Master_Xan

Ah, but have you seen bored college guys before?

Come Mitth, you should be aware that society as a whole believes many false things. For instance, during the middle ages, everyone DID NOT believe the world was flat. Gasoline is not flammable, the vapor is. And you CAN hold liquid nitrogen in the palm of your hand without injury (just don't close your fist!). Oh, and bullets do NOT go through water.

First, what's wrong with pop? Anybody who says the Word of Wisdom includes pop (or caffeine) is badly mistaken. Second, when you have faith in Jesus, you follow His commandments. This leads you to follow the teachings of His prophets. If you believe in modern prophets, you will naturally follow what they say in the name of the Lord just as you would prophets in the Bible. If you don't believe in such modern prophets, of course you won't feel any desire to follow their teachings. My point was just how important Melchizedek was. He was a high priest. He was greater than Abraham, who was blessed by and took his offerings to Melchizedek. There certainly were high priests before Moses. Obviously no one held the same position as Jesus, as He is THE High Priest. In any dispensation with the Gospel of Christ, there have been high priests, all under the authority of the High Priest (Christ). We find it ridiculous that God would so drastically change the pattern which He has used from the beginning of biblical history (namely, the calling of prophets and others to be His direct representatives on earth). If prophets, then why would God not also fill the other positions just as was done in ancient times? Jesus prophesied, but prophets cannot replace Jesus. Just the same, high priests cannot and do not replace THE High Priest. The question, at its root, has little to do with high priests and more to do with whether or not God still calls prophets and other servants (and bestows upon them a portion of His power). Although I could quote scriptures and use logic to say prophets are called, the only reason I know its true comes directly from my answers to prayers on the subject. I'm still curious, what leads you to believe there was/is only one high priest at a time?

Prince of Persia... the REAL one

Life comes first my friend. Take all the time you need/want.

Hi Bruja! Sorry, as you may have noticed from other posts on the forums I'm not particularly good at being concise. Always afraid of being misunderstood. I'll try to keep it shorter. I'd rather not "defend" anything. I'm not here to convert anyone, or prove anything to anyone. I enjoy religious discussions and am happy to answer questions or explain things, as I also enjoy asking questions of others. If this comes down to attack/defend, I will excuse myself. As such, I will use LDS scripture, as you can't discuss LDS doctrine without referring to what LDS prophets have said. I will continue to use Biblical verses (as I did above); if you feel you cannot even look at a Book of Mormon verse to see what point I'm trying to make, that is your prerogative. But because I'm not trying to prove my religion is right, I don't see anything wrong with using LDS scripture to explain LDS doctrine. I hope you will take away what you will, independent of any of us. Feel free to participate too! We believe the things taught in the temple include some of the most sacred doctrines God has ever imparted to man. We limit those who can enter the temple to those who are prepared spiritually and have the experience necessary to understand what goes on in the temple. The recommend questions reflect our desire to keep sacred principles with those willing and able to keep them sacred. For those who don't believe those principles to be truth, it shouldn't matter what requirements we place upon entry. As stated above, if you have true faith in Christ, you will follow His teachings and commandments; likewise, if you believe Jesus has called prophets in latter days, you will have no problem following said prophets. From our perspective, if you can't enter the temple because of the recommend questions, then you aren't ready for what is taught within. As faith develops further and a testimony of God's prophets is obtained, the recommend questions become the basic expectations of acting upon said faith. Again, those with true faith will find themselves doing these things, regardless of temple requirements. Think dominoes: when the "faith" domino falls, the others fall in succession. Also remember that salvation is different in our eyes than other Christian groups; (see also 1 Cor 15:41; 2 Cor 12:2; D&C 76) Just because a person does not enter the temple does not mean they are condemned to Hell for eternity. Even those who never hear the name Jesus Christ may yet be saved by His mercy (1 Peter 4:6). The idea of certain ordinances being necessary should come as no surprise; Jesus Himself said Tell me, what is the order of Melchisedec? (or Melchizedek) You said there was one high priest from Moses on... when did this Melchizedek live? Who was he, that he should have an "order" named after him, an order Jesus Himself belongs to, and what is/was this order? What makes you think there should only be one high priest at any given time?

Are you talking about the faith vs. works argument? Or something else? If you are intending faith vs. works, my first comment is to agree with you. In general, members of the LDS church stress works more than we do faith. That isn't the doctrine we teach, but it tends to be how we act. I'll explain how it is doctrinally in a second, but I definitely have seen that many LDS do not appear to grasp the doctrine fully, instead only focusing on parts of it without a greater understanding of the whole. This shouldn't affect any one person's view of the Church, just a failing perhaps of the some member to always grasp the Church's teachings. Doctrinally speaking, it works something like the classic analogy. Seven year old kid wants a bicycle. Dad says he can have one in a month, but he has to buy it himself. Seven year old saves all his allowance, sells lemonade, whatever; at the end of the month, the Dad takes his kid shopping. The kid realizes that the few dollars he has will not even get close to buying a bicycle, and as he realizes this he becomes sad. The father then steps in, takes what money his son has and makes up the difference so the kid can have a bicycle. It isn't a perfect analogy, but it works at most levels. God has commanded us to be perfect (Matt 5:48; see also 3 Nephi 12:48). We only have a short time here in mortality to attain perfection. No matter how talented we are, none of us is even remotely capable of becoming perfect in this mortal life. Yet it still stands as truth: no unclean thing can dwell in the presence of God (1 Nephi 15:34, also 1 Cor. 16-17 and Rom. 3:23). As a loving Father, God sent His Son, Jesus Christ, to atone for our sins, thus providing a way for us to be perfectly clean, even though we ourselves have not managed to do so alone. But there are conditions set before the atonement can take effect in our lives. The most basic condition is we must want it. We must have faith in Jesus Christ and desire for Him to help us. Some Christians stop there, declaring that to be the only requirement (see Rom. 3:28, though there are better scriptures to illustrate their point). Such a view is short-sighted; throughout the scriptures (Bible and Book of Mormon), it is plainly taught that part of true faith is obeying Christ; depending on your interpretation, it is either impossible to be saved without working, or else it is impossible to have true faith without that faith being manifested by your actions. Rom. 6:14-16: (Side note: most of the scriptures referencing "the law" refer to the law of Moses, which by the apostolic period had been fulfilled; in that context, the above quotation may seem inapplicable, hence my other quotations.) And of course James, who thoroughly denounces any idea of faith alone (James 2:19-20): And John 14:12: Other references include John 10:27, 14:12-24 So, doctrinally, we do the best we can, and Jesus makes up the rest (perfectly summed up in 2 Nephi 25:23). Without Jesus, no amount of work will get you into heaven. But without at least trying to keep His commandments, you aren't going to get there either; we are saved by grace, but grace will not be applied unless we have worked first. Again, I think some members of the LDS church tend to focus too much on what we have to do, without devoting enough time to studies on grace. In fact, if you asked what the requirements to get into heaven are, I imagine a great many members of the Church will start into a list of things like baptism, without first mentioning faith. That does not however change the Church's doctrine, nor does it change the belief of most LDS that it is by faith, not works, that we are saved. It simply shows what they focus on (despite the occasional attempt from the Apostles to remind them to focus on the whole picture, not just a corner of it). If that isn't what your question was really addressing, I apologize. If you restated a third time, perhaps I'd get it right?

Can't remember seeing Krytos or Scath in awhile... Tex has been around here though.

First of all, congrats for asking a question nobody has asked me before. Secondly, I'm not entirely sure I understand the question. What is it you see us adding to Jesus, that He wouldn't be enough?

Continued discussion on religion/Mormonism can be found here. Otherwise, this thread can continue on as it was previously... so, eh, carry on.

This thread has its roots over here. Regardless of whether my religion is true in any way or a complete sham, I will never consider the two years of my mission as wasted time. If (and that's a big if) I were ever to leave the LDS church, it would not change anything about those I helped with very real, tangible problems during those two years. Nor would it change the fact that I grew more in those two years than I ever thought possible; while some of that growth would surely have occurred elsewhere irregardless of my location or daily activities, a great deal of the maturity and personal skills I gained could not have occurred at college or in situations I'm likely to find myself in again. I attend Brigham Young University- Idaho, formerly Ricks College. What you have said sounds a lot like most other anti-Mormon arguments I've heard since I started elementary school. I didn't grow up in Utah, I lived as a minority and have pretty much heard it all. My personal favorite: "Why do you belong to a church which sacrifices virgins by throwing them off the temple into the Great Salt Lake?" My experiences with anti-Mormon people and literature have tended to follow this basic pattern: they say something, I refute it with evidence, they ignore said evidence and, unable to argue against it's validity, bring up some "new" and "startling" way to prove Mormonism wrong. It doesn't matter how many bits of garbage I prove false, the person will continue to bring up more reasons without acknowledging the lack of validity present in their previous points. It's hard to discuss something when one party refuses to accept anything the other says, even if they have no reason not to accept it. That might have sounded very biased, like I'm calling them stubborn without accepting my own stubbornness. I'm certainly stubborn. But I also admit when I don't know something, I'm more than willing to accept that I don't know everything about my own church, and I'm well aware that other religions also contain truth. A lot of truth. Nor am I an "emotionalist"; if you knew me personally, you'd find me rather logical and not prone to emotional outbursts or basing decisions on emotion alone. If you think you can have a civil discussion, where both sides can acknowledge when they are wrong or lack evidence to support a claim, I'd be more than happy to discuss anything about the LDS church. I love talking about religion; never had a religious conversation last more than a few minutes without my learning something new or gaining a new perspective. Just let me know and I'll be happy to dive into what you said (and I quoted above) along with anything else you'd like to discuss.

Oh silly Tex. If you're going to put together an amazing enemy fleet, you're going to do so when YOUR fleet is arriving at the system the very next day. That will nearly eliminate the AIs ability to scatter it. Besides, that wouldn't be the best way to edit the save game anyway... the point would be to beef up their overall strength towards the beginning of the game, or to give them tactically important ships they won't build on their own (like lancer frigates... I almost never see any of those). Even though they will scatter them, they will have them somewhere. Plus you could give them a Death Star

I've been interested in this for awhile now too... If I get time, I'd love to experiment and get some things figured out. Can you imagine how awesome it would be to give the computer a fleet? I've done as much as I can to max out the AI's ability to build large fleets, but they still pick the weirdest ship combinations... editing the AI value of ships is a very risky and complicated way to get the "right" combination. But if I could just GIVE them a decent combination of capital ships/fighters/frigates/etc... Imagine the possibilities! Put up the info you've accumulated so far. Not the spreadsheet, obviously, but what you know about where unique items are stored, if there is a way to tell from the number what the item is (every corellian corvette has a certain digit, or something), and basically everything else you know. I'll help in the search!

You could do the same thing using fleet sizes. It might be harder to do, but still possible... theoretically.

Tofu, I think that was a joke... if it wasn't intended as such, well, Mitth can have his opinion too

Hey wait, you're engaged? Am I the only one who missed that? I wanna hear about the lucky woman! Hmm... I spent a year working to build up my bank account. So if I'd been born rich, I'd also be another year ahead, so a junior (or graduated, if I hadn't "thrown two years away" ).

That's a cool way to do diplomacy! I'll have to give it a whirl in my next game. My trick for Imperial diplomacy is using my big stick. Bombard a planet's defenses, then leave. Often it will slightly increase in diplomacy, to your advantage. Risky unless you have command staff though; otherwise you're more likely to hit a mine and loose influence than you are to gain it. Also, if you fight a really large space battle, the systems in that sector will be affected. Remember, this is only a factor in large battles. I think it's based on how much damage you do to their forces, vs. how much you take yourself. So even if you loose, if your kill ratio is good enough (based upon the AI value of the units involved, not on straight-up number of losses), then you still get the diplomacy boost. If your kill ratio was too poor in a large battle, you loose influence. Of course, the simplest way is to find a planet which requires a garrison. Bombard the planet, it will go neutral or switch sides... and every other system in the sector will also be affected. Here's another interesting tidbit: it's much harder to assassinate than abduct. Which makes no sense whatsoever. So if I have a bunch of characters I've captured but want dead, I put them all on something quick and fairly weak (like an assault transport) and send it into the biggest nest of enemies I know of. When the ship blows up, there is a chance the captured personnel on board will be killed. Particularly effective in killing characters with low combat ratings. I'm not sure, but I *think* the speed at which the ship is destroyed also plays a part in their chances of death. I've also noticed a few ways to cheat. The AI is set up to build infrastructure first, units second. If you bomb the snot out of a planet or two, the AI will use a good junk of resources rebuilding; this can be a significant delay in their shipbuilding programs if you bomb enough planets. Of course, it also wreaks their production, too. Another way to cheat is to bombard neutral planets to slag. Obviously, you do this only in a sector you don't want; it will turn the sector over to the enemy, but as you bombard each planet (or invade and scrap for a resource bonus before abandoning the planet), the AI will spend all their resources on building up their new systems... which means they aren't building many ships, and a great deal of their personnel will be deployed to the new sector (which you are ignoring). Very handy to distract them for a couple hundred days. Or you can pick off personnel as they arrive in sector, which also lures their ships there where you can destroy them instead of hunt them down. Also handy to get their marauding fleets to leave your systems alone.

Mitth lives! Well, sort of... with that kind of workload, it's no wonder you aren't around as often as you used to be. How close are you to graduation? Myself, I'm only a sophomore... *sigh*

Welcome to the threads, Janus! I trust the other thread answered your question?

Welcome to the site! Always good to see others playing this classic game. The game is designed to randomly give you certain units. The number of those units depends on the difficultly level you're playing at, but you can't change which units the computer will assign to both sides. At least, not directly. I can tell you how to change it, but you may not like the side-effects... For the Empire, the game will start with mixtures of the following: TIE fighters Storm troopers, Imperial Fleet Regiments, and Imperial Army Regiments Imperial Dreadnoughts, Galleons, Carrack Light Cruisers, Victory Star Destroyers, Imperial Star Destroyers For the Alliance, the game will start with mixtures of the following: Ywings and Xwings Alliance Fleet Regiments and Alliance Army Regiments Alliance Dreadnoughts, Bulk Cruisers, Corellian Corvettes, Medium Transports, and Alliance Escort Carriers Alright, so you want to change which units each side is capable of getting when the game begins? RebEd allows you to load different cards in place of the ones you start with. Save a copy of your beginning ships for both sides (the ones you want each side to begin with), then replace the ships I listed above with the copies of the ships you want each side to begin with. For example, replace the Bulk Cruiser with a copy of the Corellian Corvette... RebEd will show that you then have two Corellian Corvettes in your list. When the game begins, it will give the rebels Corellian Corvettes every time it would have given them Bulk Cruisers (in addition to the Corvettes it would have given them normally). This will make the game start with the proper units. Unfortunately, you will be denied the opportunity to build several units (as, for example, the bulk cruiser is now replaced with a corvette). If you want to build those again, wait until you have the research completed to get that unit... then save, exit and go back into RebEd, and load the original card back into the original slot. This will simultaneously change all the ships already in the game back to the original type (so any bulk cruisers you started with, which had been replaced by corvettes, will go back to being bulk cruisers). It will also allow you to build them again. Do the same for the other team (replace the same level research ship with the original one). If you make a mistake somewhere and don't have a copy of the original ship, you can download any of the original ships from this site (listed in the "Cards" section). NOTE: I HAVE NOT TESTED SWITCHING CARDS IN THE MIDDLE OF A GAME. I just described what I *think* will happen, but I can't guarantee that I got it right. It's the only way I know of to do what you want though, so it should be worth a try at least. Annoying that you have to close the game each time you research a new level, but I'm pretty sure it will work at least. If any of that didn't make sense, feel free to post questions and I'll try to explain it better...

Laser Tag is pretty fun. Especially one I went to on an army post; that was a sweet setup. Well-desigined obstacles and vantage points, sniping positions, ways around the snipers, etc. Very fun. I've never done airsoft, but I bet it's pretty amazing. I've done a little paintballing, and it is awesome. It can get expensive if you're really into it, but if you're a casual player it's not too bad after the initial investment. Renting equipment isn't too expensive to try the game out, but you'll want your own gun if you play more than a couple times a year. Most fun I've had paintballing was with my girlfriend and her family. Her entire family gets into it; sisters, mother, everybody. They have a nice setup in their field; two forts, overgrown grass to hide in, and a grove of trees to one side (one of the buddies we had over was ex-military, and he DESTROYED us from that grove of trees). I've since broken up with said girlfriend, but man that was good fun.

Strategy games, for me, go in this order of awesomeness: 3) Age of Empires 2 2) Starcraft 1) Supreme Commander FA (this game is good, but the expansion is amazing) I have really high hopes for Starcraft 2 though... Civ 4 is pretty fun with people, trick is finding somebody to play with you. Friends work way better than online because then you can put it down and pick it back up later. It is, after all, a super-long game. Runescape! I remember that game... some of my buddies played it religiously for awhile. I was much too busy with Tibia at the time to care though.

Back in the day, I used to play a free MMORPG called Tibia. It was thence that I discovered: I am not allowed to play MMORPGs. After much toil and many years, I finally broke my addiction to that game. Ironic, considering it has terrible graphics (even in it's day!) and no sound... I've played Guild Wars as well, and found it a good alternative to the monthly costs. Unfortunately, it has a different focus than my play style; I prefer my MMORPG experience to have the option of solo play with group interaction when I want, which just isn't possible in Guild Wars once you advance beyond a certain point (the game's difficulty continues to increase, even after the player reaches the level cap of 20). Eve online also seems interesting to me, but I haven't gotten it out of fear that I would like it... too much. Similarly, I've never played World of Warcraft, even when my roommate last year offered to let me use his account. I don't play many other games online. The only one recently has been Call of Duty 4 (Modern Warfare). Very fun. I do play various games in LANs with friends and roommates though... Supreme Commander, SWBattlefront 2, Sword of the Stars, CoD 4, Battle for Middle Earth 2, Starcraft, Age of Empires 2, Civ 4...

That looks pretty sweet. Unfortunately, I don't understand German... is there a download link somewhere? Or is it not yet completed? I wasn't able to figure that part out...

Dang. That is a crazy lady.