Codicier

If you haven't killed off you main character a few episodes in, people start to think just ain't trying these days. What you have there is a real proto trope. Spoilers for FMA & Transmetropolitan & Attack on Titan

Tegan did you play SR3 before 4? As much as people play up the "zanny hi-jinks superpowers" stuff what i actually enjoyed most about SR4 was the NPC's interaction with each other and the Boss, so I wonder if you need to have knowledge of the earlier game to enjoy (for instance) driving around having a sing-along with Pierce (and the interruption).

I'm not sure about shaman as a metagame choice atm, but maybe the hounds nerf will have made it viable again. @Spennydubz what's the decks strategy vs hunter from 5 mana up when they can get their Hounds + Buzzard combo off? Feels like it could be very hard to end up not at a significant card disadvantage. My instinct on upgrades for that deck would push it to a more control flavour, as follows: Eleven Archer = Knife Juggler Windfury = Stromforged Axe Croc = Feral Spirit boulderfist/stormwind = Earth Elemental You end up with a far stronger mid game at a loss of early game tempo with those changes. IMO though fast agro decks are the way to go for low budget, once you get to 7-8 casting cost minions and the games not over the guy with more legendaries is going to win.

The crystalmen are really very nice the main choice for me comes when deciding who they partner up with for teleport raids, a mantis or a lanius. The mantis is great if you just want to get in destroy a system and get out, his speed of attack means the two of them can generally junk a system before enemy crew gain access. I've used this to destroy the FTL drive of a ship who are attempting escape in the past. Obviously don't try this if they have low combat skill or its close to jumping since if it does jump with them on it is disastrous. The lanius is great for making a assassination squad, because the crystalman takes reduced damage from low O2. My standard tactics with this is to drop them into the the rebel bridge a few seconds before my 1st barrage from my weapon. The theory I'm operating on here is just like my ship, if i can stop the pilot from piloting their dodge chance drops and so i stand a better chance of downing their shields etc. I also use crystal men as bait, dropping them into a room next to whatever system will be my 1st target after getting through shields. You can often get a few crew in the area and do nice damage, a particularly effective tactic vs ships without a med/clone bay.

Unless they've changed something the forums don't actually track Idle banter posts. So you actually dinged 200 elsewhere (still /gz!)

Have decided to try to unlock the crystal cruiser through the A&B victories route after a few frustrating runs with the rock ship trying to do it the traditional quest way. Started off by recording my 1st stealth cruiser victory with the A layout but boy was it a close thing. I had a mind control used on my teleport squad the moment before i was about to beam them in to the flagship missile bay, meaning the lone mantis who got beamed aboard took far longer to do his job & I took far more missile fire than i would have liked.

With regards to the Japanese game dev culture stuff if people are interested It's probably worth having a listen to Tone Control 11 with Ryan Payton. Since he talks quite a lot about his time with Kojima

The debate here seems to be centred around a couple of things: 1st there's the static issue, everyone seems to agree that it's theoretically a problem but in reality not many people seem to report actual problems happening. (Perhaps the tolerance of components has substantially improved). A more practical & common issue is with fans bearings if they are allowed to spin to quickly &/or freely' and with dust getting blown deeper into the components by over zealous spraying. In the end from what I understand it a reasonably low pressure spray from a decent distance back is the way to go if you are prepared to take the static risk.

After oversleeping on the bank holiday monday this week, i got up realised i was meant to be doing stuff and then while rushed to get ready skipping my normal morning stretches and managed to pull a muscle in my neck. It been a extremely frustrating couple of days not being able to turn my head more than a few degrees to my left but thankfully, it seems to be dying down. My painfully learned lesson is never ever skip your warm up exercises, even if your in a rush.

Sooooo next patch will apparently bring a 1 mana increase to Release the hounds cost, which is a remarkably big deal for the meta game. That card has been one of the prime reasons thing like the old Murlock deck fell into disuse, now you can once again have more than 1-2 minion out and push for lethal damage without offering your opponent a potentially huge card advantage. Of course you can still run into a explosive trap, get multishotted etc, but still. It's interesting that this is the 2nd time Hounds has been nerfed, the problem with it both times has been its not something there's any real way to successfully react to. Haerthstone for all the praise it gets for being a modern slimmed down design has a distinctly old fashioned approach to player turns. It's certainly rare these days to find a boardgame where you have no way to respond to your opponents actions in his turn. On a weird sidenote: I accidentally discovered this exists when fooling round with a druid deck. http://www.hearthpwn.com/cards/520-excess-mana

Honestly if i was doing a new build these days i might even pay a little extra to get a Blue Ray burner just for archiving my work, howver If your purely going to use this as a gaming rig that is of course a non issue. whats happening gamepad wise? There are actually a lot of pc games where you will be glad to have one. do you have a old xbox control to use? I'm not sure if its still a issue but for a while the wireless dongle needed to use the xbox wireless pad because very difficult to get hold of, If you want to splash out on i understand razer do a pimped up version. Also i'll 2nd the recommendation on the Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO, as a very quiet running replacement for the stock fan. ​Lastly have you thought about adding dust filters &/or extra fans (if your case requires them) they can make a huge difference to a pc's long term life expectancy and how much maintenance you need to do

That is more than adequate, infact that's likely to have you future proofed for a good couple of years too. What monitor are you running that beast through btw? & have you picked out a decent mouse & keyboard yet?

Good choice, I unfortunately did not fully research the boat before stepping aboard. Also watched a couple of episodes of "Chaika –The Coffin Princess" mainly on the strength of having the director of Scrapped Princess. Sadly so far it's really not doing to well reaching for the great big book of anime characters tropes way to often. However it will serve as good fantasty filler. Side note: Where/when did anime start using the word Dragoon? was it just a bit on badly pronounced english that became cannon or was there ever a deliberate choice behind it. Still can't complain to much in a season where we get Ping Pong & Mushishi.

Just watched a episode of Knights of Sidonia, when will people realise that no matter how well it may for for mechs, 3D cg really doesn't work even vaguely well for any sort of human being. It's also terrible in several other ways but weirdly even the pointless fan service doesn't irk me as much as it normally would when put up against a cast of walking mannequins

Urg today is just tone of the most heartbreaking days i've had as a sports fan I'm a Liverpool fan (those of you who follow the premier league already know where this is going) and after a glorious season where we looked like we might be able to grab a fairy tale title everything is in tatters. Not only that, this year was the 25th anniversary of the Hillsborough disaster, a event where 96 fans lost their lives (including the cousin of our current captain), and which was initially blamed on the fans (although subsequent evidence strongly suggests it was the polices fault. It just felt fated, like here was the story that would prove sport could still be the supremely uplifting drama, but now its turned to ash. I was watching the game with my dad (footballer/soccer is probably our big father son thing) and i could just feel the despair in the room after we surrendered a 3-0 lead any realistic chance of the title with it. I'm not sure about my fellow readers but my sports team affiliation is something deeply ingrained from childhood. So watching my team play isn't just about wanting them to win its about wanting them to win so i can celebrate with my dad like we did when i was a kid. in short, today was the worst.

Trying to decide whether i should make a serious attempt to build a high lvl deck or to just keep messing around trying to build fun concept decks and seeing how far i can take them. feels like the most intresting moment to moment play happens when you have a settled well tuned deck. Edit: after playing a bit more the simple truth for me seems to be, stick to what you know. Managed to take my mage agro deck on a nice 6 match winning streak before coming up against a warrior control deck (my hard counter) getting him down to 4 health and then watching sickened as he dropped 1st alexstrasa, then ragnaros. 2nd simple truth of the night: loosing a gme you are otherwise controlling to a legendary card never stops feeling unfair, they just aren't even vaguely balanced. I really wish wed get some official support for the limited format, but it feels like that's unlikely.

Having played mage most of my hearthstone career the concede button rarely get used early because if my opponents under 16-17 health, too many pyros & fireballs have flown into a unsuspecting opponents face for me to call it quits even if my agro engine runs out of steam. That said if i'm playing a bad matchup and i don't get the cards i need to make a breakthrough and they do get the cards they need to dominate me i will sometimes throw in the towel.

I've been basically firing up the ipad & playing a game of hearthstone while checking back on the progress

I just rage quit a run where i was attempting to unlock the crystal cruiser. i found the rock homewords & then lost my crystal crew member to a random event.... Of course only the moment after getting to the main menu screen did i remember i had a clone bay & he would have been fine >_<

Discovered by accident just how easy it can be to farm a drone ship for xp with the right upgrades. Built my rock cruiser c layout around heavy shields and a boarding part, and burst weapons and early on came across a rebel sentry ship with just one projectile weapon and defensive drone. I basically just sat there with my shields it couldn't penetrate rotating the different crew members from station to station untill they were completely maxed out. I then lucked into having a double scrap arm combo. The final piece of the puzzle was managing to get the teleport heal which lead to this fun situation on another automatic ship, which i used as a punching bag to level most of my crew to max combat ability (to compliment their max everything else.. nded the run with my highest easy score of 4500, and i can see this sort of tactic being something i would need to make use of (maybe even build for) on higher difficulties.

As a few have pointed out before theatre and cabaret was known for having cross dressing stars, the main difference in my view was although they had a limited local fame they were never the sort of person who was really represented much in visual media. Good call on the ancient greek btw, that's probably the strongest western example I can think of, and certainly it's influence carried on in both the Roman and Mediterranean cultures that follow. I remember finding out that David's penis had been intentionally made small because that was considered more beautiful to be quite surprising. I think however to a extent time has diluted that aesthetic's effect on western culture in a way which it hasn't yet in Japan. This surprise me tbh. I mean this a country which has huge subgenre's of storytelling within visual art based around gay relationships, but it may be a sad case that a lot of the time it's offering non threatening fantasy's rather than a real acceptance. But who knows perhaps as the old guard move out of politics you will get more liberally minded people moving in and doing the sensible thing and allowing two people who love each other to celebrate that however they darn want. On a completely different note ping pong & mushishi both continue to be great for entirely different reasons. It's almost a perfect contrast. Ping Pong is fast paced both in terms of it's storytelling and its visual presentation. A at times almost stylistically incoherent show, with dramatic framing and 'camera' angles. Mushishi on the other hand probably uses less frames of animation in a whole episode than ping pong does in a single sequence. I mean seriously that show must be dirt cheap to produce compared to many other shows, yet still characters and slow panning shots fit perfectly with it's themes so it's still a very visually striking show.

Finally managed to get the Rock Cruiser victory with the B layout with a combination of a pre-igniter, a glaive beam, a flak cannon, and a incendiary bomb and two well trained rock crew for teleporting in after the bombs set a room on fire. Does anyone know if the C layout with its crystal crew member make it any easier to unlock the crystal ship?

Whether something is mass produced schlock or not has little bearing on if it is culturally significant, it's even the inverse to a extent. You can't be mass produced unless you have a wider audience. Ukiyo-e wasn't a flash in the pan either being a significant cultural force for over 200 years, it's influence only really dimming when the isolation of japan ended. Many of the same criticism can be thrown at modern manga and anime, with fan service & product placement being often considered big problems. The point of brining up Kabuki in the context of the supposition that the Japanese have a greater acceptance of the idea of cross dressing/transgender people is that the decision to only having male characters play female role ended up producing a situation where men dresses as woman were basically consider a sex symbols. Now they still weren't treated any better than their female colleges had been, still being prostituted etc, but through Ukiyo-e they did become more widely known, and the idea of a 'beautiful boy' etc became more accepted in Japanese culture. It just feel unlikely to me that the existence of and cultural norms within such a popular mass market print visual form would have no influence on the development of manga (& therefore anime).

I guess it would because most theatre traditions never had an as important artistic genre as the Ukiyo-e woodcuts strongly associated with them.

Franz was just the 1st character I could think of off the top of my head who as a audience we definitively knew was gay and who given a decent amount of screen time and wasn't shown as a flamboyant queen. I suppose Gankutsuou was a lot more liberal than normal with its attitude to sexuality since we had Pipo as well. Actually I think in a weird way one thing where I think anime is more progressive than most media,is it's attitude to transgendered/cross dressing people. Perhaps something of a cultural legacy of kabuki?