Bay 12 Games Forum

1. Yes, the armor can block up to 6 damage, but the GDR of a mottled dragon armor alone can only block up to 3 damage. Sorry if that wasn't clear the first time.

2. My mistake, I forgot that. Lets assume our hero is wearing a +1 helmet and boot. The max GDR is going to defend by is now a massive 5 points of damage! Your total AC is almost entirely dependent on your main armor, so if the GDR with just your main armor alone is pathetic, it's safe to assume all your armor combined won't fare much better.

You're still confused. Not only do your other armour slots matter, but so does armour enchantment and other AC bonuses. Do you seriously think a character with mottled dragon armour is going to be walking around with like 8 AC? In all probability, no, it'll be at least double that, and that's a very conservative estimate. By the late game, it's likely to be significantly higher than that, even.

And that's using MDA as an example. If you want to look at swamp dragon armour or fire/ice/pearl dragon armour, it gets better anyway.

At any rate: Yeah, most of your AC come from body armour, but not just the base AC, and your other armour slots can increase your AC by, let's see, 12, if they're enchanted fully, assuming they aren't artefacts, which could increase it more, plus the minor effect of armour skill that would apply. Hell, that 12 AC is roughly the same amount mottled dragon armour gives you to begin with, even if fully enchanted! Point being, it's based on much more than your body armour's base AC, or even your body armour in general.

At any rate, you can easily have a character in the lighter dragon armours that has good enough AC for GDR to be pretty meaningful.

Yes, the EV-friendly dragon armors (I'd say Mottled, Steam, Swamp, and to a certain point Pearl, albeit casting in pearl is difficult) do provide quite decent AC, but remember that my definition of melee quality armor is armor that reliably protects you from melee without dodging, and that takes everything but Pearl out.

If you don't want to go with that definition, then obviously I can't argue with that. Skin is melee-quality armor at that point, since dodging alone is enough to usurp any armor. I only made the distinction between melee-quality and not to make a division between AC and EV armors, and I thought it was a sensible word simply because the armor isn't doing much of a job if its not an AC armor, it's just letting your dodging do its own thing.

Look, I apologize if "melee-quality armour" sounds like it means anything to you other than "armour that significantly helps you in melee and is good enough for that purpose". If you want to state clear, descriptive phrases like "melee-quality armour" and then assign some relatively arbitrary and more restrictive definition to it, then okay but it's not exactly going to help discussion.

GDR is quite insignificant. The most an unenchanted mottled dragon armor is going to block is 3 damage, which is quite pathetic. It could have 99% GDR and still only block three damage, since the max GDR can reduce damage by is 1/2 AC, which is in this case, half of 6.

Yes, GDR would be insignificant, if it actually worked that way. It doesn't. There are two things you're getting wrong here.

• GDR is not the maximum damage the armour can block. An unenchanted armour with 6 base AC can still block up to 6 damage, and that's assuming you don't have any armour skill. If you do, it can block more. GDR is just the guaranteed damage reduction, not the maximum damage reduction.
• GDR's "1/2 AC" limit is based on total AC of your character, not the armour's base AC. Otherwise it would be pretty damn useless.

One potential problem with that: If you have an OEM license and a retail disc, it'll wind up being a retail install so activation might not quite work. Microsoft offers a tool to correct it, though, so it's not a big deal: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows/help/genuine/product-key

What good is the government backing going to be in case of hyperinflation? There are plenty of examples in that article of government-issue banknotes having the exact value of a piece of toilet paper.

"Monetary policy can be really really bad" is not the same as "monetary policy is a really really bad thing". You don't get to compare the best possible interpretation of one particular example of one particular form of currency (bitcoins) with the absolute worst possible examples of another particular form of currency.

Kind of like your Big Mac loses some calories every time somebody puts more food on the market, yes? Or every time somebody discovers an oil well, the gas gauge on your car goes down?
Energy is, by definition, inherently usable for something. Given sufficiently advanced technology,  it could be turned into anything, really. (You know, E=mc˛ and all that...) Not saying we're anywhere near there yet, though.

If something is easier to produce or is found in greater quantities, it generally is worth less to people as a medium of exchange. This is extremely simple to understand, enough so that I'm pretty sure you already do. When there's a greater excess of something, people are willing to give up less for it. If the value of a bitcoin is linked to the value of a given amount of energy, then yes, the value of the bitcoin, per bitcoin, goes down, because energy gets cheaper.

Currency, OTOH, is only as good as the general public's belief that you can buy something with that currency. The €20 note in my pocket does little good to me unless the guy behind the market counter also accepts the proposition that the note represents a certain value of goods or services. Government "backing", such as it is, makes little difference on that matter if the public at large deems the currency to be worthless; it's not like the government is going to come work at your steel mills, hand out goods in exchange for money out of some magical reserve, or give you electricity if the power company refuses to accept your payment. This, IMHO, is the greatest weakness of the Bitcoin at the time being; the people willing to acknowledge that a Bitcoin represents anything of value are too few and far between for it to make a difference. Were that to change at any time in the future, then Bitcoin could very well evolve into a "shadow economy" parallel to the current government-issue currencies. That, of course, would be every government's nightmare, as Bitcoins are by design untraceable and not controlled by any regulating body, making it impossible to freeze assets of those involved in criminal or otherwise government-unapproved activities or produce proof of taxable income for pretty much anybody. (Not to mention it would wreak havoc on government finances in a welfare state like Finland, where you could work "off the record" for Bitcoins while simultaineously claiming unemployment benefits.)

TL;DR: Energy is inherently valuable, currency is not; Bitcoin doesn't yet have enough support to be considered a real currency; and if it will gain that, it's going to make things hella difficult for governments and law enforcement everywhere.

There are reasons why government control/backing of a currency is actually a good thing. Ill-regulated money has caused problems in the past that are trivial to figure out.

I agree that the biggest problem with the idea is the lack of trust in the system. If nobody trusts in the value of them, then they are unusable for the purchase of goods or services.

Bitcoins not being trusted is about more than just convincing people. Frankly, I wouldn't ever want to use a currency that isn't backed by any government or regulatory agency (absolutely nothing to prevent a massive crash/run on the digital banks) and relies on the continued security of encryption algorithms to stay functional and not collapse in a giant heap on the floor and burn to death.

We're never going to have a lack of games just because publishers aren't screwing the consumer out of quite as much money anymore. That's rubbish. If anything, as has been repeatedly stated here, consumer rights being protected gives more reason for publishers producing games that have lasting appeal. You know, the kinds of games people won't want to resell after four months. Screwing over your rights as a consumer is not the way to get the product you want, no matter what, and as has also been stated repeatedly here, being able to resell your games means you'll likely be able to afford more new ones in the first place. Also, quite frankly, there's so much shovelware bullshit these days that I wouldn't really mind if slightly fewer games came out, but the ones that did were higher quality on average. That would be fine by me.

The point was that it's pretty silly to say that only armour you would want as an AC-based character is "melee-quality" even though other armours are totally appropriate, and good, for melee as a different type of character. That's all. Now can we drop that?

Documents and things. the reinstall will put everything the computer needs to work on there; but documents and other important things to you (photos etc) will need to be backed up before they're wiped with everything else.

I should note that this is not necessarily true. If you install Windows from scratch, you may very well lose plenty of drivers your hardware uses/needs, and finding them again can be a hassle. Just keep that in mind.