I can't believe Cuda JR is 20 years old! Seems like yesterday when we all met up in Galveston

I'm using 85.91Zen

Ooops, forgot to ask my main question. For things like Veteran Assault where you need 15 global hours and 20 kills in 1 round...when does it count each criteria?I thought that if at anytime you scored 20 kills in one round, you would have immediately gotten the badge when you hit 15 hours, but it doesn't seem to be this way. So I'm wondering if you have to get the global hours first and then get the second criteria of X number of kills or whatever. I just got the 25 hours as squadleader and squad member for Valorious Unit, but didn't get the badge. Same for the Distinguished Service ribbon, I believe I had to play a round to get the 15 teamscore. Can anyone confirm if you have to get the global hours first? I'm pretty sure thats the way its counted, but if anyone knows for sure I'd appreciate it. Zen

[Originally posted by TX-EcoDragon:]

quote:Originally posted by TX-EcoDragon:Man. . . this is pretty lame:http://media.putfile.com/pwnage5580S!TX-EcoDragonBlack 1TX-Squadron XO

Yep, pretty lame indeed. This is one of the overall reasons I don't play FPS games like I used to, cheating like that kills the game. TeamFortressClassic was a great game but ruined by hacks. Sad really, the game play was awesome. Nice to see you back Copper, and thanks for the recommendation on the map. I found a server with long rounds that seems pretty good, the player count is set low and for the most part its been pretty cool, though the admins have a very hands on boot mentality which leads to plenty of innappropriate kicks. I got booted for stealing an enemy vehicle, when in fact I was in my own. To them it appeared as though I was leaving the enemy uncap base and I guess they thought I was on the other team. Another time I got booted for flying a helicopter and really can't figure out why...again I think I got a glimpse of the kick message, which was something about stealing an aircraft, though I was MEC and picked up the Mi28 fair and square, I got kicked anyway. They seem to be a little trigger happy on the admin kick, but not always I guess. Still, I think long term the server might have some advantages. Early yesterday I realized I almost had a team score of 45 just as the map ended...missed a ribbon by 2 points, but more than likely I'll be back to try again. I can't remember the name of the server, but I'll post it when I get a chance. Hopefully I'll get the basic engineer badge someday, its the only basic badge I need.Zen

Scuba,I also disabled auto reload and viola!, I was instantly hitting twice as often with the ATG than before, though I have to make a concious effort to reload after reach shot. I've already had several embarrasing instances of popping up, taking aim at a maurading tank only to hear the empty click, then being gifted with a nice 15 second spawn delay to consider that I forgot to reload the rocket. I think I've also set record heights in vaulting death after being hit with the tanks main gun round. Still, I think it's worth the small hitch in switchology, with practice reloading on your own should become second nature and with the proliferation of armored vehicles in BF2, being able to hit consistently is very important. I'm still not having any luck getting my basic engineer badge. I'm about to give up, its getting too frustrating looking for repair points. I did get the veteran engineer combat badge in only 45 minutes of playing after reaching the required 15 global hours...26 kills on the same map which was great. Unfortunately I've spent over 6 hours trying to get the veteran assault badge and keep getting 19 kills in a round, but since you need 20 I can't seem to get that dang badge either. Thats really starting to tick me off, it seems when using the assault kit I am doomed to bad luck. Zen

Eco, I guess thats the way I'll have to go then, I can't seem to get it any other way. Scuba, I have the same problem with the AT launcher too, but not on every shot. Sometimes it stays up and sometimes not. I read you can hold the one of the mouse buttons down to keep the scope engaged, but I haven't seen that work 100% so far. Could be that sometimes I am more fixated on the target than keeping the mouse button depressed, so tonight I'm going to test that out. Zen

Copper, have any suggestions on getting the 5 repair points in 1 round? For the life of me I can't seem to get it, I repair repair repair like crazy but maybe get 1 or 2 points a round. I've tried lurking around my side's assets and waiting til someone blows them up but that only gets a point or two at best, I've tried the Euromaps and driving around as a tank with the wrench out or driving behind tanks in a buggy...I hear lots of repair noises but never seem to get any points. I've repaired entire bridges and probably a hundred unmanned vehicles and crewed vehicles that are on fire but repaired before they explode. The happy crews drive off with a wave and a thanks, but I'm left holding a wrench and no points. I thought this would be an easy one, but really, it seems like no matter how much I repair someone I just don't get credit. Zen

As a matter of fact I started flying the chopper last night and amazingly enough it didn't seem to hard. I could fly it just fine, but hitting a tank with rockets was another matter entirely. Today got home from work to practice a bit more and to my surprise I still continued to do well. I even managed to make 8-9 kills with rockets and decided that I simply love the Mi28. I'd like to see TX able to field 3 or 4 experten pilots for jets and choppers, I think if we can do that and keep them in the air, we will be able to prevent getting constantly spawn killed as it so often seems to happen. I'm going to keep practicing but will be happy to gun for you anytime...it's a low stress high enjoyment crew position :)PS I'll be on in about 90 minutes, or 18:30 PST (20:30 CST)Zen

[BF2 addict]Medals, I need more medals. GIVE THEM TO ME    [/BF2 addict]Zen

One of the Euroforces maps is called Operation Smokescreen and just like Gunslinger mentioned, it has gaggles of tanks running around. The first time I played the map my tanker ferocity came out in force because I rolled out in a LeClerc thinking I'll do some damage, only to be confronted by a roaming horde of FIVE T90's! I got hammered. And then hammered again. And again and again lol. Talk about getting the tank commander aggression peaked, even while being humiliated like a n00b I was praising their teamwork-because thats the way armor should be employed. Unfortunately my side lost because these guys (correctly) stayed in a group, kept themselves mutally repaired and pretty much mowed everyone down because our team kept coming as singles instead of a large group. I never could get anyone to wing up. I had a blast though, I've come to enjoy the armor aspect of BF2 quite a bit even as arcade as they are. I guess no one would want to play against the US Abrams if it were modelled correctly because in real life only western MBT's can fight with it...and PLA/MEC has nothing to compare.So there definately are pure armor based maps, though they are clearly in the minority because apparently most people just like to gun each other down mano y mano. Nothing wrong with that, but the large armor concept is imho very cool and I wish there was more of it available in game. Speaking of gaggles, I've noticed on several maps that a mass armor attack can and does win the objective more often than not. The key is to get a group of guys *cough cough--TXers* to form up with the armor suppressing the objective and a few foot guys to brave the fire and take the checkpoint. It's been done to me more than once and we've pulled it together and done it to the other side too. Devastingly effective when the armor is employed right. That brings up a good point about mass in general in BF2...the best way to win is just like real world tactics which is to hit an objective in force. Last night on Venuto's favorite Strike at Karkand, we made a tremendous impact by going out as a group of 4-5 infantry. We basically took every checkpoint we went after and had some furious battles at the Hotel that they were doing everything possible to defend, but we won. The action was fast and furious but we stayed together as a group and put the smack down. I believe once again we won every map we played. What I see too often is stragglers attempting to take a defended objective without proper support, armor rolling in too close and getting taken out by ATG's (which is a favorite tactic of ours on defense, using mass ATG from many positions) and way way way too many snipers trying to be hero's. If we get 4-5 guys working as a unit, the results are impressive and really hits a nice military vibe with me. I think we are refining things even now to where we tend to take a distribution of kits so we can operate more effectively against whatever the enemy has, which is another aspect of the game I really like. On Karkand as USMC we invariably do a flanking move and take out the MEC rear checkpoint that has their arty and UAV/radar support. Spec ops keeps C4ing the assets, we have one guy in a tank to cover the road, a medic, support and at least one ATG. The combination is extremely effective, I don't think we've lost that map yet when working as a team. On the opposite side of mass, I think that a pair of TXer's can have a dramatic influence on the entire game once the battle on Karkand stabilizes into a slugfest at the trainwreck objective. Last night Ven and I were on early playing as MEC. The USMC had taken virtually every objective and we were down 180 to 120 something. It looked like a certain loss for the MEC, but we set out on foot to flank the trainwreck and hit the rear areas. Sure enough, none of them were defended and we started to capture points all over the USMC backside. We ran into stragglers here and there but didn't have a problem taking them out and pretty soon the USMC had to divert forces from the massive battle at the bridge to take the checkpoints back. We basically hopped from objective to objective on foot and kept taking enough of them that we won the battle by just a couple of tickets...sounds simple but it was a real challenge and extremely intense. The moral here is that aggressive moves are what wins maps...when things are tough, form up and try to hit something. It might seem pointless after being spawn camped 10 times in a row or feeling like you are facing overwhelming odds, but often enough you can break out, take some objectives and destabilize the center of mass enough to allow your forces to regroup and mass up for their own counter offensive. 2 guys really can make that big of a difference even on a large server. I also found out last night how effective the assault class is. I decided to try it out and was really impressed at how easy it was to kill the enemy and so have revised my opinion on what I thought was a fairly ineffective kit. It's actually great for infantry to infantry combat, but I still feel silly when a tank rolls by and I have nothing but harsh language to fight it with. Last night was another intense and well excuted round of BF2...I really enjoyed the TX fighting spirit being out in full force and just as we have shown through our long history together, we definately socked it to the other side yesterday. Salute to each of you for outstanding teamwork. See you guys Sunday night when I get back.  Zen

Installing Xfire is one way that makes it easy to join a game without having to ask all the usual questions and search for the server, but there's always TS. You can find us roaming around in the BF2 channel :)Zen

Forgot to add, we will probably soon see EmuDragon and ScubaSteve adding to the mayhemZen

Rahman and I must have spent 14-18 hours over the weekend playing, particularly Friday and Saturday night where we stayed up til 4am CST. I don't know what it is about this game, but I haven't had this much fun in a FPS since probably Tribes 2 back in 2000.

What surprises me is how significant actual teamwork is, even on a small scale with 2 or 3 people on comms. The impact that Rah and I had when working together with 1 or 2 other random players that joined our squad was amazing...effectively we won about 90% of the maps by sticking to simple plans and choosing our objectives carefully.

During this time our custom created TX squad was number one in points virtually every map and all our in game members scored in the top 4-5 spots consistently. Very cool was that after a few maps progressed and we starting showing the effectiveness of our tactics, whoever was commander of our side starting giving us priority of assets... everytime I requested UAV support I got it, artillery was at my command and the commander seemed to make every effort to keep us happy with supply drops.

One of the guys that had randomly joined us without being on comms turned out to be a great player. Having no communication with the guy at all, I noticed that he stuck to me like glue and had a natural sense of teamwork. I was pretty impressed with him because we all worked so well together, after a couple more maps Rah invited him onto TS, where we then proceeded to anhiliate the other team in fine style.

His name is Venuto, if you have Xfire installed look him up and add him, he's got an awesome teamwork attitude. The 3 of us pretty much owned everyone for the rest of the night, except one map where Rah sat out and I was 5 minutes late spawning. I had been thinking that maybe our success that evening was luck of the draw...maybe our team just had better players than the other and thats why we were winning so much, but this particular map changed my opinion.

We got butchered. I must have died 20 times in a row trying to spawn at various bases and Ven didn't have much luck either. It was tough, but thankfully the map ended quickly to the trumpet of our sides stunning humiliation. Mildy annoyed at the sudden break in our winning streak, we all came back in, spawned together and moved out as a unit...and for the rest of the night we crushed the other team til 4am when we were all too fatigued to continue.

It was an eye opening experience for me...I had thought the other team was maybe just having a bad night, maybe our side had the better players but the success we had when working as a squad vs what happened when we didn't was like night and day...and against the exact same opposing team members. We really did seem to have a tremendous effect on the flow of the entire game.

All in all a satisfying weekend of BF2 for me. I learned a few new tricks, got some medals and had a blast teaming up with Rah in classic TX style. We met a good player who comes on comms with us and worked out the basics of a 3 man strike team that can work major damage on the enemy. I couldn't be happier with the way things went.

Look for Venuto on TS this week, he's a good guy from Brooklyn and will most certainly be on comms looking for a wingman.


See you guys soon...damn, this game rocks!




 


Zen

Welcome back Gun!I'll have time to do some RO if you like this week, but Rah and I have been hitting the full version of BF2 pretty hard. I'm going to try and make SGT this week before the beloved and I go to Mexico for the weekend.Zen

Actually yes, there are around a hundred servers or more, most of them pretty well populated. I never have a hard time finding a 20-30 of 32 player server, so finding action is pretty easy. It's a little difficult to tell what kind of map style is being hosted, some are big for tanks and some are infantry only, so the only thing you can do is memorize which map is what style. Also, not all classes are available everytime you play. Sometimes you can be a sniper in one server but not on another hosting identical maps. To me thats very annoying, sometimes I am in the mood for one kind of class and have to hunt server to server to find open slots or being able to use a certain at all. Zen