JediMaster

Correlation does not imply causation.

To be fair, you don't need to be online with Steam to use it. I've played Steam games on my laptop with no internet plenty of times. Now certain games require online connections at all times even without MP, which is annoying at best, but Steam and many other launchers like Epic do not require it all the time.

DCS and Il-2/ROF both have the same setup--you can fly in any mission with any plane as an AI, but you need to own it to get in the cockpit. DCS of course requires you to own a map to fly in it period, while Il-2 allows you to fly on any map if it's someone else's server, but you can't host a flight on it or fly it offline if you don't own it. The only issue is if there are only a few flyables and you own none of them.

You needn't be forced to takeoff and land if the server and/or game doesn't take away the option for air starts/exits.

It only counts as a seaplane if it can take off from the sea. Any plane can land there...once.

Content, yes. But it's like making new Star Trek episodes using the same sets, costumes, and effects from the 60s today...the engine needs updating. The uninterruptible animations, the clunky interface and movement, so many things that haven't changed since OFP in 2001. I wish someone could take all the Arma content and AI and settings and models and port them into CoD or BF or something like that. I love their graphics and feel but despise their gameplay.

When they are facing away from me, I come up behind them, fire and hit them once and they spin and shoot me in the head dead with one bullet before I can fire a 2nd shot... I don't know what else to call it. Someone had looked in the files and noted that the AI reaction time was about 250ms. Doesn't matter if they're pro bodyguards or meth heads or street thugs, 250ms. And on top of that after they react their aim is near perfect, they can always run while you can never do more than shuffle along, and they can go from moving 2x your speed to a dead halt and then fire with perfect accuracy at your head in that same 250ms. Compare that with how well Raven Shield did it and I'm quite puzzled.

Oddly enough, most of my models were Star Trek and not Star Wars. I had some smaller snap tite ones but always thought the capital ships in ST more worthy of the time. I built the Enterprise A and E, Defiant, Excelsior, Reliant, D7 (the ST 6 version in gray), and back in HS I built a Vor'cha in all metallic green for my HS girlfriend who was a huge ST fan. She actually had all the episodes up to that time on VHS.

I got the series on DVD in a bin at Walmart maybe over a decade ago. Totally worth the $10 or whatever it was.

No, it never did that to me, but then I never flew more than 90 mins in a session so I don't know if the issue was reserved for those who were far heavier users than I. I finally stopped because the rubberized plastic coating on the stick deteriorated and became like gum. You could see my fingerprints in it, my hand would stick to it, and it just became nasty to hold. Still worked ok beyond that and the eternally spiking rudder pot that required me disassembling and cleaning it every few months.

When you hit them with the lightsaber but it turns out the armor is saber-proof...

Yes! Tommy Thomas! Although his name was Francis, everyone called him Tommy. I don't know when he passed, he was already getting quite frail (1992 maybe?), but he was literally one of those people you never would have guessed was a war hero like that. However, I do totally see the "coolly and calmly" part. He seemed to be the type that would watch a volcano erupt next door and say "well, you don't see that everyday."

Personally I'd rate Pearl Harbor as a "round out the war" type of thing, like Doolittle's Raid. As the Japanese it's an unchallenging ground attack training sortie with live flak and as the USAAF it's suicide mission. When everything else has been handled, THEN doing it as a "and here's where it began" might be ok, but not to devote limited resources to in favor of things like Coral Sea or Iwo Jima or literally dozens of other spots

Not even DCS has that. It works one way only, where you can buy it on Steam and you can then use the key on the standalone version too, but ones bought there don't work on Steam. If they're not on Steam, they should still be on one like either GOG or Epic just for the exposure. Going it alone today gives you 100% of the revenue from a far smaller audience that will also grow more slowly. I've also had fewer issues updating games on Steam than most other services, so I'm not sure where the problem lies but I'd say although you can't prove a negative there's no proof those people wouldn't have the same or other issues if they weren't using Steam. In fact, I specifically bought Il-2: BoS a 2nd time on Steam so I could move to using it there after that launcher's horrid slow updating became too much to bear. To me it seems like a large number of people who dislike Steam don't like it because of one specific incident in the past, sometimes years and years back, that boils down to the equivalent of "after the hassle they gave me over returning that bad product I'll never go to Walmart again". Yet people usually DO wind up going back after some time. Steam is like any other big corporation. A small number of people have been screwed and hate it, while the vast majority see nothing different from multiple other companies and may find its ease of use and size of benefit rather than a detriment.

I'm totally blanking now on both his name and the name of the BB, but I met the man who ordered it aground (as the captain wasn't aboard) during the attack on Pearl Harbor so it wouldn't block the entrance or sink. It was 30 years ago in Miami, he went to the same church as my girlfriend at that time. She interviewed him for some school project and invited me along as I was flying AOTP and PAW at the time and she knew it! He was already quite old then, gave some back story on how he'd originally been learning to be an aviator but was grounded when he tore up a training seaplane.😬 Someone even portrayed him in Tora, Tora, Tora and had a couple of lines of dialogue, but they don't say his name there.

EA is a form of crowdfunding, as are preorders. It's all about your point of view as a wise old Jedi once said.

I've never been able to understand how the AI in 20 yr old sims can perform more ably than that in recent sims. I find myself cursing the AI in current sims all the time while in older sims it was usually more about the issues with wingmen specifically. Two things that always get me--First, not enough sense of self-preservation for AI. They will do really dangerous things to try to get you without regard to the likelihood of their safety, including having 5 at one time on your six all shooting and nearly colliding with each other like they're the only one there. Second, the fixation on human players if there's no objective or their objective if there is one without regard to other threats/targets/realities. Ignoring the escort shooting up your six so you can press the attack on that bomber? The aforementioned gaggle of planes on the six of a human as other AI are ignored totally? Flying straight, level, and stupid once in "RTB" mode? These two things do more to make the AI look like AI than a human pilot than anything else.

I think it should be important to have more planes than flyable planes. I'd rather have 6 flyable and 20 total AI than 10 flyable and that's all we see.

I loved my Logi G940 and was quite disappointed when they didn't opt to continue the line. The pedals were junk and the throttle was ok, but the stick was awesome especially when flying a helo!

Wow, some of you have definitely invested a lot more into your rigs than I could justify for mine! I've got an i7-12700k and RTX 3070 with 32GB, several SSDs, and Winwing HOTAS and MFG pedals.

I'll definitely pay attention to this one on release.

Yeah, it's only been a full decade since Arma 3, we have to give them more time! Sarcasm mode deactivated. They should have started full steam on 4 at the 5 year mark if they hadn't already. It's just ridiculous at this point.

I really like GHPC and hope MP comes along soon. That said, I will never understand the military obsession with acronyms. They will make the most convoluted tortured expressions to fit an acronym like they're all wannabe writers or poets or something. Especially when they're 6, 7, 8 letters long.

I haven't played RoN since Feb as I've been waiting for a significant update to the Terminator AI. I've got about 50 hrs in and I just can't deal with their ability to turn and shoot me between the eyes AFTER I get the drop on them and pump 3 bullets into them.

I'm still hoping the new Babylon 5 series will happen, but I've had my hopes dashed too many times since Memory of Shadows and Legend of the Rangers' ignominious collapses. If you missed the anti-Iraq stuff in the BSG reboot, I'm surprised.