Messages

51

Forum Games / Re: The Town of Inaba (Episode 1)

« on: September 23, 2016, 02:06:56 AM »

A man with long green-blue hair bound in an intricate braid and wearing comfortable silk robes as well as a durable and scuffed looking leather satchel over one shoulder, walks up the stairs from below decks.  Beside him a rather large reddish coloured dog with a massive mane trots along genially, sniffing the air excitedly.

He raises an eyebrow as he sees Lee's performance, and speaks briefly with one of her underlings before walking up and to the side, where he can eventually gain access to the official and the gangplank, but otherwise he stands to the side.  Lee is having her moment, he will quietly stand back, and drawing upon the energies of creation, he will activate his Spirit Detecting Glance, marvelling once more at his ability to see spirits as they are without false flesh even as he allows himself to slowly scan the port to see if there are any interesting spirits here, and perhaps more importantly, to see if there are any bound elemental or demonic soldiers backing up the official.

52

Discussion / Re: Is there a politics thread? Guess I'm making one

« on: September 03, 2016, 07:40:52 AM »

Hey, this is almost as bad as that time Shillary was on the Board of Directors for a company that is making deals with ISIS!

Detractors would like you to think that it matters that she was last on the board back in 1992, and ISIS probably didn't exist in any form we care about until 2014, but her reptillian overlords/handlers would clearly have known how that would work out because it's all a part of their masterplan!!!

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Forum Games / Re: Feeling out interest for some RP

« on: August 12, 2016, 08:42:31 AM »

I have a few ideas.  Count me in.

54

Discussion / Re: DLCon XI - O Canada

« on: August 11, 2016, 12:54:46 AM »

Andy, Ash, just gonna say 7 Wonders is pretty decent for 7 player fun if you can fit it in.

Will also be bringing Blood Bowl Team Manager, Timeline, and can, on thursday, fit in one of Clash of Cultures, Colloseum, Asgard, or Patchhistory.

Will be leaving home at 6AM PST, so if you have thoughts, let me know before then.

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Discussion / Re: DLCon XI: Foodie food food food

« on: August 03, 2016, 05:40:11 AM »

Idle thoughts.

My new workplace is a block away from a Japanese supermarket/prepared food to go place that's pretty good.  If my pay is in my bank account on Friday, would anybody be interested in some cheap sushi/rice bowls/snacks?

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Discussion / Re: Is there a politics thread? Guess I'm making one

« on: July 26, 2016, 02:24:22 AM »

Because Biden is on record as not wanting the job.

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Discussion / Re: Is there a politics thread? Guess I'm making one

« on: July 20, 2016, 08:02:42 AM »

It's at this point that I have to wonder how much funding do you need to run for dogcatcher?

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General Chat / Re: What Games are you playing 2016?

« on: July 20, 2016, 02:42:44 AM »

Also, is it just me, or does 7th Dragon 3: Code Long Subtitle seem like an Etrian Odyssey clone?  Customizable party, emphasis on dungeon crawling...  not sure if that seems worth picking up when I haven't finished EO4.

It should, it's by the same guys as Etrian Odyssey.  From playing a bit of the first one, it's supposed to be more of a traditional RPG style of series than the EO games, but it's really just navigable towns and overworld maps that get added on.

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Discussion / Re: Musing on FF5 job balance

« on: July 16, 2016, 03:36:59 PM »

Eh, disagree on berserkers.  If the only way they can get past two fights is to power level so absurdly that they can still feel it, then that shouldn't be reflected in only one fight.  It especially should not be a reason to reward them in later fights.  Honestly, treating a baseline level for all jobs and docking jobs for needing to be notably above it sounds like the better way to go.

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Discussion / Re: DLCon XI: Foodie food food food

« on: July 06, 2016, 06:03:13 AM »

It is at this point that I need to ask, is there going to be a grill at this place?  It would be nice to make burgers for people who aren't me.

61

General Chat / Re: What Games are you playing 2016?

« on: July 04, 2016, 10:05:59 PM »

I need to post here more often so I don't make super ultra mega posts.

Speaking of...

PXZ2 - Finished, ages ago.
The final battle gives a pretty good reason for why the penultimate battle was so large.  Still kinda annoying, but the last stage is almost reasonably sized, considering.  It also sets things up so that once you unlock the ability to fight the big bad, you can just do so.  As for the big bad, for the standards of this game, ultra durable.  By the standard of Bamco bosses, and PXZ1 bosses, he's pretty ok.  By the standard of Bamco final bosses?  Wet Tissue Paper level durability.

General thoughts, it is in pretty much every way PXZ1 ++.  The only place where that arguably isn't true is in the cast, and even then there's a lot of emphasis on the arguably.  A lot of the Solos are really forgettable, though 4 of them really stood out to me.  Phoenix and Maya because you get them early and they make enemy shields a joke.  They can spend 30 SP to give any pair block busting, and their own attack starts with Psychlocks breaking enemy defenses.  Granted, I never used them against any of the ultra blocky enemies, but they can at least do 5 bars which is generally where things top out (they can, for example, trivialise Mettaurs).  For damage, Alisa from God Eater does a good job.  Just a lot of hits, damage is usually enough to get through defense, and has a strong crit bonus.  As for skills, you have Aty who for a long time is your only notable heal all option as you get her early and she has a cheap heal all: 30% skill in Summon: Holy Prahna.  Estelle also comes back as notably good as she can heal everyone for 80% now, and has Variable Hex for 15% Def boost for everyone.

As for pair units, I found the Fire Emblem pairing to be strangely underwhelming.  Same with the Maverick Hunters, neither of which were as good at getting kills as I felt they should be.  Chrom and Lucina are also, sadly, your final team, so you only have them for half the game.  As for good units, only one team really stood out.  The ninjas.  Seriously, the freaking ninjas.  They are a touch squishy, though not overly so compared to everyone else, and they are mobile and have absurd damage.  If you want something dead, figure out how to get them behind that target and watch it bleed.

I suspect at some point I will try this on NG+ for the hard mode and see if additional difficulty changes my opinion of things when I actually have to pay attention to what I'm doing.  But not for a long time.


Fire Emblem - Still slowly plugging away.  Iago was kind enough to give me a useful gift.  I think trying to hold on to it is making me greedy and causing several needless deaths.  Damn.


Pokemon Picross - Still slowly plugging away.  I think I'm getting near the point where I'll need to break down and get the Mega Pencil, but am now in that point where I am stubbornly going "spend real money on this thing?  Fuck that."  Am curious if the Alt-World puzzles give Picrites as 300 is quicker to save for than 500, though let's be honest, at this point, I'm most of the way to getting another picrite/day so I'll just finish that first.

62

Discussion / Re: Is there a politics thread? Guess I'm making one

« on: June 24, 2016, 10:12:56 PM »

A lot depends on who replaces Cameron.

A solution I would propose is the idea of a three tier solution scale.  If you cannot get a majority, then referendum fail, don't go forward with it.  If you get a supermajority of, say, 66%, then referendum win, go nuts with it you crazy kids.  But if you get between 50 and 66%, then you cannot accept the status quo and need to make solid movements towards the pro-side, whatever it is, without actually going all the way.  This only works for plebiscites where there is a grey area you can fit into, but perhaps it can work.  Hmm, it's also lacking a fail condition so perhaps it would need to have a follow up of some sort built in if you hit the middle condition.

As for the idea that it's terrible that the educated can be overruled by the masses.  Sorry, but no.  I'm not a fan of direct democracy all the time either, but if you want to claim that your nation is democratic, then your legitimacy ultimately has to come from direct democracy.  It's just a question of what warrants it, and how often you have to do it.  If you want the educated to have their opinions on how things to work to count for more, then admit that you don't want democracy, you want a system where an elite rules and everyone outside that elite is disenfranchised.  At that point, it's just a matter of which elite you think should be running things.

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Discussion / Re: Is there a politics thread? Guess I'm making one

« on: June 24, 2016, 10:02:05 AM »

Ok...

First off, Quebec is a bad analogy for this.  It's not a great one for Scotland, since that at least was a real country in the past and had viable plans for the future, but it generally fits there since they're both provinces of a federation wanting to become sovereign nations.  Here, you have a sovereign nation withdrawing from a strong common market and bureaucracy.  And one which has historically had some pretty noticable differences from the rest of them.

But, to go point by point.  We've already covered why Cameron can't just go "Nope, doesn't count."  Heck, let's toss in a third one.  PArt of his mandate for this term was that he would run this referendum.  To ignore the results would, again, undermine his credibility.  Something else that Cretien didn't have against him, since he was pretty generally of the opinion that the Quebec Referendum was low on credibility to start with, but he'd humour them and win anyways.


Some businesses are going to up and move, but mostly just the Europe focused ones.  Anything focused specifically on England and anywhere not Europe will want to stay in England.  Also, the reason for leaving Quebec wasn't just the instability.  You have to remember, the reason Montreal used to be The City in Canada was because when we got our first real hit of settlers, Montreal, Halifax, and Quebec City were the only real places to go.  Halifax was too far out of the way, and Quebec City was too French, so Montreal.  This meant that a lot of the business there wasn't French.  The reason it moved to Toronto was because Toronto was rising as competition to Montreal, and because the nationalist movement in Quebec was Francophone in nature, and thus anti-Anglophone.  Basically, they left because the political climate was poisoned and would get much worse if Quebec did separate.  English business, based in England, which left the EU in order to promote English causes, will find their situation to be the exact opposite of Anglophone business in Quebec.


Hmm, Scotland.  Yeah, probably will leave.  Dunno about Ireland, will be interesting to watch.  Not expecting huge waves of immigration though.  That feels like the BS claims that we should expect waves of immigration whenever a Republican wins the White House and yet they never materialize.  The mention of the United Empire Loyalists is interesting, but not really applicable.  First off, I really doubt many people feel that much loyalty to the EU.  Secondly, a lot of the UELs were refugees.  Seriously, as far as the Revolutionary War went, it was effectively a civil war, and a lot of the UELs were having homes burnt down, tarred and feathered, shit like that.  So, yeah.  I'll believe in major population shifts when I see it and not a moment before.


As for the stock exchange.  I imagine Germany or the Netherlands probably will try and use this as an excuse to make their own.  If the EU remains powerful enough in the long run, it may one day supplant the LSE.  But that won't happen overnight either.


As for the monarchy leaving.  They weren't driven out by the blitz, they're sure as hell not going to leave because Britain left the EU.  MC, this one is straight up "I hope they suffer for doing something I think was dumb" wishful thinking on your part.

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Discussion / Re: Is there a politics thread? Guess I'm making one

« on: June 24, 2016, 09:26:30 AM »

First things first, the Prime Minister could declare that 52% is not a mandate.  The Canadian Prime Minister did something similar in the 90s, when yet another referendum happened.

Reading through your stuff, general disagreement, but not quite done yet, let alone coming up with acceptable counter-arguments.  But had to comment on this.

This would not work.

It is debatable that it would have worked when Cretien pulled it back in 95 since Bouchard basically said they didn't recognise that claim.  But let's say it was a perfect solution that would have stopped a 51% leave vote cold.  It still doesn't apply here.

First: Cretien said that before the referendum was done.  Cameron would have to say it after the results are in here.  Claims like this have no force if they look like a desperate ass-pull to explain why the other side didn't really win.

Second: Cretien and Bouchard were separate levels of government, each with a separate mandate and a separate party backing them.  Here, Cameron's party is the party that was pushing the Brexit.  If he does not honour the results, then his party will fracture and his government will lose confidence and fall.  At this point, you have a general election.  Assuming their politics are like ours, having the government fall over this issue means that the next election will be a single issue election, a second referendum on leaving the EU.  This time, the winning party will rightfully claim they have the support to deal with the EU as they see fit.

If Cameron puts on the breaks, then the only safe bet is that Cameron is toast.  Aside from that, Britain may stay in, it may sever even more forcefully from the EU, hell, this is the scenario where you might wind up with a UKIP majority.

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General Chat / Re: What Games are you playing 2016?

« on: June 20, 2016, 08:36:21 AM »

I guess the game expects me to go for multi-fights more than I do (which is very rarely, because I don't find it terribly practical to do so on Hard).

I find that on normal I still mostly only do these once the fights start getting easy.  Just too resource intensive before then.  But once you can start affording to do the multi-fights you should because the gains are noticeably higher.

Conquest -

Pros: Money
Cons: Ninjas want my money.


PXZ2 - Finished, will say more later as I'm lazy now. 

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Discussion / Re: Is there a politics thread? Guess I'm making one

« on: June 15, 2016, 05:48:34 PM »

If you want to be simplistic, you can go with 5 general shades of independents.  There's the traditional folks who are to the left of the Dems, right of the Reps, and in between, but also the folks who share space with those two parties that don't like them enough to identify with them.  Perhaps they don't like some of the core doctrines?  Perhaps they think they're far more independent than they actually are. 

Regardless, Sanders does well with independents who Democrats in all but name, whereas he falters once you get outside of that.  Which makes sense, folks who balk at the Democratic party as a whole because it's too left leaning for them won't suddenly look at Bernie Sanders and think, that's right, let's go even further left!  Whereas a bunch of people who feel the Democratic party should be their home but who are anti-establishment for whatever reason will look at Sanders favourably.

((EDIT: Incidentally, I am amused that in this topic on the US election, on a site filled mostly with Americans, the last 9/10 posts are from Commonwealthers.))

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General Chat / Re: What Games are you playing 2016?

« on: June 13, 2016, 11:10:24 PM »

You can try and fight the dragons legit.  But honestly, it may be more worthwhile to simply cheese them out.

PXZ2

Huh, I was slightly wrong.  Looks like 42 will be the last map.  That said, I was hoping they wouldn't go for immensely huge maps to finish this all off, since in 41, the key stat is, as it usually is, movement.  1/3 to 1/2 of my guys will be useless despite the numbers of enemies simply because there will be nothing living by the time they get to where they're going.

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General Chat / Re: What Games are you playing 2016?

« on: June 13, 2016, 03:55:46 AM »

PXZ2

Wasn't expecting things to all get tied up as rapidly as they are.  Then again, I suppose only two plots were actually kinda serious, and they're wrapping up on schedule, so maybe I should have been expecting it to rush to an end this quickly.  Currently on Chapter 40, and I think I'm back to the first stage of CxN for the Shinra/Ouma showdown.  Expecting the last chapter to actually be Lv41 and ending levels will be probably around 35/36.

May try and gather my thoughts on everyone when I'm done.  Something I certainly couldn't do with PXZ1 since you simply don't care about the differences, or even really notice.  That said, I'm not sure how many of these people are actually different enough to make the project worthwhile.  Maybe if I toss on plot/character thoughts as well as gameplay?

On another note.  Has there actually been a Street Fighter stage yet?  I mean, Seth, Bison, and Juri are all pretty major characters in the games, but I don't think they've gotten any stages.  Kinda odd, since I recall the SF games having pretty distinctive stages.

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Discussion / Re: Theorycrafting! (Because I like competitive metagames too much)

« on: June 13, 2016, 03:47:05 AM »

A trouble in comparing this with FFT (or even LFT) is that battles there are scaled to essentially be 1/day whereas D&D you're looking at an ideal of 4/day.  This means that in FFT, each fight is ideally against an enemy that is near equal to you, whereas in D&D, as Elfboy pointed out, you're fighting an enemy inferior to you.  This is heightened further when you consider that in FFT you are expected to reload from a save if you lose, while "let's do that again" isn't considered a kosher reply to a TPK, so FFT can even present a battle that is arguably tougher than the party in good faith, while a DM who did that without heavy telegraphing (either here's how to get out of it, or here's why you should never have picked it) of some sort is a bit of a dick.

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Discussion / Re: Theorycrafting! (Because I like competitive metagames too much)

« on: June 12, 2016, 08:38:54 AM »

I can't speak for 5e encounter design, but in 3.5 you wouldn't really be making encounters with CR = to the character level all that often.  Your goal is to follow some arcane formula that will eventually have a final CR equal to the party level, which would then supposedly eat up roughly 1/4 of the party's daily resources.  4e, on the other hand, the monsters were statted out such that their level is the level they are intended to be fought at at equal numbers to the party.


As for the debate on Contagion.  I'm not sure what level I would take it at if its effects kicked in after three turns.  But frankly, given how quickly enemies drop in combat, the idea of someone lasting long enough to fail three saves is laughable.  As for the player not using it because they correctly foresaw it would be resisted....  uh, yes.  Very clever player.  They totally knew that would be the case and didn't forget they had it and blow all their Lv.5s on other stuff on the way there anyways.

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Discussion / Re: Is there a politics thread? Guess I'm making one

« on: June 12, 2016, 03:43:47 AM »

What is true statistically, and we have primary results to back this up, is that Bernie does much better than Hillary when primaries are open,

Not technically correct.  What is correct is that Bernie does better, but there's a strong case that if every state was an open primary that Clinton would be doing roughly as well as she is now, if not potentially better.  It's also worth noting that of the 11 most populous states, 10 of them went Clinton.  It seems to be a pattern that when you have more people voting, and when you make it easier to vote, Clinton gains more than Sanders does.

It's unknown whether Trump will show a similar weakness to Clinton.

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Discussion / Re: Is there a politics thread? Guess I'm making one

« on: June 10, 2016, 11:31:23 PM »

Sometimes ya gotta let the purifying flames run wild in order to build something better from the ashes.  So Bern, baby, Bern.

73

General Chat / Re: Idiot of the Day 2016: Election year extravaganza of idiocy.

« on: June 08, 2016, 04:04:37 PM »

Grefter, what a) involves nerds, and b) involves them not shitting in their hands and flinging it about with gleeful and angry abandon?

74

Discussion / Re: Is there a politics thread? Guess I'm making one

« on: June 07, 2016, 10:13:19 PM »

Wow, the horrible thing of that infographic isn't the 855 out of 714, since the point is that neither candidate can clinch it today.  It's that Hillary's numbers are possible (if unrealistic).  Also, that they make the entirely hilarious and unrealistic assumption that the superdelegates are entirely fluid as to who they can and will vote for.  Because the mechanic to push for party candidates to win will decide to abandon the party candidate who has a lead in both popular support and pledged delegates en mass.

As for the point that California matters.  I'm not entirely sure about that.  In practical terms, California matters less than BC in a Federal election.  At least we can effect the final numbers of seat, even if we will never decide who's running the country.  However, it is possible that it may lend some weight to Sander's antics.  But I'm not sure it will add enough heft that anybody who actually understands how things work will be willing to listen unless he can pull off some kind of 60-40 blowout.  Which means that the import of the California primary is being overblown by Sanders, where it's part of his narrative, and by the press, because it attracts attention and makes them cash.

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Discussion / Re: Is there a politics thread? Guess I'm making one

« on: June 07, 2016, 05:10:21 AM »

I have to wonder how much the philosophical underpinnings of the sane ones prevent them from being able to squash the ones that really shouldn't be speaking out loud.


Speaking of crazy people, tomorrow is the last set of primary contests.  So, my own personal bet is that Sanders will lose New Jersey handily, and will probably lose California by a few points.  At which point he will promptly declare the process and Hillary illegitimate, call on the superdelegates to flip to him, and vow to carry the fight to the convention despite it being mathematically impossible for him to win.