Posts by Accushot

  • Do we really need a language censor here?

    Bp:<font size=1 face="trebuchet ms"><BLOCKQUOTE><hr size=1 noshade>Ah! a game of Charades Give us a hint...is it good to eat? <hr size=1 noshade></BLOCKQUOTE></font><font face=´trebuchet ms, Verdana, Arial, Helvetica´ size=2> Haha, very good! <img src=smilies/icon_smile_big.gif width=15 height=15 border=0 align=middle>

  • Michu Kaku: Hyperspace

    <font size=1 face="trebuchet ms"><BLOCKQUOTE><hr size=1 noshade>at losers. have any of you actually read the book? I could explain it. yet it would take a long time, as your simple minds just wouldn´t be able to cope with so much raw information. <hr size=1 noshade></BLOCKQUOTE></font><font face=´trebuchet ms, Verdana, Arial, Helvetica´ size=2> Try us. You really should listen to those ´losers´ above though. If you do stick by your belief that parallel lines touch you <i>will </i> fail high school maths or whatever you´re taking. It´s not just because it´s complicated, but because it is a THEORY. As Mike said, theories are disproved all the time. Similarly, if you write about the Intelligent Creationism theory when asked about the origins of biological life, or the Strings theory regarding the structure of the universe, you will fail. It´s good to read around the subject, but don´t get full of yourself. You need to learn the ´basics´ as well.

  • X3 - The Return

    That´s the great thing about this game; if you don´t like something, change it. There´s very little you can´t do with the script editor and a bit of basic modding.

  • Time to leave the country!

    As far as I´m concerned, you go to prison and you give up all but the very basic human rights afforded to you by the country. If you can´t play by the rules then you suffer the consequences, it really should be that simple. The human rights movement over here really is taking the piss. <img src=smilies/icon_smile_disapprove.gif width=15 height=15 border=0 align=middle>

  • I´m gonna get bashed for this, but: X2 Problem

    Just don´t turn up at all. Unlike FL, they won´t actually bug you about it all if you don´t turn up for missions. It may be worth perservering with the story until the point where you get the mercury since that gives you a good bursary to get started with, but it´s really not necessary. I found it far more enjoyable to start out on my own and ignore the storyline, especially since the cutscenes look like as$. <img src=smilies/icon_smile_wink.gif width=15 height=15 border=0 align=middle> A TL is a good capship to buy first, especially for trading. You can basically buy all the products from a station (e.g. 5000 units of energy cells) and then transport them around with the TL. If you buy a couple of mercurys (or equivalent) and have them escort the ship, you can get them to ferry commodities from the ship to each station that wants them, and you´ll find yourself earning money at a fantastic rate. The best way to do this is to use the script editor and write a script for the transports - savs you babysitting them the whole time. I now have 4 TL´s roaming the universe with a full complement of mercurys, and they simply buy up all the cheap goods and sell them later on for a profit. Another piece of advice - don´t buy an M1 (carrier) until you have bucketloads of cash. It may make a good capship and look very impressive, but it´ll cost you about 3 times the price of the ship to outfit it with fighters and defense wings. Without escorting ships it´s actually a very easy target - lots of shields but very limited firepower. Regarding your first factory, I would definitely go for a solar power plant in Akeela´s Beacon. The presence of about 5 stars in the system means that the SPP´s will be incredibly productive and therefore profitable. There´s also an Argon Centaur and (I think) a Split Dragin patrolling the system, which helps protect your investments. As a warning though, once the Khaak start to become more prolific they will target the system more and more frequently. Once you get a smallish empire going you´ll be dealing with about 20-ship clusters every 5 minutes or so, so you´ll definitely want some defenses in there. Lasertowers are excellent for this, as are M3´s. Don´t bother with anything bigger, it won´t be able to track the fast Khaak fighters and they´ll end up swarming it. As Chips said earlier, capturing enemy ships is an excellent way to make money. I wouldn´t recommend it in an M5 - you can´t even worry transports in an M5 - but once you get a decent fighter you can make good money from forcing the pilots to eject and selling their ship. Note that if you capture a Khaak M3 with some weapons intact, resist the urge to sell it. The Khaak M3 is an amazing ship. Another good way to make money once you get a half-decent fighter is to venture into the Xenon systems. It may look scary when you come through the gate and can see entire fleets of Xenon ships, but you can actually outrun mosdt of them if things get hairy. An excellent tactic I´ve found is (if you have a jumpdrive installed in your ship) to enter the system by one gate and get them all riled up. When the Xenon destroyers and carriers have manuevered towards you and are moving in for the kill, activate the jumpdrive and jump to the other gate in the system. It will then take the ships ages to reverse course and come back at you, giving you time to take out a few ships and escape afterwards. If you get a chance you should definitely accept the Xenon invasion missions when they appear. They are probably the best-paying missions around but they are extremely hard and very rare. You usually have some time to rally your ships and prepare to defend (unless you accept just as the ships begin invading), and you´ll need every second of it. You´ll need at least a squadron (say 10-12) of M3´s, and preferably some capital ship support as backup. Depending on the difficulty you can have anything from a small figher wing to a battle group composing several destroyers and carriers invading the system, and you get paid credits for however many ships you manage to repel. I forget the most vulnerable systems at the moment, but I think you get asked to help defend the Boron frontier systems (e.g. Menelaus´ Frontier) a lot. If you are offered sector map data in exchange for credits then it is definitely worth it, especially at the start of the game. Make sure you don´t already have data on the systems before you do obviously, but it´s far easier then exploring all the systems yourself. Especially when you accept a ´taxi´ mission and the guy needs to go to a system that you´ve never heard of, and you end up running around frantically trying to find the system before the time limit runs out. I´ll stop talking in a minute, promise. A common trap to fall into is to build your first factory in Ore Belt. This system is simply a massive asteroid field and some of the asteroid have a huge yield, but unfortunately it´s also a prime target for pirates and Khaak. Buy a mineral scanner and scan all the asteroids (if you have the patience) - a there are a couple of asteroids in here with yields of about 500 Ore (I think, don´t hold me to that <img src=smilies/icon_smile_wink.gif width=15 height=15 border=0 align=middle> ). Don´t begin mining the asteroids here until you´ve progressed reasonably far into the game though, otherwise you´ll spend all of your time defending your property. Once you build up a reasonable fleet take a squadron to the very north of the system, beyond the upper limit of the normal system-map. There´s a pirate base up here, and if you destroy it then you´ll go a long way towards preventing the pirate attacks in this sector. Be warned that you´ll need some heavy firepower to take it out though - every time I´ve been there it´s been guarded by at least a couple of dozen M3´s. Once more tip - avoid the unknown systems until you get a well-shielded ship. The systems are highly radioactive (or whatever) and will eat away at your hull remarkably quickly. I took my M1 in there with plans to colonise the system and had to scramble it out quickly - it only just made it and cost me about 30 million in repairs. <img src=smilies/icon_smile_sad.gif width=15 height=15 border=0 align=middle> Edit: One final tip. Stay the hell away from Khaak captial ships. You´ll need about two or three M2´s to take out a Khaak destroyer - the weapons are unbelievably powerful. Best way to do it is to get a flight of smaller fighters to run interference and distract the gunners on the Khaak M2, then get your destroyers to move in to take it out. It will often try and attack the fighters instead and will prevent too much damage to your captial ships, but you will still lose a lot of fighters. Make sure your capships are stocked up with hornet missiles, and as soon as the Khaak shields drop order them to launch everything at it. There´s no real way to take these ships down easily due to their weapons - if you ever salvage a Gamma Kyon Emitter then never EVER let it go. <img src=smilies/icon_smile_wink.gif width=15 height=15 border=0 align=middle> Edited by - Accushot on 10/3/2005 3:53:37 PM

  • Classical music

    <font size=1 face="trebuchet ms"><BLOCKQUOTE><hr size=1 noshade>The Total Annihilation Soundtrack <hr size=1 noshade></BLOCKQUOTE></font><font face=´trebuchet ms, Verdana, Arial, Helvetica´ size=2> Yes! Another example of how damn brilliant that game was/is. Good composers: Handel Wagner Orff Strauss Beethoven Tchaikovsky Mozart Bach Vivaldi Edit: Stravinsky! Thanks Taw, the only clue I couldn´t do in the crossword this morning was &quot;composer of Firebird (10)&quot;. Knew he was an &quot;-insky&quot;. Edited by - Accushot on 10/2/2005 4:15:56 PM

  • 3D maths !????

    Try searching for &quot;Euler angle to Quaternion&quot; sites. Using quaternions (x,y,z,w) you don´t end up with Gimbal lock or anything unhelpful like that, and it´s a good way of computing the overall rotation - they´re used in the THN files for this very reason. Otherwise you could always just rotate through the x-axis, calculate the heading, then do the same for the y-axis and then the z-axis.

  • Favorite Quotes

    We have this plastered on the walls of our offices at work: <b>Make it idiot-proof and someone will make a better idiot. </b> Origin Unknown

  • Best and worst computer games ever

    We all do stupid things from time to time Taw, your latest example seems to be sitting below &quot;Tawakalna (Reloaded)&quot; on the left of your post. Only kidding. <img src=smilies/icon_smile_big.gif width=15 height=15 border=0 align=middle> Best games...haven´t changed much since the last thread: Total Annihiliation - As Loveshark said, &quot;Best RTS Ever&quot;. Ever. Half Life - obviously. Dark Forces (+ immediate sequels) - probably the only decent Star Wars game to ever be released. Flashback - old, but very good in it´s time. With a half-decent story to go. <img src=´http://dorando.emuverse.com/images/flashback.u_01.png ´> &lt;-- Flashback Edited by - Accushot on 9/14/2005 2:46:45 PM

  • RELEASE: Freelimits v0.60

    Legal or not, it´s up to the owners of the site as to what is allowed and what isn´t. The odds of Microsoft taking any action against TLR for anything are, in my opinion, slim at best, and we may not all agree with all the rules - but hell, it´s not your site. Or mine. Why not just respect their wishes.

  • England Win The Ashes

    Agreed, they did well. Although the victory itself was a bit of an anticlimax - we won, then the umpires had a 15 minute meeting to decide if the light was low enough to finish, before finally announcing that we <i>had </i> in fact won. Everyone was looking a little bored by the time they decided. I guess that´s just cricket though, nothing seems to get done quickly. <img src=smilies/icon_smile_tongue.gif width=15 height=15 border=0 align=middle>

  • One step closer...... H-Fuel

    <font size=1 face="trebuchet ms"><BLOCKQUOTE><hr size=1 noshade>ok the tabulets are made by combineing hydrogen and nitrogen right? well what happens to the nitrogen? <hr size=1 noshade></BLOCKQUOTE></font><font face=´trebuchet ms, Verdana, Arial, Helvetica´ size=2> Probably released into the air. Around 80% of air is composed of nitrogen gas, a little more will make no difference whatsoever. <font size=1 face="trebuchet ms"><BLOCKQUOTE><hr size=1 noshade>and isnt nitrogen very flamable? <hr size=1 noshade></BLOCKQUOTE></font><font face=´trebuchet ms, Verdana, Arial, Helvetica´ size=2> Err...no. One of the most stable gases around, aside from the inert noble gases. <font size=1 face="trebuchet ms"><BLOCKQUOTE><hr size=1 noshade>and as for renewable fuel sources eletrical energy still seems to be the way to go <hr size=1 noshade></BLOCKQUOTE></font><font face=´trebuchet ms, Verdana, Arial, Helvetica´ size=2> Yes, but you have to generate electricity from somewhere. You can generate it from burning coal but that´s certainely not a renewable energy source. <font size=1 face="trebuchet ms"><BLOCKQUOTE><hr size=1 noshade>dont get me wrong if they can get around the safety issue of storeing hydrogen in public areas ( and from what I have heard that is the biggest block right now) then I´m all for it. <hr size=1 noshade></BLOCKQUOTE></font><font face=´trebuchet ms, Verdana, Arial, Helvetica´ size=2> I think that <i>was </i> the issue, until they started working on these amnmonia tablets. The main problem before was the sheer amount of space the Hydrogen gas took up, plus the fact that it is highly combustible, however if they can include it as a component in solid tablets that should solve the problem neatly.