Agiel

Well... f***,,, Pre-ordered Dragon's Dogma yesterday and am in the middle of pre-loading it. I come home from work today and check my email and lo and below, GMG sent me a 25% off coupon on it.

Starting with all the Meld stuff in EW, I kind of don't get Firaxis' efforts to take out the "thinking tactically" portion of the game. There's a time and place for acting quickly and decisively (hostage situation or a flanking maneuver, for instance), but the whole making _everything_ time sensitive seems to me like persuading players to act recklessly so they can get on with losing people.

Naval Strike Missile is, for my money, the most terrifying ASM to be on the receiving end of. Imaging infra-red guidance (no active radar to trip RWRs to warn you that it's coming, not to mention it won't accidentally guide towards rock formations a la the Finnmark coast), complex flight routing, very low radar cross section and infrared signature, very low flight profile, and high-g random spin terminal maneuvers to evade point defense missiles/CIWS = get f***ed. http://www.dtic.mil/ndia/2014PSAR/albright.pdf

I don't know. It was a hologram in-universe, and it might turn out to be a "Wizard of Oz"-situation and he's actually six inches tall.

The pre-eminent Alex Wellerstein's take on North Korea's latest test, and on splitting hairs on what qualifies as an "H-Bomb":

Initiatial seismic readings make it out to be around the same yield as the previous device (10 kt, which is less than the first Trinity test). So the most generous thing you can say about this was it was an attempt at a Teller-Ulam device that fizzled.

A Dangerous Waters-level push-button sim of a Ticonderoga-class guided missile cruiser or Arleigh Burke-class DDG. From what I heard, SCS was working on just that, until they took a closer look at the subject material and realised it might be too complex for even the most hardcore simmers.

I tend not to pay too much attention to that whole "cis-gendered," internet-head-up-its-own-ass malarkey, but I thought this was a riot:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ON-6vyQugw4&feature=youtu.be The handshake at the end was a nice cap-off.

US Army researchers will pay volunteers $200 to eat nothing but MREs for three weeks: http://www.armytimes.com/story/military/2015/12/30/army-needs-volunteers-eat-only-mres-21-days-straight/78011512/ I'd be almost tempted to give this a try if only so I could not only get a cool $200 but save that amount again in groceries and eating out in that time period were it not for the fact that: 1.) I would have to submit stool samples. 2.) I live on the opposite side of CONUS from Natick, Massachusetts.

It would appear that the FAA's fears that this Christmas would result in a horde of civilian RPVs being a menace to civil aviation have been greatly exaggerated:

Explanation of Steam's clusterf*** yesterday:

The NSA (No, not the one you're thinking of) has managed to uncover strategic weapons doctrine and targeting lists... from the 1950s: http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/nukevault/ebb538-Cold-War-Nuclear-Target-List-Declassified-First-Ever/ A key takeaway for me: That kind of comically fantastical thinking makes me recall these words from McNamara:

Gold drop (Yaaaaayyy)! But it's only a single sword (Boooooo)! As you can tell, I'm a twin blade type of guy:

Mark Bowden of Black Hawk Down fame on his weekend with Trump while doing a piece for Playboy back in 1997: http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2015/12/donald-trump-mark-bowden-playboy-profile The story of Trump making like Chief in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is just too goddamn great:

Apollo 17 mission live: http://apollo17.org

Guilty Gear Xrd coming to Steam tomorrow. Unfortunately we PC players will have gotten the shaft again by fighting game developers and will have to settle for a release behind the PS4 version and will not be able to play as Jam or Dizzy.

For those who don't have it yet, you can try Dawn of War II: Retribution for free on Steam this week. And if you want to give the skirmish (or the adversarial multiplayer, if you're daring) a try, make sure to pick up the Elite mod, which offers balance changes and a considerably expanded unit roster. All these new events for the game as of late gives me hope that Relic has something exciting to announce for the series soon. If there's a new Dawn of War game coming out, I just hope you can play as someone other than boring 'ol Space Marines again in the campaign.

Snazzy motion graphics courtesy of Raytheon: The 155mm AGS firing the Long-Range Land Attack Projectile. This makes this "Destroyer" ostensibly a "Battleship" in all but name (in terms of providing on-call fire support at stand-off ranges for ground forces, that is).

There is that upcoming action MMO, Blade and Soul, that was best described as Tera with a Wu Xia face. That said, how much that excites you sort of depends on whether or not you enjoy MMOs to begin with.

It would actually be my second favourite Infinity Engine game behind BG2. The barebones plot (get your party from the left of the screen to the right, occasionally do it from right to left) doesn't get in the way of the superb encounter design and the sheer joy of experimenting with different party builds. Oh, that, and DnD RPGs finally dropped THAC0.

I could die feeling like I lived a fulfilling life if a Bayonetta/DMC-style game where you play as a Harlequin was made.

Not accurate, at all. The SA-21 is simply too important to relocate from defense of Moscow, particularly to a place where their control over their territory is tenuous. What the Russians do have is a Slava cruiser off the coast of Syria with the navalised variant of the SA-10, the SA-N-6, which has a kinematic range of about 50nm, which is probably enough given the amount of coastal territory the Syrian government controls. And in any case, can't risk the Israelis somehow making off with the thing.