Okay, I finally beat Fallout Tactics today. I played it on "continuous turn-based" and the "hard" difficulty, so I may have had a tougher go at it than some other people.

It's a great game, though there are some things that really confuse me about it. It has a nice variety of weapons, though several of them are already obsolete when you find them. I was thrilled to find the Tommy Gun because I thought I'd finally be able to use the .45 ammo I'd been hoarding, but it was junk compared to the gobs of other automatics I'd found up to that point (like the Steyr or Ruger AC556). Same thing applies to the Browning Automatic Rifle. Another thing: Early on your snipers depend heavily on the Hunting Rifle. When I found the M16A1 I thought I'd be able to finally replace it, because the M16A1 listed higher damage and better range in single-shot mode, but my players actually had worse chance to hit with it. Apparently there may be some factors built into the weapons that aren't listed when you examine them. The other thing that bothered me was the fact that a vehicle you drive to a mission isn't available in the mission. This means that your equipment is limited to what you carry, and the items you scavenge are also limtied to what you carry. And scavenging is too important to neglect.

My suggestions to anyone playing the game: diversify your skills. Weapon skills are of course vital, but first aid, doctor, sneak, bartering, repair, science, and lockpick are terribly important to getting through the game. Skill at throwing, gambling, and outdoorsman will make your life a whoooole lot easier.

Don't ignore your Big Guns and Energy Weapons skills. Though these kinds of weapons aren't available until later on in the game, they'll be very important to you because your enemies are increasingly tougher and better armored. Energy weapons will be key to defeating robots because the other weapons simply don't have the penetration you'll need... except for the Gauss weapons, which you won't find until near the end of the game. They use the Small Arms skill (or Big Guns skill for the Gauss Minigun) and even though they aren't as good as energy weapons, they do let you ignore the Energy Weapons skill on some characters while still making use of them. The .50 cal machineguns are amazing death-dealers, if you've got the 9 strength necessary to use them.

You'll definitely need to scavenge in order to get the stuff you need. Though it may not seem as important after the very beginning, since the Brotherhood only sells stuff after you find it, later on you'll need to buy your own Power Armor with the cash you get from selling junk. Even though you don't usually get your vehicle in the mission with you, you can still gather everything on a level by doing the following: after you've accomplished all of the objectives, leave one of your party in the exit zone and be sure to keep the rest of the group out of it. The remaining characters can then collect the equipment from the level and bring it back to the one person in the exit zone (be careful that at least some of your characters stay out of the exit zone when transferring equipment). That one "mule" will quickly become encumbered and immobile, but that's okay because you'll still be able to return to the bunker. Once you've cleaned out the level, have everyone step into the exit zone. Back at the bunker, have your characters run equipment back and forth to quartermaster (or just dump it all into your vehicle if you have one). Take everything you can because in later levels you'll really be strapped for cash (power armor and 2mm EC ammo are expensive!).

I played the Fallout Tactics demo today and now... and now... I can... I can feel it. Building up inside of me. THE HUNGER! I can feel it building! Like a swirling empty vortex burrowing into the pit of my soul. THE HUNGER FOR MORE FALLOUT PLAYING! Good thing I loaned out my Fallout 1 and 2 games, or I'd probably never finish the Night's Edge beta!

Yesterday I decided to run scandisk on my Win98 machine. Unfortunately, Microsoft can't write an app that actually works with their own operating system. Even though I'd shut down every item in the Task Manager except Explorer, scandisk continued to tell me that some process was writing to the disk, so it wasn't able to work. No problem, I thought, I'll just "boot" to DOS and run the Win98 DOS version. After I did, however, I discovered that it had destroyed all of my long filenames. As you may know, files in Windows are stored with a maximum name length of 8 characters, and 3 for the extension. The ability to give files longer names is because there's a lookup file that associated the 8.3 filename with the longer name. Either this file has been destroyed or wiped out, and it doesn't look like any recovery is possible. Thanks a lot, Microsoft. It will likely take months for my data to completely recover from this. As it is, I have to reinstall every application I have, since the loss of long filenames has rendered most of them unusable.

Once you actually know the details of California's energy problems, you start to get really irritated everytime someone refers to it as "deregulation". The first obvious clue that no deregulation has taken place is the price cap set in place for almost all California power utilities. Here's a hint: a price cap is a regulation.

Of course, the more subtle indication that it was not what it seemed was the fact that it came from California to begin with. Free markets are a traditionally right-of-center concept. California, of course, is anything but. So when their state proposes "deregulation", letting private power companies compete for business, red flags should go off in any thinking person's head. Reading the details of what can only be described as "reregulation" confirms the doubts. The heart of the problem is that California politicians have no grounding in this thing we call reality. California has no one to blame but itself.