Aileron

My choices: Best ninja assassin: currently oid (though I hate to admit it and will soon retake the title) Best lanc: Flying Dog Brew. He is good both as an attacher and as a rusher Best gunner in base: Me Best leaker: Morte Wulfe Gimel (honorable mention) Best bomber: Crazy Mexican Worst abuser of thors: Courage Worst abuser of bricks: bundtcake Most idiotic build I've ever seen used inside a base: rushlindbaughsdrugs Its hard to find 'the best' of the basers because the best basers are the ones who don't try to be the friggin hero all the time.

oid, many of the items are good on some ships but not on others. Jedlik and Naquadah are great if you A: Know how to move out of the way when someone shoots at you, and B: Aren't flying a ship that is slow and sluggish and can't move out of the way. Not to be rude, but for *you* they don't compare because you fly a spider. Your ship eats damage rather than avoids it. Jedlik and Naquadah suck on a spider, but that doesn't mean they don't work on a wb.

Okay, point taken. The term I was looking for was 'flag reward' when I said 'jackpot'. So, essentially, ragequitting works but it has to be done before the final victory music starts playing. Just today I played in the morning when everyone was centering. Three people log on and win the flag game while everyone else ignored them. It was one of the type of games that have a pittance of a flag reward. Result: 9k Then, a few hours later, I log on to a massive flag game. It was a good flag game that was about 10vs10, with players resorting to bricks and thor barrages and the like. This was the type of flag game that should have had a massive flag reward. Problem was, after my team beat the enemy, they ragequit. Then some idiot on my team nuets his flags. gilder, if I wasn't such a mature person about this, I would name names, but don't worry, your secret is safe with me. We pick them up again when it is about 8 vs 2. We then win the game for a pathetic 4k flag reward. This makes sense because as far as the retarded inanimate code is concerned, my team 'lost control' of the flags when the idiot on my team nueted. Now, your end of this thing is working the code, and that's fine. What I'm saying is that there is something the *players* can do about this problem as well. Namely, not being a bunch of petty children who ragequit in the first place. And I am right about this point because even if any and all ragequitting had absolutely zero impact on the flag reward, it still affects the momentum of the beginning of the next flag game on a gameplay standpoint.

Sorry Kilo, but I'll have to trust Dr. Brain and Samapico on this one. Additionally, jp is affected by number of kills, so rage-quitting will always lower the jackpot for short flag games, as instead of a final melee with a lot of kills you have a boring wait for the timer to stop. Also, the fact that it is unsportsmanlike, rude, and takes the fun out of flagging goes without saying.

Alright, some mistakes I've seen that I'd like to point out. I'm not perfect by all means, so if you've seen me or anyone else do something dumb, point it out, but let's keep this constructive. Not Protecting the Lanc Too often, attacking teams like to rush forward. Rushing on offense is generally a good thing, but if *everybody* rushes past the enemies, those enemies have easy access to the attacking team's lanc and can kill it, then they simply kill the stray rushers. But simply put, the team which doesn't protect its lanc fails. Period. Suicide Rather Than Rushing I've seen small ships without repels rush the enemies lines and die without really doing anything. In the words of General Patton "No one ever helped his country by dying for it - the trick is to make the other poor dumb bastard go off and die for *his* country". Unsupported Rushing Similar to the last one, this is rushing when your gunners and bombers aren't around to back you up. Without them, the enemy will just kill you and re-take the ground you just repped them out of because your buddies aren't around to hold it from them. Similarly, if more than one of you are rushing, how about all of you rush at the same time rather than in sequence to be gunned down one by one. Take the extra couple seconds, wait for the rest of your team to attach and catch up, and everybody rush together. Not Rushing at All If you are on offense, you should be pushing forward. While I've just grilled rushers, I will point out that too much rushing on offense is far less dangerous than too little rushing. Leaking on Defense I've seen people who were so successful rushing on defense that they leaked past the offense. When you do this, you have defeated the entire point of being on defense. While on defense, you must kill every ship that tries to touch your flags. If you fly past them, they also fly past you. Rushing on defense is only effective if you can push *ALL* of them back. The Polish Flank This is what I have dubbed the tactic of creating such a large flank or leak while on defense that you actually divert too many resources from the basic defense. The attackers then simply push forward and take the base, and the flankers suddenly find themselves on offense! Flanking The only time you should try to flank is if the enemy is at most just inside the entrance to the base and you have a good ftl like tw or id. If they are deep within your base, or you are using jump or hypertunnels, it will take too long for you to reach them. The only goal you should have is to assassinate either their lanc or their flaggers. If you are going for their lanc, bring enough firepower to do it...bursts work for this. Finally, under no circumstances should you be typing '//attach for flank' or anything like that. Multiple people on flank leads to Polish flanking. Everybody Going After the Leak Okay, so every once in a while a shark or warbird gets through. That doesn't mean that every spider and levi on line does an about face and chases after him. Use common sense! Two or three lights should go after the leak while everyone else focuses on the other threats. Bringing Smalls to a Flag Game "Don't bring a knife to a gunfight". It's a classic quote from a classic movie. Similarly, don't bring too many warbirds, javs, and sharks to a flag match. Bring a few to leak, but if they are the mainstay of your force your team will be man-handled. Wallbombing With L2 or L1 bombs Simply put, these bombs don't have the radius to be effective through walls. Can you get a kill once in a while? Yes, but blind squirrels can find an acorn once in a while too. Just because you are safe on your side of the wall and getting the occasional kill from nme ships who are actually *fighting* doesn't mean that you aren't screwing your buddies over when they are trying to win and you are picking off cheap kills. Dropping Too Many Mines in the Same Place Just drop enough mines to block the passage and be lethal. Any more than that and you are wasting mines and increasing the chance of teamkills if enemies repel them. It is far better to have *multiple* minefields to force the enemy to use *multiple* repels. Not Dropping Mines on Defense They are a cheap and easy way to kill or slow down leaks. If mines don't succeed in doing that, you'll at least force them to use all of their repels. Using L1 Guns in the Face of Rush Lancs Yes, I've been guilty of this one. I like my spam guns. But, if the enemy is smart and doesn't bring a bunch of smalls to a base, you will need more firepower than a beam array to stop that horde of rush lancs descending upon you. A good tactic is to save your bursts and use them on enemy heavies. Using Non-Bounce Guns Inside a Base If they have bounce, they can shoot you around a corner. Also, even if you do have line of sight, frankly with a bounce gun you can't miss inside a base. Cloaking More Than Once If your cloak leak didn't work the first time, it is most likely because someone on the enemy team has X-radar on. Odds are they didn't decide to turn it off after they found out you have cloak, so don't try it again. Cloaking When There Are Ten or More People on the Other Team Come on! Do you honestly think all of them either don't have X or aren't checking it? Even then, they probably have a good amount of spam gun firing on a choke point and/or have minefields in place.

oid is on crack Naq or Jedlik is the way to go for wb. Both are strong reactors which don't slow you down. The idea with a small ship is to *avoid* damage rather than *absorb* it. So, take the crack-head spider pilot's advice with a grain of salt. I'm using Jedlik right now but my wb had naquadah and to be honest their performance is about the same. Aphasic armor is the most retarded armor you can try to center with. It increases the damage you take from L1 bullets, like the kind fired by mass driver and shredder, two of the most popular and lethal weapons your enemies are going to have in the center. The only ship I recommend Aphasic for is a lanc because it does the best vs. bursts of any non-signature armor. If you want to go with one-sided armor, go with Exoskeleton. The only high-level bullet you'll find in large quantities in the center is point defense. Of course, Murphy's Law states that 5 minutes after you buy Exo you will be chased by 3 noobs with Plasma cannons, so stick with ablative for bullet armor. I personally hate the sudden death cause by a stray bomb, so I go with shock matrix most of the time. With combat sensors that probably won't happen to you though. You definitely should change out your extra mount for extra addon ASAP. Trade one of your emittors for inertial damper. No ship should be without it. Also, don't underestimate the power of a spam gun in the center if you have good recharge. With wb you will have the speed to chase people down. but not the energy reserves to waste a lot of power. Also, you never know when you'll take your wb into a base. I'd recommend trap laser or positron gun. Both of them offer decent power but also have the benefit of being highly efficient, which will mean your ship will generally be at a higher energy level when you start taking hits. (Ofcourse if you really want my advice, I'd say that you shouldn't bother with a sig gun on a warbird chassis that can't support it, and have system optimizer as your third mount)

Alright, I have a variation of this idea, one that I have already employed myself for what its worth. If you are losing, don't rage-quit. If everyone does this, people will make more money in the grand scheme of things. Yes, sticking around to lose the flag game does not benefit *you* in the *short term*, but having a climate where players get the jackpot they earn benefits *everyone* over the *long term*. It gives players more reason to flag. Yes, you might not win *this* game, but if you stick around for somebody else, they have reason to stick around for you the *next* game when *you* win. Unless you are PC and never win a flag game, you actually gain something by not rage-quitting.

I bought it at a store a while back and finished it yesterday. The funny thing is, a few months back I was able to fix up my laptop to handle high-end graphics with a ViDock, and found myself in a debate between Fallout 3 and Dragon Age. I ended up siding with Fallout 3, and bought Dragon Age after completing that game first, and it turns out that I'd say it was the right decision. Dragon Age is good. Its fun watching blood spray all over your character. The cinematic and in-game combat looks a little like something out of Bravehart, though the boss kills look like something out of LoTR. The graphics are top notch, and I can only see one flaw in the animation. But.... Alright, this is a little bit of a spoiler, though not much. There was this point where I had a 'holy shit' moment over this game. It was in the big climatic battle. It starts off all huzzah and crap, and then you reach a certain point where there's this time-out, and then all your NPC companions take turns telling you how you changed their lives, how you're a good friend, etc. About the third or fourth companion, it hit me. I was thinking 'Holy shit, half of this game involves sitting through the NPCs whining about their lives.' The thing about NWN/KOTOR/Mass Effect/Dragon Age series is that you don't *play* it, you *watch* it. Its all about multiple dialog options and plot development and all that good stuff, but the astute observer will note that aside from the fact that its no longer DnD rules (a big plus), they could have made Dragon Age as NWN 1 module and it would have worked. The series hasn't really made any developments conceptually. I mean, it has better graphics, a different theme, and a lot of the processes are more streamlined, but at the end of the day, Dragon Age is still Neverwinter Nights 3.

I've come to a simple conclusion. I'm not joking, exaggerating, using figures of speech, or anything of the sort. The following is the conclusion I have come to after a great deal of thought and observation over the behaviors of the human race. I mean this literally and with utmost honestly: If you are liberal, I hope you die and rot in hell. There, that's it. Now, before you get all self righteous and defensive on me, first off let me point out that I am not going to read the replies to this thread, so there's no point in trying to have a two-way conversation about this. That being said, if you are a liberal, I know what you are thinking now. You all think the same way and respond to stimuli in a predictable fashion. You are thinking something along the lines of "How dare that ignorant prick say that." Depending on whether you feel threatened in life, itself a product of real world stimuli which I do not have means to know, will determine whether you flavor your interpretation of my statement as a threat or as the result of my ignorance. However, no matter what the root of your response will be convolution. Your response will be convoluted because you are a convoluted being. My response to your convolution is a solid 'f___ you' and a repetition of my earlier statement, because that convoluted nature is what started this whole mess anyway. Now, I do not wish to make such a statement without explaining why I have come to such a radical conclusion. While talking to a liberal is marginally more productive to talking to a brick wall, I realize that there are also fair minded people who might read these words and wonder what the f___ has gotten me so p_____ off. Or maybe, you don't care. Maybe you just read it, interpreted it as one man's opinion and went on with your life, to which I say 'kudos, you make the world a better place' though I will also say 'Look, you have to watch liberal assholes because they are *not* like you'. Or maybe, you are wondering what I am smoking and want to have some of it yourself, in which case what I say is 'It's mine...get your own!!!' However, I'll go back to those fair minded people who might be curious as to why I've reached that point. Actually, the real reason I explain myself is that I am still just liberal enough myself that I feel I *have* to explain myself when reality is that its a free world and I don't. See, I was raised to believe that different people had different opinions, and that all opinions were pretty much equal. I have recently come to the conclusion that not only is that bogus, but it is in fact a front used to impose evil upon the world. See, when they use the term 'opinion', they really mean their 'great f___ing ideas' (GFI). Now, a GFI is military term defined by a pet idea that so-called 'smart' people tend to cook up which address first order problems while ignoring the negative second and third order consequences. To those who can't read between the lines, the second and third order consequences are worse than the first order solution, making the entire thing a net negative and the description an oxymoron. The truth of the matter is that reality is what reality is. You can have an opinion which differs from reality, but if you do, its wrong, or at least wrong as far as its ability to function in the real world (a GFI can function in a fictitious world such as a movie.) See, the whole 'different peoples with different opinions' thing is really a lie trying to equate reality with GFIs. If my opinion is that the world is round, and you think the world is banana shaped, are our opinions equal? Now, everybody comes up with GFIs, but in most people its a passing idea that is abandoned when the consequences are revealed. In plan speak, most people can admit when they are wrong, learn from it, and move on with their lives. Now, enter the liberal. The liberal is a creature so convoluted that it thinks that it is smarter than the other 5 billion people on the planet, not to mention all of human history. I use the words 'creature' and 'it' because one does not have to be human to be a liberal. In fact, the first liberal was not human at all but rather Satan, who thought that his GFIs were better than God's plans, in turn bringing about sin and suffering. Thank you douche-bag. I digress. The defining characteristic of a liberal is that rather than admit they are wrong and learn from it, they stick with their GFIs and damn the consequences. Rather than admit that their GFI is wrong, they rationalize an excuse for its failure. Furthermore, rather than deal with the consequences themselves, they tend to make *other* people suffer the consequences of *their* stupidity. After all, if they felt the consequences themselves, they would be encouraged to learn from their mistakes, and if that happened they would stop being a liberal. Personally, I have reached the point in my life where I am tired of suffering the consequences of liberal's damned GFIs, though I will admit that I have not suffered even a small fraction of the suffering others have had to endure. After all, I'm still alive. However, the point is that I don't want to put up with it any more, and I'm not going to be civil about it. Their 'progressive ideas' are getting people killed or worse. I have no reason to play their game and pretend they are decent human beings, because reality is that they are evil and convoluted swine who just happen to be very good liars. Don't be fooled into thinking they are people with different opinions who in a drastic case of the Freudian Slip, have lost touch with reality. They *know* what reality is and *know* their ideas are flawed, but simply would rather have *you* suffer than for *them* to have to admit they make mistakes. Attached is an Excel file showing some examples of famous GFIs in history. By no means is it an exclusive list. Heck, the *worst* GFIs are the ones you *don't* know about because the perps were successful at quietly snuffing out the people who suffered the consequences of their screw-up.

Okay, well in that case lancs should be able to have both summon and jump drives, because lets face it, a lanc without summon sucks ass, and sometimes teammates suck and won't drop jumps for you. Cage in hypergate is completely different than cage in tw. Cage in tw tries prevents the other team from doing a support effort, whereas cage in hypergate prevents the other team from being able to show up. I can tell I'm talking to the wrong crowd here.

I just was the victim of the worst case of lameass I've seen outside of T3G. Its a variant of the 'keep opening hypergate to prevent people from using it in the other direction' trick except this time you open the hypergate and then drop a cage brick dead center. Then when the attacking team goes through, they are warped inside the cage. If the defenders don't manage to shoot them up, the attacking team is *still* stuck in that spot until the hypergate cycles, opens up, and sends them *back* to the hypertunnel. In short, cages shouldn't drop inside the hypergate.

To those with wonderful ideas of what bricks should do, you are off topic! This topic answers the question: 'Yeah, it sucks. So what are you going to do about it?' Alright, strategy guide for using the brick: 'Press F4 and hope it drops perpendicular to the hall'. Don't get me wrong, I've seen idiot drops before, but I'm not going to pretend using a brick inherently involves tactics. You use it at the places in times when your defense is weak. I sort of tried to imply it, but these two guides are geared towards strategies for those who don't have a bottomless pit worth of money. Obviously the Cobalt user is not too much affected by enemy use of bricks, but that's not the point. Better equipment trumps lesser equipment, but what about the grunts who don't have the fancy crap but are still vital to the team's progress? That Levi with cobalt can't take the base all by himself! If you have a port or ad behind them, obviously you use it. Heck, if your team happens to have a lanc with ad in the enemy FR and they don't have anti on, defeating the brick near the entrance of the base is easy. But, for this example I'm assuming you aren't that lucky. More of a 'holy crap they dropped one in our tracks and we can't get past it', or worse yet the 'damn, they keep dropping bricks like candy and we can't make forward progress' type scenarios. Repels don't really work against chronic bricking. I guess the theory would be to push the brick layer back before the drop, but the problem is that repels don't push ships very far, and at the end of the day they can *still* brick you up for a long enough period of time that the timer runs out. Also, I was wrong about the thors. Most of the bricklaying ships are warbirds and javelins...ships that blow up when hit with at most two thors. Thus, bricklayers should be identified and thors reserved special just for them. I guess another point that has to be made though is that if you let the other team get all the flags and the full length of a base to defend to begin with, then you make it that much easier for them to brick you up. If you are fighting over the FR, then they really can't back up and when you break the brick there won't be any more delays. Prevention is the best strategy. Heck, if the attacker team has but one flag, then the brick becomes *much* weaker, because the defenders can't just wait it out any more. Leaks are a big threat to the chronic brick strategy if it leaves the occasional gap. Chronic bricklaying, if the bricklayers can't push forward, is fundamentally a continuous trade of space for time. If a leaker buys more time, then more space is needed by the defender, and a base is only so long. Also, leakers tend to cause a good 2/3rd of the defending team to turn around and chase it, which enables the attacking team to get right up on the brick when the defenders stop shooting at it and go after the leak. (A.D.D. moment: Look, if you are defending with a spider or the like and a faster more maneuverable ship manages to get past you, don't chase it. Let your teammates in the warbirds and sharks run down the leak. In the meantime there is still an entire enemy team that needs to be held off, and your slow ship with a lot of firepower is best suited for the job.)

This topic will discuss defeating the brick. This one will need to be a more open-ended discussion than most of my threads, as the subspace brick is not similar to anything in reality. There is no such thing as a un-breachable obstacle, let alone a wall that will block one sides fires and maneuvers while not affecting the friendly force's fires and maneuvers. Furthermore, it is a simple fact that it is theoretically possible to have a defense which entirely consist of brick droppers and one lanc to guarantee a win without firing a shot, and actually PROFIT doing so, assuming there is enough coordination and that all members of the team devote a little money towards buying bricks. All they have to do is lay bricks one behind the other, continuously delaying the attackers until time runs out. Under these circumstances, it must be stated that defeating any and all use of the brick is impossible. If a 12 flag team uses enough bricks and use them right they *WILL* win, and there is *NOTHING* the attacking team can do to stop them, except maybe thor the crap out of them. 'Thor the crap out of them' is a straightforward tactic that does not need to be discussed here, though I will point out that just because a tactic is simple does not mean it is ineffective...quite the contrary. Simple plans are typically the only ones that work. Still, I'm not an expert on the giving end of a thor barrage, so someone else will have to lead here. Apart from that, brick defeat is impossible. Thus, I will discuss brick damage control. I will remind you that the brick is one of subspaces magical devices. With a push of a button, a player can instantly put an entire marauding attacking force's momentum to a screeching halt due to the brick's unique properties. This 'magical' status means that countering the brick is counter-intuitive. When you have overwhelming force and the enemy is getting crushed, and suddenly a wall gets put in your path, the intuitive instinct is to knock it down, go over it, dig under it, rig the wall with 100 lbs of C4 and blow a hole through it (my personal favorite method for removing an annoying wall), call in a good contractor, etc. This instinct works because in real life, walls, especially the hastily constructed kind, can be destroyed. Not so in Subspace. In Subspace walls are indestructible. Thus, to defeat the brick you need to tell your instincts to shut up. If an enemy brick is layed right, it is guaranteed that the tiles it is composed of and all the tiles behind it are enemy territory until it wears off. What you can also count on if your enemy has any right to win the game at all is that the terrain in front of the brick will be denied to friendly forces up to the next terrain feature by means of the enemies' fire. What is NOT guaranteed is that the enemy will actually own the territory in FRONT of the brick. Thus, your team's immediate goal is to deny the enemy that territory. Best case scenario is that the instant before the enemy brick times out, friendlies control the tile right it front of it. A detail which is part of that is that UNTIL that brick times out, it does NO GOOD to hold that territory. Alright, I've rambled about theory long enough, so I'll get down to business. When an enemy brick is layed, and your team does not have bricks, the procedure is: 1) Move back to the next terrain feature. You do this because the enemy will shoot into the area in front of the brick and you can't stop that from happening. 2) Fire into the area in front of the brick. Since that area can't be friendly, the best case scenario is making it a neutral no-mans-land by shooting it up. This stops enemy advance. 3) Wait. You can't rush until the brick times out. 4) When brick times out, start the rush. This way, you resume attacker's momentum as soon as possible. If you do have bricks of your own it is best to wait a while until their brick is about to time out, then drop it. This assumes your team follows step one. If you have thors, the best target is the enemy gunners right before step 4 starts so as to clear the way for the rushers. Ofcourse, this whole argument assumes the enemy is a occasional user rather than addicted abuser of the brick. If they ARE an addicted abuser, the best use of thors is a consolidated barrage against the enemy lanc. Subspace is NOT the environment to be mature. If they are being a complete and total lameass, the most effective counter is to be a bigger lamer ass.

This topic will go over various anti-thor tactics. While the focus will be defeating the thor, many of these tactics will apply to wallbombing and the weasel's EMP bomb as well. If anyone has any comments they would like to add, please feel free, as I am not the only expert here. First off, there is some equipment you can use to counter the thor. Repels are an ideal obvious choice, though a thor travels fast enough that it is unreliable to count on being able to repel a thor reactively. Armors such as shock matrix and wave disperser protect against bombs. Shock matrix is a basic bomb damage reducer, while wave decreases the bomb damage radius drastically. This makes wave the best for protecting against thors assuming they are not aimed directly at you. Both armors have a tendency of keeping you alive after major thor bombardments, albeit barely. Of course, if you have anti-bomb armor, that means you lack bullet armor, so keep that caveat in mind. A fundamental principle of avoiding indirect fire is to not offer a good target, meaning in plain english 'spread out'. If all team members are on top of each other, and the enemy thors them, he takes out the whole team. If the friendly team is spread out, the thor lobber can't do as much damage. There are two targets thor lobbers have to choose from - the dense crowd of gunners in front, or the dense cloud around the lanc. This assumes of course that there are no exposed flag carriers to shoot at. Thus there are two things you need to do when you notice that someone on the other team has a habit of thoring you: 1) Get away from your team's lanc as soon as possible after attaching. 2) Do not form a gaggle with the other shooters on your team. Your goal is not to all be in the same spot...you need to have the FIRES you generate all be in the same spot. The other principle of indirect fire is it does more damage the longer you stay still. Also, it doesn't really help the enemy when you are right next to him. So, when thored, you have to rush and rush aggressively. This is especially true for the smaller ships, which generally like to use larger ships as cover. This works well against bullets, but terribly against thors. If you are in a warbird when the enemy starts chucking thors, your best tactic is to rush the enemy and get as close to him as possible. The downside is you'll get killed by the enemy's bullets rather than the enemy's thors, but the upside is you might just cause a mass teamkill, and the threat of causing a mass teamkill might persuade the enemy's thor lobber to switch to a harder target away from his teammates. Finally, the worst thor lobbers have a tendency of setting a pattern. It takes a certain amount of time to stock up on thors, respawn, attach, aim, fire, and repeat. If you pay attention, you can get a feel for it. Sort of like 'alright, its been a while since the last time they thored us, maybe I should brace for impact.' It is possible to stop shooting and give ground, absorb the thors, recharge while still giving ground trading space for time, and then taking the given ground back as the thor lobber restocks.

Oddly enough those boxes were checked, but unchecking them fixed my problem. I'm pretty sure it was related to the Radeon 4670 somehow. I consider the situation resolved. One bigger snag with the ViDock though...they don't list the realistic requirements of the device, which are that you have Windows XP or Windows 7, not Vista, and that you plug a Radeon and not a GeForce into the thing. When I first got my ViDock, I had Vista on my laptop and a GeForce 210 put in it, and it didn't work. I ended up upgrading to Windows 7 and it still didn't work. When I returned the GeForce and got the Radeon though it worked great. Now, those familiar with logic and the scientific method can point out that my experience doesn't justify the statement that it doesn't work with Vista. But according to the website, Vista users need to match their card with their chipset due to Vista's stubbornness with on graphics driver. To my knowledge, ATi doesn't make onboard chipsets. Basically, to get it to work on Vista you have to have just the right computer to have a Nvidia chipset and just the right GeForce which can be friends with ViDock. I have an Nvidia chipset in my computer so I could have played this game, but I wanted to get rid of Vista anyway. (The damn thing gave me a final FU when it put a security block on the executable to upgrade to Win 7.) All in all, the hardware was designed for Windows 7 and a Radeon, so I wouldn't recommend anything else, and don't know why the manufacturer doesn't list those things as 'requirements'. Sorry if I'm advertising, but its just a really great product that needs to hit the mainstream market.

Alright, I recently got a ViDock 2 for my laptop. Its a little on the expensive side, but what it does is it plugs in to the express card slot and is capable of mounting a desktop's GPU (I have a Radeon 4670 in mine). Then, you have to plug an extra monitor into the card. On the customer satisfaction end, I consider it a great product. The downside is that I put about $400 total into a $500 Laptop and my total rig has no mobility whatsoever, but on the positive end I could still unplug my computer and haul it around when I need to. The problem is that while the system has no problems running high end games like Fallout 3, when I try to play Continuum on it my FPS is unplayable. Mind you, I can still run Continuum on my laptop monitor without running it through the card, and its not like I need that type of card to run Continuum anyway, but it would be nice....

I agree with everything stated above. My only point is that the primary reason its a bad idea is that it throws away a million years of socioeconomic and political evolution in favor of a suddenly concocted system. I don't care how smart you are - you aren't smarter than the sum of the trillion people who came before you. The proponents of this fail in the most basic understanding of leadership. The first thing one has to do in order to become a leader is to understand that other people are intelligent and capable of solving problems by themselves in their own way. The Venus Project, or any group similar, are highly arrogant in that their core paradigms work under the assumption that problems aren't the result of inherent difficulty or disagreement, but rather due to human stupidity in the societal system we have created. Hence, they think that all they need to do to solve those problems is change the system. As others in this topic have pointed out, history has no shortage of such fools. You can find people like this in even the most ancient of histories. There are only two points I'd like to make: 1) Fools like this are arrogant. Pride fuels their belief system. 2) When there is a problem in the world that has been around a while, most likely somebody before you noticed it and attempted to solve it before encountering some sort of difficulty that halted their progress. Thus, either the problem is either difficult and will require sacrifice to solve, or it is not a 'problem' at all but rather a fact of reality.

Now, first off, I got the shot because I was required to get one. That being said, the H1N1 pandemic has all the indicators of a media promoted panic.

I don't get it. How do those lag simulators simulate the retarded whining used by players after I pwn them? All I see is mature math and graphs and stuff.

SeVeR, I will respond to your second point first in order to get back to the first one. The right of survival both of our lives and of our liberty, superceeds all others. Now, the prospect of Al Queda or the Taliban or Hezbollah or the like forming a large army and conquering us in the 'traditional' fashion is ludicrous, but rest assured they intend to conquer us nonetheless, using a technique both brand new and incredibly ancient...the 4 generation war. They aren't trying to beat us in Iraq today, they are emplace a world-wide caliphate at about 2060. These guys aren't simply guerrilla fighters and occasional nuts. We are fighting a deliberate, worldwide mass-movement. Just observe what the Taliban has been doing in Pakistan, a nation with nuclear weapons. Through small scale coercion and indoctrination, they managed to get a chunk of the Pakistani populace to take up arms against the legitimate government. There are entire towns in Pakistan who don't fall under the Pakistani government. Can this work in the west? Yes, it can. They have already set up small colonies in the slums of Germany in France where the police don't go and sharia law rules. Are they more of a threat than your typical gang-controlled sections of a city? Not currently, but street gangs don't have a long term plan or international support. What this has to do with countries like Afghanistan and Iraq is that on the world wide front, taking over states is a requirement to Al Queda's end game. The final stage of a 4G does involve a conventional fight, and in order to do that Al Queda would have to control enough countries to make that possible. There are two points I would like to make in summary. One is that fundamentalist Islam represents a very real threat to everyone's entire way of life. The second is that it wasn't a scenario of us going into Afghanistan to punish them for harboring criminals who attacked us. We went into Afghanistan because those criminals who attacked us controlled that country and we needed to deny them that asset. Now, you know my opinion on Iraq, but you also know that I'm no longer allowed to state my opinion on it. I have been simply stating facts. I will also enter this: When you are talking about a 4G war, things like economics and resources ARE important and ARE worth fighting for because they become a large part of the ideological fight later. Its no secret that poor communities provide a good harbor for anti-governmental forces, and that you can control populations by controlling resources. One of the things that helped to bring down Napoleon was the fact that Great Britain controlled the spice trade. Were it the other way around, Napoleon would have been able to conquer Great Britain with economics, and would have had more forces and more supplies available when he went into Russia due to a lack of a front in Spain and better trade routes. I'll stop there because I don't want to get bogged down in the 'what ifs' of history, but only use what actually happened as an example of why strategy is a long term cold-hearted thing rather than based upon what the latest polls say.

Lynx, I wasn't claiming the Nobel Peace Prize was biased from 1901 to 2009. I'm just saying its been biased from 2006 to 2009. Gitmo was in compliance with the Geneva Conventions. Also, keep in mind that even according to the Geneva Conventions, POWs need not be tried to identify their status as POWs, AND they don't have to be released until the war is over, in which case the Global War on Terror against radical Islam won't be over for a *very* long time. If we *did* classify them as POWs, we could treat them like soldiers, meaning putting them through such 'cruelties' as making them stand at attention for a long period of time, or run a few miles, or the like. So, even if you got past Dr Brain, you *still* need to shut up. Your 'source' is a wiki...it could have been written by *anyone*. Okay, we don't want prisoners making routine video conferences to the world. Why? Because we don't want them sending hidden signals to their buddies. Duh. Every country does that with any person in any jail. There was NO evidence of prisoner abuse at Guantanamo Bay, but in politics a lie told 1000 times becomes a truth, so it has become accepted. Also, by the time President Obama got sworn into office, all of the non-dangerous guys, and some of the dangerous ones who did indeed pick up an AK 47 and turn right back around and shoot at us a second time, were released or sent to another country. Also, keep in mind we do have a problem in that a lot of the countries we want to send these guys to don't *want* to accept them, and we also have problems picking a country of origin for terrorists who lived international lives. As for Iraq, we are reaching the point where we can call it a 'win' anyway. The Iraqi government is stable and their police and military are competent enough to handle any homegrown threats. We'll probably keep a handful of advisers and support personnel to keep all the foreign terrorists out, and if any foreign power tries a hostile takeover I'm sure we can react to that within hours. SeVeR, I cannot make opinionated comments, but will point several facts that cannot be denied. First, the realms of the political, popular, and legal make a poor basis for determining a strategy in a time of war. Also, since Sept 11th we have been in a *Global* War on Terrorism which goes beyond any national boundaries. Finally, Afghanistan has a history of defeating foreign superpowers since ancient Greece, while all the historical nations which encompassed modern-day Iraq haven't been able to keep any foreign superpower out. And to correct the record, Obama is *considering* sending troops to Afghanistan, and even if he fulfills Gen McCrystal's full request, he would still be bringing a lot more troops back from Iraq than is being sent to Afghanistan. You can't really call it a simple transfer.

'irrespective of their political affiliation'? That is what I want. When we got three big dems in a row, two of which didn't really *do* anything, I'd have to call bulls___ on the whole nomination process. I'll even let you have Carter. He took action. However, Gore made a movie which 'inspires others to take action regarding Global Warming.' In my book, the Prize should have gone to those others who took action. Frankly, I don't like seeing any politician getting the award. They take Oaths. Its their job. Its what they are supposed to be doing *anyway*. If they go above and beyond the call of duty, that's one thing, but when its being awarded to someone for taking office, that's another. Sorry, but the Nobel Peace Prize has become a cheap trinket.

Well, look at the other recent recipients: Jimmy Carter & Al Gore. Apparently the Nobel Peace Prize recognizes politicians with a successful career in the Democratic Party. By that standard Obama certainly deserves the prize. The only real injustice is the name of the prize. It should be named "Democratic National Recognition Medal" or something like that.

Look, its been fun, but I've got to cut this conversation off at this point. I keep having to double check what information has been cleared for public release and what hasn't. I haven't said anything that wasn't public yet, but its probably best if I don't talk this subject at all.

I was describing roles, not ships. I named the role 'weasel' because that is the only ship that can fill the role of the bouncy emp bomber. If a player happens to be flying a weasel, but is rushing, he's a 'rusher'. By no more than one player in the weasel role, I meant there should be at most one player in the back lobbing EMP bombs. If players are rushing in ship 6, that's entirely different. Sorry for the confusion. BTW its the same for the 'lanc'. 'Lanc' the role means 'staying in the back with summon on'. If someone is using a rush lanc, his role is 'rusher'. By the way, here's what right looks like: All that's missing is an EMP-chucker. Also, we only had one rusher, but since we pushed them all the way to the front of the base we couldn't rush any farther. However, note that you need to have more gunners than rushers, as you need to hold an area by filling it with bullets after the rush occurs. Leak and flank are the same role applied to offense and defense, so I marked the guy flanking on my radar as 'leaker'.