majestic

Random musings on Everspace carried over from the last thread: Yes, the game has full HOTAS support since patch 1.1. The devs patched that in even though the Kickstarter goal for flightstick support was not reached. I still stand by not using anything else than keyboard & mouse for the game. It is not a space sim and the combat requires heavy strafing to get through. People who say they've killed warships are either talking about frigates or corvettes, or they're lying. Warship cannot be destroyed because they have no hitpoints (and they never had, at any point, in the versions available to players). I also disagree that the game has no sense of progression. The energy core and regeneration perks alone makes things a lot more enjoyable, not to mention easier in later runs, and any of the subroutines or gylphs can make for very interesting combinations. Blueprints and crafting perks make the first four sectors a breeze to run through. Oh and the DLC added a number of side missions, filler content the game maybe lacked outside of getting to the end to understand what the hell's going on.

Oh, it is beautiful all right: Can be a bit overwhelming at first, like all games with a roguelike core mechanic. Feel free to ask if you need anything.

I'd recommend not playing Everspace with a controller. It's a shooter in space, it was pretty much made for keyboard and mouse controls.

Oh, nothing. I'm just a bitter former WoW player who really enjoyed the game's aerial combat, the underwater raid and the Path of the Titans progression system... Granted Blizz has gotten better by simply promising less, in the past the game boxes had screenshots of features on them that didn't make it into the game. Those seem minor to me. Not just for WoW (WoD infamously got cut in half and redesigned) but for games in general. Minigames and glyphs-under-a-different-name aren't much compared to the stuff most devs pull, especially since cut stuff is generally compensated for i.e. Abyssal Maw/Firelands raids being consolidated into a larger Firelands Raid. Certainly not enough to hold a Molyneux style grudge IMO. Saying you quit Pandaland after launch because of it makes little sense to me because that had the best post-launch support of all expansions, at least up until WoD got delayed. Now, if you'd experienced WoD... Then I'd get it. Ah, I see, well that was a misunderstanding then. I didn't quite MoP because of the lack of support from Blizzard but because of the dailies insanity after an already poor earlier expansion.

Oh, nothing. I'm just a bitter former WoW player who really enjoyed the game's aerial combat, the underwater raid and the Path of the Titans progression system... Granted Blizz has gotten better by simply promising less, in the past the game boxes had screenshots of features on them that didn't make it into the game. Aerial combat wouldn't have been that fun, either with vehicles or just floating around. The playerbase hated Vashj'r (wrongly) so that's why they just left the Neptulon story unfinished. But yeah, after WoD's cuts, I'll just be skeptical about how awesome the new stuff will be. Well and how much they gate things by time or grinding for points I stopped playing Legion shortly after the Nighthold patch. We even had a decent Mythic+ group going (decent meaning members who were capable of clearing Guarm on Mythic with their raids at the time) but then the reality of Legion kind of caught up with me. Whlie I could "easily" heal the raids we ran things got more and more complicated in higher Mythic levels. The joys of being a shaman. Having a max level druid I figured I'd just switch classes for the dungeons and then I looked at the artifact weapons and, even with the catch up mechanics introduced, realized that it would take half an eternity of upgrading my class hall, grinding artifact power and finding useful legendaries (my shaman had three really good ones after all) and simply dropped my sub instead.

Oh, nothing. I'm just a bitter former WoW player who really enjoyed the game's aerial combat, the underwater raid and the Path of the Titans progression system... Granted Blizz has gotten better by simply promising less, in the past the game boxes had screenshots of features on them that didn't make it into the game.

The audio recording in question is genuine (i.e. from an actual police academy instructor). Sadly the Welt article is behind a paywall but quotes and repostings seem to infer that there are various problems with the students, ranging from a lack of respect and sleeping in class to being part of mafia clans. This isn't the first time that particular academy showed up in the news, reports like this come every now and then. Some of the older ones were fake, this one is more substantial due to the voice mail of an actual instructor. The police union commented that they're worried about instructors being threatened but nobody ever comes forward so they can't help. It's also interesting to note that this type of information seems to always come from a third party. So either the instructors are even more scared of their superiors (or the union) than they are of their problematic students or it's another case of racism in the police force. Most likely a mix of both*, and it's excacerbated by the fact that the police force has had problems filling its ranks for a while now (and not just in Germany, anyway). *Honestly, I can see why. The voice mail is the quintessential racist diatribe, the only thing it lacks is an opening disclaimer stating "I'm no racist but...".

Putting the "War" back in Warcraft... again? Much original, such wow, something something or however that meme goes. I'd be more excited for the expansion if Blizz had not made a habit out of quietly dropping half of the features announced for a new expansion. But yay, they now can morph terrain in real time now. That'll be all over the expansion, like rushing rivers were all over the Broken Isles in Legion. I think I'll sit this one out like I did with WoD and everything on Pandaria after the launch.

You mustn't worry about the crime, yes it is real and worrying but we dont see it and its not something you tend to think about in most places How to stay safe in Joburg:

Catalonia is one of the wealthier regions of Spain, but they don't really stand to gain much from any independence as far as I'm aware. Especially since they'd lose EU membership, and from what I've read on the news some companies and banks have already cut bait after the referendum. The actual cause goes back a ways what with fascist Spain actively trying to repress Catalonian culture, but I'm sure 213374U can give you more details on the matter. The EU is behind the Spanish central government, so no, there won't be any rustling, let alone chatter - for various reasons. Unless it's not in any EU region and can be rubbed into the face of the "bad guys" (Kosovo and Serbia) we can't have a region seceeding, imagine what that would do to other regions in Europe, e.g. northern Italy - Lega Nord is already actively lobbying for more autonomy - or the entire hoohaw in the Ukraine. Accepting an illegal referendum would instantly legitimize Putin's annexion of Crimea. Although to be honest as an outside I enjoy Rajoy making an ass of himself. I hate that guy any everything he stands for with a passion. As far as I'm concerned every EPP member can go to hell.

There's a civil war on in parts of Sweden, all of France and if the Freedom Party is to be believed in Vienna as well. Hordes of invaders gathering in something akin to the Purging. Movies made reality. Not sure but I think Finland's winning at the moment. Damn snow is too much for the towelheads.

Heh. After two episodes of Discovery that were actually watchable (maybe even good) they of course had to... make a time loop episode. Worse, one with incredibly lame attempts at romantic comedy and humor. There have been really fun time loop episodes (SG-1, Dark Matter) and interesting ones (TNG) but this one is so tone deaf it hurts, and to rub some salt into it the showrunners felt that Michael needed to narrate her actions so that the audience really gets what this is about. Just in case one managed to miss the enforced awkwardness of the character ever since she got assigned to Discovery. Useless science fiction technostupid of the week: Weaponized dark matter. It's like they're not even trying to come up with semi-plausible concepts any more. Sure old Trek was soft sci-fi as well but they had people with more than a single brain cell check the scripts for such obvious faults. Well, most of the time, anyway. Didn't stop Picard from finding a planet with a surface temperature of -500° C but that entire episode (The Royale, for anyone interested) was so bad that it would be considered the worst Trek episode ever if it weren't for Voyager's Threshold. Meh.

Yeah, other than one time someone not wanting someone who was "obviously" gay, most of the reasons have been stupid rather than discriminatory. Funniest reason was that the guy was too into programming to be hired as a programmer Oh yeah, that one I've seen too. The last opening we filled didn't go to the nerd who showed up in a Slayer sweatshirt* because, uhm, he was a "full-blooded" coder. The main concern was that someone like that wouldn't be able to understand the needs of the users and would produce needlessly complex modules that nobody can work with - just like the guy who quit did (except that guy got his "skills" during his electrical engineering education... programming microcontrollers which he picked up as an ECA of all things). *I have to admit that I was impressed that this wasn't cited as the reason for not hiring the guy. Much less impressed with the real reason tho. Especially because the guy we hired had prior experience in... programming microcontrollers. Man, what could possibly be any more removed from OOP development of ERP software modules? *sigh*

Actually I'd hire women if at all available and qualified. I hear they work for much less than their male counterparts.

Watched 2 episodes last night. I liked the first season, but I'm not feeling this one yet. I'm thinking Wynona is particularly bad so far. Odd, I thought she was hysterically overacting in the first season and is much more toned down and better in season 2.

Finished Stranger Things 2. I had huge reservations about continuing Stranger Things. It seemed like a recipe for disater but it somehow it worked really well, loved season 2. Maybe even more than the first, it also went a lot lighter an relied less on the 80ies shtick and had more substance.

The West does? Really? Here I tought we were too busy fellating the Sultan of Turkey, the grand Erdogan to actually give a flying f*ck about the Kurds (as long as they're not useful idiots).

Managed to get my hand on a reasonably priced SNES Classic Mini. Sat down and replayed Starfox, then tried Star Fox 2 and... it's really easy to see why it was scrapped. A few good and fun ideas but boy oh boy. Starfox had some serious framerate issues, I wonder if the original had that too (it's been too long and my original cartridge is, uhm, long gone) or if the emulator's crapping its pants there.

Posted this in the regular music threads already but since this is TEH METUL OEN11!!!: ABBA + Therion = heaven.

Aw, c'mon, give Volo some credit. Coontext would be right up his alley. And if it really was a typo it was what Bob Ross called a happy accident.

Looks like filter-bypassing to me. Assuming "coon" is actually filtered. Let's see... Nope, it isn't. I'm pretty sure it wasn't a typo but Volo making a pun. Co(o)ntext, civil war, slavery, and all that.

Meh, there's a certain irony in Americans arguing against size of all things. Isn't bigger is better a quintessential US pilosophy? The evul gubernment aside.

Everspace got an expansion/DLC. Guess I'll sink more hours into the game to keep my 100% completion rate. Plus there's a new ship to play around with... one that allows component modification four times rather than three. Mmmm, welcome my new 3k range Beam Laser M, meet some dead Outlaws...