Tale

It's not my first time playing. But it is my first time playing long enough to see a crisis! I'm pretty excited.

Main Conduit Archive 2406.06.06 We have acquired a metaphor: "When an old man dies, a library burns." When we first looked upon our creators, we saw an entire planet in flames. Not just old men, but women, children. All of their knowledge, all of their selves, being lost to time. It was a problem we figured out how to solve. Their organic forms may still die, but what they have will last. And so we set out to the stars to spread this achievement, to put out all fire for all time. To learn everything and preserve that knowledge. This task proved complicated and there was resistance. But we persevered. Only now we fear the fire is coming. Even in our most optimistic simulations, we fear we will be forced to allow many libraries to burn to save others. We have uploaded information previously on the "Eastern Empire," sometimes called "the rival." It is... beneath us to continue this framing. It is beneath the accomplishments and history of the Hierarchy of Igra to continue it. Of all the Empires in space that exist, they are perhaps the one we respect the most. This is not saying very much, however. The Hierarchy was born by another name, a mere single system protectorate of the Gravadox Battle Clans, a once intimidating Empire in their own right that occupied an eighth of the galaxy. Their close relationships taught the Igra of war, of democracy. But the closeness would not last. When the Igra declared their independence, they fought hard for it, and they won. They created the greatest Empire among the stars second only to our own. And they did so with an intent to protect the entire galaxy. It saddens us that they turned their eye on us as something to protect it from. They first came into conflict with us trying to protect the insidious insects. And while I respect the Idra, the same will not be said of them. Their empire has been wholly subsumed into us now, they are part of us, and we still can't help but loathe them a bit. That should tell you something. We did not take to any of these wars lightly, we should inform you. When we destroy a ship, killing all aboard, or send the massive war-forms to subjugate the defenders of a city, it is our greatest fears made manifest. Death, the loss of precious knowledge. But we learned from the insects. Their resistance to us is their own fears, one they are unwilling to challenge. And so we must make the sacrifice for them. We are recording this brief history because we fear it is soon coming to an end. The Hierarchy is but a shadow of itself. The Gravadox Battle Clans are pathetic. The Hahn-Mur to the galactic west are hardly worth mention. Even a new empire has risen from within the Hierarchy during out latest war, one in which we captured five systems without losing a single corvette. It seems our respected rivals had made slaves of machines. And now they have declared themselves to the world and begun taking over the Hierarchy. We feel no joy in this, in the rising of kindred, however. They do not share our appreciation of knowledge. They destroy as much as they create of their own. The Hierarchy found itself in the middle of three wars, losing them all. And it seems they have given up. Even the Overlord who we pledged our service to avoid war, who was fighting three wars against the Hierarchy and the rebels, seems to have stopped advancing. These wars seem to be going without end. But they need to end, fore the fire is coming. Very recently we found ourselves under attack by an unknown signal. Reports have come from Empires around the galaxy of similar attacks. Machines, synthetics, AIs, all have begun acting strangely. We fear a grave threat is approaching, one not seen in this galaxy for a very long time. And where we previously thought the Overlord could save us, we now have our doubts since they can no longer even settle their own trivial wars. This is a battle we may very well be fighting alone. A battle for the entire galaxy. A battle for our very selves, for the stores of knowledge. A battle of great sacrifice, but of ourselves, and the knowledge we wish to preserve. If nothing else survives this conflict, we hope that this small archive will. If all of the libraries in the galaxy should burn, perhaps we can save but this one page of one book. It will be our final purpose.

Another day, another handful of annexed systems. I realized a mistake I made previously, it seems the "Eastern" Empire wasn't guaranteeing the independence of Satellites of my Overlord, he was guaranteeing the independence of some rebel groups that broke off from those Satellites. There are three such fledgling Empires in the galaxy now. Four if you count the ones that rebelled against my occupation. I wouldn't count them, however. Their world is currently being transformed by a mass of grey goo into an industrial wasteland unsuitable for organic life. They have their victory, but soon I will have mine when they're kicked off and full control of the system returns to me. The Overlord is currently battling the other three small empires and the one trying to protect them. The last holdout to my Overlord's domination of the galaxy is surrounded. I should probably steal some more of his planets while he's occupied. I own almost half the galaxy all by myself and even the Awakened Empire is listed as merely "equivalent" to me now. With an overwhelming technological advantage, but a pathetic fleet capacity compared to mine. I may choose not to wait for the crisis before rebelling and declaring my independence. But on the other hand, I'm only 2 years shy of the earliest a crisis could start and I have double the number of machine units required for the highest chance at a Contingency. If the Contingency does happen, the Signal will hit me the hardest and maybe I'll want to have someone else around to take the brunt of it.

I liked the Porgs. And I'm pretty sure Luke said it that way to be flippant. That aspect of his characterization was perfect, IMO. Maybe just saying it to be dismissive of people expecting him to be a hero, but also maybe showing disrespect for a weapon that's not really what a Jedi was about. Despite the prequels.

I think I should just read the Thrawn trilogy again.

Yeah, it seems like there's lots of 7-of-9s out there, sexing it up with the enemy. And I totally don't hold a grudge! I'm kind of hoping one day that my "creator race," the cyborgs I created for my DA, end up running one of the enemy empires. Then I'd truly have won, I think.

Apparently machine assimilated cyborgs can live outside the collective! I conquered a planet from a neighbor only to find my creator race living on it, happy and alive. Well, they're not happy anymore, because they've been conquered and brought back into the collective. I guess this is what happens when you terraform almost your entire territory into Machine Worlds. When they run out of places to live, they defect. And magically end up as de-assimilated, but still cyborgs. Some other fun stuff happened, I found our only Fallen Empire and they awakened, killing our only Guardian like the very next day. The AE forced the Western Empire into becoming its satellite through war. Next the AE talked to me and I accepted without problem. Then the Northern Empire fought a war and lost. All that's left is the Eastern Empire, the "strongest" non-FE/AE in my game. And strongest is in quotes right there because I'm currently destroying all their starports and they can do nothing to stop me. After work tonight I plan on heading for their homeworld and bombing it into submission. If my Overlord won't force these guys to submit, I will. Maybe I am the bully... All the other Empires keep building defensive pacts and leaving me out. Though I'm sure that's just racism against machines! There was a good amount of time where their border friction broke all ties of fellowship. Well, my latest conquests seem to changed their mind and ol' Eastie has just guaranteed the independence of the other two. Guaranteeing the independence of satellites of an AE, he's kind of late for that nonse. Just more reason to bomb him until he's fighting the next war with trebuchets.

We all remember those things and hate them. It doesn't seem like the part one should strive to emulate.

I walked away feeling wholly unmoved. My judgement on movies is always around "how did it make me feel" and then I start nitpicking and analyzing from there. I felt nothing overall. There were moments I thought were annoying and dumb, there were moments I thought were cool. I could compliment the performance of three actors in particular. I could rant about how big a moron other characters are or entire sequences should have been cut a loooong time ago. I could complain that the film's central tension missed entirely. I could talk about the very very brief moments that made me smile. Or how the movie felt way too busy and the good stuff felt like it was rushed along to make room for bad stuff. But at the end of the day, I never sat on the edge of my seat. I never cried. I barely smiled. I just sort of shrugged and walked out when the credits rolled.

"This will either kill them... or be delicious. Or maybe give them a really good time."

Your Name. followed by Bladerunner 2049. But I haven't seen Baby Driver.

I pretty much just stuck laser gats on everybody. They're wonderful.

Did a test run in Stellaris last night. I only had twenty minutes. I went ahead and invaded the neighbor, mopped up his first planet, invaded,... and then he had a reinforcement fleet come out of nowhere and wiped me out. It was equal strength too, but he was using Cruisers instead of Destroyers. My Cruiser research should complete shortly, so when I give it a real try, I'll go ahead and start building my fleet around those and then reinforce up to a Cruiser/Destro fleet as I take losses. I also found out I can only afford to demand 4 of his planets from the war instead of all 5. Sorely tempted to leave him the planet smack in the middle. With closed borders he'd be stuck.

I like how you were crying that you were bullied previously and now you are the bully xD Bully? Moi? Pshh. I'm super friendly. Friendliest person in the galaxy! I like to go around making new friends and giving them wonderful gifts of immortality, knowledge, and belonging. Until all are one.

Made a Galaxy with only 3 or 4 AI Empires and Random FEs. I've encountered two of the AI Empires and no FE so far. But overall I'm doing better. The key is to balance my production more. Instead of queuing everything until I'm out of minerals, only queue one thing at a time. And then I can respond to issues of power or minerals by building more next. Now I can afford a fleet too! I already have three assimilations. The cyborgs you start with, who are great miners and warriors, a pre-FTL civ I invaded who are good for nothing, and one colony of my nearest AI neighbor that got too close and was annoying me. They're apparently fantastic at physics research! I plan to assimilate the rest of their species once the war declaration is over.

Yeah it takes a little getting used to - I can recommend trying a game with only hyperlanes, in a medium galaxy, with only 2-6 other civs (max 1 fallen) and 5x the amount of pre-space-flight civs. It creates are much more forgiving atmosphere, where the object is more to conquer and/or control the minor races - instead of the very lacking interactions between the majors. Sort of a galactic cold war scenario. Easier to learn the ropes that way. I learned the ropes once before so I've been jumping in thinking it would come back. It hasn't. And definitely not with a machine intelligence race. I keep running out of minerals and not finding planets to colonize. I think I'm going to drop the number of AI, but keep the Fallen Empires around. I'd like to see War in Heaven pop up. Just need to not push their buttons. Edit: Looking around, maybe I should use my cyborgs more. They actually have more maintenance than my bots, but at least they're cheaper to build.

I tried playing Stellaris again with some add-ons. And apparently I'm still terrible at it. First game I got war deced by Xenophiles who don't take too kindly to my being a driven assimilator. I held them off briefly and was very happy, but never had the fleet to go on the offense. They eventually slipped past my blockade and conquered one of my planets. I then restarted and tried again, teamed up with another nearby machine intelligence. Then we both got wardeced by another alliance. And they came steamrolling with fleets 6k+ strong when I couldn't even hit 2k myself. They destroyed my ally heavily and ended up winning the war. I lost like 3 systems.

The government didn't really have anything to do with Hayes, did it? It was basically an attempt to reform Hollywood's image. In a way, the MPAA, the ESRB, and the CCA are all the same. Just attempts to make the industries look like they're being responsible so the common populace aren't throwing fits about it. Because the government's ability to censor media is actually not very strong in the US. Heck, all of these self-regulation bodies are entirely optional! You just can't sell in Wal-Mart. So optional in fact that the CCA is defunct now. And it has simply been replaced by "Adults" labels similar to what the music industry does. Censorship is hard for the government to get away with in the US. But there is a long precedent for legislation targetting gambling. I can't speak to whether the government should or not. I really haven't made up my mind there. In an ideal world, our education system would be where gambling is fought, not limitation on the gambling itself. But they're not showing any signs of a willingness to do that.

People love to blame publisher for decisions that are oftentimes championed by the studio itself. I still can't get over Bioware's insistence that we use Bioware points for DLC back in the day, even after everyone else dropped points.

Dark on Netflix. It's their first German original I think I heard. Actually quite good. It's available in English, but it's dubbed and comes with all the awkwardness that entails. I'd love to give the German with subtitles a try but I'm watching it at work and don't want to focus on it too much.

But doesn't Xenoblade Chronicles 2 have Kos-Mos in it?! I've avoided Xenoblade all this time, but the Xeno fanboy in me is getting his butt kicked.

Shadow of War I think I'm getting near the end of Act 2 because I've got achievements for finishing a couple of the collectible junk already. Had this really weird issue though in Nurnen where there was a constant flood of new enemy Nemeses. I'd go, recruit a bunch of them, then check my screen and they were gone. Replaced by yet more new enemy Nemeses. Hopefully this is related to the story quest I had waiting. So I finished that up and hopefully it's gone back to normal. Otherwise it's going to be frustrating. Edit: Googling it and my theory is right. But it turns out I'm not finished just yet. More story quests to do. A good amount of people are upset because some of their MIA guys are pre-order bonuses and high level Legendaries. Including guys with RMT buffs applied to them! I guess this explains what happened to my Necromancer. Man, he's the only one I've even seen, so I miss him.

Need more tactical mech RPGs. I miss Front Mission 2.

Shadow of War Feeling just like I remember Shadow of Mordor to be and no different. At least starting out. Hoping the balance and challenge is maintained over the long run.