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Desperados3 looks as delightful as one would hope.

Fiber 'net installed. Hubby speedtests at around avg 800Mbps on a quick testing but I seem to be bottlenecked somewhere in the LAN pipeline to 100Mbps. Which is still way faster than before, tho. Instead of 4MB on Steam it's almost 12MB. And screenshot threads load instantly vs. taking some seconds to load all images. Yay. At some point hubby will fix the LAN bottleneck (he has other stuff to work on too like installing a better firewall he needs 'cause work security, vs. the basic stuff ATT's router thingie uses). I'll be curious re: Steam then. I mean, game D/L's (or wanting 10 Twitch streams on at once) are the only major net speed issue for me typically. Anyhoo, I feel "with it" for (1st world) 'net speed again. Edit: well, hubby just changed the lan router cable and changed a port and now I have full speed. It's always the cable, right. So I tried a Steam game update. It got up to 71MB but the download finished too fast to see it go higher.

I just one-shotted the final boss in XCOM: Chimera Squad with my first shot of the mission. On Impossible difficulty... (OK, technically I used Fan Fire, so it was multiple shots with one action)

On office social call got tired of being nagged to turn on webcam, so finally did. Turned it to face the sun.

^

Yeah, and that's perhaps the single most disappointing thing about the film since the potential was actually there. You're not meant to 'know' that BC is playing Khan at the start they had a great opportunity to show the charm and manipulation side properly in the first half setting up his plot and actioning it, and the ruthless side later post reveal. It was a technically good performance from BC, but I ended up thinking that character wise Tom Hardy's Bane (!) was actually a more convincing Khan analogue. If one were to be charitable one might say that they deliberately tried to steer away from a Montalban style performance due to it being iconic, but if so it was a mistake. Then again since it's JJ that's probably overthinking it, and he was too busy doing 'clever' stuff like reversing Kirk's 'Khaaaaaan!!!1111!!!' line to pay attention to irrelevant details like characterisation.

I was just excited to see Robocop back on the screen again. His death is pretty much the perfect Peter Weller moment, and it makes the entire movie worth it.

In lieu of E3 indie developers banded together for their own presentation in form of Guerrilla Collective on June 6th-8th. Larian will be there and so will... ZA/UM. Curious. They did say to keep those Disco Elysium saves.

I don't really have a favorite manufacturer in BL3. Just favorite specific weapons. I look at dps, basically. Like, there's this shotgun The Lob. Fires a giant ball that is super slow moving. Normally you'd toss it thinking "useless." But lvl 57 ones do around 11k+ elemental damage. So I put it on and charge into enemies faces and fire so they can't dodge. Boom, often a critical and they're dead - thus I like the weapon even if initially it seems like it "sucks". I love high elemental and splash damage. Especially in Mayhem 3+. I am a charge into the middle of a fight type, no stealth, I (mostly) gave up on snipers and any subtlety since BL2 (sniping was the bomb in BL1 tho). Hubby's still the more subtle type, using cover and trying for precise shots and the like (he takes 3x as long to do/clear anything, I swear, heh) but eh, not my style anymore. So I choose gear accordingly. Edit: My current favorite weapons are Hellshock pistol and Yellowcake. I typically need nothing else, really. I can blow through storymode/normal through all of Eden6 using a lvl 14 Hellshock. >.> Lydia sniper can be awesome too. Note: power wise, almost anything works on Mayhem 1, don't have to be picky there and you still get plenty of Legendaries in M1. Hubby sticks to that.

There may be a hint hidden in Chimera Squad about XCOM 3 being planned for 2022.

I'm done with Divinities again and picked up Shadowruns to cleanse the palate as people keep telling they're so good. Also people keep telling to skip "Returns" but I'm not doing that because people also also keep telling it's real short. So far so good, I love the writing in "Returns"; I wonder if that's because it's legit good or it's my murder mystery bias + after "Divinities" even third grader's "How I spent my summer holidays" essay might read like high lit. Gameplay wise, it's...well...very streamlined. And linear. Get your story bits, visit the hub to resupply and hire dudes, hit the next mission. Kind of like hybrid between a RPG and a strategy game. I'm also unfamiliar with Shadowrun system so I'm playing it like a fantasy game -- two summoners, a mage and a big beefy dude who hits hard. Took a decker to one mission, had no idea what to do with him. And looking up stuff on the 'net mostly results in spoilers for the next two games because "Returns" seems to be the unpopular red-headed stepchild of the series. Oh well, at least now I know that the class I picked -- the shaman -- is going to be a bit OP in the next game, so that's that.

After that talk about dialogue, I'd actually like to see Josh take on a role primarily as the dialogue and relations designer. Focusing on the writing, characters, and world/lore. It would be nice if he was back in the seat largely as a creative lead, and someone else took on the role of directing, and maybe some fresh blood in designing combat as well. The Civ games have a new designer for each game, and the cite the reason being fresh eyes contribute more. Pillars could benefit from the same, but I think Josh still has a lot to add. Especially with his history background, and fact lots of this worlds lore, setting, and themeing comes from him.

I played Final Fantasy X. I wanted to give it a second chance after all these years and it was much better than I remembered. But I still see why I disliked it when released. Tidus acts like a child, his performance and Yuna's are both lacking. And the random encounter chance is simply ridiculous. But I actually really enjoyed it. I also rushed through The Forest. Building a base is too tedious for me to enjoy building. Have to chop down like a dozen trees and fight off half a dozen cannibal attacks just to build a log cabin. And you still don't have any defenses up. I'm not a fan of fighting off cannibal attacks on your camp. But spelunking into caves trying to find your lost son and fending off mutants living down there. That was my jam. Final boss sucked, though. I'm on to The Long Dark. The Forest reminded me that I do enjoy story stuff in these survival games. But this one is trying a bit too hard at that. So far the story is people talking way too much without giving any insight into the greater disaster. I guess it's more exploration, unraveling a mystery, and environmental storytelling I enjoyed. But it's still interesting.

It is a bad day to be an enemy of Keyrock.

Depends a bit on the rough build idea you have and which items you want to use. Generally I would have high PER for more ACC and DEX for speed and also RES if I wanted to stack Deflection and use Riposte and Enduring Dance with Mirrored Images and a shield like Tuotilo's Palm for example. Because every point of deflection has increasing returns. If Mirrored Images etc. ist only there to improve your survivability a bit and you want to dual wield weapons or fists or so then I personally wouldn't invest too much into RES (although getting hit by Arcane Dampener as a Nalpasca is really bad - maybe you still want to raise RES and also INT a bit). MIG doesn't need to be very high because you have Sneak Attack already and CON doesn't need to be very high if your deflection is good. By the way: if you use Tuotilo's Palm or an offhand weapon you could think about a Battle Axe + modal in the main hand (at least before getting something else): if you use Full Attacks (like Stunning Surge) mostly then the long recovery of the Battle Axe will be skipped and only the one of Tuotilo's Palm/offhand weapon will count. Makes you attack as fast as without the modal but the damage will be significantly higher (because Bleeding Cuts stack - also with Swift Flurry as I said). Only with Full Attacks though.

Enjoying the sunset: Public opinion about Andromedons: Someone on the Steam forum insists Patchwork isn't useful: Listening to Minsk's advice:

"Char building simulator" is exactly what PoE and Deadfire are for me, hehe. That term never crossed my mind but it fits. I do playthroughs to see if the stuff I tested with console is also good (which mostly meansfun to play) in the "real" game - but it often happens that I abandon the run as soon as I hit a certain spot where I can see "yep, it works well" or "uh it doesn't play as good as I thought". Megabosses are not impossible but unfun for me because they need stuff I usually avoid: consumables, resting bonuses and so on. And because they are such huge bags of HP which makes it a tedious grind even if you have a good setup. Also heavily favours classes with unlimited resources which I find to be a bit lame. I would miss nothing without the Megabosses.

The four last episodes of the last season of Clone Wars were so good that I...

New Large Shield - Can be enchanted / upgraded Accuracy penalty reduced by 2 Elemental Imbuement - When large shield modal active add damage to each main hand attack. Abilities tied to paladin levels cipher keywords. Unique animations. Gravity Well - Functions like pull of Eora but ticks twice as often and a much greater reduction in stride - for when you need the enemies where the tank is. Can upgrade Gravity well to 2 per rest. Modified medium shield from previous version. Added bashing attack this is separate from Shield Bash ability which 1 / encounter. Bashing will scale with enchantment level - requires Noqn Shield bashing fix MOD which is integrated into Elric Galad's Balance MOD (links will be published in suggested mods on my Nexus page)

Are people still defending the Chinese gov't? The same government who **** on a doctor for speaking the truth who then 'mysteriously' got the virus afterwards and die. And, now, China is pretending they see him as some sort of heroic martyr even though they branded him a traitor? That China? The Chinese gov't answers to nobody lest of all the Chinese citizens.

The whole thing is very much ad hoc, but it is a novel virus. The justification is however epidemiological, and is (more or less) based on what is achievable as opposed to what people might like to be achievable. Epidemiologists as with every specialist group tend to use jargon which may not play well with common definitions. This CDC page has a pretty good definition and examples near the top. Epidemiologically speaking the asian countries used as a comparison are at- or very very close to- 'Elimination' rather than 'Control'; ie instead of managing the incidence effectively over the whole population they're able to jump on it case by case as they would with something like measles. Denmark cannot do that yet, and it would likely take a lot of extra time- probably 6 to 8 weeks- to get to that status. At the time they started lifting restrictions had an R of 0.7, ie the average covid19 patient infected 0.7 people, and it is still in controlled territory now at ~0.9. The approach in most places is very much about trying to manage the infection rate against the other factors that are important. On a more meta level the good/ effective response from some countries tends to be due to geography more than anything, with a healthy dollop of culture/ experience too. If you're an island or have very easily controlled land borders (Taiwan, RoK, NZ, Australia etc) you have a massive innate advantage, if you had experience with SARS1 you have a big advantage because a lot of the behaviours learned there were maintained and it acted towards preparation. Unfortunately the vast majority of Europe has neither of those factors working for it and indeed have some of the most open borders with each other. The ultimate reason why Denmark will only be able to use a Control strategy is simply that there are too many infections already, and there is no realistic way to stop ones coming in from outside. Once that is accepted relaxing some controls- while keeping R<1- is the orthodox strategy.

After some work, I managed to get both the credits and the standing with one of Paranid factions necessary to get my Paranid Odysseus Destroyer fixed up and fully equipped. For scale, that's my Split Cobra Frigate docked on top of the Odysseus. Here's the destroyer's bridge: The only thing not top quality on the ship are the maneuvering thrusters. The mk3 thrusters are ludicrously expensive (5 1/2 million credits) and only slightly better than the mk2 I have installed now, so that upgrade can wait. I modded the hull and shields to be beefier, all the shields, the main shields and the component shields (large ships have shields for components such as engines and turrets in addition to the main shields). I also modded the two main cannons on the front of the ships to do more damage, but haven't modded the turrets yet, since I ran out of the necessary components. Lastly, I modded the engines for more speed. I almost want someone to threaten one of my stations now.

Well @Boeroer, you raised some very compelling arguments. I will admit, that at first I was more interested in Shadowdancer. Especially, the mobility aspect was a big selling point for me. What I am afraid though, is that between Escape and Mirror Image I will burn through my resources too soon. Besides, I don't know which of rogues active abilities are worth using (if any), and how it further impact resource economics. More so, I think that up until the very end of the road (Deathblows), Soul Whip is far superior than Sneak Attack. Thus being said, my knowledge in that regard is superficial at best. I have a romantic vision of Shadow Dancer jumping around entire battlefind with escape, kicking ass and taking names, riposteing from time to time. The more I was reading in various threads, the more I was sold on theory that Transcendent provides better DPS and more varied playstyle with interesting active abilities. Plus Transcendent not being reliant on finite resources provides nice incentive to use some other armors than Devils of Caroc for once. Which sounds awesome but it would suck to invest dozens of hours only to realise that only ability I use is Soul Annihilation and I spend majority of time waltzing around mobs cause god forbid ever being enganed. (though Force of Anguish and Blade Turning should provide some survivalibility). Regarding Swift Flurry - I am not by any means hell-bent on it. I was theorycrafting that Mirror Image allowed me to sustain Dance of Death for longer thus accumulate more ACC hence proc Swift Flurry more often. If Lightning Strikes is more efficient I am all for it.

Cool you liked that Berathian Priest. Ouf... that highly depends on preference I would say. If you like less micro or more (casting usually adds more) for example. Personally I like Monks a lot - and Rogues and Ciphers (except Beguiler) not that much - so that's kind of a tie here. In my opinion Trickster is a very nice subclass though and Soulblade can be very powerful. Erm... I think I like Shadowdancer more due to his mobility (Escape is very cheap), the no-fuss damage output and the better survivability in the early game. I like Ciphers more in other multiclasses I guess. If you are willing to use Swift Flurry then some weapons are particular fun: Willbreaker Morning Star with modal + Force of Anguish, Stunning Surge and Enervating Blows: lower enemies' Fortitude by 45 points via stun/weaken/Body Blows and then use Force of Anguish wich targets Fortitude. The Willbreaker also has hit-to-crit conversion. Sun & Moon: hits twice and thus has double chance to crit. It procs Stunning Surge refund and Swift Flurry more often than other weapons. It's also very good with a Soulblade (either less risk of missing and also gain focus with the second flail head if the first one applied Soul Annihilation). Sungrazer: it has an enchantment which procs on kill-with-crit. Usually that's hard to proc - but with Swift FLurry it's rel. common to kill with a crit. And the following explosion is powerful and also gains from Sneak Attack/Deathblows or would also generate focus. The other enchantment that triggers on x% hits is also great when Swift Flurry procs (additional procs count). Usually it's best to only hit with this weapon then. So it's one of the few cases where one handed style can make sense. Stalker's Patience: it has an enchantment that removes recovery on 20% of crits. If Swift Flurry procs it will remove recovery very often. I had like 5 or more stabby-stabs without recovery sometimes. Also here one-handed style can make sense. Usually it's strictly inferior but here it's ok. Whispers of the Endless Paths: Offensive Parry procs 100% on melee misses against you. It stacks with Riposte. Both work with Swift Flurry. A Soulblade is especially fun because he can gain focus just passively while "parrying" blows and then burn that focus with a cone attack of Soul Annihilation. But of course the deflection of a Nalpasca/Soulblade wouldn't be too great unless you get Borrowed Instincts. Trickster has an easier time to get high deflection sooner. Soulblades can make good use of Tuotilo's Palm - because Soul Annihilation is a Primary Attack- You can use the main hand weapon but will not attack with the (weak) shield bash - yet you keep the recovery bonus from dual wielding. Nalpasca/Tricksters can also make good use of it - with Mirrored Images + shield deflection (especially with the +1 deflection per wound) Riposte can be used and you become even more sturdy.

I never understood the negativity about the A-Team movie. It was a silly fun show and the movie was in the same vein.

@Boeroer Thanks for insightful answer. If I remember correctly, you were an author of amazing build for priest of Berath in first Pillars. I had a blast playing him. Nevertheless (and given that I am going to spend most of my time on veteran difficulty) which one of them would you recomend as more fun to play? Transcendent or Shadowdancer?

Lets not say things we cant take back. Still the only movie Ive seen where someone flew a tank.

China is definitely hiding their real numbers; it's a totalitarian information control dystopia- albeit with some leaks, and which was literally welding up buildings to enforce lockdown- and that's what they do. They also definitely spread it across the world, and if it wasn't a deliberate policy it was so willfully stupid and abjectly moronic a decision as to make no difference to it being deliberate. You can't shut down domestic travel because of the risk but allow international travel- with threats and complaints against people imposing restrictions, even- then claim it was not your fault and you didn't know. Of course it's your fault, and of course you knew; you shut down domestic travel because of the risk after all. And while there's zero evidence at all that it was man made or manipulated the coincidence of it originating in the same city as China's big research facility into coronaviruses is certainly a striking one. That being used by Orange Man to deflect criticism doesn't make it any less of a striking and suspicious coincidence. It just isn't proven (and the default position from history is natural transmission/ transfer, not in/ ex lab, so it has to be proven or at least have more evidence provided than coincidence), and given China is an information control dystopia is extremely unlikely ever to be proven.

I don't know if multiclassing a mechanic and a druid is a good thing but good luck to ya.

That sounds like it's been a long road, getting from there to here...

I've just updated the database in production to get an issue resolved as I've done, several times now. Found out later I am supposed to get approval for that but...eh. SaaS sucks ass, good for the client I guess but means I have to deal with pointless change approval boards, several dozen KeePass stores (THAT MUST NOT BE SHARED WITH ANYONE), etc.

I just commited a completely untested hotfix to our production system that touches two seperate processes, one of them business critical and happening over night, meaning quite frankly right now during night shift. I'm thinking about ordering this:

Yeah, the US is baffling at times. I really like Bahnhof. The Swedish Security Service had a meeting with the CEO of Bahnhof about getting direct automatic access to all ISP's and phone companies telephone and emails in secret, he recorded the entire conversation and after saying no to the agreement he gave the recording to the media which ended up in the department head of SSS being called to the justice department for a hearing. Good ****.

what did I just read

As far as I'm concerned the boss is a spicy Latina.

I personally don't like rolls in video games because there usually is no scenario for unsuccessful roll or scenario is unplayable. Like in some games failing to pickpocket makes everyone in town hostile. What should a player do? Load a save game, that's what. Second, if there is always a slight chance of success there is an opportunity for min maxing where you don't put point's in those abilities, because if you need to roll them you can save/load your way to success. Far better mechanic for video game is 0/1 approach. Either you have the skill (or appropriate level of it) or you don't. So if you want to open every chest then you need to hone your skill, if you want charm your way out then you have to develop your persuasion etc.

I seriously doubt most of the people who donated were too daft to see that's not a Harry Potter event they're looking at.