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Messages - Karnewarrior

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1
Other Games / Re: Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri
« on: November 13, 2020, 04:41:54 pm »
Alpha Centauri was really cool. It's a shame it looks kind of garbage compared to today's graphics.
BE tries to scratch the itch but whiffs on what made SMAC actually stand out, which wasn't story or mechanics but how both backed each other up so readily. BE's all about gathering the largest percentage bonus to damn near everything and customizing your faction into a jack-of-all-trades because who *willingly* leaves a weak point in their armor, but that just sucks all the feeling out of the leaders. BE's leaders don't feel as complete as SMACs either.

That said, I still play more Civ6 than SMAC. Beyond the eyeburn graphics, SMAC's gameplay is frustratingly simple and a bit grindy. Warfare mostly just amounts to stacking the most attack units you can afford onto a tile with a defensive unit and skittering them along until they die, killing and looting as they go, and the strong bias towards mobility means stuff like infantry gets pretty much obsolete by the midgame. The AI is either too warlike if you or an ally is near Miriam or Santiago, or not warlike enough if you're distant from them. The combination of combat being just unit spam also winds up meaning a whole lot of micromanagment later on, especially once Fungal Blooms start happening all over. It just eventually becomes a bit of a slog.

I dunno, I like SMAC better as a book than a game, honestly.

2
General Discussion / Re: AmeriPol thread
« on: July 12, 2020, 02:01:19 am »
Quote from: scriver on July 11, 2020, 09:43:00 am
No it's the opposite -- it's "if you don't stop buying lottery tickets you'll never save any money"
The difference being that here, stopping buying the lottery tickets doesn't stop us from spending the money on them, it just prevents us from reaping the collective rewards.

The whole edgy "everything's awful and nothing will ever get done" is cool and all, but it's predicated on 100% bullshit. Nothing's awful and everything will get done eventually - that's how literally the rest of human history worked, it's how it's going to work out here. You can choose to be part of building that future and possibly have a say in it, or sit and mope about the futility of it all and be forgotten in the gutter.

I'm growing rather irritated with the doom and gloom in this thread. It's entirely unwarranted. I'm not that depressed and my fucking Grandfather just died. No candidate is perfect - fucking Lincoln didn't even want to free the Slaves, it just wound up being politically expedient. Stop focusing on the negatives and discarding all the positives as inconsequential and maybe the world won't seem like such a depressing place, eh?

3
General Discussion / Re: AmeriPol thread
« on: June 27, 2020, 11:43:06 am »
For the record, we're in Afghanistan because, over a decade ago, it had the Al-Queada HQ in it. See, they blew up two very large financial centers in a populated American city, and when the Afghani government was asked to assist us in the op, they said no... Which was kind of predictable because it would've been some donkey-ass optics for them anyway.

So we invaded. Then, because of insurgents and because Al-Quesadilla got really good at Hitman: Middle East Version, it took us over 10 years to actually kill the guy who ordered the attack. We're there now mostly out of momentum - it looks terrible and is terrible to leave the country with the way it is now, where people are basically guaranteed to get taken over by a tyrant of some stripe, so we sit there and do a bit of tyrannizing ourselves trying to help, like a toddler smacking a broken motorbike with an inflatable hammer, trying to convince himself that if he fixes it daddy will come home.

Basically, we had a decent reason to be there, but it was botched at the beginning and everyone in office is too incompetent to fix it or is stopped by malicious interests when they are.

4
General Discussion / Re: AmeriPol thread
« on: June 27, 2020, 12:59:34 am »
Quote from: Frumple on June 26, 2020, 11:55:02 pm
Quote from: Karnewarrior on June 26, 2020, 11:33:25 pm
Nooses being used for hanging people isn't racist though. Nooses being used to hang specifically black people is.
However, nooses were not and are not exclusively used to hang black people. They're symbols of death, not racism. I'm saying that it could be taken the same way someone spray-painting the grim reaper on their car could be taken. That's not racist at all.
I mean, I might buy that if it were specifically included with/involved a gallows, as well. Hanging off random shit puts you a hell of a lot closer to lynching territory, and if you try to argue that ain't racist in the fucking USA you either ain't from around here or you're actively throwing out bullshit racist smokescreens. Ain't really a third option. Closest that'd come to one is staggering ignorance, and I doubt anyone capable of stringing a coherent sentence together is that blitheringly ignorant.
We clearly haven't had contact with the same circles of racist then - the ones I know don't use nooses like that. Nooses were, where I live, the territory of your goths, punks, and emos. Usually they're more of a symbol of suicide than anything else.

I live not too far from Alabama too. Don't assume just because you've never seen a noose used that way that it's someone trying to justify racism. It's entirely possible you're the one making erroneous assumptions here.

Quote from: Cthulhu on June 26, 2020, 11:49:50 pm
There are other uses for a noose, anything you'd want to secure with a loop that tightens under pressure and won't come loose unless the thing it's around is removed.  A garage door pull isn't that, and even if it was there are multiple ways to tie a noose for non-execution purposes.  The one with the big twisty above the loop was designed specifically for killing people and whoever tied it knew that when he did it.

Re: New reply:  This dude seems to disagree with you as far as the symbolism of nooses go
I don't think he really needs the noose, considering the obvious klan hood he's wearing. The implied meaning behind something can change based on context. To use your argumentation method, I don't think the makers of this halloween decoration were trying to scare kids by the implication of lynching a black guy. Something makes me think these emo kids are saying something totally different with it too.

5
General Discussion / Re: AmeriPol thread
« on: June 26, 2020, 11:33:25 pm »
Nooses being used for hanging people isn't racist though. Nooses being used to hang specifically black people is.
However, nooses were not and are not exclusively used to hang black people. They're symbols of death, not racism. I'm saying that it could be taken the same way someone spray-painting the grim reaper on their car could be taken. That's not racist at all.

6
General Discussion / Re: AmeriPol thread
« on: June 26, 2020, 01:11:40 pm »
Quote from: A Thing on June 25, 2020, 07:10:04 pm
I'd be very surprised if the symbolism of the noose was lost on them. I know the whole "death" thing is there, but presumably whoever did it is from Alabama*. You'd have to be extremely sheltered to not understand the other connotations of a noose here. Probably just didn't care or thought it was funny.

*I guess they could be from out of state, no idea how much of NASCAR at Talladega is actually from in-state.
No, I don't mean that they wouldn't understand it, I meant they probably didn't think about it that way. I'm quite sure they knew lynchings to be things - but it's one thing to know a historical fact, and quite another to connect it with something in the modern day, especially something like this where there are other, equally plausible explanations for it that aren't malicious.

7
General Discussion / Re: AmeriPol thread
« on: June 25, 2020, 06:26:24 pm »
I mean, I probably would've taken it as a reference to death, not lynching, even after the new (black) driver came in, and if we're totally honest I'm probably more racially aware than most of the guys in that garage are (not that they're necessarily racist, just that they probably don't think about racial biases and prejudice as much as someone sensitized to the issue through personal experience or media exposure).

Probably saw it and figured it was some kind of reference/joke to how lethal NASCAR can be at times, or a edgy Ooh-rah sort of thing where the driver is a spectre of death for his opponents or something. It doesn't surprise me that it was overlooked until it became horrifyingly relevant.

8
General Discussion / Re: AmeriPol thread
« on: June 24, 2020, 02:05:22 pm »
Quote from: Cthulhu on June 24, 2020, 09:36:23 am
Quote from: MetalSlimeHunt on June 23, 2020, 06:16:13 pm
At least they took it seriously. It shows how afraid NASCAR staff and drivers are for Wallace's safety. I'm not into it myself, but from what I'm told he's the only current black driver in NASCAR, and people in the, ahem, "old guard" fanbase have been heaping abuse and threats on him constantly since the Kyle Larson incident and especially since the Confederate flag ban. There were even neo-Confederates flying a plane banner and protesting outside a race right before this all happened.

The original stock car racers were prohibition-era bootleggers who needed cars that could outrun the police without looking obviously souped up, and eventually started racing each other.  NASCAR literally originated as a contest between federal criminals to see who was best at resisting arrest.  I can see the lost causer in there with the focus on rebellion, but the blue lives matter guys watching NASCAR need to get their shit together.
Eh, these guys only care about history when it lets them imply their enemies are the real racists / mass murdering scumbags / dictatorial totalitarians / etc. When applied to them History only starts being relevant about 20 seconds ago, unless it makes them look good to their fellows, in which case it's "tradition" and "heritage" and gets whitewashed to the point of being unrecognizable.

9
Other Games / Re: Stellaris: Paradox Interactive IN SPACE
« on: May 12, 2020, 12:33:53 am »
The logarithmic growth is probably intentional, as I find my worlds, once overpopulated, remain so.
This despite enough immigration happening that my worlds very quickly wind up as cosmopolitan as possible.
My empire species listing is a travesty

10
Other Games / Re: Stellaris: Paradox Interactive IN SPACE
« on: May 03, 2020, 02:29:20 pm »
I haven't had a single rebellion and my Xenophobe faction has been sitting at literally 0% support with hundreds of supporters for decades.

Honestly it would be better if the system worked such that pops would be more likely to migrate to worlds with a higher proportion of their ethics in the population. I think the reason I haven't had any revolts is because the hundreds of Xenophobic pops in my empire are relatively spread out, so they can't spawn anywhere and they can't gain enough of an advantage to pop on me.


On an unrelated note, the local Marauders finally decided to raid me while I was at war with the Spiritualist FE. They only had 13k fleetpower when my fleets are nearly scraping 100k now when healed and 20k when totally thrashed (even my corvettes have about 850 fleet power each!), so I wasn't too worried, but it moved from the mild amusement of Mike Tyson being threatened by a particularly pudgy child to outright laughter when the raiding fleet hopped into the same system as the Enigmatic Fortress.

Cue a small event saying that the raiders had been beaten back. The Solar Union of course took full credit for the Fortress' actions - I'll be happy to pay the Marauders a visit now that they're finally waking up, although I'd been waiting for a Great Khan to come around. Never did. Still, as funny as it was seeing the dorks yeet themselves, they're getting uppity. It's time to crush them... Just as soon as I ethics-shift a couple of my old enemies...

11
Other Games / Re: Stellaris: Paradox Interactive IN SPACE
« on: May 01, 2020, 05:33:36 pm »
Yeah, the current logistics system is way too simplified. There's no reason I should be able to send a doomstack of ships to the other side of the galaxy via hyperlanes and use them as easily as I can a fleet defending my home systems, just because neither ship is in orbit of a space station.

I think I'd do what I described before with a necessary supply lane of occupied systems, with empty systems qualifying for the supply line but being somehow inferior, or cutting into the "supply" part such that you can't cross great gulfs of uninhabited systems. That makes isolationist FE's have a mechanical reason to do their isolating behavior too; as it stands, the only benefit keeping a buffer of empty systems provides you is the AI not being able to stack up on your borders, which AFAIK they don't do anyway. It doesn't slow an enemy at all and it doesn't change your sensor radius so it's not like it gives you significant warning, particularly with how slow movement between systems can be anyway.

Alternatively just transition the whole damn fleet mechanics over to HOI-style army management rather than EUIV style unit management. Give certain fleets goals to capture whole sectors and then let the AI fight the AI.

12
Other Games / Re: Stellaris: Paradox Interactive IN SPACE
« on: May 01, 2020, 02:20:02 am »
I would say a good way of undoing Doomstacking would be a "Supply Line" system. Something something if your fleet doesn't have a line of controlled systems going to a starbase with enough anchorage for it, it starts to suffer maluses which culminate with the fleet starting to take hull damage.

They don't really need to be self-sufficient for years just because they're spaceships - one of the caveats of the setting is that crossing a system takes hardly a couple weeks, and it only takes 3-4 years to cross the galaxy with better techs. Naturally the ships would become less self-sufficient in exchange for more space to put arms and armor type stuff. The trade-off to that being supply lines.

This would help discourage the worst doomstacking, since a couple enemy corvettes hitting the supply line at a bad time could seriously hurt your fleet. You would need to keep multiple fleets in operation and make sure you have multiple supply lines. The AI would need to be taught how to use those systems to their advantage though.

Basically, not Europa Universalis, but rather Hearts of Iron. Ships can't scavenge anyway, but those crews need food.

13
Other Games / Re: Stellaris: Paradox Interactive IN SPACE
« on: April 29, 2020, 04:43:46 pm »
I've decided that my federation mates, after denying the folk on the other side of the Orphan Gate federation status, aren't fit to actually run the Federation. This is a free democracy, you see, and that means helping people! Using my absurd diplomatic power, I have officially retracted their right to vote about... Well, just about anything.
It's still technically the democratic version of a Federation, Galactic Commune or whatever, but I've elected myself President Forever and also given the President sweeping political powers within the Federation. Last time we fought a Galactic War the idiots took like 5 systems and not much else, and only after letting both sides' WE hit 100, despite the AI's WE hitting 100 in record time after I personally invaded their capitals - all three main capitals, plus the majority of the sector capital worlds in each nation.

Next time we fight a war, we're properly replacing their governments! No way am I going to sit here and watch Humans be sold on the slave market - more than that, since everyone's connected via hiveminded brainslug! It's like knowing Grandma's in a North Korean prison because she's logged into Facebook and making constant posts about it, it's just uncool.

I'm also getting ready to start popping FE's while I wait for the Crisis to hit. I've had hints that it'll be Prethoryn, but I don't know if that makes it certain or not - I haven't gotten any kind of vanguard or radio contact from them, so the Crisis hasn't actually begun yet, but I did get an Anomaly that suggested they've visited before.
The FE's are the only real challenge my empire faces now, as I approach level 10 in most of the combat repeatables. I have no idea if they'll actually be the challenge they look like, but they have ~200k fleet power where I'm just starting to hit 50k for each fleet, and I'm running out of Leviathans to smash. The other members of my Federation are also smashing Leviathans, interestingly, so I think we're about spooled up for a good showing in a War in Heaven. And that should last us until the Crisis.

Brain Slugs really make the genetics path the best one, don't they? My leaders live 210 years on average now anyway, and I can research the +5 years repeatable on an average of about a year with my tech output. They're functionally immortal, and everyone's slugged up and has 10% extra research speed just by default - meanwhile my machine leaders don't have slugs, and their greatest advantage of being actually immortal doesn't seem that amazingly overpowered in the face of a biological pop who can last until the length of this current game doubles, if I hire them now. 200 years from now, this game will be over, one way or another.
I wish there were repeatable techs for alloy, consumer goods, and strategic resource production. Even if it was 1% per repetition, it'd make getting my production to the silly levels I want it at a lot easier. Influence and Alloys are now my only real bottlenecks, but my strategic resources could use a boost too. +40 motes just isn't absurd enough for me.

14
Other Games / Re: Stellaris: Paradox Interactive IN SPACE
« on: April 26, 2020, 02:05:03 pm »
Quote from: EuchreJack on April 23, 2020, 05:03:00 pm
Well, I had the smart idea to play as a Militarist, Authoritarian, Xenophobe, thinking that my neighbors would then be peaceful, egalitarian, alien-lovers.  One was a Federation Builder...and the other an Honorable Warrior.  And slightly further out were all xenophobe authoritarian.  I pushed the Militarilist to dump one of the others, and get the Authoritarian dumped.

My massive plan to get neighbors that were decent folks that would band up against me, and whom I could then reform myself and join too, failed.

I understand why people play various forms of purgers, because they're all assholes in Stellaris.  Lots of respect for the hivers and assimilators, at least they understand its the governments and not the aliens (mostly).

...and of course, I prefer building to fighting, so being ultra-miltarist is actually pretty weak.  I'm going to start a war just to tech up from enemy salvage.  Maybe I'll break out into open space, might lose an uncolonized system, but whatever.  Give my people what they want I guess.
Yeah, I don't know why, but it definitely feels like Xenophobic Authoritarians are overselected for in my games. They're bloody everywhere.

On a different note, anyone else notice that Primitives who advance to FTL during the span of the game *always* get the enlightened origin - even if nobody was in their system the whole time? It's throwing me off a bit that primitives don't get their own Origins.

15
Other Games / Re: Stellaris: Paradox Interactive IN SPACE
« on: April 12, 2020, 04:05:31 pm »
It lags from day one for me, which is supremely irritating. I wish I knew what was eating my memory like that - I don't play with many AI empires at game start anyway since I like to play a lighter version of the Fermi Paradox, where most aliens are primitives while Humans/whatever developed.

But the lag on any galaxy size I actually care about playing on is egregious in the extreme. It takes half a second at the end of every day! Very, very noticable.
I know bannerlord had an update that for some reason switched the game to playing on the CPU graphics card and caused a similar problem, but if there's a way to check if that's happening with Stellaris I don't know where to find it.


Quote from: E. Albright on April 11, 2020, 09:59:43 am
It seems like it might be a problem to do non-CB wars from an AI perspective. Having clear at-war/at-peace lets the AI behave more cleanly, I suspect, and we've had plenty of problems with AI as is...
I wonder when it will become economical to put a learning AI algorithm behind the wheel of a bunch of AI civs in a game like this and then just run it for several thousand cycles. Neural Networks are surprisingly CPU-light once the learning bits are stripped away, and it'd probably produce several varieties of AI that could be swapped out to allow for different playstyles from the computer.
Plus, they'd be able to handle resources much better than static AI. They wouldn't *need* the bonuses to keep up with the majority of players, and they'd be a lot more reactive to new strategies from the player, even after the lobotomization for release.
I guess the big issue right now is nobody wants to pay for the server farm needed to train up relatively complicated networks like that in a reasonable timeframe, especially since they'd need to get trained on fairly late-in-dev gameplay.

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