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Comment: Re:"To replace obsolete and aging aircraft platfor (Score 1) 354

by Onuma (#47421715) Attached to: The Pentagon's $399 Billion Plane To Nowhere
I suspect you don't have the military background I possess.

Firstly, the AH-64 and OH-58 are primarily Army platforms, who use almost entirely rotary-winged aircraft. The Apache is a wonderful system -- the most badass thing in the air. It has a huge armament of 4 winglet pods (16x hellfires, or 76x FFARs or a combination thereof, plus a 30mm chain gun). But it doesn't have the ceiling of the A-10, nor does it have the range. The Kiowa doesn't have anywhere near the armament of the Apache, being a smaller, lighter aircraft -- it can only maintain 1 small FFAR tube and a .50 cal, or a two of one and none of the other.

The AC-130 is a massive bird. Puff the Magic Dragon, we called it colloquially. Fantastic engineering. But it is HUGE! It is designed to linger over an area, like a village or town, and obliterate everything in the area. 105mm howitzer, 40mm and 20mm rotary cannons. This is used when you need to destroy an insane amount of bad guys and boost morale into infinity.

The MQ-9/Predator/Reaper is nice, but it doesn't have the same capabilities of any of the above craft. Safer in that you don't have pilots put into danger. But it has less armament capability than the A-10 or the AH-64, less agility than the OH-58, and nowhere near the firepower of the AC-130.

So no, there are not "lots of things that are far better at the A10s limited role". You are ignorant. Go back to your Call of Duty.

Comment: "To replace obsolete and aging aircraft platforms" (Score 4, Interesting) 354

by Onuma (#47419775) Attached to: The Pentagon's $399 Billion Plane To Nowhere
The F-35 replaced the A-10 Thunderbolt II's role as a tank buster, CAS bomber...

With the money we have spent on the F-35s to date, we could have repaired, retrofitted, and maintained our supply of A-10s for several decades. Hell, the A-10 is practically a flying tank. It has some of the best armament and is the most rugged fixed-wing aircraft which America has. It was a ridiculously short-sighted move to replace it with another overexpensive "multi role, joint" fighter.

Comment: Re:The only pre-order bonus (Score 1) 86

Plenty of studios understand this very well.


That's business done well, for the sake of the devs and the gamers. Sure, Subset makes slightly less profit in the short run, considering they could have released the add'l content as DLC (which really would have been fine, in the end, as long as it was appropriately priced). This way they'll actually make more money over the long term, because customers remember when they're treated well and given quality products with a highly-perceived value.

Comment: Re: This is dumb (Score 1) 192

by Onuma (#47335227) Attached to: An Army Medal For Coding In Perl
It's the federal government's procurement process. It has not evolved with technology, and therefore everything involved in all of their processes is antiquated, inefficient, and slow.

I dealt with this kind of thing for 8 years as a soldier, and am still dealing with it as a contractor. It's pretty ridiculous when you know how much more smoothly things could be running.

Comment: Re:Sigh (Score 2) 100

by Onuma (#47319559) Attached to: Building the Infinite Digital Universe of <em>No Man's Sky</em>


Comment: Games for gamers, versus numbers for shareholders (Score 1) 208

by Onuma (#47309937) Attached to: The Simultaneous Rise and Decline of <em>Battlefield</em>
So long as big, publicly-owned companies are churning out games they are generally only going to consider profit and perception by shareholders as the end goal.

Companies who create a good game for the sake of the game itself can often see profits as a result of their dedication -- the end goal is always putting out a game which is as good as that studio can feasibly put out. $$$ is welcome, but secondary. For this reason, I am an advocate for game developers to stay privately owned. If I hear about a producer/publisher's IPO I will absolutely scrutinize every reason to even consider their products from that point, forward. Can anyone name a publicly-traded gaming company who isn't all jacked up?

I have not purchased or pre-purchased a AAA-produced game since the awful release of Diablo 3. While it did turn out to be a fun game, Blizzard proved to me that they really don't have a clue as to what captured the essence of the first 2 games in the series, nor do they actually give a crap about the people who are ensuring their paychecks. If anything, I will wait for a Steam Summer Sale, Humble Bundle, GoG sale, or something comparably discounted. I end up missing out on the early days of fun where a whole bunch of friends and other players are online all at once, but I save a ton of money and I don't regret my $5 purchases...as opposed to those $50-60 mistakes.

Anything free is worth what you pay for it.