Keyrock

Kinda sorta but not really. Both XCOM and JA are similar in that they have turn-based tactical combat and management, but both combat and management aspects are a bit different.

I captured my first section of Fleatown. This was my most successful stealth assault. The firefights were few and short because the enemy numbers were whittled down and once alerted they walked straight into crossfires I had set up. Having Vicki slap a couple of oil filters onto the ends of her pistols was a good move. I took hardly any damage and zero wounds, which means I can immediately move on and not waste any time. I'm contemplating hiring Red to fill in my glaring explosives expert gap. It will take a while to get him to my team, though. Probably worth it in the long run, though.

For eight years, from 1960 to 1968 the US government thought it was both a good expenditure of taxpayer dollars and a wise decision to fly a bunch of B-52 bombers loaded with nukes around North America (and to other points, but mainly North America) continuously. We're talking mid-air refueling so that they don't have to land continuously. What could possibly go wrong? The program ended with the aforementioned accidental dropping of a nuke onto Greenland. The nuke didn't detonate but the conventional explosive did and the nuke ruptured and a bunch of radioactive material went into the soil. As you can imagine, the Danish government wasn't exactly pleased about this. By the way, the program to have nuclear armed B-52s continuously flying was called Operation Chrome Dome. You can't make this $#!+ up. As an aside, the 2 nukes that fell on North Carolina both had all their fail-saves, save one, triggered. It was a different fail-safe in each case. These bombs were an order of magnitude more powerful than the ones dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We were 1 fail-safe away from the US accidentally killing millions of its own people.

Which part of "accidental mishaps" did you not understand? Let me help you out, the term "accidental" expressly states that it was not done on purpose. Also, I don't think it's crazy to suggest there may be more we don't know about. Some broken arrows that happened as far back as the 60s weren't officially disclosed until a decade ago. If you honestly think there aren't more broken arrows that haven't been disclosed yet then I have a wonderful offer for you. There's this bridge I own that connects Lower Manhattan and Brooklyn Heights and the price can't be beat!

I like it better without the % chance to hit. I somehow feel less frustrated when I miss an attack that vaguely seems to have more bonuses to hit than penalties than I do missing an attack that's 80% chance to hit. It's a weird psychological trick that keeps my brain more satisfied. On the subject of modding, Haemimont Games stated that making the game moddable was very important to them so there should be a ton of mods heading down the pipeline. I'm mainly interested in custom maps/campaigns and modding some old favorites into the game, assuming they're not in it. I'd love to try a run with "Unusually Ruthless" Reuban, but the modder needs to make his stats $#!+, make almost everyone else hate him, and make him leave if he doesn't get enough kills, just like in JA1. I took over my first diamond mine without too much trouble. Dr. Q was the only one to take damage and he suffered 2 wounds. No big deal, I'll have him patch himself up while I have my other 3 mercs train. I felt kind of bad having to kill hyenas, that didn't stop me from throwing a grenade into their pack, though. I felt really bad while the grenade was in the air, though.I see 2 enemy squads next to Fleatown, one directly on my way and one a square out of the way. I plan to take both of them out before assaulting the town.

Fun fact: The United States of America has had so many accidental mishaps with nuclear weapons that they coined a term for such events: Broken Arrow. Officially, there have been 32 broken arrows (Lord knows how many there are that we don't know about), including the time the US dropped a nuke on Greenland, the time the the US dropped two nukes on North Carolina, and the time the US dropped 4 nukes on Spain. Six US nukes that were lost have never been recovered. Sleep well!

To me there were no stakes because we already knew the outcome. That's the problem with making a movie expanding on something referenced in another (much better) movie, the journey better be damn good because we know how it ultimately ends. I'd have a slightly higher opinion of the movie if not for CGI Grand Moff Tarkin. Not only was the CGI not good, it legitimately bothers me when Hollywood CGIs deceased actors. Just get another actor that looks vaguely like Peter Cushing, don't... Just don't. It's wrong. It's disgusting.

It's easily the best attempt to either reboot or restart the series in the 20+ years since JA2, not that that's a high bar to clear. The game feels properly Jagged Alliance; all the tactical options you could reasonably want, interesting cast of characters, and a story that feels like it was ripped out of an 80s action movie. I think the most contentious point is that the game doesn't give you a % chance to hit, it instead lists off pluses and minuses (e.g. +high ground +aiming +upgraded scope -dark -enemy in cover) from which you can infer a vague probability of success. I'm done with the island. After some well deserved R&R, my crew took a boat over to the mainland and now I'm ready to assault my first diamond mine on the way to Fleatown. My team's biggest weakness is that I don't have anyone good with explosives. I've got psycho covered with my own created merc, Paul Kersey, and if you've ever watched the Death Wish movies (and if you haven't, what are you doing with your life?) you know that that's an accurate character trait.

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I do believe that at the time I watched Rogue One, which is to say as soon as it was available to watch outside a movie theater, I did think it was better than The Force Awakens. That said, I was nowhere near as high on The Force Awakens as was the general consensus. My quick review of The Force Awakens is "meh". My quick review of Rogue One is "meh", but said with a slightly more upbeat inflection. My review for Solo is "meh" but with a significantly more negative inflection. The Last Jedi outright sucked and Rise of Skywalker was an atrocity. So maybe it really is the best Star Wars anything that has come out of Disney? Not exactly a high bar to clear, but there it is. Keep in mind that I haven't watched any of the Star Wars shows, nor do I have any interest in watching them. Supposedly people liked The Mandalorian and word 'round the campfire is that Andor is good. That's hearsay, I have no plans to find out for myself.

As a fan of 70s blaxploitation movies, and just exploitation movies in general, I like the look of this. Is that supposed to be a selling point? Do people remember that movie fondly?

I redid the island fort assault and this time did much better; no wounds and hardly any damage. I've got one more thing to do on the island before I return to Ernie and hand in all my quests, save Herman. I've got intel on the area which should help me avoid unnecessary detonations. I wish I could do it tonight, but I have to get up early tomorrow morning. Side-note: Vicki's passive ability that automagically repairs all weapons and armor she has equipped is incredibly useful. While it is tedious constantly swapping weapons and armor with her to keep all my team's gear looking nice and shiny, it's worth it to not have to stop and waste precious time (time quite literally equals money in this game as mercs don't work for free) repairing stuff.

Yeah, I've had zero issues with JA3. None, nada, zip, zlich. In a year full of terrible PC port launches it's refreshing when Probably because this isn't a PC port, it's a game made specifically for PC. I just did the assault on the Legion fort on the island. That's the first battle I've had where I nearly had a merc go down. Everyone survived, though, and scars build character. That was a fun battle.

It wasn't so much launched as it was dropped. People said it was da bomb, so I guess it was well received?

It could be argued that this doesn't warrant its own thread, but it doesn't really fit into any existing thread. Also, I just really wanted to use that thread title because I'm juvenile like that. Worth it, in my opinion.

My biggest takeaway from MI7 is that Hayley Atwell should be getting a lot more leading roles than she has been. She was Peggy Carter in Captain America and the Agent Carter show and then... What has she done since then? She should be an A-list Hollywood actor, she should be on the Jennifer Lawrence level, she's really good. I hope it's not too late for her, she's around 40, I think, and after a certain age the roles for women in Hollywood get rather narrow. It would be nice to see her be the lead in a few big blockbusters before she's relegated to just playing witches.

Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Pt 1 - My first trip to a movie theater post pandemic. I don't know if I'll go again any time soon because $#!+'s expensive and I have a pretty good setup at home, but I don't regret going today because the movie was awesome. This might be the best of the MI movies, which is impressive given that they've mostly been good to great. You know, Tom Cruise is a weird dude, he clearly has quite the ego, I mean he got a hilariously giant gold medal from Scientology, but God bless him for making these movies. God bless him for still making old skool action movies with real stunts in real locations. If there was any question of whether Tom Cruise could still do this at age 60, the answer is a resounding yes. Dude is still a fantastic action man and he delivers the goods here. This crazy mother****er jumped a motorcycle off a mountain. He didn't jump a motorcycle into a foam pit in front of a green screen, he jumped a motorcycle off a mountain, potentially multiple times (I don't know how many takes they did). The movie is quite long, roughly 2 hours and 40 minutes, but it didn't feel 2 hours and 40 minutes, it felt more like and hour and 45 minutes. It never dragged, it was always engaging, thrilling and spectacular at times. There were some really great action sequences. There was a really long car chase that managed to be simultaneously comical and adrenaline pumping. There were great fight scenes that felt visceral. And don't you worry, there was plenty of Tom Cruise running. You always have to have Tom Cruise running. It seems like they may be setting up Hayley Atwell as Tom Cruise's replacement, or for a spinoff. I'm all for it, she was terrific as Grace. I would be totally down for her to be action woman. She was everything you would want in a leading action star; charming, witty, resourceful, even vulnerable at times, and it doesn't hurt that she's rather attractive. I would also welcome a prequel of sorts about her exploits as an international thief. My only complaint is that Simon Pegg and Ving Rhames weren't in the movie enough, especially Ving Rhames. But, that's a small complaint in an otherwise terrific action movie.

I also started over because, like the dumbass I am, I forgot to make my own merc and was just rolling with the hired mercs. I was very early into the game (just liberated Ernie) so rather than wasting precious time to wait for my created merc to meet up with my squad I just started over. Here's my merc: They didn't give me enough characters to call him "Death Wish" or even "Deathwish", so he's "Dethwish". That's the most Charles Bronson of the available faces I could find. My team is the same as before: Blood, Dr. Q, and Vicki. They worked really well previously so if it ain't broke don't fix it. Everyone on my team has high agility so that I can sneak around and set up nasty ambushes. Blood is particularly great at stealth kills with his throwing knives. I can sometimes take several goons out before battle begins, which is obviously of great advantage.

I went to the shooting range this morning for the first time in a while. I decided to do a bit of an experiment and try a variety of ammo to see how they compare. I tried Sellier & Bellot 180 grain full metal jacket (this is what I have been mostly using for target practice), Freedom Munitions 180 grain round nose flat point (full metal jacket), Nosler Defense 200 grain bonded jacketed hollow point, and Underwood Ammo 155 grain TAC-XP (jacketed hollow point). What I found was that unsurprisingly the Underwood ammo was loaded the hottest of the 4 (Underwood is one of the few ammo manufacturers that still loads 10mm Auto as hot as it was originally when it first released in the early 80s), the Freedom ammo was also loaded quite hot, the S&B was a little bit weaker, and the Nosler was significantly lighter shooting than the other 3. However, I was really impressed by how accurate the Nosler ammo was. It's not specifically labeled as match grade, but I could probably competition shoot with this ammo. It's very consistent. My conclusions are as follows: * I will continue to use the S&B as my primary target shooting ammo. It's (relatively) inexpensive and reliable. * The Nosler ammo will be my home defense ammo, as it was before. it's the weakest of the 4, but it's still plenty powerful enough to drop a person. A heavy slow moving bullet is great for soft, fleshy targets. * The Underwood ammo will be my going deep into the wilderness ammo. If you told me that I was going to have to defend myself from an unspecified threat and all I had was my Glock 40 and ammo of my choice, this is what I would choose as my ammo. This ammo is expensive but it is STOUT and is rated at 1400 fps muzzle velocity (probably slightly higher from my Glock 40 because of the 6" barrel where as I believe the velocity rating is based on a standard full size pistol, which typically has a 5" barrel). 1400 fps is very high velocity for a handgun round and it's well known that velocity defeats armor. The reason I bring this up is that you need to think of a bear as an armored target. Unless you are an incredible shot or really really lucky and put a bullet into the bear's eye, you are most likely shooting it somewhere in the torso where you have to penetrate the thick hide and a layer of fat that, in the case of a black bear, which is what we have round here, would typically be 3" to 7" thick, depending on the age of the bear and how well fed it is. In the case of a brown bear the layer of fat could get into double digits inches thickness. If I were somewhere with brown bears I might opt for some of Underwood's even lighter and higher velocity rounds. I believe they make a 135 grain that's rated for 1600 fps, which is extremely high velocity for a handgun round. As it stands the 155 grain TAC-XP ammo strikes a good balance of bullet weight and velocity that should be perfect in case I need to defend myself from a black bear. It would obviously absolutely massacre a wolf, deer, coyote, or anything else I would typically encounter in this part of the country.

Right now I'm playing on default settings (First Blood difficulty with no game rules active). In a future playthrough I may do Commando difficulty with the Dead is Dead rule.

Story time with Baphomet is a step in a more wholesome direction.