gabe_ruckus

I think most of the people who play regularly have most of their unlocks that fit their play style by now. I know I've got most of the Assault class unlocks already, so sinking six bucks into that wouldn't be a very good value. I may actually get the vehicle pack though. I don't use vehicles often, but I might use them more or try new things, like jets and attack helicopters, if I can just unlock everything. Especially at four dollars for the vehicle pack, I spend more than that on energy drinks. Figure if it gets me more enjoyment out of the game, then it's money well spent. Getting all the unlocks still isn't going to make a new player a good player, either. I get where the cynics are coming from, but I just spent fifteen dollars on an addon that adds three helicopters to a game with almost no military content. I get a lot more per dollar paying a few bucks to make the vehicle experience a little more streamlined.

I haven't played ME3, but back on Battlefield, the new patch changes a lot of the interface problems the PC had, and I seem to have better performance with it. While I don't agree with everything EA does, I have dealt with the customer service and found it to be really good. I was having issues with the Karkand pack installing, and I had to use phone support. Hold times were short, and then I talked to somebody in the US who walked me through the problem I was having. Really, their DRM isn't any more restrictive than Blizzard's, and it's not like I don't already have games I've bought on GoG, Steam, Stardock, and Origin, so it hasn't been a huge hassle to use Origin. At least they're not as bad Ubisoft, although I'd really like to see some voice chat without having to create a group outside the game in BF3.

I'm just glad this the closest we'll get to a remake of the OOOLLLLDD game Hind.

I did do some messing around with Arma2 and ToH in bootcamp on a nice new Imac, and I had mixed results. Graphically, the Imac pulls ahead pretty well. It's got a 4970m graphics chip, vs the laptop's 460m. Textures look stunning on the Imac, and 1080p on a 27 inch screen is something to behold. I think the CPU bottleneck is going to keep me playing games on the ASUS laptop, though. Any significant number of AI or things going on in the background really bog down the Imac, even in Windows 7 64 bit installed with Boot Camp. I'm just going to invest in a faster hard drive for the laptop and use it strictly for gaming. On another note, PiP on ToH had ZERO effect on performance, regardless of quality settings, something I've felt I've been missing on the ASUS, as even low PiP settings chop 10-15 fps off the game with the 460M I haven't tried with Wine, I'm still learning the mac interface (First Mac I've ever owned), and even with a PC mouse (Because I'm not re-learning how to use a mouse after 24 years of gaming) I'm still not sure how to go about doing things like that. Honestly, I got it mostly for recording anyway, so keeping the laptop for gaming and the Imac for music and photography works pretty well for me. I think I can squeeze another year out of the ASUS before I build a desktop next January.

I had to mess with my curve settins again, I think some small changes were made. With the throttle, try putting the sensitivity dead center, otherwise you're curving your collective inputs. The others should be a bit left of center to get the fine control curve you'd see in DCS. I've got a slight curve on the twist handle, but I'm still having rudder issues. The light helicopter and heavy fly great now, The light especially is a dream and very easy to control when flown properly. The heavy feels good too, not like a light heli with a big model. I'm going to have to try and load it up with passengers still to see how it runs. If this is an indicator of how the Hinds are going to handle, I'm pretty happy with it. The Medium still has a huge problem, the rudder seems to have WAY to large an impact on flight control. I was doing a rescue mission, and I actually managed to get to the boat and load up the two survivors, but as I ruddered around at a hover to face the hospital the thing went out of control and started rolling uncontrollably. Ended up doing some kind of roll/flip and hit the drink. Was able to do it twice, the slightest rudder input in the medium sends the helicopter out of control, and it's got too much authority at speed.

Okay, my bad, this thread is almost a year old and I started a new one :P There's a new update! It's still fun, if anything much more so, and you should all try it. Also, maybe we could get the thread's name changed to reflect what it's about since there's a paid release? :)

Whew, at least this one is open source and free. You're all a bunch of jerks here, every time somebody mentions some innovative new indie game with a cool concept and pre-order access, 10 dollars disappears! Seriously though, keep these coming, Kerbal Space Program is some of the most fun I've ever had in a game!

So in all this space engine talk, I read this mentioned once, tried it, and got hooked like it was heroin. The 1.4 update is out, I'm downloading it right now, but it adds persistence, landing legs, all sorts of stuff so you can start actually making a space program. Anyway, I love it, maybe you do, maybe you've never heard of it: http://www.kerbalspaceprogram.com/ Discuss!

It was about 2000 USD, I'm in the military so I was able to get it without paying sales tax. The Post Exchange has a 15 day return policy, as well, so it was a risk-free investment. I know how to build a comparable desktop for much less money, and I already have a great gaming laptop, but I decided to take the plunge and try it out for the multimedia aspect. So far, it's been less than painless, any USB bus plugs in and immediately gets recognized, I can swap headphones or speakers, or recording inputs on the fly, without restarting any software. I haven't had to download a single driver, and even Garage Band is pretty solid compared to comparable software (I use Studio One, personally, though). Also, the digital to analog delay I got recording on the PC is gone. Expensive, but I save a lot of time and energy so I can be creative instead of fixing irritable combinations of hardware and software. Last time I updated Studio One on my PC, all my external plugins stopped working, and it took me 14 hours of troubleshooting to figure out it's because the updated version of Studio One was 64-bit, and all the 32-bit plugins weren't being recognized. The fix was installing two different versions of Studio One so I could track drums in one, render to WAV, and then record instruments in the other. Now, when the bug to write hits, I can just plug in and go. The interface is a bit weird, and I'm using a PC mouse because it's what I'm used to, but so far it's been a good investment.

Figured this fell out of the scope of the existing PC thread. I do a lot of sound recording and image editing, so I took the plunge and got a HUGE Imac desktop, a real high-end version. Now for recording, I couldn't have made a better choice. My audio bus is literally plug and play, while my mixing software is still running, and that's great. Sound quality is awesome, I can change from internal to headphone jack to USB headphones to the jack on the USB bus, all while still working, and I haven't had any issues with drivers at all. Everything seems to be playing very nice with each other. So far, I'm pretty satisfied with it. There is just one little caveat: I think this Imac might be more powerful than the ASUS laptop I use for gaming, and so I've got an itch to install windows 7 with Boot Camp and just see how it does. A couple things keeping me from doing that, though: 1: This thing feels HOT to the touch. Not just a little warm, but hot enough so you don't want to keep your hand on it. Mostly near the top and back, and the fans work, but they haven't kicked in as aggressively as they did during a hardware test. I have a little worry about overheating. 2: I know Boot Camp and dual booting comes with a performance hit. I tried EVE online on max settings at 1440p and was getting about 40-90FPS, depending where I looked. 1440p would reduce Arma1 to a slide show on my laptop, much less Arma2. So I think I might have some success there. Anybody have any experience with gaming on the Imac? I don't want to jump in and dedicate 300gb of HD space for Arma, TOH, and Arma3 without being sure it'll be worth it in the end.

So, any ETA on 2.7? j/k, downloading now, but I'm going to busy for the next two days. Look forward to getting into it though!

I think you'd enjoy it, Jakerod. The terrain can seem a bit flat, but the way it's implemented with plateaus is much more like Steel Panthers than Supreme Commander. Makes holding that terrain above avenues of approach much more important since a rolling hill would be a nightmare to get your units into an actual hull-down position, and now it's just calculated based on their position. Actually, now that I think about it, this is like a real time Steel Panthers 3, which is just awesome!

Aww, I was looking forward to the head start. I hope the SP earns me some command stars, I was really looking forward to the campaign portion too.

Not just the scale, but realistic speeds for the units do a lot to keep it at a manageable pace (I'm pushing 30, I don't even ATTEMPT to play Starcraft online). Once you select a platoon of tanks and click, there's a slight delay, they form up, then move out, and they move at a realistically slow pace, depending on terrain. There's also a chance to get a track stuck in mud if you take it off road, or throw a track, or move really slowly through swamps. There are roads, but that makes holding key terrain that much more important in this game. I won a match by holding a key ridge along my enemy's primary avenue of approach, and stopping the attack that nearly wiped out my ally. Making sure to keep units supplied and keeping the trucks protected from your FOB to your lines keeps things slow, too, since you're going to need to slow down to protect your trucks. I've seen player attempt tactics that could be exploitative - One match saw one of my enemies drop all his points into FOBs and Artillery pieces (The FOBs are basically giant supply hubs). But arty gets pretty spread out at range, and since he couldn't project enough force to get a sense of where my forces were concentrated, he spent a lot of his time shelling an empty objective zone that I moved out of to control the ridge I mentioned earlier. This game is GOOD, I could see an actual military using it, or a version of it, for Officer training.

Check your video card drivers, also I had trouble getting it started until I disabled 3d vision. I guess it doesn't play nice (Which is fine, that shit melts my eyeballs in most games) with 3dvision.

Just found a great use for infantry. AA infantry in the woods are invisible until they're SHOOTING DOWN ALL YOUR CHOPPERS. Just awesome stuff, a really well put together wargame with realistic weapons and pacing. Best since Close Combat, and dethrones Company of Heroes for modern RTS. If you're in the military and have ever had to do any planning at all, you're going to love this game. Never played a strategy game where holding key terrain was more important than squatting an objective point.

So far, I've got a pretty positive opinion of the game. I dealt with an arty and heli spammer in the last game I played, just moved my units out of the FOB area quickly. His arty were stuck across the map, and therefore not very accurate, and he'd dropped most of his deployment points in them and FOBs for ammo. My 6 mobile pieces, on the other hand, accompanied by supply trucks, were able to effectively engage enemy forces and stay mobile to avoid counter-battery fire. The AAA units are effective enough to counter heli-spam, too, and a player who thinks they can effectively win a game with massed arty and choppers is going to find themselves fighting a large combined arms force of cheap units. The fog of war factor is really well done, too, keeping units in reserve can make or break an engagement, and the infantry are great for setting up an ambush secondary to a tactical retreat, especially the ones armed with guided missile emplacements. I just played a game as the USSR side with no unlocks, and pretty well carried my team through to the win. I almost never pre-order anything, and I'm glad I did this one. The multiplayer is a lot of fun, and hopefully the SP campaign will offer some strategic depth and force you to think tactically. Grey areas in the victory conditions are a nice touch, too, it's neat to see a match end in a near victory vs an overwhelming victory, and the replays are pretty illuminating when you're looking at ways people try and exploit certain unit types so you can develop counters. I might be a bit biased, I used to do S2 stuff for a living, and a game that lets me use key terrain and deceptive tactics is going to score extra points in my book. ---------- Post added at 00:23 ---------- Previous post was at 00:20 ---------- One more note, I'd like to see some kind of tech level restriction in the final game, as it is, the infantry IS kind of useless unless you're using it with ATGMs to cover withdrawing armor, and so I haven't seen infantry on infantry engagements. But there are a LOT of light units like troop transports and M113 mortar carriers, so being able to limit unit types in custom games and a few smaller maps would be great.

1: Riding a bike around when I was a teen, the one and only time I crossed against a light at a busy intersection, almost got nailed by a red car. I remember everything being in slow motion, seeing all the little seams in the body of the car, the driver, the tires, just an intense adrenaline rush. Turned with the traffic and avoided getting hit by only inches. Got across the street and had to have a sit down for a while. 2: Was attacked by a guy wielding a 10 inch bread knife in 2005 (Long, fucked up story leading up to that, but that's unimportant here). He ran at me, and I hit him with a 6 D-Cell (Read: Big Fucking Black) Mag-lite in the jaw. Broke his jaw, and he went down for a second, but decided to get back up. Hit him in the arm, and finally got to my car, at which point this half-naked man with a broke jaw and arm who's been chasing me with a knife wound in his leg (REALLY long fucked up story) hurls a rock at the side while I speed away. I got a few blocks and had to pull over to puke. Ended the night getting arrested (Having a mohawk and being involved in anything this messed up will do that) and spending a day in jail, followed by two intense weeks of anxiety before the charges against me were dropped for self-defense. Had PTSD problems with that for a long time, too. 3: I've been deployed to Iraq, so I've seen or been around some messed up stuff, but the closest I ever got to being hit myself was a Katyusha rocket landing about 20-30 meters from my CHU. Funny part is, it was part of a barrage of rockets, and I was playing Arma2 at the time. The first few hits I mistook for the video game, and then they started getting REALLY loud and shaking everything. Next moment, my wall locker's rocking back and forth, I'm on the ground and I've kicked over my chair and trash can. I'm a medic, so next I've got to take some deep breaths, get my shoes on, grab my bag, and run outside after a barrage. Rough night. Some of my friends were playing call of duty on a network (We strung CAT5 cable from all the CHUs to a router in a central CHU for gaming. I know, War is Hell), and they had the same "Is that the game? Oh shit, not the game!" realization I did.

Realized it today for the first time, because I never had a medium in the career, and I usually only fly the light helicopter because the heavy doesn't "feel" heavy - and the medium's got some pretty strong force feedback! It was nice, I actually had a reason to trim out the bird in flight, and I could feel the weight of the helicopter a little bit more. I went back to the light and heavy birds, and they both felt like they had no force feedback. My joystick auto-centers, but the heft that the medium chopper had isn't there. It's really bugging me in the heavy, since it doesn't feel heavy compared to flying the light helicopter. I'm using a MS Force Feedback 2, with the red trigger. As far as I know, it's just the standard windows driver for it, I checked the Microsoft web site and they don't even support it anymore, as far as I could tell. Is everybody else having no FFB in the light or heavy birds, or is it just me?

I guess that's what they meant by a kinder, gentler army.

Hey, I've wanted something like this for a long time, just a really epic battle with respawn over a large area, so this is great! Had an awesome fight in Zargabad today, attack helis overhead, Frogfoots and Thunderbolts strafing and firing rockets, tanks advancing with infantry... It reminded me a lot of all the Battlefield 3 I've been playing, in a really good way! Especially after the battle had been going for like 45 minutes, and most of the buildings in Zargabad were in pretty bad shape. :)

So, I haven't seen this brought up yet, but I've realized the PiP effects are much more demanding in the Full Version than they were in the preview versions. On Takistan in the preview, the mirror had almost no impact, with maybe a 1 FPS hit, tops. Now, in the full version, any PiP effect in cockpit is an immediate 15 FPS reduction, where having it off gets me about 30-50 FPS in most situations. Could it be that the mirror or PiP views are trying to render the same 10km viewdistance? Or maybe the total objects visible is much greater than on Takistan or Chernarus? I was hoping you guys could take a look at the code, I know I loved the effect in the CP, and I'd like to be able to use the effects for slingloading and FLIR, but I can't for the performance hit. The other thing is the Anistropic Filtering. I usually play desert maps in OA, and I can max the anistropic filtering with no performance hit. When I'm away from the water in ToH, I can do the same, and it looks great. But you guys have tied the water detail to the AF setting, and it's a killer at anything over normal in ToH, where there's water everywhere. Could I ask that you guys maybe consider a separate slider for water detail?

Hadn't looked this up in a while, but I found it! http://community.bistudio.com/wiki/setSkill_array This command lets you individually set skill parameters for units since Arma1. You can individually set AimingAccuracy and AimingShake for a unit with these commands. The way the upper torso of the shooter is moving around, I suspect BIS just set both of these to very low values and used attachto to stick the guy on the back of the boat. unitName setSkill [type, skill] shooter setSkill ["aimingAccuracy", .05] shooter setSkill ["aimingShake", .05]

player addaction doacid?

Huh, that's a really clear explanation of VRS, I really hope you don't abandon this thread, it's been pretty educational, despite all the weird venom that really doesn't seem warranted in a video game discussion. I've been able to get into a VRS pretty easily in Black Shark, especially when I was just starting out (Spent a couple weeks learning to actually fly before I even started tackling shooting things at the same time), but I never knew exactly why it was happening when it did, just the conditions that caused it so I could avoid it. Thanks for the lesson, and I'll have to try nosing forward out of it, I usually end up cranking up on the collective and yawing hard left (Habit from spins in IL-2), usually without success. It's rarely recoverable since most of the flying in DCS is pretty low altitude, and a lot of the time with a center mast helicopter, the blades end up intersecting and shattering. DCS is supposed to be a pretty solid sim, so I assume that's close to what would happen in a real KA-50. And you guys with the arguing, who cares if it's a 3rd party who developed the flight models? They probably read this too, they have a vested interest in continuing to sell their flight dynamics. More importantly, some of us are learning something, and that's kind of weird because I'm on the internet, home of bad memes and porn. Keep it civil? and also