Pete

All sorted - not sure how that happened but should be visible now 🤷🏻‍♂️ It was literally the only forum with visbility hidden for the Rookie member group but works now I've ticked the right box 🙂

@LameDuck This is all fixed now so you should be good to go I have noticed that over the years some download sites we referenced like GamersHell are no longer operating so at some point we may want to redirect to alternate download locations for those/host them ourselves (if we still have the files) or remove them.

Yeah I think the last game I made time for was Battletech because I really love the universe and the old MechWarrior and Mech Commander games. I've logged 197.6 hours until December last year (most in the first 6 months it came out) and that got me through the campaign maybe 2.5 times, so not sure about taking on something longer. That said, this is a website I've just discovered that puts it in the realms of possibility: https://howlongtobeat.com/game?id=53702 but maybe next year - I've definitely got too much on at the moment 🙂

Phoenix Point Complete Edition is 34% off @Thorondor you usually post an image but linking to the video was easier 😆 I have a question - since I only saw the early videos and interviews for this game - should I get it? I'll likely not have time to play it any time soon and reviews seem positive, but a endorsement from you guys holds more weight than any external reviews 😁. Also if this question should be split off into a topic in the relevant forum let me know - not sure what the protocol is in this topic 🧐

You may have noticed a bewildering array of changes in the forum software - some you'll like, others will take some getting used to. The forums finally received a software update after many years of me wanting to but never finding the time. It's a necessary upgrade as running such an old version is not sustainable in the long term. There is still work to be done on the forum theme in several places but the aim is to keep it simpler to update in future to keep on top of the updates. The main site software has also been updated @Zombie and anyone else who edits pages, give me a nudge before doing so as I'd like to do some tests on some non-live pages with you to make sure there are no shenanigans with the editor.

I'm happy for any subscriptions (they can be one-off, so like a donation - just set the subscription to 1 month and name your amount) and thanks to anyone in advance who throws some money into the pot but at the moment the system for that is for SC as the UFOPaedia side of things seems covered (for now) and I'd also have to work out with the host for UFOPaedia how we'd transfer that money properly between us if it was more of a joint subscription thing in future. Donations - you would really have to be set up as a charity or a not-for-profit organisation to be doing it legally and I prefer legal. There's paperwork and bank accounts to set up a not-for-profit organisation even if we wanted to take donations with no tax so it's almost as much effort as setting up another company, but if we do it as subscriptions and the tax element is included during payment then it actually counters some of the tax I get charged by Amazon for the hosting (In the UK we get billed from Amazon in Ireland so tax applies) so it all works out in the end. I think actually since you're in the USA you wouldn't see tax when subscribing - the system I'm looking at says "hey, you're paying the UK and you're in [insert country here], here's the applicable tax we'll add to that" which is zero in your case (or should be). I'm not in any hurry to set that up as we need to do some software upgrades here behind the scenes that take priority in June - when I have the spare time to do it. SC's not going anywhere so don't worry about that. Compared to UFOPaedia it's relatively low system requirements

Gee thanks, want a ban? I'll assume it was meant in jest Hobbes has already said it's sorted so I don't understand your replies really. Leaving it at the current host, who seems to have secured funding, is the simplest solution. To move it to another host is a lot of work to get it set up properly how I'd do it, and I don't have time right now for that anyway so I'm happy with the current resolution. If the topic comes up again we can look at it again but as far as I'm concerned it's all fine until Hobbes tells me otherwise. I am in the process of investigating subscriptions for StrategyCore but, running a business, I need it to take into account taxes so I don't get into trouble - once that's ready we have an acceptable method of funding both sites, though the next step is how to pass funds along to the guy looking after the UFOPaedia hosting. It may just be funding for SC to begin with. Subscription levels rather than donations is simplest for me.

Oh wow that's good to hear! I'm setting up another Amazon AWS (hosting) instance for StrategyCore and a few older sites - SC does still get quite a lot of traffic even now so if this situation comes up again in a couple of years I'll have a home set up for it that's scalable - my concern was I needed to keep this stuff separate from business websites as a busy day on the wiki has been known to make servers wobble a bit But yes - great that it's sorted for now - thanks for letting me know.

Thanks Hobbes. I checked out some of the latest updates for the MediaWiki software and seems as though it could take advantage of separate read/write databases that I have set up on Amazon for other projects which might help with the load. Can you let me know if it's still been slow or has it been okay on NineX's server these past years? Also, is there any appetite in the community to help cover costs? I could set up a subscription on Gumtree easily enough, but I can't absorb the costs myself and it would need to be on its own AWS instance (probably along with StrategyCore) so as not to impact any other sites I manage. Historically it's not been overly fun paying for servers and sorting out issues for free with less and less free time (though I did have help from Thorondor and Olav) - sorry if that sounds a bit mercenary of me but otherwise it just all sits as low priority after paid work and I'd rather support it properly if I was to take it on again.

Hobbes - could you let me know if you know what the costs are these days? The biggest problem I've found with MediaWiki (the software) in the past is that it's unnecessarily resource hungry and seems to play best on a dedicated server. This puts the cost at the right spec machine between $60-$120 per month, but usually at the higher end. Not sure how this tallies with NineX's costs though.

Cheers! Well I started again on Superhuman. Lost my soldiers and Skyranger in the first fortnight and there's no easy way to come back from that when you've spent all your money already, so did a restart (I don't think that was cheating?). Now in March, back to where I was on my Easy game - nearly researched Avenger, got Power Armour at least for my guys and gals, just about got Heavy Plasma, stumbled across Alien Base 1 so I can now do some harvesting of my own I did have to withdraw from a Terror Mission in the first month as my soldiers weren't equipped for Cyberdiscs, but the game fortunately threw me a Floater-only terror mission in Feb which was a lot easier (though all civvies died and one by my hand so scraped a Poor rating there). I expanded the base so fast I'm in a financial deficit so have been balancing building useful items with medikit sales to keep in the black - can't remember what financial woes trigger losing the game so I sacked a few spare soldiers and a second Skyranger that was mostly ornamental in its hangar - hopefully that will help. All good fun but remembering how much the aliens cheat is also part of the fun (night vision, knowing where you are after X turns etc).

Cheers Zombie. One more question - I clicked Ironman on OpenXCOM but can't remember if I actually selected Superhuman difficulty first, which might be why I'm finding it easy. Are there any telltale signs that I might or might not be on Superhuman? I mean, I was losing an average of 1-2 soldiers in the early missions in the first month playing carefully, but maybe having swept through 3 terror missions in 3 months and only encountering sectoids and floaters might be a clue? I can't remember exactly when the Chrysalids come out to play Never mind - the saves are nice and easy to read in OpenXCOM. I've been playing Beginner difficulty Oh well, I shall start again. The only reason I was thinking it was Superhuman was the loss of so many soldiers on one mission, but it turns out that their Commander was at fault!

So I revisited this last night after many years of neglect due to real life stuff, and even using Ironman mode in OpenXcom I'm in mid-March, year 1, and I have laser rifles and 4 lots of Flying Armour and 6 lots of Power Suits. Don't get me wrong, I've had a few close calls, and a mission where only two soldiers survived. I even had a few missions where I only took 5 soldiers as I forgot 3 were wounded and I hadn't hired anymore. But I've managed to survive two terror missions (Floaters - easy - and Sectoids, slightly harder because of Cyberdiscs). I must say I'm using some weapons I've never used before (AC, HC) and incendiary on those reapers really does work a treat, so maybe finally straying from my "only rifles and grenades" game I've played since way back in 1994 is helping I think my comeuppance will be in the USA though - I'd built a radar station there and it detected two large UFO's, one small and an extra large. I couldn't shoot any of them down, but I've landed the Skyranger at the XL and so far have only had one solder mind controlled (laser weapons and power armour meaning that poor guy isn't doing much damage so far ). Can someone remind me - if I survive - is there a way for me to stop the USA going over to the aliens once this activity has begun? I vaguely recall you can if you shoot down all the UFOs, though I may have imagined that. Is it possible by sweeping the XL UFO clean or is all lost? I guess they could be building a base, but the landing sites are really spread out so I'm thinking infiltration instead. Also can someone remind me if I can redirect the Skyranger to the two large UFOs on the way back and clear those out too? It's been so long since I've played that I've forgotten some of the game mechanics. I even forgot to assign research for two weeks One thing I don't like in the game is that the goodies you get from clearing a mission seem to arrive straight back in the stores before the Skyranger - is that right or am I imagining it?

You guys can speak to Joshua who now looks after the server regarding technical issues. I don't think he checks in here all the time so PM or email would be best - NKF you were copied into a PM with him a while back but I'm not sure emails were even working on SC at the time so you may not have seen it?

You'll need to speak to Joshua about anything technical - I PM'd yourself, Thor and NKF in a conversation with him to make introductions but you guys didn't join in I've not got server access myself yet but any technical issues you'd be best PM'ing Joshua or emailing him as that's his area now.

Hopefully not *crosses fingers*

Hi all This took longer than anticipated but it has finally happened! It's live on Joshua's server finally and editing is enabled again. Might take a while for the domain IP change to load around the web as I've only just done that bit, but if you go to edit a page and hit CTRL+F5 and the green message I put up isn't there then you're viewing it on the new server

This is taking a little longer than anticipated, but will definitely be worth the wait - I just want to keep edits on hold whilst this takes place as I know how annoying it is to lose work!

It's alright - I worked it out and there's now a message, but only on the edit page. This makes sense as there's a setting in the system that locks it for edits only and lets people browse the site still, so editing a page shows the warning at the top and I've made it stand out. The plan is to move it today. Since it's all locked down, in theory if Joshua tests everything nobody will be any the wiser and I'll just post a message when it's all up again. It'll probably be offline for the next few hours at least. Sounds like he's putting together a beast of a server for this by the way, so should be nice and fast from now on

Joshua seems willing to throw really fast hardware at this so I'm currently creating a backup with a view to getting this moved tonight/tomorrow. Will this cause any issues? I'm not sure what the best way is to alert anyone over on the site so if someone has that power whilst I'm sorting out backups that would be appreciated.

It's like when I'm fixing IT issues in my day job - proximity to someone's PC normally makes it spontaneously work. That and turning it off and on again

Thanks for the input guys. I can't take credit for getting UFOPaedia going though Ivan - it existed long before I offered to host it years ago. At present the site is back up so I'd like to get my backups in place and get it moved before too much longer - when it crashes the database locks up and the tables need repairing so having it in a working state to take a backup is a good start. @Zombie - I don't think anyone here could rewrite the code behind it. It's the same software that powers Wikipedia so that should give some idea as to how many man hours went into developing it, I just know it doesn't behave as quickly as it should or could given current technologies. I don't think there's anything to be done about that but at a bare minimum more resources would help, as would keeping it patched. There are caching options with the MediaWiki that are beyond what I can do on the hosting it's on so maybe that would help a lot. Hobbes - can you PM me Joshua's contact details so I can have a chat? Infinite resources sounds the way to go

Hobbes - sounds like another interesting avenue. I would value your opinion on which way it should go. Perhaps you could discuss with other UFOPedia staff and get back to me? I can do the technical side with the transfer but I'd like you guys to have a discussion over where it moves to if you don't mind. It was a bit easier when there was one option but now there are two it's up to you Since you guys have invested a lot of time into it it wouldn't be a bad idea to ensure you can get a site backup and database backup any time you need it if circumstances change in future. As for SC, as I mentioned it's on a separate server and requires far less resources compared to MediaWiki which UFOPedia runs on (it's a massive resource hog and needs rewriting from scratch IMO - the codebase is pretty ancient in places). Olav and I have an agreement in place to share the lower hosting costs on SC so it doesn't need to go anywhere, but I will start up a discussion later on after we've sorted the immediate crisis calling for more contributors - the one thing SC needs no matter what if it is to be revived in terms of articles. So yep, let's keep this topic about UFOPedia for now as that's priority one.

I think StratrgyCore has been on life support for years to be perfectly honest. Whenever I've found time to drop by its the same few faces here each time. The problem is nobody has mentioned an interest in helping out at SC in terms of content and its all Thor's effort the last several years. If I step away from SC, which is practically zero maintenance, what does that achieve? Passing over UFOPedia, which is on a different server and does require maintenance from a server administrator, makes sense to me. Without a plan, passing over SC makes no sense as it doesn't resolve the issue of very little content. If you'd like to make suggestions for SC, open up a new topic and Thor, myself and the other admins will happily discuss, but we've simply had a lack of volunteers with time on their hands before which is step 1 I think. They're two sites with very different issues.

Hi Hobbes That's sad news. I arranged with Ninex earlier today to move it off the current creaking server onto his dedicated server next weekend which would definitely help with the stability for the foreseeable, but the spam registrations issue would still be there and if visitor numbers only increased over time then the problems might come back eventually. In short, I'm really not sure what the answer is but I do know that the technical side of it is better off under the care of someone who has time and resources for it. All I have time for at the moment is work, more work in the evenings, family and sleep so I've had zero time for anything around here for a long while sadly. I've not even had time to buy XCOM2 yet, which is just wrong. I'm not going to ask you to reconsider - that's entirely your business - but it might be interesting at least to see how it responds to a move to much better resources next weekend. Regards Pete