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Looks like UA SOF were able to deliver another pack of cigarettes to Crimea 200kms behind enemy lines, and some Russian soldier found them.

The Fallout-style RPG teased by New Blood last week features big names in the classic Fallout scene Van Buren developer Adam Lacko, artist Red888guns, and original Fallout composer Mark Morgan are all working on the project. https://www.pcgamer.com/the-fallout-style-rpg-teased-by-new-blood-last-week-features-big-names-in-the-classic-fallout-scene/?utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=socialflow&fbclid=IwAR3_U_Ms6jVnRpuJyLRuxlrMY1YGMpjs0pwN5TA7PbLIg2TQ9l7O0fCLOUM EDIT: Yeah, this **** deserves its own thread...

Short answer - well, not really - like any strategic sort of game (or any game really) once you've mastered mechanics, a map's terrain/resources, or developed a town/city past a certain point, it's just going to be a sense of "grinding" for completion or personal goals. Longer answer - it also depends on exactly why you like the games/genre. I do not personally, for example, like stuff like SimCity or Civilization. I don't care about making alliances or politics for resources/peace, outside of simple "pay open a trade route/place docks for trading", for example. On the flip side, the reason I played Banished as long as I did was because it had a random map generator so I could create/try new towns without already knowing the map/terrain, and an obsession with trying to achieve the highest population before it either PC-lagged to a stop or the AI mechanics just couldn't handle it anymore and it would all fall apart due to buggiess, haha. I do not tend to long term enjoy the ones where you keep working on/adding to/upgrading the same city forever and ever as time and eras pass. I don't care about playing the same city "forever" because yeah, that gets boring even if you're unlocking new "tech" or whatever. For me the fun is the challenge of efficient designing and utilizing that against new terrain/maps. Also, map editors. (all the Impression's ones had those IIRC). Patron had some other minor problems but the main issue for me was the lack of random maps or map editor - experimentation/layout challenges dried up fast. What I started with is the early Impression's "city builder series", where their motivator was their fixed and increasingly difficult map/city goals and once you achieved those, you'd move to the next campaign scenario and have to start all over, on a totally different map, with different resource/terrain challenges, each one being quite different for layout challenges. If you haven't give Casear 3 a try (GoG has it), if you can put up with some of the old wonky AI challenges (which to me is part of the fun but...) The only "city builders" with official campaigns that I ever finished - or came very close to finishing - are Casear 3, Caesar4 (not as good), and Pharaoh (altho those monuments took too long/were aggravating).

Reminds me I need to take a peak at Guild 3...can't possibly be that bad, could it. Still grinding along in Andromeda, being the foreign saviour to these useless Angara that can't fix their planets. Is an "okay" experience, all said, combat is fun, the somewhat tedious Architect fights were enjoyable. I do like the crafting, grindy-ness aside, being able to augment the items and such, I dislike the UI a little but that's nitpicky.

As promised before, Kazakhstan’s oil to EU will start to bypass Russia, starting in september. https://www.euractiv.com/section/central-asia/news/kazakhstan-to-start-oil-sales-via-azeri-pipeline-to-bypass-russia/

Yeah, Prostitute bonuses stack with everything. Also Inn Resting bonuses stack with everything too. Which is weird because I don't see why Room bonus should stack and food should not. Maybe an oversight ? Anyway, next BPM version will include full food stacking, which makes even more sense now that I've discovered Inn resting bonuses stack. EDIT : next BPM version is about ready, unless something else comes to my mind, or if I have to do something about elemental weapons (but it should stay in CP scope)

Interestingly, TASS reported this straight away. In its own way. https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/ammunition-depot-explodes-northern-crimea-tass-citing-local-authorities-2022-08-16/

I can definitely get down on some grits with only a bit of butter and salt & pepper.

Ahh, Scott Morrison, the gift that keeps costing Australia... https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-62544961 Scott Morrison: Australia's ex-PM 'secretly held ministry portfolios' ... Mr Morrison became joint minister for the health, finance and resources portfolios in the two years before he lost power in May, local media report. Which means being able to divert government funds (to friends, which he used to win the election before the latest one), grant mining and drilling rights (to his friends, the kickback of which is part of what funds The Liberal Party) and make a mess of the health care system during Covid (not benefiting anyone other than himself, as failures in the health services would be reported to... himself)... without leaving an audit trail from the minister of each portfolio to the PM (also him) No wonder Australia slipped so badly downhill on the corruption index the last 10 years. Edit: Note for Americans, 'Liberal party' doesn't mean the same in Australia, being similar to other countries conservative parties social and economic values (i.e. leaning heavily on the church, religion, mining and fossil fuel industry for support, wanting to ban same sex marriage, outlaw abortion, economic growth through increased military spending and cutting cost on education, projects for indigenous and homeless people etc.) Edit2: Ironically, it was another conservative, Malcolm Turnbull who, through legal loopholes, managed to twist the arm of the parliament and got same sex marriage passed into law (he tried multiple times through parliament and got shot down each time, then he skipped the parliament and did an "unofficial survey" sending out a questionnaire to all Australians, who voted for the change with 61.6% for. The stunt did cost him his political life though and Morrison was his replacement. Because the survey was not a government, but a private survey, parliament could not prevent it from happening and once the proverbial cat is out of the sack, even the most conservative parliament knows better than going against a 2/3 majority of the population when an election period is only 3 years... still, we got stuck with Morrison for way too long

https://www.wsj.com/articles/if-your-gen-z-co-workers-are-quiet-quitting-heres-what-that-means-11660260608 "While looking for a new role, she no longer worked beyond 40 hours each week, didn’t sign up for extra training and stopped trying to socialize with colleagues. “I took a step back and said, ‘I’m just going to work the hours I’m supposed to work, that I’m really getting paid to work,’” she said. “Besides that, I’m not going to go extra.” Shocking concept.

I prefer plain grits, well, not plain-plain, but no meat or veggies or cheese. I'm an admitted weirdo though.

Man, I was just thinking that the CK3 DLC I've been playing hasn't been worth the purchase price. Evidently Paradox agrees. Yeah, just double the price of old, anaemic DLC, what's the worst that could happen? Feels like it's pretty much a skeleton crew running the game as it is, the pace of development, hell the pace of implementing trivial fixes, has been glacially slow. Has the Bloodlines 2 disaster hobbled the company that much?

Another nice combo is Goldpact Knight/Shifter. In Bear form you can have tremendous armor without any recovery penalty (good at the start of the fight in order to withstand initial heat), you'll have healing while shifted, Eternal Devotion stacks with Wildstrike and even the Ring of Focused Flame (as all items except armor and weapon) works in shifted form, too - so accuracy with FoD while shifted is nice as well. If you pick a Bleak Walker and take Scion of Flame (Paladin or Druid tree) and Spirit of Decay (Druid tree) your FoD attacks will get additional +2 PEN, which is pretty cool.

I can overlook the heinous disrespect to biscuits and gravy, but anyone that so much as utters a single bad word about grits is dead to me.

Shifter/Monk is great, yes. Shifter/Barbarian feels really good, too. Shifters get good armour without a recovery penalty, making full use of the Barbarian's focus on armour and HP and their bonuses to action speed. The sizable base damage and lash of spiritshift weapons+wildstrike makes good use of Barbarian damage bonuses too. Plus Barbarian on-kill abilities work with spell kills. Blood Frenzy/Spirit Frenzy work on spell crits/hits. (Spirit Tornado seems to be bugged in base game because it doesn't stagger on spell hits een though Spirit Frenzy does. Can be fixed with the Community Patch mod.)

tekehu has a pretty good subclass, but it comes with major drawbacks: missing out on fire keyword spells and no summons; no summons is not that big a deal unless you single-class a druid at which point you start missing out on some decent summons (lashing vine, oozes, fire stag). so while it's definitely good, a custom mainchar druid can achieve different niches than tekehu. importantly watcher abilities to get brilliant (and to a lesser extent energized or intuitive), but it's only one/day so without rest-spamming it's not a huge differentiator. the best thing a watcher druid can do is do something different from what tekehu is pigeon-holing himself into, or multiclassing, even with a chanter (since tekehu's chanter is wildly different from any other chanter). personally, i would recommend a druid build if you haven't done one before. always good to try something new IMO, and after giving a druid a whirl a few times I'm a big fan of the playstyle. i'm not as big a fan of berserker set up as others, but a tactician/druid would be very powerful if you can keep good uptime on that brilliant buff. if you want to do something wildly different than tekehu, than maybe a shifter/trickster? (lean into shape-shifting plus tons of defensive and offensive goodies from trickster)

is what happens when you got earnest people who want justice for wrongs and they is so angry they don't care 'bout due process. speaking o' nogoodniks and due process... Lindsey Graham must testify in Atlanta 2020 election probe, judge rules baby steps update: Stephen Vladeck on the FBI's Search of Trump's Home is an excellent layman-friendly rundown o' the relevant issues and if you avoid the phone call answers, won't require much o' your time to indulge a listen. ten minutes. HA! Good Fun!

Yawara! This show is so silly...and also very obvious with where it's going at times, it almost hurts - almost. The issue is, even though it is what it is, I'm still enjoying it. So far, the show maintains a driving storyline and consistent characters while not quite going too far into absurdity, and...well, I guess that's enough to keep my interest so far. Actually, even with its few fundamental design issues, I'm rather starting to enjoy it. Right, now for SpyxFamily...episodes 3 through 5. Three and four more or less kept walking the same line as the previous two - a lot of absurdity, but most of it serves a purpose and keeps the story moving along without trampling on the characters or plot, so it's enjoyable and fine. Episode 5, on the other hand, was a classic "the characters are puppets to the premise" kind of episode, where you have a wacky premise that takes center stage over everything else and the characters no longer behave in line with their established core characteristics for completely arbitrary reasons (i.e. to make the premise play out how the writers want it to...no matter what it takes to get there). It must be said that this style of episode in shows is almost always complete anathema to my brain, even for a show as silly as this one...actually, with the relatively short run-time that this show has along with it being pretty tightly scripted up until now, it feels very inappropriate indeed. The good news is that I think the show promises to treat this episode as if it never happened (because it's obviously filler) while getting back on track for episode 6, and that should prove to be more enjoyable. Anya, so far, continues to be the core of the show that makes it work, .

10th anniversary of Sleeping Dogs today (well, technically it was yesterday here due to date line shenanigans). I'd be kind of hoping that Nordic/ THQ/ Embracer do a sequel of that sometime instead of nobody asked for this remakes of Gothic, except I seem to remember that Sleeping Dogs was one of the few westernish series SE didn't sell.

I'm a pretty optimistic guy, but even I know better than to expect JA3 to be good. I think a big problem is people focus on Ivan, Fidel, and all the other characters as being important to making a JA game. They aren't. It is important to have a colorful cast of characters. It's important to be able to develop them over the campaign. That's it. The strategic map looked ok at the end. The camera seemed off in the combat shots. The inventory and equipment modification scenes seemed incomplete. I'm not going to hold my breath. At the end of the day I'm getting a better tactical combat experience from Xenonauts 2, Battle Brothers and Wartales. These nu-Xcom style games offer a fun cinematic combat experience, and maybe JA3 will fit that mold. But I'm not holding my breathe.

Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition - I'd forgotten how *massive* this game feels and it's also surprising how well it's held-up over the years.

Please don't suck, please don't suck, please don't suck...

I don't know how to feel about a Gothic game with anyone other than Piranha Bytes making it.

Russians and their homophobia. Not too long ago, a russian user on a different forum called me "Fritz" as derogatory slang (because germany) and said my added features in Fallout 1in2 were "homosexual" - makes me think that the socialist fraternal kiss between Leonid Brezhnev and Erich Honecker must have caused a real generational trauma to them.

Thanks for the response, Boeroer! I was tinkering with a Hunter (Stalker+bear/Unbroken) build, but I am not sure how to allocate the stats. Should I go for Resolve & CON or try something else?

https://www.pcgamer.com/classic-style-rts-tempest-rising-hits-in-2023/ That music ****ing sucks.

This game seems to have excited enough people for long enough to make me curious about it… I’ll have to check it out more when I get home again (currently travelling interstate) Edit; what can I say? Missed the smell of kerosene and the queues at airport security

Still no gameplay

Overlord 4.7 Ainz visits the frost dragons and the quagoa. Despite making a mistake, Aura and Shalltear think he is a genius supreme being.

didn't even know there was a darkest dungeon 2 hope it is not as grind intensive as the first one

Are you implying that ELEGANCE is a meme? Decidedly un-elegant.