Bay 12 Games Forum

Well, normal in the sense of normal conversation between crooked businessfolk, sure? Not from NY myself, but there's family up there that comes and visits every once in a bit. It did look a bit like how one of them (an in-law, mind, but still) talked at times, actually, now that I think of it. The rest, not so much.

... iirc, that one is still in prison for gambling ring related charges, or something along those lines. So, uh.

Yeah, was aware. Didn't mean to suggest I wasn't, if I did, heh.

And yeah, quick double check suggests the translated version's only (legitimately) available through the google store. If you're stuck with apple there's not much I can do besides give a halfhearted prayer for your damned soul.

Significantly more than threadmarks (they're pretty great, mind you, but there's a lot of B12's discussions that it isn't as useful for as somewhere like SB or SV, imo), a decent alert system would probably be all kinds of sexy. There has to have been something approaching a good hundred or more times over the years I've been here someone's asked how to unsubscribe from a thread, or fiddle with new/unread topics, or so on. I wouldn't be entirely unwilling to bet stuff surrounding that sort of feature is straight up the single most asked about thing regarding the forum software.

... after that would be an easier method of resizing images, and/or auto-resize, methinks. Then let me put spoilers inside spoilers and I might go find a small child to sacrifice to you. I mean, it would probably be a tadpole or something instead of human, but we could work something out. I've never cooked veal but I'm willing to learn.

Okay, I have sunk far, far too many hours into this thing over the last handful of days not to make mention. I speak of the amazingly named Space Battleship Story RPG! I'm sure it's a poignant and moving title in the original language. It's somewhere between a RPG, a strategy game, a monster collectathon, and an idle/incremental whazdinger.

Immediate note of the downsides, just to drive away folks from the start: The game engrishy as all hell, grindy as goddamn and has multiple breakpoints where you'll find yourself slamming head first into a giant wall of incandescent Fuck You In Particular until you grind out almost obnoxious amounts of resources and progression, it's pretty slow in general, the gameplay itself is both fairly hands off, somewhat approaching clumsy/buggy, and can very easily be brutally unforgiving anyway, there are ads (post battle, generally, but most of the time you can just hit whatever your back button is and get right back to the game. They're pretty painless as mobile games go.), and there's probably other stuff I'm forgetting to boot. Game has flaws you can sling a wave motion gun shot through.

Despite this, this damn thing has been on and playing close to 24/7 for the last several days, on and going with me giving it at least half an eye while I do just about everything but drive, bathe, and sleep. What it basically amounts to is being the captain of a 2D side-scrolling Gundam space fleet, complete with giant mecha, massive space battles with gigantic tracts of your screen space covered in laser beams and explosions, and alternate dimension F18s that will drag you to the side of the space lanes and violently sodomize your everything. Also war crimes. War crimes as far as the eye can see. _{okay, it's mostly just one war crime vigorously repeated -- the game's what-amounts-to-bonus-level that sporadically pops up consists of you chasing down and violently murdering an immigration fleet; i.e. a colonization fleet filled with who knows how many millions of civilians. This has one of the best time/return cost ratios for much of the game, and remains one of the better sources of population for even longer; also the main immigration ship, for all you won't be able to buy it for pretty much ever -- its cost is straight 9s, and I'm pretty sure the game's gold cap -- is one of the strongest ships in the entire game}

Gameplay is pretty simple, all told -- you have all of 10 buttons that actually do anything gameplay wise, one of which chooses your flagship's targeting priorities (you can target manually, but you will probably not hit shit if you do), four which designates targeting priority and formation for your allies (manually separable by ship type into three groups, plus your hanger minions), four which turn on and off your weapons and ship-board ally launching (which can be commanded with one of that first four-group), and one button to retreat. With these, you fly through side-scrolling levels, blowing everything to hell as you progress mini-boss (usually just mildly beefed up normal enemies) by mini-boss, until it culminates in an end-stage boss fight, all of which are giving a solid go at returning the favor. Along the way, you collect money, population, and loot, then you go back home, spend loot on upgrades and allies, and repeat the process all over again.

The big bit, is the loot. Which is also the monster collectathon. Your enemies can drop their everything, with some mild caveats (several types are rolled up into a single type for your minions, ferex) -- their weapons, their design schematics (which lets you build them, upgrade them with money, and use excess schematics to upgrade the design through murder), their subweapons, generators, if they have it, you can murder them and take it. This, mind you, also includes the end-stage bosses. The asteroid fortress you run into in the first few levels? My current playthrough is using that as its primary flagship.* That bastard on saturn (or uranus or jupiter... can't quite remember which it was) that is probably going to be your first roadblock? If I pull together enough money and murder it enough to get its design, I can build that, drive it, outfit my supporting fleet with it, and if things get really frisky I might be able to stick it in my flagship's hanger and use it as my freespawn murderfodder. If I have enough load space (most boss items are incredibly heavy, several times the largest available space you'll have for a while -- don't worry, after a bit you start getting access to ships that can mount some), I can take their weapons and smash fleets to the metaphorical space ground with them.

Which leads to pretty much the rest of the game. You collect money and people by killing things, and spend them on earth for world investments (which unlocks a bunch of stuff, mostly formations and difficulty level access for individual stages, but also the occasional ship) and developing weapons (which you'll probably rather pick up, but sometimes development will let you get a weapon a bit ahead of the curve and sometimes you just don't want to grind that one enemy in an available stage) and ships (which have to be developed initially to use, but cost less as the level rises via pickup). Also you can change the ability/skill you're leveling and promote your character if you've sent enough things to the grave (which primarily unlocks new skills, but also -- and rather importantly -- increases the number of non-hanger ally ships you can bring along) and spend resources (generally end of the level, well... resources... that's your third currency, used for chips and development) to upgrade "chips", which are basically special abilities (such as better auto-aim, more hanger space, faster distance coverage, status resistances, etc.), 23 in all and the lot of them random drops from specific stages.** Then you pop up to orbit, adjust your ship loadout (or not) and fleet composition (if you're not broke or don't want to), and repeat the process.

... and that's the formula. You go, you kill in epic 2D space genocide competitions or get blown to hell trying,*** you come home, tweak your ill gotten gains, then do it again. Theoretically there's a plot but A) it doesn't matter and B) it's sufficiently poorly translated (no ill word at the dev, though, the current version is still going through the translation process) you probably won't understand it anyway. The graphics are fairly low-fi pixel-y, but it's the kind of 2d low-fi that means several hundred/thousand projectiles and a few dozen ships can all be on the same screen, and are generally good enough for what they do, there's sound but I haven't bothered to listen to it, but mostly you're just driving your ride and accompanying minions through a hell wall of death and jink, and it's pretty damn great, particularly if you're fairly fond of mostly hands-off games that still have a bit of investment and need for attention. Reminds me of an RPG-ish 2D side scrolling Liberation Army, and that is a complement and a bloody half.

Anyway. Initial caveats aside, I'm basically loving this vaguely beautiful attempt at putting you in the driver seat of the space fleets in a giant robot anime, and after this much time sunk, feel this bloody thing needs to have a recommendation.

Couple parting tips: Carrier allies increase your hanger space, up to a maximum of 3 -- this is very, very nice once you get superweapon level load space, since it means you can stuff another three full on cruisers into your mechapocket. Also on the ally front, once you find yourself with melee weapons (you'll know them because they're little no-range crescents that probably seem completely bloody useless when you first try one out) and proper gunboats (not the little patrol boat or whatever, the type will say gunboat instead of small boat), you will be very interested to know having those gunboats in your fleet increases your weapon range at a ratio of 1 per two gunboats, max of +2 at four boats... and that includes the melee weapons.

This will turn the previously complete crap melee weapons into the deadliest mid/short-mid-ish range weapons you will have access to for a very, very long time, particularly if you manage to off a metal SF or murakumo and get their swords to drop, and render the previously kinda' iffy SF mecha into tiny little deathbeasts, particularly once you hit the initial specialist and beyond. Also gunboat+metal or murakumo sword is quite possible the best anti-projectile piece of equipment you will find for basically ever so far as your sub slot goes -- if you're having trouble with something that shoots a single large projectile into your face, or fires in a straight line, hunt yourself down one of those two, get your gunboats, and laugh in the face of glowing projectile death.

And don't forget to visit the wormhole when it first shows up! Leaf 32 is a wonderful place full of money and glee that you'll want to avoid bringing your friends to when you initially scope it out unless you're already flush with cash and have some excess population laying around.

* It's the cheapest thing you can buy that's able to mount boss weapons and actually do anything... and more importantly, if it can mount boss weapons it can mount most ships you'll see for a while, so you get to stop spitting those piddly mass produced mecha or tiny boat ships or fighter planes out of your hanger and start spitting full fledged battleships. Also has a pretty decent sized hanger, which is just icing.
** Tip: Farm the training ground until you get its chip. Farm the training ground until you get its chip. I think it might be a guaranteed drop, but if it isn't, keep popping the deathstar balloon _{yes there is a deathstar balloon} until the chip falls out. It's what lets you speed up the rate fights progress, and is the difference between getting ten hours of progress in ten hours and getting fourteen.
*** Very much bonus points because you are going to die, the losses for your flagship getting blown up are usually pretty small. You don't lose anything you collected up till that point in the stage, and as near as I can tell the only costs involved are replacing any non-hanger allies that may have gotten ganked in the process of your ignoble end, most of which are fairly cheap. Key word there being most. You get that asteroid fortress minion blown up and you just lost a few dozen thousand gold and a good twelve thousand lives. Deployment and crew costs go down as ship design level goes up, but the big ones cost so much it's going to be a long time before it makes much of a difference for 'em.

Hypothetically, I would have much preferred if she had told me to begin with. So many more possibilities, there. Not particularly possessive of someone else's emotional attachments so long as a decent enough connection remains between me and them, but at least an invite would be nice, y'know? If I had somehow ended up in a legally binding marital contract with someone they would have known from the outset I could probably be talked into a threesome without that much trouble.

Probably better to know, at the absolute least if the side relationship is impacting whatever arrangements your main one has, though. Depending on other aspects of the mainline relationship there's even odds it doesn't really matter (not like you can't love more than one person, et al, and depending on the logistics aspect it's entirely possible to be married and give zero shits who the other is boinking or has emotional entanglements with, so long as the bills are paid and the kid happy or whatever), but you can't really be sure without awareness.

If there's no effects, though, and otherwise y'all's relationship is about as it ever was and as strong as desired, though... eh. The difference between something that isn't happening and something that is but has no effect on you is no difference. Still nice to know, but if you're both still getting everything you want out of your own relationship, it just... doesn't actually matter, yeh.

Brass tacks level, in complete honesty in the end I'd want to know if only so I could ask for pictures. It'd be better from that angle, and if absolutely nothing else about the situation pinged my concern that angle would still be left over.

E: Though, uh. Definite caveat for the identity of said other critter. If your wife is going down on a twelve year old, ferex, you probably really want to have a heads up. Joint and several can be a sumbiiiitch.

Well, if a mayor WAS getting flack, it would more likely have been privately rather than in public. Let alone relentlessly like the way Trump does.

On the privatization of air traffic controllers, I know there's some countries that already do it like Germany and Canada. While Germany is a whole bunch smaller than the US, Canada is equivalent as far as 'flyover territory' goes, namely, lots and lots of rural airports between the major hubs. So, I'm wondering how it works out for them, and other countries that do the same.

They seem to do alright. That said, nav canada, ferex, also bought the system/rights to run it from the canadian government. Near as I can tell deficit spending wasn't involved. So straight from the start whatever they did isn't what's being proposed if it's coming with 45b price tag. And uh. As for Germany, it's organized under private law, but one might be interested in taking a moment and seeing who owns it. Independent third party as per the suggestion state side it is not. So it's a bit of a case of whatever they did apparently isn't exactly applicable to the plan at hand. They might have insights but those insights look pretty bluntly to be "not what the GOP is suggesting".

... that said, again, it's pretty likely to be a non-starter. There's a little slice of the GOP that's been suggesting privatization for a while now, and some air unions have been pushing for it in the clearest example of fox clamouring to be let into the hen house I've noticed in months, but the rest of the party has been persistently against it -- and if the GOP can't even sell it amongst themselves, you better believe that ain't going very far.

Over that same period, privatizing air traffic would increase the deficit by $45b, undoing more than a third of the "savings" of the AHCA.

Oh, more fun than that -- consider a moment his initial call for the government pay in on infrastructure is 200b, i.e. that 45b deficit aimed to enrich the private sector would be about a fourth of the total effort he's claimed intent to make. Just ponder on that for a mo'.

Though @smj, I don't recall any leader, at the absolute least of a major country, doing that. Pres would sometimes sling flak, sure, but the sort of flak they'd sling would not be of that nature, couched in that language, or with that timing and whatnot. It's just... not something a president has really done. Or just about any major leader. The immediacy and blatant insults are what does it.

Yeah, I'unno, but pretty sure derision and whatnot from a major world leader to a city's mayor that soon after an attack is high on up there on the metaphorical "new" scale.

... honestly, I literally can't remember something like that. Maybe back during civil war times or something? Our earlier days politicians threw shit pretty hard.

In other news, trump has made his opening volley on infrastructure by calling for the privatisation of our air traffic controls. Not updating the FAA or investing money into it, but divesting government control to a third party that would pay for its operation with user fees. For those paying attention, that is, indeed, more or less the exact opposite of pushing for investment into infrastructure. Bonus points, signs point real hard to it quite possibly being deader on arrival than his budget plans.

The tone has been set, ladies and gents. Now we get to spend a few days finding out if it's going to hold.

E: Oh, and he apparently twitter-storm sabotaged the everloving hell out of his immigration ban appeal to the SCOTUS. So that's nice.