Gaizokubanou

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Everything posted by Gaizokubanou

  1. Is It Wrong To Eat Meat?

    Could you think of anything else that consumers can do purely on their end that is simple as avoiding meat though? Nobody likes moral highground braggers for sure, but I can't think of a single reason to NOT try to at least reduce the consumption of meat, especially if one lives in USA. Pretty much this. Bigger problem doesn't mean we have to stop trying to fix smaller ones, even if they are bandaid fixes, unless the effort spent on those bandaid fixes are removing resources away from the main effort. But I haven't seen that argument ever made successfully against reducing meat consumption because how simple it is to carry out.
  2. Is Social Media Eroding Our Humanity?

    You are not wrong in a sense that what you are describing would totally fit the bill for large number of people. But it also wouldn't fit the bill for another large group of people. I mean online isn't a magicland that we wonder into... it's just a network full of content generated by other people that has to occupy some physical space somewhere. If you live in USA, I both highly recommend (to gain perspective) and not recommend (for your safety) a visit to either Camden or Newark in New Jersey if you feel that you are lacking in perspective. I was 'lucky' in a way that I ended up visiting Newark quite often due to going to law school there, which was heavily guarded by law enforcement. So it was like this island of order in sea of poverty stricken neighborhood, and you just walk past few too many blocks and you had legitimate chance of getting involved serious crime. Oh and when you go there, don't bother locking your car if you are going to leave something nice (something above $20 value) in plain view. All that's going to do is ensure your window breaks Gets really ranty this part so please skip if you don't want to read ramblings
  3. Is Social Media Eroding Our Humanity?

    It really depends on where you live. I lived in South Korea for about 12 years of my youth and it's just really grimy over there when it comes to smaller crimes. I know they illegalized it now but back then teachers beating students was accepted part of the culture, along with heavy subway groping, assaults (because guns are banned and combine that with weak police, just plain old violence is pretty common), police bribery (no traffic tickets, just pay cash and go), spraying powerful pesticides in street (oh man those trucks looked so cool when I was a kid so all the fellow kids would run after the fume ), etc. Also rioting is super hardcore. I still recall when I was in a bus, we passed by a street with completely burnt car wreckages from riots previous days. It didn't help that the year I left the country, a shopping mall and a bridge collapsed due to shoddy construction from, you guessed it, more corruption taking money out of material cost. For all the smack that people talk about USA having high violent crime ratio, few areas I've been (exempting Camden and Newark in NJ, those places are awful) is just way better socially than SK by far. Then in USA the area I worked retail in had large population of Jewish people and Haitians and face to face racism was real and strong (which was also very strong in SK but when 99% of people are of same race you just don't really see it popping up). So I can see why some people are shocked by online behaviors but for me, I just feel like I've seen far worse more regularly offline. A more funnier example would be... you know how people describe awful behavior as shit-flinging? Well have you actually had a real shit flung at you? XD
  4. Is Social Media Eroding Our Humanity?

    if you want to put it like that, I would rate offline far worse. People have physically assaulted me in face-to-face situation for no provocation, and obviously that's not a possible outcome if entire engagement is done online. You say that having a person attached to online behaviors can improve communication and I agree, but it can also 'improve' the degree of abuse that can be directed at them. All social media does is let people communicate. The world didn't get more rude with it, we can just hear all that garbage stuff louder if you were lucky enough to not have them near your physical location. Like I would so much prefer any online abuse that comes with typical competitive multiplayer match over the ones I had to risk facing in an actual physical arcade of my youth. You thought modern DLC were robbing consumers? How about actual muggers instead? Apologies if this sounds bitter.
  5. Is Social Media Eroding Our Humanity?

    Having worked in retail before, I don't see much difference between general human behavior online and offline. So I don't think social media is adversely affecting anyone beyond what any other social interaction would.
  6. Episode 291: Europa Universalis IV in 2015

    Yeah, to me EU4 never felt like they were trying to reflect history other than some broad flavor/theme stuff. Through all of its iteration, EU4 was diplo-war game where it's all about coloring the map with your own by using diplomacy to eventually get in wars (although sadly actual wars are modeled really poorly, perhaps it is for the better to focus the scope on diplomacy). I actually like that about EU4 though. It scratches that megalomaniac itch of mine very well.
  7. Episode 291: Europa Universalis IV in 2015

    Yeah both of those guys are pretty cool fellows I enjoy following on SM and watching contents they produce. Too bad about Arumba wrecking NL though XD Anyone else fan of DDRJake BTW? I feel like he could also get bit more 'coverage' because he is one hell of game tester. On the podcast, interesting points from both Sean and Rob about shortcomings of trade, and perhaps they are both right and both static elements combined with issues with money in-game.
  8. Wow so information age stuff... ok. Also supernatural and weirdness going so I presume you don't want to go too strict with social logic in terms of cultural relationship with industry and agriculture. So you said game 'world' is alternate USA... like the entire known world? Or is there just alternate USA existing in this world full of other stuff?
  9. Pretend I don't know the first thing about making games

    I got a F in computer science 101 first time around and got B- second time. And I'm coming very close to creating strategy-action hybrid in Gamemaker. I got basic hexagon movements down, unit frameworks are in place and combat AI is done and can be adjusted based on multiple variables. Most difficult part in this current project had to be just trying to understand how to write A* (it has built in A* but only for built-in square grids) but besides that it's been pretty straight forward with how well the darn thing is documented. So yeah, Gamemaker is pretty freaking easy to get a grasp on. Highly recommended for those who have no idea how to start.
  10. I just didn't think "research your topic" was worth even mentioning because of how obvious it should be. I agree it's pretty much mandatory for every topic that isn't ultra familiar to the author. I hope you don't mind me asking few questions here... What technological era is this in (post-industrial, feudal, ancient, etc.) What geography is like in that region Main sources of food Post industrial you have lot of room to shoe-horn in whatever you want, but anything before that you can do some really cool stuff based on the 2nd and 3rd question if you want to get technical with this stuff. Food source can be a great way to build the culture around (for example, rice has requires high labor and steady water source but feeds well, so civilization that grows rice would likely live in temperate environment with dense population with proportionately high peasants population, which then has its own implications). Since you are working with fiction of course you would probably want to come up with fictional foods but the basic logics follow... where does it grow, how is it grown, how well does it feed answers some of the most basic elements of the society and can result in very sound fictional society.
  11. Endless Legend

    Every 4X has problematic end-game, but Endless Legend suffers far worse than it's peers. So normal game speed is 300 turns cap. It's pretty easy to have income of 50k+ dust per turn before 200th turn. With custom Broken Lords it means you can get a single city's population up to 100+ around that time frame as well. The way that citizens work, along with districts (you get past 7 districts and happiness penalty is no longer a concern) make for especially tedious late game, even for a 4X genre. It's pretty much what Gormongous says if you want the big picture, the factions are cool (except for oddity like how Drakken, the diplomatic race, is best suited for early war rushing) and watching your city grow (that first 1 ~ 8 districts is where the game shines) is a pleasure but past that point the game is really wonky.
  12. Endless Legend

    Did you mean Endless Legend? If so it requires strategy for first half of the game, then the AI just fails to scale past that so you can out perform them consistently past that point.
  13. If story tellers were limited to retelling their own life or else be labeled as 'exploitative' then we would have one boring set of fictions. Write whatever character of whatever creed so long as it adds value to the overall theme and story.
  14. They're taking my Freeze Peach!

    Could you clarify that bolded bit?
  15. Episode 290: Odds and Ends

    What about laser based sensors (trying to tag every object with signal strength laser (yes, whoever that does this will be seen but the idea is that it would be sacrificial scout))? I mean the problem with detection you raise is not that things are invisible, but that it's hard to tell what they are, so you could have cheap sacrificial 'scouts' just tagging everything to see how laser reflects back? And if they can do this during peacetime (why not), even better? About missile aiming yeah that's why you would spam and scatter them to create at least a triangular field of coverage which would then converge. As for spamming billions, that's how I'm envisioning it. Just spammed across every single points of interest passively, so the buildup should be easy. Closest thing to warship would be the factory that makes them. But otherwise clearly you know something more about this stuff so I'll take your word that lasers in space is highly scale-able weapon design and could dictate a whole lot. An idea though, perhaps large bodies would, upon entering wartime, just emit and create dense miniature 'atmosphere' as a way to diffuse beams passively. Doesn't have to completely, just enough so that baking it through all that diffusion, combined with irregular movement (it's already visible so pull out everything) would require lot of dedicated resources, creating opportunity for the other side. Nice, wish you luck on that new thing! <3
  16. Episode 290: Odds and Ends

    Yes, and I already touched on that subject, that those maneuvers would be possible pre war long before the action You can think of near future with dispersion free lasers but no improvements for visual sensors? Again why give your arguments these super techs (which is fair given that we are discussing future tech) and give my side only the best of what we got today (which is unfair)? Unless you think they have reached their physics based limits which I know very little of since I'm not good with science. For example, solving dispersion problem. Say they fix it so weapon grade laser can be focused at the lengths you are talking about. Tech necessary to disperse (which is simple as carrying some gas or building outer material so that when it melts it creates the dispersing material) already exists. Why couldn't they improve along or do you think laser just has that much headroom for feasible improvement in comparison? I'm expecting missiles just floating in space to start flying for kinetic weapons. No need for ships there (or ships are the weapons?). But that's not important distinction I suppose. Yes but what happens after getting there is another issue. And why restrict kinetic weapons to bullets that needs to be precise? I haven't heard of that JPS stuff (although I checked out other parts of NASA). I just googled what I needed Much appreciated So how did your project turn out BTW? Or did you have to put a halt on it too early to get an accurate feel for it? ***Edit: Now I think about it there is a simple but definitely a game under your interpretation of future space war. Since you go by 'if you can see it you can kill it', and shooting will almost certainly let you be seen. So how the game would work is simple. However the combat initially starts, the idea is that every ship trades one to one (except for the very first ship getting shot at). So what would be the game? The game would simply be to setup your forces so that when fighting starts, you end up controlling more points of interest (control is simple, you exclusively have guns aiming at it). The idea would be to fool the opponent into miscalculation so that they over spend on few points while you try to win more location by smallest margin possible. Could make for good short multiplayer game. Could be epitome of simultaneous turn game where you take few turns reconning the areas while setting up your forces, with ultimate climax being the final combat phase (yep, just one turn of shooting, true to the vision).
  17. Episode 290: Odds and Ends

    I think warS would be over by the time this maneuver is finished under passive motion achieved via a thrust that's too small to worth of note Although your point about just spamming stuff makes sense and would probably be vital. What I'm thinking is, there can be true stealth in space but it has to be achieved long before any fighting starts to get to any meaningful position (otherwise the stealth launch would be too slow to make any contribution to the war), so most active ways of dealing with detection is to spam aka flare style And you are putting wayyy too much capabilities into laser while not giving kinetic weapons fair share of technological improvements here.... you are talking about laser weapons firing over light minute (18 million kilometers, thannks to google). Now that's perhaps possible in the future but if you want to talk about how much they will burn down kinetic weapons, give kinetic weapons fair share of benefit of doubt in tech here because the scenarios you are describing is pitting a light year range laser beam vs kinetic weapons that can be built right now I think better point defense system against kinetic weapons would be to again, spam the rough incoming direction with your own mass of insignificance to throw it off course (or at least force it to use fuel to adjust course). That can be deployed long before lasers of equal tech are in range IMO. Loving this nerd out talk and how we totally went completely off topic lol <3 But as much as I love the topic but it just sounds like awful game. I certainly think it makes for an awful game without some heavy hand waving (which is moving away from sim-aspect(which is what I'm doing anyways)).
  18. Episode 290: Odds and Ends

    No you are thinking of wrong source of heat. Once you activate your propulsion system to give that initial push, that generates the heat they are talking about. That has to be dumped out of the ship somehow, and that's the heat that can be used to detect you. Hence how I was describing that in order to get a true stealth launch, something else has to perform that initial push for you and prevent that heat energy from being transfered to you, hence the freezing part. But soon as you try to change course, bam you are detectable again.
  19. Military And Consumer Gaming

    So on feminism thread Apple Cider and Merus said some interesting bits about the topic and I wanted to discuss it without going off topic so there it is, a thread about it IDK about how you guys grew up but as I grew up I actually grew quite fond of military hardware long before I ever played a wargame that handled the subject matter with any sort of resemblance that's even worth noting. I think I started to collect main battle tank models (1/48 scale I think?) around age 6 (1991, year of Terminator 2), and my past time reading ended up becoming almost exclusively about military related stuff. But it was a peculiar fandom because while I always LOVED tanks, I also always feared possibility of war and inevitable conscription (so I thought, but I ended up dodging it through power of immigration hahaha eat it South Korea military) so perhaps I should be TANKFUL (had to do it) that I didn't turn into some sort of evil fascist. So the reason I bring all that up is, I like military themed stuff, including video games. I must have spent 100+ hours into Operation Flashpoint in my high school years, loved battlefield franchise (for the ridiculous nonsense they are but wow are those fun or what) and recently spent 20+ hours into Wargame: Red Dragon after getting it during Steam sales. But having said that, there are few recent developments that I do find worrying and hence I want to discuss this topic more with other people smarter than I. So what bugged me when I just grew up loving all that stuff? Let's say I'm totally ok with Call of Duty as game but the live action ads for that series really rubs me the wrong way because it gives me this impression that they are trying to tell us that shooting gun is a fun, casual carefree activity... well it is in a video game, but the live action-ness of the ads seem to cross that safety line. So what do you people who are smarter than I think on this subject?
  20. Military And Consumer Gaming

    You didn't come off as making such condemnation so no worries. I get what you are saying. Too often I was trolled into thinking that I'm having normal discussion about these stuff only to find out the other dudes are all about preparing for the coming of days. So I have totally witnessed such craziness and get what you guys are talking about.
  21. "Ethics and Journalistic Integrity"

    I expect such outburst but man it's always surprising to actually see the specifics.
  22. I Had A Random Thought...

    Yep, that's what I meant and yeah that's also my guess and of course I'm no biologist either so yessssss
  23. Endless Legend

    Revelaitons all over the places here. And yes, that spelling was very much intended, thanks to CAPACOM.
  24. Military And Consumer Gaming

    I may be digging myself deeper into a hole (or is it a... foxhole? huehuehue) here but I like bunkers too, but kind of in a way that I like castles (both cool structures that represents engineering with certain specific goals). I guess the defense I have for myself is that I have no delusions about my need for any of those stuff (no I don't own a bunker or even guns, odd for USA person who likes guns but hey that's what happens when you live in NJ), and appreciate them for what they are-a strange hobby. Only dedicated weapon I own is few axes I use for lumberjacking to get some wood for fireplace on certain winter days when I want that extra seasonal feels. Now that I mention it, it's just odd how much I like guns, live in USA, yet do not own any... Apologies as this got little ranty.
  25. I Had A Random Thought...

    Gah I love noodles. So tasty. Random thought I had for a while is why are there so few animals that have their digits bend outward?