Zoraptor

You're talking about a food and oil embargo and you don't think you're going to get retaliation? From the Chinese Government's POV it's game over for them if they either back down in those circumstances or try to cope with them. From the Chinese people's perspective it'd be a return to the Opium Wars and Japanese Occupation style interaction with the west, whether they'd partly blame their government or not they would, at least, go for anything that would prevent that happening again. Really though, it's boggling that anyone would think the Chinese would just stand back and take it as you revert their economy back to the 70s and starve them, which is what you're talking about. The US wouldn't stand for that, nor would Russia or anyone else with the power to- they're not some piddling regional power like Iran. They'll do everything and anything in their power to asterisk you up in those circumstances because you'll be actively and deliberately asterisking them up. Practically, and fortunately, there's very little chance of such an embargo ever happening but by the tenets of your scenario that would already be happening, so we're already talking unlikely scenarios. Well yes, though I note you don't mention what its primary role actually was... Contextually it's pretty obvious I meant ASW since from previous (recent) posts I know perfectly well what AEGIS is used for and that it'd be useless against subs, on the other hand the 'fact'* that a specialist ASW warship was apparently sunk by a country that most people consider a joke militarily is significant to the argument. I blame acronym overload syndrome, personally. *I'm unconvinced personally and it may well be another case of the enemy being utterly hopeless/ preternaturally devious plus competent depending on circumstances that is so prevalent in the cold war and propaganda, but at least publicly the US/ ROK et al are certain it was NK wot dun it.

It's not a question of redistribution of wealth in the classic leftist sense though. If trickle down and other right wing theories or the mishmash approach they're using at the moment actually worked to improve the general lot of blacks it would be fine, the critical aim is to improve their lot not to check boxes on an ideological purity chart.

I'm not advocating a Mugabe style solution, but there does need to be a better 'peace dividend'. A large, disenfranchised, disillusioned and poor population is a recipe for radicalism and violence even if it lacks the unifying force that apartheid provided. I'd tend to say that the problem in Africa has had nothing to do with left/right ideology and more to do with a series of spectacularly bad leaders, and corruption. Plus a liberal smattering of bad colonial policy, east/west cold war posturing and other factors outside their control.

Not your best work. So the Chinese can take out only, say, 60 US cities/ military sites with ICBMs. If that's a Chicken Little scenario then I'd hate to see a genuine sky-is-falling one since it must involve one of two things: Russia going postal or an alien invasion. Frankly, they'd also tell the Russians to go asterisk themselves, if it's come to nukes it's too far gone to worry about them since Russia cannot actually stop them, just wave their finger and quietly annex some 'stans, Belarus and Ukraine while China and the US are happily exterminating each other. Then of course there's the small matter of China having nuclear submarines. Now I know, people will just giggle at them and say that the glorious infallible US navy will sweep them from shining sea with a wiggle of a single finger and a twinkle in their glittering eye; but then the same people also cannot explain how a barely above WW2 tech diesel electric DPRK sub apparently managed to sink a modern AEGIS vessel of the ROK not only without retaliation but without any detection at all. And they'd never in a million years expect to take out retaliatory capability. That involves sinking the US fleet and airforce; and if they can do that then there's no problem in the first place.

Sheesh, Wals, give it a break. Yeah, the (ultra) left are inhuman freaks, so are the (ultra) right and the various regimes the West supported as their right wing death squads wandered around liquidating their sets of inconvenient wrong headed intellectuals. I don't think we need to mention South Africa's apartheid era attitude to black intellectualism, nor good friend to Reagan and Thatcher Augusto Pinochet's, now do we? You don't have to reply to oby, you know. Besides, he's right in the general sense, while the black majority's wealth has improved (by about a third, if I remember the figures correctly) it was coming off a very low base so does not represent much absolute improvement, just relative improvement over apartheid conditions. And that is causing increasing friction.

British and other western jihadis are subject to different pressures than those in Yemen or Afghanistan, certainly, but most jihadis come from muslim countries and that is clearly what Rostere is addressing there- Britain is hardly the subject of colonialism, except in Daily Mail headlines. There may be a few hundred British jihadis but it's fewer than went off to the Spanish Civil War in the 30s as a comparison, and a tiny insignificant (except to fellow Brits) proportion of the jihadi movement as a whole. Western citizens become jihadis primarily for the same reasons people adopt any radical ideology would be my guess. A feeling of disconnection from their country and society.

We don't have any idea if he'd be banned for saying what he meant- it doesn't have to be a spiel about how he ruined the last perfect White Paradise on earth. Plenty of western leaders- Thatcher, Reagan, others- hated Mandela without being overt racists, usually for "at least apartheid RSA aren't commies!!! or terrorists!!! and Mandela is a commie!!! and a terrorist!!!" reasons. In any case it would be a completely pointless argument because it's clear that the majority of people like Mandela, and won't be swayed. Mandela certainly had flaws. Most people would probably put him in the freedom fighter camp instead of the terrorist one, but he was not Gandhi and anything that paints him as perfect has been subject to airbrushing. Of course some people blame Gandhi for all the deaths in the India/ Pakistan partition too...

Geoff Keighley is hosting, free carbonated beverages and compressed maize wafers for all! I'm not quite sure why I have antipathy towards the VGAs/ SpikeTV awards. They're basically harmless in much the same way that any music award show that gives Miley Cyrus song of the year is harmless, and I can just ignore those.

Sure you can, most encounters in Fallout could be avoided by running to the exit grid, same with Jagged Alliance 2. It isn't as quick as in RTwP, but it's doable. Running past the combat in PST wasn't exactly a perfect solution either and I did it mainly to avoid pointless combat from aggroed thugs. It looked like a Benny Hill chase scene and relied on most (any? cannot remember any ranged weapons in PST exc magic) enemies not having ranged weapons.

Pretty sure it was stated that there would be no DRM on the physical copy, with optional registration to GOG/ Steam.

Which is irrelevant as we aren't talking about a minor spat here. If things are serious enough that the US is seriously damaging China's economy then they would have no expectation that the US would pay back its loans anyway. And it wouldn't just be Chinese bonds being devalued, it would be everyone's. Good luck getting more money out of anyone if you've just proven that you will- effectively- default on your loans wholesale, and if printing money were an economic panacea Zimbabwe and Weimar Germany would be Nirvanas. Recipe for winning bragging rights over a pile of economic ash, that. Then you're actually talking a blockade and an act of war, not some sort of economic stoush. That scenario leads to Fallout, if you aren't absolutely sure what you're doing. And, of course, it would prove every single one of China's reservations completely correct. I'm unenthusiastic about the current set up, but your proposed one is... bonkers. Japan is still cordially loathed by its neighbours, is clearly on its way down, is internationally irrelevant and if you're going to award permanent seats based on contributions be ready for Saudi Arabia to be next on the list. If I had to redesign the UNSC Japan wouldn't make my short list. I'm not even sure if I were to appoint the whole 15 seats that Japan would make it.

Why do I find the tears of internet outrage so delicious? They'd better still have cinematics for high level spells in TToN though, I thought this was the integral and defining characteristic of PST. If they don't have this I shall be forced to break out the 'Torment in Name Only (TINO)' acronym, and perhaps contact the International Criminal Court and Ban-Ki Moon plus demand my money back plus extra for mental anguish.

The thing I really noticed about the rugby was how quickly the old South African flag and singing of Die Stem instead of the new anthem basically disappeared, and Mandela's attitude had a lot to do with that. I still can't watch that final though. It's a shame Robert Mugabe didn't show the same attitude. He did a bit in the early days, his jailers piped cricket commentary into his cell as punishment but he ended up loving the game. Pity he went completely mental and didn't know when to give up power.

For the aficionado who wants a wildly successful but almost totally unknown German general may I present Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck, probably the single most successful commander of the entirety of WW1. Defeated multiple British invasions with aplomb, invaded British territories and ended the war better supplied than at the start despite a total blockade. And yes, I was reminded of him by the Chinese Expansionism thread. Plus he told Hitler to go asterisk himself too. If a few million more Germans had done that the world would have been a far better place.

It wouldn't just be x$ on top of the price of a set of cheap garden furniture. As soon as the US tries something significant China can and will reciprocate. It's economic MAD, in essence, you can have a certain amount of low level antagonism and 'competition' but if you try doing something that is considered to be important you're risking escalation and retaliation- and you'll end up getting as much damage yourself as them. While China is not the sole source for bond purchases and loans for the US it is a major one and if the stakes are raised enough they will use that leverage, for example. Or cut off some of the essential stuff they make, it will take months to years to gear up to make replacements and during that time it won't be x$ on the price, it'll be xyz$ on and likely complete unavailability. China also, and in contrast to the west in general, has trillions in cash reserves. They'll burn through it quickly enough if push comes to shove, but that's certainly a better position than being 17 trillion in debt or whatever the US debt level currently is. Tanzania (German east africa, which reminds me...), Namibia, Samoa, Papua and Togo. Nowhere near France or the UK or even the Netherlands, but quite significant.

Zhukov is too mainstream. Chuikov, Koniev, Rokossovsky et al are the hipster options for WW2 Russian generals. True connoisseurs go for a fine vintage Suvorov though.

I was going to check out the anticipated RPGs list, but 15 separate pages for 15 games? That ain't going to get rewarded with 15 page views any time soon. In theory at least I have 4 kickstarted RPGs plus DAI and TWitcher3 to look forward to though, so it's probably 6/16 given no WL2.

There is the Napoleonic version of M&B- it isn't really JA/ Darklands style but it is Napoleonic and small(ish) scale. Was absolutely riddled with bugs and primarily aimed at MP though.

Are we talking about Dragon Age Origins here? The one where Orzammar was one of the four requisite places you had to secure an alliance with to beat the game? Yep, I am. It has effectively no relevance to the overarching plot except providing an alliance, and Shale is peripheral to that goal since she's separate from the Harrowmont/ Bhelen choice. Alistair, otoh, could be a king/ spouse/ PC spouse/ sacrifice/ alcoholic bum- all except the last one being very important to the overall plot- as well as providing background and interaction with Eamon/ Teagan. Shale's about equivalent to Wynne or Leliana in importance, nice to have, but not by any means essential.

I don't really have a problem with Arrival* being dlc, of those I listed I only really dislike the F3 one and I probably wouldn't even there if the ending were not so broken in the original. If I had a criticism it might be that it would be better suited to an 'episodic' type format where the expectation is that the episodes are all integral- and I do think that if you're going to have that sort of dlc you really need to have a good recap of important events between the games. Having Shepard be in jail at the start is otherwise a bit jarring. *I haven't played it either, so I'm going on hearsay/ having read the plot summary as to its importance.

How so? Dragon Age released a full expansion. None of the DLC really impacted the story of the main games. Shale, a character so important to the storyline of Orzamaar that she was featured in later novels. Oh come on. Orzamar's plot is not exactly central to the game, and her reactions are not much more central to it than, say, Leliana reacting to you defiling Andraste's Urn. If you had to buy Alistair it'd be a lot closer, but you don't. Story dlcs are "damned if you do, damned if you don't" on their integration. Have a wholly peripheral thing like, uh, Golems of Amgarrak (?) and you get people complaining that it has no relevance and is a pointless cash grab, have an integrated and important story and it's a cynical cash grab instead where you only get the whole story if you pay extra.

If one accepts the premise that Germany in ww1/2 was - by virtue of geography - completely incapable of winning a naval conflict with Great Britain. Germany didn't really try and win a naval conflict with GB in either war though- even at Jutland it wasn't intended to be 'stand and fight'- and for the forseeable future China won't try it with the US either. China's navy isn't designed to fight the US one, just to project a certain amount of power which it lacks at present and to build up prestige. If they did have to fight the US one they'd lose, and they'd try asymmetric tactics/ rely on subs much as Germany did. But if they want to apply pressure to the Phils, or Vietnam, or Korea or Japan then it's a useful tool; and if they want to protect essential sea supplies from anyone other than the US it's essential.

Meh, as always GabeN only believes in competition that benefits him, if it's him tipping the playing field to his goals it's fine, if it's someone else it's horribly unfair and monopolistic. Him bundling his system on unrelated products on windows = good competition, totally not unfair; his company making his own OS is totally not unfair; MS doing it (sheesh, if you went by NostraGabeus the sky would have fallen with win8's release, instead MS have been using steamworks for their PC games. Couldn't pick his nose, that guy) is just inherently unfair! How so? Dragon Age released a full expansion. None of the DLC really impacted the story of the main games. I suppose there's an argument for Witch Hunt. Not a very good one, since it didn't lead into anything in DA2. Presumably it will be of some importance in DAI, given we've seen Morrigan. Mass Effect(s) would be better. There's a better argument that Arrival (? the last, bridging ME2 dlc) was necessary for the flow of the series' story, and that Javik should have been a non dlc companion. Fallout 3 is probably even better though. Want an ending that makes any sense at all? $10, s'il vous plaît.

To the best of my knowledge, no it hasn't, it's still saddled with GFWL. Yep. The sum total result of the petition to remove GfWL was to get it saddled with GFWL and steamworks, except for the (GfWL only) Euro retail version. That is where people thinking it has steamworks comes from as it does, but effectively only as an added DRM layer and in addition to GfWL, not as a replacement. Thanks muchly, petition signers!

They contribute mainly by stopping the US + minions from running off and starting conflicts, of course.