I just started playing Spaceward Ho! and am quite amused by the honesty of some of the default dreadnought ship names:
Watch Out!
Mass Murder
Destructor
Slasher
3 Likes
When we started writing our company accounting system in the late 1990s, the Windows version of Spaceward Ho! 4 was the user interface ideal we were striving for.
It had a very uncluttered, elegant user interface for all that it could do. Your research, shipbuilding and terraforming budgets were presented in simple bar graphs - broken down into more graphs by planet and research type. And you could adjust your budget just by pulling bars on the graphs up and down with your mouse. It had a multiple window UI that you could adjust as you liked, taking full advantage of a large monitor while letting other programs share the screen.
4 Likes
17 Likes
I find this amusing, as I am playing on the iPhone. Never having played it before, the UI there came across to me as a cramped impenetrable mess. I could see how having a large monitor with multiple windows would help immensely.
1 Like
I have the iOS version on my 10" iPad. It’s quite playable there.
Alas, the user interface doesn’t have the elegant simplicity of the early Windows version (yellow box, no version number, 1992 date.) It was very much the Windows UI, but it made it work like nothing before or since. The 1999 version 4 (red box) cluttered it up.
Here’s the best screen shot I could find. But its at the start of the game, before much of what the graphs can indicate and do becomes apparent.
1 Like
Ah, clever - submitted once as it’s spelled, and then phonetically.
(I suspect that Americans remember Python more fondly than the British.)
1 Like
They must name it Boaty McBoatface, it is simply the best name.
3 Likes
I half remember the tale of a Royal Naval ship passing an American Naval vessel; the names have been changed to protect the guilty and because I can’t remember them.
USN Signal, “What kind of name is, HMS Terrible?”
RN Reply, “Who the fuck is James E. Williams?”
5 Likes
The S.S. Stutter.
The above joke is the property of the excellent and extremely funny Graham Higgins.
7 Likes
Reminds me of the one about a battleship in poor weather at night getting flashed a signal that she’s on a collision course, change heading now. Battleship responds with “Negative, you change your course!” Gets back “Negative, change course immediately.” Battleship: “This is the HMS Terrible, the most feared battleship in the Royal Navy! I demand that you change course!” Response: “Well this is the lighthouse at Dover…”
7 Likes
Because I am a nerd I suggested the extremely boring “British Polar”.
Not a lot of people know this, but British Polar was a company that specialised in making engines for ships involved in polar exploration, and for submarines. Amundsen’s Fram had a British Polar engine; they’ve been going over a hundred years.
2 Likes
Surely as a British vessel the cost is £200m, not $287m?
1 Like
If we leave the EU it will be easy: the price will be £200M, $200M and €200M.
(Please note how I am avoiding the snark of pointing out that lower case m is milli not mega. It reminded me of a model railway layout on display that had a large warning sign “Danger of electrocution: 12000mV.”)
1 Like
They shoulda went with The Love Boat.
1 Like
Given that it’s a polar research ship, it’ll likely be spending time south of the Falklands, a stone’s throw from Argentina.
Perhaps they should name it the “Jeremy Clarkson.”
3 Likes
The NERC gets final say, of course. It’s not like they’re actually going to use Boaty McBoatface. I’m thinking they’re feeling decided SMART since they got the viral buzz they were looking for by doing this. Maybe even more than they anticipated, which is hardly a bad thing.
1 Like
Please don’t give people ideas. I’d much rather have the RRS Boaty McBoatface than the RRS Maggie Thatcher or the RRS Conqueror, thank you.
2 Likes
This led to a bit of reading… while I knew about the sinking of the General Belgrano and all that, I had no idea that ship was that old. Holy crap, a nuclear sub vs. a pre-WWII cruiser. What the fuck was Argentina thinking. Once it was obvious the Brits were calling their bluff they should have backed down for the sake of their own countrymen’s lives. It’s stupid to go to war, but doubly so when you’re that outgunned.
Not exactly a stone’s throw, but what’s the range of an Exocet again?
1 Like
