=VG= SemlerPDX

Damn, I'd watch Flash Gordon before I'd watch Buck Rogers. Ming the Merciless is the best old school classical villain!! (played by the very famous Max Von Sydow)

First off, I understand English is not everyone's first language, but correct words do matter. Yea, no. It doesn't. You're absolutely right about this being unnecessary. And if it did make sense, setting aside the need for individual troubleshooting which you mentioned, not enough people would even use the Forum Search function or seek out the thread, anyway, to justify the effort. A troubleshooting flow guide is something that shitty customer service representatives rely upon instead of knowledge, skill and experience. I wouldn't put our guests at this website through that kind of hell.

I think we do a fine job of helping people, and every situation is different - no need to over complicate things with forms or formats. But people need to help themselves, too, and we're not mind readers. Best not to assume, but I'm certain if someone needs help, they'll cooperate with those trying to help them if they truly need it.

Star Trek (TNG/DS9/Voyager only) -- very thought provoking. I love the original trilogy of Star Wars (before the remaster with the 3D muppets), but IMO it's nearly apples to oranges in the way Star Wars vs. Star Trek portray science fiction - one is realistic, one is pure fantasy and laser swords.

Looks cool! Best of luck!

Sure, it's possible - I already said I had flown with a guy on our server years ago who used only mouse and keyboard, I simply do not know how he achieved it. I will note that he considered himself Combat Mission Ready when we went out on a sortie, but was unacceptably slow with threat reaction and target engagement - I assume due to the lack of a HOTAS setup. Controls and input must be done in a swift and timely manner, and mistakes are punished harshly. There is a reason our Air Force pilots do not have a keyboard and mouse in the cockpit, because of the number of commands which need to be sitting at the finger tips ready to be activated at a moments notice without the pilot taking his hands off the throttle and stick (HOTAS). Like I said, many of these essential controls are listed in Jeffu's blog. This is basically the real deal, real life things not modeled or supported are few and far between, and that short list includes nuclear consent SOP's, classified IFF SOP's, Air Flow/Oxygen requirements of the pilot, and of course the tremendous stresses on the physical body (G forces) are non-existent (except for simulated screen effects when sustaining too many G's). If they put a remote control unit in the jet, everything you do could be translated to the real thing. Just because these guys above have no solutions for operating BMS with only a mouse and keyboard does not mean they are not CMR experts - well, everyone in this thread but Vanilla and m823us - we all have thousands of hours in this sim, and between the three of us, have helped hundreds who are just starting out in this hobby for nearly a decade (here at VG, anyway). There is no shortage of experts over at the BMS Forums, either, and your chances of getting advice on an established method for mouse/keyboard flying would be higher over there, being the main hub for this simulator. No shortage of "blind leading the blind", too, so watch for date of joining, number of posts, and number of thanks. BlueWolf might be the first to reply with a proper method, I assume - or maybe Arty. *You will get MANY MORE suggestions to purchase a simple joystick, just be polite and remember they do not know you've already been over it many times already. DO not feed the trolls. Again, best wishes and good luck!

I can sympathize, but I just can't conceive of flying a sim like this in that way if the goal is to become proficient in any way. I can't even imagine getting through the learning curve of certain systems without hands on throttle and stick. Best of luck to you and best wishes! You have chosen a more difficult route, but like learning on a shit guitar and then getting a good one, you'll come out of it better if you stick with it. The locking you mention requires a lot of things to be in the correct setup and requires certain controls to be readily accessible, chiefly the TMS 4-way hat (Target Management). First, the missiles you wish to use must be loaded on the jet (I assume they are for your question) and the Master Arm switch should be at ARM, and you must be in the correct Master Mode, either A-A mode, or DGFT (dogfight), or MRM (medium range missile). Second, you must use the Radar Cursor on the FCR (fire control radar, left MFD by default) to move over the contact you wish to lock or bug, then the TMS Up (press once) will "bug" a contact, and pressing it a second time will lock it up. If you hear "Buddy Spike" after a second press, you have locked a friendly jet in BMS. Pressing the TMS Down (one time) will disregard and "unlock" a target, and allow free movement of the cursor once again in the FCR. In the case that all the above is true and correct, the missile you wish to use must be within range of the enemy, so be sure to go through that portion of the BMS-Training.pdf found in the Falcon BMS 4.33 U1\Docs\Falcon BMS Manuals folder. When you are within the release window from the locked target for the selected missile, press the Pickle (Weapon Release) button to release the missile. Again, you want to refer to the training manual and corresponding training missions found under Tactical Engagement in the main menu for all the details I've left out or glossed over - there is so much! There are individual manuals for many of the weapons, too, but you can go as deep as you want with your learning. The manual on the AIM-120C is very helpful. *This blog by Jeffu is about setting controls for a joystick, but it shows many pics and highlights many controls that a sim pilot will need to access frequently, and a brief read of it could benefit you:

I've only known one person that used mouse and keyboard to fly BMS, and not sure how he did it. Like Jeffu said, the mouse is used to move the cursor around the cockpit and click various switched and dials. Even if also used for flight controls, there would need to be some way to switch between those two functions and that is not something BMS does natively AFAIK. If you're not sure you're gonna really get into flight sims, I'm guessing you might not want to purchase an expensive HOTAS style flight stick and throttle like the Saitek X52 ($130) or the Thrustmaster Warthog ($500) (or Cougar). Get a simple flight stick, like the Thrustmaster USB Joystick ($20) - it's pretty affordable. That's my advice

Um... are we getting trolled or something? No offense intended, but this is some very bad math magic with terrible misdirection. Seriously, though? What about those who have not had their birthday yet this year? So, if I was not born in June, but in December, I would be 38 right now, plus the year of birth 1979 = 2017 Also, last October 2017, same thing -- I was 38, born in 1979 and the sum of those is 2017. So, this happens every 1,000 years (and also every single year?) Anyone else think this is some bullshit trolling? I think someone pulled a "fast one" on our dearest BadPloy...

Ah - I was unaware of that. I see it only has the final sub-forum showing, which could be help and support for any topic.

...if only there was some way to tell what game he was talking about, like maybe the section of the forums it was posted in or something.... too bad.

Good points, Kav. So there is zero despawn for a specialist kit on a dead body out in the field? Having that would help, but I can imagine it's in place for realism gameplay. Would be nice if there were some Admin tools to deal with such examples. ^added above to previous post for clarity

^don't listen to him, folks! DO NOT ENCOURAGE PLAYERS TO INTENTIONALLY TEAMKILL OTHER PLAYERS WHO BREAK THE RULES NO MATTER WHAT THE SITUATION!!!!!! This is not the solution, and will only cause greater disruptions to the game. The only solution is to retrain our PR Admins to deal with this specific situation and to draw attention to the player(s) who are stealing kits and refusing to give them back when requested. Like all infractions, the offending player must be identified, otherwise there is no recourse. Yea, it sucks when good people have to take time out of their day to deal with some dick, but that's the nature of online video games. As we move forward, we need to start identifying those who do not return kits, and we need to warn/kick those who do not comply, and ban those who intentionally teamkill to acquire a kit. EDIT: I am specifically referring to the problem as it pertains to specialist kits, as these are the kits that are not possible to reacquire through respawn or crate.

Many of our rules were made after finding out that we needed to spell out certain common sense concepts. Maybe we need to add something along the lines of "Return a kit if requested unless you yourself took it from the crate or other claim point" -- needs rewording and if there are any specifics that need to be added, help would be appreciated. Enforcement may be difficult so we may need players to simply report for the logs and then report to forums if they did it often so we could get word to individuals and discourage kit stealing. Particularly the special limited kits - that is so common sense people need to be made aware that ignorance is not an excuse. If Admins are online, players should attempt to handle it themselves through chat or mumble, and/or mention that an Admin can get involved, and do so if they still won't comply. Thoughts?

...in some cases we didn't make the graphics, authors vary... can't speak for that one, not sure who the author was. Just FYI

Ah -- so this is a Windows 10 update thing. Glad you got it sorted. Good luck to you and see you around! Looks like the Fall Creators Update is responsible for this one. Good that you found the fix. I don't have that problem because I manually update Windows 10 and avoid certain updates (or remove them immediately if installed). It's not easy to keep up with and know what is what, Windows really screwed the pooch with this newest OS. shameless plug: If you want to learn how to get more control of Windows 10 in function and appearance, check out my article here -

I agree. I was going to say that those games are some moldy oldies right there. A monthly subscription to Humble Bundle would net the same cache of old games plus many brand new titles, too, for about the same price. Anyway, thanks for the head's up, Zadra! News is news!

Is punkbuster running and allowed through the Windows firewall?

Got word, server was hung up on updates, it's been fixed and is now installing updates. Should check periodically to see if finished. When done updating, it can be started up as normal.

It is quite possible that the server will be down through the weekend, and we should expect a response on Monday. Apologies for the downtime, we appreciate your patience!

Sent email to Belgriffin re. possible Win10 updates needing pre-login input. Will post up when I hear something back.

No worries, but I meant launch the game until you get to the screen that looks like this: **This is an old screenshot, ignore the old version showing 4.33.4 -- you need to be on current version (4.33.5) Good luck with the updates, any issue, let us know!

Hello and welcome! Happy to help you out if we can There are no permissions needed and Win7 is fine. Start up BMS and note the version number in the lower right of the main menu - if it says Falcon BMS 4.33.5 (x64) Build 16084 then we're good there. The server is in Kansas, so you're not far from it. Some people from overseas can have issues, so were good there, too. Out of curiosity, what is your internet speed? If it's a wired connection with at least 5-10Mb/s Downstream and 2-10Mb/s Upstream, we're good there and can look elsewhere for the issue. If it's WiFi, we might want to do a few tests. If you have a modem, and then another device like a router before the line gets to the computer, we might want to look at both the modem settings and router settings to be sure they're the same. If your computer's internal IP address keeps changing, forwarding ports won't matter (often more of a WiFi issue), so we want to be sure that stays the same, or reads back the same every day. It should by default if the PC is wired to the modem/router. That's a good place to start. Unfortunately these issues require a bit of back-and-forth as we get to the bottom of the issue. Be patient and hang in there! I hope some others have ideas that can help, too. I certainly don't know everything.