Bay 12 Games Forum

In close combat, I'd give the edge to the Guardsman. Stormtroopers are never really shown engaging in it, while Guard legend is full of massed bayonet charges.

Ranged combat would be a little more even odds. I'd give a slight edge to the Stormtrooper due to full body coverage (except joints) as opposed to Guardsmen who just get a flak jacket and a helmet (design varies by regiment).

Goddammit, I swore that I wouldn't get involved in another politics thread, but now I feel I have to.

Out in Nowheresville there are two primary uses for guns that don't apply to inner-city life: hunting and ACTUAL self-defense.
My step-grandfather hunts every year to supplement his yearly pension. By bagging a moose or two, he's got enough preserved meat to last several weeks throughout the year and still have enough to trade with other people in his rural community for fish, vegetables, and services.
Also, out in the wild there are wild animals. Wild animals can be dangerous, both to humans and domesticated animals. How do you expect a man to defend his herd of animals from things like mountain lions or wolves or whatever without a gun?

Looks like a small pebble of harder silvery shinier material which has been sitting ontop of the softer sandy material below it long enough for it to erode around it from wind, thus leaving the non eroded rock on a pillar. Eg like this

That could very well be it. Perhaps actual silver?

How are you gonna be compressing or simplifying the land when people can be anywhere on it at any time? This isn't a single-player game where you can neatly pack up locations that aren't near you, nor is it a space sim that is 99% featureless emptiness. If the idea is that you can literally go anywhere on the Earth, you're gonna need massive amounts of data that can be easily changed to accommodate user-made modifications such as buildings. There can be no invisible walls, there can be no "nodes" that have no direct access between them. Hell, even fast-travel could be considered "cheating" the spi

You mentioned Spore. Aside from the fact that it's a single-player game with noticeable load times when visiting worlds (which were procedurally generated anyway, so there aren't exactly "world files" that you can open up), those are much smaller than a real planet. I couldn't find any statistics on Spore planets, but there are statistics for Kerbin (from Kerbal Space Program). That massive planet that you can explore and is mostly empty? A tenth of the size of Earth. And again, single-player game.

Say your idea simplifying data is accurate. If the players were to spread out enough, how many would it take to bring the server to its knees? How much land could be simulated around each person? Minecraft does it in chunks, but those chunks are miniscule compared to the potential size of the world. Minecraft servers typically hold less than 100 players at any time.

The only saving grace I see at this time is that they're planning for it to be a browser-based game, which if nothing else means less strain on user hard drives.

Well, if it's cheap, it could be useful. But I'm not sure if it's feasible to mass product nano polymer.

At one point, it wasn't feasible to mass-produce aluminum. Times and technology change, so if this stuff really takes off we might see a hell of a lot more stuff like this.

Science, have you gone to far?!?!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=IfUaKXasdD4

Looks awesome. I'd use it on my laptop carrying case in case it rains

My guess is it's debris from some other lander project. Or hell, maybe even this one, though it doesn't look very "fresh".

Failing that, it's clearly part of some Martian war machine, and messing with it will have dire consequences for us all.

Just to let everyone know, I have quite a bit of schoolwork today, so no update.

However, I should have time tomorrow for an extra-large update to make up for it