I tots will when I'm not on the corporate thin client. The IT department strikes me as a crew that plays Wall Street Kid, and perhaps Madden on the weekends.

Sigh when I worked at a beltway bandit helpdesk/support staff we used to stay after hours and play need for speed on the corp lan

These clients couldn't handle it. Now, if I was working for Charter...

...I know a guy, and he'd have fun setting up a few dedicated servers. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

X-COM ate up a ridiculous amount of my childhood. Is there anything High Explosives can't fix?

Alien alloys. But that's what the plasma explosives were for.

Alien Grenades, High Explosives, and Plasma weapons couldn't eat through a UFO hull plating on ground missions. Blaster bombs, on the other hand... were the sheer bane of my existence if the enemy had one.

Much as I like turn based, I did kinda like that in Xcom Apoc you could go 'real time'. I remember (at least for the earlier levels when the aliens weren't quite uber yet) sending in a squad just armed with stunners setting them in a central hall arrayed to cover all entry points and then sped the game up, letting all the aliens wander into my fields of fire and stunning the crap out of them. Good money maker.

Doesn't work well in later levels as they start using explosives, or those cultist dudes also with explosives, but its a good way to quickly build up a nest egg for research and stuff.

BLASTER BOMBS that's what they were. By the end I didn't really have that problem (but Elerium was).

Either the FBL's would annihilate the power sources on the target, or the plasma cannons would. I could just fly in through the ceiling.

X-COM Apoc was...all right. It had some interesting aspects to it, but it didn't feel as epic as the previous games were.

Apocalypse was interesting in that, aside from having a real time system (that if you got used to was generally superior to turn based. Less chance of getting screwed by a popper or brainsucker) the difficulty wasn't actually affected by your choice at the start. Well, not really. Higher difficulties merely lowered your starting and weekly income from sponsors. The AI was in no way affected... they MIGHT start using higher levels of tech sooner but not from what I remember reading.

There are quite a few good mods out for Apoc, however, they really change up how the relations with companies and the likes works.

France is down to its last city. It took a while taking all 40ish cities, but it went alot faster once my bombers got over there. Now I have to decide if I want to conquer the remaining two civs, build the Apollo program, or try for a cultural victory. I love how everyone is still telling me that my army is weak. My 12th level mechanized infantry might disagree with that when everyone else is still using riflemen for the most part, I've seen some barbs and city-states with infantry.

Anyone else feel paratroopers would be way cooler if they could attack after paradropping?

Yeah-though once you mastered that tech and had enough of a Psi corp the larger ships became easy prey. And the smaller ones are no contest.

Spot alien near LZ.
Mind control
Move alien till another is spotted.
Mind control
Move alien till another is spotted.
Mind control
Move alien till another is spotted--enter the ship (or spots were the aliens are grouped)
Mind control
Move alien till another is spotted--move up to the command center
Mind control
Move alien till another is spotted. See where the aliens are located.

Move three troops out 1 by 1. Firing blaster bombs after they move
1st one Fires and hits Ufo near the top level of the ship to puch a hole.
MC'd alien moves in and spots all troops in side if needed.
2nd trooper fires and takes out the aliens there.
3rd trooper fires for good measure.

Collect Eleareaum.

Not I would let the aliens land intact if they were not doing a terror mission.

Heh. Mine was:

Mind control alien, walk until I find another alien
Mind control al-hey, he's got a stun ball launcher!
Fire stunball launcher, knock out 3-4 other aliens
Mind control ali-hey, he's got a blaster bomb launcher!
'Inadvertantly' destroy large swaths of ship

Er... isn't that sort of the entire point of paratroopers?

I think the point is to get ground troops in by air. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

But if they can't attack on the same turn they drop, you can't drop them within the defense radius of an enemy city, so they have to march some distance overland anyway. That kind of defeats the purpose.

*shrug* Do they have to march all the way from your city? No. That's the purpose.

No, they don't fulfill the purpose of 'direct sneak attack by air', but that not *their* purpose. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) Maybe it would be nice, but it's not very historical, right?

I would say paratroopers fighting shortly after landing is fairly historical. They were often used to be put behind enemies lines and set up ambushes and resistances and stuff like that, but those don't work very well the way Civ is set up.

Yes, but (despite the 'years' system), I think that's what dropping them close already demonstrates. After all, don't they have to regroup and everything first? They don't get dropped *on* the target.

LOL, yeah, my Red Dawn fantasies were busted after I found out that paratroopers had to wait a year to attack after paradropping. One thing I did like about the previous civ was how you could airlift units.

You don't have transport planes in Civ5?

Yeah, airdrop and (less useful) helicopters were handy for moving around that big empire in 4. :/ What about shuttling between airbases/airfields?

Nah, give me Alpha Centauri´s planet-wide orbital-insertion drop-pod troopers anytime. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/grinbig.gif)

QFT.

Agreed. It is a huge pain having to ferry troops across the water for 15 turns to get from my continent to my enemy's, and that's after 4-5 turns on the railroads to get from the center to the shore in the first place. I can't help but think that a boying could do it a bit quicker (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

Cooler? Yes. Realistic? No.

Paratroopers have to regroup after being dropped in.

--



Waaah?

That's what layering your entire empire with railroads was for.