Agiel

Finnish Top Gun: A Finnish friend of mine has relayed to me that it's a video illustrating how in order to be an effective Ground Control Intercept officer, one has to be an qualified aviator as well. *Trivia/Goof: A pilot mistakenly uses the brevity code "Fox 3" when launching a captive Captive Sidewinder IR guided training/test missile. The proper call would be "Fox 2".

This man agrees.

This discussion reminde me of a story told by Viktor Belenko, the famous Soviet defector who flew his stolen MiG-25 to Japan (that was eventually returned to the Soviet Union, in 30 crates). He would try all the goods to offer in an American supermarket, happening on this one canned good that was simply labeled "Dinner". He tried it with potatoes, onions, and garlic and found it very delicious. The next day, he had some friends over to his house, who spied the can in his garbage can and remarked: "Viktor, I didn't know you had a cat."

I do it on Hard partially because it was the "Golden Mean" for me for Dragon Age: Origins, partially because Kevin Van Ord, one of the few games writers whose opinions I respect these days, had said in his review that Inquisition required fairly little strategy (and I'm assuming as a reviewer he played it on Normal), and partially because I started playing Inquisition on the tail end of finishing a replay of Icewind Dale 2.

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.