Thank you for the warm welcome, everybody! Yes, I'm the real deal. I'll be contacting Neal to confirm my identity.
It was a must that I come directly to you guys, since you make up the biggest community and are actually my meat and potatoes (
). I'm glad you didn't feel offended that I didn't show up here earlier.
For starters, as I have posted on the official forum, this is what I'd like to do: a bundle of must-have mods (stadimeter fix, no tap dancing, horizon fix, etc.) and an list of reasons why the game might crash. Unfortunately, I won't be around for a few days and will start the sticky posts towards the end of the next week. Until then, I hope you can help me with suggestions.
Seriousness aside, I see you've gotten some good laughs out of a couple of my posts, specifically about decisions and how they are made. OK...
I like war stories. Don't you? Here's one that I've made up and in which any similarities to real people and events is purely coincidental.
Immagine a great war with many transnational parties involved, let's call it the war of Gaim Ing. In one side's war room sit several generals, admirals, marshals, looking at all sorts of maps, documents, charts and graphs.
"We have major problems on these fronts, gentlemen", says one of them. "We need to reinforce these flanks right now! Can we bring in the troops from the Noisy Prey front?"
"It's very risky, sir", responds a captain.
"We have no choice. If we lose these battles, we lose the war. Move the Noisy Prey troops to these other fronts at once!" says the great general.
So the captain storms out the door and heads on towards the Noisy Prey front. He reaches the command post and calls out the lieutenant:
"Go to the outpost and tell the sergeant to dispatch his troops to these fronts immediately!"
The lieutenant makes haste and gets to the Noisy Prey front where he summons the sergeant:
"Your company has been disbanded and your troops have been reassigned to other fronts!"
"We're still fighting some 'buggers' in this town here, they are hidden inside these houses, sir."
"That was an order!"
So the Noisy Prey front is left without any soldiers. Months pass and many of the sergeants, lieutenants, generals and even troops forget about the Noisy Prey front. At the same time, slowly but surely, word gets out to different command centers that the "buggers" have overrun the town and are disrupting everyday life for the people there.
So an intelligence department decides to dispatch a scout to asses the situation. And if he gathers enough good information, maybe the generals will send some troops back to the Noisy Prey front.
The scout starts his journey and has problems even finding the road since nobody's been through there for quite some time. He finally reaches his destination and the situation is rather bleak. He starts to make reports but is unsure whether any troops will come no matter how many distress signals he sends.
Fortunately, some of the people from the town have military experience or can at least fire a weapon. So, rather than stand around and wait, the scout decides to help organize the townspeople against the "buggers". Many of the people in the community have already built ramparts and all sorts of devices that serve this purpose. Visitors, however, don't know these things and many of them get struck down right after entering the town limits. But with a little bit of work, almost everybody can be safe on the Noisy Prey front.
So work starts in the community but will reinforcements ever come? Will the "buggers" ever be routed? Or will these people have to fend for themselves? I guess we'll see that in another chapter...
This is all pure fiction, but I suspect that's the way most of the modern day wars between transnational parties are fought.