Containers

Busch · Post by **Busch** » Wed Mar 05, 2014 3:48 pm

The systems that have economies much better than that found in Sapphire are where one may find increasing ship frame offerings, up to a point. The locations of the top-of-the-line frames are not so much secret as they are hidden/unknown. Purposefully. There are 5 known 'unknown' systems/planets within the quadrant area - Aries, Cerulean, Deneb, Pearl, and Virgo. I'll leave it up to you how and when you may visit any of them.

Yep, there's not much info in the instructions. In the Shipyard, where ever you find yourself, if the ship frame is a silhouette/blacked out, rather than 'colored in', that frame is not available at that station. Ship frame offerings may vary per station in systems, but are generally 'tuned' to the overall economic level of a given system.

And, if you've not already done so, you may wish to pick up one of the compass mods that have the station portal degree hacks in place. They're pretty handy, and are time and frustration savers. SeeJay has a lot of mods on one of his Evo-Mercs web site. I've forgotten the listing, but it can be found in SeeJay's sig bloc of the Clan [HB] thread, here in the forum. It's the 'new' one.

PaulB · Post by **PaulB** » Thu Mar 06, 2014 5:07 am

From post: 167754, Topic: tid=11260, author=Busch wrote:The systems that have economies much better than that found in Sapphire are where one may find increasing ship frame offerings, up to a point. The locations of the top-of-the-line frames are not so much secret as they are hidden/unknown. Purposefully. There are 5 known 'unknown' systems/planets within the quadrant area - Aries, Cerulean, Deneb, Pearl, and Virgo. I'll leave it up to you how and when you may visit any of them.

Yep, there's not much info in the instructions. In the Shipyard, where ever you find yourself, if the ship frame is a silhouette/blacked out, rather than 'colored in', that frame is not available at that station. Ship frame offerings may vary per station in systems, but are generally 'tuned' to the overall economic level of a given system.

And, if you've not already done so, you may wish to pick up one of the compass mods that have the station portal degree hacks in place. They're pretty handy, and are time and frustration savers. SeeJay has a lot of mods on one of his Evo-Mercs web site. I've forgotten the listing, but it can be found in SeeJay's sig bloc of the Clan [HB] thread, here in the forum. It's the 'new' one.

I think some of the shading umm contrast is not very good on this Laptop with come games anyway. I know there is world of difference between the old Silent Hunter I when viewed on my Laptop vs my older and obsolete Tower (but with FX 5900 Ultra) that I "was" using the 22" wide screen on.
I need to get my new minitower up and running games.

Paul

Post by **Marvin** » Thu Mar 06, 2014 4:10 pm

Is it not possible to adjust contrast on your laptop?

PaulB · Post by **PaulB** » Fri Mar 07, 2014 2:05 am

From post: 167773, Topic: tid=11260, author=Marvin wrote: Is it not possible to adjust contrast on your laptop?

Yes but it wouldn't help.
I'm not sure if it's a question for the fx 350m drivers or the LCD display or what.
All I can say is there is a world of difference between how some of the games look ok the Laptop vs on my old Tower which had an fx 5900 ultra and viewsonic vx2235wm 22" widescreen LCD.
Only I can't use the Tower. It's an old Supermicro MB with Dual Pentium P III 650e coppermines and 896MB Ram.
It's just too old and obsolete (CPU, RAM, AGP, USB wise) to run even older games like Privateer Gemini Gold and dosbox Silent Hunter I. THe fx 5900 ultra could handle them but not the rest of the hardware.

I've even had a couple of crashes with EM on the Laptop.
the fx 350m only supports opengl 1.2 and the 2 Gb ram is barely enough. I need to try and get (2) 2Gb sticks to replace the (2) 1Gb that are in it.
Of course that won't help the shader or whatever the display quality problems are but it should make EM more stable.
Have to do the best I can with what little money I can scrape togther - being on S.S. Disability Ins.

What's a bit odd is Vegastrike 0.5.1 (even though it really wants openGL 1.3) looks really good on the Laptop. The ship in camera view for instance has amazing lighting (reflections) and shader effects.
Privateer GG (used vegastrike 0.5.0 engine) didn't have as good a lighting and shader effects.
I'm not sure if EM is using openGL or just DirectX/Direct3D or what but the effects are more reminescent (on my laptop I'm saying) of PPG rather than Vegastrike.

I need to stop proscrastinating and get my new minitower build up and running Games.
I got sidetracked mid December - January with lower back and other health problems so I'm' just taking my time.
I'm a bit intimidated by Windows 7 also. I've been using Windows 2000 on the Tower for the past 12 years and XP Pro on the Laptop for the past 3+ years.

Paul

Post by **Marvin** » Fri Mar 07, 2014 3:41 pm

Sounds like your spending your Disability money wisely ... but don't be shy about using Windows 7 ... it's friendly and not nearly as freaky as Windows 8 ... the problem might be in finding a copy of Win 7 (as opposed to Win 8 ... and, if you wait too long, you might be stuck with whatever operating system Microsoft has planned as 8's replacement).

Post by **DaveK** » Fri Mar 07, 2014 6:04 pm

I run Windows 7 on my desktop and XP on a couple of very old laptops. 'Ole Reliable' XP is a fine OS but W7 doesn't take long to get into. I've found the biggest issue is the new ribbon versions of MS Office - Vice hasn't introduced them to EM though

Good luck with your tower and your health!

PaulB · Post by **PaulB** » Sat Mar 08, 2014 3:22 am

From post: 167794, Topic: tid=11260, author=Marvin wrote: Sounds like your spending your Disability money wisely ... but don't be shy about using Windows 7 ... it's friendly and not nearly as freaky as Windows 8 ... the problem might be in finding a copy of Win 7 (as opposed to Win 8 ... and, if you wait too long, you might be stuck with whatever operating system Microsoft has planned as 8's replacement).

Oh I've already built the minitower and I bought Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit OEM version from Amazon.com and installed it.
I just haven't got to the point of putting games on it yet.
I'm tryng to get all the Apps on and I'd like to do an image backup of the SSD. I have to test the bootable USB flashdrive I formated and out the backup program on (lord I can't even remember which program it is now - ohh - clonezilla live).
And I've still got to install a wireless network card.

Paul

PaulB · Post by **PaulB** » Sat Mar 08, 2014 3:27 am

From post: 167798, Topic: tid=11260, author=DaveK wrote:I run Windows 7 on my desktop and XP on a couple of very old laptops. 'Ole Reliable' XP is a fine OS but W7 doesn't take long to get into. I've found the biggest issue is the new ribbon versions of MS Office - Vice hasn't introduced them to EM though

Good luck with your tower and your health!

My Laptop came with Office 2003. I bought it refurbished on ebay back around 2010 or so.
My Old tower has Office 97.
I can't put Office 97 on windows 7 for obvious reasons and I don't have an installable version of Office 2003 - so I downladed and installed Libre Office on the minitower and hope it will suffice. It's rated pretty good. Wish I had a newer version of Paint Shop Pro 6 but I can't go buying new software just because Microsoft wants to make new operating systems.

Paul