Bay 12 Games Forum

Quote from: PTTG?? on April 19, 2018, 11:58:48 am

I want to set up a mod which creates zero hyperlanes, but makes every star have a gateway.

This would definitely break much of the game, but I think it has potential.

I believe one of the mods I have in the list I posted on the prior page opens up the sliders enough that it might be possible.  There's at least one that causes your civil to start with the only exit being an under construction gateway, at least, and it is the literal only way out of the system.

That's what gave me the idea, in fact. I think the sliders don't go down to 0 or up to 100% though. And come to think of it, you can't go to gateways you haven't discovered yet, so there would at least need to be some kind of scripting to reveal the whole galaxy.

I'm reminded of Wittgenstein.

Quote from: Matt Russel, Dead Philosophers in Heaven

I was going to do my honours dissertation on Wittgenstein. I spent pretty much all of last year reading from the Tractatus to On Certainty. It almost killed me. Reading Wittgenstein is like siege warfare – it requires total commitment combined with the expectation of intense suffering. You have to be OK with reading 80 pages of impenetrably fragmented argument without knowing if you are completely wasting your time or not. I think, best case, I probably understand about 1/10th of what he was on about, and yet I’m pretty sure he was right about absolutely everything.

I mean I am a Liberal Arts major and when I look at Philosophy I for a moment know what it feels like to be STEM.

Good lordy. Not getting into the TPP is literally the only thing Trump did that I outright approved of.

Let's go back a little bit here. The idea, as I understood it, was that Putin hated Hillary and was friendly with Trump. Putin does not need specific control of Trump; likewise, Trump respected Putin as the charismatic authoritarian he so desperately wants to be, so his previous friendliness makes sense. Now that Putin is making Trump look weak, Trump has turned around. Of course, Trump still desires approval from daddy Putin, so he's moderating his response in hopes that things can be patched up.

Note that this whole hypothesis actually includes the possibility of a technically innocent Trump. If Putin and the Russian apparatus was working of their own volition to elect Trump, without collaboration, it's not exactly Trump's fault. I leave it to Muller and others to determine exactly how likely that is.

Frankly, the idea of compromat-ing Trump is a bit absurd. He has no shame, and his supporters literally cheered him on when he bragged about sexual assault and tax fraud. I believe that any material that would meaningfully weaken Trump would be so outlandish that it's not believable -- something on the order of weekly satanic cannibalism rituals at the Mar-a-Lago. And if it can't be believed, it's not effective compromat.

Just so we don't forget what could be done by competent leadership, we could have opened diplomatic ties to neighboring countries and established a coalition of nations willing to prevent further humanitarian crisis and refuge movement. Assad and the rebels could be driven out by locals, instead of by a foreign power. Then we provide finance and resources for reconstruction, and use that soft power to encourage a democratic government to form.

Still waiting to hear a better solution.

I'm not exactly sarcastic here; I recognize it world be a huge undertaking, but I can't find any ethical framework that says "you should help your fellow humans,  unless it's too difficult or unprofitable, in which case leave them to die."


It's also worth pointing out that 18 million is the worst case scenario. Only two million people have left Syria done the war began,  and even with free safe transport out, I doubt the majority of the remainder would actually leave. But, having given them the option,  the US can wipe their hands of it.