LOL thank you, observant ones... but I got it now.
For future reference, if anyone has trouble updating decal due to information cacheing from the isp, after a week of struggling and researching, it occurred to me... use a different isp!
I'm stuck with dial-up, and am using Netzero, which wasn't allowing the newest version of the xmls to come thru to me, but when I tried signing in to a different internet account, one which hadn't allowed AC to update, and still won't run it, decal updated properly right away. I then just had to go back on Netzero to run the game, now with decal working.
Then of course, I discovered that eltank doesn't exist anymore.

What's the world coming to? Anyway, look me up, I'm back at least for a little while, and low and behold, the game is still fun for me! Cyas around, I hope
