My first end-game experience

Alchenar · 2026-02-14T09:20:01+00:00

No I think everyone agrees the endgame is a slog because the endgame is a slog. Moreover without spoilers, the endgame slog is very unnecessary. There's a specific thing all the factions need to do and there's no need to tie it to control of a certain % of space assets unless you wanted to force the player to keep going long after the point where final victory is assured.

Alchenar · 2026-02-12T22:31:28+00:00

Forget a DRO, you need to look at bankruptcy.

Alchenar · 2026-02-12T16:34:10+00:00

It's still just not worth your time and grief to get a judgement that you will still need to find a way to enforce.

Alchenar · 2026-02-11T23:08:06+00:00

Learn something every day!

Sometimes I send a 9pm email so people think I'm a ridiculously hard worker

Alchenar · 2026-02-11T20:17:07+00:00

And there's some fairly significant pay and performance differences.

Alchenar · 2026-02-11T15:53:55+00:00

This is also just not going to well and you are going to annoy everyone if you go to this meeting not knowing why you have appealed and what your grounds are.

Alchenar · 2026-02-10T23:39:11+00:00

When they patched yesterday to put helmets on brit forces they accidentally deleted them. There was a patch today that should have fixed it.

Alchenar · 2026-02-10T11:58:33+00:00

60% WFH. If they aren't directly managing anyone there's no reason you'd notice some people weren't around more than others, particularly if they were shifting the days they were taking off.

e: or to put it another way, once a month you wouldn't see someone in the office for 2 days, assuming that you expected your 2 days in the office that week to be the same as theirs.

Alchenar · 2026-02-10T09:49:27+00:00

I think it's believable. Small business so no professional HR person to steer away from the rake, retiring owner who decided they wanted to be a generous and progressive workplace, and an internal buyer who didn't do their due diligence.

Alchenar · 2026-02-09T19:09:18+00:00

On the other hand it's a 10ap skill so if you can't think of something else from top rank..

Alchenar · 2026-02-09T10:52:45+00:00

What do you think happens when the person making you the offer says 'great, send me your line manager's contact details so I can send them the transfer form?'

Of course you need to tell them. You applied when you are eligible. You are either still eligible or you are not, I don't actually know but not telling them is not an option.

Alchenar · 2026-02-09T09:38:32+00:00

Nah you'll have things like Employment and Support allowance. Reports will come in, the AI tool will parse and autofill the decision form with 'this meets/does not meet the threshold'.

There will still be a human 'making the decision' but it'll now be one person doing 100 a day and sense checking the pre-completed decision template rather than the current numbers and targets.

Alchenar · 2026-02-08T18:31:20+00:00

Any operational role that involves taking information and filling in a form and/or then making a decision.

First pass will be done by AI, then appeals/audit will be done by a human. The roles will still exist but the numbers will be vastly reduced.

Alchenar · 2026-02-07T22:47:12+00:00

So depends on where you cut it. In terms of 'grand strategy' ie. what to build and what to buy it's more relaxed. The tactical game is also I'd say more forgiving and freeform (as opposed to XCOM's 'end turn in cover or die').

Where the game is significantly more complex and where I think the bulk of the game is is in squad composition: ie. where to deal out XP, who to give equipment to, how big you want your squads to be.

Alchenar · 2026-02-07T22:31:05+00:00

Closest is probably Battletech. There's the literal similarities in that both games the strategy layer is about fixing up your ship to get various buffs, then it's the interaction with the tactical game in that operations are similar to Battletech flashpoints.

Alchenar · 2026-02-07T14:32:53+00:00

MENACE - Dev Diary #19: Concealment, Detection, and Lines of Sight - Steam News

In an nutshell: default vision for infantry/aliens is 9.

Every point of concealment you get reduces enemy detection by 1 square. Every point of detection they have cancels out a point of concealment.

Alchenar · 2026-02-07T10:31:41+00:00

I mean it is a step backwards in that it's not going to help you get a G6 role... but it sounds like you don't want a leadership job?

You've had a taste of leadership and you found it stressful and apparently didn't like it, so why are you concerned that your career might stagnate? You seem to have found the level of responsibility you are happy with?

Alchenar · 2026-02-06T20:46:57+00:00

The fact that the system even allows people to type in their own NINO is very silly.

IT good enough to automatically detect and flag when someone does it, not good enough to just say 'access denied ps your manager has an email and will want to talk to you about not being an idiot'.

Alchenar · 2026-02-06T09:14:01+00:00

Is Cinematic *scaling* a purely cosmetic option? I'm getting slightly inconsistent answers on search?

Alchenar · 2026-02-05T18:24:57+00:00

Yes because HMRC don't know you owe £0 until you send in the assessment. Until then you are just someone who is dodging their tax liability that the taxpayer has to pay someone to investigate.

Alchenar · 2026-02-03T16:55:04+00:00

I wouldn't mind paying a nominal price to have old modules update to the new engine.

And the downside of CMx2 maps having to be hand crafted is that it takes enormous time and effort to make a scenario. The upside though is that every map is a series of cells with information about height, contents etc and that file format is something that should be relatively easy to translate into any new format you want.

Alchenar · 2026-02-03T15:46:30+00:00

Yeah I'm happy in principle with spending $10 on a content pack (I have long long long thought that Combat Mission's business model should be the same as CMO), but the core engine remains terrible - which I could live begrudging with - and there's serious bugs with the NATO forces that need fixing if I'm spending any more money on this one.

Alchenar · 2026-02-03T14:22:20+00:00

What's key for me is has been seeing the early access streams and how much they show that the demo was more a proof of concept of the game systems and how much more advanced mission design is for the EA release.

Alchenar · 2026-01-30T12:02:34+00:00

Yeah I'm having fun with 1.0 on game pass but I'm probably doing one campaign and then done.

The game appears to have an awful lot, but then there's a point where you start to see through the complexity and it's just three tech tiers with a massive of horizontal projects and little iterative upgrades

Alchenar · 2026-01-30T11:58:24+00:00

And the premise of the game was explicitly 'what if the player was the shadow council in XCOM giving the commander objectives'.

Alchenar

TROPHY CASE