Slight story-line adjustement suggestion: (Spoilers on the current storyline)

[Robrecht]

This is probably a very rude first post (since I immediately start questioning things), but hear me out here.

While I know "the current story outline is fixed" and as far as I've read that's not a bad thing because it's not a bad storyline, I would like to suggest a few slight adjustments.

The reason for these suggestions is that in the current storyline, humanity either comes out as: a. completely screwed or b. extremely too powerfull in the end.

In the currently set storyline, the enemy is a bio-engineered sentient disease that's hundreds of thousands of years old and that has ravaged our known galaxy for almost this amount of time. Somehow, they never discovered earth (or if they did, they discovered it earlier, but ignored it for not being very interesting and only recently discovered humans living on it now) and now they decide to invade Earth.

However instead of sending their entire armada immediately, they apparently send scout teams (initially) small enough to be defeated on a regular basis (without effort on easy difficulty, with great effort and casualties on the hardest difficulty) by a eight person teams. Then, when the scouts/researchers achieve their goal of being able to infect humans, they still don't send in their entire armada and eventually the humans find a way to blow up the mothership which houses ALL aliens infected with the 'virus' who haven't already been killed or captured on earth.

Now, the fact where I find this to be somewhat unrealistic (and realism in the storyline is one of the things you have made clear is very important to you) is that if this 'virus' has indeed been around for nearly a million years and if it has taken over all of the Milky-way galaxy, then the mothership would have to house literally hundreds of billions of infected aliens and if they don't all reside on the mothership, then the milky-way galaxy should hold hundreds of billions of infected aliens in several dozen colonies.

It seems to me that it would be rather ridiculous for humanity to be able to defeat an alien 'empire' numbering in the hundred billions with a team of 8 (or however many soldiers fit on the PHALANX FTL transport) humans.

My proposal for an adjustment to the storyline would be this:

The 'virus' is NOT in fact nearly a million years old. It is two years old and emerged two years ago (and don't underestimate how much can happen in two years) in a research lab on a Taman mothership, the Taman being a relatively vast interstellar 'empire' with a few colonies consisting of several billion Taman each. The particulars of the 'virus' (it's goals, effects on the subject and it's hivemind) are the same as the current storyline.
The mothership, containing the original colony of the 'virus' is essential to it's survival, however, as the original colony acts as the central nervous system and brain of the hivemind, without the mothership and the original colony, the 'virus' will still exist, but it's hivemind will be shattered and destroying or curing the remaining hosts will be much easier.
Since it's inception, the Taman have tried to contain the infected Mothership with limited success: while the threat of several other Taman motherships capable of defeating the infected mothership keep the infected mothship from invading Taman space directly, the Taman government has sent one or two fleet out to destroy the mothership.
Due to the tactical superiority of the hivemind, these fleets have been largely unsuccesful. They have managed to do some light damage to the mothership, but that damage is easily repairable and many ships have become infected due to infected boarding parties from the mothership.
Despite it's increased might, due to it's newly captured ships, the hivemind decides it is not safe to try to invade Taman space yet and instead sets out to invade several known smaller species in the nearby galaxy: the primitive Ortnok and the slightly more advanced Shelaar.
While the infected mothership is highly succesfull in this attempt and soon the mothership and it's fleet contain nearly as many Ortnok and Shelaar as they contain Taman, it is not as effective as hoped: The entirity of the galaxy's Ortnok population is effectively infected, but the Shelaar manage to send a plea for help to the Taman before they loose more than a few planets and soon a large fleet, containing several motherships, arrives in Shelaar space to destroy the infection.
The fleets clash for several days and while the hivemind is tactically superior, the combined fleets of the Taman and the Shelaar have numbers on their side.
The infected mothership is the Taman-Shelaar fleet's main target and soon it is badly damaged, even if the rest of the infected fleet is only fired upon in self-defense and as such relatively intact.
Because the mothership is so important to it's survival, the hivemind decides to flee, taking most of the fleet with it and leaving only a few ships to cover the retreat.

The Taman government loses track of the infected mothership and it's fleet and the infected mothership survives with severe damage and several important systems, among which it's FTL drive, are damaged beyond repair in the escape. Without the mothership's FTL drive, the 'brain' of the hivemind cannot return to Taman space and the hivemind's plans seem ruined...

Untill.. A year after it's escape from the Taman fleet, a distant infected scout discovers a planet inhabitted by a primitive spacefaring species. More importantly: this planet might provide a suitable breeding environment for the original colony. This planet is earth and the infected mothership is slowly moving is, sending more and more of it's fleet as it becomes able to.

This several things in game:

Why the alien assault starts off relatively weak, but becomes increasingly stronger:  it's because initially the hivemind sends whatever is in the area of earth, but as time progresses and the mothership comes closer, the hivemind is able to send more and stronger ships at the earth.

It explains why the earth is able to defeat the mothership of the invaders: it's still more formidable than anything earth could hope to build before it arrives at the earth, but it's damaged enough that a tactical strike will take it out.

It explains why the invaders CAN realistically be defeated: they are numerous, but not infinite and taking out the mothership cripples the hivemind by taking out it's ability to reproduce in great numbers.

It explains why the invaders do not just swam the earth completely once they become able to infect humans: they still need crews to repair damage to the mothership and to defend themselves long enough to escape again if the Tamans find them.

Only one of the researches currently designed would have to be changed: Instead of discovering a barren planet devoured by the invaders, the FTL scout makes contact with the Taman government, who declare (after having researched the corpses on the ships left behind when the infected mothership escaped) have decided the only way to effectively destroy the infection is to completely sterilize earth after the original colony lands there. This leaves the people of earth with only one option: destroy the mothership before it lands. Otherwise humanity will become extinct, either through infection or sterilization.

Does that sound acceptable or would it be too much effort to change it now?

[Winter]

This is probably a very rude first post (since I immediately start questioning things), but hear me out here.

While I know "the current story outline is fixed" and as far as I've read that's not a bad thing because it's not a bad storyline, I would like to suggest a few slight adjustments.

The reason for these suggestions is that in the current storyline, humanity either comes out as: a. completely screwed or b. extremely too powerfull in the end.

In the currently set storyline, the enemy is a bio-engineered sentient disease that's hundreds of thousands of years old and that has ravaged our known galaxy for almost this amount of time. Somehow, they never discovered earth (or if they did, they discovered it earlier, but ignored it for not being very interesting and only recently discovered humans living on it now) and now they decide to invade Earth.

However instead of sending their entire armada immediately, they apparently send scout teams (initially) small enough to be defeated on a regular basis (without effort on easy difficulty, with great effort and casualties on the hardest difficulty) by a eight person teams. Then, when the scouts/researchers achieve their goal of being able to infect humans, they still don't send in their entire armada and eventually the humans find a way to blow up the mothership which houses ALL aliens infected with the 'virus' who haven't already been killed or captured on earth.

Now, the fact where I find this to be somewhat unrealistic (and realism in the storyline is one of the things you have made clear is very important to you) is that if this 'virus' has indeed been around for nearly a million years and if it has taken over all of the Milky-way galaxy, then the mothership would have to house literally hundreds of billions of infected aliens and if they don't all reside on the mothership, then the milky-way galaxy should hold hundreds of billions of infected aliens in several dozen colonies.

It seems to me that it would be rather ridiculous for humanity to be able to defeat an alien 'empire' numbering in the hundred billions with a team of 8 (or however many soldiers fit on the PHALANX FTL transport) humans.

Don't worry about being rude, it's fine -- as long as you don't expect your ideas to be adopted without question.

From what I've read of your post, it seems like you've missed a couple of important details in our storyline draft. Let me try to explain point by point.

The 'why not a total invasion' question is self-defeating. Any alien species capable of invading Earth can easily overpower us with a total invasion. That's not the point of the game. Our explanation for the UFO:AI scenario is that the alien mind isn't committing any more resources than it has to to get the job done, which (in the beginning) is harvesting of human material for the re-engineering of XVI to fit humans. That job gets done quite swimmingly regardless of the small-scale interference from PHALANX. At no point in the game are there any real advantages to a total-invasion scenario for the virus -- the drain on its already low resource pool would be terrible. Imagine the cost of trying to manage 8-10 billion prisoners, many of which may be armed. This is a no-go scenario for the virus since it doesn't want to kill all those people, it wants them alive.

When XVI gets going on Earth, and PHALANX becomes more of a problem, then the virus commits more resources to the field in order to accelerate the takeover. It will be getting some new supplies from mining operations in the asteroid belt and in surrounding systems. Still, anything used on Earth is not being used for the virus's #1 goal, which is to build the wormhole device and leave this spent galaxy for a nice new one. The discovery of Earth was only made in the final mop-up operation covering the last few galactic spiral arms (which is just as likely as any other explanation for an alien discovery of Earth).

Also, the reason why a small team of PHALANX members can blow up the entire alien threat (which is all concentrated in a single mothership, excepting some of the resources on Earth) is because the hive mind can't divide itself. It can't sustain permanent operations more than a few lightyears from the mothership. The mothership is extremely big, yes, with a population of several trillion, but most of the aliens there aren't armed. As long as the team is able to muck up that wormhole device, it'll tear the whole ship apart.

The point of this storyline is also very much tied in with gameplay. We want to keep the player on his toes at all times, strategically on the defensive trying to counter alien plans that are actually effective, and challenged tactically by new weapons and powerful enemies. And of course there's the slow march of XVI, which will be actually unstoppable -- the player can slow down XVI through his efforts, but it will always keep growing until the player is forced to take on the final mission as a desperate action in the face of defeat. (This has been one of our plot guidelines, we don't want to be able to keep playing indefinitely such as in X-COM.)

We've been working on this storyline for a long time, but there are still details left to be fleshed out and a lot of the actual text left to be written. We wanted to bring back some real cosmic horror, and that means humanity standing alone in the face of an enemy of overwhelming power -- but an enemy that can be defeated against all odds through cleverness, ingenuity and skill.

It also has some other important advantages:

1) No other aliens in the galaxy to possibly appeal to for help. This is something to be very much avoided; if it's possible and you fail to include it in-game, the player will feel cheated. This is a point that your proposal has trouble with, you're forced to handwave why the aliens won't help humanity -- and you end up with a bad cliche.

2) No other planets to mine for handy resources that Earth doesn't have very much of.

3) A consistent set of goals, reasoning and capabilities for the virus, with a long-term plan that is only slowly revealed to the player.


If we were to change the story now, the proposal would have to be very well-written, original, and tight as a drum with regards to plot holes. I'm afraid that yours gets sunk by a couple of fundamental flaws, and the way you present the enemy doesn't really have the feel that we're going for with this game.

We'll be happy to hear any other ideas you've got, though.

Regards,
Winter

[Robrecht]

I don't mean to get in an arguement with you here, but if we look at accomodations alone, a mothership housing trilions of aliens would have to have atleast atleast a mass of 2x1.5x1 meters (a little less for Tamans a little more for Ortnok and Shevaar) of sleeping space alone. That means 3 cubic meters per inhabitant, assume it's only a trillion, that's 3*1.000.000.000.000= 3.000.000.000.000 cubic meters, or 3.000.000.000 cubic kilometers of mothership for minimal sleeping space alone. That's not counting: storage for weapons, armour, clothing and food, engines, powersupplies, washing facilities, airconditioning, maintenance equipment, sensors, etc.. etc... That would make it several times larger than the sun and longer than the distance between the earth and the sun. In fact.. If you do factor in living quarters, corridors, storage, food supplies etc. etc. for SEVERAL trillion inhabitants, the mothership would have to be almost two light-years in linear meters (that's meters^3 converted to meters^1 a light-year is 10 quadrillion meters, rounded up).

But even if we take only sleeping space and only for one trillion, the wormhole they plan to use would have to have an event horizon (wormholes are modified black holes) of at the very least several billion square meters across. A wormhole of that size would transport more than just the ship: It would swallow half the milky-way galaxy.

And even then that doesn't matter, because a ship that size, even if it is made of the lightest material possible, would implode in on itself. More over if you could even get it to stay stable without imploding, the thing would have STARS orbitting it.

I'm sorry if I sound extremely harsh here, but as a science fiction writer, the most annoying thing I can think of in Science-fiction is when people think you can throw around billions and trillions as much as you want.

Other things: Why would the aliens (if they have the size and resources you ascribe to them) even land on earth after they know how to modify the virus to infect humans? If they have trillions of persons, they can simply shower the earth's atmosphere in virus and infect everyone all at the same time. They don't even need to attack anyone in the first place, if they just land in a small town, they only need maybe a thousand soldiers to abduct the entire town's population for experiments. A thousand soldiers out of 'several trillion' persons is NOT a big drain on resources.  Hell, even the 20 Billion soldiers they might presumably need to make their dominance of earth 100% assured would only be one hundreth of the several trillions they have at their disposal. It wouldn't be a huge drain on resources, since the large majority of the invaders would survive, even if the majority of humans was armed (because the humans only survived the Mumbai attack because the aliens withdrew, your own backstory says that humans were being slaughtered en-masse and that the aliens didn't have many losses at all), because the aliens have such superior technology and numbers. The resources gained from earth would be more than the aliens would lose from such an action.

So while I completely understand that you don't want to cast away your story, just because I happen to come up with a different idea, I don't think you can argue that my idea has more flaws than yours.
If my story has a few crippling flaws (I know you said fundamental, but it's basically the same), yours is a comatose paraplegic.

Now... I hope you don't get angry, because all I did was react to you in the same way you reacted to me (maybe I reacted a bit more aggressive). And I DO love everything about UFO:AI, I just think the story could use some small changes to make it less of a 'yay humans are the uber-pwnzor saviours of the galaxy' story and more of a believable sci-fi epic, so to speak.

My main goal is a dialogue, not a war. The idea I posted was not my 'be all, end all' replacement story, but an example of my capacity to write. I'd like to discuss ideas and suggestions with you so we can, maybe make the story better.

[Winter]

I don't mean to get in an arguement with you here, but if we look at accomodations alone, a mothership housing trilions of aliens would have to have atleast atleast a mass of 2x1.5x1 meters (a little less for Tamans a little more for Ortnok and Shevaar) of sleeping space alone. That means 3 cubic meters per inhabitant, assume it's only a trillion, that's 3*1.000.000.000.000= 3.000.000.000.000 cubic meters, or 3.000.000.000 cubic kilometers of mothership for minimal sleeping space alone. That's not counting: storage for weapons, armour, clothing and food, engines, powersupplies, washing facilities, airconditioning, maintenance equipment, sensors, etc.. etc... That would make it several times larger than the sun and longer than the distance between the earth and the sun. In fact.. If you do factor in living quarters, corridors, storage, food supplies etc. etc. for SEVERAL trillion inhabitants, the mothership would have to be almost two light-years in linear meters (that's meters^3 converted to meters^1 a light-year is 10 quadrillion meters, rounded up).

But even if we take only sleeping space and only for one trillion, the wormhole they plan to use would have to have an event horizon (wormholes are modified black holes) of at the very least several billion square meters across. A wormhole of that size would transport more than just the ship: It would swallow half the milky-way galaxy.

And even then that doesn't matter, because a ship that size, even if it is made of the lightest material possible, would implode in on itself. More over if you could even get it to stay stable without imploding, the thing would have STARS orbitting it.

I'm sorry if I sound extremely harsh here, but as a science fiction writer, the most annoying thing I can think of in Science-fiction is when people think you can throw around billions and trillions as much as you want.

The aliens don't require a human amount of living space. For our alien concept, a couple of the things you've listed aren't even a consideration, like clothing. Most of the population (probably around 95%) would be thrown cheek-to-cheek into big life-support tanks, kept alive on the bare minimum required -- even grown in them from (artificial) birth. A vast majority of the 'several trillion' is therefore unavailable. Even so, yes, the mothership has grown over thousands and thousands of years to be the size of a Dyson sphere.

Also, what does saying 'as a science fiction writer, etc. etc.' achieve here? There's more than a few sci-fi writers around, and I'm one of them. Been doing this a while, too. Appealing to authority to try and bolster your side of the argument isn't a valid method of discussion.

Other things: Why would the aliens (if they have the size and resources you ascribe to them) even land on earth after they know how to modify the virus to infect humans? If they have trillions of persons, they can simply shower the earth's atmosphere in virus and infect everyone all at the same time. They don't even need to attack anyone in the first place, if they just land in a small town, they only need maybe a thousand soldiers to abduct the entire town's population for experiments. A thousand soldiers out of 'several trillion' persons is NOT a big drain on resources.  Hell, even the 20 Billion soldiers they might presumably need to make their dominance of earth 100% assured would only be one hundreth of the several trillions they have at their disposal. It wouldn't be a huge drain on resources, since the large majority of the invaders would survive, even if the majority of humans was armed (because the humans only survived the Mumbai attack because the aliens withdrew, your own backstory says that humans were being slaughtered en-masse and that the aliens didn't have many losses at all), because the aliens have such superior technology and numbers. The resources gained from earth would be more than the aliens would lose from such an action.

I'm afraid you didn't read the writeup correctly. The only way the virus can be transmitted is through direct injection of infected blood, it can't infect by any other vector.

Again, the virus is already hard-up for resources and is not about to waste any dealing with an insignificant planet like Earth. Humanity poses no threat to it or its operations. Therefore it is handling the situation with a minimum fuss to itself. It's a slight weak spot in the story, but hardly a SoD-breaker.

So while I completely understand that you don't want to cast away your story, just because I happen to come up with a different idea, I don't think you can argue that my idea has more flaws than yours.
If my story has a few crippling flaws (I know you said fundamental, but it's basically the same), yours is a comatose paraplegic.

Now... I hope you don't get angry, because all I did was react to you in the same way you reacted to me (maybe I reacted a bit more aggressive). And I DO love everything about UFO:AI, I just think the story could use some small changes to make it less of a 'yay humans are the uber-pwnzor saviours of the galaxy' story and more of a believable sci-fi epic, so to speak.

My main goal is a dialogue, not a war. The idea I posted was not my 'be all, end all' replacement story, but an example of my capacity to write. I'd like to discuss ideas and suggestions with you so we can, maybe make the story better.

Um, at what point was I being at all aggressive to you or your ideas? I just pointed out that your story has several important flaws that disqualify it for incorporation into our storyline. I never called it a bad story, didn't lash out, never even mentioned my personal opinion, I only gave you a professional evaluation of your proposal. I'm frankly amazed at your attitude -- every working writer gets proposals rejected or is asked for a complete rewrite sometimes, and they deal with it calmly and with professionalism. I expect exactly that out of anyone on my team and I do the same when they review my material. If you're not capable of that, then you don't qualify.

Regards,
Winter

[Robrecht]

Well, I'm sorry, but the general idea I get from you is that the main reason you don't want to change anything, not because you feel it doesn't need changing, but because you wrote this.

I mention the sci-fi writer angle not to appeal to authority, but to lead in my complaint that too many writers tend to use huge (unrealistic) numbers in order to give their space-empires and such, just because it sounds impressive. If you go about it logically, even a Dyson sphere is incapable of sustaining trillions of lifeform, unless it has energy-to-matter conversion in which case it can't be struggling for resources.

I guess I did mention being a sci-fi writer in order to appeal to authority, but not in the sense that it lends credibility to my claims, but rather to indicate I do know what I'm talking about.

'Trillions' may seem cool, but you have to realise that there aren't even a trillion stars in the galaxy. And my count for sleeping space was not based on rooms, it was based on the rough size of the creatures themselves. I'm simply suggesting that the story would not suffer if you used less exhorbitant numbers.

[Winter]

Well, I'm sorry, but the general idea I get from you is that the main reason you don't want to change anything, not because you feel it doesn't need changing, but because you wrote this.

I mention the sci-fi writer angle not to appeal to authority, but to lead in my complaint that too many writers tend to use huge (unrealistic) numbers in order to give their space-empires and such, just because it sounds impressive. If you go about it logically, even a Dyson sphere is incapable of sustaining trillions of lifeform, unless it has energy-to-matter conversion in which case it can't be struggling for resources.

I guess I did mention being a sci-fi writer in order to appeal to authority, but not in the sense that it lends credibility to my claims, but rather to indicate I do know what I'm talking about.

'Trillions' may seem cool, but you have to realise that there aren't even a trillion stars in the galaxy. And my count for sleeping space was not based on rooms, it was based on the rough size of the creatures themselves. I'm simply suggesting that the story would not suffer if you used less exhorbitant numbers.

I didn't write it on my own, I had extensive input from my co-author and the other member of our story team, BTAxis.

Personally I'm quite happy with the storyline as it is, it's got the perfect gritty mood and lacks any glaring plot holes or big leaps of faith. The characters in our research writeups repeatedly bring up the questions that the player will be asking, such as why there's been no large-scale invasion, speculating and analysing as new evidence is unearthed. We don't ask the player to casually ignore anything for the sake of gameplay, but neither do we try to explain everything away with some overwrought and convoluted plot. You can never have a perfect plot. Some things have to be left to finesse to smooth them over.

That's my problem with your proposal. It overthinks certain things (why no total invasion, why is the enemy defeatable), underthinks others (what to do with live non-aligned aliens left in a position to affect the war, ignored the 'running away' angle, i.e. the problem of other habitable places where humanity could send ships), and generally ends up lacking spark. As a player I don't really want to read about the doings of some random aliens that manage to randomly affect Earth out of every other corner of the galaxy. I want something to make me care. I want to stand alone in the face of an alien threat so vast and mind-blowing that it instills real horror. I want to see civilians twisting in agony as they're infected and turned against me by an unstoppable force. I want to see my home planet slowly slipping through my fingers as the pressure mounts. I want to hear the last words of dead but once-intelligent races whose zombie-like bodies I'm now forced to fight as servants of the enemy. I want something to make me think, "Yes, here is an enemy so horrible and wrong that it must be fought to the death, even against impossible odds."

That's another important thing; I'm not seeing any drama. Nothing really speaks to me about it. We're not writing a technical manual here -- we're writing an experience. More than anything it needs to hook people, and an audience will always be happier with a good story that might be technically imperfect than a bad story that runs like clockwork. We aim for it, and as far as I'm concerned we've achieved it in as great a degree as possible, with regards to the plot.

Regards,
Winter

[BTAxis]

Robrecht, I stand by Winter on this point. It is really not useful to introduce small details and explanations when they are simply not required. The setup we have now is solid. Both Winter and I are capable of reason, and over the past year we have worked together to produce the story we have now. We have both attacked each other's ideas in intelligent conversation, rejected ones that didn't make the cut and incorporated the ones that did. What we've written up so far is not a random idea born at the spur of the moment. Yours, on the other hand, obviously is.

What Winter did in the above posts is explain to you why your proposal is weak, and he did so on logical grounds. What I've seen you doing is try to invalidate the current storyline by splitting hairs over things that really are not important to the player. There are MORE than enough details to our story and to the writeups to accomplish the suspension of disbelief that the player needs. Furthermore, the current story has the qualities to make for a good gradual telling, and is therefore well suited for the game.

Bottom line, we will not change the storyline according to what you've written so far. You're at liberty to get upset over that, but it won't change our opinion.

[Robrecht]

No, no, you're both not getting me.

The reason why I started showing the flaws in your story is, because as I said twice before, I AM a writer. I have published stories. You DID attack my work (especially you BTAxis, in your post).

Actually (since offending my work like that is enough to get me pretty angry and I'm holding back) my suggestion was: NOT just a random idea, I spent several days coming up with something and while I admit that it's rough and needs a little polish, it is a HELL of a lot better than "there once was this alien virus that ruled the galaxy for a million years, but that somehow never managed to find earth, they conquered everyone and everything, but then they tried to take over the earth with dozens of teeny squads instead of the gigantic mass of their several trillion population count, then the humans deus-exed them all to death and humans lived happily ever after, the end." which is what your story boils down to.

You talk about what players want and need as if you have all the answers, but you can't be sure of that and I'm convinced you're wrong and I can prove it to you:

With your permission I will post both your story outline and my suggestion on an independant forum dedicated to Science Fiction and Fantasy. Namely, the following: http://www.sffworld.com/forums/

If you are right and people like your story outline better and don't think things like the virus having Trillions of people and pretty much ruling the galaxy for a million years, I'll not only admit that I know nothing about writing Sci-fi, I'll also never publish another science-fiction story ever again, BUT if they think my suggestion is better you have to admit that you were wrong in simply dismissing my suggestion. You still don't have to use it or listen to any of my suggestions, just admit that it isn't bad just because you didn't write it.

Also, you have to realize one thing: my suggestion was just that: a suggestion, if there are flaws in it and I'm not saying there aren't, those can be dealt with. Your story outline, however is hard, set and (as you've showed in this thread) never going to change even the slightest bit, even though a population of several Trillions and a timespan of a million years are outright ridiculous.
I know that you guys are very proud of your storyline and aside from the trillions and billions and millions you throw around, it's not bad for a first try, but please don't act like it's the new Dune or Star Wars or something, because it most definately isn't.

[BTAxis]

That was the last straw, Robrecht. This thread is locked; there is no point continuing this. Any new threads on this subject will be deleted.