Captain Aggravated

Reddit had a habit of severely siloing subreddits. You’d get banned from a shitpost sub for saying something factual.

Wolcott comes the closest as the Kuritans did actually answer the batchall and bid the fight, they played by the clan’s rules. They also presented the Genyosha as green troops instead of the elite force they were, and they dug traps, hid explosives and hung strips of metal from the trees in the swamp they were to fight in. I see it as reaching a similar place that the Lyrans did at Twycross, both took significant planning ahead to take advantage of prevailing conditions that reduced some of the clans’ technical advantages, both involved setting traps, and both still resulted in a lengthy and brutal knock down drag out fight.

As for Tukayyid, the clans lost at Tukayyid through a failure of doctrine. With the exception of the Wolves, the clans thought they were fighting a trial of possession. Comstar thought they were fighting a siege. Comstar was right.

On the different game, same version number thing: That’s a tradition that dates to the mid-90’s with the 3 games published under the title Mechwarrior 2.

31st Century Combat was the first, it featured two campaigns from both sides of the Wolf/Jade Falcon Refusal War. Ghost Bear’s Legacy is also post-Clan invasion but largely to do with the Draconis Combine. MW2 Mercenaries is set pre-invasion up through the Battle of Luthien.

Mechwarrior 4 was fairly similar; Vengeance was a relatively small story set on Kentares IV (and its moon) and is kind of a microcosm of the FedCom Civil War. Black Knight does continue the bad ending of Vengeance, and MW4: Mercenaries is more broadly about the FedCom Civil War; most missions are either Davion or Steiner aligned though other units and factions appear (including the Jade Falcons and the Capellans). Kentares IV isn’t so much as mentioned.

So what does the Inner Sphere bring you for serious fights then?

This is something I don’t think any of the Mechwarrior games ever really brought to life because yes the Clans had outright superior weapons and the Inner Sphere to my knowledge never won a toe-to-toe fight during the invasion. Name one time an inner sphere lance stood against a Clan star in a fair fight and won. The clans ultimately lost because it turns out blitzkrieg is a dumber thing to base a religion around than the phone company. And it’s really difficult to build an action cockpit simulator game around that as a primary gameplay mechanic.

I seem to recall a statement made by Gabe that the very conventional control layout of the Steam Deck is in reaction to feedback they got about the Steam Controller, that it needed to have zero learning curve

Who cares about legal if it hurts republicans?

You know what my thing is? The Cyclops is huge, and most of what you need it for is exploring a cave network. It would make more gameplay sense if you got a big boat or submarine that acts as a base of operations, and then something a little bit like the Seamoth for deep submergence.

Below Zero…

If I was asked to compile the 10 prettiest screenshots from the two games, at least 7 of them are coming from BZ. The deep twisty bridges, the giant anemone cave, the crystal caverns, the…what’s the thing you go up inside of? Subnautica really hits you with the beauty early on in the safe shallows, and otherwise goes for “cool” rather than “pretty.”

I like both soundtracks. My absolute favorite track comes from Subnautica, which often uses music to establish tension. BZ has an overall nicer soundtrack that has a lot of movements that feel “wondrous,” like our character feels amazed at the environment more than anything.

Subnautica’s story works perfectly. It’s a castaway scenario, and Riley Robinson’s goal, from start to finish, never stops being “survive and escape.” What working toward that goal entails takes a winding and scenic path, but at no point does your overall motivation stray far from “Survive and escape.”

BZ’s story belongs in the square hole. Most of the problem is they had written one story, built a lot of the game’s assets including several setpieces around the map with that story in mind, and then they threw it away and had to come up with something else. You play as an idiot named Robin Ayou, whose goal of finding out what happened to her sister is a minor sidequest because Robin becomes a sidekick to the real main character, Al-An.

Subnautica could sometimes have issues with draw distance and pop-in. BZ solves this problem by making everything murkier so no matter what you can’t see more than a few feet forward.

Subnautica features shallow reefs, flat plains, sloping dunes, abyssal depths, narrow canyons, giant forests, huge caverns, narrow passageways, floating islands, lots of varied terrain that present different challenges and opportunities. BZ is made almost entirely of self-similar confusing twisty turny corridors. The caves below the kelp forests, the twisty bridges, the anemone cave, the icebergs, everywhere on land, there’s nowhere that isn’t a twisty turny self similar corridor.

The Snowfox feels broken. That whole segment of the game, I’m amazed they shipped it.

I am under the impression that this game is for 1 to 4 players.

Holy dissertation, Batman!

What version of Linux does Fedora install?

As of this writing, My install of Fedora Linux 40 KDE is running Linux kernel version 6.10.11.

If that’s not what you were asking, Fedora is the distro. It’s a fork of Red Hat, uses the rpm package format, they offer the GNOME desktop by default (the “Workstation” flavor) but several other popular UIs are available.

Is it directly compatible with Windows software such as games and OBS, or does it require modifications/compatibility installations such as WINE?

Linux is not directly compatible with Windows software. Either the developer/publisher of the software must ship a Linux version or a compatibility layer such as WINE muse be used. If you play games on Steam, Steam will pretty much just handle that. There is a setting in Steam’s settings called Enable Steam Play for all other titles which at this point is the “just work” button.

OBS is open source and widely available on Linux. I just now installed it from Fedora’s package manager.

Does it have documented support online or is it a matter of haunting forums and such for when problems occur?

It’s documented and supported a hell of a lot better than Windows is. I don’t know how people use that puddle of shit. I was converting a computer from an HDD + Dell Optane to a regular SSD. Apparently I didn’t quite have the BIOS set up right for this so it gave me an “Install error 0xd2c77e2939a44aa7b5” Which I guess you’re expected to write down on a piece of paper by hand because the Windows installer runs in an incomplete and useless environment. Trying to install Linux on this same machine, I got an error which said “Such and such BIOS setting is probably wrong. You can read more abut it here” and gave a hyperlink to a wiki, which was clickable because this was running in the full desktop LIVE environment, and it also included a QR code link to the same article so you could easily pull it up on a mobile device.

That said a lot of your “hey I’m having this weird issue” is going to take you to the distro’s forums or to Reddit. As if that’s not where most Windows tech support comes from anyway, Microsoft doesn’t answer any questions.

And no matter how solid an OS is, I will tend to break it, generally by doing stupid shit, but I will break it. Before putting it back together. Which is generally how I tend to learn software.

You’ll fit right in here. I once borked a Linux Mint install by uninstalling Python. A LOT of shit broke including the package manager, I couldn’t get Python reinstalled. That was a reinstall of the OS, thankfully I had /home on a separate partition so I could just install the OS around it without touching that and I didn’t even have to restore a backup. That kind of mistake tends not to be the “I just ruined my life” moment that borking Windows is because Linux is faster and easier to install. I’ve never killed a Linux install doing anything “normal” aka what you’d expect to do if you were used to Windows. All except once I was doing goofy things with the system files, and that once I was building a circuit on a Raspberry Pi while it was running, a jumper wire got away from me and touched something on the board and it froze. Had to power cycle it. Probably don’t let random wires touch your motherboard while the computer is running. That’s a Top Gear Top Tip.

Yeah it’s just jabbed in end first at the scientifically most chaotic angle.

Isn’t a 4004 a 4-bit ALU?

Not the first time I’ve Lemmied this story, and it’s not a tattoo it’s a motorcycle decal. Kid turns up on a Kawasaki forum to show off his Ninja’s paint scheme, and on the front cowling are five kanji figures, the first and the third were identical. Someone asked “Why does your bike say ‘pig dog pig bird horse?’” He says “Nah man, it says N-I-N-J-A. That’s how you spell ‘Ninja’ in Japanese.”

It’s not that hard to use ham radio equipment to screw with things like aviation com/nav radios and the like.

Anytime I had a problem, I threw a molotov cocktail, and BOOM! Now I have a different problem. 😀

I kind of want a show where Al is the main character but that’s just The New Yankee Workshop.

Sometimes I wonder what architects are thinking designing bathrooms.

I guess architects are all romcom characters who live in a world that isn’t quite like ours, where big loud creepiness works with women and you can walk into a bar and order “a beer.”

Lego instructions > IKEA instructions. While I think both are excellent at language free building instructions, Lego are the true masters. IKEA targets adults with their instructions and are seen by a lot of people as tedious and confusing, Lego targets children and they make universally beloved building toys.

I haven’t seen the show in years but I remember it having a slightly ironic/subversive undercurrent? I always read Tim Taylor as a bit of a caricature, that his whole grunting macho overdo everything attitude almost always backfired on him and he’d be better off calming the fuck down.

Exhibit A: The character of Al Boreland, who is…well basically he’s Norm Abram. While still outwardly traditionally masculine, wearing a full beard, a flannel shirt a tool belt to his contractor’s job, he’s very secure in his manhood, confident without being macho, soft spoken and even gentle. A perfect foil to Tim Taylor, who finds kindred spirits in Clark Griswold and Jeremy “POWAAA” Clarkson. If you’re really on board with the MAGA alpha male bullshit, do you write a character like Al Boreland?

I think, like a lot of folks on the right, Tim Allen followed the Republican party as they sprinted toward fascism. I think Allen was in on the joke in the 1990s and became the joke in the 2010s.

Cardboard is wood with extra steps.