Hawt Linkage. Discuss, if you like; there is but one reason why I'm posting this.

Wroth Yakslapper

*Sniggers*

From the official updates page.

Update Page Wrote:Update – Thursday, August 11

* Improved traders so that they maintain more stable prices and closer spreads between buy and sell prices.

* Improved traders so that traders from all regions (America, Europe, and Korea) now buy and sell from the same stock and charge the same prices.

I mentioned, in the beginning of my Epic 50 report, that I was taking a break from a different game, one with slightly more...agressive Babylonians. It's an astonishingly fun and interesting game, and so I thought I'd share a few things with y'all.

What has come before is more or less unimportant, save that I'm America, and my goal is (I discover halfway through the game) to conquer the world (apparently unclicked most of the victory conditions...). This is ok, because I've been having gigantic naval wars with the entire world since about 1400 AD, which I'm winning solely because it's destroyers vs. frigates, and I've got the destroyers.

Just before the screenshot I am about to show you, I had a lengthy war with my neighbors, the Aztecs, which ended in their destruction, and a far less lengthy war with my neighbors, the Mayans, which ended in THEIR destruction. I have worked my way across the Atlantic and have invaded Scandanavia, where I am fighting Babylon for possession of the former Viking homeland.

Babylon, as it turns out, is having none of this:



Also there are about 100 more guys in Stockholm, plus random 20 or 50 man stacks of Spanish and Babylonian troops past that.

Now, that's a lot of guys. I have 97 bombers and some arty sitting around, and that helps a lot, but it still takes me about 10 turns of solid blasting to wear down Babylon's enormous stacks (Babylon has over 500 infantry at one point). At this point, I declare peace on the Hittites and Mongols, secure RoPs, and blitz through Spanish Europe.

About the time I finish that and start slogging through Babylon, I pick up modern armor. And it's a good thing I did, because, well, ok. Maybe, in the past, you thought you had a giant war with the AI. Maybe you even thought that me blowing hundreds of Babylonians and Spanish sky high was a pretty impressive war.

Let me assure you that, having witnessed the AI RoP Rape to end all RoP Rapes, I may definitively say that you are wrong.

Behold, the Hittite Army:



Not counting the arty or the 30 or so guys that took down some other stuff, that's 835 Hittites right there. Weighting down my shift key, that took about 15 minutes to move all those guys.

In the interests of fair disclosure, let me note that I DO also have 4 mech inf armies and on order of 12 modern armor armies on this continent, but they're, you know, on the other side of the Hittite Empire. Also 78 bombers and 10 F-15s. So I feel reasonably ok about the whole thing.

But wow.

We all have one, a cutscene that should be quite severe and serious, but turned into something akin a comedy due to an unintentional feature of the game engine, poor voice acting, or some other variable. What's yours?

Mine has to be the final Riverside Province cutscene. We barely scraped to the bridge alive, triggering the cutscene.

First of all; Bledri, my pet, managed an Wile E. Coyote moment as he made it onto the bridge three seconds after it dropped. I scrambled for the print screen key as his little paws trod thin air just to return to my side, but was too slow, alas.

Then it turned out that some of the White Mantle made it across the bridge before Bledri, and proceeded to spend the rest of the cutscene hacking chunks out of one of the party members (fortunately not me) while we had that big ol' chinwag with Evennia. It was hilarious. Had it not been for cutscene invulnerability, he would have died seven times over. I half expected someone in the cutscene to turn to the White Mantle and yell "Hey, will you knock it off!? We're trying to discuss your downfall here!"

Yesterday I started a new character, Me/R Weira Lourdes (So called because I wanted her at the extreme right of the character selection screen, meh) and the time comes after completing every single possible quest available (Including the taster quests for other professions), I'm left with Across the Wall.

So I put out the usual PuG request and get landed with a dainty li'l E/Me. We head to the gate, pop over, and start mashing Oakhearts on our way to Ben Wolfson. We get there in one piece, I pick up Wolfson and start heading back down via the lake route (same way we came in).

One green dot on the compass isn't following me. With mounting dread, I turn around to see what my little pyromancer was doing. She was staring at the Charr warband with interest. I could tell what was going to happen.

One Fire Storm later, and she's got a whole bunch of Charr smashing her. I know from experience that neither I nor my pet can take on a warband of that size (Rurik 'forgot' to follow me on Charr at the Gate). Yet, gosh darn it, I'm such a nice guy that I try my best to make sure she gets out of there alive.

Splat, crunch, snap, I'm dead on the floor. I res at the shrine and try my best to make it back to the area in a desperate effort to make the best out of a horrid situation. The ele dies when I'm about half way there.

Her complaint? 'Stupid NPCs.' That's right. She blamed Wolfson for not killing the Charr pack, oblivious to the fact that he can't, and that's the whole reason as to why he's stuck there.

But I can't help but think, who was the dumbest: Her for tripping a warband, or me for not getting my hide out of there when I had the chance?

Edit: Corrected starting date

Hi,

I'm slightly ill at the moment: Too ill to do something useful, but not ill enough not to be bored. So I decided to take some statistics about the Epics tournament. I don't think we'll make it to Epic 100 with Civ 3, so Epic 50 looks like a good enough jubilee to make a small retrospect.

The first Epic was opened on May 20, 2002, over three years ago! From all of the 50 Epics, 37 were scored, and 13 unscored. Sirian has been the main driving force of the tournament, sponsoring 37 Epics. T-hawk sponsored 5, Arathorn 2, and Rowain deWolf, Charis, Griselda, bihary, microbe and Kodi one each.

How many players have played the Epics is not known, but 104 different players reported about their games, were they be victory, loss, or unfinished. All in all, 483 games were reported. Here's a list of the most active players, not listing those with less than 5 reports:

43: Kylearan
25: Sirian
23: T-hawk
18: Sulla, Jabah
15: Dwip
14: Jester, Urugharakh, Grimjack
12: Cyrene, Griselda
11: falsfire
10: Sirp, Rowain deWolf, Jaxom
9: Smegged
8: Iteean, JMB, DogBoy, Charis, Bam-Bam
7: Hotrod, KingBob
6: mucluc, Sir Bugsy
5: JJ, cheshire cat, snaproll, speaker, 6thGenTexan, Dark Savant, LKendter, Justus II

(Er...who's that crazy guy with apparently Too Much Time On His Hands who alone is responsible for about 9% of all reports? Maybe someone should tell him to Get A Life... )

The game with the most participants was Epic 18: Potluck Duet ( 24 ) followed by Epic 24: Speed Racer ( 20 ), Epic 31: Potluck Brunch ( 19 ) and Epic 14: Alexander the Great/Always War ( 18 ). The Epics with the lowest number of players were Epic 23: Prince of Persia ( 3 ), Epic 49: Domination Dilemma ( 3 ), Epic 41: Balance of Power ( 4 ) and Epic 26: Mystery Meatlof ( 4 ). Average participation per Epic was 9,66 players. Average fun factor was somewhere between High and Very High.


Let's see where this will go from Epic 50 on onward, and how any tournament Civ 4 might spawn will fare. For me, it has been a lot of fun!

-Kylearan

Sure we've all thought about it, and sometimes being the ruler isn't as exciting as what could actually be happening on the frontlines in the battle field of the Orion Universe.

So I've taken it upon myself to fan-create a Table Top, Pen & Paper Role-Playing game. It is based loosely on the Tri-Stat system and functions mainly on d12's.

As of right now I've done the rules for Basic Hand-to-Hand combat and the Races. but I'm currently working on Ship-to-Ship combat as well as Ship Types, Planet Types and Planet Sizes.

Obviously the MoO Universe has alot of explore from the adventure's point of view and being able to create a unique party makes things that much more interesting.

The idea originaly hit me when I was playing MoO2 a few years ago and I noticed that the Leaders you hire, are alot like your little party of Hero's who Help maintain planets, or attack enemies.

Obviously this game focuses more on exploration and adventure then taking over the universe as the PC Game does.

People may be asking why I decided to set it in Masters of Orion 2 Period. One it is personaly my favorite game (MoO3 really disappointed me although it had alot of good story ideas). It also is after the Dark Age of the universe (MoO1) And during a time of Galactic Renaissance so to speak (New Races emerging and old races evolving).

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Also to those who want to keep up with how the progress of the game goes I've created a blog for the game so please feel free to visit it

'Master of Orion - The Role-Playing Game' Game Status Blog

And on another note please visit Arioch's Page to see some of the art I'll be using. Arioch's Gallery. Also don't forget to view his web comic Outsider. It's been a big source of inspiration as far as the feel of the game.

Arioch
Outsider Webcomic

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A bit of teaser really for the alpha release of the Master of Orion RPG. so tada, the Offical Character Sheet.

Nothing too fancy as of yet but it really is something I feel proud of.

Enjoy

Character Sheet

Ship Sheet

Note: the webspace I am using is currently Geocities so if your having problems downloading the character sheet drag and drop the link into your address bar.

If you Still have problems let me know and I will try to work something out.

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But I would like a little feedback from the Community.

- Possible Ship/Planet schematics or designs would be most helpful

- Fanart and In Game art, I haven't been able to take in game screen shots of MoO2 (ala the Print Screen > Paint Method). So anything would be great!

-As well as any Feed back and/or encouragement.

If your interested in Helping please let me know.


Thank you all in Advance
-Akito Yagami-

Well, it looks like we might have some new players' reports for this one, so here's a brief explanation-

The game closes today- Monday, August 1. If you've completed the game and the report, you can post it (or a link to it) in reply to this thread.

If you haven't completed the game, you have until tonight to finish playing. If you're not done, save your game and make a note of the date. That date will be your "official" end date for scoring purposes.

To be eligible for scoring, you will need to post a report that includes at least the minimum information needed for scoring by tomorrow- Tuesday, August 2. Some people do post smaller, "placeholder" reports with just barebones scoring information, then post a more detailed report later.

Also, in case anyone's out there deleting save files right now, remember to save your 1500 AD save. You don't need to do anything with it at this exact moment, except make sure not to delete it. Thanks.

Well, enough talk- on to the wine , women , and song !

-Griselda

Spatha. This is one nasty saw. Just dropped this morning outside of Ironmine - Max dmg with a couple of mods too



KoP

Blizz is acting crazy again.

Battle.net

Some interesting screenshots, including what looks like a new world event (this chick looks familiar...), and some nice shots of the big guy in Tristram.

Also, from a quick search of the reliable B.net forums, there is a translation information from a Taiwanese site that one could interpret as the death of oskills.

Patch could occur as soon as Monday, given that the D2 servers will be down for about four hours.

That's about as much as I could find in 5 minutes worth of search.