kanisatha

Maybe a 'disagree' button more so than a 'dislike' button. Too much hate and vilification on the Internet as is.

I avoid US domestic politics discussions. But world politics is fair game given that it's my profession as an international relations academic. And you won't get any defense of the liberal international order from me. I'm a staunch realist and am happy to see the LIO dying right now and love watching all my fellow liberal (in the political science sense of that word) academics wringing their hands in agitation. But, the faults of the IMF and WB were more incompetence and stupidity. The BRI is malicious by design and intent. My country of origin from a long time ago is Sri Lanka. What China has done there, and specifically the Hambantota port deal, which has now become a classic case study in many international relations classes and textbooks, is a worse form of colonialism than anything the British did. To use China's own silly rhetoric, it is colonialism with a happy face, which is a far more insidious form of colonialism than the brute force colonialism of the old Europeans.

Not only the Tibetans but also the Mongols, Uighurs, and Koreans have historically suffered Chinese oppression. And even today China seeks to take land from India, Bhutan, Burma, and all the countries around the South China Sea. Also, the tribute system *was* colonialism. And in that vein the so-called "belt and road initiative", which is China's contemporary tribute system, is 21st century colonialism.

Ah piece of cake. Plenty of time leftover.

And early man would've had plenty of reason and incentive to build these crazy things, because if I were living thousands of years ago I swear I would have gone mad with boredom. I mean, no computers to play videogames?! Seriously?! Well, at least give me a pyramid to build with my spare time!

Agreed, and this in turn leads to the show's personalities whining about how desperately we need our alien superiors to come back and save us from ourselves.

What I hated most about DA:I was constantly having to kill packs of wolves. Cannot go anywhere without running into them as they constantly respawn. The generic enemy respawning needs to be hugely toned down.

Our AI overlords taking over can't come soon enough. I'm really tired of the stupid humans.

Yeah they've said it will be a completely new crew in a completely new star system. Plus, I imagine they want it to be a game someone can play without ever having touched the first game.

I've got you beat. I find it to be too much D:OS AND too much PnP D&D 5e, and not enough original BG games and a game that remembers it is a video game and not a TT simulator.

Yeah from the beginning they said HoM&M was going to be their inspiration for the strategic-level mini-game battles. I believe some of their devs worked on HoM&M. I myself don't care for that type of battles, and a dev told me in the KS forum it would be optional and the game will allow that mini-game to be automated.

Fair enough, but you/everyone should check out the details of the three DLCs first (the info is now there on the Steam store page). For me, I find DLC#2 to be interesting but not so much DLCs 1 and 3. So I have to wonder if the season pass is for me. But then again, if they have any systems updates/expansions in each DLC, well, then I have to get them all. Also to add to the note, in their most recent dev interview/stream, they do mention that there could be additional DLCs beyond this initial three, and the season pass will cover all future DLCs.

I've just finished Ember and am about to start playing Tower of Time. Anyone have any ToT must-know tips to help my experience be better?

I guess this is where different people (among those who did not like the D:OS games) have different reactions. For me, BG3 is not (yet) sufficiently differentiated from D:OS2 for me to like it. Still waaaaay too much D:OS2 in the game for my taste.

There's a lull in news about good/interesting games to talk about, and vacuums always demand to be filled.

Apologies. I failed to stick with my own rule of not commenting on politics.

I'm in a teacher's union too but I will never vote D under any circumstances. The D's talk a good talk about education, but what they actually stand for and their education "policies" are the opposite of what will give students a good quality education. Yes the R's are not interested in the education issue (though I think that may be changing nowadays), but the R's not doing anything about education is markedly better than the D's doing something about education, because what the D's do to education is actually harmful to students' education. Do nothing is better than cause harm.

The reason is that instead of being organizations that simply fight for their members' rights, unions have become fronts for one political party at the expense of all other parties. So naturally people who identify with those other parties are not going to be supportive of an organization whose purpose is to serve the electoral interests of one specific party (oftentimes even at the expense of their own members' preferences and interests). If unions became truly non-partisan, non-ideological organizations that exclusively fight for their members' workplace rights and nothing else, then they would absolutely be a whole lot more popular.

I was reading about this yesterday. Loeb seems to have quite a bit of funding for this project, so I'm hopeful.

Yup, and the Su-75 is basically a single-engined version of the Su-57 with the exact same technology but downgraded somewhat for export. Even the engine is the same as the Su-57, which is just an upgraded version of the Su-35 engine, whereas the F-35's engine is a revolutionary new engine just like the aircraft itself (which is why the F-35 engine is also going through some teething and parts issues).

Ah I see. I thought you were referring to Russia's F-22 equivalent, which is already flying as the Su-57. Seems like designation number inflation is even higher in Russia than in the US military.

I actually agree, and do believe that if US and NATO forces had to fight the Russians either in Ukraine or in the Baltic republics in the near future, they will get their asses handed to them in relatively short order. But this has nothing to do with technology comparisons. US and NATO forces are technological superior by a wide margin. It's their morale, training, and will to stand and fight, alongside US and NATO people's willingness to sacrifice and accept casualties that I seriously question and which will doom the West. I mean, if the Taliban can chase us out of Afghanistan and Iranian militias can chase us out of Iraq .... Re. "Checkmate," the cost estimates are all well and good, but ultimately it comes down to performance. And I don't see much performance value in Russian 5th gen platforms at all. Take the MiG-35, built purely for export at a very low cost. Despite costing only a fraction of what Western 4.5 gen aircraft cost, nobody wants it. Yes countries want low cost, but not at the expense of quality/performance. Also, talk of the F-35 being bad is just utter nonsense, being fed by ignorant idiot news media types. Every single country that has operated it has their pilots only raving about its performance. Yes, just like any other revolutionary platform, it is having some teething issues, issues that will be overcome in time. But it is very much a revolutionary platform for future air operations with incredible capability.

I imagine you meant the Su-57. But yeah, I will grant that the S-500 system is probably the best area AD system in the world right now. The performance parameters of the Su-57, however, are very much questionable.

An interesting note. On the Steam page for this game there are items already listed under additional content for this game. One is a season pass, and if you click on that it says season pass for the three upcoming DLCs for this game. So three DLCs confirmed.

The MiG-21, -23, and -29 (for 2nd, 3rd, and 4th generations respectively) were all supposed to be "checkmate" aircraft. None of them worked out that way at all, with popularity peaking with the -21 and sharply dropping thereafter, because customers learned that indeed especially with Russian products, you do get what you paid for -- i.e., garbage. The only thing the Russians are good at is bombast. Besides, this lame aircraft will also have China's FC-31 as a cheap export competitor, and nowadays the Russians are not only behind the West technologically but also behind the Chinese.