JsARCLIGHT

It was really hard to tell colors in the original Tron mostly because there was so much bleed in the images. The tank crews could have been yellow for all we know as the intense red bleed inside the tank control rooms caused everything to look red. Clu is an example of this, inside the tank he looked red... outside the tank he looked greenish yellow on some prints and almost white on others. That being another problem with the first Tron movie, there are a lot of bad prints out there. I think the most recent release (the 2 DVD 20th anniversary edition) has the most accurate color print and even it still has a ton of bleed... it was just the nature of the tech they used for the effects.

Of all the episodes shown this season I would only count one of them as a lame duck. The others are all either good or great. "Now Museum, Now You Don't" was another great one.

Using that reasoning then you would want to capture that facility pretty much intact with as little damage as possible so you could start it back up again as soon as you held it. Which would pretty much rule out any fighter/bomber type weapon, because you don't want to blow the thing to pieces you just want to capture it. The best tactics and weapons for an operation like that would be some form of armored landing/boarding craft with a crack team of commandos trained to fight in close quarters with weapons that will not damage or disrupt the facility's structure. Kind of like space Navy Seals boarding the facility through subterfuge. "Capture" or "Recover" missions are some of the hardest to fight because you have to hold back so you don't destroy the thing you are fighting to gain. Use of a fighter/bomber would come into play if that facility was a monitoring station or other military installation that you wanted -gone- and not captured. And this is the direction I was talking about... once you determine the cause and means of your "war" it is easy to "write doctrine" for the machines and tactics to be used to wage it, just as in real life. We don't deploy tank brigades to deal with a hijacked airliner just as we don't deploy an infantry division to fight against an aircraft carrier. The tool fits the job, so long as your "job" is right your tool will always be "right".

Reading 1/1LVL's post made me think of another area that sci fi kind of wings it a lot of the time... which is folks being just a tad too "prepared". If by some great stretch of the imagination humanity hits the stars without starting wars with ourselves in space we will be completely ill prepared to fight a hostile alien threat just as they will be completely ill prepared to fight us. Humanity builds weapons based on the fight we expect to fight next and nine times out of ten we guess wrong and wind up with equipment that really only "half works". It's only after "first contact" with an enemy and prolonged engagements with him can you properly analyze his equipment and tactics to form your own effective weapons and defenses. Going into a "first contact" situation with hostile aliens we will be fielding almost exclusively technology and tactics designed to fight other humans. That technology will either go over really well against aliens or it will fail miserably. Depending on how that goes down our equipment and tactics will be tailored to better fight the war. In the element of space for the first hundred years or so humanity will be like a child stepping outside their house for the first time. We can only prepare ourselves based on our limited experiences inside our house and pray that what we encounter in the big outdoors doesn't kill us instantly when we make contact with it. We can only assume that other beings from other planets will fight like we fight, hold the same tactical desires as we hold and engage in the same maneuvers that we do. If we happen to encounter a group of beings who are so totally alien to our way of warfare we could either win big or lose big. But I still firmly believe the greatest enemy mankind will fight in space is our fellow man. You can take the man off his home world but you can't remove the hate, anger and greed that men possess. We were killing each other with rocks and twigs thousands of years ago and we will be killing each other with death rays, planet bombs and black hole guns a thousand years from now... provided we don't nuke ourselves into oblivion beforehand.

The problem with Star Trek is it's doctrine and tactics are based on turn of the century naval warfare which heavily played on large wooden ships slugging it out with each other, each able to withstand tremendous punishment and the engagements usually ending with the sun going down and no real decisive winners except on rare occasions. Today's modern wars are more or less a series of tiny platoon and company level engagements that rely on a symphony of supporting actions and multiple levels of offense and defense. You might only have a hundred "guys on the ground" but that small band of fighters is supported by flights of fighter bombers coming in for CAS hits, choppers and tanks rolling around the sides to pincer enemy positions and long range artillery and satellite guided munitions to hone in in forward air/artillery guided support relayed by a guy on the ground. Our planet hasn't seen a truly large scale high intensity "war" in decades and we probably never will see one again. Everything today is tactics, precision and coordination. They do the same amount of damage and displace the same amount of death as ten times the troops and equipment did in WW2... and they are still looking for newer and more efficient ways of doing the same with less manpower. But in the end technology is simply the middleman of war. The catalysts and the goals of the conflict are what drive the actual execution of the war. If say resources are the cause of the war and the goal is to take as many strategic resource points as possible you are not going to be seeing devastating, world destroying weapons being used. If their cause and goal are to capture raw materials, why blow them into dust just to "beat the folks holding that position"? If territorial expansion is the cause and goal you don't want to lay waste to all the places you plan on inhabiting. High technology can and will provide devastating "total war" weapons but most future wars will probably not be "total war"... they will be low intensity, clear and hold affairs like they are today. A "problem" with most sci fi is that people don't think about "what comes after the war", they only think about creating the most destructive weapons. A planet destroying bomb launched from ten light years away is absolutely no good when your objective is to capture a planet rich in minerals. A laser cannon capable of turning a space station into vapor is not much use when your goal is to capture a strategic space station that occupies a spot next to a well used space traffic area. In a sense the "biggest and baddest" weapons of the future will be akin to our atomic weapons of today... everybody has them but no one wants to use them because the only purpose they serve is as a "final solution" or as a bargaining chip. Only a tyrant or madman with nothing to lose and nothing to gain would deploy a "Death Star". IMHO it's "cheap" storytelling to simply have your sides blowing up planets right and left, laying waste to entire galaxies on the weekends. It's madness... but then again most sci fi is used as allegory to real world events and a lot of sci fi was born out of the cold war fear of nuclear holocaust.

Back during WW2 the Nazis actually had the idea to build an "orbital skip bomber" that would fly up, skim along the upper atmosphere and bomb the US from "space". I think most of the "space bomber" ideas now relate to that doctrine... something that can escape the atmosphere and bomb targets from such an altitude that retaliation from ground units would be impossible. I don't really see that as a "space" fighter/bomber though. When I hear the term "space fighter" I think of something that would be deployed in the vacuum of space ten light years off the ork belt in some far flung star cluster, used to attack a "space station" sitting out in the vast emptiness. Hardcore sci fi "never happen in a million years" stuff. I mean, why would someone build a "space station" in the middle of nowhere? Then why would someone else want to attack it? What is the objective? Why are they attacking it? What tactical purpose does this engagement serve? I figure if you can establish and answer those questions then the doctrine of "why space fighters" comes naturally.

Where there are people, there is conflict. Where there is conflict, the need for a military and military hardware exists. I would think that a tactical doctrine for a space based fighter/bomber would be a no brainer. Obviously to have a space based weapons delivery system it's implied you have space based dwellings. Those space based dwellings would eventually evolve to fit a combat role with defenses and armaments necessitating some sort of small profile vehicle with which to attack said installation. Military doctrine always espouses the role of as small an efficient a strike force as needed to accomplish an objective. You never send a destroyer or a nuclear submarine after a mud hut. And at the same time you never send a large, slow military vehicle against a well defended position... it would get picked to pieces. A maneuverable small craft with effective pinpoint "surgical strike" weapons which would engage in fast "hit and run" missions against fixed or variable targets seems a given to me. After all, it's very hard to disguise a large capital ship well enough to "surprise" a tactical position. It would be like trying to sneak up on a bunker in a Winnebago... but a smaller vehicle with a smaller radar signature capable of delivering the same devastating strike would be harder to detect and harder to retaliate against. Plus the tactics for the use of such things also seem like a no brainer. A bunch of small radar signatures could probably easily be "faked". Throw out a bunch of drones approaching our objective from several angles would lead them to array their defenses to protect against multiple attack vectors... when in reality only one flight is "actual" and they are flying into a hot zone that is only putting up a fourth or less of it's possible combined defenses against the approach vector those "actual" fighters are using. I've always imagined the future of air power (and in this case space power) is a small, probably unmanned multi-role vehicle capable of delivering high damage weapons to fixed targets as well as engaging in vehicle to vehicle combat... like a small drone carrying low yield nukes and some sort of cannon. Something that is efficient in it's operation, cheap to manufacture and deploy yet stealthy and agile. It will cost billions upon billions to build one "space cruiser" but you could make thousands of fighter/bombers for the same cost. Edit: I would also assume that the vacuum of space would introduce new combat strategies that cannot exist in an atmosphere. I would think that omnidirectional cannons and weapons deployment would be needed, the ability to aim and fire up, down, left, right, behind and in front... possibly turreted cannons like on the Gunstar in the Last Starfighter. Due to gravity and atmosphere our airborne fighters all follow the traditional "chase" attack patterns, but a spaceborne fighter would be able to attack sideways, backwards, etc. not always in line with it's direction of travel. Also going with the usual progression that for every new sword a new shield comes along I'd imagine new countermeasures and armor would be developed. Possibly something along the lines of the old school Regan era "Starwars" system in which installations and vehicles have "anti missile" lasers that lock onto and destroy incoming threats like missile command. Which would again lead to a smaller, "closer in" delivery method like a fighter which would give the countermeasures less time to strike down an incoming weapon like a missile fired from miles away.

Well, Dumont was old... but he was also referred to as an "old program" as were all the other programs that the MCP was going to envelop there near the end of Tron. The MCP himself was eventually revealed to be a bearded old man. Even Sark was no spring chicken, complete with wrinkles just like Dillinger. IMHO it might screw with the Tron mythos if people could write programs that looked like younger versions of themselves. Then again a program's "appearance of age" might have more to do with it's technological age rather than it's creator's age. Dumont was old as was the MCP and Sark was getting old but Tron, Clu, Flynn, Ram and Yori were fairly new programs written with "modern" code to do "new" things. Perhaps the bigger and older a program gets it's appearance ages as well? Also along the line of appearances, I wonder if we'll see some "non human" designs like some of the ones from the Tron 2 PC game. Characters like The Kernel and Ma3a were interesting departures from the more traditional Tron designs.

When you think about it, the "world" of Tron has probably totally changed. Flynn had "been inside" and came back... perhaps in Tron's world people now enter and exit the computer world as "Users" regularly like Flynn did in the first Tron. Perhaps "yellow" is the "User's Color"? Edit: Then when you think about it, every program written by a user has their face. Which means "Young Flynn" could be an old program written in the '80s that was constantly updated. If they follow the same "logic" as the Tron 2 PC game then Flynn took over Encom and began reworking it "in his image". It would then be assumed that he would have to write new programs to take the place of the MCP to administer the company's networking. And by that logic Dillinger could still be alive somewhere and could write a new Sark program. With where computers have gone to since the original Tron there are so many various ends the new movie could explore. Hackers, viruses, electronic espionage, the explosion of online gaming, you name it. Some of these elements were already touched upon in the Tron 2 PC game.

Zark? Wasn't the badguy's name Sark? And wasn't he derezzed? I know it's been a long time in the coming and I wonder how they are going to handle certain things in the new Tron. The old Tron was very "old school computer" oriented and it will be interesting to see how stuff like "the internet" is handled story wise. And I wonder what will happen to the story arc of Tron 2: Killer App (the PC game from like six years ago that was hailed as the successor to Tron)?

In SD...

Tears of a Sea Cow... another instant classic. "I want to build an empire to house the machine I built to kick his ass!"

Same status on my end. Site says (OFFLINE) at the top.

OK, I think everyone has had their swing and we are through the starting lineup. Please try to redirect this thread into a meaningful discussion of the game otherwise we're going to lock it.

What sold the Prodigy reference for me (and how I instantly recognized it) was the faux "Firestarter" guitar riff they had when he was running around. That whole scene was almost directly lifted from the Firestarter video. I've gone back and re-watched the episode with my DVR so I could pause it and look at the entire group of people to see all the references. And there are quite a lot... but there is some repetition in the references, for instance Trevor Horn appears twice (once as his Buggles self and again as his Art of Noise self).

Could be worse... could have that weird red haired guy screaming OUTLANDER! at Peter Horton all the time in it.

My shields always seemed to regenerate pretty fast and my "repair" action was also pretty fast... then again I had very tech savvy people in my squad, mostly to hack things and salvage stuff. The whole "upgrading the Mako" thing was a big complaint of mine. It seemed everything in the game was upgradable somehow except it... and it played such a major role in your exploration of planets.

I just seem to have had a lot of "wobble" when I was driving it on the Xbox... I think it had to do with the "go forward" control constantly shifting depending on where the camera was aiming. So if you turned your camera to aim and shoot at something but wanted to drive around in another direction there was this brief "whoops" when the Mako would bobble and you'd have to adjust your steering to straighten it out. This phenomenon was compounded in the times when I'd get the Mako "stuck" and have to "Austin Powers" my way out of a jam (constantly throwing the thing into forward and reverse to "rock" out of a spot). Some folks I know who have the PC version told me the Mako steering was "greatly improved" but they had not played the Xbox version, so I was kind of curious as to how it actually steers and shoots.

How does the Mako handle on the PC? That was one of my chief complaints about the control scheme on the Xbox was that the Mako drove like a drunk hippo.

I've never done anything with my stuff. Outside of buying a Venture Brothers avatar, everything on my box is stock... and the stock settings are abysmal on my HDTV. The colors are just so blown out saturated... they hurt my eyes to look at them they are so "hot" and the only way to "detune" them enough is to detune my TV settings, which then all my games look like mud. I love the menu system on the PS3... it's warm, yet elegantly understated... not like a screaming goat on fire painted hot orange like the Xbox system default. Are there any pictures of this new stuff around? If it's like what it sounds then I'll be all for it. Anything to help me not have to look at the road flare colors they have by default.

I could do without the hot neon colors and the advertising saturation the current one has. The Xbox360 menu system reminds me of driving through the main strip back in Vegas... it's busy, loud, distracting and obnoxious but you have to get through it before you can have any fun.

I liked Mass Effect well enough. I kind of want to see where they take it for the sequel... there was a lot in ME1 that I felt was kind of "half developed" and I saw a lot of room for addition, modification and improvement. It was a very good "start" and a very good game, where it goes from here is what will really enshrine it as a classic IMHO.

Another thing just noticed: I was re-watching "My Dinner with Hatred" on my DVR and I just now noticed that Dr. Tara Quymn is the first page of the "new super scientists to arch" book that the Monarch is reading.

I was thinking the same thing, especially how she reacts to Jonas Venture at the door but cries when he foists her off on Kano. ... and speaking of Jonas Venture it seems the new "fad" of this season is continually painting Jonas as more human and fallible, whereas before he was seemingly the straight-laced competent genius with only the odd mistake who was above reproach. Now he's a key party throwing wild man.

Well... I think we have our "dog" of the season. "What goes down must come up" was kind of blah. I really only laughed twice, the first time when the guy from Prodigy was mugging around and when the crap rocket crashed. Outside of that it was pretty much... well... a miss. Still though, seven episodes in and only one I'd call a miss and several I'd call pure gold. They are batting above the average in my book.