Agiel

Thoughts from Philip Roth, for my money the finest American author still living today (though he has retired from writing), on the Trump presidency and its parallels with his novel, the Plot Against America:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tsb7CxwSiBA

Years from now we're going to be seeing books written about how quickly Trump's honeymoon with Mattis and the Pentagon fell apart over everything from procurement to NATO. This kind of clash of personalities, fundamental disconnect of priorities, and total cluelessness on foreign policy on the part of Trump for whatever reason gives me some vibes of John Diefenbaker's Ministry and his Cuban Missile Crisis and Bomarc debacles.

I'm also baffled by the implication that California should be considered any less "American" than all those heartland states. After all, as that movie "The Founder" shows, it's the birthplace of McDonalds which is as good a symbol as any of American innovation and ingenuity (such as it is, given Ray Kroc's depiction) and the footprint it leaves on the rest of the world. And, you know? Taco Bell, Carl's Jr, In-n-Out, and Del Taco were founded in Los Angeles. That makes the city the source of another American symbol: Chronic obesity.

Ideally you want to look up what the draft of a ship is in the identification book, set the depth setting to ~2 meters deeper than the draft, then set the fish to magnetic-influence detonation. This is so that the torpedo detonates directly underneath the ship's keel and "breaks the back" of the ship so to speak and can generally spell the death of all but the heaviest ships with just one torpedo. It could be that the automatic targeting sets the running depth to those settings, and assumes the player sets the torpedo to magnetic-influence themselves. Just keep at it and check in with the fine folks at Subsim (who can teach you far more than what I could tell you here). You haven't lived until you've conducted a surface torpedo attack on a convoy with decks awash under a cloudy night. "Aal Eins... los!": Fun trivia: Magnetic-influence detonators for the G7a torpedo in the initial stages of the Second Battle of the Atlantic were notoriously unreliable, forcing crews to rely on the contact detonators. This state of affairs was a damned sight better than that of COMSUBPAC, where _both_ the magnetic detonators (they were tested in Alaska, but did not account for the differing temperature and magnetic conditions of the South Pacific) and contact detonators (they were simply crushed upon hitting a vessel) of the Mk. 14 torpedoes were totally useless for the initial months of the war.

Dodging Hedgehogs in a Type IX-C in 1945 in the GWX super-mod for Silent Hunter III was my nightmare. Anyhoo in my experience it's usually best to plot a surface course to a point far ahead of the convoy's current path then dive to below the thermocline and come to full stop (the drawing tools on the navigation station are your friends for this). Then as you pick up the merchant ships on your hydrophones come to periscope depth and at max go to 3 kts to manuever. Also you don't have to go out of your way to sink 3 ships in a convoy for a good haul; just one 10000t tanker could put you well on your way to beating Kretschmer's tonnage kills.

Well in Vermintide the Witch Hunter also dual-wielded flintlock pistols (and going by the ammo counter, he would have had at least 40 under his coat) and simply dropped the empty ones after firing and reaching into his coat for a fresh one. I suppose for POEII that kind of animation would suffice and just take the game's word for it that after the encounter your PC picked up all the empty guns and reloaded them all before the next encounter.

Or you could have a brace of flintlocks on your persons. Granted, you wouldn't be able to put out as much dakka downrange as you would with all these Derringers, but you get the idea:

Oh, the curse of a 9-5 job. When I try that out when I get home I'll be crushed by people with experience. Well, that and because my reflexes have dulled over the years.

Woah. Don't say anything you can't take back:

Not only that; there would appear to be pretty significant story advancement for them in the pipe (on top of Cadia having been blown the 'eff up):

Would be lovely to see a cRPG with a Harlequin party. They have all the DnD archtypes represented - Fighters: Thief: Mage: Ranger: Though I'd be pretty psyched to see a DMC/Bayonetta-style action game featuring the Solitaire. Given how they can eat an Imperial Knight alive in the tabletop, this isn't too far from how it would look:

Mad Max with heroin, highly impractical BDSM gear, pointy-ends galore... Actually, yes, Mad Max IN SPAAAAAAAAAACE!

Would be pretty cool if it also led to a PC game based on GW's upcoming "Gangs of Commorragh" game, though that would probably be dependent on that game selling well and even then it'd be quite some time before it would come out in digital form ("Can't let digital bi-furcate the player-base, no-sir-ree-bob").

This isn't me "gloating" about an inauguration that may or may not have had anemic attendance as compared to the inaugurations of other Presidents. Many have said that we should hope for the best from a Trump presidency, but frankly Trump spending so much energy worrying about what others think of him means I have my doubts he has any post-The Day After Reagan surprises in store for the US. https://youtu.be/ctmZGSyMFy4?t=3m48s George W. Bush took plenty of guff from the Daily Show, the Colbert Report and the like, and through it all he behaved presidential; there were strong criticisms (and some of them I thought were even valid) of Obama throughout his two terms and I hardly think he let that get to him. It's up to Trump to either crap or get off the pot, because from what my family and I have known of him for the close to thirty years we've had to read about him in the papers or hear in the news his talk is worth less than a one trillion Zimbabwean dollar note.

Hopefully we get to meet Klovis the Redeemer: Scratch that, hopefully not.

"We have to give him the chance. He can grow into the offi-"

I was kind of stupefied that some haven't figured out from close to thirty years of his antics that Trump was the most hollow, fleeting, and perjured man possible... then I glanced at the newstand at my supermarket and realised there was something that should have tipped me off: People had to be buying enough National Enquirer magazines to keep the lights on at their offices and made their rag such a perennial sight at store checkouts

Then again, Andrew Jackson was actually physically brave, didn't have access to near instantaneous (and unfiltered) intercontinental communication (though if he did, he probably wouldn't have fought the battle that would have propelled him into the public consciousness), and ~1500 strategic offensive warheads ready to go in 5 minutes on receipt of orders at his disposal.

I will say that it seemed to have the same pitfall PS:T had where it disproportionately favoured a certain build to get the most out of the game (a high wisdom character in PS: T). In the case of Numenera the experience of playing a Nano with mind-scan and high stats in the various Lore and Mechanics skills went a lot further narratively-speaking than the "Graceful Jack with a Silver Tongue" I made my first playthroughs with.

It was hard for me to pass judgement on the combat encounters (or "crises," as they are called in this game), perhaps because the early access version only represents a small fraction of the final game, but also because it was difficult for me to measure whether or not they were a substantial improvement over those of Planescape (which had encounter design that actually made me put the game down) due to the transition from RTwP to Turn-based. From what I've played so far there was probably only one or two that measured up to the encounter design of some great turn-based RPGs like Original Sin and ToEE, since they allowed for players to exploit their surroundings, but the rest did things like pitting you against 10 of the same enemies in a relatively wide open arena or just one big boring enemy.

That made my day :D Thanks for that.

The teaser image depicts a smoking pipe and a stalk of wheat. Edér has a stalk of wheat hanging from his mouth, and he's fond of smoking with a pipe, so I guess that implies he would be a returning (or even THE central) character of the sequel.

Project Louisiana teased by Obsidian. Many have bet that it's Pillars of Eternity 2. It would seem to imply Edér as a returning character or even a central figure (his portrait has a stalk of wheat hanging from his mouth, and he smokes a pipe).