Agiel

I did try it at level 12 on Hard, assuming that was the level I was meant to play it on. It still cleaned my party's clock at that point. That said, I haven't gotten too balls-deep into the crafting, and from what I'm told that's where you go into game-breaker territory.

Sort of hope the DLC options has more "Skyhold" wardrobe options that include being able to walk around with my character's combat get-up. Kind of don't like the idea of my Qunari inquisitor walking around buttoned up and would prefer if she looked properly "Ordo Hereticus" complete with jackboots like this piece of concept art here:

Kitten and an adorable barn owl:

Orion launch, following another milestone of the first F-35C carrier trials aboard USS Nimitz:

Companion observations (note that between working overtime five days a week and sleeping nearly 12 hours a night to recover I have only gotten to around after I get Skyhold): Cassandra: Ambivalent. I think I can get hints of her underlying motivations (that which don't relate to stopping the Fade Breaches and the Elder One). We'll see how it pans out, but so far I don't find her offensive. Varric: He remains great as of yet. Solas: A *good* character so far. Fairly amicable. Sera: Kudos to the writer for her and Robyn Addison for getting her voice pitch perfect. However I find her motivations at a high level too nebulous. I like her dialogue save for that which relates to her motivations and the Friends of Red Jenny. Vivienne: Don't quite think her being a mage and her support for the Circle system meshes that well. Otherwise she's fairly inoffensive. Iron Bull: Pretty good character. I think it's interesting to see how the "Shell-Shock" condition plays out in a fantasy world. That said, I actively avoided the dialogue that related to romance or bad sexual innuendo so that opinion isn't spoiled (the Ostrich Effect). Blackwall: Okay personality-wise, but from a gameplay perspective that guy keeps trucking, so he's a winner in my book. Dorian: Okay. Cole: Surprisingly not horrible. Perhaps it's because unlike most other Bioware characters he doesn't open the emotional floodgates on you right away (if he will at all, I suspect). In summation: So far my fears that there would be a character that was Bastilla Shan/Dragon Age 2 Anders/Jacob Taylor levels of bad have been allayed, for now. We'll see how they all shake out once I do all their companion quests.

I don't think authoritarians and kleptocrats in Russia are sunk just yet (Venezuela, Iran, and Nigeria are a different story), though the recent trends suggest they'll never see the salad days ever again.

Anyone know how well Beamdog's Infinity Engine ports play on a regular iPhone 6? Thinking about getting Icewind Dale: Enhanced Edition for my new phone, though I have reservations on how well it would play on my screen.

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Collectivism score: 67% Authoritarianism score: -17% Internationalism score: 83% Tribalism score: -67% Liberalism score: 83% I am a "Socialist Anti-Government World-Federalist Humanist Libertine". I almost feel as if it's a collection of contradictions, provided you eliminated the "fascist nationalist" side of the scale reserved for the mentally ill. In hindsight, I went a little too "and the kitchen sink" on some answers where "maybe" would have sufficed. That said, my political thought role models being Thomas Paine and Christopher Hitchens, that kind of seems on the mark.

Thinking about breaking in my new iPhone 6 with this, even if my heart is in Icewind Dale II. Wonder how well it will play, given my new phone isn't a "phablet".

All the Dutch people I know seem to speak with American accents. Can't really hear "Schmoke and a pancake" in them.

RIP the way overpowered Nova.

Funny how Bioware figured to prevent Masterwork save-scumming by seeding the materials but didn't think to stop players from doing as you have done.

I'm willing to bet at least a fair bit of those people on the streets are exploiting the cause of the legitimate protesters to satisfy some primal desire to torch a car and smash storefront windows, and have close to zero (if any at all) emotional investment in the cause of police brutality and racial bias, to the point that they probably couldn't have been bothered to learn the names of the parents of Michael Brown.

And if your "Red Storm Rising" experience feels incomplete with only the GIUK Gap, take the fight to the Fulda Gap, the North German Plain, and the Danube Line in Flashpoint Campaigns: Red Storm for only $30 USD.

http://youtu.be/ZR_Kh8sdpHY

Larger ships with extremely sophisticated radars, battle-management systems, and heavy AAW firepower are needed to defend high-value targets, an example being the Ticonderoga-class cruiser and the Arleigh Burke-class destroyers (which despite the difference of hull designation, both have nearly the same displacement tonnage, just shy of 10,000 tonnes fully loaded) defending the US Navy's carriers. You are however correct that strictly speaking Russia's navy is better served by inexpensive and low-endurance. but very quiet diesel electric submarines like the Kilo-class and smaller, multi-purpose vessels like the Nanuchka and Gremyashchy-class corvettes that can be supported by ground-based naval aviation and ashore A2/AD measures defending its littoral, as the Russia simply doesn't have the funding to create and maintain a blue-water navy with an activist maritime policy that necessitates aircraft carriers and large surface combatants as Admiral Gorshkov had envisioned. Hell, they could barely afford a beach trip for a graduating class of cadets.

@Gorgon The photo depicts an Australian Anzac-frigate and the Russian Slava-cruiser Varyag, launched back in 1983, so it's a bit creaky in spots; the Top Pair search radar is still a mechanical-scan array where other navies use phased electronically scanned arrays with plenty of redundancy, and it only has a single Top Dome fire control radar, so it can only defend against a saturation attack from a single 60 degree axis. Its SA-N-6 "Grumble" missiles (roughly analgous to the RIM-162 SM-2MR) still use semi-active track-via-missile guidance where other navies are switching to datalink capable active radar homing missiles like the RIM-174 Standard and the Aster 30, giving them over-the-horizon engagement capability against sea-skimming targets. To your first post In terms of overall armament, it can be considered analogous to the Arleigh Burke-destroyers, which the US Navy has 62 versus the only 3 Slavas in service with the Russian navy. Second photo depicts the Indian carrier INS Vikramaditya, converted from an old Soviet Kiev-class VTOL carrier/cruiser... and a bit of an overpriced lemon in the Indian navy's eyes. Still, it's big, it can launch fixed wing aircraft off a ski-ramp (albeit with a lower weapons and fuel load than a craft launched by steam catapult) and gives them a degree of overseas projection capability, and India now has a carrier to answer to China's Liaoning (also converted from an incomplete Soviet carrier) and (probably more importantly) to Pakistan's none.

I'm a pilot... (I found the link semi-related, as real-life pilots are about as acerbic and capricious as cats are).

Rules for a Rift fight: 1. Bring a mage with Dispel. 2. Preferably bring two mages with Dispel. 3. Bring all your mage friends with Dispel.

You don't *just* attach said sight onto any old tank like you would a web-cam. Modern fire-control computers have to factor in everything from range, elevation, wind, humidity and even the warp of the barrel from repeated firings in order to hit a target up to 3500 meters away with standard unpowered tank rounds (with an extreme instance being an Iraqi T-72 killed by a Challenger 1 from 5100 meters away). To use an American example to explain the complexity, proposals for the M1A3 call for the wiring to be replaced with fiber-optics, resulting in weight savings of one ton! Not to mention the fact that panoramic sights are expensive pieces of equipment that add considerably to unit costs. The original M1 was slated to have it until congressional beancounters stepped in, and only the provisions for it to be installed at a later time were left (until the introduction of the M1A2), and the Germans settled for an analogue day-only "Peri" as an interim measure for their own Leopard 2s (they only received panoramic sights with thermal imaging capabilities with the Leopard 2A5). And as I have said at least two times before I find it unlikely to the extreme that the Ukrainians would upgrade tanks for their own armed forces of whom the prime contractor of parts would come from a foreign country unless they were meant for foreign sales as was the case with the T-72AG.

You haven't seen the very first movie, have you? It takes the conundrum of invisibility cloaks and the wearer's clothes to its logical conclusion. In other news, picked this up. Not only is it pretty heavy, but it animates ridiculously well: Companion piece: http://youtu.be/tPnppCelvk0?t=31m37s

The PNK-6 system can only verifiably have been placed on T-84 "Oplot" tanks, the absolute bleeding edge of Ukrainian tank-building, and not on any Cold War-vintage T-72Bs, of which it certainly is no trivial matter to simply attach the sight to any old tank or make it work in conjunction with the FCS. And in any case as I stated before there is very little reason to believe that the Ukrainians upgraded many of them to this extent, and even if they did, the Rebels would have had to have pinched the tank from the plant in Kharkiv dozens of miles behind pro-Kiev lines and driven to to the battlespace. Shows what you know. T-72M is the designation for export versions of the T-72A "Ural". Ukraine never purchased the SOSNA-U sight from Belarus, and the only relevant system is their own indigenously-built SAVAN-15 sight, again largely for export purposesonly. And the photo was dated during the intervention that was fully acknowledged by the CIS.