srmalloy

Ahhh, yes, the entertainment of flying around Peregrine Island with my AR/En Blaster using Boost Range and Snipe on the Nemesis Warhulks... First shot, they'd just stand there, as if they had no clue why they'd just taken damage. Second shot, they take off at a run, scuttling around like a cockroach as I follow them taking shots as Snipe recharged until they lock up and explode. Or standing up on the edge of the plaza near Imperious and using Boost Range, Build Up, and LRM to wake up the Cimeroran Traitors in the alley between the building and the cliff on the other side of the staircase up... and then gunning down any survivors as they try to charge up several flights of stairs to get to me.

'Overdose on a power' reminds me of the old 'wolf farm' days, when the Devices Blaster would be setting up Trip Mine after Trip Mine in the shipping container while the Tanker was gathering up all the wolves on the map and bringing them back on the container... and hovering too close when the Blaster dived down to get 'in range' and trigger all the mines, resulting in the client burping and throwing up a "Too many effects to render" pop-up window. Now that's overdosing on a power.

Actually, it's indeterminate; it only takes one to actually change the lightbulb, but you never know how many will show up and shoot the previous one so they can take the credit for it.

Incidentally, the swordfish is green and little Eunice cannot paint the small overstuffed chair. The word is "albatross." Paint the chair red. Immediately.

They didn't want to give anyone fuchsia shock.

And that, I think, is something that the devs have done well with CoX. By making all the recipes "world drop", they eliminated one of the 'justifications' for botting in other games -- farming a 'boss' or 'elite' mob to get the rare drop(s) that you can only get from that mob.

That could be due to either it becoming much easier to make inf, so that they're getting 'overstocked' and trying to dump it, or the demand has cut back, again causing overstock. It was funny in Aion watching the RMT stores that would park out in front of the building where the broker and warehouse was in the prime city for each side as the price of a million kinah slid from the original price of about $10 down to $2, then rebound about halfway.

Or Scrappers who six-slotted their attacks for damage, because they'd taken Focused Accuracy and slotted that to be able to run it continuously, getting all their accuracy from one power, rather than having to slot each attack separately.

I ran into the gross variance in "intelligence" of the Vahz mobs back shortly after the game's release. I'd finally gotten my AR/En Blaster her Snipe attack, and I'd joined a group that was doing a Vahz door mission in Steel Canyon. It was rough going; we had several near-wipes from all of the untyped damage as the Abominations tried to steamroller us. So when we had cleared the mobs from one of the rooms that had an overhanging balcony and a long corridor heading out from it, we hesitated before aggroing the mass of Abominations (no Reapers or Mortificators, just Abominations) at the far end of the corridor.

I volunteered to pull one/several, figuring that, with Snipe, I would be far enough away to limit the number of Abominations that would aggro. So I lined up on one, popped Build up, then Snipe... Abomination goes down. None of the rest notice. Okay, as a pull that was kind of lame, but... We try again. Build Up... Snipe... Abomination goes down. Still no reaction. One more time, and after the third Abomination drops without any sign of reaction from the rest of them, the Scrapper says "This is boring" and charges the Abominations, followed by most of the rest of the team. Predictably, Boring Lad is the first one to hit the floor on our team, but we finally clear the intersection.

Since then, though, when I can do it, it's always been my policy to take out the brains of the spawns and let the rest reset and go dumb before trying to take them.

I'm surprised that people haven't noticed the additional parts connected with that ruling -- it's legal to exchange game currency for real currency, unless the currency is from an onling gambling company... unless you use "bots or macros" to 'earn' the currency (and good luck at policing that one). But the point that was most telling is that the Korean government has enacted a 10% VAT on all such transactions -- I suspect that the motive behind the decision may be motivated more by Korea wanting to get a cut of what is believed to be close to a trillion dollars of transactions each year than it was by the merits of the defendants' arguments. (see the article on playnoevil.)

Actually, HESH (aka 'HEP') rounds do not "penetrate" armor; the round flattens against the target and detonates, causing shockwaves through the armor that reflect when they hit the inner surface of the armor, creating an interference pattern that spalls fragments off the inner surface of the armor. Because of this, spaced or composite armor significantly reduces the effectiveness of HESH warheads, and the use of Kevlar spall liners further reduces their utility. Their primary use in modern warfare is against fortifications, as HESH rounds rely on spin stabilization in flight, which means they can't be fired from the modern smoothbore tank guns.

Not always; head south from PI, and you'll eventually be zoned into the north end of Talos.

Add the VP-70-M, the military version, which is burst-capable.
And the Mauser M712 Schnellfeuer, a select-fire version of the C96 "broomhandle" Mauser first produced in 1932, and similar select-fire variants produced several years earlier by the Spanish arms companies Beistegui Hermanos and Astra (Mauser began production of the M712 when they discovered Astra was selling more 'Mausers' than Mauser was).

More accurately, the difference between all semiautomatic and full-automatic actions is that the semi-automatic action does not have a way to keep the 'hook' retracted even if you keep the trigger pulled back. A select-fire weapon will have a dial or lever that allows you to select whether or not the hammer is released at the end of the action cycle.

But not all submachine guns work that way. Pure-blowback weapons can be fundamentally different. Take the German MP-40, which fired from an open bolt -- you draw back the bolt to **** the weapon, and pulling the trigger releases the bolt, which moves forward, strips a round out of the magazine, chambers it, and fires it with the fixed firing pin on the front face of the bolt -- if the bolt goes forward and there is a loaded magazine in the weapon, it will fire. This type of design is where the cliché of dropping a submachine gun and having it go off, spraying bullets everywhere came from; only a wedge that fits a notch in the bottom of the bolt (pulling the trigger draws back the wedge) and a notch that the cocking lever can be hooked into (the 'safety') keep the weapon from firing once cocked. They're simple to make -- most of the MP-40 could be made from metal stampings -- but they require more attention to prevent accidents. Which isn't really a consideration if what you need is maximum production of a reasonably-effective weapon during a war.

Equally funny is the movie cliché of jamming the muzzle of the pistol into someone's back/side/armpit -- with most semiautomatics, doing that will push the action back a little, which will prevent the weapon from firing.

Tell that to Magnum Research, the company that manufactures the Desert Eagle. They make the Desert Eagle in a number of finishes: Standard Black, Polished and Blued, Black Chrome, Matte Chrome, Brushed Chrome, Polished Chrome, Satin Nickel, Bright Nickel, 24 Carat Gold, Titanium Gold, Titanium Carbon Nitride, and Titanium Gold Tiger Stripe. Except for Standard Black and Black Chrome, the first eight finishes are also available with 24K gold appointments (pictures showing them are here, and yes, the ones incorporating gold or titanium look like you'd expect to find the owner fondling the gun rather than shooting it).

Double-action semiautomatics give the shooter a 'second chance' when a round fails to fire -- they can pull the trigger again to **** and drop the hammer; single-action semiautomatics with an external hammer can be recocked and fired again, but that generally takes both hands. Hammerless or internal-hammer weapons don't have that option, falling back to the same recourse as the others when the second try proves the round to be a dud -- cycle the action to eject the round and chamber a new one.

A rotating bolt will have lugs that lock against matching lugs in the receiver; this allows a cartridge of higher power to be fired without requiring higher-strength springs to control the bolt. Because of the tight tolerances involved, rotating-bolt actions are more sensitive to contamination. Most pistol ammunition isn't powerful enough to require a rotating-bolt action.

They both use gas; when you fire the cartridge, the expanding gases push the bullet forward and the shell casing backward. Because the casing is seated against the breech, it pushes the breech back; recoil-operated actions use that force directly. Gas-operated actions bleed off some of the expanding gas farther down the barrel to drive a piston that mechanically works the action. Because they rely on a port in the barrel, they are sensitive to fouling -- one of the things that made the M-16 so reviled in Vietnam was that the US military changed the propellant for the rounds to one that caused much greater fouling in the barrel, which would block the gas port and stop the action from cycling.

That depends on the gun designer; some weapons lock open when the slider in the clip (the plate in the clip that pushes the rounds up) pushes up to obstruct the mechanism, others have a stop on the frame that gets pushed up by the slider. The ones held open by the clip slider, obviously, close the action when you draw the empty clip. The ones held open by a frame stop can either close automatically when you put in a new clip (chambering the top round), or require a manual release.

Semi-automatic designs will **** the striker either when the action reaches full recoil or when it returns to battery -- the M1911, for example, ***** the hammer as the slide recoils, while the P-08 Luger ***** the striker as the recoil action completes, loading the new round. Typically, weapons that **** the striker during the completion of the recoil cannot be recocked without ejecting the round in the chamber.

Besides the Webley-Fosbury, there was the Mateba Autorevolver, which was a recoil-operated revolver, and the commercial failure of the Dardick magazine-fed revolvers, which fed triangular cartridges from a magazine into a cylinder with open chambers (allowing the rounds to be fed sideways into the chamber) whose open side was closed by the weapon's frame as the cylinder rotated.

(the profanity filter is working pointlessly overtime in this thread...)

The P-08 Luger uses the toggle-lock action invented by Hugo Borchardt. In the design, the breech block slides in the receiver; the back of the breech block attaches to a two-piece toggle hinged to the back of the receiver. At its full-forward position, the toggle parts are aligned with the breech block, allowing the mounting pins to carry the recoil force to the receiver, which recoils backwards as a unit. As the receiver, breech, and toggle move backwards, lugs on the toggle strike angled plates at the back of the frame, pushing the toggle joint up and 'breaking' the toggle, allowing the breech block to recoil backwards, opening the breech and withdrawing the spent cartridge. The 'break' of the toggle stretches a spring running down the back of the grip, whose force pulls the toggle back down as the receiver runs forward, stripping a new round from the clip into the receiver.

The P-08 design suffers from a design flaw; the firing pin is released through the action of multiple levers on the left side of the weapon; the slide containing the firing pin is exposed, making the weapon vulnerable to misfires if the mechanism is not kept clean.

Interdenominational travel? Is that something like getting on the plane as a Protestant, but being Catholic when you debark? Or is it just a way of taking you between, say, a Buddhist temple and a Lutheran church?

At least if the telescope is at any practical point on the ground; to have a horizon distance of 3,000 miles, an observer needs to be around 1,100 miles up, which would make hacking a spy satellite and its cameras the more effective way to go.

But it's not just a question of distance -- point even a cheap telescope into the sky and you can see things that are millions of light-years away. It's a question of resolution -- at 3,000 miles, how far apart do two objects need to be before you can distinguish them? That will determine what the quality of your image is going to be, not how far you can see with the telescope.

Any mission will do this, including TFs. It's not difficult to get missions where you're getting triple credit (two Defeat N [group] and a door mission against that group), but I've never managed a quad-credit.

That's backwards, actually; it rises in the SSE and sets in the NNW; I have several screenshots of this from shortly after Peregrine Island became accessible -- the ferry at Peregrine Island gives you an ideal spot to watch the moon setting across the water.

It depends; that image clearly shows a 'stock' box of building unioned with another 'stock' box of building. There are still some places in Founder's Falls (the tunnels near the Natural contact store) where you can see that the buildings actually extend down through the 'ground', to prevent gaps in the terrain (not always successfully; there used to be spots in FF where there were gaps that the NPC mobs could use to get under the geometry (and the pathing algorithm would cause them to run away and jump down one of them, then run to another to jump back up to come after you). But in that example, I expect that the window, the wall above and below it, and the top and bottom of the recess all extend polygons back into the 'hidden' area, making the clipping algorithm go into subdivision to render the scene, causing some additional rendering load.

CoV graphics lag comes from models with higher polygon counts than CoH, and overlapping surfaces where the near surface does not completely obscure the far surface (ex: grates on the floor in Grandville, or the webbing in the Tangle)[/QUOTE]
There are also supposed to be a significant number of the Arachnos buildings in Grandville that have buildings like the ones in the center of Cap inside them, as if the devs built the zone using 'stock' buildings, then went back and put the Arachnos buildings over them like shells, then neglected to remove the now-hidden buildings -- so the renderer has to process each polygon of the inner building, then do the subdivision loop to clip them against the Arachnos shell, before rendering the scene, which causes slowdowns, over and above the grate-masking load.

It's the white stuff we see about one winter in four when we look out to the east, up on the tops of the Laguna Mountains.

Although I admit that I do have a set of chains for my car, having bought them in Ramona many years back in order to be allowed up past Santa Ysabel to Julian; I'd owned a set of chains before that, having bought a set in Redding in 1983 when I was driving up to Portland for a science-fiction convention, but since all we got on the way up was blinding rain, and they'd already ploughed the roads by the time we drove back, I returned them unopened to the store I'd bought them from.