SirNuke

Buy a network switch (such as this beast). Plug a (probably short) cable from the router to the network switch. Run a cable from the switch to the PS and another cable from the switch to the computer. It doesn't matter what cable plugs into what port on the switch. You can, obviously, plug more computers into the switch if you have the necessary cables. If you have gigabit ethernet (on the computer), you might consider getting a gigabit switch. Judging by your setup however, you probably don't (and it probably wouldn't be any faster if you do have gigabit ethernet on your computer). NewEgg has cables. Buy a Cat5e or Cat6 (Cat6 doesn't have any true advantages in your setup, but it's probably a bit more expensive). However, regular Cat5 won't perform as well as Cat5e (though I'm pretty sure they aren't sold anymore). I would also recommend buying enough cable to avoid a fridge or microwave by at least 3 feet (if you happen to be running by one).

I'm probably going to get a Wii (though quite a while after the release). If at nothing else, it can play games that my PC can't (type of games, not specific titles). What I don't understand is what the PlayStation 3 has going for it. Blu-ray? Great for some people. Probably helps that HDCP is going to make life hell for people wanting to watch HD-DVD/Blu-ray on computers. Processing/graphics power? I'm going to be building a better (per dollar) computer sometime next year. The specs really aren't that great compared to higer end gaming computers when they were released. I'm quite sure it will survive, if only due to Sony's name on it. But it's not going to dominate, and I'm not going to even consider getting it.

What is the case for switching forum software? SMF wasn't the cause for the downtime.

Yo, it's a parady site! Wikipedia to the rescue You got... never mind, I fell for it the first time I saw that site :-\

I refuse to sign that. You must understand that as a game is developed, it changes. Making a game, or any program for that matter, isn't just throwing as many features in as you can. Ideas might get worked on and get nearly completely implemented, only for some reason to appear that it isn't such a great idea. I have yet to see any reason that Petro/LucasArts is hiding anything huge that needs to be in the game. This isn't Rebellion 2, and throwing Diplomacy in isn't going to magically fix anything. Neither will throwing 20+ units into the game. Now, I am disappointed in the game. For me, online matches rarely get past the connecting window, and rarely end without a sync error. There are many bugs, and I think it's rather obvious the 3 month delay for 'polish' was rewriting parts of the game. The game play suffers from many somewhat minor flaws (such as how small the maps are, which doesn't allow for many different attacks. Also how assault forces always need roughly the same combination of units to win. And the lack of different ways to take a planet). I personally wish I had saved my money and bought Galactic Civilizations II. If this petition gets accepted (which it won't), all you will end up with a bunch of half finished models and half implemented ideas (an xml key doesn't not mean it was ever used, just that they considered something). For most, there will be a very good reason why they weren't included or completely implemented. Delphi has [presumably] been paying attention to our bi- complaining (and I thank him for doing so). A 'good' petition would be requesting the dedication of Petroglyph that patches will be released that tweak the game enough to allow for more varied game play (or whatever specific problem you have with the game).

The autoresolve doesn't seem to favor more units. My favorite tactic/abuse of this is sending a single Infantry squad into a heavily guarded enemy ground force. Even though you will always lose the infantry, the enemy almost always loses at least one ground unit. Of course, any smart human player won't agree to autoresolve if that's being used against him. However, how does the decreased autoresolve health work? If both sides' units decrease, it won't effect gameplay.

Thank you for the update. Why are these types of conferences always out in California/west coast? On another note, does EA still own the old Westwood Building?

Persistent damage would not work well with the current game balancing, and personally I can only think of one time were it may have made a moderate difference in how the game played. However for unit experience, I think that would be a very nice touch. For basic units, nothing too fancy, some simple system like in C&C. For heroes, perhaps a system where you can upgrade their abilities as they get more kills (and potentially lose these some of these abilities if they get killed).

Yes, except scratch out "Episode III" and write "Science Fiction films".

Ever try to program an AI before? It's a lot harder to do then you think, especially with the general trend away from AIs that cheat to gain advantage.

I typically play Rebels in skirmish missions. And I don't believe there are twice as many Rebel players as Imperial players on this board.

The Bar "Kick back, relax and talk about anything unrelated to the game. For sensitive personal messages use PMs." Mos Eisley Spaceport Lounge "Pls. post your SW humor here and have a great time. Keep it appropriate with no sexual jokes / non-SW humor is also accepted." And I thought this was EaWish enough to warrent in this forum, though I don't care nor do I see why it matters.

Tim Buckley of Ctrl Alt Del approves of EaW, and made a comic about it. Language warning for both (PG-13ish, if you are in the US). Not that anyone probably cares. News rant. http://ctrlaltdel-online.com/news.php?i=1016 Comic http://ctrlaltdel-online.com/comic.php?d=20060222 On a totally unrelated note, why is EaW still considered a misspelled word by the spell check?

It allows host computers to communicate with routers and request ports to be opened and forwarded to it. There is no support for restricting hosts, or any way to warn users that a computer wants certain ports open, so most commercial oriented routers don't support it (like mine, unfortunately).

The game is limited to 3 AI players. Not entirely sure why, but it is. Multiplayer battles can have up to 8, though I have only gotten one game to work with more than 4.

I feel obligated to post some stuff. Though don't rush to release the game, release it when it's done. The world doesn't need another Battlefield 2: Special Forces. All of these are quick brainstormed ideas (aka they sound cool/nice/fun/etc now), and are pretty much in random order. Personally, as long as it covers a lot more territory, I don't care what the time line is. I also claim no control/copyright on these ideas/thoughts. I think the key thing that can (and should) be done better for the expansion is making each battle much less repetitive. On that note: 1. Larger maps with more units. Much, much larger maps. 2. Decrease advantages of certain units over certain other units. One of the current problems is that there is very little variation in what a powerful fleet/force is (the combination of units). 3. The ability to change ship's hard points (ex: make a 'special' anti starfighter Mon Calamari with all concussion missiles and lasers, for example). This would probably work best as the ability to make new 'lines' of ships, rather than customizing individual ships. Though I could see this being detrimental to game balance. 4. Better yet, the ability to make flag ships, special, customizable, nameable star ships that are unique to players (and boost the power of other ships in the fleet). 5. Much more interaction between the environment and units. For example, the ability to send infantry into buildings, or have them hide in a jungle to try to surprise the enemy. In particular, you could give this ability to Rebels and decrease the strength of their units to make the game more "out powered, yet cunning rebels vs mighty Imperials". 6. More overlap between the units. There are too many units that are both vital to winning battles yet lack any alternative. I never thought I would be recommending this for an RTS (which tend to have too much overlap, and therefore make entire units nearly worthless). 7. More build sites, which would give the player the ability to kind of plan out defenses. 8. Have units produced on different planets have certain advantages/disadvantages, plus skin the units to slightly match their home planet. Such as, if you produce a squad of troopers on Bothawui have it be a squad of Bothans, who can sense enemy units a little further away than regular units because of their spy like tendencies (or something). Other ideas: 9. Greater interaction between the space and ground battles. I suggested before something where the ground and land battles occur at the same time, and with the option of send units into the atmosphere. The ability to send certain weaker capital ships into low orbit to either A: attack ground units or B: attempt to stop enemy units from landing would be a very unique and interesting concept. 10. Faster paced games, particularly for ground battles (ex: make units move faster and do more damage). It seems to me that land skirmish battles bog down quite a bit. Speed is what makes Dawn of War and Starcraft so much fun. 11. Be able to choose the first wave of ships in a space combat battle (and the formation of the ships, I'm tired of having my starfighters hyperspace in at the front of the fleet, only to have the Imperial fleet rush its tartens and destroy most of them). This would also allow you to plan waves. 12. On the same note, the ability to retreat certain ships/units (assuming they are over a certain health, so you can't just retreat and instantly repair almost dead ships/units), so you can 'progress' battles (start with a lot of anti-starfighters, then send some of them away and bring in bombers and capital ships). 13. Increase the movement speeds between friendly planets, but decrease it between friendly and enemy planets. Make it more difficult to go rampaging through the enemy's planets after breaking through the stronger outer planets, and easier for the defender to reinforce his planets. I hate waiting for a ship to reach the front lines because it has to go through three planets with no hyperspace lanes between them. Randomly forming hyperspace routes would also be a minor but interesting change. 14. A variation on campaigns focusing on a few (perhaps only one) planets, but have multiple bases on each planet. You can then engage the player on different spots on land and space. I think this would work well with multiple players as well (assuming even teams). 15. Ability to divert a percentage of credit product to speeding production. And finally: An 'ignore' feature on the Multiplayer chat room. Please, it's getting worse everyday. I know a lot of people having been complaining/begging about this, but I don't think persistent damage would work well with how the game is currently balanced (though you probably already know this from testing). Though permanent experience would be a nice touch to help personalize the ships.

Kind of hard to fix the problem with no details at all.

1. For some special units, certain actions make them 'revert' back to their regular copy's voice response. The heroes that are boosted versions of regular units, and the force corrupted units do this. Also fighters lose their vocal responses when assigned and selected from a group. 2. Right clicking after selecting bombardment (on land) will both order the units you have currently selected and cancel bombardment. It should only cancel bombardment. 3. Much more aggressive AI in skirmish missions. 4. Make ground units move around obstacles to fire, rather then trying to fire through them. 5. Sometimes changes in ground texture blocks firing. I noticed the especially with Tie Maulers on the first Imperial mission. 6. Add some GUI controls for the furthest land zoom out levels, particularly so we can still use the special abilities of units. 7. Shortcuts (single keys, like T for Tie Fighter or something) for building units. 8. Perhaps the option to purchase lost Tie Fighters in capital ships (particularly for the acclamator, which always runs out long before the ship is lost in skirmish). Unless that's part of the balance. 9. If you change the allies/all in game messaging check box but don't send a message, it looses that change. 10. Multiplayer connectivity problems. SirNuke

Sign me up. Just don't expect me to change my account name

It's not ports, different types of communication. Somewhat Basic Networking: Packets: Sections of data. TCP: Communication that most of the Internet uses, since it checks to make sure all packets are recieved, and resends lost ones (this is completely independant of programs, and is implemented by the Operating System). UDP: Much faster (less laggy to be more precise) than TCP since it doesn't check if packets are lost and instead the programs (in this case EaW) need to be able to handle lost data. Since a majority of important programs use TCP, some VPNs might block UDP packets. Broadcasts: Packets sent out that have no specific desitination, just that all LAN computers to recieve it. This is how EaW and other computer games 'find' games. Some VPNs are set up so they don't forward these. What VPN server/client software are you using?

I'm saying that apart from the interface, Blizzard's RTS online games feel exactly the same as local LAN games. In fact, since everyone online has to be using the latest patch, often they are easier to setup than local games (I find invariably there will be two or so people who refuse to patch and would rather have everyone else reinstall to the gold version). The level of transparency is amazing, and not easily duplicated. Very little software gets to the level of "Everything Just Works All The Time", so I can't expect that. I do, however, except the online interface to work most of the time out of the box, and at this point it's beyond fixing "Oh shoot, we forgot to remove the #define ___NETWORK_TEST_CODE___ from the gold compile" type problems. GameSpy's site doesn't provide a whole lot of information about what their SDK/service exactly provides (without signing up for developer access, which I don't feel overly enthusiastic about doing [though they probably wouldn't give me access anyway]), but I have yet to see much evidence that there isn't fundamental problems with EaW's network code (whether it be independent of the GameSpy service or part of the GameSpy implementation).

But that doesn't make it acceptable. I'm averaging only 22% of games getting past the inital connection screen, and 13% getting through the entire game without errors occuring (including quick matches). It would be a lot higher if I didn't keep giving up and switching to single player. Ever play a Blizzard RTS online?

Depending on your setup it may not be forwarding udp packets or broadcast packets (udp is what the game uses, and broadcast packets are need for the games to find each other). Check out the configuration/documentation.

Every news station news part is fairly moderate. It's the talk shows they host that they try to pass off as news that make them left/right. This applies very greatly to Fox. When they are showing news, it's the same moderate stuff that everyone shows. When they make opinions about stuff, it becomes very rightish (I personally don't think they are nearly as right-winged as a lot of people make them out to be, they just seem really out of place with the traditional left-wing media). O'Rielly is a strong example of this. My choices/preferences: print newspapers, google news, BBC's online site, and then CNN [in that order]. I personally love USA Today, and my formally local newspaper, the Columbus Dispatch. The AP does a fairly good job being neutral. I also use google news to find articles showing virtually every possible take on a situation. Then if I'm on Firefox, I use the BBC's feed to find new stuff. Then, should I find myself watching TV (doesn't happen very often), I will watch CNN. I can't say I have ever noticed a ' "Oh america is great worship us and you will be our minions". ' views coming out of any channel. But then again, I live in the US.

Yes, my apologizes. Yahoo gets 80,000 per day, and Google 30,000 (though only for the .com domains). I was reading the wrong graph on Alexia. But my point stands.