Apollo

No ,the major urban centers also make up the majority of the BNP of the USA ,it wouldn't be fair to not give them an amount of political weight parralel to the amount of contribution they do towards the USA. Untrue to ,because these 49.9% still have representative's in power ,and in the USA there are many group defending minority rights. This sort of ligic is rediculous ,it's like saying that Gays should have as much ellectoral power as non-gays as otherwise the gays would be ruled by the non-gays. Take a example to the European system.here in Belgium we use popular vote ,and we have a number of chairs in senate and other institutions wich are devided according to ellectoral result.Say that you for ex. 100 chairs ,and a person gets 10% of the vote's ,then he gets 10 chairs.Thats fair.

So you hate democracy? Â Atleast i thought represejntative democracy was supposed to be voted like that. Such a bad sounding term ,that "mob rule" ,as if the coman people would really be that stupid to vote the right people. Youre idea to give every inch of territory the same voting power regardless of poppulation sounds all to stupid to me ,thats and oppinion. But know that atleast in europe most country's go by this "mob rule" voting system ,and i don't see any political collapse here.And we have rural and urban area's to. People make a country ,not territory.if you dont like the right of people in urban area's to vote with their numbers ,then maybe you should think of discarding a few city's like New York and let them form an independant state ,i know a lot of New yorkers who would like that settlement. The masses of the city's also pay the masses of the costs of the USA and bring the masses of the income ,their economical weight in society gives them the right to have a similar political weight. You can't alter democracy just because population density is not evenly handed.Democracy means the majority rules ,but with respect towards minority's. There are more political groups representing minority interrests than it's healthy in the USA ,in any case these groups should suffice to represent the rights of the minority's. Ask youreself what is more democratic ,majority having more politcal weight than minority's ,or minority's having more political weight than the majority. That is untrue ,political positions in senate for ex. are devided among all people according to their ellectoral weight ,it's not like the winner with majority gets all positions ,the others get positions to.Atleast in European system chairs are devided among ellectoral weight ,with multiple party's noone reaches a majority ,forcing them to coalitions.And party's are never tottaly undevided on all issue's ,so you almost always have individual party members going agaist the party line.Then there are also the political groups representing minority's ,often they have more influence than they should have.

Granted ,and what can be said about these people's "religion" ,the form of religion terrorists are using ,or right wing people in the USA ,are more or less a derivate of religion altered for political goals. Many current christian dogma's have been created trough history after christ for political means ,and are not to be found in the originaly greek written bible ,and even this bible is a derivate ,not the exact words of Christ himself and probably romantisized story's.In a same way ,the koran has gone trough many alterations ,and deffinatly translations of texts that easily can have multiple meanings depending on how analysed have made many versions of bible and koran today not in line with the original writings. I have nothing against religious people ,but i prefer religious people who don't take the writings of their bible/koran to seriously ,rather just folow the most basic moral guidelines of it.I myself though am an staunch atheist ,seeing how much blood has shed in the past of the name of religion i can not believe in any god that could allow such a thing.

How do you know that it rarely happens if only a token number of vote's are counted per state?The figure's of poppular vote of the last ellection are only a derivate of the token 10% votes counted.The fact that a recount was asked in Florida was just because this token count system.If a 100% of poppular vote's are counted in every state and used as determinal ,then there is no reason whatsoever for a recount as the result would be a undeniably correct representation of national voting ,unless local corruption would be in place in wich only locally a recount would have to haoppen ,and that albeit only when the amount of local vote's can be determinal for the global ellection result.Florida 2000 only shows more the inperfecties of ellectoral voting and token vote counting.

Even then ,IMO the system of only counting token vote's is much more criminal and anti-democratic than purely the system of ellectoral vote's ,although afcourse im against that to. But the token vote system leave's much more room for corrupting and basicly destroy's democracy ,if only a token 10% is counted then it's easy to get whatever president you want on the chair with a bit of meddling.It's like as in south Africa ,that only a token 10% of vote's would be counted there ,but "inciddentaly" mostly among the predominantly white constituanties.A system of token vote's is not democracy but oliarchy ,where the powerfull political elite decide's whats counted and what not ,thus making the ultimate decissions. take into calculation the financial influnce of the coorperations ,and then IMO the USA is more like a Coorperate oliarchy than a democracy.

Well it's an extreme example ,but what if a candidate wins 51% of the votes in 51% of state's (or equivelant of 51% percent state ponts won) and 0% of vote's in all other state's ,he will win the ellection ,however he will only have roughly 26% percent of the poppular vote and the other candidate will maybe have 74% but loose. So in theory the ellectoral voting system could allow a candidate to win with only 1/4th of popular vote's against a candidate with 3/4th of popular vote's ,hardly very democratic. With this add that in many state's not all vote's are counted ,only a token number of vote's that supposedly is representative for the rest of the state.And a clear problem of that is that every state has a governer of a certain party ,and they may influence a vote counting to start at parts of the state that are polarized towards their party. The debacle in 2000 was mostly about that ,in Florida we had Jeb Bush ,and surprizingly most of the "token vote's" counted were mostly from pro-conservative constituanties ,like the Cuban quarters as example. This make's the previous calculation even worse ,now a candidate doesnt even have to win 51% vote's in 51% ellectoral point worth state's ,he only has to win a token 51%.He could win with 10% of actual vote's in 51% of state's if they only count the right constituanties ,or basicly a candidate could become president of the United states with only 5% of the real popular vote.because only a token percentage of all votes over the USA are counted ,there is no way to know if the figures of poppular vote from last ellection are albeit true ,supposedly it was 55% for Kerry ,but maybe in 100% of poppular vote's had been counted ,instead of the token 5 or 10% ,then the difference in poppular vote might have been much bigger. My conclusion: With shitloads of cash and an influential political network it's much easier to become president of the USA than by actually getting a majority of people behind you. America is only fully democratic in name ,by default any represented democracy isn't a real deomcracy IMO anyway ,but for a partial Democracy the level of democraticness in the USA system is quite depended on the level of political corruption in the USA.

American's to? Seriously ,i hate this kinda remarks ,as if all non American's would defacto hate every American just because of some foreign policy's of the USA ,and if all condolences for 9/11 would have been insensere.Some people outside the USA might think that a different foreign policy in the past towards the middle east might prevented some terrorism on the USA soil ,but therefore wont automaticly see the killing of a few thousands of innocent civilians as a justified thing. Im a humanist ,i hate war and i hate the kinda pragmatic logic of "to preserve peace one must be preppared for war" wich is sometimes perceived as an only way to solve certain issue's ,for the same reasons i obviously hate mindless kiling of innocent civilians. Anyway back to topic then. Personally ,i don't understand why all this sub shadowing by both Russia and USA didn't effectivly stop with the collapse of the USSR ,as if Russia is really to be considerd a threat to "democracy" still as was it the idiologicly enemy in the cold war.Or let me refresh my memmory ,i did thought the reasons for the cold war were about: -Containing the spread of an enemy ideoligy ,basicly democracy vs comminism ,communism wich was fast spreading after WWII ,especially and Asia and to a smaller extent South america -Containing a previously quite agressive and expansivist nation that in the period before WWII attacked many East European country's (USSR attacked Finland ,Rumania ,baltic country's ,partittioned Poland with Germany at molotov-ribbentrop pact) and occupied many "liberated" country's after WWII (most of East Europe) ,making the USSR a hughe power in terms of land mass ,population and millitary power ,powerfull enough to match West-Europe and USA combined in military power. But then the world has changed: - Russia becomes a "democracy" ,atleas goodbey to communism and it's danger from being spread from there - USSR desintigrates ,Russia falls back to its "core" territory  ,becomes a country with only 60% of the USA poppulation in terms of manpower (and only 30% of EU poppulation) ,a hughe conventional metalyard for wich it hasn't got the money to keep it from rusting (nuke's and subs included) - Russia has troubles with local insuregency groups in one of the worst terrain's for fighting - One of Russian's assets ,it's resource righ but low poppulated Siberia ,now borders a China with 1.3 Billion people and a semi modernized army ,having historical claims for quite a part of territory North and East of the Amur river and a healthy interrest in resources to fuel its expanding economy [sarcasm mode] Sorry ,but whether or not how the Kursk sank ,i don't see the need for heavy traffic of nuclear-submarine in the Baltic ,given the frequency of sub accidents it's time that the UN sends Kofi Anan down there in a mini sub to regulate traffic... But i do understand the evil ploy behind this.its not like these countrys after the cold war could say to their poppulace: Well the cold war is over ,atlast all our economical efforts over the last decades to create this hughe millitary has shown it's worthlesness so lets cut our millitary to 20% of the original. So they decided to give the impression that this rediculously oversized millitary was actually needed ,works well with terrorism really ,just shell their possitions for days and drop some 3 dozen 500lb's bombs on a terrorist defended shanty ,works wonders to cut youre stockpile and give youre millitary industry something to work on.Even a fleet can look usefull with carriers supporting jets and if youre sending youre carriers to Iraq you afcourse have to cover them with shitloads of destroyers and cruisers. But submarine's ,even in a very very extremely remote way ,just can't be used to contain the danger of terrorism ,wich is mostly land-based afterall.Pitty no submarine was in sight when the USS cole was attacked ,they could torpedo'd that speed boat... [/sarcasm mode]

Thought of it ,then again i think the amount of guns and experienced gunfreaks at Bis is legio ,we probably wouldn't get past their parking.... News or no news ,all fine to me ,i got confidence in BIS ,probably the only software company i still have so much confidence in.

I just saw a report on the German ellections on BBC world ,showing that the traditional party's as the center democrats lost some ground to more far right and far left wing party's. Especially the thought of an emmerging and growing far right wing party must produce a lot of controversy in Germany given it's cultural and pshychological feeling's on it's past ,and yet such controversy combined with an opposition positions is a element that really can aid such a party in it's growth. Belgium has virtualy the strongest far right wing party in Europe since World war 2 ,The Flemmish block has a support of about 30% of the Belgian voters and has become one of the largest party ,it mainly got this growth due to an opposition possition and campaigning against immigration/immigrants. The fact that there is a "cordon sannitaire" in Belgium (an understanding between all other party's in Belgium to never make a coalition with the Flemmish block) aided to the controversy and actually poppularity of this party ,the flemmish block even grew a few points after being prosecuted and foud guilty by Belgian justice on crimes of racism. What i want to ask mainly to German people is how they feel about this party and it's possition of ideoligy withing the national consiounce of Germany's History.

Look at yourself Name THIEF ! Â Â Well i had a very good armored Z1 ,upgraded to Z52 and now my armor sucks. Â But then my Z52 reaches 60 knots wich i find more important. Btw the new ships is named BIS_Orion

name: P162416 shipname: Bis_Flanker lvl 25 Z1

Some Money tips by Apollo (cyrrently at lvl 24 in a Z31) I see a lot of people having problems earning cash ,especially at the turnover to a nationality destroyer.When i bought my Z1 ,i had just enough to equip the whole boat in arnement and gear ,but had nothing left for armor.Yet i have found strategy's that almost ensure you atleast a steady profit ,maybe not very high ,but atleast preventing that you are making losses or debts. 1) When you have a nationality destroyer ,Make sure you don't get it sunken.A nationality destroyer cost almost 400 credits in repairs ,youll loose that mount of money if you get youre ship sunken. 2)If you notice youre team is about to loose ,then flee the battlefield.When you loose youll only get a small team bonus usually (about 100cr in big games) wich may be just enough to pay for youre expenses in ammunitions ,but if you don't sink you won't loose that 400.Youll probably be about 50% of the times on the loosing team ,so make sure that you fight on positions near retreat points and where the concentration of friendly troops is sufficiant ,so that when it goes bad it's easy to flee. Fleeing is not always bad.In NF the team that dealt most dammage to an enemy wins ,when you flee there is less potential for the enemy to deal dammage to youre team. 3)Make maximum use of situations where youre team is about to win.Youll get about 500cr bonus for team win ,you can make some personal income as wel withough much risk by assesing the situation and engaging those enemy ship's that are isolated From their main force with a few destroyers. 4)If you reached lvl15 ,youll be forced outside the noob area's.Play the bigger games in the +15 area's ,theyll bring in much more win and loose bonus as well as experience. Torpedo's are youre friends at that lvl ,you can now mount 2 torp launchers that can launch 3 torps at a time ,combined 6 ,the field of coverage of 6 Torps shot in Wide mode is quite an imporvement over the dual torp launchers and makes it much easier to kill especially in the big games. 5)In the big games ,join the innitial torp wave ,spam torps when youre near the island and race back to the back (don't get youreself killed by the enemy torp wave's wich will be a pain to dodge ,and note that a good Engine is very important) Usually i use the Island to turn because it offer's a bit of cover against torpedo's.In the big games its easier to score with torpedo's (although they are expensive ammunition) ,sometimes the rewards of a well placed torp wave can be hughe ,i once scored over 1000 personal credit's by sinking 4 ship's by a 2x4 torpedo wave. This is the way i play it ,torp wave ,retreat to back ,second torp wave ,retreat to back.Then see how the end game evolve's ,if youre winning ,go make some credits on cannonage on isiolated enemy's ,if youre team is loosing ,retreat and keep what you get from team bonus and any personal credit's gotten from torpedo's.This way ,granted that you can prevent youre ship being sunk for something like 9 of 10 games ,youll make steady profit. Yesterday ,i made about 10K in 5 hours of playing ,wich is quite a lot.

Yes it's a weird community ,ask something and they alsmost answer: read the forum you NOOBlet ,well something like that ,and the forum itself is quite messy to ,the search function there aint no high flyer.

Trobably you just behind a firewall that restricts the port the game uses for connection. Just type in the Ip adress of the firewall/router and open the ports (ask the game forum for appropiate port to open and manufaturer site or manual for the IP adress.(granted that you have admin rights.

name: p162416 ship:Bucaneer Btw ,for Ofp friends ,that is first comes first gets ,i offer a free lvl. 12 Japanese bridge commander that i have on void. (since i have a German DD) It will allow you to buy a Japanese nation ship ,though you might not have the money to equip it well. I'm currently at lvl 12 ,my Z1 DD is fully equiped in arnement but quite low on armor ,Once youll have bought a nation ship youll notice the importance of creadits ,and how hard they are to get...

I'm at level 15 now (German DD) and i can't enter the noob area anymore now (highest allowed level there is 14) so i won't be able to play with you guys at the noob levels. It's a fun game ,though i getting my ass nerved by torpedo's. One thing i hate is the lack of strategical naval battle insight of some of my teammate's ,you would think line formations are all to well known ,well not i see ,and 20% of dammage i take trough games is usally FF. I don't mind them gunning in front of back from me ,but i hate it when they running parrallel and close.

Well ,about the posting long text's from site's or linking to stuff not very important to the actual debate ,i think should be resolved by changing the mindset of the community just like we started to use them that coman.Under the philosophy that we experimented it and although good reference's can be vital at important moments in a debate they shouldn't be used in such an frequency. About forum changes ,well i have many thought's as seen on other site's: you could allow more threads viewable on 1 page ,i can currently see 15 topics and it's a bit few IMO ,Maybe i have to change some User setiing but normally i can see about 30 thread on 1 page on other forum's.It allows for a larger overview of threads. I agree with what Leppard asked to ,no multithread's anymore plz ,but then we have to watch out afcourse that we don't get 3 threads on almost the same topic. Otherwise ,we could try out some forum games ,i think posters on this forum are usually educated enough to write story's for ex. ,so someone start's a thread with the beginning of the stroy and each poster can add a addition to the story.Or you do some quiz on the harder difficulty levels. Like a "name the tank quiz" ,where you show some photo of a tank and others try to name the model. ah well ,thing's like that...

No ,because there is a whole different atmosphere where you wouldn't easily fir in.Most big Gaming forum's have OT boards where also various topic's are discussed ,and often depending on the level of complexity of the game the OT discussions will have a certain quality. The reason why i think that many people post OT on game forum's is because they talk with people where they have many interests in coman with ,personaly im a fan of tactical and strategical game and have a big interrest in war and war material ,and i think that that many people here are interrested in that type's of thing's. ;) So i expect people here to be about on the same level of me in certain aspects in general ,aspects in personality wich make it easier to communicate on a friendly and relativly relaxed manner. I can make about 30 account's on various site's of special interrest and discuss my seperate interrests there ,but then i probably will never have a big postcount on any of them ,while i do not care for the number i care for the fact that i learn to know a comunity better and vice versa ,and the specialized site may be to specialized for me to invite to participation ,being resident in a community for a long time can give certain advantage's to. Wholehartly agree ,besides the lack of shocking events in recent times (or atleast not the daily shocking events we are suite used to) i find these multithreaded sticky's really uninviting.

Yes Ran ,but that's more of a recon vehicle ,i bet such a thing would probably be able to conquer half of Africa on it's own ,but i would still prefer a Merkhava above that while driving trough as IDF tanker trough Rammalah. Â I read about that vehicle though forgot it's name ,but if i'm correct it was 120MM cannon and about 90Kph top speed? but clasified as recon vehicle AFAIK.

The IDF for one is quite fond of constantly upgrading the armor of their mobile forces. I figure that the role of armor on a tank is depending on the amount of manpower a country can waste in war.For a country like china due to their manpower mass produced MBT's with lighter armor but more mobilety and firepower (and maybe also fewer oil consumption) would be better to support fit their needs ,while a small and relative low poppulated but rich country like Isreal who often opperate in their backyard in dense regions a tank more geared towards protection of manpower seems logical. Yet then again for a country like for ex Australia ,having a hughe country to protect with few manpower ,theyr forces would probably more geared towards ligt IFV's easily transported in time of need. Coices of equipment for an army depend on various geostrategical factor's ,the region youre in ,the friends you have the quality of youre foe's. Though i must say ,i have seen much more footage from the chechen war where some infantry packed APC or AFV was blown apart than acutally seeing Chechens killing T80's ,in fact i think that withought those MBT's Russia would have gotten a severely harder job in the 2nd Chechen war.

Then again ,i figure the spot of inpact would also be important in the equation. If you are going to hit an heli with an rpg then probably youre prety damn close to this target heli and the heli itself is flying real slow or is hovering.IMO if youre albeit able to hit an helicopter in air with an Rpg then you probably are also in the position to aim that rpg to a particular spot of the heli ,depending on the type of heli.Now heli's like Mi17's and Chinooks don't really have a low profile. So i would think that part's like the pilot canopy ,the rotor engine or the tail are excelent target's to aim at to down a helicopter for ex. ,The rpg would probably cause more dammage there since it's dense and has critical parts. Though a helicopter tail or rotor engine would be harder to hit ,the pilot canopy is probably the best area to shoot and Rpg ,not only because of it's easier to hit due to it's size ,but also because when for ex. trying to down a heli near an airfield youre likely going to place yourself on a spot near the airstrip on the path of a landing helicopter ,thus usually youle be facing the pilot side when the heli is coming. In any case ,i guess it has been proven that rpg's can be very dangerous for low flying or hovering helicopters. Btw can i add some questions to this topic ,im not an army expert myself so there always thing's to learn here. I would like to ask what the effect would be of various tank rounds on helicopters in real life ,or even AT rounds ,though i doubt that such things probabl arn't going to happen much in real combat ,i'm just curious.

I figure youre right ,with a few exceptions ,i think that a Chinook hit at it's rotor by an Rpg would still crash ,but the rest of it's body is probably strong enough to withstand such a blow. Â Ah well ,the thing with helicopters is that due to their nature as airship's they usually will have very few armor ,because they are build to be light as to be able to fly and be agile in the air and able to carry a sufficiant payload ,by norm any airship will be build by light materials because any airship has a limited weight lifting capacity ,and usually what they spare out in weight in the plane/helicopter itself can then be used for other thing's like arnement or passenger's ,or not used to preserve agility. From an designer point of view ,with full conventional warfare in mind ,i think it's also unneffeciant to give gunship's much armor ,as usually they are prey's for enemy jet's anyway ,heli's are most often used for ground support covered by air supperiority and therefore i would say firepower is for them most needed. A Plane like an A10 basicly is able to carry more armor because it has an jet engine that allows the plane to have more lift ,so it's not comparable to heli's. And notice that while an Stinger is known to be a highly effeciant weapon against heli's ,it's basicly crap to kill armored ground vehicle's with.A question i would like to ask is if a Stinger would be actually able to take out vehicle's like HMWWV or BRDM ,and by take out i mean also kill the crew inside ,not just imobilize it.And if it could kill that ,if it could do the same on light APC's. (like an M13)

i'm not an expert on millitary matters ,but i can figure out some of these questions. First of all except for the gunship's helicopters barely have armor (if any) and probably would crash under any such rockets as rpg's and Stinger's if hit ,i do not now how much a gunship like AH64 can take but i do know that most transport heli's like mi17 ,chinook or blackhawk are easy to down with rpg's and stinger's. (given distance) yes distance will make a important difference afcourse ,most heli's these days are downed when trying to land or hovering close above the ground ,thzey are easy t shoot then even with RPg's and they havn't got time to react.When shooting at such a hel at long distance's surely the countermeasure's will make a possible difference.In the same sense Speed will do a lot to avoid being hit by rpg's ,even if you fly low. Luck? Well if youre enemy is dumb enough to not arm the missile ,or to shoot a stinger while youre between him and the sun ,for the rest luck is luck and not easy to predict. I do not think there is such a thing as best armor on a transport heli. Warning systems will help afcourse given a good distance from the rocket start point ,it gives the pilot the time to get speed and deploy countermeasures i figure. Afcourse distance will be the greatest factor ,the further the target ,the harder to hit it ,deffinatly for rpg's afcourse. Most downing of helicopters in recent time's where mainly done by terrorists or insurgents at moments that they could shoot the helicopter at very close distance ,like shooting heli's at airfields or when they are used of insertion/extraction of hostile urban area's. (like in Blackhawk down) Kill's of helicopters at long distance's are far few.

I recently found this game ,and quickly became addicted to this fine Mp game ,wich can be downloaded for free! Allegiance is a strategic space game with close resemblances to Ofp Cti games in the sense that you have one comander building bases and researching technoligy etc. and other players basicly exploring space ,attacking enemy resources (base constructor's ,miners etc) and bases.A wide array of vehicle's can be researched for space combat going from basic sout and fighter ship's to capital ship's like space cruisers ,battleship's or carriers ,stats dependign on tech level. It's an Mp only game and takes some time to learn ,servers can host a very big amount of players in one game. (up to 200 as i believe) The reason i want to promote this is that despite it's quality it has a relative low mp player base ,but if more people would know it it would undoubtebly be played more.Given the strategic nature of the game i think it would be well appreciated by a great number of Ofp players ,especially the CTI fans. So try it if you wwant ,it's tottaly free anyway! (oh and do the training missions!) review @home of the underdogs Allgiance website (download)

you don't need the cadet's ,just an adaptive mind. ;) Ive been playing this game for not much longer than a week and already im killing vet's at a not to bad ratio ,im still kinda noob there but i can hold my ground. Just read about the game and test thing's out ,youll get the hang of it ,experience helps a lot. ;)