don't give up if I can't help you. Johnson, my only guess is turning off User Account Control and/or Running Continuum as an Administrator. Destroyer, I have no idea, but it seems to me to be some sort of internet problem rather than an OS problem.

What directory is Continuum installed in? If it is install in C:\Program Files\Continuum\ , you should move it to C:\Continuum\ or into your My Documents folder.

Its not presumptuous. A quick Google search will confirm that Transocean operated the rig under contract from BP (though oddly enough the Deepwater Horizon rig comes up about the 10th hit). Now, as I said, I make a living in engineering management, so I know the basics of what works and what doesn't. Add to that the fact that I am working from hindsight and being sufficiently vague to cover all reasonable causes, and that was an easy guess to make. As for why we care, well, the reason I care is because of what the government is doing about it. The moratorium, the RICO charges, the regulations that are sure to come out, target the mythical 'Old Men in the Smoke-Filled Room'. This concerns me because these witch hunts have defined most of my life. The hunters have targeted my faith, my family, my friends, my job, and promise to target me the moment I become successful. Anyway, the actions by this administrations speaks that it is presuming that a large portion of company leadership secretly endorsed reckless behavior in order to get higher profits. That is far more presumptuous than I am being. -PS: for those of you unfamiliar with the 'Old Men in the Smoke-Filled Room' trope, imagine if you will a board room with a table in it. Around this table are sitting a bunch of middle aged white men wearing expensive suits and smoking cuban cigars. The windows in this room are covered. The door locked. This is because the meeting is secret, and that these men are gathered to do unspeakable evil in pursuit of collective money and power.

I didn't know that, but it kinda adds to my point. I merely took the effects and worked backwards. You cited a potential cause. My assessment was that there wasn't a single point of control for the rig and that business types stuck their nose in operations too much. Having two companies involved in the rig adds to the potential for hiccups. Well, since I haven't tracked this part of the story, let me guess...BP payed Transocean to operate the rig. Transocean operated it the Transocean way and everything was fine. Then some BP representatives show up one day and notice the rig isn't being operated the BP way. They directly order half the people on the rig to do things the BP way while the other half of the rig is still operating the Transocean way. The system splits itself in half and then fails. Hence why the rig needs a captain. Now, I don't know what happened because I haven't been tracking the news, so someone please tell me if this description is accurate of if I'm going off on a tangent.

Go ahead, it takes very little effort to ignore you guys. To be fair, I haven't really made suggestions on what the government *should* do. I personally don't know anything about drilling, but I *am* a professional when it comes to engineering management. Operating a drill rig has two qualifiers: Operation of the rig requires specialized skills, and the rig itself is isolated from the outside world. There are thus two realms here. One is the realm of operating the rig and is handled by engineers, operators, mechanics, and construction workers. The other is the realm of business and is handled by business managers and accountants. Since at BP the rigs are making a profit but aren't being operated safely, the problem is that the realm of business has invaded the realm of operations. I had a long post before I edited it, so here's the short version. There needs to be a system in place to keep the businessmen from ever stepping foot on the rigs. Each rig should be captained by a senior member of the realm of operations, and that captain should be king of his little piece of the ocean. He should report to an 'admiral' also from the realm of operations who should keep the rig captains under control. The 'admiral' should be partnered with but not subordinate to a junior member of the realm of business who in turn will report to his superiors. This is what works. I can damn near guarantee that successful oil companies look like this and BP doesn't. Most likely at BP you have many different operators directly reporting to many different businessmen, and the businessmen are making jackasses of themselves with their decisions and the operators are taking them for a ride. What the government should do, rather than filing a RICO case against BP's Board of Directors, which will accomplish absolutely nothing, is to build up the operator's power. The government should require a licensed professional with real-world qualifications to be legally accountable for the rig, and should require somebody with the same license to be in charge of running a fleet of 3 or more rigs. This license should be designed so that only someone who has mastered the art of drilling can obtain it. This would ensure that a large amount of responsibility rests with the people most qualified to operate rigs, and with that responsibility comes power to keep the business types out of their realm.

Boring ass conversation? There's a subtle reason this conversation is popular, if you can pick up on it. Rivers can be dammed and channeled to prevent flooding. You can *control* inanimate objects, but *punishing* them doesn't work. Companies do respond to government fines and incentives, but the distinction is that these are control mechanisms and not punishments. This is indeed a case of negligence rather than an accident. (Hence why the blanket moratorium was ruled against: other organizations were not prone to the same negligence and thus are not liable to the same risk.) One thing to note is that technically BP's policy is to be in compliance with all applicable government regulations, and all cases of them not being in compliance are a result of somebody violating company policy. It looks to me at this point that the organization had insufficient supervision of the people in charge of the rigs. What I am trying to get at here is that BP isn't a bunch of old guys sitting around a table in a smoke filled board room plotting about how they are going to rape mother nature for more money. That seems to be the public perception considering that the government has filed a RICO case against the company. In reality BP, as well any 'real' corporation, is a bureaucratic system of checks and balances which currently doesn't have enough check and too many balances. If our attitude is to fix a broken machine, we'll do it. If our attitude is to punish the old men in the smoke-filled room, we'll destroy a bunch of scape-goats and won't solve the problem.

Look, a lot of you still don't get it. BP isn't an entity and not capable of compassion, so it can't 'give a damn about the oil spill' any more than a rock can. BP is a collection of finances and policies which control a group of people's jobs, and the persons may or may not give a damn based upon their personal preference. I'd assume that most of BP's employees do honestly give a damn about the spill, just like most of us do. The beurocratic machine they work for can't. The only question is whether or not that machine is broken. The most probable answer is: no, it isn't. The company has policies and systems in place to ensure that oil is collected in a clean and safe manner. Most likely, people tried to shortcut the process by circumventing the procedures and the supervisor was letting it happen. To put it bluntly, most likely the people truly responsible for the leak were either among those who died in the initial explosion or someone on the manufacturing line who produced a shoddy product.

Look, I know that this is a forgone conclusion, but I really hate it that BP was to face punitive damage for the oil leak. This attitude is just plain incorrect. Corporations are not faceless entities. Faceless, yes. Entities, no. They are an abstract idea. Punishing a corporation for doing something undesirable is like hitting a river with a stick after a flood. The river has no feelings and no psychology. They are just objects. A corporation is an abstract collection of finances and policies, nothing more. It doesn't feel. It doesn't think. It doesn't even really exist. Also, I hate the fact that the CEO got re-assigned too. Many would be surprised how little power people in those type of positions really have. I mean, he can make life very painful for a lot of people after the fact, but proactively providing positive control is the domain of the immediate supervisor. The corporate headquarters are responsible for writing the policies, not enforcing them. Still, the guy came off as insensitive. However, his job is to be the most penny pinching prick in the whole organization. What do you expect? No argument has been put forward that the BP accountant in Alaska or the BP negotiator in Saudi Arabia should lose their jobs over the oil spill, but that's exactly what will happen with these punitive damages. The organization's bottom line will be affected, and they will have to cut costs. I'm not saying that the company should have no incentive to protect the environment, but we have reached the point where this is an emotional knee-jerk reaction that does more harm than good, and furthermore we are making that reaction without even thinking about the second and third-order consequences. Or am I speaking heresy here?

Plasma terrs are lame. Especially the ones that run around with stealth on all the time.

You know, I change my mind. I'm with Sama. We need to fix the features we already have before adding any new ones.

If this is done, the captain should be a team's lanc. If there is no lanc, then the freq has no captain. In the case of the server having to decide between multiple lancs, the first check should be for a lanc carrying flags. If there are no lancs with flags, then the lanc which is getting attached to the most (run a count of attaches over a 15 second interval of all lancs on a team) should be the captain. Why the flag carrier first? If you have a lanc with flags, he's either dropping and has nothing better to do, or he's the backlanc and everyone is attaching to him anyway.

Aileron

Well, wouldn't file size then make animated a minus rather than a plus? Would there be any way to do a perimeter or fill using small files tiled over and over?

Don't be like that. I put 'thor abuse' in quotes because I am *not* bothered by the use of thors. What I am annoyed about is that I can't nuet the friggin flags when the enemy has anti warp. The only thing that brings thors into it is that this is an anti-thor feature, which by the way doesn't work, so get rid of it.

Yes, I'm reviving an old topic just to announce the conclusion. The US government is now throwing out 260 million dollar's worth of H1N1 vaccine that was never used and has reached the medicine's expiration date. Chalk this one up in the 'overblown' column.

Or, just go back and allow changing ships when under anti-warp again, since anti-warp does not effectively stop 'thor abuse' when the thor lobber uses transwarp.

Well, plenty of people around here are from Canada. These protests hardly qualify as news though. Its just the typical crowd doing the typical things for the typical excuses. I mean first off, they only are aggressive when they are in a group. The reason they riot now is because they have been storing up their anger for years. That is because individually, they are too weak to stand up for themselves or even think for themselves for that matter. Heck, most of them probably know but do not understand* who the G20 is or what they stand for. Their most likely motivation for attending the protest is because their college professor told them to go (or their friends told them to go after themselves being told to attend by a college professor). Ofcourse, put them in a group and it is their one chance to act out. They are big badasses now. They can beat up on an inanimate and completely stationary parked car! *clarification: Many of them are well-versed in G20 trivia. As in which nations are members, who the VIPs are, etc., all of which is information I myself do not know/care about. What is important about understanding the G20 is that it is the New World Order having a strategy meeting. Whatever the issue, whether it is unemployment, Global Warming, world hunger, cute furry animals dying, etc., the very act of trying to hold the G20 responsible for a problem implies a desire to bestow upon G20 the power to solve said problem. Ofcourse, the G20 cannot give power to itself, and a bunch of angry college students do not have any authority to bestow power either. Thus, the entire thing is an exercise in futility. If the protesters were really concerned about an issue (and they aren't...see first paragraph), they would facilitate it much better by not disrupting the meeting and calling their congressman/parliament representative instead. Now here is a thought we can actually debate: Any *legitimate* modern government has an obligation to uphold and defend its Constitution. Canada's Constitution, as well as the US Constitution states that the people vote for a Parliament/Congress, and Parliament/Congress appoints ambassadors, like G20 representatives. By protesting outside the G20 summit, these people are going directly to the ambassadors, which is essentially an attempt to cut Parliament/Congress out of the loop. Wouldn't this action qualify as an attempt to undermine the Constitution? If so, than wouldn't the government have the obligation to encourage these protesters to use their Parliamentary/Congressional channels? Local officials and police in charge of security for this type of thing typically try to stay out of the politics of this sort of thing and remain neutral on the public face. A reporter asks them a question and their response is 'no comment'. That actually is the wrong answer. The government should have an official policy of encouraging citizens to use the proper channel. In reality, the Mayor and the Chief of Police of Toronto should be encouraging the protesters to go home and call their parliament representatives. However, right now if either of them made any public comments that carried such a message, it would end their careers.