Steel Beasts Pro Discussion Thread

[Asid]

Breaking News!

3 enemy operatives dressed as civilians were apprehended 1km west of Meerkavich. The ensuing firefight killed 1 enemy operative and 2 Morkovon security forces!

[Asid]

Breaking News!

Meerkovo has gone from DEFCON 4 to DEFCON 3 !

[Asid]

Intel

[Asid]

Breaking News!

The town of Meerkanov fell! The peace delegation were eliminated! We failed!

The war rages on!

[PanzersEast]

Some screenies from this afternoon sessions










































PE

[PanzersEast]

Asid and I playing in the snow....

[Yskonyn]

Great screens guys!
I am not able to play much these last days but these posts here keep me fed with a good dose of SB! :)

[Ssnake]

The 1-year license makes sense if you're only going to be playing it on one machine or until after another big update.

Except you have to time your upgrade with your next yearly purchase - because if you forget and you upgrade, you've lost what was remaining of your licence.

No, you don't. Buying a time-based license ADDs time to the validity of it, it doesn't overwrite. So if you purchased two one-year licenses and activated both immediately you'd get one license valid for two years. We still recommend activating only what you need for two reasons:
1) You might take some time off. No need to have the license clock ticking when you don't play.
2) Your PC might need unexpected extensive repair, and sadly we can't rule out that a license gets lost in the process.

A ticket that has not been activated and is sitting as a ticket on the CodeMeter WebDepot server can be activated even on a new PC, or well after the old license has expired.  :)

[Ssnake]

It's going to be hard for me getting online with the others since I'm in Singapore.

There's a considerable Australian multiplayer community over at SteelBeasts.com; their sessions should coincide nicely with your time zone.  8)

[GDS_Starfury]

tell em your names Bruce.

[Double Deuce]

I really hate you guys . . .  my laptop does not meet the requirements for SB so I am SOL and can only dream about it atm.  :'( I need a 2nd job.

[JudgeDredd]

The 1-year license makes sense if you're only going to be playing it on one machine or until after another big update.

Except you have to time your upgrade with your next yearly purchase - because if you forget and you upgrade, you've lost what was remaining of your licence.

No, you don't. Buying a time-based license ADDs time to the validity of it, it doesn't overwrite. So if you purchased two one-year licenses and activated both immediately you'd get one license valid for two years. We still recommend activating only what you need for two reasons:
1) You might take some time off. No need to have the license clock ticking when you don't play.
2) Your PC might need unexpected extensive repair, and sadly we can't rule out that a license gets lost in the process.

A ticket that has not been activated and is sitting as a ticket on the CodeMeter WebDepot server can be activated even on a new PC, or well after the old license has expired.  :)

I meant "upgrade" in the sense of upgrading your PC, not upgrading your yearly subscription.

If I bought a licence now and I forgot about it and went about my normal business and upgraded my PC in October, I've lost 10 months licence. That what I meant by timing your upgrade....if I bought a licence now and wanted to upgrade my PC I'd have to wait until next August to do it so as not to lose any of my paid licence.

[Ssnake]

Ah, I see; still, it depends:
"Mild upgrades" (new graphics card, more RAM) will work without invalidating the license. Remember, only three out of five elements of the computer's hardware fingerprint must remain the same, so even swapping the CPU would be possible (usually however swapping the CPU doesn't make a lot of sense financially as the mainboard will probably support only a small range of other CPUs that probably don't offer a lot of performance gain).

Personally, I have been quite a bit of a PC tinkerer from the late 1980s to the mid-2000s but I have given up the upgrade game. There's no money to be saved in it any more. I still have a local PC dealer custom-build my machines, but I run them for about five years and then I replace them entirely. So for me at least the last ten to fifteen years have been mostly an experience of rather predictable hardware exchange intervals. It's mostly a question of "Shall I wait another year for that juicy new NVidia flagship that's currently in development".

Sure, it's not the same for everybody else, and if you have multiple PCs then maybe the CM stick is a good choice. But then there are maybe five to ten customers every year who lose their CM stick, and some of them come to the conclusion that the time-based license works better for them after all. It's harder to lose your PC when moving house than a small USB stick. Or some people travel a lot with their notebooks, and have only few USB slots on their machines. Again, the time-based license is an excellent alternative in these cases.

There are of course cases of unplanned PC upgrades like a HDD crash, or a mainboard with RAID adapter going on the fritz. In that case preserving the license may not be possible. On average the damage will be half a year of the Steel Beasts license that is at stake. I'm not saying that $20.- is negligible, I wouldn't light my cigars with $100 bills either (if I were smoking). But $20.- isn't exactly a critical loss either, if you can afford a PC for gaming purposes in the first place. And it certainly is less of a loss than having to buy a $115.- CodeMeter stick if you lose that one. What I'm trying to say here is that life isn't without risk, and that this question here is, like so often, a question of trade-offs or risk balancing.
We offer choice, and it's up to you to choose. :)

[Asid]

I really hate you guys . . .  my laptop does not meet the requirements for SB

What laptop/spec do you have?

[Asid]

Great screens guys!

PanzersEast is the official "war correspondent "   

I am not able to play much these last days but these posts here keep me fed with a good dose of SB! :)

We will be here when you find the time. In the mean time you can be an "armchair general"  ;)