Yeah, I was about tonight, some nice scraps to be had. Nice battles on Mos Entha and Taloraan, both right down to the wire, which is always the best way. The last Taloraan match was a good one with the Empire defending their last Bulk Freighters as the enemy Nebulon-B Frigate moved in for the kill. We were hammering away at that thing but it just wouldn't go down. Then one Freighter erupted, we were running out of time. One of our pilots then spawns in the remaining Freighter and limps it out of range of the Neb-B, a B-Wing Starfighter takes pursuit and is swiftly despatched by me as I swoop from underneath the escaping Freighter guns blazing on my TIE Bomber. It is then that I am struck by the full force of a storm of fire coming from the Neb-B. I hold my course braving the flack and unload my torpedoes as I enter effective combat range. And still the bleedin' thing doesn't go up. I then swiftly bank to execute another attack run from behind, still the Neb-B's guns find me in their firing arc, so I move in closer hammering away with my blasters as that's all I have left. And then finally, the thing erupts before me, prompting from me a highly un-Empire like "Yeehaa!"

With one ship remaining each it was gonna be close. The day however could not be saved, by the time I'd reloaded weapons by docking with the Freighter the first wave of Rebel Fighters was already on us, and myself and the already heavily damaged Freighter went down with the first volley of torpedoes. So a defeat then.

But still a cracking game.

Sure, the 1.4 patch for BF2142 is causing us a bit of a hick-up as far as numbers of players on servers are concerned, but they'll be coming back soon, and following are some of the reasons why.

Just a few snapshots I took whilst out and about.

It was me in the last freighter, and yes, that was fairly awesome. I was frantically flying TIE Bomber attack runs on the damned frigate as she hung there pelting away at the freighters. I then had this hunch that maybe I could buy us some time by moving the damned thing away, so I spawn on board and use the thing's shields to survive the barrages of fire. Eventually, through sheer luck and determination, utilization of deflector screens, and even a bit of dodging and weaving which, amazingly, actually seemed to cause a good deal of shots to miss, I outrun the frigate.

At this point I am in the northeast corner, as I want to be where a) there's no frigate and b) there are TIE Bombers spawning. The frigate now has to get through the Bombers piloted by Talon to reach the freighter, which fortunately it fails to do. But then, as the TIE Bomber hovers near my freighter replenishing its hit points and torpedoes, rebel fighters attack and blow my ships to smithereens (I was at 5% hit points with my shields burned out, so no wonder).

Truly an amazing experience. Also taught me that freighters replenish torpedoes, so I made an effort to actually return for warheads instead of just sacrificing my fighter for a new one. It felt quite good, approaching an enemy ship, firing my torpedoes, and then just turning tail and leaving for more torpedoes before she could return fire. I think it'll be my tactic of choice in the future, that is, on enemy ships reasonably close to a freighter that can resupply me.

Little behind the times, are we? We've had one community game already . It was swell, at its peak there were about 30 people on the 32 people server. But perhaps you know that and are referring to something else, what do I know.

Yes, we testers teamed up with the developers and fought it out with the regular players, who were surprisingly good and actually put us to shame in all four rounds of space maps. I think that if we do a good job advertising beforehand (maybe make a pretty poster like the one for the mod's initial release), it should be safe to host the game on a 64 player server next. 32 versus 32 on Taloraan would be beyond awesome.

Thread here.

Heh, tried to use those cliffs east of the city as a hideout on Mos Espa today, with moderate success. I settled down with my sniper rifle and binoculars, and spotted an AT-ST approaching the Slave Quarters, giving an advance warning that would've been great for my team had it not been for the fact that no one bothered to spawn in the Slave Quarters to defend it in the first place . I then got to take some pot shots at a stormtrooper pretty deep in the city, without noticeable effect other than him scurrying for cover (do sniper rifles have damage loss over distance? They sure as Heck have a long range). I went back up there a few times, but didn't accomplish much. Next time I'll bring my rocket launcher to see if I can't nail me an AT-ST. No way is that lumbering thing going to expect attack from my direction .

I also wonder if the cliffs could make for a good spawn point for a squad. If a squad leader got up on one of those plateau and put a spawn beacon there, the squad would have a nice little fort that would actually be slightly hard for the enemy to take. Getting across the naked strip of sand would be a problem, though.