From: fortony@sonne.cso.uiuc.edu
Subject: Re: the endless quest for the perfect keymap
Originator: fortony@murphy
Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana
Date: Thu, 20 Aug 1992 18:10:46 GMT
Keywords: keymap

rjones@itchy.dsd.es.com (Ray Jones - Perp) writes:

>In article <fortony.714287599@murphy> fortony@sonne.cso.uiuc.edu writes:

>>Look, Ray, you bleating, verminous gutterweed, I am *the* scout bomber.

>So I've heard you say, which always makes me wonder when I see so many:
>GOD->FED <planet> taken over by sunscreamer (F1)

Err, those are server errors.  You must be dropping packets.

>At least I have the ability to say "I'm ogging" and still *do it*, you
>scumming little showboater.

Hey, it's still scoutbombing.  Just two armies at a time, is all.

>You obviously run too much, if you are able to always be going that fast
>before they're even near you.  Try to stay and fight sometime.  :)

Stay and fight?  With my little "I'm a Toys'R'Us scout" ship against
those big sleek savage metal things?  Even I'm not that imprudent.
Besides, if you *want* me to scoutbomb, dammit, you won't put ideas
like this in my head.

>That being the case, though, I can see why you'd need to waste such a nice,
>BIG, SLEDGEHAMMERy key on such a wimpy, weak, depressingly boring action.

Well, I couldn't very well map it to 'maRAY JONES IS A FISHHEADED CUR',
now could I?

>I personally prefer to wait for them to *try* and grab hold of my slippery
>DD of Death, then hit that crowbar for all it's worth, cross their T and
>dot their I with a stream of torps, and the added bonus of a tractor.  BBs
>and CAs are just tooo slow to react when they see those marbles of death
>rolling their way, while I nimbly dash away to take a planet, leaving them
>wounded and wondering just who was that masked man.

But, but, ray, if you tractor me in a DD, you're coming towards me at
like warp 5.  My phasers are sending your crew back into the stone ages.
My torps -- and they're not all going to miss -- are crushing your little
ship like the blazing hammer of God.  You think you're getting out of
the gravity well alive?

>Hey now, don't try to out-low-rating me, my tiny-shipped friend.  I have a
>double 0.4 on most servers, and for the INL I can drop them down to 0.3...  

Ha.  I made Captain on quad DI, and I *still* don't know how to planethook
automatically.

>But seriously, have you considered that you might dogfight better with a
>key *specifically tailored* for the smaller ships' abilities?  Such as
>their amazing accel/decel rates?  I rest my middle finger on 4, my thumb on
>space, and my index on tractor/pressor, and I'm raring to go.  [...]

You seem to be laboring sweatily under the misapprehension that all my keys
are mapped to pressor, or something (though, now that you mention it...hmm).
I have 'v' mapped to maxwarp, so my hands are resting on q/s/z/x/v/d/space
and the mouse (weapons, movement).  q=shdown, s=shup, z=beam up, x=beamdown,
v=maxwarp, d=det, space=pressor.  And if I wanna bomb, b's right there.

>Constantly changing speeds is the way to go.  *Anyone* can tractor/pressor.

It is we who, by virtue of our god-given keymaps which dodge, phaser, torp,
pressor and det at the same time, will rule the universe.

>(combined with tractors, and the right conditions, you can just throw your
>enemies into third space, and then take the planet while they are coming
>back through customs.)

dammit, Ray, that was a team secret.

>Ray 
>(in way over his head)
>--
>                                          rjones@dsd.es.com
-- 
a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z
Felix Sebastian Ortony	fortony@murphy.gis.uiuc.edu
Newsgroups: rec.games.netrek