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I haven't responded to these topics at length for a couple of reasons, chief of which is that it's hard to write coherently when you're watching a human nightmare unfold in close to real time and it feels like you need a close to daily Johnny Walker nightcap to help sleep at night, as I have friends and acquaintances from Ukraine who have thankfully managed to flee to Poland or Moldova (for those interested, here's where I go for my doomscrolling). -To start I can't help but observe just how astoundingly prescient former Russian GenStab member Mikhail Khodarenok was at the beginning of February on outcome of the "Special Operation". Translation provided by the excellent <<Russian Defense Policy>> blog and excerpts provided for emphasis: "To assert that no one in Ukraine will defend the regime signifies practically a complete lack of knowledge about the military-political situation and moods of the broad masses in the neighboring state. And the degree of hatred (which, as is well-known, is the most effective fuel for armed conflict) in the neighboring republic toward Moscow is plainly underestimated. No one in Ukraine will meet the Russian army with bread, salt and flowers. It seems events in south-east Ukraine in 2014 didn’t teach anyone anything. Then they also figured that the entire left-bank Ukraine in one fell swoop and ticked-off seconds would turn into Novorossiya. They already drew the maps, thought out the personnel contingent for the future city and regional administrations, worked out state flags. But even the Russian-speaking population of this part of Ukraine (including also cities like Kharkov, Zaporozhe, Dnepropetrovsk, Mariupol) didn’t support similar thoughts by a huge majority. The “Novorossiya” project somehow imperceptibly deflated and quietly died. In a word, a liberation crusade in 2022 in the form and likeness of 1939 won’t work in any way. In this instance the words of Soviet literature classic Arkadiy Gaydar are true as never before: “It’s obvious that now we won’t have an easy battle, but a hard campaign.” ... To this it’s certainly necessary to add that supplies of prospective and highly-accurate weapons in the VS RF don’t bear any kind of unlimited character. “Tsirkon” hypersonic missiles still aren’t in the armory. And the quantity of “Kalibrs” (sea-based cruise missiles), “Kinzhals,” Kh-101 (air-launched cruise missiles) and missiles for “Iskanders” in the very best case number in the hundreds (dozens in the case of “Kinzhals”). This arsenal is completely insufficient to wipe a state on the scale of France with a population of more than 40 million from the face of the earth. And Ukraine is characterized by exactly these parameters." -Ever since the lines seemingly ossified in at the end of 2014 I had deep suspicions that the Russian armed forces were going to have a substantially harder time moving beyond the Donbass due to the potential morale problems we are seeing now; the Russian armed forces would be invading a fellow Slavic country with a shared cultural and religious background and most Ukrainians are able to speak Russian, fluently in fact. In spite of a painful history between Ukraine and Russia a conflict was as unthinkable for most westerners as the state of Iowa invading Minnesota (I'm reminded of this poignant exchange between Simon Ostrovsky and Ukrainian Naval Infantry from back in 2014). What's more I had believed the addition of the FGM-148 Javelin to the Ukrainian arsenal (which in retrospect should have happened in the direct aftermath of the MH-17 shootdown, not in 2018 when Ukraine had long since ramped up production of domestic ATGMs, which made up for their lack of sophistication in comparison to the Javelin with sheer numbers) was going to be something that would give Russian armour pause due to how devious the thermal imaging mode of the CLU and its launch-and-leave features were going to be on top of the fact that current hard-kill APS measure cannot account for top attack projectiles. -The seemingly derelict Russian Air Force can in part be attributed to the fact that the Russian armed forces tend to treat air power more as "extended range artillery" which drops ordinance no more than 100-150km behind enemy lines, and not as a means of conducting deep battlefield interdiction as western Allied air forces pioneered in Europe in 1943-1945 and the US codified into doctrine with AirLand Battle in the 1980s. For this the Russian Armed Forces would have left the task to breakthrough exploitation force (not happening now, for obvious reasons) or to their missile artillery and cruise missile bombers (both only effective against stationary targets). What has not helped is the severe lack of PGMs and advanced imaging infrared targeting pods in the Russian inventory (the most advanced targeting system in use is the Su-34's targeting system which only has an LLTV mode, which doesn't compare favourably to western IIR-capable offerings like Sniper XR or the ATFLIR) which has limited their ability to engage pop-up targets from a safe enough altitude (most Russian aircraft losses were from MANPADS, as they had to fly low in order to hit targets with any meaningful accuracy, which was fine in Syria, where the MANPADS inventory of rebels quickly dwindled to nothing). -All these factors lead to what is seemingly the only viable strategy left in the minds of the Kremlin, which is to follow the formula they used in Syria, which is to savage Eastern Ukraine and bomb all the civilian infrastructure that makes it possible for the remaining population to make the call that they're better off sitting tight. After all no population left = no partisans or potential troublemakers for the now evidently woefully-inadequate invasion force to deal with (some folks who like living inside their tanks insist that the Russians are making real progress in terms of territory, to which I say: "So, what? They haven't even gotten to what was supposed to be the actual _hard part_ yet, which is installing their Quisling and rebuilding a country while everyone is shooting at them). The message is this: "You want liberal democracy? A small/Mittelstand business climate that isn't (as) racked by corruption and cronyism? Go move to the EU for that, because here it's 'Putin or we burn the country.'" Will add more tomorrow night.

https://www.ign.com/articles/ken-roberta-williams-colossal-cave-3d Way before my time, but interesting to see them making games again.

Why? The obvious name of choice is Shady Deals, ideally with a stylized picture of him on the logo.

That is firmly lodged in my time. My dad actually took me to Sierra in the late 80's and we did a tour of the game studio. I remember seeing artists work on Quest for Glory III.

Will have to double check, but recall them not having systems posing much of a threat, after war, sanctions and the NFZs. Russia banned Facebook and Instagram, so hey, can't say they are all that bad. 😛

Supēsu Kobura aka Space Cobra Episode XVI: "Jigoku e! Ragubōru" aka "To Hell! Rug Ball" While described as a cross between US Football and baseball, I think its more akin to a cross between US Football, Rugby and Baseball, with the name really coming from the latter two. Cobra is just minding his own business biking through the wastelands on a planet when the Galactic Patrol pull him over. Is the end of Cobra's career coming at the hands of a traffic ticket? It seems like this episode has set-up the story for the remainder of this set of episode's story arc, as I imagine the next few episodes will deal with Cobra's investigation while surviving the attacks of all the people on the team he's annoyed (pretty much everyone because he's Cobra).

HA! Good Fun!

It's well known that Valve can't count to 3.

Playing Elex 2 right now (along with short bursts of Assassin's Creed Valhalla, Watch Dogs: Legion and Far Cry 6.. that's a combined 500 hours right there!). I'm biased as hell since I'm a huge fan of Piranha Bytes ever since Gothic at the beginning of time, but I must say that Elex 2 is a return to form for Piranha Bytes in my opinion. Elex was.. ok. It introduced a new setting, a new main character and it was a good try at something new for the team (mix of tech and magic). It just ended up being so bland. The gameworld was colourless and repetitive, the enemies were the same as previous games except less colourful and the story was.. let's call it un-memorable (better than forgettable, shut up). Elex 2 started off horribly for me. The writing/editing in the first few minues was so bad I honestly didn't understand what was going on (I had forgotten a lot of Elex's story) and the starting area looked even blander than I remembered from Elex. But since I had pre-ordered (don't judge!) at almost full price, I pressed on. I fought a few weird creatures, climbed a few towers with my jetpack and lo and behold, slowly but surely I started getting that Piranha Bytes feeling back again. After a while I even started finding quests that were well written and the game started making sense. Not only that, some of the quests were actually interesting enough for me to want to solve them for reasons other than the reward at the end (not always a given, unfortunately)! The world feels much more varied this time around, the characters feel more fleshed out (and the dialogue is so encompassing, it feels like the characters have something to say about every scene, no matter which companion you happen to travel with) and the combat feels much better now (especially ranged). I do, however, also feel that they might have eased up on the difficulty level a tad bit too much. I can understand why they did it (judging by the feedback from the first game) but I think they might have overshot it. The main thing though is that this feels like a proper Piranha Bytes game again: open world, no hand holding, secrets around every corner, no quest markers/map icons/Ubi towers or any of that crap, just pure unadulterated violent exploration. I love it. I should probably mention that the jetpack is brilliant this time around and you'll actually get to use it to its full capacity for some of the game's more hidden stuff. Farting about around decaying skyscrapers is awesome. I've maxed out my character now and just entered chapter 3 so the game is starting to feel a bit long in the tooth. I'll probably stop running around so much and concentrate more on the actual story quests from now on. But it has definitely already given me my money's worth. Also, and this is definitely worth mentioning, I haven't had a single crash for over 90 hours! I haven't even encountered any bugs! That is amazing and such a gigantic change from, for example, the release of Gothic 3 (if anyone remembers that disaster). KUDOS TO YOU, PIRANHA BYTES!

I had idea for an aesthetic update to combat. When you have a 1-handed weapon and a shield equipped and in combat with a much larger enemy, occasionally have the character bash their shield with their weapon, and shout something intimidating like "Bring it on!" or "I'm not scared of you!", maybe even custom comments based on which weapon type. It adds a little flourish to the game and I thought it would be a fun addition. And a fun edition.

Can we get a way to name game saves? It would help especially for those with multiple saves for different game types! I'd love to start a new game or two, but fear accidentally erasing an older game. I'm on Xbox, but I've seen PC players mention that they duplicate their saves and move them to different folders, but that's not an option for us console players...

🤮 🤮 Dude! I just ate! That is, Kai Leng is worst of the worst. Even being killable does not redeem him any. In other news, just had a big ass cut scene where I was once again exposed to Nocticula's smug mug. Aaaaand will have to repeat it, because I forgot to take away leaving companion's gear. Just lovely.

I don't know what you would even be installing. I don't think they had CBBE for Oblivion 😛

I went out for lunch today with my family so I am still busy installing mods. I will finish tomorrow or so, its going slow but I am checking each mod to be consistent

I wonder how Bruce's mod isntalling is going

It's too bad you can only have one companion at a time. I'd love to have both Caja and Nasty tag along and have them throw barbs at each other.

I think you might be able to pull off multiple arquebus attacks on a gun-switching Blackjacket as well. Can also do it multiple times per fight as opposed to making use of a one time -85% recovery from stealth. You just need high dexterity to reduce the 1.1 second attack time to below 1 second.

My favourite part was how supportive the spidermans were of each other.

Boeing's Loyal Wingman drone is now officially the MQ-28A Ghost Bat (newatlas.com)

The most songs performed in a game was probably David Bowie with 3 different songs in Omikron: The Nomad Soul

No, added lashes don't change how an attack is tagged. Either the weapon itself or the ability you are using need to have that keyword. An enchantment usually doesn't add a keyword to the weapon - at least I don't know any enchantment that does. So Elemental Bolts will not negate the malus of an Arcane Archer. I don't think Arcane Bolts is very strong. It doesn't scale like normal Minor Missiles does. Normal Minor Missiles adds projectiles instead of dmg with Power Level. And then some PEN of course. The Missiles of Spearcaster don't gain projectiles. They will profit from weapon quality (+dmg,+PEN and +ACC) though. To me Arcane Bolts is better because 4 added mini-lashes are more reliable than a 15% chance to proc missiles - and lashes are also multiplicative dmg bonuses which will most likely result in higher additional dps than missiles every 6th or 7th shot which only do 5 base dmg each. So for me it's always Arcane Bolts. But I didn't use or test the Missiles excessively so maybe there's some combination with an ability or so where it's cool. I haven't discovered one yet. If you are not dismissive of per-rest abilities then it's not an easy choice. In the right situation Skewer is actually pretty good and it scales well. The good thing about x/rest abilities is that you can "spam" them in hard encounters. Two Skewers fired into a crowd in one encouter can make a serious difference. Pinning is a good pick if you don't like per-rest abilities much or tend to spare them up until it's too late and then rest without ever using them. Pinning is also not bad with Driving Flight. But - if you use Imbue:Web a lot (as I do with Spearcaster) then Pinning might be a bit redundant. It's still my favorite pick because it is quite good in very long fights which will become more common in the DLCs. Nope! If you decide then it's fixed and you can't get rid of it. However, without using the console you can export a character with the (uncenchanted) item from another savegame, import that chat with the item into your current game and enchant it anew. Will be expensive but possible. You would then have two of those items, each with a different enchantment path.

It's a The Clash cover, Kiev Calling A different channel

don't forget the logo we had a bunch o' cavedog swag, and not 'cause we were such a fan o' total annihilation. HA! Good Fun! ps am still joking

I've thought about doing Devil, but Unlimited Hellfire Rays could be busted, but I think TTTs or the recent patch fixes slas to not be counted as spells.

Started Chapter 5 now. Ended up giving most of my party Last Stand because it stopped the "hilarious" accidential critical hits from leading to instant reloads and characters with Last Stand can tank anything in a pinch. Ember has a Greater Bolster, Greater Maximize (well, the artifact that converts all damage done to unholy to boot - not that it was necessary with the Ascendant Element) and Greater Quicken Rods by now. Got her Improved Critical: Ray, Mythic Improved Critical: Ray and Loremaster'ed Improved Improved Critical: Ray and gave her Red, Gold and Brass bloodlines. Even on Unfair, enemies need to get really, really lucky to survive going against her. Or, as it happened in case of the [Chapter 4 Final Boss], when Ember was up, he got really unlucky and ate a 1200 damage crit from her Hellfire Ray, pretty much ending the fight immediately. Oh, and yeah, the Hellfire Rays added by Blackened and Red Salamander are of different spell levels, meaning she now has three spell levels (6, 7 and 8) worth of Hellfire Rays. That pew pew lasts for a while, and in between she sets enemy caster stats to 1, inflicts excruciating pain on enemies and conjures up cannon fodder if needed. Could debate the finer points of nothing of that fitting her character, but hey... who cares. Almost tempted to make myself a Leyline Witch going Devil at some point. That just must be completely hilarious with the Devil's unlimited Hellfire Rays.

Albert's House of Kaleidoscopes.

I initially had that right at the start and then figured I finally found a useage for that image from the TNG gag reel/outtakes. Yeah, I got enough trash on my plate right now and should not star new series until I've reduced the load a little, but I've been progressing through a couple of things without mentioning it. It'll be the last new thing for a while, I think. I mean... at least as long as I keep adding new stuff I don't need to finish whatever the hell that was I randomly picked on Amazon Prime Video a while back. Kazaka... kama... erm, *looks up* kemurikusa. Well, no. It's a German "Merle" in the dub and in the original Japanese that I've started to use simply because whatever Amazon did to the German dub made it randomly switch to the original in between in both the browser and on my TV - I can only surmise that the original TV version was cut for violence for the German market and had scenes removed that were never dubbed and then restored for a digital release but left original with subtitles, have not done any research in that direction - comes out more like Merure (me like in men) with a semi-dropped u, which makes sense (all Japanese syllables end on a vowel, except for the single n). Not making any promises for the English dub, not sure if they could resist making a cat girl be called Mearle as in M-Earl. Could be worse, she could be called Purrrrrrl, huh? /bows and leaves. I could make an effort and compare them, but I'm pretty sure Amazon Prime Video is worse than the Blu Ray version. It always is. It doesn't look so bad on the 4K TV, and by that I mean it beats the digitalized TV PAL copies they have for other anime (*cough* Attack No. 1 *cough*). That's from the fourth episode. Both Merle and Hitomi have been exposed to a poisonous plant during their escape (Merle was captured by Allen's guard, and Hitomi just collapsed after a vision). Shounen dolt runs off to make medicine, and they both wake up and have internal monologues about finding the other girl weird. Hitomi is weird because she's dressed like a school girl and has short hair, and Hitomi thinks Merle is weird because she's a cat and has a tail. Merle has also typical cat mannerisms - that picture alone is showing that, but she eventually also raises her hair. I really should be annoyed, and I really should not have laughed at the scene, yet I was not annoyed and found it funny enough. Something's wrong with me. Help me. Please. edit: It must be said that cat girls aren't as inherently out of place in a silly fantasy action anime than say, Komi's cat ears or girls cosplaying as cat girls (hello Steins;Gate). Or wearable cat ears like Azusa was forced to wear by Sawako. Ah, stupid Sawako.

you may have been built to be better than human, but you can't escape the fact you were designed by humans, which means your programming is inherently flawed. you were bound to slip up eventually. HA! Good Fun!

Oh come on, everyone knows Bruce Payne's Damodar was the real star - he's the only person they brought back for the sequel!

No Jeremy Irons no care. I love the fact that my man realized what kind of movie he was in and decided to ham it up so hard that even Jeff Goldblum would have been jealous, elevating an otherwise meh movie into something fun.

Playing Elex 2 (surprise, surprise): Having lots of fun with this game, but it's nearing the end now. I am completely overpowered after 87 fun hours exploring the world. Then I tried out alchemy and accidentally maxxed out every skill in the skill tree.. I had so much **** collected that I basically had endless potion making ingredients.

Honestly looks good, but: 1) It's WarnerBros's game 2) With how widely popular HP property is/was I imagine HL will aim to appeal to as wide non-gamer demographic as possible, being all spectacle and no substence 3) It's WarnerBros's game

I definitely spent more time modding Skyrim/Oblivion then playing the games.

So you will not be playing Oblivion, you will be installing mods and trying to get the load order just right so the game will not crash on startup, and when it launches try to figure out why all npcs are in t-pose.

Personally, with Pallegina and Eder (with Fair Favor 😉) as frontliners, I would play a ghost heart/ascendant or an arcane archer/ascendant with Frostseeker. I would also pick Aloth for more AoE nukes. For the last spot Ydwin cipher/rogue with firearms could work, but I consider her just average. You could also pick Konstanten as a support/debuffer (with LDV, Spirit Frenzy and The Long Night's Drink...), but in fact anything works at this point.

as a conjurer she still gets some quality debuffs from transmutation/enchantment, which includes a bunch of handy spells like slicken, chill fog, arduous delay of motion, expose vulnerabilities, pull of eora, call to slumber, etc. and of course C O M B U S T I N G W O U N D S which can be extremely OP in the right setup.

So much yes!! One of my zip lines gets interrupted by a blade of grass. I found that if I lay blueprints for a pebble foundation over that particular patch of grass, it doesn’t grow back. Still, I’d rather have the ability to move the placement instead of recycling and losing half my material.

-Hello devyn231 I'm sorry to hear you've been experiencing these crashes during your time with Grounded. If you haven't already, I recommend making sure your video-card and OS drivers are both fully up to date. Next, a fresh install can resolve issues like this as files can become corrupt or damaged. If either of those things don't work, I recommend submitting a support ticket where we will work with you one on one to investigate and try to resolve this issue. https://support.obsidian.net/contact and include the following information: 1. Platform (Xbox Console, PC Game Pass, PC Steam). 2. Multiplayer or Single Player Game (if multiplayer, can you tell us how many players in total in the game, and their platforms if known) 3. Description of issue. 4. Last thing you did in the game before the issue occurred, if applicable. Thanks!

Can Trail Markers get some options? I'd like to be able to have a range selection with the Trail Markers on the HUD, I don't need to see the ones super far away, can there be a Range clip slider? say from 100cm- 500cm, or unlimited = As it is now? Also if i could select on the map which of my trail marker icons I see on the HUD would be great, I want to mark a spot for a resource, but i don't really need to constantly see it either. Maybe I could marker a Trail Marker as "Map Only?" It's rather taxing to turn on the Trail Markers when there's many of them, vs when they're all off. It would be great to have a way to reduce the amount of HUD Trail Markers show on the HUD based on my range to them, also having the ability to turn off displaying them or not on the HUD completely. Thanks for all your great work! Such an incredible game!

actually if the slider went from NeverShow-500cm that would take care of both requests in 1.

Can we get decals for shields like applying the art you can buy from burgl to the cover so our shields look a little bit better for the cinematics of what you suggested

Yeees!!! Please!

Yeah I just accidentally deleted one of my saves, luckily it was just me testing out the Custom Game, but still...

YES! Thats a great idea. I keep getting my saves mixed up.