The Aliens inhabit the floating hulks and hivelike nests. Packed with close combat units and optionally longer ranged weapons, the aliens are a quick moving army well suited to overtaking opponents and overwhelming them with numbers.
They are almost always deployed as blips.
Close combat aliens have 6 ap each, others are limited to 4 ap. Aliens do not use CP and cannot interrupt.
Aliens can be selected as three different sets of blips; Standard, Expanded, and Maximum.
- Standard - All blips contain 1 to 3 of the standard close-combat unit. Balance is usually better if more blips per turn are given to the alien player choosing the standard configuration, as the strategies for playing this style are typically mass-and-overwhelm.
- Expanded - The expanded set includes both standard close combat units and aliens using ranged weapons. Blips that spawn as standard can have 1 to 6 aliens. Ranged weapon blips are single aliens carrying toned-down versions of weapons available to other armies, such as rocket launchers, miniguns, plasma weapons, and can spawn as aliens with psionic abilities as well.
- Maximum - This set of blips contain new weapons that include the expanded set with multiple aliens per expanded blip, and add weapons such as spike launchers, gas area-effect weapons, and much more. These are very powerful and should usually be taken into account as an advantage, and afford extra points to the opposing army.
nethulk
With a layout oddly reminescant of old roguelike games, google’s experiment with keyboard shortcuts should save ‘homerow’ style typists a large amount of time going through search results.
Here’s the scenario I envision for this: You’ve gone to the google hompage to start a search, the cursor automatically focuses onto the search query box when the page loads, so you can start typing your search keywords right away. After hitting enter to start the search, do your fingers drift back to the ‘home row?’ Those ASDF and JKL; keys that mavis beacon and so many other typing tutor programs (and perhaps keyboarding teachers) drilled into your head? I know mine do, its second nature.
With your fingers there, as your eyes scan down the page for the most relevant site or article in the search results, your index finger on the ‘J’ key will select the next result in the list. It will also scroll the page down to the end if you keep going. The ‘K’ will go back a result, also scrolling the page. The ‘Enter’ or ‘O’ keys will go to the URL of the currently selected item.
I’ve been able to very quickly locate what I want in the results with this, and without taking my hand off the keyboard and reaching for the mouse. It may not seem like a huge energy saver if you’re a hunt-and-peck typer or if you prefer to use the mouse to select things, but it is for me. I do many google searches in a day, and as a programmer I am a quite accomplished typist, if I must say so myself.
Keywords, ENTER, J->J->J, ENTER and I’ve found what I want. I had no idea that this feature was ‘missing’ until I found it. A big congrats to the developers at our favorite search engine for thinking of these small things that make life easier. Way to go!
Head on over to Google’s Experimental Search to try it for yourself.
Uncategorized google
If you’re looking for a nice cheap netbook this holiday season, check out the Acer Aspire One that’s on Staples black friday advert.
The Aspire One is an ultraportable that’s just a little bit bigger than my Asus EeePC (with a 7″ display). Its got a strong processor for a netbook, and good memory, and a REAL HARDDISK. A bonus for those who were thinking the EeePC’s built in SSD drives were just a bit too small.
They also come in the customizable colors that made the EeePC so popular. (Yes ladies, you can get yours in pink!)
Gadgetry, Technology
http://www.excelguru.ca/blog/2008/10/23/blogging-to-wordpress-from-microsoft-word/
Its possible to set up Wordpress and Word to cooperate, and you can submit articles right from your favorite word processor! I’m definately going to be trying this, I just got a copy of office 2007, and I’ve already fallen in love with OneNote.
Blogging
