EclipseDog

Hayia all. Just got back from my road trip hence my previous silence but I'll try to respond to everyone here and again when I next can as I may have to set out again frequently. Quoting Neorapsta: But then you have to factor into account that the BBC takes the most pesimistic views when it comes to human development, being they only take one side of things and it has to please the right sort of people. Fact is if you use the probability model I normally use, 0.02% of anything your measuring, ie.psychics, fortune tellers whatever. In this case, there would possibly be upto 400 million races in our Galaxy alone, or something around that area, can't be bothered to really go into minute details. You may well be right regarding BBC's objectivity or rather their lack thereof, Neo. However, I'm aware of the 'Formula for Advanced Life' that you are speaking of and saw yet another documentary, this time on Nova - which is a bit more objective, wherein a scientist explained all of the factors in their equation for advanced life. Sadly that formula suffers from the same lack of objectivity which the BBC has, only in its case it is from the opposite side of the argument. The formula takes into account all of the possible Galaxies x Star systems within each galaxy x Possible planets orbitting each star, etc. The formula did contain a factor for the unlikeliness for life to start and another for life to advance but even then it didn't accurately account for each in the equation and a few other negative modifiers, but it intentionally only included a few negative modifiers but a sleu of positive. However the formula left out completely most of the factors that led to life as we know it, such as having just the right type of minerals to create things that were building blocks in our ability to create ever better things. It also did not take into account things such as predation, food supplies, and other very essential categories in the advancement from simple life to complex and then later advanced sentience. There is a vast list of key ingredients to the end-product of a race of space travellers, or for that matter even a species that can even equal our own existance, that just are never taken into account by any of the scientists that are true believers in its possibility. If the best possible formula for our equals being out there somewhere only has a 0.000*1 % (The * because I can't remember the exact number of 0s before the 1 but that it was quite a few) chance of probability when you don't even take into account all of the things that could go wrong to prevent it, then the odds after taking those things into account would be so small that it is no wonder the scientists, who earn their living by proclaiming their field of study to be worth spending money on, would completely avoid using the true formula for life equal to our own. I'm going to give you an example of just how unlikely it is to find a race of space travellers or even a species capable of broadcasting or even receiving signals from across the emptiness of space. Imagine if you will that humanity never rose up on earth to become the dominant higher life form, but rather that snakes ruled the roost. It could have very well happened if they had been able to become a higher level predator over mankind's early ancestors, and as it is they exist nearly everywhere on earth including some places that are inhospitable to humanity. Now imagine that our brains or even a more advanced brain capability were given to them. Even though their brains were at our own current level or higher they would not have been able to build cities or travel even as far as the moon simply because of their body design. Some might attempt to counter that with an argument that snakes would grow the limbs necessary to do these things, however that growth just would not happen and wouldn't even be suggested unless the suggestor has done absolutely no study into how evolution works. Snakes used to have arms and legs just like most land animals, in fact certain species can still be found which have not quite fully lost the tiny bone spur which one upon a time would have been an upper limb bone. The reason they no longer have legs is that the species without legs were able to not only survive but rather actually thrived in the environments encounterred. Say a litter of seven babies are born and six had the standard limbs found commonly among animals, while the seventh had something wrong with it... say a leg bone wasn't strong enough to support its weight for instance. If it had stuck with attempting to walk 'normally' it would have died off due to hunger/thirst/predation early in life. Since snakes exist we know that their ancient ancestor learned to accomodate its disability by using a different mode of locomotion. Now this crawling or whatever animal has reached the reproductive stage of life... for evolution to work it had to have passed its genes off which means that it somehow was able to attract/ambush/whatever a mate during his/her breeding cycle. The catch is that one parent would have had to have had a fully functioning set of legs... this would have led to a gene clash between the gene leading to a fully functional limb and the other which contained the false limb. In order for the missing limb to have won out and been passed onto the second generation and then beyond that through all of the later generations then it would have had to have been a dominant trait that overpowerred the limbed genes of the other partners in the genetic chain. What this means is that even if you somehow managed to create a snake/lizard hybrid birth the odds of the offspring (and their offspring in turn on down the line) regaining the limbs, would not occur. The missing limb trait would be too strong of a trait in the species. Thus snakes are pretty much doomed to eternal limblessness. The other cause of evolution (and also the one that is the most common), climate changes, would no longer be able to force the snake into a new evolutionary path. Either their limbless state would continue to be useful with the climatic changes that occurred... or else the entire index of species known as snakes would die off in a world that could no longer support them. Besides which... all of that talk about genetically forcing a return of a limbed state to snakes is useless when you speak of a world where snakes have assumed humanity's place as the highest lifeform. After all the reason they became the top of the chain would have been because they were the best around... they would have no example (such as our own human society) of limbs being worth having. No limbs has led to a total lack of tools, machinery, construction abilities, or any of the other necessities for receiving and sending messages or outright space travel. In other words, earth would have become a place teeming with life, perhaps even intelligent life, but without any means of alerting other outside life forms to their existance or becoming aware of them in turn. The main problem with the existance of another space-age species existing besides humans and also being able to contact with our own is that there are so many levels of negativity which argues against it. 1st it needs just the right planetary host. 2nd life needs just the right elements on its planet for life to be formed. 3rd it needs to be able to grow beyond the point of simple cell organisms such as bacteria. 4th it needs to evolve into a species with high intelligence and reasoning capabilities. 5th it needs to be able to have the capabilities to change its environment (ie tool use, manufacturing, construction, chemistry, etc.). 6th it needs to be safe from predation and have an adequate food/water supply to allow for a large society. 7th it needs to actually have the thought of an exterior life existence occur to it or it wouldn't ever even bother searching for it. To clarify that seventh point - Humans lived on the continents of North and South America, yet other humans living on the European continent never even thought of their existance nor tried to contact them nor search for their existance. The only reason that changed is that explorers found them while searching for something else entirely (a shortcut to the other side of their own land mass - ie the Orient), prior to that and without that occurring both groups had been and would continue to have been unaware of each other's existance and never made any attempts to look for or visit each other. On the surface that's an even greater argument for searching the cosmos for life, except that those other life forms in the 'new world' had originally been connected by land to the life native to Europe/Africa/Asia but had been seperated by rising water levels. This is not a case of two sets of life growing from nothing but rather pre-established life simply continueing to exist exactly as it had with very little change if any, and simply being forgotten about or mourned for dead by relatives that had fled away from the water levels. It is quite possible that this could even explain the myth of Atlantis when you stop to think about the correlations, and how the ones who fled back to the original side of the former land bridge had no way of knowing that the water stopped rising prior to swallowing the rest of that land mass and the people now seperated onto it - and antler tipped spears were a major jump in technology from stone tipped which would fit the requirement of technological advancement spoken of in the myths if the tale was indeed that old and had been passed down and retold in ways to be more understandable or entertaining to later peoples. Anyway, returning to the subject I began to meander away from, without thinking of something being possible in the first place it will not be searched for, and if it is not searched for then it won't be found without sheer dumb luck of accidently stumbling across that unimagined thing/concept/being. 8th the vastness of space is humongous. Even if a species became space-aware and space-capable, the time necessary to find a second species also space-aware/capable is so long that in all likelihood the two societies could never connect in the timeframe between from when their society reached that level and the eventual ending of their society due to planetary or celestial changes no longer allowing for their form of life to exist. In other words it isn't enough that a second set of life grow like our own has, it also needs to have done so/begin to do so during the proper timeframe to allow for our contact with them. Imagine if a space-capable species came about even as often as once in ten thousand years. It could very well have last occurred too early for our own advancement to that level to have realized it and by the time we ourselves had reached the same pinnacle theirs could be gone already and the next yet to come might also be too late for our own ability to make contact with them prior to the ending of our existance due to some factor or another. All of that leads down to the very last factor in any formula for the ability to make contact/be contacted with/by alien life forms. Did all of the building blocks for advanced life tumble exactly right then also stop tumbling at just the right instant (in comparison with the vastness of time) for the two to affect one another. Without the last factor of time, any formula for the existance of life (in regards to the reason the quest for it exists - contact) will be flawed and useless. And with that last factor added in... it is mathematically and scientifically impossible. Quoting Shades of Green: The fact that Earth's advanced life suits our very specific temperature means nothing; LIFE, represented by bacteria, could exist in warmer places (120 degrees celsius at least) and colder ones (beneath the ice on Antartica). Most of Earth is not in these extremes, so most life forms evolved to suit the common temperature. Thermophilic bacteria are rare because vulcanic hot springs are rare. The problem with what you just stated is that bacteria are not advanced forms of life. Yes, bacteria can survive conditions we cannot even imagine the difficulties to. However, bacteria cannot emit radio waves through the cosmos, nor can it build spaceships to travel said cosmos and then abduct/meet other species. If advanced life could handle what simplistic bacterial life can handle there would be advanced life forms everywhere in our own solar system you would even have to look farther than the moon for that. Even when life deals with harsh environments it does not lead to any of the steps necessary for planetary travel. Or rather let's put it this way... the day we see a space shuttle rise out of the depths of the ocean and blast off in search of other worlds while pilotted by a crew of jellyfish and other life forms that evolved, where even sunlight does not appear to exist in any detectable way other than the presence of that life, is the day you'll have won your argument. Quoting Shades of Green: Which planet? jupiter? Saturn? meteor impatcs on Earth are quite common. The fact that we don't see as many craters here as we see on Mars or the moon owes it's existance mostly to our atmosphere. Most debries burns up on atmospheric entry, and the craters left behind by the bigger bodies are eroded as time passes. Venus, which has no moon (but a hell of an atmosphere - literally), has nearly no craters on it's surface as well. I was intending to mean Jupiter when I wrote that post. As for your arguments of impact frequencies... you are both right and wrong in that quote. Earth is indeed under constant heavy bombardment by the lil things that either fully burn away in our atmosphere or the remainder that actually impacts hardly affects life on the planet. However, if Earth was being hit by the bigger space debris we would not have had a chance. Semi-recently, Jupiter was impacted by a meteor that fragmented due to its intense gravity but was estimated to be as large as Earth's own moon if not bigger. If Jupiter wasn't spinning around out there larger debris would be able to pass through Jupiter's range without being dragged by its gravitation field into a collision with it. If that had been the case it would have continued on through and may well have impacted with our planet with such devastating mass that our atmosphere simply could not protect us. Speaking of Jupiter's existance and the way its sucks up space debris... a documentary that came out about that planet a few years back theorized that the gigantic hurricane storm (that appears as a dark spot swirling that planet's atmosphere) was in fact caused by a vacuum created when an overly large celestial body impacted with the atmosphere and continued through leaving a wake in its passing. If true that would have been devastating if it had hit Earth since the 'hole' is supposed to be even bigger than our entire planet. Quoting Shades of Green: Earth didn't have free molecular oxygen when it was first formed; It's atmosphere was mostly water vapor (which later formed the oceans), CO2 and nitrogen. Oxygen began to appear in the O2 form only about 3 or so billions of years ago, only AFTER life appeared, due to photosynthesis. And water are quite more common than was first thought; Mars, for example, has lots (even if frozen, it had flowing water once upon a time), and Europa probably has a huge under-surface ocean (again, we don't know enough data on it to make any conclusion). Err... I'm not sure if you realize it but water in a vapor state still contains its 'H20' properties, thus water as we know it did not exist until Oxygen as we know it existed. You are right that earth once did not have the molecule we know of as Oxygen, it also however did not have the molecule we know of as water, but rather back then it was a mixture of the CO2 and hydrogen you touted. In other words it did not contain both the CO2 and H alongside the bonded pseudo-water... it was rather entirely a mixture thereof into pseudo-water-vapors. We may never exactly be sure what caused the potent mixture of CO2 and hydrogen to rain down onto the surface in that previous form of water, although I personally would assume the mixture's fallout occurred after a large impact to the earth's gaseous external layer via meteor/whatever. You are entirely correct though regarding the origins of Oxygen and the process that caused it. However I can't figure out why you stated that as if you were arguing against something I said since I never said otherwise. Edit: Hrm on second thought I think it came from my mind thinking one thing and my typing saying another. When I said "lacking oxygen" I had meant "lacking CO2" which is what simple life forms process oxygen from. I apologize for the confusion. As for the rarity of water or the newfound lack thereof... to the best of my knowledge they have yet to find that frozen water on mars but rather merely evidence which leads scientists to believe that water once existed on that planet (through the land appearrance similar to dried waterbeds on earth). As for Europa... last I heard it wasn't exactly water but rather was a unique form of liquid gas that would be inhospitable to life on Earth. Quoting Shades of Green: The bottom line is that we know almost nothing about life, the conditions nescery for its formation, other planets, and other solar systems. The question of extraterrestrial life is an open one. Again a case of being both right and wrong. We know almost everything vital for the creation of life and its continuation and advancement afterward. What we lack knowledge of is what was the instigator that caused life to suddenly spark from its base materials. You are very right in your statement in regards to celestial knowledge and the lack thereof. But you are wrong in stating that because of that the possibility of ET being open-ended. Suppose one were to willingly accept that every galaxy contained over 1000 star systems and each star system contained over 10 planets and allowed for an overly optimistic view of life on those planets and said that even half of those allowed for life in some form. At that point run a complex program that checks that life hosting planets. You know the drill... evolution, predation, gene dominancy, food supply, water supply, brain power, advancements in the right technologies and theories, etc. Then add a second program that took all remaining planets where life was and give them a random start date and space-capable/searchable length of existance along with the time requirred to reach destinations & wait for response. (For instance Carl Sagan's famous message is supposed to take 50k years for a response to be received back if there is even anyone/thing there to do so and can do so.) Then run a final program that has them randomly search the cosmos for other life without knowing exactly where to look (where even the slightest bit off can make the difference of reaching a system or passing it by)... then you tell me whether or not anyone actually contacted each other in your experiment. It is far from an open and possible subject.

Err guys? I think he wanted to know whether folks used cannons vs stingrays vs avalanche in their weapon pod setup. *grins* Loved your reply though. *chuckles* If he did mean the way I just corrected, personally I usually set up with 1 cannon pod and 1 missile pod and just use whichever missile type I have stockpiled and only purchase new when my stockpiles empty out.

Huh... surprising... you'd think having a relative in one of the American secret agencies would lead to hearing of such things first before the general public if true. Optimal words being if true though. Somehow I doubt the report, but who knows... I do know, however, that I personally doubt there is any sentient space-travel-capable life forms out there. I saw a documentary put out by the BBC a few years back that was on our own solar system and how it compares to others out there. If that show was to be believed the odds of life forms even as advanced as we are is infitestimally unlikely. According to the show, humanity owes its existance to an abundance of factors that all had to come true just to enable us to be. *) First we have the fortuitous orbit that is in the form of a circle rather than a cylindrical, egg-shaped orbit that most planets take on. *) Second we are just far enough away that advanced life is sustainable but not so far as to be unable to survive. *) Third we have a humongous planet with a high gravitational well near enough to our home that it removes a lot of the space debris from impacting and setting back life for millenia and perhaps even ending it entirely. *) Fourth we have the moon which does the same job so well that it proudly bares its battle scars to the world it bodyguards at great risk to life and limb as they say. *) Fifth we have the existance of both oxygen and water which is very rare for both to be found on the same planet strange though that rarity is to my mind. *) Sixth we have the renewing, life-alterring properties from the elements of fire and electricity, neither of which is possible in most planets due to the absense of oxygen and water respectively. *) Seventh was pure good luck. Even if you have all of the right ingredients for something to exist it won't magically pop into existance. Something needed to occur which caused the 'primordial soup' to cook and be stirred, and then, once 'life' came about, take the results out of the elements that 'birthed' it before what was made became undone, similar to how leaving something in an oven too long replaces a delicious masterpiece with a charred inedible disaster. *) Eight was another case of nearly unthinkable good luck against the odds. It isn't enough that sentience be formed. Even the highest of intelligences cannot begin to explore space without the means of survival and also the means for passing knowledge on, but most of all a concept is worthless unless it can be created. There have been studies done that suggest that humanity may not be the lifeform on earth that can use the most brainpower, however where we excel is at taking the brainpower that we do have and using it to create tools which in turn help us create even greater things, and also in passing our knowledge from one generation to the next instead of needing to rediscover everything time and again as generations pass on. - In other words in order for a species to even become eligible for beginning space travel they need first to have a high intelligence, the ability to pass knowledge on, be free for the most part from predation, easily gather sustenance, able to create and use tools, and perhaps most important of all they would need materials available that can be made durable enough to survive the rigors of the travel - not an easy thing when you consider that all we humans know of metalurgy supposedly came about through pure dumb luck of someone once upon a time forgetting to clean his fire out and a bit of tin and copper becoming bonded into brass unintentionally. Actually that brings up another point... the luck factor and the odds of the same events happening twice in two different occasions. Newton supposedly only figured out the concept of gravity after an apple beaned him on the noggin, whether it was because it knocked some sense into him or just that he simply had never stopped and thought about it we'll never know... but would that same event actually be likely to occur on an alien planet as well? There are many such fortuitous episodes in human scientific discovery, and each single episode would all have to have occurred in order for an alien species to develop the same path as our species did. *) Finally there was the near annihilation of life that ended the reign of the dinosaurs, which was a necessary thing if a sentient species was to evolve. To explain better the reasoning behind the last given reason, the dinosaurs were an emphasis of size and force while the brain itself was largely more a minor package deal. It's possible but unlikely that eventually a switch to brain power would have occurred, whereas in the aftermath of their removal the small inherited the earth, but it was an earth that was devasted by the event causing it. This caused the small to search vast areas for sustenance and caused those that could figure out ways to survive to last longer and repopulate, thus eventually leading towards a future with more emphasis on brain power than muscle power for the most part. Stopping and looking back through all of those requirements makes my mind boggle that even we have made it to the lowly point of development we are at, and firmly removes any thoughts of there being another species out there somewhere that is even more advanced than us... and not just more advanced but so far advanced that they can leave their mother system/galaxy and travel to our own. It's indeed possible that there is life out there somewhere. But if there is any out there... and that is a much bigger if than most scientists are willing to believe... then it is not capable of visiting us or contacting us.

*nods* I always went with the travelling the globe for 20k leagues myself but I can easily see someone without a concept of the ocean's depth making that kind of a mistake in their title back then. Then again... Mr. Verne did seem to be far-advanced for his time. As for the rest... eh I'll go along with most of the rebuttals but I'll disagree with the comment about the astrophysicists knowing if such was the case. Scientists can only research what their brains conceive of. Air pollution can be seen easily which is why such a large emphasis has been put into researching that. The orbital paths of our planet and the others within our system are not so easily spotted though. Since we still have 365 & 1/4 (ap.) day years with the winter and summer solstices occurring at the same time it is obvious that if there is a change thus far it is minute at best when it comes to our orbit. However even a few minutes difference in the orbit could mean enough miles closer to the sun to explain an excess of heat blanketting the earth and we just have not botherred to keep track of the total time spent from one soltstice to the next under the mistaken belief that it would never change. Actually for that matter I'm personally not even sure the solstices are actually the high and low points anymore since I seem to recall last year's being off.

Just looked at your guide Pumpkin and it looks very nice aside from some minor details. Those being the justified alignment causing big gaps of space between words on some lines when using certain screen widths and font types/sizes, and the way your mouseover menu layout sometimes supercedes one clickable on top of another. Other than those two issues I thought your site was very well created. Kudos as they say!

No offense taken, to the contrary I'm glad to see people who I can freely exchange ideas and possibilities with, without being mired by peers who simply cannot 'see'. *smiles* I love how easily this board can become very thought provoking with this group. Zombie, I thought about your response and it did strike a chord since it does make for a more sensible solution to propulsion since your description sounds close to something already in the drawingboard process, "The Ion Drive". Since your theoretical application has its roots in an already established future tech by earth's scientists I could easily imagine it or a system similar in design to it being produced by an intellectual species of aliens. However, where your theory loses me is where everyone went in response to my query about fuel usage and distance travelled per fuel unit. With the example you just gave the aliens would quickly exhaust even the biggest of fuel cell stockpiles. First they would need to create the anti-matter and for that process they would use the Elerium. Second they'd need an untapped Elerium unit to clash with the anti-matter unit. And third they'd need a third unit of Elerium just to control the directional thrust and strength. Thus you'd need 3 units of elerium for each momentary instant of thrust (no matter how great that thrust would be during that instant), which I think would lead to needing sporadic re-bursts in order to maintain a set rate of speed and direction. And that is just with a single engine craft... each additional engine would require its own massive stockpile or else the craft could easily be sent off-course or spinning wildly enough as to make life within such a craft impossible. NKF is right though in that all of this is purely fiction... but then again so was Jules Verne's submarine and many other prophetic fictionary elements. It seems a waste if minds such as ours can conceive of something that should be theoretically possible, come up with all the roadblocks to its conception, and then find a logical solution to make something work... only to let it waste away after labelling it pure fantasy. PS: This whole subject of thrust and gravity have led me to several perhaps profound thoughts that I'd like to share with everyone. Imagine if we or an alien race ever came up with a way to synthesize gravity to the level of making the galaxy's own inate gravitational pulls of planets and suns do the work of travel for us. Such a feat would require the ability to temporarily remake your craft's gravitational pull to the equivalent of a small planet or in some cases even a large one, thus causing it to be dragged into the pull of the pre-existing gravity fields surrounding all celestial objects. Sounds like a wonderful concept at first glance... until you realize the frailty of the gravitational balance throughout our system. Imagine if your brief 'pull' was enough to nudge ever so slightly a single moon or planet off its regular orbit. This would in turn minutely change anything else effected by the pull from that object, until all would be affected in a giant house of cards or dominoes. But let's leave the theoretical and move to things that are already occurring. I'm sure you all are aware of the large chunks of a much larger meteorite which slammed into Jupiter's atmosphere a year or more back now. All of the scientists at the time were thrilled and amazed to be able to witness firsthand what an impact of such a large body could do to a planet... but they never even stopped to think of the bigger picture. A main part of this fuel usage thread has been thrust, so I'm sure many of you are aware where I am already going with this considerring my last real world 'what-if' scenario and that theme. What if those rocks sped up the planet's orbit or alterred it? What if it nudged it slightly off-axis so the gravity of the planet no longer is aligned to stay in its planetary orbit? What if the extra mass caused by these rocks has caused the gravitational pull to become stronger? Have I got your gears whirling yet? Well how about another bit of theoretical disertion towards events that are already in motion... Taking the same theme we've been working with all along, 'Thrust', and applying it to something that is so commonplace in our own world that it rarely even ever makes the international news any longer. What I am speaking of is volcanic eruptions. An extreme amount of force can be released in these eruptions, and unlike a space travel experiment gone awry or a freak meteor strike that may never truly affect life on planet Earth... volcanic eruptions are much closer to home and a constant source for disruption to the natural balance. Each 'blast' must alter the path our planet takes, if ever so slightly. This is incredibly bad since volcanoes do not erupt at the same time on opposite sides of the planet and so they never can be cancelled out. These observations of real events and their possible consequences leads me to my next theoretical observation... is it possible that 'Global Warming' if real is in fact caused by the earth's orbit being shifted closer to the sun by the change caused by any of these things? Jupiter is a very big planet after all and a shift of its gravity could easily also affect us in small ways, similar to how the sun when it gives off solar flares and storms affects us. And let us not forget the thrusts of our own volcanoes releasing their power to the surface. I leave you all with one last thought... humans often mess with things they do not fully understand until after its too late. Centuries after the whale hunting trade was banned and we're still seeing the effects from it. And everyone has heard the repercussions we shall be facing in the coming years due to deforesting and air pollution... but has anyone or any government or private organization ever done research on the aftereffects of the blasts caused by the A-bombs and others like it? Does anyone have any clue whether those blasts went off while facing one direction or another and whether it had any affect on our planetary orbit? Can it actually be possible that the mysterious cause of global warming if true be in fact this overlooked matter? Have we humans managed to move our own home closer to the sun perhaps..? Personally, I'd really be interrested to see these possibilities and more researched even if in the end it turned out my worries were for naught. And considering all of the things we humans waste time, money, and effort upon it seems foolhardy not to adequately research qualms which may indeed prove legitimate fears.

People keep commenting on how outside earth's atmosphere it wouldn't take as much effort to travel since there is no resistance. Okay... umm but wouldn't that make it harder for the aliens since they are relying on gravity and anti-gravity propulsion systems? If there is no gravity to push against exactly how can it move anywhere using a gravity requiring system? Better question.. how come none of you even thought of that?

Actually having no fuel cells in the power sources makes sense when you think about it from a certain mindset. The kamakazi mindset. Those aliens are determined to take our world and retreat is not an option. They are given only enough fuel cells to reach their intended destination and then fulfill their mission parameters. If they won only then would the supply flotila arrive with endless stores of fuel. There is just one thing I don't understand... why don't any of the ships ever have a pantry full of extra fuel cells... certainly not all of those aliens are expendable (such as the leaders and commanders). So why don't we ever come across any stacked fuel cells inside a storage unit or locked away in some room on-ship? I mean if you think about it... the elerium on the hybrid crafts use up their fuel cells just travelling across the globe. Even if the full alien craft handle the fuel usage at a much better rate it still would not explain how they could travel even the distance from Mars to Earth... and I doubt I even have to explain the insanely impossible task of intergalactic travel with that kind of a fuel rate usage and no fuel cell stock rooms.

@Bomb Bloke - I know this was created ages ago, and I am well aware that it was incredibly advanced for its time... why else would I still be playing a game from a decade ago in computing technology and frequenting a board devoted to it? As for it taking many years to spot these bugs... err no. Most of the bugs get spotted by folks within a week or two of beating the game for the first time at the max level and then beginning to tinker around trying to get the full feel of the game. Most of the bugs I've caught I actually spotted in the first 24 hrs actually since I tend to get bored and play around trying to see the worst possible scenarios and best possible to try and gain a better feel for the gameplay of a game. Your reply to this correction I figure will be along the lines of, "Then why are we only now hearing about this?" Actually most of these bug reports can be found elsewhere posted by others and I do believe I even spotted some of the same folks that frequent here getting into the action way back then. Myself, I was too busy actually playing this game and others like it to ever even check for internet communities devoted to it. In fact I only became aware of the existance of this forum site a few months back when I decided to run a search for a patch to get my old game working on my new WinXP. BTW: That list of bugs which should have been easily fixed with a little bit of thought on the programmer's part is not related to age. Every game has that fault, including the newest stuff being released here in 2004. I wasn't complaining about X-COM being worst than any other but rather simply pointing out that there's like some unwritten rule that at least one incredibly dumb error needs to be left into all game programs just to make its' players wonder how the programmers could possibly make such a stupid mistake, and that a bunch of minor quirks should be left in just to give that feeling of an itch that won't go away and can't be scratched so it just torments you in an endless agony of methodical torture. I think there may just be something in the personality markup of the programmers that leaves them all as secret sadists. *shrugs* As for your comment about loading up a bunch of games from back then and seeing exactly how little they had in comparison to this game... agreed with one exception. Now I'm going to have to go into a bit of detail in order to detail exactly how huge the game actually was, so I will apologize now prior to going into the non-XCOM game review. Any of you ever play an age-old game by the name of 'Daggerfall'? It was a first-person shooter type game where you wandered around a huge map (I once actually tried to walk a character from one end of the month doing nothing else... gave up two months later... now that is big) and used swords, axes, knives, archerry, brawling, and magic to blow apart various things. That game boasted a do-it-yourself-spell-creator, hundreds of skills to gain experience in, tons of weapons each with different qualities depending upon the type of material used to create it, hundreds of enemy types, several different character races both for male and female avatars, a wardrobe of a thousand clothes since they created about 50 different types of clothing for each gender and about 10 different color codes and each type could load uniquely into each of the color versions, giving about 500 articles of clothing wearable for each gender. But what truly made the game amazing was its freedom of chracter setup. You could choose your own primary skills, secondary skills, and alternate skills and thus determine the way your character would play instead of being stuck into a set sect, you also could add unique abilities and disabilities to make the character more fun or challenging or easy. This was everything from immunities to things or the opposite where a single exposure carried a danger of death with it, to the ability to instantly handle a weapon like a master after picking it up for the first time, to a blind panic where you act like a headless chicken anytime you encounterred a certain enemy type (such as beasts, undead, or whatever). It even allowed your character to be unable to enter holy areas or take damage from sunlight as well as other assorted interesting twists on the way you had to play. Wait there was one thing even better about the game... the game included races of werebeasts and vampires which would attack you. Each 'hit' would spawn a random hidden dice roll and if you were 'un'lucky enough to land just the 'right' roll you'd become a vamp or were yourself. This would change your character picture, your stats, advantages/disadvantages... and would open you up to being attacked by demon-hunters, but if this wasn't to your liking you could always begin a quest to rid you of the demonic taint. Speaking of quests there were thousands of them, some of which were even vital to the gameplay. The most realistic part of the game, however, was that the game map consisted of hundreds of provinces/nations instead of just a single place. Each of them had hundreds of cities and their own bank system, criminal justice system (yeah, there was one), and so forth. The game was so freaking big that even after over a decade worth of time playing the game (first on its original system and then later on the PC after a hack-over was done to make it PC-usable) that I still have yet to ever fully explore the entire game map. So how did such a huge game get put together back in the times when there wasn't even such a thing as DOS or the huge memory chips/storage devices of today? Ugly 1-dimensional block graphics for the scenery and enemies/NPCs sadly enough. Then again it is a bit of a laugher to walk through the people/trees or to twist in place while standing in the object/being and see it on all sides of you as if it was standing next to you. ;p Oh... and the ability to be in a dungeon and leap off a stairwell... only to pass through a wall/ceiling/floor and go falling for miles through endless nothingness then finally get to the bottom level of the map and be stuck there if you can't cast a floating or flying spell can be quite a shocker too. *eye roll* Oooh and I almost forgot about the weird bug where a person in the ocean could use the jump skill to 'jump' across the oceans/lakes/ponds/flooded tunnels instead of having to slowly swim or drown. See? Even games that I'd rave about have those incredibly dumb errors to them. Actually the more things I complain about in a game the more of a compliment it is since games that I like I pick apart all of the ways they could be better whereas the bad games I don't even bother wasting time complaining about.

Actually my guess is that it is a case of the programmers not thinking things out fully rather than it being a prog bug, the same as the other one where the moment any lil buggers stick a foot in your hanger it magically makes that base vanish from the map to them. Sadly programmers not thinking their programs out completely is the case in every game I've ever seen so it's nothing new to see. Think of all the other things similarly not thought out and programmed in such as fall damage, the mind control on four square enemies only putting one of four squares under your control, the way blaster bombs can blow holes through enemy ships but not X-com ships, etc. I'm not even going to get into the stupidity of having the research at each individual base not being combined together or how exactly the aliens can wander around the battlefields outside of their ships without any special breathing equipment yet you need a special alien containment unit to house them.

Eh I can't help but think that the solution to these problems is already out there... Combine the PSI (Pounds Square Inch) strength of spider webbing, the flow and adaptation of liquid mercury, and the cohesiveness of that foam stuff that they use for that kid's toy 'Floam' and what would you have... I'd wager a very strong, durable, self-repairing material that was still extremely light (since none of the mentioned things are heavy) and mallable and could take great damage and pressure without destroying the structural integrity.

One problem Zombie... the groups don't just stay gone... eventually they will refind one of your bases. Besides which... you gain some massive scoring by blowing retaliation fleets out of the sky constantly... enough that in most games you could realistically not do any missions outside of base-defense and terror sites and still be constantly awarded by the nations with bigger contracts for doing such a good job. And since you don't have to pay for the ammo used up by your auto base defenses your only costs would be maintenance and salaries. After a few months of constant assaults upon your bases and being blown from the sky (you can let the individual assaults run while you're reading email or showerring or eating or some such thing) you'll be bringing in more money from the countries than spending on maintenance and salaries even if you're running a base with every spot used up and 255-255 for scientists and engineers, and the full 240 available soldiers rationed to the various bases. Mind you, eventually you will have to take your defenses down (if you ever want the constant assaults to end), as was mentioned by others in a different thread, since they won't stop coming otherwise. But personally I find that having all my bases set up with 5 fusions and 1 grav shield can keep em out and I simply let it auto-run whenever the sequence starts. Once you get past the point where maintenance costs are higher than your monthly allowance I've always considerred these missions where the masochistic aliens commit mass suicide to be like a bunch of free easy bonus points which can overcome even my biggest mission blunders (such as the time I shot a blaster bomb from inside my avenger and took out all 26 soldiers... ugh I still get nightmares about that one!) and still end up with a monthly score high enough for my funding not to be cut. Far as I'm concerned there is no reason not to just let the aliens flail around like a bunch of death-desiring morons and get points without any effort. Mind you, I think we all wish that the attack sequence against your base defenses was handled without a fight scene... but it isn't that big a deal... just watch a 30 minute sitcom or something while letting your guns annihilate the alien armadas and when you come back you will have not lost anything but gained even more monthly score. *shrugs* I just don't see the big deal here.

I'm sorry but on *that* issue I can't help but say anything other than greys... if X-Com is based on the supposed 'true accounts' they'd have to be in order to be realistic. Besides which... the first version of the game I ever saw them in was the one this particular forum is dedicated to and in this game has them as greys too... I don't think I'll ever think of any of the sequels to quite the same regard as I continue to devote to this aging favorite no matter how good they are in their own ways. Here's another topic while I'm at it though... Skyrangers: Obsolete after alien crafts, particularly after Avengers. (Yes/No) For which I'd have to answer yes personally since I can just stick 3 avengers at every single base making 18 avengers available for call at any time... crash sites don't need to stay tapped for days on end for me. ;p

And here I thought it would start off with an argument on what to do with the psi-corp rejects. (Fire/Cannon Fodder/Seperate Team)

Sorry but that tank won't last long as your reply to at-ramp reaction fire. Once alien grenades, blaster bombs, or cyberdisks start appearring in your scenarios all it'll take is one hit to knock out the tanks, and the nades and bombs will even take out troops hiding behind said tank. At first you might not realize it since the reaction fire has to come from just the right place... but when it does... PS: Speaking of tanks... a lil secret you might not be aware of that can help clear your LZs faster... your tank that's at the exit hatch can stay in place where it spawns on battle-open and just revolve 360 degrees using the 'face this way' method while only using up a few minor TUs in the process. This will spot 'most' aliens near the LZ even where the plane's body should block your line of sight... go figure. Anyway, the reason to do this while still in the plane instead of exiting is that it makes reaction fire of enemies useless unless it comes from in front of your exit hatch since your plane's body 'hides' your tank from the alien while still letting you see them. They'll still be there to react to your movements when you finally exit the plane of course... but at least you won't be caught by surprise out of the dark so to speak, and can exit in a manner to minimize the risk.