RichardCranium

I was wondering if anyone else had seen recent periodic slowdowns of the game under Windows 7 (64 bit) with NVIDIA GeForce 9800GT cards in SLI mode? This is a recent annoyance that has only shown up this year. Most of the time, the game runs smooth as silk with no graphic slowdown. At periodic intervals, the graphical updates slow down to an utter crawl then speed back up. I've ensured that my drivers are up-to-date but that did not appear to help. Maybe NVIDIA put some easter eggs in the driver to encourage people to upgrade their hardware. :D

Duh. One of the card's fans was stuck, so the card would overheat after a few minutes. I cleaned the cat hair out of the card's fan, made sure it would start spinning at powerup, and things are back to normal.

OK. My carrier sails up to Obsidian. Walrus #9 (Mark I armor, Gatling gun, production capsule) is set to go to the command center location and build a production center via clicking on the location of the destroyed command center. There isn't anything on the island to interfere with Walrus as it drives itself to the location. Well, other than the AI. The Walrus takes a reasonable path to the CC and doesn't have much of a problem until it reaches the bridge over the lava flow. Yes, a bridge. Something with fixed endpoints. Something that really should be the easiest *bleeping* thing on the *bleeping* planet to drive across SINCE THAT IS ITS ONLY PURPOSE TO EXIST IN THE FIRST PLACE. Alas, no. The Walrus decides, instead, to jump into the lava flow to the east of the bridge and thus end its worthless existence. Do you guys test this stuff? I mean, that's not a difficult use case: Sail up to undefended island Order each of the four available Walrus to build new command center without committing suicide Yeah, sure, I'm a user and I'll be back whining later about how my Walruses spend more time bumping into each other versus shooting at the things that are shooting at them. But you *could* point out that "Hey, if you tell a Walrus to go build a new command center on an undefended island, there's a 90% chance that it will actually accomplish the mission!"

I can't say that I've seen any real pattern. I thought that perhaps the slowdown was due to the enemy carrier arriving at an island (not the one that I might be at) and the system was busy cranking up all the objects over there, somewhat like what happens when *I* show up at an island. But, in my current strategic game, the enemy carrier is sitting on the ocean bottom. I'm still getting the slowdowns, sometimes while I'm in time warp between islands. I noticed that the sound effects of, say, Manta plasma fire slowing down while the annoying messages of the crew are at standard speed. Speaking of annoying messages, I wish there was a duct tape mod for Male Tech Dork. I'd probably put it over both his nose and mouth; especially after he points out the scrambler on the other end of the *bleeping* island instead of the one that's right in front of the carrier.

Well, no. It's "Just In Time" all right and Java is well known for having an implementation of that concept in the Java Virtual Machine. Other virtual machines, however, also do "Just In Time" compilations to native code. .NET comes to mind.

In fact, I've had deadly rated islands repulse a normal-level enemy carrier.

From what I've seen, the enemy has two strategies: Make a beeline towards your stockpile island, taking whatever islands that are near the straight line path. Those islands may not make a connected network. Occupy all empty islands first before attempting to take your stockpile island. After all empty islands belong to someone, it may attempt to extend its network towards your stockpile to get a friendly island within a certain range of it. I'm not certain of the algorithm in option #2; option #1 happens a lot. From a game play perspective, once you've had enough time to build two torpedoes, there's no way the enemy carrier can survive after you find it. (Good thing that it doesn't appear to create and use torpedoes itself.) With that in mind, it makes sense for the enemy carrier to find you before you can build them. That's why I seem to see option #1 happen more often than option #2. As for the enemy carrier being able to get more done during a given time period, it needs some advantage to make up for your ability to be more flexible that it is. I haven't lost too many strategy games; the only ones that I have were when I got too close to the enemy carrier too early in the game. Even then, I had to do something stupid in the close range gunfight to lose. Oh yes, as far as I can tell, defense islands contribute no resources or production to your network. They just provide defense upgrades to adjacent islands.

Oh. If you liked Elite back in the day, check out OOLite.

Actually, your island destroyed one Walrus and one Manta before you got there. The enemy carrier appears to use all 4 Mantas and all 4 Walruses to attack any island, so if you see fewer than 4 of either unit, then your island destroyed something while defending against the attack. I've also seen enemy Walruses drive up from the beaches, so I don't think that they teleport to the CC area. Next time, leave the carrier alone and attack the units that he has attacking your island. If you blow up the ones that he's landed, the enemy carrier can't/won't do anything to the island until he gets fully resupplied with Mantas and Walruses. (Which can take several supply barge round trips.) Now, the enemy carrier will go after you if you get too close, but you can leave it alone for a while if you want.

As of late, I've been experimenting with pure Walrus invasion forces in the strategy game for a change of pace. I'll send in all 4 Walruses at once. Each have Mark II armor and ammo boxes. I'll have one armed with plasma, one armed with HEAT, and 2 armed with missiles. I'll set them to aggressive mode and send them to certain points along the way to the CC. Once they've cleared a path, I'll send one of them back for refit with Mark I armor, hack capsule, and Laser II to take over the CC. Unlike Mantas in aggressive mode, the Walruses won't destroy everything that they see that can/does shoot at them. The Walruses won't always maneuver to where they can actually fire at something. Still, it's a change of pace and I've managed to take over several islands without losing a Walrus (I've certainly re-armed and repaired them using the various stations on the island). While doing so, I found out that you can actually hack a jammer. I've also noticed that the island refuel, rearm, and repair points on the island perform those functions much, much faster than the carrier itself does.

The joke's on you. Not only no joystick support, but only one specific type of game controller is supported. I was rather surprised, myself, but I guess nobody on the dev team uses a joystick.

Look around the last island that the other carrier attacked. It's probably sitting out of fuel between two islands.

How much fuel did you have on board?

Really? Some of us couldn't care less about multiplayer.

Well, the OP stated that he had opened a trouble ticket and provided the appropriate information there. Since he hasn't seen any updates on the ticket, he's a trifle annoyed. That's a reasonable stance, particularly since he gave the information on the trouble ticket on the 19th of last month.

No. I have a CyborgX joystick that I'd love to use to fly Mantas or drive Walruses. Doesn't work. I even have a Logitech USB game controller that I'd use in place of the joystick. That doesn't work either. After all, who would expect that the game would support devices from small, unknown companies such as Logitech. :d: There's a hack posted in one of the other threads where you can supposedly run a program that will make your joystick/not-XBox-game-controller act like an XBox game controller.

It would be nice if Mantas were able to land on a moving carrier. That may have to mean that the carrier has to slow down; if so, that should be handled by the carrier and Manta automatically. It would also be nice that if a Manta runs out of fuel and lands in the water then either: It sinks to the bottom and blows up rather quickly. Or I'm given some way to go pick the stupid thing up from the surface of the ocean. Right now, it just skitters around on the surface until I move out of range. I'd like to be able to bring up one of the spares that I have on board and use it.

Or just go get a copy. As far as I know, the linked site is above-board and legal; you should check the laws in your own country.

I'd sometimes send 4 Walrus with a single Manta to take out an island that was at the limit of my range. A Manta flying at the slowest speed was roughly as fast as a Walrus traveling as fast as possible. 2 of the Walruses would carry the refuel pods; one of the remaining two would carry a full complement of wire guided missiles and the other would carry an ACCB. I'd use the two Walruses with the fuel pods to refuel the missile Walrus and ACCB carrier. When I got close to the island, I'd keep the Manta out of range of any defenses and use the wire-guided missiles to take out the enemy Command Center from the water (you could steer the missiles up over the beach and into the Command Center). I used that tactic to cut off the enemy carrier from its supply network and was able to conquer all the islands without ever seeing or engaging the carrier. At least in the PC version, there was a bug where you could load up a Walrus and a Manta with stuff, deploy them from the ship and then request a resupply drone to top off things like missiles, Walruses, and Mantas. You could then bring the Walrus and Manta you had deployed back to the ship. You could then request resupply until you had 255 of each item (such as Mantas and Walruses). Drones and flares saved my butt more than once. The carrier's surface-to-surface missiles were very close to useless, IMO. You couldn't use them against an island with any sort of defense since you would have to back up to the island to use them, which left your engines in a rather vulnerable state. If you let the enemy carrier get close enough to use them against it, you were probably going to lose. 4 Mantas with missiles and kamikaze runs would be enough to cripple the enemy carrier so you could finish it off with missile Walruses or more Mantas. I have little doubt that almost none of those tactics will work in the reboot.

Then again, there's a lot of folks who couldn't care less about multiplayer. The original game was quite fun in SP.