Mr March

Got a question for any X-COM fans in the know. Like I said, it's been a lot of years since I played, so some of the smaller details I've forgotten. What is the time line for the game? By that I mean, how much time does the player have? Can you keep going for years, or will you eventually run out of time and the aliens win? Also, is there a time limit after you've finally researched the final Cydonia mission? I seem to vaguely remember some game rule that once you research the final mission, you're under the clock from that point on and have to complete it soon. I've forgotten if this is true or not. I know I'm doing very well in my current game. I'm in August of the first year (1999) with 6 bases, 5 sets of 10 experienced soldiers all armed with laser rifles, plasma/heavy plasma and Power Suits/Flying Suits. I can research "The Martian Solution" in my queue and I still have an alien Commander to research if needed further (which I think is, if I remember correctly). My Psi-Labs are built in all bases, the first month of training is already under way, and I've got a dozen psi-amps built already. I've also got an Avenger and two Firestorms all armed with Plasma Beams as well as Mind Shields and Hyper-Wave Detectors built at all bases. I've got tons of elerium from raiding the Supply Ships making trips to an alien base that I've allowed to operate in Singapore for the last 4 months. One of my bases has 900, another has 800, and two more have 600+ each, with the lowest sitting at 350 currently. Plus $40 million in the bank

I've plans to add more Macross 7 mecha and invariably more color variants will follow, especially since alternate color variants are easy to do, unless the paint scheme requires Angel Bird-like or Nora-like details (which are a pain to color...hehehe). I'm in the midst of trying to obtain more scans, since Macross 7 art work is very limited in my own collection of Macross art books. I'm really glad that helped, at the very least. Not sure what the problem could be. At any rate, I'm glad you're enjoying the site. The humor section was a lot of fun for me and a nice break from the rest of the content heavy site.

Those are the "magic hand" manipulators for maintenance use. Now that's a good idea! I wonder if they did keep using those things in future variable fighters. They could certainly be used to reload the gun pod, esepcially since the arms are right next to the gun pod in fighter mode. Though, the arms are folded away in fighter mode, with only a single facet of the arm section exposed. THe old magic hands came one from each facet of the battroid forearm. Might be tricky to make it work.

Personally, I always thought reloading the magazine was possible only in battroid mode. Unless there's some additional heretofore unmentioned mechanism involved, I can't see how the gunpod reloads in Fighter mode and Gerwalk doesn't seem like a possibility either. Interesting question nonetheless.

Martha Stewart and porn is not something that any human being should be subjected to

Damn, you have been gone a long time. You made two posts in January this year, but haven't posted since spring last year. Welcome back!

For some reason your connection is not downloading any of the pictures from the M3. All the gifs, jpgs and other images don't seem to be downloading to your browser. I've logged into the site and double checked the folders. The Banner and Buttons folders have all the images they should. As a test, I've cleared my browser cache and revisited the M3. I did the same for both browsers, Firefox and IE. All the buttons and images downloaded again, so the site is functioning normally. At this point, I'm not sure what I can do to help further. Have you had this problem with the M3 before? Perhaps it's adware or a virus on your computer? Are you browsing from a computer that has my website content blocked for some reason? If direct links to each section works for you, I can provide those. The M3 is a very small website (only 10 sections, including the acknowledgements pages), so posting the various sections is easy. Macross Zero Section SDF Macross Section Macross DYRL? Section Flashback 2012 Section Macross Plus Section Macross 7 Section Features - Icons of Mecha Sub Section Features - Scale Charts Sub Section Humor Section I hope at the very least this helps you.

The Macross Mecha Manual is running okay for me. When you click on the line that say "Don't Forget To Check The Main Site" it takes you to the splash page for the "UN Spacy Quarter Master's Tactical Database", the main website upon which the Macross Mecha Manual is hosted. The UNSQMTDB is under construction and revision, by briscojr84 and is not part of my own site. Perhaps try it again and make sure to press refresh when visiting after an update so your browser downloads the newest updated menu pages.

There's this website that some guy did called the Macross Mecha Manual. It's got fairly accurate stuff and some really nice pictures. Here's his Glaug entry: http://www.un-spacy-qmtdb.com/SDF%20Macross/glaug.htm I wonder if the guy ever visits the MacrossWorld forums? Hehehehe

Tanks can be such a great unit to use, I'm not sure why it would be avoided. Granted, I have played X-COM games without them, but there's no reason to IMO. They are a valuable part of the game, more than can be said for certain other items in the game. I like the ability of the tank to move faster and the heavy firepower that can be used to complete missions faster. Especially in the mid to latter parts of a game, sometimes a UFO will come up and you're thinking to yourself "Oh for crying out loud, I don't need money, I don't need elerium...just go away and let me do my research." Tanks can make missions go by so fast. Roll them out, have them level the terrain and mow down everything. Quick, dirty and low risk. Helps make things faster.

Damn, it's been so long since I've followed a game prior to release, I'd actually forgotten about the dreaded release date pushbacks. The video game industry has to be the worst offender for that. Remember Daikatana or Battlecruiser 3000AD?

Funny video. His little commentary is interesting too. Going through the pains of trying to get noticed

Love the tanks! So helpful in the early parts of the game, for all the reasons you mentioned. They also make great scouts and expendable point units. ANd how can anyone not love the terrain destruction of the missile tank?

My viewed-to-own ratio would be WAY off. I saw over 170 films last year alone, including anime. My entire DVD collection is just a little greater than that, anime DVDs included. So obviously I see way more than I could ever hope to own. I do own a respectable amount of anime on DVD. I have the complete SDF Macross series, the complete Cowboy Bebop series, the first season of Ghost In The Shell Stand: Alone Complex and the first few volumes of the Samurai 7 series. I also own two OVAs and about sixteen anime films all on DVD. I've easily seen at least ten times as much anime as I own and it's likely more.

I would think any blip showing up on the tracking instruments would count. At any rate, the YF-19 and YF-21 stealth systems were overcome by OT detection systems so it's obvious that even more advanced stealth systems can be detected with Cyclops radar. Most likely, though electronic warfare in the Macross universe is now operating on a whole other level, the race between detection and stealth still follows similar patterns as our modern conventional technologies today.

Yea, they show these in theatres before the film. I don't know what's worse, the dancing sailors or presenting the military as oh so dramatically serious to the public. But then again, I've never seen any recruitment advert that I liked. Hell, even some of those lame summer flicks that basically ARE recruitment films have always failed to impress me. Genuine interest and respect for your military is worth more than any silly recruitment flick or advert.

The Reguld appears in both Kawamori Design Works books and as such are his designs. chrono is correct, the Reguld is a Kawamori designed mecha.

That is one cheesy advert, for military service of all things! I guess if it works in the native culture, whom am I to disagree? But from my perspective, that just makes the Navy look silly. Wow, now there's a little known piece of military history

Gung ho! Actually, elerium was never that much of an issue with me until I replayed games on much higher difficulty levels. It was then that I learned not to be so crazy with alien weapons. Now instead of arming the entire squad with the best available alien gun (like Heavy Plasma), I just arm a pair of troops with Heavy Plasma, a pair with regular Plasma Rifles, a pair with Laser Rifles, one with Small Launcher and grenades/high explosives/misc, one with Rocket Launcher/Blaster Launcher, one with an Auto-Cannon and all three ammo types and one with a Heavy Cannon and all three ammo types. Prepared for anything

No stoning required I'm sorry you didn't like the 1/48. I don't purchase toys, models or similar fan merchandise in large quantities, but I do like to splurge on a worthwhile toy and I must say I think the 1/48 was a great purchase. IMO, the 1/48 looks better than the 1/60 because the sculpt is better, it has better articulation and is better to handle because it's that much better constructed. If the 1/60 was all that existed, I'd be happy with it, but the 1/48 came out and I was thrilled. I guess that explains why so many love the 1/48, myself included. So I guess the moral of the story is, don't buy another one

The first two rules are a reference to Fight Club and not meant to be all that serious. Yes, some of the other rules may seem common sense to most, but sometimes it's good just to go over the obvious before getting into the obscure, like Rule 6 that most people often miss. You get the most elerium from Supply Ships that land near the alien bases rather than the alien bases themselves. My mistake. You can't open UFO Power Sources with explosives without destroying everything, but Heavy Plasma works reasonably well with minimal risk as I recall. It's been years since I've tried the base theft and I never did it all that much. You get elerium, but attacking the supply ships is much better and less tedious than base theft. Bases are just too big to waste time going to over and over IMO. But I guess it depends on how desperate you are for elerium

"There are over 550 million firearms in worldwide circulation. That's one firearm for every twelve people on the planet. The only question is: How do you arm the other eleven"? Where there's a will, there's a weapon I find that the laser pistol is actually the most profitable sell factoring in time. Yes, you get a higher profit margin with laser rifles, but the laser pistol can be manufactured that much faster. I also find manufacturing laser pistols is a good tradeoff with the laser rifle because I can use my engineers more for non-sale items. I can make a little less money over the short term with laser pistols, but manufacturing laser pistols means I spend less time actually building them and spend more engineer man hours building stuff for MY uses. About Elerium: For the most part, you get a lot of it in any game just by performing missions. But if you use a lot of alien equipment, craft and build everything, you'll run out fast. Here are the basic Elerium rules: Rule 1: You Don't Sell Elerium. Rule 2: You Do NOT Sell Elerium! Also, dont sell anything that costs elerium to build that you may need it later. It's tempting to sell them, but never sell UFO Power Source, because you'll just need to build them when you make the ufo-derived craft. Use the salvaged stuff and save on elerium. Rule 3: Don't waste any opportunity to investigate a downed/landed UFO. To do so is to miss out on Elerium. Correspondingly, never shoot down any UFO over the oceans (since you cannot conduct recovery operations underwater, the craft is lost). Rule 4: Don't obliterate UFOs! Try using "Cautious Attack" and don't always fly in for the kill. The damage you do to the UFO depends on size but it also depends on tactics. Don't fly in guns blazing all the time. Otherwise, there's not much left of the UFO once it crashes and sometimes the Elerium is all but destroyed. Rule 5: Never manufacture any alien guns or alien munitions. Alien guns and munitions should be used only as taken from your enemies. If you're using them up faster than you can replace them, you're arming your soldiers with too much alien weaponry and needlessly wasting resources, which leads into our next rule... Rule 6: Do not stack ALL your soldiers with alien weaponry. If you have a team of 12 soldiers in your assault craft, all armed with Heavy Plasma Guns, each one of them that fires but a single shot during the mission uses an entire clip according to the game. That's right, even if a soldier fires 1 out of 35 shots in a Heavy Plasma clip, the game code considers that clip "expended" once combat ends. If each of your team fires at least once upon the enemy, that's 12 clips per mission! Many of the weapons remain useful throughout the game, like Laser Rifles and grenades. Moderate the use of your alien weapons that utilize elerium and you'll find you never run out. Rule 7: DO NOT USE THE FUSION BALL LAUNCHER...EVAR! This mighty weapon is mighty for a reason, because it sucks Elerium like a blackhole. Unless you've got a stockpile of several thousand Elerium in each base, never use this ship-mounted weapon. Arm your interception craft with Plasma Beams instead. They are faster firing, hold nearly 100 times more ammunition and are simply far more efficient. If you are relying upon the Fusion Ball Launcher to take down the big UFO battleships, instead use groups of two or more interception craft and attack together. Even the mighty alien battleship will quickly fast against two to three attackers armed with dual Plasma Beams. Rule 8: Find those alien bases! Patrol, patrol, patrol and find the Alien Bases. Assault them and you get some elerium, but it's those Supply Ships that carry the most. Watch a base and assault the supply ships, they typically give a ton of elerium. You can also perform theft missions on alien bases. Run your team in, ransack the rooms with power units using non-explosives to open them up, pick up those little purple balls that are inside, run your team back to the landing craft and abort the mission. Rinse and repeat for a constant supply of Elerium. Waste the alien base once you're bored. Rule 9: Do not abandon earth-made craft and use exclusively alien made designs. The Firestorm, Lightning and Avenger all consume elerium to not only build, but to refuel as well! Of all the rules, I'd say the simplest rule is to moderate usage. If you monitor the amount of elerium and use it just on the stuff you should (like flying armor, alien craft, plasma beams, et cetera) and never manufacture other elerium-necessary items that you can salvage from combat, you should have more elerium than you could ever use in the span of the game.

Kicking some serious butt! I'm only five months in (May 1999) and I've got four bases with three garrisons of troops (Europe, North America, Asia and Africa), three Interceptors armed with Plasma Cannons, a Firestorm, one entire squad all fitted with Flying Suits, plus about 6 million in cash and building my first Avenger. It's nice to know I haven't lost my touch after all these years. It's been roughly 7 years since the last time I played X-COM, but it's like I never left

The most fun I have in X-COM is setting up fields of fire with two or more squads. Especially in terror missions it works beautifully. You fight your way into a secure position early in the map, then move your 2-3 squads across the map as a rough line, occassionally splitting each squad into flanking teams of two members each. When you approach the far corner of some building with a squad on each side, any aliens backed into that area are gonna be toast, facing fire from multiple directions simultaneously. SO much fun

Of course the original, X-COM Enemy Unknown (a.k.a. UFO Defense). TFTD was a cheap sequel, churned out just for sales. It's basically just the original with an aquatic theme, twice as hard and not nearly as fun. Apocalypse was okay, but fell short of expectations IMO. DOSBox is brilliant. I've had several different DOS games working on it - including Master of Magic - and it runs them all smooth. X-COM works perfectly. I'm using my old CD DOS version 1.4, which I beleive was part of "Conquer The Galaxy" game pack which included X-COM, TFTD and Master of Orion all on CD. Apparently there's a Windows version of X-COM, but I've never seen it and supposedly they messed with the sound effects in the Windows version. No thanks, I like my X-COM the original way