Bay 12 Games Forum

I wonder if 30+ km/s directional plasma bursts can turn blades of an extra high-speed and hardened turbine.

Plasma burst I'm not worried about. But the high energy neutrons tend to interact unpleasantly with steel. And it's those that are going to be carrying most of the energy, not the relatively small amount of plasma.

The article talks about one burst per minute. That would be a pathetically low power output for a power plant. Not to mention this is far further behind on the demonstrated technology curve than either traditional ICF or MCF, either of which would be more likely to efficiently generate power from advances in similar areas.

1) Energy collection.
I'm not clear on what fusion reaction they are using, but no controlled inertial confinement experiment I'm aware of has a reliable method of collecting the energy output. Most reactions that can easily be conducted involve high energy neutrons you would want to capture. That's hard to say the least. More like destructive to your machinery.

2) Energy per shot.
If you can accelerate your ship over a few days it doesn't matter how long it takes to deliver your thrust. If you want to generate a certain megawatt output, it kinda does. I don't know how quickly this one can be cycled, but the laser triggered variations are not even near the ballpark.

3) Cost.
Each shot would need to cost pennies at most. We are talking about highly engineered pellets, likely involving some prior treatment of lithium to get a more suitable fusion fuel. Scale might do it eventually, but in the short term it would be way too expensive.

No, it's not romcoms being targeted towards men, it's a romance and a comedy mashed together to appeal to a wider demographic. Men don't care about the sappy parts.

I... I just... what?

For starters men very often do care about the sappy parts. Lots of men are in, have been in or want to be in romantic relationships. Fictional romantic relationships are an entirely normal and common part of male escapism, even if it isn't considered a masculine form of entertainment in current culture. The idea that sappy romantic stuff is just for women is absolute nonsense.

And I don't really see how you are drawing a line between romcoms and romantic comedies here. I mean, it looks like you are just defining romcoms as films targeted at women and then dismissing the laughable idea that they could be targeted at men as well without being some other genre. In other words, you are defining the argument out of existence rather than trying to consider the point being made.

Also, does my aim suck, or is there no headshots on MAXes?

There is a headshot but it's pretty hard to land and (IIRC) the damage reduction means the shots are still under critical threshold. That means they don't get the extra circle showing them as headshots.

Again, this is from memory and theorycrafting, but a circle around the hit marker indicates damage over ~250. Even a 200 damage SAW or Mercenary will be dealing only 80 damage with a headshot after the 80% small arms reduction.

You will take them down twice as fast, you just won't get an indication you are doing it right.

But I've been saying the whole time that male protagonists aren't actual people either. In vast majority of games they're all muscle and no personality. Sturgeon's Law is extra strong in gaming.

Two issues here;

1) If 90% of everything is crap but 90% of all protagonists are male, you still have the number of good male characters vastly outnumbering the number of good female characters. That's before getting into that female characters are less likely than male characters to be well written because of the lack of female input at the writing/development level.

2) The use of tired tropes about women and constant sexualisation of female characters further reduces the attractiveness of those characters to women. A poorly written male character can still fit male escapist fantasies quite well. Female characters are less likely to do the same for women.

I'd sit on the SC and watch the daily deals. The 500 cert S-type carbines were on sale once for less than that. Alternatively it means you can buy 2000 SC down the line and buy three guns at full prices instead of 2 and some camo.

Remember that the radar and wrath are mutually exclusive, filling the same slot. If you want to get close to a sunderer while riding as an engineer then you probably want to look at the turbo for getting in quickly.

If you play infiltrator - especially SMG infiltrator - then AI mines are probably better on them. I don't so far so I went with the engineer.

I remember stealth and radar rank 1 worked nicely for solo capping on quiet continents. Leave the flash between you and the enemy spawn and you get to see them coming. Each rank of radar after that just makes it easier to pull off and useful in more bases. Would be even nicer on an SMG infiltrator. Getting the Kobalt early encourages trying to kill people with the flash, and it's not great at that. I'd seriously just use it as a support turret while locking down enemy bases. The radar is more important and generally useful.

Ooh, you can help me.
What are the best certs for engineer for anti-vehicle, and what should I get on my flash? (I'm thinking the boost or proximity radar).

A fully dedicated AV engineer would mean;

AV turret (1000 certs or 700 SC)
AT mines (100/200 certs)
C4 (200/500 certs)
Flak armour (1/10/50/150/1000 certs)
Sticky grenades (100 certs)
S type carbine plus UBGL (500 cert or 700SC weapon, 100 cert UBGL, another 230 for other attachments and scope)
Utility pouch rank 4 for 2 each extra C4/tank mines (200/400/500/1000, C4/tank mines alternate ranks)

Sticky grenades are there to more reliably detonate mines when planted under a stationary Sunderer which may not always work into the future. They are also useful in AI situations (stick one to an enemy and watch him run into all his friends trying to escape) so not a waste of certs. UBGL fills the same role as well as doing damage to finish off burning vehicles, but can be buggy and tricky to use at times. Flak is obvious in my opinion.

As a priority though? 100 on tank mines. Even with the nerf they are incredibly useful. 200 on C4 and 200 utility pouch is the cheapest way any class can carry 2 bricks of C4 so is a reasonable option. As Metalax said, it gives you AV options while your mines are planted.

In the end the AV turret is pretty damned powerful, so may be worth a SC purchase. If not then prioritise that over most of the other expensive stuff.

For myself I prefer running engineer as a support and defensive class so went for AI mines over C4 to help in indoor defences. I bought my C4 on the heavy assault. I can still use tank mines directly against vehicles in suicide charges, but for AV when my tank mines are laid I pull a HA. The rocket launcher works better in combination with C4 than any engineer option short of being able to carry 3 or 4 bricks with the utility pouch.


As for the Flash I can only really speak to my own build. Bold is where I've stopped so far;

Scout radar (50/100/200/500 certs for 25/50/75/100m radius)
Stealth (30/50/100/150/200/400/500/1000 certs)
M12 Kobalt (100 cert or 250 SC unlock) plus;
Zoom optics (1/50/150/500 certs for 1.25x/1.5x/1.75x/2x)
Maximum ammo (1/10/30/50/100/150/200/400/500/1000 certs, 100 extra rounds per rank)

The Kobalt gives me a more accurate version of the engineers turret on a mobile platform. Rank 1 stealth means you don't appear on people's radars unless you are spotted while the scout radar will help you spot anyone around. Higher ranks just reduce the time taken for lock-on weapons to lock-on, but that happens so rarely it's not worthwhile. The 100m radar is expensive but gives you full radar vision over nearly any base in the game, including biolabs when positioned underneath. I use this as my primary transport, riding as a heavy assault. This gives me the most AI/AV options while also acting as a scout radar for any allies I'm moving along with.

As a side note, the zoom optics don't replace each other when you cert up but rather act as different scopes, so you can choose from any of the zoom levels you have previously unlocked. So if you don't like a higher zoom level you can downgrade.

I'm probably going to buy the scrapper chassis with this to help with the mobility inside bases. Getting caught up on obstacles or unable to turn to target enemy infantry gets me killed more than a lack of speed does.


If you wanted to go all out AV then you would want either wrath cloaking or the turbo to get into and out of range and the Fury grenade launcher to deal actual damage to enemy armour. I'd stick with stealth to hope to get some shots off before I'm noticed rather than pray that composite armour lets me survive. Definitely racer in that setup.

Most major outfits have at least some presence on the official forums. After that there are listings on reddit, although I don't know how many outfits bother with those.

Some groups recruit through the squad menus. These should be labelled. That might be the best idea if you want to get to know people rather than going through some over-the-top application process.