R2-Opus2

I found myself back at the space.com site, interesting articles there. Right now I've been parusing over highlights from the Columbia Accident Investigation Board's final report http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/caib_details_030826.html Not a bad substitute site to visit when TFN or starwars.com has crap or sparingly few updates, plus, it's reality

Yea I think in the end, with the events here in the US, they probably only paid a fine if anything happened to them at all. For a little while though during all that, I was sorry for any people I knew still imployed at my old digs. BTW, that group I was in was Giant-Landover. It had been previously a family owned operation for damn near 50 years that had been expanding well in their own right. To this day though I can't fathom the reason for the sell out if they were doing so well. Probably just greed there....damn sellouts hehe

I heard some more space station talk today. Apparently they want the crew they just sent up to come back. They say the equipment used to monitor life support systems like air and water may be on the blink, and NASA officials want to wait until their shuttle system is up and running before resuming operations since those vehicles are the main means of resupply (meaning if something is broke or going to break soon, they'd rather wait til they can ferry the parts up). I don't know that they've decided anything final on the subject, but I know they've been talking about it since before this latest crew rotation. I think they ought to wait and be sure the station is in a stable orbit before they do anything drastic, like leaving the thing unmanned heh.

I'm not familiar with those chains, but I am familiar with Royal Ahold. They're another one of those Euro supermarket monguls I believe (somebody correct me if you know but I think they're either Dutch or Swedish heh). Anyway, I used to work for a US supermarket a few years ago and while I was with them that company bought ours. As far as I know they still own the US chain, although last thing I knew, they came under fire for some accounting issues (this was all post-Enron, when a bunch of companies were under the microscope for similar issues). I know that before I left, they had designs on obtaining a few more chains, cornering a majority of the market on the east coast. I haven't really kept up with them over the years, but I think besides here and in Europe, they have operations in Asia as well.

Like Paul, I tend to only hit the main site to explore the Databank, and I don't have to be a Hyperspace member to look at it. As I browse though, I do skim topics that they will let me look at, but I'm also told Hyperspace "ain't all that", so I don't feel I'm missing much anyway.

I think that until the private sector, including those in the private sector of other competing nations, can find commercial aspects to space, the average Joe Citizen isn't going to care about space or its potential. Costs are ever more prohibitive. So until private companies can lend a competitive edge to foster futher interest in space, we're left with the resources of the richest contributing nations' and their government programs...and the complexities that brings in working internationally. i.e. I heard a recent radio news broadcast of the case of the Russians looking for some type of reimbursement for taking up the slack of the US shuttles, still out of the picture, because they're using their modules to move crew back and forth now until that's resolved. I think they are right to ask for payments, and this only further illustrates the need to work internationally. Now imagine what the future would look like with additional private enterprises taking advantage of space. Note how crippling the economy suffered for the month or so that airlines lost business in the wake of 9/11, now transfer that to a future where we've incorporated a great deal of space activity into our economies. An accident, no matter how large or small could concievably cripple most of Earth's entire space-based economic systems, even if the downtime seemed insignificant (i.e. see the one month or so example of our airlines). Which also comes back to a fluid international partnership in dealing with space issues, both governmentally and commercially. Another example of something that's really got me nervous about our futures in space...The thing that scares me the most, as more and more countries take advantage of space and what it can offer...is all the circling pile of space debris from so many craft with expendable components (i.e see rockets and such that require many "stages" to get into orbit, now multiply by the 40+ years or so we've been sending crap into orbit...how do we begin to clean that up?). Sure, the best thing we can offer is data on all the known tragectories most of this junk travels in and share that knowledge, but the people doing that must also account for anything new any other entity puts into space. Anyway, my fear is if governments don't have any plans to deal with it, that burden will fall to the private sector. The more we send stuff up, the more important these issues become the longer they are not dealt with...hindering futher efforts as we slowly cut ourselves off from accessing space entirely. My hope is that soon we'll have a commercial remedy for our "heavy lifting" fleet of government shuttles. No other country yet has a craft capable of hauling to and from space, vast amounts of cargo. Not only will the shuttle program most likely have to contract out for their new line of shuttles, but that'll need some supplementation for downtimes such as this one. And one of the only ways other than research to warrant many more is to come up with some commercial applications. My only other hope, this one regarding the Mars hype is...I'd much rather see the world develop its "backyard" a little first, before dedicating a manned landing mission to Mars. To create some stepping stones as it were, to get there. I've always been a proponent that we should try to develop the moon somewhat before continuing elsewhere. There's still much more we can learn about that that might even help us for that eventual Mars expedition. Granted, I'd be ok with manned "flybys" of Mars, akin to what we did as the precursors for landing men on the moon...It only makes sense in regards to finding adequate landing/colony sites. But I feel a manned landing mission asap would be a terrible misstep. I am more in favor of, after setting up a fledgling colony on the moon, to begin establishing some rudimentary space infastructure. For example, setting up an orbital platform of some type as a transfer site not just around the moon, but one around Mars too. The first people that go there will need adequate safeguards to get back should something go wrong. No doubt though with the moon as one of the exceptions, an orbital platform might not be terribly important to have given its low gravity (i.e. a shuttle could probably take off from the surface like an aircraft does here on Earth, only it could keep going with its available thrust if fully fueled to make orbit). Anyway, there's a bunch of stuff in my mind that could/should be done first before the major push to a colonization effort on Mars. The major ones for me is dealing with the space junk and developing further commercial enterprises for space. I think that some of these efforts ought to move concurrently with one another if not one at a time. One of the days I hope I'm around for research-wise, is the day they can put an observational "Hubble"-type telescope (ground based or orbital) on the dark side of the moon, which would supposedly have one of the best views of the night sky, better even than Earth orbit.

I guess there isn't much of a pattern I can find, although I did notice in one game session, ships with characters on them are at risk if they are in one of the toughest among the fleet. Sometimes I noticed LNRs picking off weak as well as strong ships so I coulnd't find a pattern there. Something else with characters, slightly off the track here...In tactical mode, if I'm playing against Imps, and am nervous about running into a deathstar, I put all my charactrers in a small fast ship. Sometimes, not always (I noticed this with characters other than the main ones, luke, leia, han, and mothma). the deathstar always picks off the toughest ship.

Oh we've got our watchdog groups alright. You may not ever hear of any (again, probably some media bias cropping up), but they exist.

I don't know if you meant this how you worded it, but I think you mean "I don't see why they should listen in on ElvisMiggell or any other countryman for that matter" Maybe my English is terrible, but I thought you thought by that, that there is a reason to listen in on ElvisMiggell hehe Seriously though, this "war on terror" crap needs to be watched carefullly. In a way, from a law enforcement perspective, I can understand certain frustrations in rooting out criminals, but I'm still left asking myself are these kinds of laws the best way to go about it? There's also questions of tech-know-how by said criminals. What if the only way to track a suspect or even discover one is through monitoring money trails or cell phone traffic? If you don't know about them through any other means, they never get busted unless they screw up majorly in some other more obvious fashion. It just seems to me that its also more than just the laws in question, but what methods criminals are using to avoid law enforcement that justify said laws. Our times dictate how these things evolve certainly, and that's true of the criminal and the cop. But in tracking them, how far is too far and how far is enough to get the job done without infringing on our basic rights?

Good question. I can't remember what book he (82) appeared, and I think he only appeared once. The context of it as I remember it is that he was already at the Academy, among the next generation of Jedi after that group comprising 81 and Kyp before. I don't think they gave him much attention in that story at all...it was more a kind of blurb, but that blurb gives an interesting insight to that family line. And good point Trej, his entire line could have had the potential, but it took Luke to spot it in 81 (I believe Jedi Search was the book he was rounding up his first initiates, Dorsk among them). I'd have to read that again to see if its true whether Khomm's people are just simple copies, or if each successive clone was "tweaked up" any to enhance any desired ability. I do know that each served a particular purpose in the culture though i.e. If one Khomm clone line was made up of diplomats, that job was kind of predefined for them for each one. I think this was a challenge Luke had to face when persuading Khomm officials let him take Dorsk to train, because doing so would leave a hole in their orgainized society.

What can I say, I have no life

Yep, that's my guess. All that genetic tampering can't be too good for their chances

That's what I was hoping for too when I set up my jedi game, but despite the high stats of the opponents, I tend to wind up with less of the AI characters actually in command...I guess in hindsight, the reason I saw Generals if any command position at all, was that its typically the best one to be if there are troops present. Since I usually only saw them on fleets, I would assume that ships are their best assets especially if they can hold troops, thus it can better thwart sabotage missions on them more effectively. So, maybe it is a fault of the AI, but in a way, probably not. Perhaps the rank of General beyond a certain stat level in AI characters is "the most desired" rank in that respect. The enemy AI will still send characters on missions though, even if it isn't using them to command anything so I guess that's still a plus for a jedi high stat game. Anyway, to counteract this AI rank assignment a little better, instead of making every enemy character "uber", I'd keep half their number or so with relatively lower stats so it can somewhat set ranks more normally. Maybe that'll give me the best of both worlds a little in my next game. I think I'll also try your suggestion of lowering my own side's stats some to make it more challenging. Already though I had boosted Vader's and Palpy's stats to near 500 in esp/combat, so that'll make things tough on any place they hang out. Luke's already been busted several times in my previous game. Only thing though I had to risk more expendable specops to rescue him each time heh

Also, if you aren't both playing with RebEd stuff on, be sure to find yourself a few big planets with the max energy slots you can find (normally I think you'll only get 14 as the highest). Make a few shipyard bases out of them and plan to keep them well defended. If I've made it to Gencore IIs, I have two of those plus either a ion cannon (if I plan to keep any characters there) or a turbolaser. That still leaves you with 11 shipyards you could place. First thing I do on such planets is direct a good deal of fighter garrisons there to protect it before building cap ships with them, while at the same time boosting troop regiments there as well. With such planets you could direct cap ships to finish and be placed to any roving fleets you have. In multiplayer, since I haven't played it that way yet, it may be tough to get 3 or 4 of these kinds of heavy shipyard planets built up fast enough, so begin with one and aim to protect it at all costs along with any world you have with a construction yard if in the same sector (a preference here would be, check to see if those two worlds are near one another, and that forces from either one can retreat to either one if attacked separately, meaning at least one of those could always be covered/overlapped with each other's stuff should one of those lose a battle). If your afraid to have a shipyard planet only in such a multiplayer game, I would instead have at least 10 shipyards 1 training facility besides the 2 gendcore IIs and ground cannon with one of those combos. Thing is, you can sacrifice a planet that has a construction facility, but without troops, you can't retake such planets that have construction facilities if you've lost all yours. So if I had to wager what type of world I'd defend to the death, it'd be a planet like this one above because you'll need those resources to take the battle to the enemy. Also by having mostly heavy shipyards, that means you can churn out the fighters quickly to ensure you keep it. If you are keeping RebEd stuff on (i.e. this current version, and if you both have made your HQ/Coruscant with max energy slots), that means you can have the best of things from the angle of plenty of shipyards, plenty of troop facilities, defenses, and contruction yards. In my games with the AI, I've gone with 48 shipyards, 3 gencores, 3 ions, 3 turbolasers, 12 troop yards, 15 or so construction facilites, and the remainder in any mines/refineries. I generally keep the lower bar maxed with mines, so if I lose a world with too many refineries on it, I can always tweak my home system to take up the refinery slack (switching back to my basic setup after I've recouped the loss elsewhere).

Well, they (they being a different country than yours) don't have a right to directly tap YOU directly if your in a different country from the person you are calling. But they do have a right, by tapping the one their after, to listen to tapes of that call traffic if they've fullfilled what they had to do to tap that person in the first place (by whatever law that is). In other words, even if the subject of your call was innocent, they would still have to go through the suspect's logs on that end (the one they could bug by said law) to be sure. The senario of tapping you too, would only be followed up by your country's authorities if they thought you had some criminal ties with the bugged caller overseas (and they weren't looking to bust you right away, but maybe dig up others too first). So it would depend on your country's laws in that respect, then probably international laws if there was a larger web of crime spread around different nations involving others. Just my take on it, I could be wrong heh. Not agreeing one way or the other if I support the notion, but I understand how they might do something like this to dig up international criminals from one side's source. There's so many legal hoops any given side would have to hurdle I'd imagine, especially too if extradition were an aspect in where their tried/jailed.

It's been a LONG time since I read the original Robo vs. Terminator crossover, but I do remember I liked it. The book is buried in my basement among 12 or so comic book boxes so I'd have to make a day of it and go dig it out I don't recall if there was any time traveling on Robo's part, but I think he somehow managed to bring himself out of mothballs in the future to duke things out as well as dealing with a visitation or two in his past (the stuff involving his detective work in uncovering how he was the bases for future Terminator design). Anyway, that's one of the few things I can remember about it other than it being a Frank Miller story...he's generally good no matter what genre he touches. I really wish Hollywood had followed his vision when it tackled the Batman franchise heh. They killed off every major cool bad guy (except the Riddler and Ivy I think)...now where can they go with it? hehe.

I would say that yes, if Dorsk's people were in fact in the business of making every successive clone in a given family line "better" each time, rather than "just running off another copy" when one dies. I tend to think this is the case. So in this respect, at least in Dorsk's family line post-82 has a shot at having greater potential if not at least the same as Dorsk 81's. I'll add here too that whatever chances Dorsk's lineage had for obtaining Force potential "prior" to 81, is probably shared by the other non-force-using lineages. Basically, if it can crop up in his lineage, there must be some element of chance it could crop up in others. However I would argue that everyone's chances as a whole in that culture is lessoned more for this potential because they are a "clone culture", because they've long since let things not develop "naturally".

Welcome Alyssa. Yea, I pretty much came to the conclusion that if I want a challenging game with the AI is to give them a break on costs/resources in lieu of actually altering up their stats too much because I'm becomming more and more convinced that the AI's ability to mix up the command ranks largely hinges on the fact that too many stats are above 100. I believe this was why I was having that "General on fleets only" dilema. If I don't change stats too much from their stock, they assign admirals, commanders, and generals on fleets and planets as before. I still boost their leadership if nothing else, so's that fleet battles move a little quicker in tactical mode. Also, by giving a secondary character the ability to train Jedi, I have not yet seen them train after not seeing Vader do it. I had thought originally that possibly the reason Vader does not train is because there was always one Imp system somewhere along the way needing diplomacy work done. And Vader's primary objective according to the AI's direction, after recruiting, is diplomacy. But all I found was that Vader would just stay on the last world he was on that he did his mission if all systems weree fully swayed. Ususally never being in a command position even though I have him set to be able to be all 3. (Again though, I suspect maybe he doesn't get a command job because his stats are too high if my theory is right about the secondary characters above).

I'm sure the publisher realizes by now that any problems Rebellion may have had were in implementation, so that's not to say the concepts it used were bad. Man of those same concepts worked for other successful games. If the company made another game, I doubt very much they'd call it a sequel, it'll probably wind up being something radically different if only cause it seems that, with every new title, they seem to try to invent something new to sell it. For Rebellion, my sense of that was that it was the camera features they hyped, not unlike Force Commander. Substance-wise though, they had a good product, I just hope they can build on that (perhaps hopefully too, making it less "click intensive" with the mouse, but that's one of my only other pet peeves with Rebellion).

I've come to a similar conclusion, this one tied to blockading, not taking, those enemy systems. As long as they still control them, that should still count towards not experiencing natural disasters as frequently if at all. As near as I can tell, difficulty doesn't come into play (all my games have been on hard and in largest galaxy size). I do experience the natural disasters though, they're just not as frequent, maybe 1 every few hundred turns. If/when they do, I resort to my save game method when posible of going a dozen or turns previously, play up til it happens, rinse and repeat, until it doesn't happen. If the natural disaster happens to a crap system of mine though, I let it happen and move on.

First place I generally look when searching the net is the main site at starwars.com just to cover my initial bases. Usually to scan their databank for any changes or new additions. I don't know if the pics there are what your aiming to find/borrow from, but I find the descriptions are useful for the sorts of things your talking about. http://www.starwars.com/databank/organization/imperialnavytrooper/index.html I haven't personally noted any terrible differences between the Army regiment and the Fleet regiment counterparts in my search. All seem to still have the big bowl-like black helmet and black uniforms.

Well its about sovereignty, and what lands by extention include that, such as bases, embassys and the like, that grant you those rights. What I'd be curious to wonder though if there is any nation for instance, that does not recognize like the US does for instance, that being born here makes them a citizen. i.e. If I had been born to American parents in Saudi Arabia and that country didn't count me as one of their citizens...would that put me in some kind of non-citizen lymbo?

Well while I think their recall procedures are a bit whacky, I'll say this for it. At least its one way to impose a term limit on someone they feel is ineffectual. The only other way is to impeach them when they've abused their office but this wasn't one of those occasions. I think its strange sometimes on some issues. You won't find politicians voting in some term limit rules any time soon, but you'll sure as heck see them vote themselves raises without taking it to the people first (I don't know what that issue has been like per state, just in reference to Congress a few years back).

I don't see what the big deal is, I mean sure, maybe he couldn't be president, but he can still go as high as senator. I'm not to sure if he could be Speaker of the House for instance, since that is part of the higher chain of command (i.e. if the pres and vice pres were out of the picture for some reason, I think that's the next highest office holder that can assume the role). Its been a long time since my civics lessons, so I might not have that right about the speaker (maybe its Chief of State after pres and vice pres, I dunno) Anyway, the reason I don't think that's such a bad law is cause they can still get positions that have plenty of influence on the office of the presidency. Governor is not too shabby a position, but better still would be a member of Congress if he chose to go that high.

If your using your Nebs for a hit-and-run type deal, I'd augment that with Escort Carriers definitely. Perhaps gradually adding Assault Frigates for a teeny bit more bombardment power. Thing is, if you know you'll be outnumbered as far as having heavier cap ships, I tend to go the way of having more fighters attached. Certainly, at least enough to take out interdictors if I had to run.