David Hingtgen

Nightmare is far faster than most people think. It's just more fun/flashy to do most of the slower high-power moves (and the computer sure does). But the main thing is just to really nail down what moves are the stance-switching ones. Stances are far more important to Nightmare than to Mitsurugi or Ivy. Nightmare's various inifinite stance-switch combos rock, especially against newbies who've never seen him do more than a 2-hit combo. And with Nightmare, 6 hits is just about instant death... Standard->Knight Behind->Low->Side->Side Reverse is the most useful, but most limited (few variations, predictable). Usually skip Side reverse to go to low or behind again, or go to Behind again right from Low. (Alternating Behind and Side is the fastest, scrubbiest way to get an infinite stance-switching combo, you've probably seen even the CPU do it--useful for a quick short one, but not in the long run, unless you're agaist total scrubs)

I just started playing the US version after taking like a 4-month break from the JP one, so I'm having to re-learn a lot of Nightmare's stuff. (None of the FAQ's seem to play at all like I do, I just go through the move list a lot looking to see what goes into what stance, and build combos from there)

For every fighting game there is, I usually pick one of the faster (but rarely fastEST) characters, but I really like Nightmare. Still, I'm way better with Sueng Mina.

Well I think those proportions there are pretty good for a ZOE mech. Maybe slightly longer arms/legs, but not "bigger".

Or in the "obvious thing they missed" category, is that half the time in various Tekken games, Heihachi is walking around with 2 katanas, yet they couldn't "come up with" a weapon for him in SC2...

(Or does he have a katana and a wakizashi? Always looked like 2 katanas to me)

And there's always F-22raptor.com as well as F22-raptor.com, and it gets REALLY confusing. (Frankly, I'd rate official/government sites as the least accurate)

LOL--simultaneous Li Long fan postings.

Hey, Li Long was way better than Maxi will ever be.

Anyways, I've been using Sueng Mina since Soul Edge, as well as Hwang. Picked up Nightmare and Xianghua on DC. Can use Sophitia decently.

1,000lb and an AMRAAM? Hmmn. Globalsecurity *is* very good, and I generally don't question their stats.

Despite being an avid fan of SAAB when it was on, I never saw the last few eps. I swear some stations stopped showing it before it was "officially" canceled.

Good place to stake things out: your car. No one ever looks in cars. Easy to hide in your car in the dark, and look out.

Or, learn not to blink, and stay up until the sun raises. They'll either give up, or reveal themselves.

I just read a lot, that's about all I can say. Also, I take little for granted, I usually always check things out for myself. "If 3 books all have the exact same numbers, then that just means all 3 copied the same source". If they disagree, then one of them went out and measured/checked for themselves. Find the one correct source, not just one that copied somewhere else. Even official sources can be wrong. Boeing's own 720B drawings and stats have a few errors---the tail IS different than the 720, yet they describe it as being identical.

I knew all-blue had something to do with weight, never knew exactly what. Should have asked our resident missile designer.

PS--Knight26, what about ACMI pods etc? Usually all-blue or even all-red I think.

Well that's definitely not NATO standard AFAIK. I was pretty sure Australia conformed though. We do have some all-blue weapons, but those are pretty much only weight simulators used for training loading crews and the like. Generally only see AIM-9's like that here.

Here, it's stripe color, and nothing else. Pretty sure Belgium follows that method exactly, I'd have to look up most other nations.

Maybe NATO only specifies "blue" for dummy, and it's left up to individual nations to decide how that blue should be applied. I mean, I've never seen anything BUT blue for a dummy round. There's always pink bombs though, at least we've got some.

I always presume way too much about where people are posting from, sorry.

Umm, no. Body color means nothing. Only stripes have meaning. Blue stripes=dummy. Yellow/brown=live (since it indicates the explosive type, as you said). All bombs are olive drab, both live and dummy. Stripes on the nose indicate live or not. Same with missiles--all of them are white or grey, stripe color indicates live or not.

Same with torpedoes---generally metallic green or orange overall, dummies have blue stripes, live ones have yellow. (Since there are no rocket-powered torps, none have brown)

Yup, it's the 100th Anniversary of Flight this week, so it's all airplanes, all the time on most of the TLC/History/Discover channels, etc.

Yeah, squadron's got about the best selection there is. But you'll probably want to try larger scales---a 1/48 P-51's a LOT smaller than a 1/48 valk.

PS--a lot of the "colorful" valks you see in Japanese hobby magazines etc are based off of 60's and 70's Navy planes--F-4's, F-8's, A-6's, A-7's, and early F-14's.

But the YF-21 has *two* gunpods.

All in all, the original's the best to me--VF-1 !

The bottom-most pic posted by Burn looks the most do-able, but still too "everything" that I mentioned. (Tail-heavy, lack of wing, etc).

PS--just saw a Super Hornet demo on TLC last night, I was honestly impressed--it can do a WICKED tail-slide and practically post-stall manuevers. Now if only it had some speed and big missiles, it'd be a decent interceptor...

Best landing gear? Now THAT's my kind of topic! Of course, most valks seems pretty similar after the -11...

That's easy, VF-11. Though I'm not really TOO fond of ANY valk's nose. Ironically, I do like the F-18's nosecone more than just about any other. The plane as a whole is a different matter...

It's simply too tail heavy, that's the main thing. Too much weight too far aft, on too small wings. And no tail. Expand the wing into a big cranked delta, and that'll solve most of the problems. Bigger wing (thus more lift), more aft center of lift, no need for a tail if you make it a true delta. Basically, you want to make it look like an F-16XL/VF-11MAXL.

Burn--those count as verticals. Look at an F-22 or F-18. They're angled just as much as the Legioss, but are still the vertical stab, and still require full-size horizontals. F-14 has moderately canted stabs, likely the VF-1's inspiration. (While common nowadays, F-14 was pretty revolutionary for a jet in having two fins, canted outwards) A canted vertical stab does almost nothing, control-wise. If you pull both rudders inward, you can gain a moderate pitch-up when combined with the elevators. But nothing more, no actual pitch control. Works almost exactly like adding nose-up trim. (Good for carrier takeoffs, but not in combat)

YF-23 is one of the few planes with true "flying tails" that can do anything and everything, and it has an utterly unique control system. (Also, its stabs are SO out-canted, they are actually more like horizontals that have been bent up---yaw control is B-2 style, from the ailerons) And of course, YF-23 uses the WHOLE tail to move, not just control surfaces on the trailing edges.

Here's an A-4, about 1,000x better proportioned than a Legioss: (and it's got a tail, too)

renegadeleader1: A-4's fly because they actually have a tail, and don't have 70% of their weight aft of their center of lift. (Center of lift should be AFT of center of gravity, not ahead of it). Also, their wings are proportionally MUCH larger. That's why A-4's are such good planes--their lift/weight ratio's probably better than the F-14/15/16/18. An obvious fact overlooked by many people: wings are the most important part of a plane. Don't spend 80% of your design time/money/effort on the tail and engines, the wing's the important part. Tiny wings=not good. See F-104's service history.

I had to go find out what a Legioss was first... (I know of the term, but not what they are)

Well, my brain says overall "brick with wings" but I can't really find anything specifically "wrong" with it, other than it looks like a 1/48 kit built with 1/72 wings. Wing/body ratio is even worse than an F-104, but F-104's flew. It's just ungodly huge at the back. Pretty much everything aft of the cockpit. More like a box with a triangle grafted on the front. It's like a 747 carrying 2 or 3 shuttles on its back---just too much volume/mass for its size. I can't phrase it right, but you should understand what I mean.

All in all---I don't think it'd fly.

ewilen--your post appeared while I was typing. I did mention in my first draft of my reply that it wasn't FAR off from being a cranked-delta, but for a delta-wing to work (as in, no h.stab) it generally either is, or isn't, a delta. And this isn't. Wings are too small for it to work.

Delta's basically work by having the center of lift spread out over such a large area, and so "matched" with the plane's center of gravity, that the plane has little/no natural pitch tendency. Can't do that when the wing's so small, thus center of lift is so small, and with that big a back end, the center of gravity is way out there...

That's just what I'm talking about--there's a whole bunch of little slots and flaps around the sides of the engine, and I want to know what they do. The most intriguing theory is that they can move enough to actually vector the exhaust for yaw, not just "tweak" it. If so, then the F-22 actually has 3-D vectoring, or thereabouts. (Or the oft-said "2.5D") And something like "pssst..it actually has 3D vectoring" could be tried to kept secret for a while...