Bay 12 Games Forum

Compared to the book, where Roy is unceremoniously shot and dies instantly before the book continues on for a few more chapters of ramble, the movie version really is astonishingly superior.

The prequel trilogy was okay, it wasn't brilliant or anything and some of it was just kinda bad, but I'd argue it's worth at least one watch. I remember hearing about fancuts that were generally well-received, maybe try looking for one of those.

After that I heartily recommend Rogue One as a sort of "interquel" between Episodes 3 and 4 (closer to 4). It's by far the best Disney-made Star Wars film, and this is not one of those damnation-by-faint-praise things. It's genuinely good.

As for the games, everyone's listed the biggest names. KOTOR, SWTOR, Battlegrounds, the Dark Forces/Jedi Knight games, all good. Fallen Order is also supposed to be good, being a sort of SW-themed soulslike, but I have not personally tried it because it requires signing your soul over to EA to play.

Honestly surprised it wasn't locked earlier, there were some real Nasty Opinions getting tossed around. Wouldn't be surprised to see a mute or a ban come out of it.

So what's next on the checklist? Is it the ethnic cleansing of everyone in Russia Putin dislikes, or is it nuking Ukraine...

A purge of insufficiently loyal officers and politicians seems, to me, far more likely than any use of nuclear weapons. Even Putin probably realizes that unleashing that particular dog of war will mean an end to him and his reign, and short of using enough warheads to glass every city in Ukraine it probably wouldn't win him the war anyway.

To me it's less like they're losing and more like they aren't winning. They're still some way from being defeated or retreating back to pre-war borders, but their advance has stalled out for something like a week now and they have yet to take any of the major cities. They're suffering from some pretty major logistics issues (which are only going to get worse as sanctions take their toll), their air force is nowhere near as effective as it probably should be, and the Ukrainians are kicking all sorts of ass.

That said, Ukraine is also taking some pretty hefty losses in terms of life and property damage, damaged or captured utilities, and so on. News from Mariupol makes it sound like the city is basically a pile of rubble now, and no matter the outcome of the war that will be a long and expensive clean-up operation. Until the Russian artillery stops bombarding and the soldiers stop fighting, the war isn't decided just yet.

Personally I think it isn't out of the question that Ukraine might indeed emerge victorious, which I never would have believed when the attack first started. But, it's dangerous to assume that Russia won't pull something nasty out of a back pocket and start turning things around.

I've been wanting to create an expy of the Culture, from the Iain Banks series of novels, in Stellaris but I'm running into a couple of hurdles. To summarize, the Culture is primarily known for a few things:

Post-scarcity communist anarchism. Culture society has few if any laws, no need for currency, and as much freedom and equality as they can manage. Life is basically idyllic for most.
Great reliance on machines to manage their society. From unintelligent machines to sentient AI drones (who count as full citizens of the Culture) all the way to incredibly potent Minds that keep things running.
A disdain for living on planetary surfaces, preferring instead to live on orbital habitats and ships and such. After all, why mess around with undesirable ecosystems or destructive terraforming when you can just build tailor-made environments in space?

My first thought was to make a Rogue Servitor empire with the Void Dwellers origin, but quickly discovered that Machine Intelligences were not allowed to go that route. It also locks you out of certain ascension perks that would fit the Culture well but require normal, non-Gestalt ethics. Thus my dilemma. How to make something that at least resembles the Culture?

Its bothered me a bit so I'll just post it.

But I find NATO standing up and applauding when Ukraine asked to be part of NATO and their speech they did...a bit more like them standing up and clapping Ukraine's demise. I mean imagine leader of a nation being invaded, putting up a great fight but almost for sure will be conquered. All NATO can do is clap for you some failing encouragement instead of actually doing anything that would actually prevent a big bully invading you, since sanctions aren't really doing anything to prevent that. Kinda sad to me more than anything. But anything that can be actually done would just be world war 3...still...it bothered me a bit enough to post. And especially since NATO refused the no fly zone over Ukraine...makes it more like just like they clapped Ukraine's demise, even though wasn't really intended to be that kinda gives it off that vibe to me.

Dunno if I was being conquered or beat to death, I wouldn't want people standing around clapping for me some encouragement. I'd want to be defended personally if someone was beating me to death.

The big problem we're facing is that (most of) the world is still hoping to avoid WWIII, and there's a considerable risk that bringing NATO forces into direct conflict with Russians could trigger such a conflict (even if it only occurs in defense of Ukraine).

Unfortunately we can't just declare a no-fly zone over Ukraine and expect Russia to honor it. They didn't pay attention to anything else that was said in the lead-up to this war and are resolutely ignoring the world's displeasure as much as they can. Ordering a no-fly zone would require the use of NATO air and anti-air assets to enforce the zone, and unless all the Russian pilots refuse to fly in protest it will (not might: will) lead to shots fired, war declared, and quite possibly nukes in the air.

It's a shitty situation and I wish the world were doing more to help Ukraine out, but the risks of escalation have to be acknowledged.

Mordecai chooses Grimoire for his extra sub-category, for the record.

: "Thank you, Professor!"

: "Er, not about the money. Sorry about that part."

: "I've been working on those studies for weeks. Now that it's done I'm not sure what to do next."