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Originally posted by Insano:
**What I meant by I see that too was that the rebels would ship supplies in freighters w/o rebel transponders. And, the rebels only fire on ships equipped with confed trasnponders. You win the one about the game engine. But, as most confeds would say, the confeds have better tech than the rebels (i'm not admitting anything) so the rebels might not be able to scan cargo. They also might not choose to because it's an invasion of privacy. Well, maybe anyway.
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I think it may well be time to let this topic slowly sink its way down to the bottom of the topics page and off the screen on our monitors. (Some of you may even say it is well past time!) Therefore I am only going to post a couple of final remarks and then see if there are any other threads/topics I want to participate in. I won't be checking back here, so if anyone responds to what I now post and you want to have me check it out, call it to my attention if/when you see me post something elsewhere.
Insano, thanks for clearing up your points about Rebels and which ships they shoot at, i.e. Rebels don't shoot at ships without Confed Id's, (except pirates, which are target practice it seems for everyone.) I thought you were most likely using the idea that the Confeds would help anyone shot at by the Rebels, to help you try and counter my contention that having Confed transponders on their ships helped the confeds identify their ships and come to their aid. Thats why, also in the first part of my post, I said I didn't think this took place in the game itself, (Rebels shooting at other ships without Confed transponder Ids.)
I brought it up again in the last part of my post because you went on to say towards the end of your post, that the Rebels only shoot at Confed ships. My use of the phrase "you can't have it both ways." probably was not clear as to what I was trying to say. Let's try this: If the Rebels only shoot ships with confed ids, then you can't turn around and use the aruguement that the confeds would help any ship shot at by Rebels, not just confed ones, as a counter to my saying all Confed ships having confed transponders makes it easier for them to identify when one of their ships is in trouble. It doesn't happen, the Rebels don't do this, they only shoot confed ships. Hope that clarifies my point.
About those Luxury liners in Capella; I did some checking in the resources (System dudes, flets and pers). Except for the occassional pers luxury liner that may randomly appear in Capella, the only luxury liners that show up in Capella will be Confed luxury liners, so that is the only kind available to shoot. Therefore, one could say that the Rebels are not really making a decision to shoot or not shoot a luxury liner, its a confed ship so they shoot it.
The next, (and last) post I will probably make on this topic: Which Government is Better? is for Macavenger as it relates to part of a discusion he and I were involved in earlier.
Macavenger: in our discussion about the Raid munitions convoy mission where you are required to take the stolen munitions to a pirate planet, you said that from a logistics/logical standpoint it made sense for the Rebels to do this because the Confeds don't patrol the pirate systems. This was in response I believe to my saying I thought it would make more sense for the person doing the mission to get them to a Rebel controlled planet and therefore helped me justify my suspicions about the motivations for the Rebels having me do this. So I did some checking, by actually starting up the game and flying from confed controlled systems to all of the various pirate controlled bases, Evildrome, New Antigua, Pirates Cove, Pirates Haven. Here's what I found: On the way to all of them, regardless of where I started, I ran into numerous individual confed ships and small to medium sized Confed patrol fleets along the routes. Also, I will give you the point that the Confeds don't patrol the actual systems in which these pirate bases are located, they do however patrol all of the systems surrounding them. In fact, I checked all the systems around the pirate systems and each and everyone had either a single confed gunboat, or a frigate and two gunboats or even in several instances, a Confed cruiser. (I made a list of what type, how many and in which system, but it is at home sitting on the table next to my Mac Powerbook.) Not exactly a safe travel route in my opinion for a ship that has just raided a Confed convoy and is carrying stolen munitions aboard. Another fact is that a Rebel controlled system is at the entry point for all of the unoccupied systems that leads to the pirate controlled systems, except for the one where Lethe is at the start. Even with this one, there are several Rebel controlled systems within one or two jumps of Lethe. So, regretfully, I can't buy into your saying it is safer for the Rebels to have you bring them to a pirate base. While the actual transfer of the weapons from your ship to the Rebels won't take place because no confed ships come into these systems, the fact that they do patrol all of the systems surrounding the pirate bases increases the risk of your being discovered and shot at/boarded on the way. Also, every time I was shot at repeatedly by any and all pirate ships not only in the surrounding systems but in the designated system as well. The Rebels need to work out a better arrangement with the pirates if they are going to continue doing this. (Yeah, I know, its how the game engine works.)
Anyway, no need to respond, I know how busy you are in Battle for Sol II. I just wanted to make these points because I kept forgetting to do so earlier.
I have enjoyed debating this issue with all of you. Except for that one small, minor incident where I mistook something you said, probably because I am so new here and not used to your writing style and phrasing, I have found all of the posters to be polite and striving to keep their thoughts logical and to the point. You are all to be congratulated.
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CRH