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: Fri, 21 Aug 1992 00:13:00 GMT
Keywords: keymap

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

>You're supposed to bomb their armies, not trade two of ours for two of
>theirs repeateedly...

But what are armies for?

>It never stopped you before.  Countless times, I'd find myself this -><-
>close to killing one of those BIG, BLOATED, ARMY CARRYING ASSAULT SHIPS,
>with my tiny, weak little DD, but I'd be out of fuel and very hurt.  I'd
>tractor with all my tractor's strength, with the hope that when I gave up
>the ghost, I might pull him with me, when out of nowhere, SUNSCREAMER and
>his LOVE TORPEDO OF ANGST would uncloak, kill the carrier, kill me, kill
>the 3 BB escorts rushing to save the carrier, ogg the SB, and then take a
>planet!  All before I've had time to click on the team selection box again.

I'd call you a flirt, but yeah, you're right, I guess I *am* glorious.

>keymap:tT ma@$#%^@^$#@^$#% sunscreamer! bomb! don't take!Tt`dsdfdgfaD1D2DrwRRwR

sniff.  How am I supposed to get 13 planets and 400 armies if I don't take?

[my description of how a DD tractoring me makes my eyes light up]

>I'm moving away from you.  Crossing the T, you know? 

Crossing the T and tractoring while being tractored?  Mmmm, YUM!  Fresh
DD meat for me to eat!

>If I'm ogging, maybe, but why ogg when you can just play "How many torps
>can you land on the BB?"  You phasers will be doing nothing more than
>trading 3 points of damage for half a tank of fuel.

Again, my normally rational fearless commandant is making the berserk,
self-humiliating assumption that the great sunscreamer would be caught
dead in a battleship.  You mongrel!  You swamp reed!  If I'm trying to
kill Ray, I'm flying a CA.  Your measly torps get detted for 5 points
of damage each; my phasers flay the skin off your blackening skull which
grimaces into a final rictus; your puny attempt to tractor is met
with a stiff forearm, and I gallop into the endzone and spike the armies
in your turf.  SIX!

>  After the tank's
>empty, I can come over and phaser you to death at my liesure.  If I'm in a
>scout, I'll definitely phaser you.  (Nothing more humiliating than death by
>SC phasers.)

Go ahead and try to phaser a BB in a scout sometime, Ray.  Hell, phaser a
CA in a scout.  Hell, phaser a SC in a scout.  Phasers in scout ships are
much much much less powerful than the equivalent dosage of torps at any
range that a scout wants to be.  Believe me, there's nothing sillier looking
than a scout closing onto a BB to get the phaser kill and discovering that
BBs can fuel in space too.

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

>You made *Captain*?  I *barely* made Commander!  And I still don't know how
>to cloak or lower my shields.

You know that cloaking exists?  I haven't even gotten a client, and I think
'ogg' is available poached, fried, or in a tasty omelette.  I play netrek
with raw telnet to the port.  You mean there are graphics?  And planets?
And enemies?

>>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.

>No tractor?  How do youy ogg?  How do you pull people off of Planets?  How
>do you change velocity to nimbly dodge torps?  Do you dodge torps?

Again, my shameful mongoloid friend, you are making a false assumption.  My
keyboard does in fact have more than just q/s/z/x/v/d/space on it; it
even has t, which is god's intended tractor key.  I don't pull people off
planets; I let them take, graciously and honorably, and then take the planet
out from under them, uncloaked with my shields down.   But you knew that.
My keyboard also has a '1' key, which is right next to the 'q' key.  I nimbly
smack that whenever I want to go less than warp 12, and switch between 12 and 
1 if I ever want to go medium-fast.

>>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.

>I thought we already did?

Oh yeah.  But we've still got one little task to accomplish.

Don't we, guys.

>-- 
>                                          rjones@dsd.es.com
rear ensign sunscreamer
(chant along with uncle sunscreamer: hey look, a DD.  tractor, phaser,
det det, phaser, torp, torp torp, det det det, phaser, pressor, beam
up armies...)
-- 
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Felix Sebastian Ortony	fortony@murphy.gis.uiuc.edu
Organization: Sophomore, Math/Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA