Straker

I should've asked this before: Are there any other keyboard cheats?

"Fear the stars" sounds like we are cowering from them. Quite the opposite actually...

Master of Magic was so under-rated. So much potential unrealized. I occasionally hear about a sequel though. Ascendancy was another game that did not live up to expectations.

I should have some time over the holidays to give v8.5 more of a workout. I'd like to see how far I can get before everything goes to pieces.

Nice picture!

Penciling in C4 and nerve gas? Reminds me of the good old days... Happy new year! 2012 will not be boring.

Did I just see reindeer on the geoscape? Time for a nap...

Cool!

The Russians were the best at civil defense. Haven't heard what shape those shelters are in now however.

Majestic was a mind bender. Sign up and you start getting emails and phone calls. Blurs the line between game and reality. My wife thought I stumbled into a real life X-file. You don't play the game, the game plays you! (sounds like a Yakov Smirnoff joke).

That's a different base. "there is no dark side in the moon, really. As a matter of fact it's all dark" - Pink Floyd

Part knowledge and part reading about space history. I'm good with trivia. I admit to using the Internet to make sure I got the dates right. I guess the point I was trying to make was to change the satellite feed name from Sputnik 4 to KH-11 1-2 on the geoscape since it was more historically accurate and had the lookdown capabilities needed. S.I.D., the early warning satellite on my avatar's TV show UFO, not only scanned the earth but also scanned for UFOs coming in from beyond lunar orbit. Handy, since the earth had a secret interceptor base on the moon.

I'd rather fix the problem than cheat my way around it. (Was it M you say? )

The opinions herein vary quite a bit. May as well make the music user definable so people can set it as they like. As for myself, early Pink Floyd works nicely.

Would you believe a secret Nazi base? http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread542048/pg1 Seriously though, one good thing about Lake Vostok as a final battle site is that it is not accessible on the geoscape (like Cydonia in X-Com).

I never used HE packs in a game. Grenades and heavy weapons were adequete to the need.

Bomb shelters were all the rage in the 50s and 60s. Turns out none were needed.

Here's a link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_vostok Its in the middle of Antarctica under 4000m of ice. The surface is about 500m below sea level and it measures about 250km by 50km and average depth is 344m. The water may have been isolated for 15-25 million years. The Russians have been attempting to drill down for a while now but there has been questions about contamination. The odd anomalies are at one end of the lake. More on that here: http://www.exohuman.com/wordpress/2011/02/whats-under-lake-vostok/

I always hated it when they would block my way through a door, stairway, etc. Being able to politely ask them to move would be nice. There were a few I wanted to shoot myself.

True enough but in what way?

A screen with different sized dots, like in X-Com, would be okay but I wouldn't mind something that shows arrows and range (in other words radial coordinates like radar instead of X-Y coordinates).

Saw something similar in v8.41. I went through the door in the small section where an alien is often standing and walked right into it. Literally. We were occupying the same square. Wish I would have thought to save a screen shot of that. I couldn't target him so I took a step further into the UFO and away from him but still wasn't able to target. He was able to nail me on his turn though.

The bottom corner of the Geoscape mentions the view is from Sputnik 4 (aka Korabi-Sputnik 1), which was launched May 15, 1960. An odd choice. It was designed as a cabin test in preparation for later manned flights. It accidentally went into too high an orbit and reentered in two pieces on September 5, 1962 and October 15, 1965. A piece was found in the middle of North 8th Street in Manitowoc, Wisconsin. There was a conspiracy theory associated with it saying the flight was actually manned but was hushed up after it went off course (one of the "Lost Cosmonaut" flights). Amateur radio operators heard radio conversations but it was reported that pre-recorded messages were carried on board. A good satellite for use in the game would be a Keyhole (KH-11). The first one, KH-11 1-1 (OPS 5705), was launched December 19, 1976 but deorbited January 1979. The second one, KH-11 1-2 (OPS 4515), would be best. It launched June 1978 and stayed up to August 1981.

Most of the time I'm retreating due to low fuel. It would be great if I can tell it which way to retreat so it doesn't retreat in front of an attacking or retreating UFO. I'm getting nailed fairly frequently with no way to control or prevent it from happening.

An alien base under Lake Vostok would be cool (no pun intended ). There has been some unusual "anomalies" detected in the area (unusual mass, radiation, and gravitational readings, etc.).