The Halibuts - Elite NC Outfit

Thursday, 28th Oct. '04

Fish Night Rolls Again

The proposal for tonight's Halibut Night is that, basically, we go hunting BFRs. Not sure how successful we'll be, but we'll give it a go. Rock on.

New Website

I've decided to go live with the new site. The key features are working (I think) so, within the next 24 hours, the domain will point to the new site: New Site. I'll create accounts for anyone who wants to post news on the site - last night's CS:S match being, hopefully, the first thing that'll be written about (Berry, step forward). Cheers.

Monday, 25th Oct. '04

Posts? What Posts?

Sorry about the lack of recent updates. This is caused by a combination of heavy workload and time taken by creation of a new Halibuts website. Have a look at the current state of it here and let me know what you think.

The general style and layout is pretty much the same, but it is now a database-driven site meaning that anyone (with appropriate passwords) can log in and post updates. The idea is that although I'll retain overall control, anyone who wants to publish Halibut 'news' can log in and post an entry on the appropriate board.

At the moment, only the main game boards exist (i.e. Planetside, Counter-Strike, WoW etc.) but within the next week or so there will be sub-categories (i.e. News, Challenges, Server details, Death's Stories etc.).

Let me know what you think by posting something on the forums. All ideas and suggestions gratefully received.

Saturday, 16th Oct. '04

Welcome to the Weekend

In this, the first weekend update for as long as can be remembered, I'm going to announce an intention to re-work the site so that we have a general intro page followed by game-specific pages. A bit of a change, but it reflects the way we've moved into other games.

Pretentious? Yup. Do I give a monkey's? Not so as you'd notice.

Monday, 11th Oct. '04

Counter-Strike : Source

The Clan has now moved into Counter-Strike. If you're up for it, Fragmatic (with source material provided by HalibutBerry) has created a Halibut Spray (get it here).

Friday, 1st Oct. '04

Halibut Night Out - Leeds

The grand Halibut Night Out draws nigh. Tomorrow we unleash the 'buts on an unsuspecting student population in the hip metropolis of Leeds. Alcohol, curry and miscellaneous pork products will be consumed with gusto.

We're meeting, in case anyone forgets, at the hotel bar of the Golden Lion in central Leeds before HalibutStrapOn leads us on an unforgettable tour of the local bars and restaurants.

Tuesday, 28th Sept. '04

BFR Updates

Picked up the following from the Dev Logs. SamHayne on BFRs and tanks:

So, a medium tank will generally not want to engage 1 on 1 with a BFR. However, if the medium tank has support, go to town. Maybe you can buy enough time for your friends to lay on the extra hurt to bring the BFR to it's knees. Or, maybe you can distract it enough for a grunt to get in close, EMP it (which will have disabling effects, but not turn off the guns like other vehicles) and/or destroy the shield gen (which isn't hard to do with some AP ammo or some well placed sniper rounds).

SamHayne on BFRs and infantry who make it within the BFR shield generator:

Intended. If you are allowing the grunts to get up under you and you can't either 1) kill them before they get to you 2) are not supported to have your squad/outfit/buddies blow them away or 3) step on their heads as they dance around at your feet then you deserve the hurt they dish out.

Besides, the Lancer wielder should just be taking out your shield gen in that 1 to 2 clips of ammo. Then you are really screwed!

SamHayne again, on infantry and BFRs:

The shield regens (currently in balance) just shy of as much punishment as a fully staffed Prowler can dish out on a even time interval (assuming all hits land). So, no a solo AV wielder by themselves won't really do anything to the BFR.

However, these suckers are serious bullet magnets. It is amaizing how when they crest a hill every gun barrel on the battlefield turns towards you and lays down the hurt. So, concentrated fire is the name of the game (or well aimed shots to take out the shield gen - go go snipers, suicidal grunt rushers and 12mm small arms AP ammo!).

Monday, 27th Sept. '04

Flying Fingers

Hats off to MyFingersSmellofHalibut who, in a brilliant display of drunken flying, dropped us last night exactly where we needed to be. Were we worried when he attempted to fly through the base gate? Damn right we were!

Thursday, 23rd Sept. '04

Hotdrops Galore

After much debate and considered discussion amongst the senior Fish, it has been decreed that UnrealHalibut will lead a Hotdrop night, targetting towers, behind-the-lines bases and other annoying things. The objective will be to deny resources to the enemy and to offer indirect support to the zerg.

Friday, 17th Sept. '04

Fish Tanks for Victory!

Wow. That's all, just Wow!

The Vanguards rolled (six, plus a SkyGuard) and we seriously kicked arse. We resecured bases, broke attacking stalemates and flattened (literally) the enemy wherever we found them.

BFR Weapons

SporkFire has announced details of the BattleFrame weapons. Get all the info here.

Thursday, 16th Sept. '04

Vanguards Roll

Tonight the fish roll in the mighty Vanguard. Log on to TS to hear the Fingers/Preach team slagging off the enemy and, almost certainly, each other.

Friday, 10th Sept. '04

Caving Halibuts

Last night's Halibut excusion to the caves proved very successful. After a faltering start (and a brief sojurn back to the surface), we poured into the caves to help NacMacHalibut fight the TR (who were being supported by SporkFireTR). A vicious fire-fight ensued as we ambushed the TR and tried to recover the ground they'd already taken. SporkFireTR seemed to disappear from sight, but we had a busy fight with a similarly sized TR force. Bring on the BFRs.

NemesisOrion

Our old pal NemesisOrion has re-surfaced with a VS toon called UnrealSalmon. Sad, very sad.

Tuesday, 7th Sept. '04

Halibuts Go Below

After lengthy forum discussion, it looks like The Halibuts will be fighting this Thursday in the Caves as we try to master this new and strange arena before the launch of the BFRs (which can only be accessed with the Cert and 10 Cave Hacks under you belt).

HA, SA, CE, ScatterMAX and ground support are the key certs for cave fighting. Yee ha!

Thursday, 2nd Sept. '04

Buggy Night

Late breaking news - tonight The Halibuts will roll forth in miscellaneous buggies. EOT.

Tuesday, 24th August '04

Development Update

SporkFire posted this update yesterday:

Welcome back to the Weekly Dev Activities.

This week, work is going forward on BFR's for release in September, and so that is where the bulk of the work is going.

Also, it is likely that there will be a batch of Merit Commendations released between now and then. You'll finally have your bragging rights, so keep and eye out for details on the first set.

We're seeing reports of continued lock-on issues with various weaponry, and so Programmers will also be looking into that.

And for those who have been following along, we haven't forgotten about other improvements coming up, such as joystick support. They're just a little further in the future, as we go to work on the above additions to gameplay.

Monday, 23rd August '04

Ride 'em, Cowboy!

Saddle up boys, its Air Cavalry night this Thursday. The main event of the evening will be the "Spam StrapOn with Reaver Rockets" extravaganza. Don't miss it, it's gonna be great.

Wednesday, 18th August '04

Battle Isles

Battle Isles are now live and, if we're lucky, we'll be fighting on them tomorrow with Thunderers.

Mini Halibut

In case anybody missed it, Mrs HalibutStrapOn gave birth on Monday morning to a baby boy. Mother and baby apparently doing well. Congratulations to Mr and Mrs StrapOn.

Monday, 16th August '04

Weekend 'Event'

Well the non-event of the weekend was the spectacular meteor showers seen all over Auraxis by very few people. Slightly less spectacular (but more widely experienced) were the earthquakes which hit all continents over the weekend. Interestingly, these didn't affect aiming or COF...

Today should be the big day for the update and/or weird event that the Devs have planned. Hmmm.

Friday, 13th August '04

Liberating Halibuts

Last night the Halibuts, aided by the technological prowess of The Liberator, went forth on Hossin and Forseral and 'liberated' many of the TR and VS scum.

Weekend Fun

Looks like BattleFrames might be hitting the servers over the weekend and SporkFire has announced a weekend-long 'event' to mark this. Get the details here.

Wednesday, 11th August '04

Damage Degradation Changes

Sporkfire has announced changes to the MA weaponry to decrease the effects of Damage Degradation. Essentially, this will result in a buff to at least some of the MA weapons. This is due to go live on Thursday.

Tuesday, 10th August '04

Halibut Night

In a ruthless bit of forward planning, Stark the Silent will be running a Liberator Night on Thursday. Cert up and join the quietest fish of the bunch for an evening of steel-encased death.

Thursday, 5th August '04

Fishing on Werner

Tonight, in a break from the norm, the Fish will swim on Werner as TR. Break out the MCGs, we're goin' hunting!

Monday, 2nd August '04

New Patch News

This was posted by SporkFire:

We will be updating PlanetSide to version 2.9 Monday morning at 3AM Pacific. Version 2.9 will contain the following changes:

• The latest round of Balance Adjustments have been done For details on what has changed, check here.
• Empire Incentives have been modified. If all Empires are balanced, they have approximately 33% of the total global population. Every hour, we check the last 7-day period and average all those numbers to see whether there are any major shifts in population. If the Empires move away from the 33% optimal situation, we alter xp and health in order to encourage new characters to be created in the Empires that need more population. If an Empire gets extremely out of balance, then the numbers finally get to the point where some players with existing characters might consider changing Empires to avoid penalties. This is done to maintain balance within the game if such imbalance ever occurs.
• Fixed an issue that would cause an avatar to take no damage in certain conditions.
• We are aware of an issue that causes some stuttering when a player first logs into the game. We have taken steps to reduce this occurrence and will be continuing to make improvements to performance after initial login.
• The Merit Commendation attachment is now displayed on character avatars.
• Implemented an option called Adaptive LOD. When enabled this option allows the game to switch to lower LOD objects closer to the camera. This is only done when the current framerate is below the target framerate. This is available through the Graphics Options UI.
• Implemented a Cull Animations option. When enabled, this option allows the game to update animations less frequently for characters that are farther away. This is done regardless of framerate when enabled. This is available through the Graphics Options UI.
• Keys bound to Turn Left work correctly.
• Outfit invite text does not get cut off if the inviter has a long name
• The Striker will now properly hit and do damage to the Phalanx wall turret.
• Fixed an issue that could cause the entire continent map to appear in the proximity radar.
• LLU Sub-Capitols will now spawn an LLU if the only linked base is a Capitol.

Victor Wachter

That should mean that the patch goes live at about 11.00 UK time. Woo hoo!

Friday, 30th July '04

Last Night's MAX Party

At its peak, we had about 30 Halibuts running around in MAXes stomping on things. The only real problem was that the enemy just ran away whenever we showed up! We would run to a tower and just charge down the stairs blasting everyone who got in the way then camping the spawns till somebody managed to get the hack on. Very effective, but not all that challenging.

Next time we do MAXes, we need to give the enemy more warning so they can organise a more effective resistance.

Any suggestions for next week?

Wednesday, 28th July '04

Roll up, roll up...

...for the greatest show on Earth! Tomorrow night, The Halibuts will be wearing MAX suits!

Yup, 30 drunken fish will wreak havoc on the face of Auraxis as they attempt to wee on their enemies. Join us, and have fun!

Monday, 26th July '04

Red Fish

Yesterday the fish wore red and terrorised Werner as the TR Halibuts swam forth.

It seems that the Sweeper is the weapon of choice amongst TR Halibuts, although more than one could be heard on TS be-moaning the lack of their JackHammer. We were less impressed with some of the driving skills on display, notably those of UnrealHalibut, who repeatedly drove his passengers into rocks, walls, Magriders and, on several occasions, leaves hanging from trees.

Friday, 23rd July '04

Fish Slaughter

The Fish died in huge numbers, all over Auraxis last night. Time and again we attacked the enemy, dropping valiantly onto bases crowded with infantry, vehicles and spitfire turrets. A painful evening was had by all...

Thursday, 22nd July '04

Fish Night

After last week's enormous stealth-hacking success, we're back at it again this week in an attempt to bolster our reputation and win new recruits to our fishy cause.

Bring AV, HA and UniMAX tonight guys - we're gonna get messy.

Tuesday, 20th July '04

BattleFrames

Its official - BattleFrames are in development (see SporkFire's post here). Get ready to rumble!

New Stuff - From NC Command

This just in:

Put out a warning to your commanders. As in many wars that last for longer than a year, technology sometimes leapfrogs between combatants.

We've enjoyed a substantial technology advantage recently, which we've ruthlessly exploited to great gain. However, the TR foot-draggers and the VS daydreamers seem to have finally organized enough to make a few advances. This is to be expected and should not be allowed to cause morale issues in your troops. Let your troops know they are still the finest in the universe and that our own technology advances are coming.

While those advances are still confidential and secret, we sent our mole agents to liberate any new findings from our enemies that might benefit our own troops.

They made the following discoveries:

1. The Galaxy's 20mm chainguns have had a new cooling unit built into their housings, allowing for a much faster rate-of-fire on these weapons. Additionally, the accuracy has been tuned to allow highly accurate initial bursts to assist in targeting and destroying incoming enemy aircraft. Despite its increased rate of fire, the 20mm still is weak against armor, but should wreak havoc on aircraft, and be fearsome to ground infantry as well.
2. MAX unit armor has been strengthened to better resist the two attacks that had previously ravaged it on the battlefield. The Decimator plagued the MAX due to its vulnerability to that shape-charged warhead. New ablative undercoatings have been added to disperse the impact of a Decimator on MAX armor. Additionally, a mechanism has been added that watches for the distinct signature of an HE Mine detonating nearby. When that occurs, it triggers a micro-pulse force shell throughout the MAX armor, briefly (and barely) strengthening it enough to survive a single dead-center mine detonation.

NOTE: Since our NC MAXs have the ablative force shield available to them, we've found that our units can absorb one full Decimator charge more than any enemy MAXs, which is an advantage we should exploit whereever possible. Forewarned is forearmed. Be on the lookout for changes in tactics and stay flexible!

Other new stuff:

• The Beamer, Pulsar and Lasher have been buffed to improve effectiveness at long-range (although the Lasher remains inaccurate).
• Projectile speed on the Comet has been increased but explosive radius has been reduced.
• The chaingun on the Prowler has increased from 12mm to 15mm.
• The Pounder has improved armour penetration and better accuracy.
• The blast radius of the Pounder has been reduced.
• The Dual-Cycler has also been buffed for better performance and accuracy.

Overall, it looks like the recent population imbalances have been addressed by buffing the VS and TR weaponry. Cool.

Friday, 16th July '04

DeathByHalibut Does it Again

No, we're not talking about Donna The Bike, but about Death's new story. Read it here.

Fishes Save the Day

I didn't make it to Auraxis last night, but here is DoctorHalibuts account of the action:

Wow! What an awesome night it turned out to be.

The greatest display of Halibut Teamwork ever seen in Planetside: 14 Halibuts saved the entire NC's ass.

As those who were there, and those who logged early will attest to - There was only one battle going on, and it was a losing battle on a locked Cyssor. Every other cont was either red or blue. Every time we set foot on a linked cont, we got shafted. The only cont besides Cyssor that had a battle was Ceryshen where the TR were fighting the VS.

An idea was put forward to HART onto Ceryshen (as that was the only cont we could get to, as the BWGs weren't working for the NC, and while those on Cyssor kept it locked, the rest of the NC had ANT races in Sanc), and go through the warpgate to Forseral where we would try to sneakily drain ANU without letting the VS know we were there (i.e. not blowing all of the tubes, and not killing the gen, and not creating any hotspots either.

A tough task, but not for the brave, noble fish!

However with the base down to 40% 3 VS showed up on the cont. We landed our aircraft, and hid the lodestar (with full ANT onboard) inside the AMS bubble, and we kept quiet hoping they were just retaking the tower and would fuck off. They took the tower, but must have noticed something, as they came into the base with an AA max shooting at our aircraft. We killed him quickly to try to lessen the amount of hotspots created, but that didn't stop the VS, as re-inforcements arrived to try to fill up the base with ANTS, but the brave Halibuts kept their heads, and stayed alert taking down the incoming ANTs and reavers with great skill and daring, and great communication as to where each VS was coming from.

Some brave Halibut took it upon himself to alert the rest of the NC as to what we were up to, and a Global from Greyowl came out telling the NC to prepare to drop on Forseral as soon as it goes neutral, and to help out the Halibuts who were going to great lengths to get the NC a place to fight for.

With the base at 10% the VS were attacking heavily, but they couldn't break down the Halibut defences, and suddenly the base went neutral. As the hack was placed on the base, the NC re-inforcements arrived with Globals thanking the Halibuts for their hard efforts, and warning the NC not to lose this hack after the Halibuts had done so well in draining the base. 1 NC ANT started filling the base, and then a VS ANT managed to get into the courtyard and fill the base too.

The story was not over, as the VS managed to gain access to the CC and hack the base themselves, leaving the NC with just the tower.

Once again the brave fish had to put an end to the VS hack, and we all met up in the main room inside the front door of the base with 6 or 7 other NC, and, as one, the mighty fish charged up the stairs to the CC and despatched the VS squad with ease. The hack was once again placed, and 4 or 5 NC AMSes were set up in and around the base, and we settled ourselves in to keep out the VS.

They took the tower and we couldn't get to it, so the NC stayed in the base and defended the hack from strong VS opposition until it went blue. Then a mass of fishy reavers took to the skies and bombarded the tower, weakening the VS inside, as the NC force descended en masse and took the tower. Then the Halibuts were sent tells, and broadcasts and globals saying thanks, and the NC started to move out to attack the continent...

At this point i found a buggy air vehicle pad which put me in my mossie, but wouldn't let me move, take off, bail, or do anything, so i hit CTRL ALT DELETE and logged.

What an amazing night!

Wednesday, 14th July '04

Last Night on Searhus

The TR were defending their tower. Me, Fingers and Preach were attacking and trying to remove their heathen TR influence. Apart from the usual problems (i.e. I can't hit anything with a JH unless it stands still) we had some issues with people spawning in blown tubes, running through walls and basically being bloody difficult. You have been warned.

Bolt Drivers and Mosquitos

On an entirely different note, I'd like to tell you a little story. Last night, just before I logged off, I stepped out on to the top of a Tech Plant on Searhus and spotted a Mosquito hovering over the distant hills and, like a good sniper, I crouched, whipped out my Bolt Driver and shot the little bugger.

The normal response under these conditions is for the Mosquito to rapidly fly towards the sniper and for the sniper to take cover but our pal didn't seem to notice me. After another 8 or so rounds, he started spinning around, looking for a target. He even threw a few rounds in my general direction (and hit me at least once) but he then went on spinning, shooting at various other things.

8 more rounds and he went down in a ball of fire, much to my surprise, and I think there's a lessone here for us all:

1. Bolt Drivers can destroy anything given enough time.
2. Always move when you're shot, because standing still ain't a good idea.

Thursday, 8th July '04

Vanguards!

Tonight we roll in Vanguards. Grab glue guns and tank certs - tonight we celebrate the 150mm explosive projectile.

Once again the legendary MyFingersSmellOfHalibut has prepared a promotional message for the troops. Check it out here.

Wednesday, 7th July '04

Merit Awards

Well, the new patch is now up and running. 1 year service awards are in place although, as far as I can tell, there won't be any Halibuts with this award till about 21st August (at which point we could have as many as 7).

Tuesday, 6th July '04

Halibut Night

This Thursday, we'll be taking the Tanks for a ride. Whip out your Vanguard certs and prepare to ram 150mm shells up the backsides of the enemy. Or something.

Esamir, Last Night

Snipers Ho! Did we rock on that tower last night or what?

Friday, 2nd July '04

Infiltrator Night

Last night was a laugh and, I think, far more successful than the original Infiltrator Night.

25-odd Halibuts sprinted around dropping boomers, throwing grenades and Amping people in the back. Great stuff, and I think we made a reasonable contribution to the overall NC effort. There's something to be said for watching people run straight past you - makes you feel omnipotent (although, in reality, you're more likely to be totally impotent having dropped all your boomers and consumed your Amp ammo).

I have noticed a distressing tendency for enemy vehicles to 'accidentally' run over stationary infiltrators. This is vexing.

Sniping, however, was where the real kills were for me last night. As the TR ran from that tower near the Geowarp over the open ground and through the canyons, many were dropped by the massed ranks of the NC sniper brigade. God knows why they kept going, 'cos they were never going to make it through the hail of Bolt Driver rounds, but try they did and we had to push them right back into the tower before they took the hint.

Next week: something else.

Thursday, 1st July '04

Infiltrator Night

Load up the gimp suits, boys, we're going invisible tonight! 20-30 see-through fish will rain upon our enemies, dealing death with Boomers, AMPs and out-of-date Sex Wee.

Shortage of Updates

Not many updates this week; a computer problem (otherwise known as 83% fragmented hard-drive with 0Kb free space) necessitated the un-installation of Dreamweaver so I'm currently coding pages by hand. Normal service will be resumed next week.

Friday, 25th June '04

Last Night on Cyssor

Was Ekera busy? Oh yes. A long hard fight with neither side able to break the deadlock. The front-line shifted across the Eastern Ekera bridge at least twice during our defence but both times the VS pushed back hard and forced us back to our walls. At one point, the NC were running rampant on the east shore pushing deep into enemy territory but a lack of vehicle support meant that we didn't hold the next tower and we were quickly overwhelmed by incoming Magriders.

All compliments to the VS last night; their snipers and infiltrators worked hard to clear our sniper cover and did a good job but it was their vehicles which really punished us, especially when they kept stealing Vanguards - it wasn't as if we had plenty of tanks to spare but some tit kept giving them away.

Thursday, 24th June '04

Fish and Football

If anyone is still sober after the football or just can't take another hour and a half of Rooney-worship, join us tonight for an evening of Fishy fun on Emerald, where we'll be attempting to hold back the red and purple tides.

Wednesday, 23rd June '04

Planetside 2

No exciting news here, except that SmokeJumper has confirmed (link) that they definitely aren't working on Planetside 2. This strikes me as a little worrying. Most games take 1-2 years to develop and, assuming that SOE have had enough time to decide whether or not Planetside is a commercial success, I'd rather expected them to kick off development of the sequel fairly soon.

Starting now, we could expect to see Planetside 2 in maybe 18 months with better graphics and gameplay, enhanced performance, more weapons and vehicles and new features. There are loads of possible reasons for not starting (or denying that they have started) including not wanting people to wait for the sequel rather than playing the original, but I now believe, in the face of this definitive message from SmokeJumper, that Planetside 2 will arrive in the form of Patch 3.5 or 4.6 or something.

In essence, I'm hoping that Planetside continues to evolve in much the same way as it has over the last 12 months (although going a little faster wouldn't hurt); a programme of continuous improvement and change rather than a dead period followed by a huge new release.

Tuesday, 22nd June '04

VS Halibuts

An alternative VS Halibut outfit on Emerald has been created under the leadership of MyFingerSmellsOfHalibut. If you're looking for a little variety, this could be the outfit for you.

Battle Isles

In case you missed it last week, here is SporkFire's Battle Isle page: link.

Friday, 18th June '04

Fish Tanks Ho!

Last night we ventured forth in Vanguards. 3 squads of Fish with up to eight Vanguards (plus a lodestar and Skyguards) rolled off Sanctuary to wreak havoc amongst the bad guys. All went well and great fun was had by all.

Oh, and for those of you who missed it, the score was 3-0 to England.

Thursday, 17th June '04

Vanguard Night

Let the shoal be gathered. Tonight, after the footie (which we're going to win) we'll be celebrating by driving huge tanks into a storm of enemy AV weaponry, or something. Join us, and let the feeding frenzy begin!

Wednesday, 16th June '04

Vanguards and Skyguards

Tomorrow's fish night draws close but the inconsiderate Euro 2004 timetabling means that we'll be clashing with the England-Switzerland game. English and Swiss Halibuts are therefore excused early-evening duties but all you Scots are expected to attend...

Oh yes, meant to say: COME ON ENGLAND!

Scaley Fish Tales

DeathByHalibut has been up to his tricks again and we are now happy to present the second installment of The Lord of the Swollen Rings: The Two Air Towers.

Bikini Trimmer

Following the success of the Bikini Trimmer, we will now be offering a variety of useful and vaguely humourous household items.

Tuesday, 15th June '04

Weekly Development Activity

SporkFire has posted his weekly update with some interesting stuff on the way for 2.8 (which could be with us in as little as a couple of weeks). Changes to the map and radar functionality look good, and the merit commendations are edging closer. No Battle Isles till 2.9 though. Details here.

The Fellowship of the Swollen Ring

DeathByHalibut has now contributed the first part of a three part epic, to be found here.

Monday, 14th June '04

Night-time on Auraxis

A brief scan of the Devs pages shows that they are considering adding a night to Auraxis. Looks like this will be a minimum effort thing (they'll basically turn down the amount of light) because, they argue, developing torches, vehicle head-lamps and other stuff would take ages and nerf the frame-rate.

Friday, 11th June '04

Last Night, Everywhere

Dig we take it in the neck last night or what? With most of the continents locked and the TR and VS playing a strong defensive game, we were forced to try opening new fronts. This we duly did, with mixed results, over a prolonged period. Several times we dropped, hacked, destroyed and were then zerged from the continent.

Frustrating, yes, but we had a laugh. 30 Halibuts dropping into a contested base can make a bit of a mess, even if the enemy response is then swift and overwhelming.

Thursday, 10th June '04

Halibut Hot Dropping

Tonight we rain upon the enemy. Joining us will be a detachment of Justice Reapers who are keen to be our allies and to mount joint operations together (God knows why, I've told them we're totally disorganised but I couldn't put them off - we must be making a reputation for ourselves).

Rock and Shoal. No mercy tonight. Kill them, kill them all!

Wednesday, 9th June '04

Shaggy Fish Stories

DeathByHalibut has excelled himself to provide us with yet another Halibut-themed PS tale. Get it here.

Fish Night, 17th June

In a fit of extreme organisation hitherto unseen amongst the now-legendary smoking-jackets of The Halibut High Command, it has been decreed that next week's Halibut Night will feature the mighty Vanguard and the awesome Skyguard (and feel free to bring along any other vehicles with 'guard' in their name). StrapOn/Fingers to lead so, basically, we're stuffed.

Micro MAX Night

Anyone who's around this evening and fancies spending an hour or so bumming around in MAX suits in preparation for tomorrow's extravaganza is welcome to join me for miscellaneous trouble-making. I'll be on from about 18.00 (approximately).

Monday, 7th June '04

Halibut Hotdrop

Brush off your HA and Unimax certs; Thursday is Hot Drop night.

Battle Isles

There is a picture of an "old-style" Battle Isle on the main Planetside Page.

Friday, 4th June '04

ATVs

Its official; the Fury is pants. End report.

Next week its Hotdropping again, Pork to lead.

Thursday, 3rd June '04

Halibut ATV Night

Known sometimes as "Gay Bike Night", tonight marks the second Halibut ATV night, this time with added Fury. Can 30 Furies take out a Magrider? Find out tonight as we scream to our deaths on difficult to aim and impossible to steer ATVs. Yee ha.

Tuesday, 1st June '04

BBC Collective

Our very own 'War Correspondent', HalibutCheeks, has posted an article about our booze-up in Brum - details are here. If you've been directed here from there, welcome. Feel free to look around, visit the forums and gather a flavour for our Outfit, The Halibuts.

Quick note: at the moment, we're only involved in a few games (primarily PlanetSide, Unreal Tournament 2004 and Eve Online) as a Clan. Details of the UT2004 server can be found on this site but we don't currently have an Eve page (if anyone wants to write one, I'll be happy to provide links and hosting space and even to format and post the entries).

If you've got any questions about the outfit, get in touch on the forums (here) or by email (here).

Busy Month

With a late burst of traffic from the BBC's Collective site, May '04 has gone down as the busiest month ever for this website with a total of 409Mb of data downloaded. Not bad, considering that in July last year (1 month before Halibuts) my site attracted only 1.1Mb of downloads. Rock and Shoal.

Friday, 28th May '04

Liberators Rock!

Last night the fish flew into battle. Just after I logged on, the Fish recalled and headed to Ishundar where the TR had taken Kusag and were moving starting to move on Luhar which had just been hacked. Coming in through the Amerish warpgate to avoid the huge TR force in the Esamir gate, we headed to Lahar and dropped on the roof of the base before systematically working our way through the TR we found in the CC and courtyard.

With Lahar secure, we jumped into Liberators and headed back to Kusag where a Huge Enemy force was making life tricky for the defenders. As the base fell to the TR, multiple fishy bombing runs over the base and tower (organised by StrapOn) pounded the TR allowing our ground forces to stream in and retake the base.

Victory to the fish. We didn't retake Kusag on our own, but we made it possible for our allies to get into the base in the face of a large TR zerg. Rock and Shoal.

Patch 2.7

Good news is that version 2.7 is now live and appears to be stable. Highlights include the new vehicle variants, a kill/death counter, working lock-on weapons and fixes for the infiltrator bugs.

Thursday, 27th May '04

Fish Night!

Thrusday again. Roll Liberators. Drop Bombs. Destroy Band of Brothers.

Wednesday, 26th May '04

Death Does it Again

As The Halibuts gird their loins for another Liberator night, DeathByHalibut presents another of his now legendary stories. Read it here.

Tuesday, 25th May '04

Liberators Roll

The consensus is leaning towards a second Liberator night on Thursday. Scenes of madness and violence are assured - multi-bomber raids are in the offing.

HalibutStrapOn will lead. See Forums for further details...

Cyssor

The VS zerg had a field day last night. Shortly after I logged on we recaptured the towers at Orisha and the Oshur warpgate but after that I think we lost everything the VS attacked. Orisha fell to the zerg, quickly followed by Shango. Pamba held out a little longer (helped by a strong NC air force) but fell when the infantry started to turn up in large numbers.

We held them at the Kaang-Pamba bridge for quite a while - they took very heavy casualties in the face of a withering Phoenix and Bolt-Driver fire but Kaang fell shortly after they took Itan. From there, it went badly pear-shaped as the VS steam-rollered their way across the continent.

Patch 2.7

Loads of great stuff coming in the new patch; one of the best things will be the fix for the lock-on weaponry which should make the Sparrow rather more effective. Woo hoo.

Sunday, 23rd May '04

Birmingham

Imagine the scene; 13 Halibuts gather in Birmingham for an afternoon and evening of drinking and eating. Attending were (in nor particular order): MyFingersSmellOfHalibut, HalibutStrapon, HalibutCheeks, DoctorHalibut, HalibutBat, HardcoreHalibut, HalibutSurfer, BlindHalibut, PorkHalibut, XavHalibut, HalibutKid, XHalibut (sorry, name misplaced) and UnrealHalibut.

Some memorable moments include:

• Fingers turning up in a moderately loud shirt
• Canal jumping, with Hardcore landing on his backside
• Fingers winding-up Pork something rotten about jumping/swimming a 40ft stretch of cananl
• Kid getting progressively more legless and chatting up birds left right and centre
• Fine Chinese food with very bad rice wine

At around 10 in the evening we headed off for food but somewhere along the way we were unfortunately separated into two groups with Pork leading his band off into the distance. No real clue how this happened, but Strapon, Doc, Surfer, Fingers, Kid and myself ended up in a Chinese restaurant eating great food and terrible wine which Fingers ordered "for the experience".

Overall, a fantastic night. Thanks to everyone who turned up; apologies to those who couldn't make it - you missed a great day.

Some photos posted here.

Friday, 21st May '04

Sniping

Last night was a blast. The Halibuts took up sniping for the night and rained fire down upon our foes. The sight of a whole bunch of Halibuts firing down from a hill into a busy VS base is fabulous. The poor buggers didn't know which way to run as we picked them off. Even vehicles were not safe from our attentions as we destroyed Magriders, Reavers and anything else that came into range of our trusty bolt drivers. Neat.

Screenshots of this (and a couple of other things) can now be found here.

Thursday, 20th May '04

Sniper Night

Ok. Tonight we are due to cert Sniping and wreak havoc from afar. As this is about the only area of the game where I feel I have a modicum of expertise, I have updated the sniping info on the Weapons page, find it here.

Tuesday, 18th May '04

Sniper Night

Like the Redcoats at Isandlwana, The Halibuts will be certing Sniping for Thursday night's extravanganza. Forget your Gauss guns or MCGs, large calibre single-shot rifles are the way to go. Rock on.

Monday, 17th May '04

Halibuts Night Out

The social event of the year draws near. On Saturday afternoon the 'buts gather in Birmingham for curry, beer and other stuff. Check the forums for details and make sure you get online on Thursday evening for a final discussion of contact details, meeting arrangements, identification procedures and Strap's 'special' requirements.

Thursday, 13th May '04

Buggy Patrol

Tonight we roll in buggies - Enforcers and Skyguards. Turn up, spawn in and drop enemies. Muahahahaha.

Monday, 10th May '04

Halibut Thursday

Looks like we'll be doing the SkyGuard/Enforcer thing this week. All interested parties contact Fingers for free porn, a "Preach Face Mask" and a bottle of smelling salts.

PS Stats

Big news on the official PS site is that you can now customize your 'My Planetside' page. If you can imagine my excitement as I headed to the page expecting new information (kills broken down by armour or vehicle, for example) then you'll understand my frustration when I found that absolutely nothing has changed. Avoid this, it is a complete waste of time.

Friday, 7th May '04

Air Cavalry Night

What a laugh! 30-odd Mosquitos and Reavers chasing around shooting things. My favourite bit was accompanying the two galaxies to their drop on Searhus. A truly awesome sight - a load of flying fish supporting a CR5-organised gal-drop on a heavily contested base.

Ideas for next week?

Thursday, 6th May '04

Halibut Night

The consensus of opinion seems to be veering towards and Air Cavalry event tonight. Grab this neat little 4-pointer and join the carnage. Woo hoo!

Wednesday, 5th May '04

Weekly Development Stuff

For anyone who missed it, here is SporkFire's weekly development update:

We are putting version 2.7 into QA today. It will not be available on Public Test for at least a few days after this. We actually don't expect to see it public anytime this week, as there are several items that will require thorough internal testing first (there is a whole battery of new vehicle tests, for example, which must be completed). It contains the following items:

• We are introducing alternate vehicle loadouts, mounting different weaponry to existing vehicles. The first variants include the Fury, a Basilisk variant equipped with a fixed-forward firing rocket launcher, and a set of Empire-specific Deliverer configurations. Check them out In Development.
• The AMS is being redesigned. It will now feature two equipment terminals, a matrixing panel and a deconstruction panel. The spawn tubes are being removed, since players now spawn in the cloak bubble, not in the tubes. The AMS will retain all of its current functionality, while adding an additional equipment terminal.
• Empire Incentives are being improved. These have been described in the In Development Forum.
• Session stats are displayed on the HUD so that players can see their kill/death ratios, the amount of time played, etc.
• Tower SOIs will show up at all zoom levels on the continent map.
• Relative Population Indicators will allow players to see the population distribution of the three Empires across the world. Players will be able to view what percentage of an Empire is on a given continent.
• Continental Dominion Indicators will display at a glance which Empire holds dominion over each continent on the world map.
• An issue that caused difficulty of attaining and achieving locks with lock-on weaponry has been resolved.
• new Fixed an issue that would allow implants to be used with no stamina drain.
• new Changed certain properties in the texture loading process that would cause stuttering and a reduction in framerates. This should result in smoother graphical performance, particularly after first loading a continent.

Just a note on the last bullet point: There are actually two separate issues that would be causing a performance difference since 2.4. One of them has been fixed and is heading to QA. We are hoping to resolve the second in time to release with 2.7. If we do not, we will continue working the issue out for subsequent release.

The update contents after 2.7 are continuing to be developed in design. Among those are these two previously announced items. In addition, you will likely begin seeing design features posted to the In Concept forum in the near future.

• Vehicle HUD improvements, so pilots and gunner may see each other's viewing direction.
• Players will be able to toggle waypoints between 4 states: Fully on, No Arrow, Personal Waypoint only, Off.

Victor Wachter

Tuesday, 4th May '04

Liberty

I had an email last week from Malorn complaining about something but, as they've gone over to TR, I think this is now a dead issue. If anyone has any problems with Liberty, let me know.

Friday, 23rd April '04

Holiday Time

Next week is Unreal's official holiday time so I'll be buggering off to Toronto for a few days. I should be back online from about Tuesday 4th May, at which point I will regale you again with my witty posts. Or something.

Cry Havoc, and let Slip the Fish of War!

Last night the fish caused pandemonium on Amerish (and other continents), attacking various bases and towers and generally making a nuisance of ourselves. We took towers, blew up generators and camped CCs, tying up a large number of VS and bringing the zerg down on our heads more than once. A full platoon of Halibuts can do some serious damage and it looks like the VS CR5s were throwing shedloads of stuff at us to prevent us taking a fin-hold on their precious continents.

At one point we were stuck in a tower having been pushed out of the base we'd been holding. Multiple Magriders supported by paper tanks, Reavers, Mozzies and MAXes helped the infantry to storm the tower but they didn't have it all their own way and we held on for a considerable time. We fell back a number of times, regrouped at Sanc and dropped anew on another continent only to run straight into a TR zerg. Great suff.

This is what The Halibuts are about; we had a laugh.

New Fish

A quick welcome to all the new fish who've joined us over the last week or so. Log on, tune in and have fun. Dicepoint reports that we now have 114 active members. Go fish.

Thursday, 22nd April '04

Fish Supper

Last night I had cod and chips for supper. Tonight, however, its raining Halibuts as we take to the skies again for another legendary Halibut Night.

Bring MAXes, Jack Hammers, Galaxies, Mines, deviantly pornagraphic magazines, Thumpers, Sex Wee, Healing Toothpaste, Armour, Beamers and Gauss guns and together we will destroy the enemy. Muahahahaha.

(only joking about the Beamers - bring atomic tooth-picks instead)

Wednesday, 21st April '04

Last Night on Cyssor

The TR just don't know when to quit. Last night we fought at the Mukuru bridges for bloody ages as the TR tried to cross in force and we offered strong resistance. The battle waged to-and-fro with neither side able to force an advantage; sniping was a real chore as the TR had a load of snipers entrenched around the bridge supports on their side of the water.

I've no idea who won in the end, but respect is due to the TR troopers and tank drivers who repeatedly tried to charge down the NC snipers, Phoenix users and Vanguards who were spamming the bridge. A couple of times they made it almost all the way over the bridge but even their heavy flail support (they had 5 or 6 in Mukuru firing at our end of the bridge) couldn't break the deadlock. Great battle.

Tuesday, 20th April '04

Strategy Guide

News is thin on the ground today, so we're going with a great story from SOE. They are now selling the official Prima Planetside Strategy Guide for a very reasonable $10.99 (find it here). If you've ever seen this book, you'll know it was almost completely worthless when it was first published and by now it must be so hopelessly out of date that the only way it could be of any use would be as a draft excluder.

Monday, 19th April '04

Vehicle Variants

The first information about the new vehicle variants can be found here.

Friday, 16th April '04

Halibut MAX Crash

Last night The Halibuts crashed the VS party with a platoon of MAXes. Towers and bases fell quickly as we stormed in, killed everything in sight then camped the CC. The sight of 24 MAXes running across the landscape was joyous to behold and the effects on the enemy were astounding; nobody stood in our way. How many MAXes can you fit in a CC?

We even managed to get friendly and complimentary messages from other NC, which makes a change. Screenshots to follow.

Patch Update

Here's a piece of news from earlier in the week that I missed:

We're not likely to have it out this week. We are targeting early Monday morning, as we did last time.

Victor Wachter

Looks good to me. Monday evening should be fun...

Thursday, 15th April '04

Halibut Night Looms Large

Bring your MAX suits tonight, HardCore is running a MAX Crash. Anyone who fancies bringing one of the following: Galaxy, Hacking, Heavy/Special Assault etc. will be welcome. Tank driving on another continent (you know who you are!) is not allowed. Here endeth the lesson.

More Patches than a Shipfull of Pirates

With the debacle that was Patch 2.6 still a panfully recent memory, SporkFire has posted details of what we can expect to see in Patches 2.7 and 2.8 (details here). For me, the most exciting features to look forward to are:

• P2.7 - Lock-on weaponry fix - should mean SparrowMAX is even more dangerous
• P2.7 - Session stats - track you kills, deaths and online time
• P2.8 - Vehicle changes - more variety and more Empire-specific stuff

Get the full SOE thread here.

Tuesday, 13th April '04

Liberator Night...

...was apparently a great success! Congratulations to everyone who turned up to kick the enemy around. The footage is fantastic: get it here (Pork's stuff) or here (Doc's stuff). Class.

Patch Heaven, or should that be Hell?

The new patch (2.6.1) rolled out and, to much amusement and gnashing of teeth, promptly rolled back in again as it became clear that it suffered from some fairly horrendous problems (mostly to do with logging onto the servers). Anyone who played yesterday and experienced the login difficulties, poor performance (even away from the zerg) and very low populations will understand why the patch was rolled back.

Thursday, 8th April '04

Holiday!

I'm off for a long weekend so no updates till next week sometime. Good luck with the Liberator raid tonight - if anyone wants to write a humourous tale of your exploits, I'll post it next week.

Cheers, UnrealHalibut.

Tuesday, 6th April '04

Halibut Night

This week the legendary MyFingersSmellOfHalibut will be coordinating a Liberator party, somewhere on Auraxis. The fish will gather and rain high-explosives on our enemies. Imagine the sight; ten fully-loaded Liberators appear over the horizon, heading for a packed TR base. Even the stoutest Red trooper experiences a little leg-tremble as the wall of engine-noise rolls over the base. The Liberators thunder overhead in a tight V formation dropping dozens of bombs into the packed courtyard, clearing the way for their ground-based brethren to sweep into the base. As a parting shot, a CR5 Orbital Strike clears the vehicle terminal which, although crowded with terrified TR, has somehow escaped the mighty assault...

Rock and shoal.

Monday, 5th April '04

Fingers is CR5

Congratulations to MyFingersSmellOfHalibut who becomes the first 'but to make CR5. We now go to work on the rest of the shoal...

Friday, 2nd April '04

Last Nights Fish Activity...

...went fairly well, I think. The hotdrops were quick and effective and we secured a number of tricky towers and base hacks. There were a couple of suicidal drops where we were slaughtered as soon as we hit the deck but there's no gain without a little risk...

Server Merger

Yesterday's story about the Emerald/Werner merger was, of course, an April Fools hoax. A decent number of people were taken in (no names... you know who you are) and clicked through to the "More Info" page. Of the 127 visitors to the site yesterday, 25 (19.7%) didn't spot the hoax. Muahahahaha.

Thursday, 1st April '04

Breaking News

Important news today is the recent decision by SOE to merge the Werner and Emerald servers. To be called Werald, the new server will be based on existing hardware in Holland to give the best possible performance for European customers. The bad news is that characters on Werner with the same name as those on Emerald are to be deleted to create space for the incoming Emerald toons. More info here.

Empire Incentives

Announced yesterday, these seem to be a strengthening of the current balance scheme. Details here.

Wednesday, 31st March '04

Fish Night - Revenge of the Halibut

Pork is coordinating a mighty rain of fish for tomorrow evening. Gal pilots have already volunteered and it looks like we'll have the requisite 4 MAXes but anyone who wants to volunteer to provide air cover or to drive Gal-dropped support vehicles should contact Pork.

This will be the last Fish Night with The Enclave. It should be a laugh, but we really want to finish on top... Be there - it's gonna be a good one.

BBC Unreal Article

Today definitely counts as a slow news day. If you're really bored, have a look at this article about Unreal Tournament.

Monday, 29th March '04

TheHalibutWithNoName's Movie Idea

Rorke's Drift Re-enactment; Halibuts as the beleagured British soldiers (all armed with Bolt Drivers) and hundreds of TR extras (as Zulu stand-ins) charging at a thin yellow line with their knives drawn. Any takers?

Fish Night

Various things have been suggested (including NoName's slightly strange "Bolt Driver" night) but it looks like we'll be going for a massed Gal-drop with Pork coordinating two Gals with MAXes and vehicles. Cool.

The Halibuts vs The Forsaken

Last night The Halibuts took part in an AMS hacking competition with the VS outfit The Forsaken. The idea was simple; each team had an AMS and the objective was to hack (but not destroy) the AMS of the opposing team.

Kicking off at about 7.30, we spent a tense 20 minutes trying to get close to the enemy AMS before HalibutStrapOn managed to creep into the bubble and hack it from under their noses. As he did this, he could be heard muttering over TS "Don't let them find me..." and, as luck would have it, they didn't.

The Forsaken put up a great fight but they were always on the back foot as we constantly sniped their deployables and newly spawned infantry. Rising, Prolapsed and Unreal laid down an almost continuous barrage of sniper fire, taking out many troops and repeatedly destroying the defensive Spitfires and Motion Sensors that some very persistent Combat Engies kept laying down. The rest of The Halibuts mounted an aggressive attack through the centre and left-flank of the playing area as we tied down the right flank under our bolt-driver fire.

Although they played a great game, The Forsaken ultimately lost out to the more experienced Halibuts. They had loads of CE down but seemed to be short of snipers. They also suffered a terrain disadvantage in that their AMS was on flat open ground and we were able to capture the high points overlooking their position from which to snipe. If they have been able to take those points instead of us, the battle may have taken a different course...

Many thanks to The Forsaken for being such good sports (particularly Nelno, Chaff67 and SgtYork who posted messages on our forum) and congratulations to the Halibuts involved. In no particular order (and please let me know who I've missed out), these were: HalibutRising, HalibutStrapOn, ProlapsedHalibut, DoctorHalibuts, OptFgHalibut, HardCoreHalibut, PorkHalibut and UnrealHalibut.

Friday, 26th March '04

Solsar

We gave the TR a right bumming last night as we kicked them all over Solsar. Admittedly it took quite a while and they fought like bloody demons, but kick them we did. Our friends BuzzCutPsycho and SnipeFrag were both present and it seems to me that they took their pounding as well as could be expected, under the circumstances. Anyone seen Buzz's left testicle recently? Ah yes, it currently resides in Fingers' display cabinet...

Unreal Server Update

Pork has delivered; the Unreal server can now be found at 213.208.119.251:7000 under the name "The Halibuts". The list of known Halibut Unreal players can be found here - if you're not on the list, let me know and I'll add you.

For this service, Pork will be looking for financial (or sexual) remuneration, possibly when we meet up in May.

Wednesday, 24th March '04

Unreal Server

The now legendary PorkHalibut has procured the services of an Unreal Tournament server for our use. This isn't cheap, so any donations you're able to make to Pork will doubtless be appreciated. Details of the server address will be on UT page (here) as soon as I have them.

Tuesday, 23rd March '04

Last Night on Forseral

Great fun was had by all but we have a new bad guy to watch out for; a VS by the name of Taynin who's favoured method of assault is the Mosquito drop, accompanied by a surging HA run. Nasty. More details on the annoyances page.

Unreal Tournament

The first part of The Halibuts UT Site is now up and running here.

Saturday, 20th March '04

Cool Stuff

First picture of genuine Halibuts merchandise is here. This high-quality collectors item is now available for all orders of quantities greater than 1. Click here for more details.

New SOE Forums

Ok, as promised, the new forums are up and running; very nice they look too. Post on The Halibuts recruiting link here. They look rather nice, although I haven't found a search facility yet...

Menu

On a recent trip to a remote part of Norfolk (don't ask and I won't tell) I stumbled across this restaurant serving various fish dishes. To my horror, I noticed that Halibut was on the menu. Looks like The Outfit have a base in Norfolk. Needless to say, I didn't go in...

Friday, 19th March '04

Last Night on Oshur...

...the Fish did rip across the continents under the leadership of the mighty (but quiet) HalibutRising and the legendary (and noisy) MyFingersSmellOfHalibut. Even John Travolta couldn't have dealt with the Disco Balls of Doom as well as The Halibuts did last night - it was Epic!

New SOE Forum

This posted yesterday by SporkFire:

Hello all,

I am just dropping the word that starting tomorrow, around midday, we will be starting life all over again with new forum software. Feel free to continue posting here, however keep in mind that many threads and discussions will need to be re-started over in the new world. The current UBB forums will be archived and accessible after they close tomorrow.

Victor Wachter

Do you think this will mean edit facilities?

Sunday, 14th March '04

Site Changes

A few changes to the site; the menu has been slimmed down (deleted stuff has been moved to the links page); the Annoyances page has been slightly updated; details of the Halibuts piss up have been added here.

Saturday, 13th March '04

Halibuts Merchandise

T-Shirts, mousemats and mugs now available featuring the legendary Halibut logos designed by HalibutBerry. Click here and spend, spend spend!

Breaking News

Sporkfire has announced changes to the Surge implant (topic is here):

Post Number 1

Once we have the 2.5 update out the door, we begin testing on version 2.6. In that update, weapons will be automatically holstered when surge is activated, returning the implant to a travel/defensive function as opposed to an offensive one. You'll see this as part of Monday's Weekly Dev Activities post.

Victor Wachter

Post Number 2

A couple of specifics to point out:

1) Surge will holster any drawn piece of equipment: REK, BANK, ACE, etc.
2) Surge will need to be manually disabled (or disabled by stamina depletion, of course) before a weapon can be drawn. This is by design, since allowing a weapon to be drawn while still surged allows for many of the same combat benefits as before.

Victor Wachter

Friday, 12th March '04

Lightning Night

Last night 20 Lightnings roared out of Sanctuary and into battle. Great fun was had by all as our paper tanks gradually folded, one by one, as we encountered the enemy. Much was achieved (we capped several bases) but the overwhelming feeling was that Lightnings aren't much good when the flora of Auraxis is so dangerous. Next week, the mighty Vanguard!

Thursday, 11th March '04

Patch

Looks like a few things have been pushed back from the 2.5 patch to 2.6, which is a bummer. Details here

Wednesday, 10th March '04

Game Updates

More info has been posted (together with screenshots) on Force Domes (screenshots, rules). Looks good but the broadcast warpgate stuff could take some getting used to. Wave goodbye to those home continents and get ready to say hello to a true global combat scenario.

There are also changes to Core Combat (see details here) which should do a decent amount to improve cave combat. Fun fun fun.

Humourous Topic

Laugh? I almost wet myself. Have a look at this.

Lasher Changes

SporkFire has confirmed (see here) that the Lasher has been changed - the Lash activation range has gone back to 5m. At last.

Lightning Night

Tomorrow is Thursday (or Fishday as it is more usually known) and we'll be driving Lightnings around Auraxis to bring death and misery to our opponents. Last week's legendary efforts are sure to be surpassed - spread the word gentlemen, we are crossing the Pond.

Thursday, 4th March '04

Slow Day...

A small collection of pap located by Fingers as he surfs the web during his normal working day:

• A great pair of jugs
• A magazine dedicated to pork

Fish Night

Gather round fishes; tonight we will be storming the enemy bases with the aim of pushing Fingers to CR5 before the new Continental Domination and Capitol Base stuff comes in to the game. Log on and lend a fin; all help gratefully received.

Note: The theme for tonight is mass descruction flavoured with a little generator take-down and tech-plant disruption. Rock on.

Tuesday, 2nd March '04

More Updates

Sporkfire has announced a load of new updates. Get the details here.

TR Halibuts

Now up and running, the TR Halibuts will provide a little light relief on a Sunday evening for anyone wanting to play with the TR toys. The outfit has been created on Werner - join us there.

Thursday, 26th Feb. '04

Halibut Night

Calling all Fish, calling all fish, tonight is Halibut Night.

Lock and load, my beauties, we're off to Auraxis to make a nuisance of ourselves and have a bit of a laugh. Fingers will be flying Galaxies for us and, with a little luck, he'll avoid base walls (assuming he's sober by the time he logs on). Berry will be wielding the JackHammer of doom and Preach will keep us all amused with his jaunty banter (and I bet you've never heard it called that before).

Screenshots

I'm on the look out for exciting screenshots this evening - grab 'em and email them to me at james@myryama.co.uk for inclusion on this site (ooh ooh, the excitement...).

Wednesday, 25th Feb. '04

Werner Vanu Night

Fingers is organising an expedition on Werner tonight to play with the Lasher. Check this forum topic for details.

Tuesday, 24th Feb. '04

Developer Updates

In case you haven't seen it, SporkFire has posted a list of changes and bug fixes we can expect to see relatively soon. Find the list here.

Last Night

Gen defence is fun! There were seven of us, I think, holding a generator miles behind the TR front line, waiting for the enemy to find us. They did, of course, but we slaughtered loads of them as they tried to make their way into the Gen room. Pity they found our AMS.

Friday, 20th Feb. '04

Last Night on Hossin

The fight on Hossin went badly last night as the TR zerged us from the continent. We retreated back to Zotz, laid deployables and awaited the onslaught but, when it came, we were quickly overwhelmed and pushed back to Sanctuary. Bummer.

Re-grouping at the Hossin warpgate, the fish gathered Vanguards, Skyguards, an AMS and a Deliverer, before girding our loins and heading right back to Hossin to make the TR suffer.

Mulac was our first target (obviously) and we arrived to find a shield in place but very few defenders. A short sharp fight ensued, followed by the normal 15 minute CC defence before we captured Mulac; no problems. As the timer counted down to zero, the assaults of the TR increased in ferocity and we (supported by increasing numbers of other NC) were soon facing a Large Enemy Force. This time, however, we were prepared and, although the battle raged to and fro, we took Mulac and gradually pushed the TR back from the walls.

Rumour has it that BuzzCutPsycho was spitting teeth as he searched for his left testicle (see HalibutBerry's topic here and Finger's topic here) after he received a number of emails about Berry's screenshot. The Enclave were out in force but we didn't see too many of them; maybe they'll stop by next week to say hello?

Thursday, 19th Feb. '04

Fish Night Again!

Ok lads, we're frying tonight! Now is the time for all true and loyal Halibuts to join the cause as we let slip the dogs of war and descend with the wrath of Khan on our colonial cousins across the pond. Bring JackHammers, Vanguards, Gauss guns, Amps, small jars of pickled herring, Phoenixes, Enforcers and your own favourite brand of lube (HalibutStrapOn will provide other equipment as required) and join us as we throw ourselves at the enemy.

UnrealHalibut out.

BuzzCutPsycho Caught Napping?

The screenshot of the day can be found here. It shows the moment that HalibutBerry stumbled across BuzzCutPsycho who appeard to be taking a break from the struggle. Needless to say Buzz didn't survive this encounter. We expect him to be online this evening and looking for revenge. Ha ha.

Wednesday, 18th Feb. '04

Fingers Baits the Enemy

His new topic on the SOE forums can be found here. Go get 'em lads!

New Patch

Big news for today is that the Player Issues patch goes live at 3am PST today (about 11.00 here in the UK). For any who might have forgotten, this is the patch with all the ammo box size and vehicle ammo capacity changes. You'll need to rebuild your favourites, but who cares because Rocklet and Bolt Driver ammo boxes have been increased. Woot.

Sporkfire's post is:

We will be releasing the following updates to PlanetSide at 3 AM Pacific.

• Player Response Updates are Live! Check out all the details In Testing!
• Fixed an issue that caused some vehicles to take excessive damage from the terrain.
• Animation Culling options will now save properly.
• Players will no longer get grief messages for shooting equipment in VR training.

Infil Loving

Sporkfire has been busy. He has also released details of the upcoming Infiltrator improvements and bug fixes. Full details can be found in his post to the forums (link here). This looks like great news for the Infiltrators but will make life more difficult for the traditional targets of these sneaky swines; the snipers. With the Silent Run buff on the way as well, life could become very tricky for the lone sniper...

Monday, 16th Feb. '03

Teamspeak Server

Looks like we're on the hunt for a new TS server because the one we're currently using will be Werner TR only from 1st March. All suggestions gratefully received. If we can't find someone to donate space to us for free, I suggest that we think about renting our own. Possible suppliers so far are: Jolt.

Router Exploit Update

In case you missed this on the forums, it looks like the telepad on the ledge in the gen room at Amun (see below for more details) was placed there by an Infiltrator standing on the shoulders of a MAX which then used its jets to leap to the height of the ledge. Neat.

Screenshots

A few new screenshots have been added. Get them here.

Thursday, 12th Feb. '04

Vanguard/Flail Night

Ok, the time has come for us to rock Emerald with a motley collection of Vanguards and Flails. Fingers is in charge of this (I understand he has all sorts of cunning planes to retrieve modules, cap Tech Bases and bum the enemy) so if you've got any questions, aim them at him. If not, load up, roll out and give it to 'em from behind.

Subsidiary Target - The Highwayment

Following discussions on the SOE forum with IbnShaitan (leader of The Highwaymen) regarding their exploitation of the Router bug, they have now promoted themselves to "almost worth worrying about" status. Let me know if you see them around 'cos using real weapons against them makes killing them too easy - only Beamers may be used to attack these guys.

Monday, 9th Feb. '04

New Router Exploit

Last night at Amun on Solsar we had a VS infestation. This was eventually tracked to the Gen room where the VS had managed to position a telepad on the ledge on the left-hand wall of the room (see screenshot here - sorry it's a little dark), out of reach of our forces. The VS kept up an almost constant stream of troopers wielding Decimators to take down the generator and could we find the Router/AMS? No.

After about 20 minutes of searching, a Reaver pilot called TyrantClaw found the AMS on the island behind the NC Sanctuary warpgate on Solsar. Check the map. There is no way that the Router should work over this range (Devs confirm the maximum should be 300m) so they've worked out a really neat exploit. There is also no way (that anyone has admitted) for a telepad to get to the ledge in the Gen room.

There is a topic (link here which SmokeJumper is monitoring, in case anyone is interested.

PS - from comments the VS made after we destroyed their AMS and Router (the NC spent about 25 minutes searching for them), they'd used the same trick on the TR earlier in the day but the TR had taken about 3 hours to track them down. Nasty.

Friday, 6th Feb. '04

Hot Dropping

Our HDs last night were definitely mixed, screwed up by combinations of CE, Starfire MAXes, manned turrets, over-enthusiastic defenders and sheer bad luck. The first three drops I was involved in all ended horribly - I either failed to make it into the base or wasn't able to get out of the entrance corridor. Bummer.

That said, some of our later drops went very well and we took several towers and resecured at least one base. Good going Fish.

Patch Update

Sporkfire has announced in the forums that Version 2.4.7 (with the Rexo patch) will go live at 3am PST, which I think is 11am here in the UK. Woo Hoo.

Thursday, 5th Feb. '04

Fish Night

Hotdropping tonight, MyFingersSmellOfHalibut to lead with the usual support and insults from everyone else.

Patch Updates

Looks like the Devs went overboard yesterday. SmokeJumper posted a load of stuff to the forums on ammo quantity updates. In case you miss them, the main changes concerning the NC are a reduction in shotgun ammo box from 30 to 16 and a reduction in 150mm shell ammo box from 100 to 50. NC nerfed?

SmokeJumper's original post can be found here and is copied blow:

"Actually, the ammo pass started because we realized that some weapons ran out of ammo VERY quickly in the field (Rocklet) and some weapons never seemed to EVER run out of ammo (Shotguns). That got us started looking around to figure out the balance of "battlefield potential". That was a measure of balancing the total amount of damage you could do with the ammo in your inventory versus the amount of time you could stay in the battlefield without rearming yourself.

Tricky balancing, but it showed some obvious things that needed work. (And which we've fixed.)

Anyway...here's some numbers for you. (Not everything is listed here. This is just skimming the top of the changes.)

Hand-Held Ammo Changes

• Rocklet: Old - 6; New - 15 (per ammo box). Rocklet users won't run out of shells so fast. Makes the weapon more attractive. (This also enhances the Punisher.)
• Thumper: Old - 6; New - 12 (per ammo box). Allows more variety in what grenades to carry because you can carry more of them. By loosening up inventory, this makes this weapon more useful. (This also enhances the Punisher.)
• Bolt Driver: Old - 5; New - 10 (per ammo box). Snipers can stay out in the field longer. They won't feel so required to bring an AMS out with them when going sniping because they can carry twice as much ammo now as previously.
• Striker: Old - 5; New - 15 (per ammo box).
• Phoenix: Old - 3; New - 9 (per ammo box).
• Lancer: Old - 6; New - 18 (per ammo box).
• The AV weapons suffered from not being able to carry enough ammunition for the player to feel like they were effective in the field. By the time they fired all their ordnance, they had only killed a couple things. This helps in that regard. (NOTE: In no way is this intended as a major AV buff. This just resolves a specific issue. Don't even bother typing the words "that's not enough of a buff for AV". ; )
• Hand Grenades: Now come in clips of three. Yes, Virginia...there is a Santa. Infiltrators, rejoice. Same inventory requirement, but instead of one grenade, you get three.
• Shotgun shells: Old - 30; New - 16 (per ammo box). Shotguns were vastly overpowered in terms of damage potential for the load carried and how long the user could stay afield using that ammo. This brings it back down into balance. (But it just brings them down to about the same damage potential and inventory requirements as other weapons...it's not really much of a nerf.)

Vehicle Weapon Clip Size Changes

NOTE: Most of these are *downward* changes, which forces you to reload more often. This seems like a nerf, but it's not much of one. You just have to reload once in a while now. The real BUFF that's coming is seen below in the Vehicle Ammo Box Size Changes section. Trust me...it's good.

• Basilisk: Was 250, now 100
• Deliverer: Was 250, now 100
• Harasser: Was 250, now 150
• Liberator (rear gun only): Was 250, now 150
• Lightning (20mm only): Was 250, now 150
• Magrider (PPA only): Was 250, now 150
• Marauder (GroundPounder): Was 20, NOW 50!!!
• Marauder (12mm): Was 250, now 150
• Mosquito: Was 250, now 150
• Prowler: (machinegun only): Was 250, now 200.
• Vanguard: (machinegun only): Was 250, now 200.

Vehicle Ammo Box Size Changes

These are the changes that will let you spray more lead around and stay in the field longer.

• 20mm ammo: Was 100, now 200. (affects Basilisk, Deliverer Lightning, Skyguard, Vanguard)
• 12mm ammo: Was 100, now 300. (affects Harasser, Mosquito, Prowler, Marauder).
• Liberator bombs: Was 10, now 20.
• 25mm (Liberator tailgun): Was 100, now 150.
• GroundPounder: Was 50, now 100.
• Flux cannon: Was 50, now 150.
• 150mm cannon: Was 100, now 50. (Yes...this is a nerf. Go ahead and post about it. *sigh*) The Vanguard's ammo supply was far, far in advance of its other-Empire competitors. This is balanced out now.

Whew. Okay...that's long enough for one post.

I'll be reading your replies. Thanks (in advance) for your comments. I hope you like the changes, but if you don't, I'm sure you'll let us know. "

Other Changes

There are then a load of other changes which, to me, look like being a big NC nerf as they effectively buff a load of TR and VS weapons to make them easier to use and more effective. This might be justified to balance the game but I can't help thinking we're being stuffed here...

Here's the post:

• TR MAX Dual-Cycler is now Anti-Infantry.
• TR MAX Pounder is now Anti-Vehicle. It's projectiles have been given extra accelerant and now fire in a flatter, longer trajectory with higher projectile velocity. The warheads have been changed to punch through armor. The Pounder is now sort of almost a light tank cannon now.
• Lancer: Reduced the COF enlargement caused by turning. It's projectile speed is slightly faster as well. This allows it to be more accurate and lets the Lancer capitalize on its "direct-line of fire" capability, making it more effective.
• VS MAX (all): The COF of VS MAXs doesn't enlarge as quickly now while jumping. This allows them to more easily utilize their weaponry while in the air.
• TR MAX (all): Anchoring and unanchoring is *slightly* faster now. This reduces the vulnerability window for those MAXs while anchored.
• Decimator moved to AV.
• Maelstrom grenade now costs 10 energy instead of 5 energy to fire. The original cost was too low for balance. That became obvious during the balance pass.
• Hand-held AT weapons are getting "recharge capacitor units" (read that as "ammo") that you can buy at AT equip terms or at facilities with the Equipment Terminal module benefit. This allows them to be recharged in the field, making these weapons more attractive.
• TR Burster will only do direct damage to non-aircraft targets. No more spamming the infantry with it. You can still kill tanks and infantry...but not with those huge explosions.
• Jackhammer is getting an automatic relaod after firing its tri-barrel shot. This reload can't be avoided. It's the drawback to the gigantic damage caused by the tri-barrel. Fire the tri-barrel, then wait for reload before you can fire again.

SPECIAL NOTE: Not all of these changes listed here will be in the same patch. I'm just listing them for a completeness view. The patch in QA currently has NONE of these changes. You'll start seeing them in the next patch thereafter.

News on Outfit Base Ownership

From the same topic, it looks like Outfit Base Ownership has taken a back seat:

"It's been bumped off the plate for a bit. There won't be any updates on it for a while still.

Sorry for the bad news...but see some of my other posts. We're definitely not standing still. (Use Dev Tracker"

Third post, concerning the NC:

Finally, some explanation from SmokeJumper about the effects of the changes on the JackHammer. I can't say I'm too keen on a 4-point weapon that is only of any use when you walk round a corner into a bad guy and to couple that with reduced ammo capacity seems to be a pretty strong nerf. Here's the post:

"We don't have a date for this patch yet. ASAP is the real answer, but I don't know how soon the "P" part is...

- I'll look at the Lasher. Don't expect much. We already looked at it several times.

- Don't get too upset about the JH change. It basically just prevents the extra "fourth" shot from occurring. The tri-barrel is still devastatingly effective if you run into someone in a corridor. Bang! You're dead.

- The reduction in shotgun ammo puts NC players on par with players in other Empires. We realize that NC players won't like it, but the fact is, they could carry too much stuff in their inventories (compared to other Empires) and that was tipping balance incorrectly. This makes the game more balanced and is an important change. Despite the fact that it's a "nerf".

- The Skyguard's ammo supply is pretty much exactly where we want it. They are devastatingly effective, but they trade a limited ammo supply for such power.

- To those upset because the NC MAXs didn't get anything new...we already upgraded their special ability. That's why it's not being done now"

Wednesday, 4th Feb. '04

New Patch Edges Closer

SporkFire has announced that the new patch is now on the test server which should mean they go live fairly soon. Yippee! Details are here and the forum thread is here.

Changes to the Decimator

Ok, this one had passed me by but it seems that the Decimator should have been an AV weapon all along rather than a Special Assault weapon. Check SporkFire's post:

"Folks concerned about the AV swap for the Deci...do a search for my posts. The Deci should have been AV all along. Additionally, the Thumper and Rocklet are getting substantial ammo improvements which will make them even more attractive to their users. SA will still be a very strong cert. If you didn't want the Thumper or Rocklet, then unlearn SA and learn AV."

Get the full thread here. Bad news if you use the Deci a lot but fantastic for those of us using the Thumper and Rocklet Rifle.

Saturday, 31st Jan. '04

Stuff to Buy

Where do you go to buy games and stuff? Here. I'll add new things to this page as I stumble across them.

Friday, 30th Jan. '04

Fish Night

Last night the fish rained down on Searhus and Cyssor, bringing death and humiliation to our enemies. With a number of superb tower caps and base resecures on Searhus, we discovered that our old friends The Enclave (led by BuzzCutPsycho) had hacked Wele on Cyssor and were intent on clearing the continent.

Recalling to Sanctuary, we dropped into Cyssor and picked up Galaxies at Gunuku before heading north-west to attack Wele. By the time we got there, the TR had taken the base and had started to move out southwards. The Fish dropped from the sky like a storm of biblical proportions, sweeping away the resistance in the base to gain entry to the lower levels and hack the CC, only a few minutes after the TR hack had been completed.

Congratulating ourselves on another successful drop and hack, we settled in to defend our base against the TR. Taking down the spawn allowed us a little security, but The Enclave rallied magnificently and sent a fair number of troopers and MAXes to attack the CC while also camping our only tower-based spawn. The battle was hard-fought on both sides but, with the hack timer counting towards zero, The Enclave made a concerted push into the CC with MCG users and MAXes and despite our best efforts, The Halibuts died. After that last attack the CC looked like a fishmonger's stall - dead Halibut as far as the eye could see.

Anxiously we watched the timer count down. The last Halibut died with fewer than 30 seconds on the timer. We had held the CC for almost the full 15 minutes against a skilled TR attack but, with no Halibuts to oppose them, The Enclave were able to resecure Wele with 4 seconds left on the timer. Bummer.

Honours go to all those Fish who took part last night. 20 Halibuts riding 2 Galaxies did much damage to our enemies on Searhus and Cyssor and strengthened our reputation. Congratulations also to Buzz's team who did a great job resecuring Wele. I think we'll promote them to be our Number 1 Enemy (an exalted and much fought-over position).

Thursday, 29th Jan. '04

Fish Tales

Fresh from the pen of the mighty MyFingersSmellOfHalibut comes a new work. Find it here.

Halibut Night

Thursday today, so fish night tonight. Discussion on the forums has been inconclusive, so I suggest we go for another hot-drop night with Fingers doing early coordination (as he seems to be planning to skive off work early). We'll bind at a dropship centre and rain down on our enemies. Muahahahaha.

Tuesday, 27th Jan. '04

Last Night on Cyssor

The Halibuts were in action on Cyssor last night. At one point I (Unreal) was involved in the storming of the bridge towards Bomazi from Nzame. The TR held the tower (over the bridge and on the left) and the VS held Bomazi (over the bridge and on the right, but a little further away). We had the tower on the south of the bridge.

I was amongst the first to cross the bridge and, having had my Lightning destroyed, I respawned at the tower and strolled over with my Bolt Driver to have a go at the blokes on top of the tower. Of course, by the time I got within range, they'd all been killed and the fight was concentrating around the base of the tower, so there were no TR to see. The VS, on the other hand, were streaming out of Bomazi to attack the tower. Loads of VS troopers were sniping at the tower from the high ground south-west of Bomazi, making life difficult for the TR but easy for us as we sat, unnoticed, on the bridge.

Spotting an interesting opportunity, I crouched down on the bridge and started picking off the VS. Many of them were clearly new players (they were exposed on the hillside, they weren't moving after being hit and they were using MA weapons against the tower) and I racked up a dozen or so kills in a few minutes before I ran out of ammo. The VS didn't even look in my direction.

Conclusions? There are loads of new players around who haven't yet learnt to cope with incoming sniper fire. Fantastic - new players and easy kills. Anyone else had this experience?

Monday, 26th Jan. '04

CR4

Congratulations to the HalibutKid who has become our third CR4. Woo hoo!

Friday, 23rd Jan. '04

Hot Drop Night

With Slapper leading the Platoon, 20 Halibuts spent the night dropping on to Hoissin like the vengeful fish they are. Particularly successful was the first drop on Ghanon where, with TR and VS forces taking our bases, the objective was simply to take down the generator and keep it down for as long as possible. This we were able to do, holding the generator until the room was stormed by a crowd of MAXes and supporting infantry.

With hindsight, it might be said that our third drop on Kisin was less successful. Dropping towards the back door, we watched in horror as we passed multiple Reavers on our way down and saw a number of Prowlers waiting for us on the ground. Casualties were rather high with maybe 80% of the fish forked at the back door but the rest of the team made it into the base, fought their way to the generator and disabled it.

In separate actions, we stomed a base under VS hack (Kisin), resecured it and proceeded to flush the interior of the base. We then brought the tubes back up and held the base against the invading hordes.

Rock on Fish - we certainly did our reputation no harm last night and fun was most definitely had. Opinion is currently divided over whether or not we do this again next week, but there are certainly

Outfit Slimming

We've been through the outfit roster and removed some characters who haven't been online recently. If you've been removed but still want to play in the outfit, just let us know and we'll re-invite you, no problems.

Tuesday, 20th Jan. '04

Halibuts are Recruiting

Are you in need of a Planetside Renaissance? Do you want to be able to squad with a bunch of fun-loving lunatics? Then you need to get in touch with The Halibuts in-game (/tell UnrealHalibut or MyFingersSmellOfHalibut), by email (james@myryama.co.uk) or on our forums at http://com1.runboard.com/bthehalibuts.

Monday, 19th Jan. '04

Weekend

Had an interesting weekend. I created a TR toon on Emerald called TongueWhacker (say hello if you notice me around) and spent a couple of hours zooming around with an MCG failing to kill people. Several things I noticed about the Emerald TR:

• Every man and his dog seems to have either HA or UniMAX certs, especially the new characters, so there is never a shortage of heavy support. There would seem, however, to be a shortage of Special Assault and Sniping Certs which makes the TR rather unbalanced.
• With Reinf Exo armour and a loadout including an MCG and a JackHammer, you'd be pretty much invincible at short to medium range.
• MCG users packing armour-piercing rounds should not be underestimated by pilots - I downed two Mosquitos and a Reaver yesterday using this combo.
• Prowlers are definitely popular. There are loads of them around and some of the gunners (especially the ones using the main weapon) are very good - they rack up kills like they're going out of fashion.

Saturday, 17th Jan. '04

Gameplay Updates - JackHammer

There's been some debate on the forums (following Thursday's announcement regarding the buff to the reinforced exo armour) regarding the relative effectiveness of the JackHammer and the MCG. Looks like the reload time for the JackHammer has been bugged since launch (see SmokeJumper's post below) and fixing this will make a big difference to the effectiveness of the weapon.

SmokeJumper's Post:

"The tri-barrel reload time has effectively been a bug all this time. The original design calls for the tri-barrel to reload one barrel, then rotate, then reload another, then rotate, then reload the last. Fixing this brings it back to the balance intended...and it's overdue.

This doesn't decrease the power of the Jackhammer's tri-barrel attack at all. However, it does bring a price to using it...as intended.

And I have absolutely no fear that the tri-barrel will still be used. It's far too effective indoors to be ignored."

To me, this should mean that when you use the JH in secondary mode, you can fire it again as soon as it has reloaded at least one barrel (albeit without the full power of the current secondary fire mode) rather than having to wait for all three barrels to reload. This opens the intriguing possibility of being able to get off four rounds very quickly - fire three with your first fire command then fire a fourth as soon as it has reloaded. Very cool. Very dangerous.

Gameplay Updates - AV Weapons

Looks like SmokeJumper has been dropping weapon buff hints all over the place. This one applies to the AV weapons which have been pretty naff for a while (ever tried destroying a tank with one?).

SmokeJumper's Post:

"The ammo boxes for AV weapons will be getting a big buff soon."

Friday, 16th Jan. '04

Buggy Night

We had a happy time last night rolling around in our 5.0 buggies, hunting our enemies and generally laying waste wherever possible. Great driving from Spiky saw us inflict significant pain without dieing too much.

HotDrop Night

HalibutSlapper has suggested, and will be coordinating next week, a Halibut HotDrop night (see here for a quick guide to the fine art of hot-dropping). We need a couple of pilots and a load of merciless killers, committed to creating a deadly Rain of Fish. Get in touch with Slapper via the forums and lets load up.

Beware the fish, gentlemen. We're dropping in for a visit.

New Patch

Biggest news here is the change to Rexo armour that should make it considerably more useful. This patch is live on the test server so it should be with us fairly soon.

Gameplay Changes

• Reinforced Exosuit now absorbs two more points of damage and has 50 more armor.
• The Empire Population Cap has been reduced so an equal number of players from each Empire can be on a continent at once. The over population cap is unchanged.
• Flag icons now appear when a cavern building is hacked.
• Destroyed Spawn Tubes and Ancient Sentry Turrets will have a "destroyed" graphic to help players know their status.
• Animation culling can now be toggled through the video options interface.
• Lodestar is now listed in kill stats.

Bug Fixes

• Players will no longer spawn in invalid locations within an AMS bubble.
• Bailing from an aircraft will no longer cause the craft's engine sound to continue playing.
• Base Lattice links will no longer go black when the status of a base changes.
• Fixed an issue where players take no damage when shot at point blank range by certain weapons.
• MAX death animations display properly.
• Vehicles will no longer get stuck in autodrive if someone enters a gunner spot when the vehicle is created.
• Fixed an issue where vehicle momentum does not change when running over people.
• Vehicles and players will no longer take damage when a player is dismounting and a gunner is firing.
• Fixed a bug where vehicles could drive through lava longer than they could drive through water.
• The vehicle shield effect will no longer stick to players when they exited their shielded vehicles.
• The Repair/Rearm functions of the Lodestar will no longer work inside of a warpgate.
• Passengers recovering from Linkdeath in a Lodestar will no longer become stuck in the cargo bay.
• Fixed a bug in ground vehicles where running over users with 0 armor will not kill them, but users with some armor points die instantly.
• Bailing from an aircraft will no longer leave the 'inertial dampener' effect visible in the sky for a long time.
• Advanced Targeting now shows the state of unmanned Ancient Sentry Turrets.
• Ancient Sentry Turrets will fire properly after a player zones.
• Holding a directional key while in the map view and exiting the map will no longer cause the map to continue scrolling.
• Vehicles with gunner positions that enter and exit a Lodestar will no longer lose gunner ammo upon exit.

Tuesday, 15th Jan. '04

Resumption of Service

Some time since an update - apologies. I'm now back from Las Vegas (great place - loads of flashing lights and silly noises) so normal service should now resume. To kick off, we have the following:

Producer's Letter

Most exciting new things on PS so far this year, are the new features discussed in this letter from TSlothrop.

Christmas Stuff

Anyone who hasn't played the game for a few days will doubtless be relieved that the daft Christmas decorations have now been removed. Phew! We can go back to playing on Ceryshen without fear of those horrible lights.

Sunday, 28th Dec. '03

Notify List

I've downgraded BuzzCutPsycho from being "serious annoyance" status to "mildly aggravating". He talks a big fight (see the forums) but he's probably only 14 so I think we should leave him alone for a while...

Saturday, 27th Dec. '03

Christmas '03

I hope you all had a good Christmas. I know for a fact that many Halibuts were totally pissed before Queenie made here speech at 3pm. Anyone who wasn't drunk may have let the side down a little and will be sent for re-education at the hands of Fingers and StrapOn. Sorry chaps...

Dicepoint Stats

Here they are, the links to your favourite Dicepoint stats:

• The Halibuts - Link
• The Fishermen - Link
• -The Outfit- - Link
• The Fighting Beavers (ha ha) - Link
• =C22=-K - Link

Christmas Eve, 2003

Happy Christmas everyone. Drink, eat and be merry. Oh, and make sure you kill BuzzCutPsycho at least once during the Christmas period. Cheers.

Saturday, 20th Dec. '03

Christmas Stuff

SOE have clearly gone slightly Christmas happy. New artwork to celebrate the Christmas season? Hmm. Very bizarre. More details here.

Sydney Moon

The Sydney Moon appreciation society is now open. See here for appropriate links.

Friday, 12th Dec. '03

KonriedKing

KonriedKing may be the first NC to make it to our Annoyance list after antagonising Halibutez and other Halibuts last night. He definitely came off worse in the ensuing fight and BigKosmo broadcast a message for everyone to see - screenshot here, courtesy of PanoHalibut.

Thursday, 18th Dec. '03

New Features

SOE have announced details of changes to the base and link system. Info here.

Thursday, 11th Dec. '03

Fish Tales Update

HalibutStrapOn's fishy Christmas tale has been added. Check it out here.

Halibut MAX Night

Ok. The idea is to have a little fun with the bad guys. It goes like this:

We cert up the MAXes (I'm going to drop Vanguard to pick up Falcon - already got Sparrow but no time to change for UniMAX). We gather at Sanctuary. With most of us in MAX suits (others Eng, Hack and Med), we drop en-masse onto a disputed tower or base and charge the enemy.

The key to success, I think, is to stick together. We re-spawn at a tower, charge into battle together, and, with our recent luck, get slaughtered together. Neat. Halibut is back on the menu, boys.

Wednesday, 10th Dec. '03

Screenshots

New shots have been posted here, courtesy of HalibutStrapOn.

Call of Duty

Here it is, the thing you've all been waiting for! The address of Pork's CoD server is: 195.149.21.245:23960

Monday, 8th Dec. '03

Battle Report - 22:40

Tonight's play was not the best we've ever experienced. The attack on Hossin went smoothly but, as there were no enemies, it was extremely boring. The move to Oshur went well too, and we made good progress until we met the VS zerg at Hvar and Izha, where they promptly started to push us back. We quickly lost all our bases and were effectively zerged from the continent.

Forseral was little better and, after about 2 1/2 hours of play, I logged having died far more times than I killed and had a rather rough evening. At one point on Oshur, the VS zerged us right into the Spawn room. Screens below. Hopefully, the server will settle down in the next week or so so that we're able to get back to medium size battles where skill counts as much as firepower and numbers.

Shot 1 shows the spawn room as I stepped into it.

Shot 2 shows how far I got (I'm the corpse at the bottom of the screen, still lying, you'll note, on the steps of the spawn tube).

Server Merger

Well, the first thoughts regarding the success of the server merger are... mixed. Huge battles were promised and huge battles have been delivered, but it has been pointed out that being zerged off a continent as soon as you hack your first base is a little dispiriting.

What will The Halibuts do about this? We will adapt. We will move faster, strike harder and melt back into the mists before the enemy can catch us. We will capture bases, pinch modules and hack towers. We will be a thorn in the sides of our foes and, when they're least expecting it, we'll mount defiant defenses against overwhelming odds and launch suicidal attacks against targets nobody else can take.

That's the plan, anyway. It'll probably fall apart as soon as we step from the warpgate, but we've got to try.

Friday, 5th Dec. '03

Membership

The Halibuts have now hit 201 members - which is fantastic. Unfortunately, this puts us over the magic 200 figure which SOE have imposed as the optimal outfit size for the accumulation of outfit points and credits under their new reward schemes. With this in mind, its probably time to kick out some of those Halibuts who haven't been online since early September. If anyone would like to comment on this, please do so on the forums. Thanks.

More News

Looks like we're going to get battle honours, essentially, when SOE mix up the ladders (see here for details). I reckon this will add a decent amount to the game and I for one will be looking to accumulate Sole Survivor points.

News

New today, is another update (Version 2.3.6 (December 5, 2003)):

• The Battle Concentration Initiative has come to the live servers. Click here to learn more about it.
• The Lodestar has arrived! Learn more about this new vehicle transport here.
• Player Recertification is also live for the first time. Learn about the new cert options here!
• Ancient Module Sockets are now located in the main room of facilities, instead of the generator room.
• Generators will no longer take excessive aggravated damage from plasma grenades.
• FPS optimizations have been made to reduce the load on the CPU.
• Surge Implant users will no longer be able to warp around the screen and become extremely difficult to hit.
• Improved vehicle handling and climbing capabilities.
• Players were unable to see orbital strikes that were initiated before the area come onto their screen. This issue is fixed and players should be able to see all Orbital Strikes.
• Players will be able to remap the "Toggle Special Ability" key properly.
• Players who bail from an aircraft and pull out a weapon will no longer leave smoke trails in the sky.
• Platoons will now display member squads each on a seperate line by default.

Movies

A new Halibut movie has been added, try here.

Thursday, 4th Dec. '03

Halibut Night

Tonight is our last chance to play before the merger. Let's make the most of it and send Konried off with a bang.

Off Topic

This has nothing to do with anything. If you remember the A-Team (and who doesn't?), check this site for all the information you could possibly want about the famous four.

Wednesday, 3rd Dec. '03

Server Merger

Its Official - Konried and Emerald will merge on Friday. Catch the news here. They're calling this a "Battlefield Concentration Initiative" which sounds to me like a bit of a sales pitch (and a poor excuse for a new TLA). If it works, and the battles become huge and fast, we're in for some real fun times.

This means we get to play again alongside CaptainBigWig who migrated to Emerald after we "ruined" Konried. Give him some special loving when you see him.

Halibut Publicity

We need to explain to Emerald who we are. I've started a little thread (here) so go to it - let them know who we are... ...but be gentle Preach, remember they haven't experienced your very "individual" style of writing before...

Tuesday, 2nd Dec. '03

New Concepts

Loads of new changes on their way. Outfit points, alliances and other stuff, detailed here.

Fishermen

Looks like we're all having great fun fighting against The Fishermen.

Unreal's Update

Site updates have been sparse for the last few weeks because I've been snowed with work and I just haven't had the time. This might continue for a little while longer but normal service should be resumed before Christmas. I've also not been online as much as I'd like so if you've been expecting to see me around and haven't, I can only say "sorry, afk for a while". I should be online tonight, and definitely on Thursday as we gather our forces for our regular weekly fishing trip.

One of the things that hasn't happened is that a page listing our respected foes hasn't yet been created. This will happen, so if you'd like to nominate someone, please do so by posting to the forums or emailing me here.

Unreal out.

Thursday, 27th Nov. '03

Cert Changes<