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Oooh, I know this one, I know this one! Let's see... perspective?

It's a political illusion.

Yes, it was a deciding and huge factor. But then again, so were Soviet numbers, the Lend-Lease agreements with the US, the need for Germany to fight on two fronts and the weakness of her allies, the German lack of preparation and planning for a long war, the crushing defeat of the Luftwaffe in the Battle of Britain, and so on and so forth. It was just another factor, sorry. In fact, I think that the Soviet deep operations doctrine (whose intellectual author was purged, mind you) was much more decisive than raw industrial output. That's irrelevant, anyway. You made a fallacious argument, and when called on it, you try changing topics. The difference is that, unlike yourself, he hasn't espoused the policies that led to any of those instances of massive loss of life.

Post hoc ergo propter hoc... And Soviet industry was only one of many factors.

Hehe. Why is porn "questionable"?

Tried Turbo or anything of the sort?

They did hire Jorge "Oscuro" Salgado to work on FO3. If I recall correctly, he's from Spain. Huh. Isn't that the guy that made that huge ass mod for Oblivion? "Convergence", was it called? I didn't know he'd been hired by Obs -- does he have a forum profile for us to stalk? Looks like there are some things I do not know. Unthinkable!

Yes. If I was a house robber, I would simply wait until you were out and then steal your guns. Hahaha. Sweet, sweet irony.

^ Exactly. You mentioned a normal rule of commercial life, but there's also a normal rule of people: they always want to have their cake and eat it, too. I don't think I've ever considered purchase of anything Apple, for many reasons, so it's not like I needed one more. But that's the beauty of supply and demand -- if people really want free unrestricted access to the internet in their phone, someone will provide a solution. Apple can do whatever they well damn please with their products... and I suspect they will do quite well anyway. Also, h4x.

Aren't most gun-related deaths in the US from small calibers, though? I'm not saying that a ban on .22 LR and unrestricted ownership for AAA platforms is the way to go, but come on, how concealable is a Browning .50 MG?

Finished reading this today (and I even skipped the CK parts!). This may very well be the best LP EVER -- the author has basically crafted a custom-made mod that encompasses several games just for the purpose of writing the LP. The mod is available for download, too, so I know what I'm going to be playing for the next few weeks. I didn't know of the SA policy of archiving threads after some time (and then charging for access to them), but it doesn't matter as the whole thing (minus goon interactions) is on the LP Archive: http://lparchive.org/LetsPlay/Hohenzollern/index.html

the harder question is which is the best adventure game for a kid to start on... Leisure Suit Larry, obviously. Seriously, the guy is a total buffoon, ugly as a sin, but in spite of this he has never been known to have needed to do any actual work, and scores regularly. What more could you ask for?

See, I have already done that in countless other threads -- he simply repeats himself time and time again, hoping the opposition will go away. Analysing and defeating his rhetoric in detail is a pretty sterile effort, even when there is something to analyse and it's not just tripe along the lines of "democracy is only good when you can only vote for the CPSU". Use the search function, if you don't believe me.

Blah blah do you have an argument or are you just going to attack my use of the word "bourgeoisie"? Especially since I haven't used it?Blah blah the bourgeoisie this the anti-communists that. Do you have an argument or are you just going to keep repeating the same boring rhetoric forever? The fact that his rhetoric doesn't change doesn't necessarily make it invalid. The fact that it is completely vacuous (as I said) and mostly simply unreferenced **** and personal opinion, however, does. Yes please. I wholeheartedly endorse full annexation of Spain by the UK, or dominion status at the very least. Keep your cuisine, though.

No, you don't understand -- I don't vote.

I'd hit it.

Blah blah do you have an argument or are you just going to attack my use of the word "bourgeoisie"? Especially since I haven't used it?Blah blah the bourgeoisie this the anti-communists that. Do you have an argument or are you just going to keep repeating the same boring rhetoric forever?

Can you stop sounding like a broken record? "the bourgeoisie this, the bourgeoisie that". Seriously, it's not only tedious as **** to read, it's also completely vacuous. Do you have a bot to write your posts for you? Not at all... unless you are part of the bourgeoisie, of course.

@Rostere: Gorbachev made the "right" decisions, with which objectives in mind? Dissolution of the Soviet Union? Avoiding the use of force to keep the people of the Republics in line? Preserving the Soviet state at any cost? Those are mutually incompatible -- the dissolution was most certainly NOT his intention, and the others were his duties as HOS. He may have been morally in the right, but he failed as a (Soviet) manager. So because it was the local elites that finally initiated the disintegration of the USSR, they were a necessary and sufficient element? Are you familiar with the concept of catalysis? Also, the referendum called for a new reformed federal Soviet Union, but it didn't clearly ask whether the Union should be dissolved altogether or kept as it was, if choosing "no"; the wording was confusing and open to interpretation. Doesn't matter, anyway. If "the People" really liked the Soviet system better, they would have switched back one way or another. But the only place where this has even remotely happened is Belarus. That should have read "Zionist", my bad. I'm not too good at this whole Marxist-Leninist inflammatory rhetoric thing. Precisely. Now compare it with the 1990 Russian election where political parties other than the CPSU were banned, a portion of the seats were reserved for party candidates, and in spite of Glasnost, the media was still a state apparatus. I wonder what the OSCE ratings for that one would have been, heh.

As I said, I was just being silly and taking your idea that "anything they add to this, it isn't X-Com" literally. TFTD had some weird **** that didn't fit very well with the canon established in the first game, too. Wasn't that sort of the point though, that people cared about the gameplay mechanics, not the cannon? What people care about and what things aren't always one and the same... Seriously though, if what defines X-Com for people is mechanics alone, then JA = XCOM. edit: So... consider it a spinoff. Problem solved!

You mean I have failed to establish a causal link in your eyes. Unfortunately, that's not a problem I can solve, as history is not a mathematical science. However, I could just as easily assert that the destruction of the Armada had absolutely no relevance in the decline of the Spanish Empire, and you couldn't really disprove that negative -- after all, the USN recovered from Pearl Harbor and went on to win the war in the Pacific. I guess it just comes to choosing which explanation you think is more plausible; whether the fall of the USSR was the result of a massive conspiracy perpetrated by the corrupt revisionist counter-revolutionary elements in the higher echelons of the Party and their imperialist Jewish overlords, or simply the result of an economy that couldn't compete, coupled with an incompetent leadership, mismanagement and a critical lack of foresight and strategic planning that her enemies knew how to use. So those were "free and fair", huh? How free and fair compared to the last Russian elections? I thought that was a "right-wing dictatorship". Which one is it?

As I said, I was just being silly and taking your idea that "anything they add to this, it isn't X-Com" literally. TFTD had some weird **** that didn't fit very well with the canon established in the first game, too.

Possibly because technical limitations didn't allow for much more. I'm going to be even sillier than usual, and say that since TFTD played mostly underwater, it wasn't X-Com, either. X-Com was about the iso, turn-based, squad tactics as much as it was about sci-fi, molecular control, and the horror atmosphere inspired by playing night missions against the remains of ancient alien civilizations that use people to make yummy shakes in their vats. If they can make a squad-based shooter that incorporates aspects from outside the actual mission gameplay (research, UFOpedia, base and budget management, randomized environments, etc), it could be nerdgasm. If not, well, I suppose we'll at least recognize the Chrysalids. Oh, wait. It's going to be cross-platform... nevermind then.

Exactly what kind? Interested to know. I mean, anything more than obvious stuff with trade relations, and missile positioning? It mostly had to do with the inability of Soviet economy to a) cope with the domestic increase in grain demand (production had remained almost constant from 1965), forcing the Soviet Union to be the first importer globally, b) sustain its superpower status, and c) use its huge industrial sector competitively to export anything but weapons (the market for those was down), restricting its exports to raw materials only. The US took advantage of this by, among other things, pressuring Saudi Arabia to drive oil prices down, thus hitting hard the #1 source of hard currency for the Soviets, and instituting a grain embargo which, while ineffective at starving the Soviets into submission, did drive up the prices they paid for it. Measures were also adopted to prevent Soviet gas imports to Europe, further strangulating an already strained economy. And don't forget that mess called Afghanistan. The economic troubles and widespread disillusion were what prompted Gorbachev to try his hand at reform... and we all know how that turned out. lof would have you believe that the Sowjetunion was close to functional autarky and that huge military operations cost no money as Soviet armies were conscripted. He'd also place the blame for the fall of his workers' utopia on rootless cosmopolitans and the corrupt neo-bourgeois Soviet elite (this rhetoric should ring familiar, no?). But as with most things he posts, the reality is simply other. I posted more or less the same on another thread already, btw. If you are interested in the topic, try to find works that focus on the geopolitics of oil throughout the 20th century.

That's a fairly liberal use of the phrase "right-wing dictatorship", bud.