Zoomba

Reply to My Galactic Civilizations II - Feedback in Bug Reports GalCiv2 Forums

I actually don't feel you addressed those points. You say make them expensive, but once someone ends up with the uber IGBM stuff and just starts cranking them out, the game is over. Unless the defenses completely negate them. If that's the case, there is no benefit or reason to get the missiles. I'll just equip every ship with a scrambler, place one scrambler building on every planet... there... safe. I'll now go out and stomp them with my armada which is 10 tim

Reply to My Galactic Civilizations II - Feedback in Bug Reports GalCiv2 Forums

IGBMs would seriously unbalance the game IMO. A race would need only to spend their time building a set of missles to the exclusion of everything else. Have a set of short-range ones to toss at any fleet that comes within striking distance of your planet and you're pretty safe. Late in the game, you send out your swarm of missles to take out all enemy planets relatively near your core empire. It also doesn't really add much to the strategy aspect of the game. Th

Reply to The Pope and Birth Control in Current Events JoeUser Forums

I think the problem a lot of people have is that they are generally incapable of disagreeing with someone's beliefs or positions without feeling they have to disagree with them as a person as well. It's like those who dislike someone because of what faith they belong to, or what political party they vote with. Some people need to learn to separate out beliefs and opinions from the person. I don't care who you vote for, what you worship, ju

Reply to What Happened to Science Fiction? in Fiction JoeUser Forums

Dr. Guy Actually, I just troll these blog comment sections to goad people into revealing great books that I would want to read. Guess I just got a couple more! You also revealed my secret plot. While I do honestly feel about Sci-Fi what I wrote, the hope was that I could get people to come in he

Reply to What Happened to Science Fiction? in Fiction JoeUser Forums

Furry: A dig against both Tolkien AND Asimov!?!? Ok boys! Get the tar and feathers! I also have to respectfully disagree with you on both Tolkien and Asimov. I find both to be excellent writers and to have told good stories. I don't see the decline in writing quality as Asimov got older either. I started on his Foundation series about 4 or so months ago, and having rea

Reply to The Evolution of Game Forums/Communities. in Gaming JoeUser Forums

I think most fanbois are improperly labeled in phase 4 and 5. It seems that once a game is released, anyone who has anything favorable to say about a game is instantly a fanboi. I genuinely enjoy World of Warcraft, but if I'm brave enough to say so on the forums I get a handfull of trolls jumping up and down on me saying I'm Blizzard's lapdog. But I do agree the true fanbois obstruct discussion (though about as much as the trolls and perpetu

Reply to Terrain in Ideas GalCiv2 Forums

I'm going to jump in again on this one. Lets say we're going to work with pseudo-science in relation to FTL and Black Holes. Here's a great bit about motion through space at superluminal speeds... comes from Nemesis by Asimov: At sub-luminal speeds, mass has a gravitational effect that pulls matter towards it. Think of normal sub-luminal travel to super-luminal travel as a flat line, with the speed of light as a point in the middle. Sub-luminal s

What Happened to Science Fiction? in Fiction JoeUser Forums

I'm nearing the end of the main body of Sci Fi work of Isaac Asimov. I've now consumed the Foundation Series (7 books), The Empire Triology (3 books I had to track down used since they're out of print), The Robot Triology, several of the robot shortstory books, and Robots & Empire (the book to tie Robots, Empire and Foundation together). Not to mention a few of the

Reply to Use a Gun, Go to War! in Politics JoeUser Forums

My suggestion is to blacklist dabe. On the issue of convicts with assault rifles... that just strikes me as a bad idea. I think we should go back to the times of hard labor, chain gangs, make prison life uncomfortably and unpleasant. And work on applying the death penalty evenly. Kill 20 people? Chair for you!

The Evolution of Game Forums/Communities. in Gaming JoeUser Forums

This article is in partial response to Ravenblack’s “Decline of Game Forums IMHO” (https://www.joeuser.com/index.asp?AID=71017 4/3/05). There is no question in my mind that I’m a gamer, specifically a PC gamer. I’ve played pretty much every major title released in the past 8 or so years (how long I’ve held some form of job and been able to buy games).

Reply to Fighting Inspiration Tooth-and-Nail in Philosophy JoeUser Forums

Ok, so this is a bump of an article I wrote over a year ago, sue me... but I do have something new to add With the passing of Pope John Paul II last week, we are now being reminded of the kind of man he was, politics and beliefs aside. He was a man that brought the message of peace and love to just about everyone. His message was all "warm and fuzzy" much like Mr. Rogers in t

Reply to What Computers & The Internet Have Done To My Brain in Living in Cyberspace JoeUser Forums

One thing I forgot to mention in the article (because I was... can you guess? Distracted!), I actually wrote this article several months before posting it. I got distracted about 3/4 of the way through it and saved it to my hard drive. I found it again the other day when I was reorganizing all of my files, tacked on the last two paragraphs and posted it. Fitting that I was distracted from my article on how technology is so distracting <img src="..

Reply to Diagonal Galactic Map in Bug Reports GalCiv2 Forums

You can rotate your main view so that it is at a "90 degree" angle. I'm not exactly sure why games do this (the diamond map), but it's been a convention for strategy games as far back as Age of Empires. Personally I like it as it makes everything feel bigger than it might actually be, more epic.

Reply to The definitive GalCiv 2 feedback thread in Bug Reports GalCiv2 Forums

Radial Menus and Nested Menus are very tricky to implement. NWNs menu system was generally poorly received as you couldn't get to what you needed quickly or easily (not to mention the high-light targets were too small to hit if your mouse was moving at any speed). Nested menus (ala MoO3) are often too hard to find. I'm sure there were settings and options I never found in that game because it was in some nested menu that wasn't clearly marked as such or w

Reply to Research screen on beta 0.11b[b].002 in Bug Reports GalCiv2 Forums

I would like a research queue too. I'd love to, in the early game, setup my research map and let it go for the rest of the game, tweaking it when the need arose. Leaves the option for micromanagement for those who want it, but lets those of us who don't, to cut it out.

Reply to Random objects the baby makes toys in Blogging JoeUser Forums

My favorite toys growing up: -Refridgerator boxes (man, these things could be ANYTHING) -Wood blocks -Connectx -Cardboard Blocks (we had roughly 300 of these things. We could build forts big enough for several kids to sit in, they rocked) -LEGOs (I think these are the BEST toys in the entire world. I'm 23 years old and I still buy LEGO sets!) -Pots & Pans (I loved that metal scraping against metal sound when I was little)

Reply to How I get the beta? I did all the stuff.. in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

Stardock Central has been giving me errors when validating serial numbers for anything aside from my TGN or ODNT subscriptions (BlogNavigator, ObjectDock Plus, Natural Desktop etc...) for the past week or so. You may be experiencing the same problem I am, only with a different product.

Reply to What Computers & The Internet Have Done To My Brain in Living in Cyberspace JoeUser Forums

I recently stepped-up the amount of computing distractions. I finally got my desk at home setup properly so now I have my primary gaming rig, next to that my powerbook that I do email, AIM and IRC on, and then next to that the monitor and keyboard for my home server. I'm now not only flipping between applications on a screen, but between 3 distinct computers altogether! AHHHHH!!! Ted: As much as I hate to admit it, the Amish may have so

Reply to Screenshot of the Day in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

Happy Birthday Cari (and sister)! Hope you had an excellent day. Can we get the espionage component of the game be managed through Pac Man?

Reply to What are you wearing? in Misc JoeUser Forums

I cut work today so I'm sitting here in a white t-shirt and boxers. Yay for being a lazy bum!

Lets Jump Off Of A Bridge! in Humor JoeUser Forums

And now, a humor article to hopefully lighten the mood around here somewhat. What do you do when you find yourself in New Zealand, home of Bungee Jumping (according to them at least)? Why, you find something very very tall to throw yourself off of of course! And that's just what my friend Liz and I did when we were in New Zealand back in June of 2004. The end of our trip had us in Queenstown, site of the first commercial Bungee Jump (once again, according to New Zeal

Reply to THIS IS JUST TOTAL COMPOST in Current Events JoeUser Forums

It reminds me of a comedy bit by (I think) George Carlin... Goes something like this: "I hear all of this crap about 'Save The Earth!' Fuck that! I say 'Save Humans!' We'll eventually blow ourselves to bits, but the Earth will still be here, spinning away"

Reply to THIS IS JUST TOTAL COMPOST in Current Events JoeUser Forums

I think the issue here is more we're growing at a rate that isn't sustainable. The cyclic nature of... well... nature, only works if everything goes in cycles. Including population. There are more people requiring more land and more resources than ever before. The past 100 years have seen an insane amount of expansion and consumption compared to all of recorded human history. I'm not saying it's all doom-and-gloom or that we're going to wi

What Computers & The Internet Have Done To My Brain in Living in Cyberspace JoeUser Forums

As I sit here writing this, I have a Visio drawing up where I'm recreating a process flow that I'm using to draw up specs for a web application I'm going to be building, I'm checking e-mail, I have a number of pieces of paper on my desk in front of me where I'm doodling out ideas on how to solve a dozen different problems I'll have to overcome when I start building th

Reply to WinCustomizing like it's a big DVD in OS Customization JoeUser Forums

Seeing as I think WC is one of the last large products of yours I don't have... do you have some sort of frequent buyer program? I'm looking to get into skinning my machine more in the coming months, so I'm going to keep it in mind.