melkathi

And in a parallel universe to Fenixp the Vodyani were abducting my population: (funily enough, we have pretty much the same alliance. The Unfallen asked my Riftborn to ally with them, then allied with the Horatio against the Cravers. The Horatio loved that as they were worried about my fleets pacifying pirates in the no-mans-land between our sectors. Then I added the Sophons to add pressure on the Vodyani.)

I think I may have been playing "just one more turn" of Endless Space 2 for the past 4 hours

It's easy to shrug everything off as not being all that important. And you get easily branded a hypochondriac, but it doesn't hurt getting a check up when you have an issue. Even if it is a small thing, you can still manage to reduce it to a couple of days where otherwise you'd be under the weather for a week.

Carmageddon?

Sunday morning I got an email from a prospective guest asking if I had a room vacancy for the same day. We spoke on the phone as well. He would be in town for 4 days. But as he was attending an event, the company would cover expenses and accounting needed to do a bank transfer of the money. I gave him the IBAN. He send me a screenshot of the transfer through e-banking. Late afternoon / early evening he arrives and checks in. Because it was Sunday, the wire transfer would not happen 'till Monday obviously. It takes one working day. Tuesday morning the money hadn't gone through. Tuesday noon the guy had vanished, leaving behind a bathroom he had defecated in and smeared his excrement over the floor and shower walls. I talked to my bank. I talked to his bank and while his bank couldn't give information to a third party, they made it clear that while they couldn't give me any information, they could give me advise, and the advise was to accept that the money wasn't coming and that I should consider what my course of action would now be. The cleaning lady found some papers of his under the bed. Among those was the price list for services at a different hotel. I called them and asked them if they knew the name of the "guest". Their reply was "Oh, God. Did he do the same thing to you as well?" We talked and I explained that since he was local and not a fraudster who disappears abroad and can't reasonably be chased (usual fraud is British tourists on specific islands and US American tourists anywhere - for me in Athens city centre US Americans are the number 1 danger, any other country is pretty safe once they arrive (fake reservations in an attempt to get schengen tourist visas is a different matter)), this time I would not let the person get away with it. This time I'd find the bugger. Even more so as googling his info he turned out to be a gossip columnist with his pictures all over the net. Not someone who could hide. Not in a small country like this. We talked again a short while alter, and I told them I had informed the hotel owners' association so we'd at least have a chance to find out if he showed up somewhere else. Sadly the association can't send out an email alert in these situations; in the past we had been sued. Apparently a fraudster's fraudster nature is personal information and may not be publicly shared. Regardless, the people at the other hotel had decided they too would try and get the guy and we agreed to work together. While planning one of them suddenly had the IDEA (capital letters since it is what makes the story). From them the guy had also stolen the guest mobile phone (some hotels offer mobile phones for the duration of the stay, so guests don't need to bother with roaming etc). "Let me see if I can track the phone." A few minutes later she called me. "Are you still at your place? GPS shows the phone just 200 meters away from your location. And Google Maps shows the site as another hotel." I knew the street. I knew the place. I went over to the fairly new place that had opened there. A small place similar to mine. Just a few apartments. No 24 hour reception. I rang the bell for reception and shortly after the front door was opened. By my "guest". He went into a long explanation of how he was just visiting a friend. How he hadn't checked out. After all, he had left his papers in the room. He returned, grabbed the keys and promised that the failed wire transfer was a mistake and he'd return with cash. Obviously I double checked his ID and kept a copy of his ID (taking note how the ID number did not correspond to the number he had filled in for check-in). Now this isn't the movies. While I knew he was a fraud at this point, while everyone else knew he was a fraud, he actually had two more days of a reservation and thus two days left in which to pay. Yes, I would be able to add a hefty charge for damages, but I couldn't call the police and say "The guy who is supposed to leave in two days and has two days in which to pay, hasn't paid yet and let's be honest won't." Sadly that is not how the law works. He never returned. Not to my place. Not to the place he had gone after mine. The owner of that place though was shocked and had joined our team. He spend the whole day and night monitoring the security cameras in case the person showed up. Which he never did. Next morning I went to the police. I explained the situation and was told to wait for the sergeant. The guy I had been talking to being the sentry for the holding cells filling in while the other guy went to the bathroom or something (Greek police has had major cut backs). I started to tell the sergeant and he interrupted me "Is that the guy from Honduras? Because we caught him two weeks ago." I explained that no, mine was Greek, a local fraud. I explained the situation to him. I told him about the other two places and how we had very real suspicions that there had been at least one hotel before our three. I was advised to return the next day in the afternoon. As the guest legally had the right to pay until noon the next day, if I were to file now, it would give him the chance to pay me the next day, then have me charged with a false accusations, slander etc. The officers understood my annoyance and feeling of impotence, but just as the hotel owners' association had done before them, they underlined the very real danger of me becoming the accused. We made an appointment for the next day when the same officers would be on the afternoon shift and we'd finish filling in the forms and put in the next day's date. I left and shared the information with the team. Then I went for lunch. I was going to have a nice relaxing lunch. Draw a bit. Look at furniture for the apartment I am moving to. They others called me. They had tracked the phone to a new hotel. I told them that the first of our three places he had a reservation with was the one with the strongest legal grounds to call the police. The check out date had passed, so he had left without paying. The fraud was fact now in their case. Furthermore he had stolen from them. They should call 100 (It isn't 911 in Greece ), not a precinct. They should not talk to him. Call the police before the guy came down from his room, so the police would have time to arrive. They could get him arrested. The rest of us could only offer support. In the meantime though the guy send the third place an email, cancelling the remaining nights because he apparently had an accident, had been taken to hospital and would have to stay in hospital for a few days. The remaining clothes at the room he asked to have stored so he could pick them up when he was well. Obviously he did not know that at that time the owner of the hotel was already downstairs in the lobby, alongside one of the ladies from the first hotel, trying to convince the receptionist to tell them if the guy was actually there. The receptionist wasn't helpful. The places manager showed up and confirmed that the guest had checked in and was currently in the room. The hotel wouldn't be able to assist in any other way of course as they hadn't become a damaged party yet. We consulted over the phone. I laid out again what the legal options were according to the police and my lawyer. As the guy had cancelled the other reservation, we agreed that the third place had grounds to call the police as well. Both of the other two hotels called the police, while I got a schnitzel, fries, a pepsi, and a chocolate cake desert. Just as I was savoring the prospect of eating that last piece of cake, the others called me. The police had arrested him and were taking him to the precinct. I should come as well to testify and add my charges to theirs. I really enjoyed that last piece of cake. Had a pepsi refill and rushed outside and jumped in a taxi. At the precinct I met the others. The officers were taken aback of how cordial we were, but we were having a great day and it soon rubbed off. In the guy's back they found keys and keycards for five other hotels he had pulled the same stunt at over the previous two weeks. The policemen loved it. What they had thought would be a routine silly call about someone trying to bail out on paying their check, turned out to have the makings of a big case. And all that wrapped in a fun tale of hoteliers tracking a guy through GPS. And basically presenting them with a lot of the groundwork already done. At some point we were led to another room so the police could take the guy's statement. When the officer where we were waiting heard why we were in his office, his eyes lit up. He jumped up and said "So if I go now I'll get to see the guy? Awesome. I want to see who he is so I got the complete picture of the story!" If this was going to be the talk of the precinct, he wanted to have seen the perp. He had seen better perps. It was explained to us that we should not get our hopes up. If found guilty he'd get 1 year of jail on probation. That was what we should expect. We were also told that while the phone was what allowed us to catch the guy, ironically it would be my set of keys that would land him in court. If the crime has happened within the last 24 hours it is treated in flagrante delicto and a trial can happen within the next 48 hours instead of getting set for a later date (which could mean in three years as overworked as the courts are). As he had taken my keys and not reappeared, the police put it down as theft. And as I hadn't confronted him at the latest hotel, he hadn't had the opportunity to return them to me there. Silly, the police officers agreed, but these were the loopholes they needed to get things done. We finished our statements and left. I went by the precinct today, to tell the original officer who we had planned for me to file charges with, how things had proceeded and how he would no longer need to do that. Didn't want him to wait for someone who'd never show up. He had heard parts of the story at shift change, but he hadn't known it was my case. He was really excited. The case had turned big. The guy had already been taken to the judge and found guilty. There also had been prior cases. And our case had given the state attorney what he needed. The police officer patted me on the back and said: "He is going to jail. You will not see that one again for a long time." That was my week. Now I have to turn this into a novel. Also rather chuffed

Construction sites need tools: Guard taking out undead: Guard working hard: Lunch break:

Don't worry, as Merkel said: das Internet ist für uns alle Neuland.

My google-fu suggests USB stick. Or upload to facebook (compressed) or Twitter. All three require you press the "share" button.

I can play city builders too!

I am always disappointed when I see New Vegas placing higher than Alpha Protocol. But my pure dislike for the writing in New Vegas is well established

That is fighting talk!

A forum horror movie: "I know what games you voted for last winter"

For me the franchise peaked with Alpha Centauri (which isn't really part of the franchise but you know what I mean), and no Civ after that could live up to the awesomitude of AC.

I'm waiting for the "Can I have your stuff" post

This poll is rigged! Any poll where a game with such a well written story such as Alpha Centauri ranks worse than Mass Effect must be rigged. I shall leave the forum forevermore in protest!

Well, at least Alpha Protocol is ranked higher than those games I didn't vote for

The added stress is the wonder if by siding with one side you miss out on a recruitable character

No they are both fighting the undead. And the thingie I need is in the fortress overrun by the undead. But the two armies (that both want to clear the undead out of the fortress) refuse to work together, and I need one of the two to let me use their basecamp.

I want to play games with choices. But whenever there is a choice, I can't decide on which choice to make. Undead have overrun the area. Two armies are there. I can ally with one of them and annoy the other one. Both armies blame the other for not cooperating against the undead. Who do I choose? The knightly order that got overrun by the undead in the first place or the mercenaries who see this as an opportunity to steal an ancient artifact?

I thought I had voted for it as well

As long as they like the same stuff I like I agree wholeheartedly

DS2 was a surprisingly good game. My only gripe with it was that when npcs would talk, the game wouldn't pause. I have no clue what the people in my party were saying to our enemy, usually I'd have to defend myself and the click would skip the text away

Dragonfall was the one with the dragon I think? Never completed it. Got bored.

Because I enjoyed it much more than most of the games, which were released last 5 years *shrugs* And I have no understanding how. I found the gameplay extremely lackluster, dull and underwhelming. The writing was decent. I would have enjoyed the plot as a shadowrun novel. But the game packaged around it I found lacking compared to any other turn based rpg.

I think Shadowrun Returns is the first game on the list where I have no understanding why people would have voted for it.