You get a lot less of that in Eve Online mainly because the skillpoint system allows for enormous variability. What's more, someone who's been playing a week could easily kill someone who's been playing for years in the right circumstances. Stick you in a destroyer, them in a frigate, you can probably kill them off pretty easily.
Why would someone who's been playing for years be flying in a frigate? Maybe they're just moving through to somewhere and don't want to risk a pricey ship. Maybe they're low on isk and are just doing tackling for others. Maybe they're testing something. Maybe they don't have better ships in the area and the local market has bad prices on most things. Either way, it's not just theoretically possible for a new player to kill an old player in Eve; it's downright practical.
First of all, your judgement of who or what I am is rather premature since it's based on a whopping couple of comments. It's entirely possible I'm just emotionally invested in the topic and am reacting more strongly than I otherwise would. Perhaps it's not that. Since you don't know, it's pretty silly to comment on the entirety of my personal emotional development based on a couple comments in the same topic.
Secondly, reading for understanding is important. I did not say anything about the individuals who would choose to play this game, WoW, or any other. I offered criticisms of WoW-like games and then specifically stated that I have no problem with the fact that a lot of people happen to enjoy that sort of thing. I'm sure plenty of people enjoyed playing ET for Atari. I have major problems with that game (along with most others), but if some people loved it, more power to them.
Thirdly, reading for understanding is important. I did not say anything that could reasonably be understood to mean I think all MMOs should conform to my own standards. In fact, I said the exact opposite. And you'd know that if you'd read my post.
I stand by my original argument that the Star Trek universe and franchise deserves better than an MMO where Klingons must beg and plead for an opportunity to open fire. Further, I hope it completely and utterly fails so we have some opportunity for a game that lives up to the Star Trek name. The sad part is that they had the ship combat nearly perfect with Star Trek Bridge Commander. If they'd built up from that, they would have had an amazing base for that aspect of the game. I mean, this is from 2002, and any one of those ships could open fire on any other at any time.
Taking surprise space combat out of Star Trek is like taking the Na'vi out of Avatar.
I think this guy's full of it, but there's a pretty simple test. Blindfold him and drive him out to a nice, open, quiet country setting. Something with lots of fresh air, birds chirping, no cars, no people, etc. Somewhere where you can smell flowers from a mile away and it feels like you're on a country road in the middle of nowhere. Park under high tension lines. Then ask him how he feels. If he's not on the ground doubled over in pain, he's a POS and full of it.
And if this guy really does have that severe a reaction to all technology, then Darwin says he should go stuff. Let him join an Amish community and live the rest of his life in peace. He has no right to shut down every invention of the past hundred years everywhere he goes simply because he's a genetic disaster.
Eve has sex slaves. You can purchase all your wallet can handle on the market. I believe they're under the 'trade' goods along with narcotics and mercenaries.
Going 200 miles for $4 is a real decrease in the peoples'[sic] standard of living?
Right now, it costs me about $18 in gas to go 200 miles in my fairly efficient (30mpg) old Honda. That's to say nothing of all the wear and tear on moving parts within the engine, oil, etc. Just the gasoline itself costs me about $18.
In 5 years, I'll be able to make the same trip for $4 in 'fuel' costs without breathing carcinogens all along the way and without having half the moving parts in a vehicle that costs about the same when new as my Honda did when it was new. That's assuming we make no progress in battery technology for cars in the next 5 years. A real decrease in the standard of living? Insanity.
The only things being decreased are the cost of my trip, the maintenance costs for my car, the pollutants in the air (real pollutants, not CO2), and the amount of funds available to some sand-sucking savage who'd just as soon pour the gasoline on my head as in my gas tank so he could watch another infidel burn for his god. Seems like a win-win to me.
If you're not going to support PvP well in a Star Trek game, make it single-player. Otherwise it's little more than a jag-off love fest with no real excitement. Yes, PvE is easier. Just like making people grind fishing in a lake every day is easy. Just like making people fly dragons around in circles for hours is easy. Just like making someone run dozens of FedEx quests is easy. Just like making someone fight the same boring thing over and over and over is easy. There are lots of easy things to do in a game and most of them stink.
And what I'm attacking is the apparent disclosure that Klingons will be asking permission to get into a fight. What's their new motto? Today is a good day to request permission to argue in strong terms?
WoW is fine. EQ is fine. They're not my cup of tea, but plenty of people enjoy them. What pisses me off is that they're doing it with Star Trek. A well done Star Trek MMO would pull me away from Eve in a heartbeat. Years of training and I'd cancel all three accounts tomorrow if there were a really great Star Trek MMO. Instead, what's announced is beta testing for Klingons asking permission to fight. It's a pussy game and until it grows a pair, it will continue to be a pussy game.
Actually, I've never griefed anyone, but I've been baited into fights a number of times. Most griefing is suicide ganking when you're in empire. But what Eve has taught me is that while games can be amusing or entertaining, they'll never be thrilling and exciting without a real risk of loss.
And if Klingons have to ask permission to fight, it's a game for pussies. A Star Trek game deserves better. It deserves rich, deep content, beautiful graphics, and absolutely cut-throat space. Otherwise you're left with something that's ultimately empty and meaningless. And while I have no problem with pointless, controlled gameplay on something like WoW where you can run around and do the 5 things you're allowed to do all you like, it pains me to see it done to Star Trek.
Yes, I get that when you crunch the dollars and cents, making WoW in space and slapping the Star Trek name on it seems profitable, but it doesn't mean I have to like it.
There will be conflict between the two factions, but supposedly all PvP will be "optional and consensual."
So it's a game for pussies? Thanks, I'll stick with Eve Online. Let me know when they grow some balls and make it reasonably realistic. If you want safety, park your ass in a station and go play WoW.
300 miles between service stations is perfect acceptable for most people. Few are actually willing to drive more than that at a stretch anyway. Most cars running on gas won't make it more than around 400ish anyway. There are some exceptions (particularly with large trucks), but then you've got a nice $60 or $80 bill to pay at the next service station. There's no consumer vehicle in existence that goes 12 or 16 hours of driving without stopping. Nothing goes a "full day of driving". And if you're going more than 300 miles in a day all that often, perhaps you should just invest in a conventional hybrid and go from there? For the other 99.999% of the population not doing 300+ mile trips all the time, all-electric vehicles can handle all their needs without gasoline.
In terms of charging times, their FAQ says: Standard charging times will vary depending on battery capacity, ranging from approximately 3 to 5 hours. 5 Hours is for the long range (300 mile) battery.
With regards to battery life, "How long will the battery last? a. Battery life is dependent on many factors, including; mileage, age, temperature extremes, and charge cycles. In general you should expect a Model S battery to have a useful life between 5 and 7 years, but proper care can result in a 10-year life."
My question is, what's the batter life on that Volt? You seem to have issues with batteries, but if Volt's battery life drops off, you've got a Prius that costs nearly twice as much. Since we don't have more details on how battery swaps will work, it's difficult to say what'll happen with service station batteries. What we do know is that they've bent over backwards for their Roadster customers, so they seem to be geared toward not doing stupid PR moves. Will that mean some sort of indicator on batteries? Some kind of tester? I don't know, but I'll bet Tesla would entertain questions. They've got at least 5 years after launch to figure it out. In the meantime, you know the infrastructure that's available in your area when you buy the car. If you're going on 300+ mile trips all the time and there aren't quickcharge stations near your destination, this probably isn't the car for you and it's likely no electric will be until the infrastructure is in place. But most people travelling 300 miles+ are flying anyway.
And a network of quickcharge stations already exists; just in California. In fact, they're even powered by solar installations. Solar's pretty lousy for power at the moment, so if those work, one has to wonder why the existing grid couldn't handle a few tens of thousands of these cars on the road. It's not like this or any other car will replace everything else overnight. There are still many cars on the road from 20 and 30 years ago for personal financial reasons and collector reasons.
And did you seriously just compare a touchscreen used to change the [i]radio[/i] station to the [i]gasoline combustion engine[/i], its moving parts, its exhaust system, etc strapped on to the electric motor in the Volt? Why does a car need a 17" fully configurable control panel for its functions? It doesn't. Neither does a car need a radio, a windshield, headlights, a trunk, a roof, doors, airbags, or seats. It'll still move back and forth. Those things were added as conveniences which drivers were willing to pay a little extra to get. If having a fully configurable 17" touchscreen for all your dash controls adds $1000 to a $50,000 car, virtually anyone will be thrilled to have it. Especially since the car includes the ability for 3G wireless connectivity for remote monitoring and such.
But I do find it strange that you don't want to pay an extra $10k - $15k to get rid of gasoline completely when you're perfectly willing to pay nearly double for a Prius made by Chevy. Something to think about while you're (apparently) driving around for 5+ hours every day going more than 300 miles to who knows where. In the meantime, thank God Tesla came along to show everyone else how to make a great all-electric vehicle with decent range. I hope they sell a ton of them so I can pick up a more affordable Bluestar.
The Model S does actually exist. They've been building them since last year. They even had journalists driving them around last year. They're simply not in assembly line production yet. That's slated for 2011. Tesla already delivered the Roadster and the Model S is simply the next step from that technology. There's no reason to doubt it's coming.
Yes, they're pricey at the moment. The next car being planned (bluestar) is targetted to sell for around $30,000. It's tentatively scheduled to go into production some time in 2012.
The point was that all-electric vehicles can take the Saturday workload you specified with no trouble at all when they're done correctly. If you really wanted to spend the money on a high end sports car, you could walk into a Tesla dealership and purchase an all-electric roadster right now. It'll go 250 miles on a charge and do the quickcharge, but its battery is not swappable. It'll also set you back $110,000 or so. On the other hand, it'll do 0-60 in 3.6 seconds.
I read and understood it just fine. Tesla makes a car that goes 200 miles on 4 bucks worth of 'fuel'. Find me something at or near production that can do that or admit that the weight of the battery in Tesla's vehicles is irrelevant in the face of the overall specs. Sure, if you could make the car lighter, it'd expend less energy to move. But that's not the point. The point is that Tesla's design, with that big, heavy battery, goes 200 miles for $4. Prius can't do that. Volt can't do that. Nothing else that I've seen anywhere in the entire world exceeds the operational efficiency of a Tesla vehicle. And that's why the weight of an individual component of a Tesla vehicle is not relevant; because the overall system vastly outpaces anything else on the market or planned for immediate production.
1. Tesla Model S batteries are standard for Tesla Model S cars. No other planned production electric vehicle (that I'm aware of) has a swappable battery, so we're just talking about 1 battery type stocked at an initially small, but growing, number of service stations.
2. Tesla Model S already has its battery set up to be removable. It's a 5-minute swap.
3. Tesla's published numbers indicate a minimum of 5 years battery life and a max of 10 years of 'useful life'. The batteries are available via lease, which would make Tesla responsible for them at the end of the lease. I don't see details on how battery swapping would affect the lease and such, but if you're that curious about it, you could always give them a call. (650) 413-6300
4. Partial charges at fill stations would be available via the quickcharge. You can plug it in for part of the 45-minute charge time and get part of a charge. There are a number of quickcharge stations already available in California.
And yet the Tesla Model S, with its big battery, does 0-60 in 5.6 seconds and has a 300 mile range. My point was that if the car performs well and is cheap to run, what does the weight of any particular component matter? The overall specs are the deciding factor. I don't care if the Volt's batter only weighs 6 ounces; it can't charge as fast as the Tesla battery, it can't be changed in 5 minutes, and it can't move the vehicle 200 miles for $4.
Their previous generation vehicle (the sporty Tesla Roadster) had a 250 mile range using the EPA combined cycle (varying driving conditions). If they did 250 miles on the last car, they shouldn't have any trouble doing 300 on the next one. The difference is the cost. The volt is cheaper and depends on that gas engine to keep it moving. Tesla just went all out with the electric, freeing up room to store more power onboard.
Also, Tesla's Model S does a battery change in 5 minutes. Go from empty to full in 5 minutes for another 300 miles? I can't imagine too many situations where that wouldn't do just fine.
Not sure whether it's your math or their's, but Popular Mechanics' numbers have a huge price difference driving even a Prius vs a Volt or Tesla Roadster. When you're outside the range of the Volt's battery, things look similar to driving a Prius. Inside the 30-mile range, the Volt is less than half the cost of the Prius.
On the other hand, the Tesla Roadster (the high end sporty car from Tesla) will do a 200 mile trip for less than half the cost of a Prius OR a Volt. Just $4.40 to go 200 miles in a ridiculously fast car. The Model S should have even better numbers.
It's not for longer trips that pure EV's get killed. It's the every Saturday when you have to run to the grocery store, bank, stop by your mother in laws, pick up some stuff at Best Buy, and you drive 150 miles running errands use case.
Tesla Model S goes 300 miles on a single charge, can recharge to full on a standard wall jack in just a few hours (not overnight), has a quickcharge option with special equipment that takes just 45 minutes, and is specifically designed so that the battery can be swapped in 5 minutes (such as at a service station). So your Saturday would basically consist of unplugging your car from a socket in your garage, driving to the grocery store, bank, Best Buy, etc, driving home, plugging it back in, and having that 150 mile trip cost you $3.
Do you also have the Duke Nukem Forever specs handy?
The Aptera site can't even tell you what kind of battery the thing will use, doesn't give a specific weight for the vehicle, and has no timeline for sales to anyone but California residents. Further, the car only seats 2. A Tesla Model S seats 7 (5 adults, 2 children). This is to say nothing of the fact that the Aptera is the most ridiculous looking thing I've ever seen, only has 3 wheels (AWESOME for poor weather conditions!), and only reaches 85mph. Most states would actually classify it as a motorcycle (special license for it).
What a fantastic piece of shit. For the upper range of the car's options (mid-$40,000s), I could get a lower-end Tesla Model S. Why bother with this?
The large battery pack that is supposed to produce that range will weigh over a half ton.
Why, exactly, does the weight of the battery matter if the specs already take that into account?
And 300 miles still isn't a full day of driving.
Where the heck are you driving? Unless you're going cross-country, that'll cover just about any typical trip. I go from New Jersey to Maryland every weekend and I'd make that round trip just fine in a Model S even if I didn't charge it in between. But even if I wanted to drive it to Los Angeles, it isn't a problem. More on that in a moment.
On a car not shipping yet and with no firm production date.
It goes into production next year. They had prototypes being driven by people outside the company last year. This isn't Duke Nukem; it's a cheaper version of the already existing, shipping, working Roadster based on technological evolution. In time, all tech gets cheaper.
And that is the range fresh out of the factory; for the Roadster, the specs call for the range to drop by nearly a third after 50,000 miles of use.
Kind of irrelevant if you're flipping the batteries. Still, even the Roaster does a 200 mile trip for $4 worth of "fuel".
Swapping batteries at gas stations? Without even hints of a standard for battery packs? Not a chance. Not for a very long time. And not without major upgrades to the electrical infrastructure. (The size of the feed for even a single busy "refueling" station would be mind-boggling.)
The Model S has been built from the ground up specifically to allow changing batteries at service stations. Battery change time? 5 minutes. So you pull in, get a fresh battery thrown in, and you go another 300 miles before needing another. Based on the Roadster's numbers, each change should cost less than $10. The batteries charge to full in 3 - 5 hrs on a standard 110 line. With a specialty charger, they charge in 45 minutes. A service station stocking a handfull will have no trouble meeting demand as it grows. In California, there are already quickcharge stations set up specifically to do the rapid recharge on the Tesla vehicles (the Roadsters for now).
Again, the Volt is the car for today. The Tesla products, etc. are cars for 20 years down the road.
No, Tesla products are already doing quite well on the road. Their more consumer-oriented product is shipping next year. The Volt isn't shipping yet either. Volt can't do a 5-minute battery change. Volt can't charge in 45 minutes. Volt won't cost just $4 for a 200 mile trip. Volt doesn't have a 17-inch completely reconfigurable vehicle controls touchscreen built into the dash.
Volt isn't the car for today; it's the car for 3 years ago. Unfortunately for them, it's still not ready. By the time it is, Most who could afford it will look to the Tesla and wonder why they should consider the Volt. Just spend the extra 10 - 15k and get something that gets you off gasoline completely and which doesn't have all the added complication of Volt's fuel combustion engine, exhaust system, etc. Volt take an already complex vehicle engine and adds even more complexity to it. It's the Microsoft Office of cars.
Congratuations! If you actually do shoot a bomb, you'll probably kill yourself and do a significant amount of damage to your surroundings. If you shoot a chemical or biological or radiation agent, you've just dispersed it.
Perhaps you should do a tad bit of research on bomb disposal methods prior to commenting further on the topic. Clearing the area, then firing shots into the suspected device is entirely common and appropriate procedure for securing such a device. We're not talking about nuclear ordinance here. The kinds of bombs that will fit in these kinds of packages having been assembled out of spare parts and pieces in somebody's kitchen will create a sufficient explosion to do significant damage only within a small, confined area. Sometimes various shrapnel is added to increase lethality. None of them will do much in wide open space.
Probably most of the visitors to Israel carry directions to their public transport and the place they're staying. She cooperated fully with their questioning, to the extent that they were happy to leave her sitting out on the balcony enjoying views of the Red Sea while they dealt with her belongings. What makes her a terrorist suspect is the material she had on her, entirely consistent with her being a journalist travelling from a Middle Eastern country documenting the hate against Israel. Apparently living in one of Israel's neighbours, and showing an interest in the Israel-Palestine conflict, is reason enough to think you're a bomber. That's scary.
First of all, she's not a journalist travelling from a Middle Eastern country documenting the hate against Israel, she's an American displaying hate against Israel with her own personal belongings. Add to that the travel to several Middle Eastern countries and a device which (when x-ray'd) looks a heck of a lot like a bomb (battery cells, etc) and you have all the grounds necessary in a place like Israel to declare the thing a suspected bomb and destroy it. News flash: when you cross a nation's border, said nation has every right to detain you for as long as they wish, question you about anything they wish, destroy anything of your's that they wish, with or without reason. In this case, we've got a country constantly under seige by randomly exploding things in public places whose agents spotted an individual displaying a serious hate for the country and what could (in the world of Hamas, Islamic Jihad, etc) be a hiding place for yet another clever bomb.
All-in-all, if I were an Israeli citizen, I'd much rather have these guys standing between terrorist groups and my family than you. You're looking for reasons not to inconvenience people entering the country. They're looking for potential threats and dealing with them best they can.
Your attitude would directly increase the chances of more people being blown up in bus bombings.
You quite obviously have the luxury of living in a place where completely random things suddenly exploding isn't a regular occurrence. The border agents in Israel do not have that luxury.
When Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and all the other local terrorist groups stop stuffing bombs into everything they possibly can in order to blow up buses and nightclubs full of civilians, Israeli border patrol agents can stop testing suspected bomb containers by shooting them as a matter of policy. Until then, if it were my life and the lives of my friends and neighbors on the line, I'd be plugging holes in anything being carried across the border that I thought could even possibly contain a bomb if I had even the slightest thought that something wasn't right.
This snooty little cunt knew exactly what she was doing and she went there with every intention of stirring up trouble. What she didn't count on was the fact that - unlike where she's from - the government in Israel takes all potential threats seriously because they've been taught to do so by decades of cleverly hidden bombs blowing up their citizens at random. And the reason they questioned her for two hours is because they've learned from vast amounts of experience what to ask and when to figure out what someone's really up to.
She was packed to the brim with anti-Israel crap and had maps and directions to a public bus station and a hostel in the heart of Israel. She couldn't have looked more like a foreigner coming to do harm if she'd written "TERRORIST" on her forehead in red lipstick. So they decided her laptop could be a bomb and destroyed it the simplest way they could; by shooting it. And after all that? They gave her the info so she could be compensated for the damage done to her property. That's right; they're paying for the damage because it turns out she wasn't a terrorist carrying a bomb; just a snooty cunt carrying a big chip on her shoulder and a lot of attitude.
Perhaps 18 months was how long they needed to sort through 22 million emails and remove any traces of illegal activity. Now that the emails have been sanitized, they have been miraculously "found".
So, wait... President Obama is conspiring with Dick Cheney?
You're right, there's hardly anything at all to check for in Eve. There's no such things as planets, astroids, moons, stations, starbases, NPC ships, containers, jetcans, other players' ships, deployable weapons, drones, stargates, etc moving in three dimensions with collision detection to worry about. Very easy to avoid lag when all you've got is hundreds of players firing weapons at each other that need to calculate for explosion radius, tracking speed, shifting distances, angular velocity, transversal velocity, flight times, etc.
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I think you just found a great use for the plaintiff.
You get a lot less of that in Eve Online mainly because the skillpoint system allows for enormous variability. What's more, someone who's been playing a week could easily kill someone who's been playing for years in the right circumstances. Stick you in a destroyer, them in a frigate, you can probably kill them off pretty easily.
Why would someone who's been playing for years be flying in a frigate? Maybe they're just moving through to somewhere and don't want to risk a pricey ship. Maybe they're low on isk and are just doing tackling for others. Maybe they're testing something. Maybe they don't have better ships in the area and the local market has bad prices on most things. Either way, it's not just theoretically possible for a new player to kill an old player in Eve; it's downright practical.
Reading for understanding is important.
First of all, your judgement of who or what I am is rather premature since it's based on a whopping couple of comments. It's entirely possible I'm just emotionally invested in the topic and am reacting more strongly than I otherwise would. Perhaps it's not that. Since you don't know, it's pretty silly to comment on the entirety of my personal emotional development based on a couple comments in the same topic.
Secondly, reading for understanding is important. I did not say anything about the individuals who would choose to play this game, WoW, or any other. I offered criticisms of WoW-like games and then specifically stated that I have no problem with the fact that a lot of people happen to enjoy that sort of thing. I'm sure plenty of people enjoyed playing ET for Atari. I have major problems with that game (along with most others), but if some people loved it, more power to them.
Thirdly, reading for understanding is important. I did not say anything that could reasonably be understood to mean I think all MMOs should conform to my own standards. In fact, I said the exact opposite. And you'd know that if you'd read my post.
I stand by my original argument that the Star Trek universe and franchise deserves better than an MMO where Klingons must beg and plead for an opportunity to open fire. Further, I hope it completely and utterly fails so we have some opportunity for a game that lives up to the Star Trek name. The sad part is that they had the ship combat nearly perfect with Star Trek Bridge Commander. If they'd built up from that, they would have had an amazing base for that aspect of the game. I mean, this is from 2002, and any one of those ships could open fire on any other at any time.
Taking surprise space combat out of Star Trek is like taking the Na'vi out of Avatar.
I think this guy's full of it, but there's a pretty simple test. Blindfold him and drive him out to a nice, open, quiet country setting. Something with lots of fresh air, birds chirping, no cars, no people, etc. Somewhere where you can smell flowers from a mile away and it feels like you're on a country road in the middle of nowhere. Park under high tension lines. Then ask him how he feels. If he's not on the ground doubled over in pain, he's a POS and full of it.
And if this guy really does have that severe a reaction to all technology, then Darwin says he should go stuff. Let him join an Amish community and live the rest of his life in peace. He has no right to shut down every invention of the past hundred years everywhere he goes simply because he's a genetic disaster.
Eve has sex slaves. You can purchase all your wallet can handle on the market. I believe they're under the 'trade' goods along with narcotics and mercenaries.
Going 200 miles for $4 is a real decrease in the peoples'[sic] standard of living?
Right now, it costs me about $18 in gas to go 200 miles in my fairly efficient (30mpg) old Honda. That's to say nothing of all the wear and tear on moving parts within the engine, oil, etc. Just the gasoline itself costs me about $18.
In 5 years, I'll be able to make the same trip for $4 in 'fuel' costs without breathing carcinogens all along the way and without having half the moving parts in a vehicle that costs about the same when new as my Honda did when it was new. That's assuming we make no progress in battery technology for cars in the next 5 years. A real decrease in the standard of living? Insanity.
The only things being decreased are the cost of my trip, the maintenance costs for my car, the pollutants in the air (real pollutants, not CO2), and the amount of funds available to some sand-sucking savage who'd just as soon pour the gasoline on my head as in my gas tank so he could watch another infidel burn for his god. Seems like a win-win to me.
If you drive a Prius like a sports car, a BMW M3 gets better gas mileage. Your point is absurd.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydvAQ6Y49vc
If you're not going to support PvP well in a Star Trek game, make it single-player. Otherwise it's little more than a jag-off love fest with no real excitement. Yes, PvE is easier. Just like making people grind fishing in a lake every day is easy. Just like making people fly dragons around in circles for hours is easy. Just like making someone run dozens of FedEx quests is easy. Just like making someone fight the same boring thing over and over and over is easy. There are lots of easy things to do in a game and most of them stink.
And what I'm attacking is the apparent disclosure that Klingons will be asking permission to get into a fight. What's their new motto? Today is a good day to request permission to argue in strong terms?
WoW is fine. EQ is fine. They're not my cup of tea, but plenty of people enjoy them. What pisses me off is that they're doing it with Star Trek. A well done Star Trek MMO would pull me away from Eve in a heartbeat. Years of training and I'd cancel all three accounts tomorrow if there were a really great Star Trek MMO. Instead, what's announced is beta testing for Klingons asking permission to fight. It's a pussy game and until it grows a pair, it will continue to be a pussy game.
Actually, I've never griefed anyone, but I've been baited into fights a number of times. Most griefing is suicide ganking when you're in empire. But what Eve has taught me is that while games can be amusing or entertaining, they'll never be thrilling and exciting without a real risk of loss.
And if Klingons have to ask permission to fight, it's a game for pussies. A Star Trek game deserves better. It deserves rich, deep content, beautiful graphics, and absolutely cut-throat space. Otherwise you're left with something that's ultimately empty and meaningless. And while I have no problem with pointless, controlled gameplay on something like WoW where you can run around and do the 5 things you're allowed to do all you like, it pains me to see it done to Star Trek.
Yes, I get that when you crunch the dollars and cents, making WoW in space and slapping the Star Trek name on it seems profitable, but it doesn't mean I have to like it.
There will be conflict between the two factions, but supposedly all PvP will be "optional and consensual."
So it's a game for pussies? Thanks, I'll stick with Eve Online. Let me know when they grow some balls and make it reasonably realistic. If you want safety, park your ass in a station and go play WoW.
A Star Trek MMO deserves more than this.
300 miles between service stations is perfect acceptable for most people. Few are actually willing to drive more than that at a stretch anyway. Most cars running on gas won't make it more than around 400ish anyway. There are some exceptions (particularly with large trucks), but then you've got a nice $60 or $80 bill to pay at the next service station. There's no consumer vehicle in existence that goes 12 or 16 hours of driving without stopping. Nothing goes a "full day of driving". And if you're going more than 300 miles in a day all that often, perhaps you should just invest in a conventional hybrid and go from there? For the other 99.999% of the population not doing 300+ mile trips all the time, all-electric vehicles can handle all their needs without gasoline.
In terms of charging times, their FAQ says: Standard charging times will vary depending on battery capacity, ranging from approximately 3 to 5 hours. 5 Hours is for the long range (300 mile) battery.
With regards to battery life, "How long will the battery last?
a. Battery life is dependent on many factors, including; mileage, age, temperature extremes, and charge cycles. In general you should expect a Model S battery to have a useful life between 5 and 7 years, but proper care can result in a 10-year life."
My question is, what's the batter life on that Volt? You seem to have issues with batteries, but if Volt's battery life drops off, you've got a Prius that costs nearly twice as much. Since we don't have more details on how battery swaps will work, it's difficult to say what'll happen with service station batteries. What we do know is that they've bent over backwards for their Roadster customers, so they seem to be geared toward not doing stupid PR moves. Will that mean some sort of indicator on batteries? Some kind of tester? I don't know, but I'll bet Tesla would entertain questions. They've got at least 5 years after launch to figure it out. In the meantime, you know the infrastructure that's available in your area when you buy the car. If you're going on 300+ mile trips all the time and there aren't quickcharge stations near your destination, this probably isn't the car for you and it's likely no electric will be until the infrastructure is in place. But most people travelling 300 miles+ are flying anyway.
And a network of quickcharge stations already exists; just in California. In fact, they're even powered by solar installations. Solar's pretty lousy for power at the moment, so if those work, one has to wonder why the existing grid couldn't handle a few tens of thousands of these cars on the road. It's not like this or any other car will replace everything else overnight. There are still many cars on the road from 20 and 30 years ago for personal financial reasons and collector reasons.
And did you seriously just compare a touchscreen used to change the [i]radio[/i] station to the [i]gasoline combustion engine[/i], its moving parts, its exhaust system, etc strapped on to the electric motor in the Volt? Why does a car need a 17" fully configurable control panel for its functions? It doesn't. Neither does a car need a radio, a windshield, headlights, a trunk, a roof, doors, airbags, or seats. It'll still move back and forth. Those things were added as conveniences which drivers were willing to pay a little extra to get. If having a fully configurable 17" touchscreen for all your dash controls adds $1000 to a $50,000 car, virtually anyone will be thrilled to have it. Especially since the car includes the ability for 3G wireless connectivity for remote monitoring and such.
But I do find it strange that you don't want to pay an extra $10k - $15k to get rid of gasoline completely when you're perfectly willing to pay nearly double for a Prius made by Chevy. Something to think about while you're (apparently) driving around for 5+ hours every day going more than 300 miles to who knows where. In the meantime, thank God Tesla came along to show everyone else how to make a great all-electric vehicle with decent range. I hope they sell a ton of them so I can pick up a more affordable Bluestar.
The Model S does actually exist. They've been building them since last year. They even had journalists driving them around last year. They're simply not in assembly line production yet. That's slated for 2011. Tesla already delivered the Roadster and the Model S is simply the next step from that technology. There's no reason to doubt it's coming.
Yes, they're pricey at the moment. The next car being planned (bluestar) is targetted to sell for around $30,000. It's tentatively scheduled to go into production some time in 2012.
The point was that all-electric vehicles can take the Saturday workload you specified with no trouble at all when they're done correctly. If you really wanted to spend the money on a high end sports car, you could walk into a Tesla dealership and purchase an all-electric roadster right now. It'll go 250 miles on a charge and do the quickcharge, but its battery is not swappable. It'll also set you back $110,000 or so. On the other hand, it'll do 0-60 in 3.6 seconds.
I read and understood it just fine. Tesla makes a car that goes 200 miles on 4 bucks worth of 'fuel'. Find me something at or near production that can do that or admit that the weight of the battery in Tesla's vehicles is irrelevant in the face of the overall specs. Sure, if you could make the car lighter, it'd expend less energy to move. But that's not the point. The point is that Tesla's design, with that big, heavy battery, goes 200 miles for $4. Prius can't do that. Volt can't do that. Nothing else that I've seen anywhere in the entire world exceeds the operational efficiency of a Tesla vehicle. And that's why the weight of an individual component of a Tesla vehicle is not relevant; because the overall system vastly outpaces anything else on the market or planned for immediate production.
1. Tesla Model S batteries are standard for Tesla Model S cars. No other planned production electric vehicle (that I'm aware of) has a swappable battery, so we're just talking about 1 battery type stocked at an initially small, but growing, number of service stations.
2. Tesla Model S already has its battery set up to be removable. It's a 5-minute swap.
3. Tesla's published numbers indicate a minimum of 5 years battery life and a max of 10 years of 'useful life'. The batteries are available via lease, which would make Tesla responsible for them at the end of the lease. I don't see details on how battery swapping would affect the lease and such, but if you're that curious about it, you could always give them a call. (650) 413-6300
4. Partial charges at fill stations would be available via the quickcharge. You can plug it in for part of the 45-minute charge time and get part of a charge. There are a number of quickcharge stations already available in California.
And yet the Tesla Model S, with its big battery, does 0-60 in 5.6 seconds and has a 300 mile range. My point was that if the car performs well and is cheap to run, what does the weight of any particular component matter? The overall specs are the deciding factor. I don't care if the Volt's batter only weighs 6 ounces; it can't charge as fast as the Tesla battery, it can't be changed in 5 minutes, and it can't move the vehicle 200 miles for $4.
Their previous generation vehicle (the sporty Tesla Roadster) had a 250 mile range using the EPA combined cycle (varying driving conditions). If they did 250 miles on the last car, they shouldn't have any trouble doing 300 on the next one. The difference is the cost. The volt is cheaper and depends on that gas engine to keep it moving. Tesla just went all out with the electric, freeing up room to store more power onboard.
Also, Tesla's Model S does a battery change in 5 minutes. Go from empty to full in 5 minutes for another 300 miles? I can't imagine too many situations where that wouldn't do just fine.
Not sure whether it's your math or their's, but Popular Mechanics' numbers have a huge price difference driving even a Prius vs a Volt or Tesla Roadster. When you're outside the range of the Volt's battery, things look similar to driving a Prius. Inside the 30-mile range, the Volt is less than half the cost of the Prius.
On the other hand, the Tesla Roadster (the high end sporty car from Tesla) will do a 200 mile trip for less than half the cost of a Prius OR a Volt. Just $4.40 to go 200 miles in a ridiculously fast car. The Model S should have even better numbers.
http://www.popularmechanics.com/automotive/new_cars/4215681.html
It's not for longer trips that pure EV's get killed. It's the every Saturday when you have to run to the grocery store, bank, stop by your mother in laws, pick up some stuff at Best Buy, and you drive 150 miles running errands use case.
Tesla Model S goes 300 miles on a single charge, can recharge to full on a standard wall jack in just a few hours (not overnight), has a quickcharge option with special equipment that takes just 45 minutes, and is specifically designed so that the battery can be swapped in 5 minutes (such as at a service station). So your Saturday would basically consist of unplugging your car from a socket in your garage, driving to the grocery store, bank, Best Buy, etc, driving home, plugging it back in, and having that 150 mile trip cost you $3.
What else ya got?
Do you also have the Duke Nukem Forever specs handy?
The Aptera site can't even tell you what kind of battery the thing will use, doesn't give a specific weight for the vehicle, and has no timeline for sales to anyone but California residents. Further, the car only seats 2. A Tesla Model S seats 7 (5 adults, 2 children). This is to say nothing of the fact that the Aptera is the most ridiculous looking thing I've ever seen, only has 3 wheels (AWESOME for poor weather conditions!), and only reaches 85mph. Most states would actually classify it as a motorcycle (special license for it).
What a fantastic piece of shit. For the upper range of the car's options (mid-$40,000s), I could get a lower-end Tesla Model S. Why bother with this?
The large battery pack that is supposed to produce that range will weigh over a half ton.
Why, exactly, does the weight of the battery matter if the specs already take that into account?
And 300 miles still isn't a full day of driving.
Where the heck are you driving? Unless you're going cross-country, that'll cover just about any typical trip. I go from New Jersey to Maryland every weekend and I'd make that round trip just fine in a Model S even if I didn't charge it in between. But even if I wanted to drive it to Los Angeles, it isn't a problem. More on that in a moment.
On a car not shipping yet and with no firm production date.
It goes into production next year. They had prototypes being driven by people outside the company last year. This isn't Duke Nukem; it's a cheaper version of the already existing, shipping, working Roadster based on technological evolution. In time, all tech gets cheaper.
And that is the range fresh out of the factory; for the Roadster, the specs call for the range to drop by nearly a third after 50,000 miles of use.
Kind of irrelevant if you're flipping the batteries. Still, even the Roaster does a 200 mile trip for $4 worth of "fuel".
Swapping batteries at gas stations? Without even hints of a standard for battery packs? Not a chance. Not for a very long time. And not without major upgrades to the electrical infrastructure. (The size of the feed for even a single busy "refueling" station would be mind-boggling.)
The Model S has been built from the ground up specifically to allow changing batteries at service stations. Battery change time? 5 minutes. So you pull in, get a fresh battery thrown in, and you go another 300 miles before needing another. Based on the Roadster's numbers, each change should cost less than $10. The batteries charge to full in 3 - 5 hrs on a standard 110 line. With a specialty charger, they charge in 45 minutes. A service station stocking a handfull will have no trouble meeting demand as it grows. In California, there are already quickcharge stations set up specifically to do the rapid recharge on the Tesla vehicles (the Roadsters for now).
Again, the Volt is the car for today. The Tesla products, etc. are cars for 20 years down the road.
No, Tesla products are already doing quite well on the road. Their more consumer-oriented product is shipping next year. The Volt isn't shipping yet either. Volt can't do a 5-minute battery change. Volt can't charge in 45 minutes. Volt won't cost just $4 for a 200 mile trip. Volt doesn't have a 17-inch completely reconfigurable vehicle controls touchscreen built into the dash.
Volt isn't the car for today; it's the car for 3 years ago. Unfortunately for them, it's still not ready. By the time it is, Most who could afford it will look to the Tesla and wonder why they should consider the Volt. Just spend the extra 10 - 15k and get something that gets you off gasoline completely and which doesn't have all the added complication of Volt's fuel combustion engine, exhaust system, etc. Volt take an already complex vehicle engine and adds even more complexity to it. It's the Microsoft Office of cars.
Congratuations! If you actually do shoot a bomb, you'll probably kill yourself and do a significant amount of damage to your surroundings. If you shoot a chemical or biological or radiation agent, you've just dispersed it.
Perhaps you should do a tad bit of research on bomb disposal methods prior to commenting further on the topic. Clearing the area, then firing shots into the suspected device is entirely common and appropriate procedure for securing such a device. We're not talking about nuclear ordinance here. The kinds of bombs that will fit in these kinds of packages having been assembled out of spare parts and pieces in somebody's kitchen will create a sufficient explosion to do significant damage only within a small, confined area. Sometimes various shrapnel is added to increase lethality. None of them will do much in wide open space.
Probably most of the visitors to Israel carry directions to their public transport and the place they're staying. She cooperated fully with their questioning, to the extent that they were happy to leave her sitting out on the balcony enjoying views of the Red Sea while they dealt with her belongings. What makes her a terrorist suspect is the material she had on her, entirely consistent with her being a journalist travelling from a Middle Eastern country documenting the hate against Israel. Apparently living in one of Israel's neighbours, and showing an interest in the Israel-Palestine conflict, is reason enough to think you're a bomber. That's scary.
First of all, she's not a journalist travelling from a Middle Eastern country documenting the hate against Israel, she's an American displaying hate against Israel with her own personal belongings. Add to that the travel to several Middle Eastern countries and a device which (when x-ray'd) looks a heck of a lot like a bomb (battery cells, etc) and you have all the grounds necessary in a place like Israel to declare the thing a suspected bomb and destroy it. News flash: when you cross a nation's border, said nation has every right to detain you for as long as they wish, question you about anything they wish, destroy anything of your's that they wish, with or without reason. In this case, we've got a country constantly under seige by randomly exploding things in public places whose agents spotted an individual displaying a serious hate for the country and what could (in the world of Hamas, Islamic Jihad, etc) be a hiding place for yet another clever bomb.
All-in-all, if I were an Israeli citizen, I'd much rather have these guys standing between terrorist groups and my family than you. You're looking for reasons not to inconvenience people entering the country. They're looking for potential threats and dealing with them best they can.
Your attitude would directly increase the chances of more people being blown up in bus bombings.
You quite obviously have the luxury of living in a place where completely random things suddenly exploding isn't a regular occurrence. The border agents in Israel do not have that luxury.
When Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and all the other local terrorist groups stop stuffing bombs into everything they possibly can in order to blow up buses and nightclubs full of civilians, Israeli border patrol agents can stop testing suspected bomb containers by shooting them as a matter of policy. Until then, if it were my life and the lives of my friends and neighbors on the line, I'd be plugging holes in anything being carried across the border that I thought could even possibly contain a bomb if I had even the slightest thought that something wasn't right.
This snooty little cunt knew exactly what she was doing and she went there with every intention of stirring up trouble. What she didn't count on was the fact that - unlike where she's from - the government in Israel takes all potential threats seriously because they've been taught to do so by decades of cleverly hidden bombs blowing up their citizens at random. And the reason they questioned her for two hours is because they've learned from vast amounts of experience what to ask and when to figure out what someone's really up to.
She was packed to the brim with anti-Israel crap and had maps and directions to a public bus station and a hostel in the heart of Israel. She couldn't have looked more like a foreigner coming to do harm if she'd written "TERRORIST" on her forehead in red lipstick. So they decided her laptop could be a bomb and destroyed it the simplest way they could; by shooting it. And after all that? They gave her the info so she could be compensated for the damage done to her property. That's right; they're paying for the damage because it turns out she wasn't a terrorist carrying a bomb; just a snooty cunt carrying a big chip on her shoulder and a lot of attitude.
Perhaps 18 months was how long they needed to sort through 22 million emails and remove any traces of illegal activity. Now that the emails have been sanitized, they have been miraculously "found".
So, wait... President Obama is conspiring with Dick Cheney?
To me, "can I have your mobile, cutie" sounds like you want to borrow the phone. But I'd probably lend it to someone calling me cute.
Did you get any weed in yet, cutie? Running dangerously low over here.
You're right, there's hardly anything at all to check for in Eve. There's no such things as planets, astroids, moons, stations, starbases, NPC ships, containers, jetcans, other players' ships, deployable weapons, drones, stargates, etc moving in three dimensions with collision detection to worry about. Very easy to avoid lag when all you've got is hundreds of players firing weapons at each other that need to calculate for explosion radius, tracking speed, shifting distances, angular velocity, transversal velocity, flight times, etc.
It's not even like there's anything cool to look at while that stuff's happening...
http://ve3d.ign.com/articles/news/51662/EVE-Online-Dominion-Screenshots-Trailer