User talk:Jasonred

AARGH!!! I've been forgetting to log in whenever I edit!!!

Those 218.111s are all mine, AFAIK. my server seems to give me slightly different IPs each time. huh.

Posting on talk pages

Jasonred: Please sign your posts on talk pages or informal discussion pages by putting tildes (~) after your post! 3 will add your linked name, four will also timestamp the edit. I'm about to use four tildes here. Arrow Quivershaft 23:46, 26 February 2009 (CST)

More on the signature. I know it's easy enough to forget to type in the quadruple tildes, but you might find it easier to use the toolbar to add your signature and timestamp as an alternative. It's the second to last icon above the text edit box. It just makes submitting to a talk page a two-click process rather than clicking directly on submit. Just pointing that out if you hadn't noticed it yet.

Oh, and the toolbar's also a quick way to add the bold and italic formatting to any text selection as an alternative to emphasizing text with all capitals (which are probably best left for acronyms). -NKF 02:57, 9 April 2009 (EDT)

Posting on main (non-Talk) pages

Hi Jason

Glad to have you back with us and making lots of contributions. You have a lot of game experience to share so that is very good. Some more points on the protocol for posting though:

The main pages are meant to be articles, not discussions. So on the main pages we don't add a signature. I made this mistake myself when I was first posting. So: Talk pages, add your signature; Non-Talk pages, don't add a signature.

Also, as the main pages are meant to read as articles, they shouldn't have comments or discussion really. They should present a single view. So if you have a comment, question, or difference of opinion it's best to raise it on the Talk page rather than the main article. Then we can have a bit of a discussion about it, come to agreement, and change the main page in a way that reflects some kind of consensus.

Cheers, Spike Spike 06:17, 28 February 2009 (CST)

And while a bit of humour or speculation is ok on main articles - as long is it's clearly speculation - imaginative fiction should not be on the main pages. We try to keep the main pages 'canonical'. :)

Spike 13:32, 10 March 2009 (CDT)

Some literary license has been taken in places when we first started out the wiki, but we're now trying to make sure the core articles aren't too fictitious in content. Alas, even though I wrote the description for the HTL, I feel a great need to reduce it a bit to bring it back in line - particularly with the second to last paragraph. It was only included as it was often a comment TFTD players would jokingly mentioned in their posts in various message boards I've been to. -NKF 13:46, 10 March 2009 (CDT)

Speed Run timescale

Hi Jason. Is the Speed Run record measured in real time or game time? I guess it must be real time, you couldn't get to Cydonia in an hour of game time. Doing it in an hour of real time is unbelievably impressive. Spike 07:28, 8 March 2009 (CDT)

Yeah, that seems to be in real time. I agree that it's impressive; I can complete a full run of 1-Mission X-COM in a few hours, but just over an hour is...wow. Arrow Quivershaft 07:39, 8 March 2009 (CDT)

You can't even research laser weapons in 1 hour real time... actually, your skyranger can't even complete an intercept in 1 hour game time, methinks... Jasonred 09:47, 8 March 2009 (CDT)

You're entirely right about game time, but in real time, thanks to the time acceleration buttons, it IS possible to get to March in less than 20 minutes. Arrow Quivershaft 17:09, 8 March 2009 (CDT)

Theories about battle time

Sorry about this; I can't edit the Talk:Time Units, so I had to move this here. Arrow Quivershaft 16:56, 16 March 2009 (EDT)

I find that if I get the server error, copy your edits onto the clipboard (or in my case, I make doubly sure and paste it into an editpad window), navigate to another page, then go back to the page you were going to edit and edit it again and paste your work back into it. Seems to work fine that way. Not sure what's causing it. -NKF 00:27, 17 March 2009 (EDT)

The most outlandish theory is that Time CEASES TO EXIST within a battlefield... the Elerium has affected space time itself, preventing units from escaping, outside interference, etc etc. While some poo-poo this theory, it would be noted that all tactical mission will end at the exact same time that they began, on the clock. Even a 900 turn long siege and hunt-n-seek on the battlescape will not even take 1 second to transpire in the rest of the world. This is very important to know, for the commander who is busy trying to juggle multiple intercepts and ground missions. (as compared to Jagged Alliance, where events do occur in real time, and a engagement which takes hours will eat many hours of daylight) Jasonred

The point about how Battlescape time doesn't translate across to Geoscape time is valid and worth noting somewhere, but perhaps it's not completely relevant for the Time Unit section. Not entirely sure where it could go though. Perhaps the Geoscape overview section? -NKF 00:27, 17 March 2009 (EDT)

Unconscious kills

Good question. The article (Unconscious#Notes) points out that unconscious kills don't show up on the victory screen. It's a good guess they don't count for Experience either. Spike 10:16, 5 April 2009 (EDT)

They definitely don't in Xcom... I'm specifically asking about TFTD. Jasonred 10:33, 5 April 2009 (EDT)

Usually those sort of things are identical as the game engines are identical, with a very small number of known bug fixes (or attempted fixes) in TFTD. I suggest you just test it and let us know! Spike 17:16, 5 April 2009 (EDT)

Capital Letters (aka Shouting)

Please make an effort to limit the use of all capital letters. This is considered to be shouting, and is bad netiquette too. FOR EXAMPLE, THIS IS SHOUTING. Except in very rare circumstances, emphasizing text in an article with all caps is in bad practice. Using bold text is a little better as it doesn't have any negative connotations associated with it, but it shouldn't be happening in every contribution and on every page either. Just look at any normal book for what I mean. Rarely do you see any type of formatted (bold, italics, colored or otherwise) text within. This is an online encyclopedia and should read like one. --Zombie 08:59, 8 April 2009 (EDT)

Personal pronouns, and stuff

On similar matter, I do have one thing I've been meaning to say:

When adding to any of the main articles, remember that may be many writers. Be careful when putting in personal pronouns ("I"), opinions or anecdotes. They should be avoided or perhaps rewritten to better fit into the article.

A few exceptions include articles that are in the brainstorming phase (aka - it's just a discussion between members), or pages that clearly belong to you (like your talk pages or your own guides). Thanks to the disclaimer I added, we can also add our own opinions to the various articles in the weapon analysis page. I felt we needed some place on the wiki where we could put a variety of personal opinions and discussions for others to consider, as I find that it is a good mental exercise to see how different things work for different people - but to leave it up to the reader to decide how to use the information. Great way to pick up ideas that you would probably never have thought of before.

I'm mainly mentioning this for both your benefit as well as the rest of us, because I know you are (or probably were) tired of some of us constantly revising your edits.

One other thing, I hadn't really taken notice of this until recently, but I discovered that you've deleted some of my recent edits (mainly some paragraphs in the talk pages - and I think some damage table I drafted up, but I can't remember which. I'll have to backtrack a bit to track it down). It is quite a strange sensation for me when I'm reading through a talk pages only to find something I'm sure I put in is no longer there, but can't remember what it was. This is mainly a reminder to check that the Wiki doesn't complain about edit conflicts - as this happens a lot when we've got sharp bursts of activity like we've been having over the past week. -NKF 02:48, 9 April 2009 (EDT)

... I doubt I deleted a damage table... which page? The history will show what I did.

Though I have had some horrible incidents where I am editting a page at the same time as someone else, and something terrible happens. Are you sure it was me?

Found it - battleship page. Looks like we may have been editing the page at the same time. Had a table to show the min-max number of shots it takes the battleship's weapon to blow up one of your ships. Basically converted your earlier analysis into table form. A few other minor edits went missing too, but no worries. Good thing the wiki keeps short histories. -NKF 00:36, 10 April 2009 (EDT)

Time-Efficient Corridor Build

hi, I noticed you edited the article to represent the possibility of the build working better when rotated. Actually, because this was a build from a progression of thoughts, I hadnt really thought of rotating this exact build. I had analyzed that thought when it was a little different, and I NEEDED to have the hangars down low. Anyway, kudos on catching that. However, after analyzing further, here is the way I understand it: Rotating it 90 degrees counter-clockwise would seal the (currently) bottom-right two general stores. Rotating it 180 degrees would seal the one 2nd to the right. Both of these would prevent any human spawning points from reaching alien ones without blasting the walls. Rotating it 90 degrees clockwise would seem to be the only viable solution, as it would only seal off the labs, workshops, and special facilities (mind, psi, containment, and/or hyperwave, depending on how they get arranged). Living Quarters and General Stores would be fine. Please let me know what you think of this (I'm watching this page if you wanna respond here). --Talon81 20 April 2009

Well, basically the disjoint bug can be mostly overcome through pre-planned rotation and rearrangement, but Xcomutil just makes life so much easier overall... now all we need is a mod that fixes the green screen of doom bug! Jasonred 03:03, 21 April 2009 (EDT)

Well, I know that the disjoint bug can be overcome in MOST builds through rotation, but as I said, this build seems to have only one way. And while of course there are utilities to overcome it entirely, I am trying to account for those who do not use them. Personally though, I find Seb76's loader to be FAR superior to Xcomutil. --Talon81 02:27, 22 April 2009 (EDT)

I'll use it too, once all the bugs are ironed out. Jasonred 05:21, 22 April 2009 (EDT)

Pesky Paragraphs

Hey thanks for fixing the paragraphing there. I usually paragraph like crazy, in fact people have complained (here on this board) about me paragraphing too much! But actually I wrote that article on a mobile phone and it's hard to get the sense of what the formatting looks like. So thanks, and by the way, excellent point about the multiple engagements per flight, and the advantage the cannon weapons have for that.

By the way I don't know if you read my Air Interception article in detail but it looks like the rate of fire advantage of Laser and Plasma Cannon is not so much as the published weapon data tables imply. The advanced cannon only fire twice as fast as an Avalanche in Aggressive (3x faster than Standard Avalanche, 4x faster than Cautious Avalanche). This new data could really shake up the understanding of the relative power of the aircraft weapons.

Heh heh, Cautious Avalanche, that sound like a code name for some NATO war game exercise. Spike 12:46, 4 July 2009 (EDT)

"Gentleman, you're about to be briefed in Operation Cautious Avalanche. The propose of this mission is to capture an UFO and its crew by using Elerium detonations to set off a controlled avalanche to completely bury the craft..." Hobbes 13:31, 4 July 2009 (EDT)