melkathi

The original had more complex hit/miss mechanics and shots that kept going until they hit something or left the area, damaging anything they hit according to their damage roll and some things were easier to shoot through than others. XCOM essentially only allowed explosives to reliably remove cover and you couldn't even target anything non-hostile with normal weapons. I think it is somewhat sad that with so many teams trying to create spiritual successors to the original and each and every one comes up lacking in some way, even the official sequels, though Terror from the Deep was pretty much the same game without the difficulty bug and horrible, nightmarishly anthropomorphized lobsters. UFO: Extraterestials Gold Edition came pretty close. And yes, it has the good old hit/miss mechanic. And even the Aftermath/Aftershock/Afterlight trilogy had a lot of things going for it (though also a lot of bugs going against it). At least though they tried to give a deep tactical gameplay. I need to play a bit more Xenonauts.

Warning: Long post. So, Satellite Reign. Is it the Syndicate / Syndicate Wars sequel you have been waiting for? I don't know. It sure seems to be the one I was waiting for though. The Basics: The evil company Dracogenics (it's a cyberpunk story, big companies are by default evil) created immortality tech: the rich and powerful can download themselves into new bodies and essentially live forever. But a new player has arrived on the scene who aims to grab this tech and power it brings for themselves. Enter you. To this end you control a small, 4-man clandestine team of cloned agents in isometric real time (without pause). A main story offers missions to guide you along and access to the different districts of the city has to be unlocked, but mostly players are free to do as they please in each district and pick targets of opportunity. Your Agents: Your agents have been cloned using stolen Dracogenics tech. As a result you can discard their bodies at a whim and download them into new hosts. This is meant to a) explain the respawn mechanic and b) the game's new recruitment mechanic. If an agent dies, they can be respawned at the nearest beacon. After some time. For a bit of cash they'll respawn sooner. The respawn timer and cash depends on the complexity of the agent being cloned. More augments and equipment requires more time and resources to procure after all. But a base body can provide only so many ressurections before the genetic information starts to degrade. Thus you are required to diverify your gene data base by snatching people off the street. While in previous games your agents were faceless, vat-grown base clones, interchangable for anything but their installed augments, the dracogenics tech has allowed for far more sophisticated skill sets. Your agents now each have a class/specialization. You have one of each, representing the four key agents who's conciousness is being transfered from clone to clone. Melkathi notes: This has been a point of critique from fans of the old games: we want our faceless clone. It is part of what makes cyberpunk so distopian after all. Now that the body snatching is in place though, I for one have become quite happy with the new system. The Soldier Agent: The soldier is your grunt. At first not really able to do all that much other than shoot stuff and be shot at, they can enter a state of Rage to become more effective in combat, Draw Fire away from squishier friendly targets, Harden themselves to damage, and become the team's Explosive Specialist. On top of that they can learn to Hardwire equipment - a usefull skill when you want to turn off the electricity to a military compound. The Support Agent: The support agent does exaclty that: help your team accomplish their mission. They can heal team mates, hand out combat stims and even have some leadership training to boost the team's effectiveness. Most importantly though they are equiped to perform a World Scan, checking the flow of information for details about their surrounding. They can see what camera is connected to which control panel, but also who that civilian is who just strolled past. The Hacker Agent: The hacker agents hacks. They can hack door controls. They can hack security cameras. They can even hijack the chips implanted in a person's brain. Melkathi notes: In effect the good old persuadatron from the Syndicate games, intelectual property tied to that license, has been turned into a skill in this game. A hacked person can follow the agents around and assist in combat, or they can be send back to base and used in the gene pool (ouch). In combat, the hacker is an expert when it comes to energy weapons and can deploy combat drones like a rigger in Shadowrun. The Infiltrator Agent: The infiltrator does the sneaky stuff. Like the soldier they start off rather skill-less (though with a neat sniper rifle). Soon though they can develope their sniper skills, dealing knockback damage and entering sniper stances, but they can also learn to be extra sneaky. The click button turn invisible mechanic can seem out of place in many games, in a cyberpunk game it does make a certain sense though (think assassination scene in 1995's Ghost in the Shell). And to make the stealth even more usefull, the infiltrator can be trained in melee combat for stealthy, silent kills. Melkathi says: Yup, I do kinda miss the agents with the complete lack of personality. Syndicate was the one game series where this lack actually enhanced the atmosphere. But the classes and accompanying skills add a lot more options without truly taking anything away gameplay wise. Maybe it would have been better if the player could choose how agents specialize. But 5 Lives Studio is just five people and they do have to set in limits if they want to ever produce a finished product. This is a limitation I can live with. Most importantly it adds more than it takes away. Agents haven't lost any ability. They simply became from four clones who can hold an Uzi, four clones who can hold an Uzi and know how to... The City: You can move around the city freely. For specific values of freely. There are restricted zones where guards will shoot you on sight. There are gates that need to be bypassed one way or another. there are security cameras that will spot you. So let's say: you can try to move freely. But nobody stops you from trying. The city districts have been quite lovingly crafted to give players loads to do, and more than one way to do these things.When for example you leave the short tutorial (right click to make your agent walk over there etc) and enter the Downtown District, all you have to do is get the band back together and get access to the next district. All you can do though is a whole lot more. There is a bank waiting to be robbed. There is a Dracogenics military compound waiting to be raided. There is a Ronin Industry storage facility to be snuck into. There is the CCTV database to be hacked and the Black Market Clinic inside the Wyvern compound that could be of interest. And of course there are the spots to set up your beacons, the ATMs to be hacked and the civilians doing what civilians do: walk around oblivious to the fact that the player is about to happen onto their lives. Holster your weapons, stroll around, see the sights. Don't get arrested. The Mission: Your mission log holds the information Tag (the lady with the sexy accent) has provided you both on your main mission and on targets of opportunity. She also provides opportunities to purchase more info through information brokers and strategic bribes. For example, and only the tiniest spoiler, the game intro informs you that one of your agents has been arrested. As you leave the tutorial, saving them should be a top priority. You know the location of the police compound they are being held in. It has a big gate. You could blast your way through the gate. Shoot the guards and fight your way back out through the inevitable reinforcements. You could wait for a patrol to open the gate, then fight your way in. Of course you could also wait for no guard to be in sight and hack the gate controls. Alternatively you could snoop around for something other than the gate. Have some spare cash? Tag has a contact who knows someoneone who knows a corrupt cop. That can save you the snooping. Through the back alley to the west you can enter through the compound's back door. Or from the construction site to the east you can use a cable to zipline directly onto the prison roof. The choice is yours. Melkathi says: the back door really is the easiest way. Your agents come out fairly close to the CCTV control panel, turning the sneaking to the prison building into a stroll. And if you don't dawdle, you can be back out the same way before the cameras wake up. Hijacking: A note on hijacking. It is a skill only your hacker has. And it is a skill that needs to be upgraded. A level 1 skill can only grab civilians. At level 2 some minor guards can also be controlled. The heavier guards require a higher skill. Guards too can be send back to the gene databank, though currently it messes the game up a bit: Sending the hijacked person to base releases them from your command, resulting the guard you hijacked to then try and shoot you if you are in a restricted area. When you kill them they still appear in your gene pool. Before you hijack a new recruit it is advisable to perform a World Scan with your support agent. Once a person has been scanned, with just a small expenditure you can download additional information on them, showing you how they would affect an agent's stats if they were used as gene material for a new clone. The World Scan: The Wold Scan is an integral part of the game. Within its radius it shows you power lines, highlights important objects and highlights human targets in different colours: white for civilians, red for guards, blue for agents and yellow for VIPs. Need to assassinate a target? Scan the area they were last seen and locate their chip. Need to bribe someone for their access codes? Do the same. And as guards are highlighted in red, a scan will help you keep tabs on them while you are infiltrating a facility. And you'll want to do random scans as you travel through the city. Not all civilians are just average Joes and Janes. Sometimes someone will turn out to be someone you need: a World Scan may reveal a person to be a scientist you can headhunt. Offer them some cash and poach them away from their current employer to bolster your research team. Final Thoughts: It seems you cannot lose the game. Even though clones deteriorate if they die too often, you can simply grab more bodies off the street - life in the city is cheap. Hacked ATMs provide a steady cash flow. It seems you will always be able to recover from any mistake. Some people may wonder what the point is of trying then. Well, for some there may be no point. But dying does rob you of time, can rob you of money, of the sense of accomplishment and, as you are forced to replace the clone base for your agents, it can rob you not only of an agent's dashing good looks, but also the desirable traits of a body. Melkathi remembers: While most civilians seem to give around +10 Health as a clone, and my base soldier clone had a nice +30, I ran accros a lady with a funky haircut who had +80 health. The ideal meat shield! To me, eventually being forced to replace that body could end up just as bad as a game over screen. To me the game is a lot of fun. I love the atmosphere. A LOT of work has been thrown into it by the small dev team. It captures a lot of what made the original Syndicate games *feel* great without simply copying them. It is a game that stands in its own right. It is real time without pause, but so far it hasn't gotten so hectic that I woul have needed the pause. Then again. When I did get overrun, I recloned my agents and tried again.

Impressions are good. Does not compare to the rough state it was in. It went from Alpha to Beta today so will try the content complete build today and post my thoughts.

Someone asked me the other day, melkathi, old chap, you know the important things in life, no? So when then does Satellite Reign release? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5L3AeCib1F8

I shall adjust the TV angle for you next picture The plugs... yeah. My electrician is great at laying cables and doing the grunt work. He turned out incapable of doing proper finishings. Next time I'll use a different one for that bit. I promised SadExchange that I'll write my impressions in the other thread at some point. That way you wont have to moderatorate them out of this one into that one as off topic

Because a cyberpunk game needs multiple screens and visible cables.

ABC has the rights and killed the show before it was aired to put out Once Upon A Time instead *blargh* Maybe the WB movie will at least be good.

Forgot to mention: Next time I'll do better. I abducted several homeless people and random passers by and used them to download my agent personalities into fresh bodies. You see, clones degrade after too much cloning. You need new, fresh DNA to work with ever so often to keep your agents in top shape.

Started fooling around a bit in Satellite Reign. It is shaping up to quite the awesome game. Tried to be all clever and stealthy. Infiltrate the surveilance compound for the district and mes with the face rec software to make cameras less effective. Snuck past two cameras and one guard. Dashed towards the stairs and last minute noticed a guard walking up those very stairs I was aiming for. Hid in a corner. Guard walked past. I dashed down the stairs. Spotted a second guard comming my way. Tried to hide behind some boxes as the door to the generator room was too hard to hack. Was spotted. Guard opened fire. I returned fire. Guard dies. Other guards hear the noise and come arruning. More guards die but raise the alarm. More guards come arruning. My agents all die. Clone new agents. Upgrade agents. Try again. Manage to open the generator room door and hide in there while a new patrol (now two guards at once) walk past. Get almost to the main building. Get spotted by a surveilance drone... Dash into the nearest building and get stuck on a walkway overlooking the compound with five guards covering the building door. Try to shoot my way out. Fail. Clone new agents. Try again Hack the door controls for the back door into the compound. Leisurely stroll down almost next to my target. Sneak past a camera. Walk up to the main building's door. Forget to set two agents to hack the two terminals at the same time. Try that again. Lone guard spots us. Gun down lone guard. Second guard comes to check out the noise. Soldier keeps guard pinned down while Hacker and Support open the building gates. Infiltrator dashes inside and completes the mission. More guards come arruning. Soldier draws fire. Support deploys some healing nanos. More guards come running. Decide to just make a run for it. Dash up the stairs and out the back door. Holster weapons and try to meld into the crowd. Surveilance drone simply hovers over compound wall and starts firing. More drones zoom in from all directions. All agents gunned down...

Spoke to Paypal customer support today. I went in expecting Steam support quality of "support" The guy actually was awesome. Tried to fix the issue. Failed. Told me he'd have to escalate it. I said ok. He said: but let me tell you what will happen when I escalate. The techs wont fix it either, instead send you a mail suggesting you should delete your account and make a new one. So my suggestion is, since you have a 0 balance right now, I wipe your credit card data from this side to make sure it is purged from the system, delete your account and then you make the new one without waiting days for the tech stuff to simply suggest the same thing. Sounds like a plan

Would it mean we get Sweet Home Alabama as a national anthem? We could initiate preliminary talks.

It seems quite clear that Varoufakis did not resign but was resigned. The scoop for a while had been that Tsipras wanted to get rid of him but had too little control over his party/government to just do it. The timing for the resignation is perfect. While the NO won, participation wasn't high. By having V for Varoufakis resign, Tsipras created a day after where everyone won. The NO voters won because NO got over sixty percent. The YES voters won since one of their central goals, getting rid of Varoufakis, was met. And Tsipras won because he re-established his position in the party - for now. And Varoufakis won since he managed to go while he still could present the whole thing as him being awesome. Now he can get his tenure at Harvard and travel the world delivering speeches about how he'd have saved Greece if only the evil lenders had let him.

So NO basically won. 68% among the under 35 with a vast majority among the students. All the kids living off grandad's and grandma's money. Above 55 it is 63%+ in favour of Yes. Funny that. Oh, and Monte. N17 and the Conspiracy of the Fire Nuclei both no longer operate and have been jailed. There is no real far left terror group at the moment. All violent potential currently comes from Golden Dawn and groups to the right of them (scary *****ers when admiring the SS is seen as too soft). And some uncoordinated vandalism by anarchists. Though we'll see how that all changes the more the ties between the left and the far right are strengthened. If you remember the assassination of the two Golden Dawn members last year, the terror group that claimed responsibility was a fake. Their letter was wrong on every level. The details were wrong. And the style was wrong; the person who wrote it was very obviously simply copying info they found online. A bad fake. Bah. Why am I against gun control?

Sounds bad. I wonder to what extent the current gov't has actual support from the armed forces. Have you heard anything about Academi (formerly Blackwater)? http://beforeitsnews.com/global-unrest/2013/02/greece-blackwater-mercenaries-guarding-govt-and-overseeing-police-coup-feared-2453458.html https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=el&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.newsbomb.gr%2Fpolitikh%2Fnews%2Fstory%2F296524%2Fapantisi-dendia-sti-voyli-gia-tin-blackwater I'm guessing the "domestic enemies" he was alluding to are supposed to be Golden Dawn fifth-columnists and such? Actually no. It was meant to rally that part. That is the scary part. The government has the support of the far right. The No vote afetr all is the supposed far-left SYRIZA and their far right coalition partner ANEL (independent Greeks), alongside the radical leftist ANTARSIA and the nazis from Golden Dawn. As someone from ANTARSIA told me: "The purity of the NO message is underlined by the fact that not even the Nazis dare oppose it but feel forced to support it". Apprently those of us who are saying YES are worse than Nazis *nodnod* It's the general theme they have been pushing these past few days. The announcement by the Minister of Defense should be read as "If the YES vote wins, don't worry, we can stay in power." So, yup. The probable NO victory today is a great victory for democracy /end sarcasm.

Just because our Minister of Defense announced the other day that the army stands ready to defend "us" from domestic enemies?

Very low participation today it seems.

The Yes crowd wants to see them gone but knows we don't really have any worthwhile people to put in charge. Honestly, Venizelos is probably the best man we have right now. But he could never unite a government behind him anymore. When PASOK had to decide for a new party leader in 2008 they started an internal slander campaign against him that he'd never recover from. But as a friend of mine said the other day over a game of Blood Bowl Team Manager: "You know I have always voted conservatives, but not even I will pretend that Samaras could lead this country." The thing is though: the previous government was terrible. And one had to ask "How much worse could it get?" Well, now we know. Right now the Yes supporters are not asking for a good government. We'll settle for our simple bad one please. Just take away the dreadful one.

I am firmly on the Yes side. My social circles are split between Yes and No (though more in the No) and some undecided or abstaining. The people I know that vote Yes do so for one or more of several reasons: 1) Knowing the party and the people in the government too well 2) Being in the private sector 3) Having been in the "party" since forever (which I guess comes close to 1 above) Which all boils down to not trusting this government to do a thing right and hoping a Yes vote will get rid of them. The No crowd among my circles seems rallied around: 1) Wounded National Pride 2) Bravado 3) Having no worries as dad pays the bills anyway Mind you this is my circles. I am certain there are people who have reasonable cause to vote No. I even have a friend who seriously believes that a No here will change the whole of Europe for the better. The uncertain / abstain crowd basically has one line of thinking: If we are voting on whether or not we accept those specific terms, how can the referendum be held when the deadline for those terms is already passed and those terms are no longer on the table? If the question is moot, how can one vote at all? Overall, the No crowd is far more social media savvy. They are also far less opposed to cyber-bullying. Or real life bullying. The other day a friend was chased and verbally abused all the way from the metro entrance to the train platform for throwing a No-flyer into the bin.

Heh. My mother (who is visiting at the moment) just came back from Lidl. There were three bags of rice left in the whole supermarket. Pasta was mostly sold out, with only two kinds left and those again only a couple of bags each. She said that the place basically looked like the aftermath of a crowd on a panicked stockpiling mission. What people think really depends on where you are. SYRIZA's core voters are better off inteligentsia (my architect colleagues), civic servants (who migrated over when the socialist PASOK party, which had been buying their support since the junta, fell apart) and teachers. So those are fervent NO supporters. They are starting to lose ground with the teachers since they assigned Baltas as minister of education - he has never hidden his disdain for the common teacher and for public education, and has been a slap in the face for the people who fought to have the party win the elections. Private businesses and especially the tourism industry are mostly in the YES crowd. The tourism industry here is ironic. The NO crowd talks about the raise in tourism taxes being a reason to say no, yet the ones who'd pay that tax support the yes *shrug*. Probably alongside my line of thinking: "Lower taxes don't do me any good if I have nothing to be taxed".

Before Bruce asks me to post in here as the off-topic resident Greek: Hi! And that's mostly all I have to say. But... My family has always been extremly politically active. We left Synaspismos when the party mutated into the dreg that is now known as SYRIZA. Many other traditional left families have done the same. As a result there is little of the Left left in that party. A reason I keep out of such discussions. It is a party that labeled itself as Left without any relationship to the believes or ideology. They are an opportunistic pack which realized that a left party was easier to usurp. Yes, because the Greek Left is what Monte described: a bunch that got stuck at student union rethoric level. Greece is a small country. We know each other. Heck, I had lunch with some of those ministers, lounging in a beautifull garden of a mostly illegally constructed summer house. So I'll not try to talk all high and mighty about what economic policies are right or wrong. Pretending to know better than you lot because I live here. But as a friend I'll say this: don't believe much the Greek government is saying. They are untrustworthy, power hungry twerps. Heck they openly admitted only calling for the referendum to sort out inner-party conflicts.

The so called left government here seems to be preparing to do a coup should they lose the referendum even though they are rigging the vote already.

I don't think you are supposed to hold it anyway, rather you should lounge in close proximity and drink cold beverages of your choice.

A few more pictures: From the hotel, having friends round for dinner (the aftermath. Also, this is before the clean-up, that's why there is moss...) http://i.imgur.com/9ZUPtiw.jpg Athens by night: http://i.imgur.com/vCppu23.jpg (I'll need to learn to properly use the camera. Might have to nag Woldan for advice) http://i.imgur.com/gkP0I2Z.jpg

Old potter's / ceramics workshop most likely

Sitting in the bus. 7 hours ride just started so might as well use the bus wifi to upload a few pics. Bedroom upstairs apartment: http://i.imgur.com/TeKkTCS.jpg http://i.imgur.com/nKK4KWm.jpg Upstairs apartment: http://i.imgur.com/i042jAm.jpg Ground floor studio: http://i.imgur.com/hgRLF0A.jpg Bathrooms: http://i.imgur.com/SwduOo5.jpg Doing work in the garden: http://i.imgur.com/Fs1C7Q2.jpg http://i.imgur.com/tUW0Bcr.jpg My dudes working on the new gates (yesterday) : http://i.imgur.com/BCIyZIP.jpg http://i.imgur.com/gkTt5BK.jpg (which we need to paint tomorrow) And noticing the typo after we put up the sign :/ http://i.imgur.com/ariQdc0.jpg Rest of the uploads failed... meh. Another time