Zoraptor

Their technical aspect QA has certainly improved immeasurably. But they still tend to break the balancing when patching or releasing dlc, and it often isn't fixed. The real question is why Paradox would go public if things are going so well as they are now. It's so they can get more money; and there's no way the people who are giving them the money won't want to both make a profit on their investment and have a say. And that's without a Chris Avellone type situation where one of the private shareholders (Johan or Fredrick, say) wants to leave, they've both been there over a decade much as MCA was with Obsidian.

Nah, only the last part means that. Doesn't have to be EA anyway, they can just be guaranteed to get knees jerking. When Elevation Partners came on board with Bioware, Bioware said pretty much exactly what Paradox is now saying. Nothing practical will change, we'll just have lots of lovely moolah to spend, no strings attached. As if there is ever truly no strings attached. Two years later, they were owned by EA. Publishers buy up other publishers, uh, pretty frequently. Not that long ago EA was going to buy Ubisoft and only got blocked by the French government, IIRC last publisher they bought was Popcap, their financial situation has precluded anything else recently. To illustrate: Activision is three publishers (except Blizzard each bought other publishers prior as well) that are merged- Activision, Vivendi (game publishing arm), Blizzard. Zombie Atari is three as well (Infogrammes, GT Interactive and one other whose name escapes me- Hasbro's video game arm), Ubisoft has bought bits of or wholesale Blue Byte, 3DO and multiple others, Square Enix is three amalgamated publishers (Square, Enix, Eidos) plus others, Take 2 is 2k and Rockstar merged etc. Paradox is an uncomfortable size and has rather a lot of flops and cancelled projects, balanced by the occasional break out hit like Magicka or Cities: Skylines. Whatever they say if they can't make a decent return and someone is offering money to buy them they'll get plenty of pressure from shareholders to sell out.

Oh come on, VW and no Your Mileage May Vary disclaimer?

Paradox? Oh, that's right. What EA Arctic used to be known as. Shame Dragon Age Kings and Star Wars Universalis failed so spectacularly or they'd still be around. I was quite looking forward to Hearts of Battlefield, too. And that WoD game with Obsidian, shame the first thing EA did back in 2018 was shut that idea down. Funny how everyone suddenly started seriously complaining about their terrible dlc policies and platform exclusivity once EA bought them and their titles got made Origin instead of Steam exclusive... (2018 might be a little soon)

That's the add on. I don't use nuke user scripts personally as I generally have enough self control not to need them (and don't mind some mouse wheeling) so I cannot recommend any, but there are a fair few variants for vBulletin and one for XenForo- which I think the forums here still uses- available that should do the job.

Use the greasemonkey script that nukes any quoted post of those on your ignore list. You need never see another Bruce post again.

That was my impression as well. Luckily I never even bought this game because everything I saw and read about SCL, just made me wonder who the hell was the target audience for this game. Target audience was reasonably obvious, it was just unrealistic: appeal to the established D&D fanbase (which is bigger than niche, NWNs and BGs were each multi million sellers) plus some from the more 'casual' audience of Diablo 3/ Skyrim types, plus consoles in future. The game just fell uncomfortably into the 'appeal to neither significantly' hole, as most such attempts inevitably do. They'd have been better off aiming for one market or the other instead of both, but aiming for both markets will always be tempting because if it comes off it means more money. But, the alterations from D&D, lack of proper GM mode and the like puts off the D&D audience, being D&D at all puts off most of the casual audience- and it didn't have great word of mouth, didn't have great sales numbers to provide funds to fix the problems so just kind of... stalled. It doesn't mean much for the state of RPGs, except perhaps putting another nail into the coffin of D&D as a cRPG system. Probably good news for Beamdog though, as it gives them better bargaining with Hasbro for a BG3.

That's a fair point. I don't think anyone here would argue the Afghanistan intervention was needed. But every one since was a bad idea. Congress could have stopped every one of them it's worth mentioning. You all know where I stand on US foreign policy and of of these 5 candidates the only two who favor a more reserved, less interventionist attitude are two who probably won't win. From a FP perspective do you think there will be a bit of difference in the actions of a Clinton, Cruz, or Kasich State Dept? I don't think there will be. So again, what does it matter? It's not just invasions and the like, there's also trade agreements and there there is some differences between candidates. Probably theoretical difference as I'd suspect when it came down to it all of Clinton, Cruz, Trump and Kasich would sign up to the TPPA/ TTIP whatever they say now but at least theoretically Clinton/ Trump and Sanders oppose TPPA with only Kasich outright supporting it.

They do rhyme if you speak with a scottish accent (and most northern english ones too). Albeit speaking with a northern brit accent may not help with audibility overall... Finding an accent where rough, though and bough all rhyme might be rather difficult though.

If they're using state capital names for crowdfunded projects the unannounced kickstarter wouldn't be either Louisiana or Indiana but a state capital name post New Jersey's Trenton. That would make the unknown KS project something like Annapolis/ Hartford/ Atlanta/.. There's only one project known to have a state capital name though, and what the practical difference is between a project with a capital and a state name isn't known. Could be crowdfunded games get a capital name, could be smaller scale games of any type, could be just to asterisk with people who like making lists based on state names.

Yeah, Shtora probably wouldn't have made much if any difference in those circumstances, it being turned off is more indicative of the government forces not always being as competent as they should be, as were the open hatches. Shtora would definitely help against older missiles or their Chinese/ DPRK knock offs though and there are plenty of them around. They've spent 5 years getting shot for sitting still like they're invulnerable citadels (as here, though at least they had some cover) or charging around wildly or charging into built up areas, and almost always without proper infantry support. Nowadays they probably have the help of Russian helicopters to target ATGM teams but it's still no substitute to proper infantry screens or moving your tank around after a few shots.

That was a T90, it has Kontact-5 Explosive Reactive Armour which is designed to defeat TOW's dual warhead, plus the hit was on the best armoured part of the tank. It had the Shtora countersystem but it was off either due to incompetence or maintenance (it can only be operated relatively briefly/ not continuously due to heat/ battery life). It was probably functionally knocked out, ie could not be used further, just not destroyed. You can tell almost instantly the result from videos as rebels cut the video off quickly if the tank isn't destroyed by a hit. Most Syrian tanks have either no/ partial ERA of the old Kontact-1 variety that is now basically useless except against simple RPG rounds, plus are less armoured or have jury rigged partial extra armour so have been very vulnerable.

Nice classic selection. Will probably get the FF and Railroad titles, already have the XCOM series and (pretty sure) Pirates! elsewhere.

Software as a product has been the rule here for more than a decade via the Consumer Guarantees Act (which is a genuinely excellent bit of legislation). I haven't read the SSA recently but at one point there was NZ explicit stuff dealing with software-as-product issues and we'd obviously be a smaller market than Aus.

If no one reaches a majority then, er, no one can be said to be acceptable to the majority* and any resultant candidate is the result of the 'establishment', one way or another. In any case, Kasich can not really be said to be the establishment favourite- he's basically their least disliked remaining choice/ last man standing, even just in the active phase of the campaign he's been 3rd and last choice behind Jeb and Marco. One way or another their remaining candidates are all deeply flawed. Cruz is borderline unelectable and only seems a reasonable choice compared to Trump, Trump has a large 'anyone but Donald' anti following to balance his popularity plus no actual policy as opposed to sound bites and Kasich is... moderate, unremarkable, uninspiring, just a bit boring. Of the three though- and it's true in comparison to Hillary as well- merely being a bit boring could be a significant advantage since while he's unlikely to bring in droves of enthusiastic supporters he's unlikely to alienate significant numbers either whereas the other candidates may be more inspiring but they're also far more divisive. Plus, he's from an electorally crucial state and while Donald may think he can carry New York he's about the only person who thinks that. *Barring a VP Kasich type compromise

This one, presumably, since that's the official order. I can't remember which game has which codename though.

With that level of commitment and the budget for it coming out of training it doesn't really matter to Russia if it drags on for years. And it is working, since November at least there's been nothing but local, temporary, opposition success versus significant advances by the government. Another year of such advances and the opposition would be practically finished as a formal military force so there isn't any need for the quick success. Troop numbers have never been the primary problem for the government and they are getting and have had significant imported troops. A shambolic and ossified military leadership, corrupt and inept logistics and low morale from poorly equipped and trained conscripts have all been more important than just troop numbers; as shown by Hezbollah who have none of those problems being almost uniformly successful. Most of those problems have been (partly at least) dealt with without adding more troops. And of course Syria makes a very useful bargaining chip for Russia, they can step up their intervention or reduce it for political or PR purposes unrelated to the actual conflict. That's why I rather doubt they're putting anywhere near as much pressure on Assad as many think, once Syria is settled that leverage goes.

What? In most places with a prime minister local elections are separate from national elections. I think what you mean to say is that the legislature elects the government. I presume he means 'constituency' and 'member of parliament' rather than local body/ council elections for 'local senatorial'. Because they generally do elect the PM, with some exceptions and if you don't have that system you probably don't know the correct technical terms- much as non US people will often get Congress/ Senate/ House and their functions mixed up.

Palmyra recaptured by the government from ISIS. It's a city of around 50k with some of the most extensive archaeological sites in Syria many of which have unfortunately been blown up by ISIS; it was originally lost during the extraordinarily bad period the government had about ten months agp. After Qaryatayn to the south is taken the next step would probably be As Sukhna, which is the only significant settlement on the way to either Raqqa or Deir Ez Zor from Palmyra.

Since it hasn't been mentioned previously Bernie won the three caucuses (Hawaii, Alaska, Washington) from yesterday, all by around 50%. They'd have to go Kasich, surely. I presume that's the only reason he's still in the race. (Do you have to be an active declared candidate for a brokered convention? For a contested one it seems obvious you'd have to be, but I kind of presumed a brokered one could have a wildcard candidate. Not that it really matters, since there isn't an obvious wildcard candidate in any case)

I remember when Oby himself was a 17 year old Russian girl. Ah, those were the days. Then those bastard moderators forced him to become a bloke. Please, let's not drift off into impossibilities.

The French situation says it more eloquently- why not just make demonstrations illegal, open endedly? At least the Brussels situation was a request based on ongoing police operations requiring available manpower.

Don't worry, Atari zombie Infogrames is used to it. Oddly enough the idea of selling an 'early access' kickstarter game retail doesn't phase me much at all. Theoretically it ought to be as bad but I guess when you've funded via, essentially, the unsecured credit/ hopes and dreams of thousands of nerds it just doesn't seem such a big deal to sell a merely incomplete product as opposed to one that doesn't exist at all.

While I agree with the sentiment... those sort of 'infographics' always leave me with a slight desire to grind my teeth. There's dozens of extra examples that could be added some of which such as the Speicher massacre were massively above the scale of anything else listed, some of the chosen examples are distinctly questionable- for example in the Tunisia attack listed 30/38 killed were British and all killed were European so there was not (likely to be) any muslims killed, and it got extensive coverage in Britain especially- and as previous some of those chosen did get extensive coverage. Reads like an american watching Fox News/ USCNN, googling 'ISIS terrorism', going to wikipedia and then not reading any links just generating a list. Or perhaps from a Saudi PR group, which would certainly explain the lack of Speicher coverage since Saudis would say that wasn't against real muslims.

... The whole point of doing it is so it will be pointed out. That's trolling 101, and Bruce does it all the time. In all seriousness, Bruce purports to be fine with prostitution and not fine with an open marriage. Even if they were honestly held opinions rather than the forum equivalent of Gawker clickbait (no surprise Bruce would defend them, they're peas in a pod) there's literally no point even arguing with someone that disconnected with reality; the level of cognitive dissonance that would be required to honestly hold both opinions renders it utterly pointless.