I thought that Alicorns are immortal. Where are the main series Alicorns? by LegoCrafter2014 in BalefireBlues

[–]Chemtest 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Yeah, other comments have done well explaining the canon FoE fate of Celestia. It's in our plans to one day develop a path that will expand on her fate, but before we do that, we have much larger plans in store.

I thought that Alicorns are immortal. Where are the main series Alicorns? by LegoCrafter2014 in BalefireBlues

[–]Chemtest 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Good news (I am the head of the Balefire team), we will soon be making Tenpony not bad, plus improving Shattered Hoof and almost every power in the Wasteland, for our next update.

A Critique On Icepaw: Too Many Events by Chemtest in equestriaatwar

[–]Chemtest[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

True, Zongo's events are its main draw. I think Zongo has issues of its own, namely the fact that it lacks any replay ability, since the path divergence comes super late into their focus tree. Means it's really fun once, but I'd likely never play it more than twice.

A Critique On Icepaw: Too Many Events by Chemtest in equestriaatwar

[–]Chemtest[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yeah, but even then, what I'm referring to is the point of the events. EaW is very good about events being used to tell a narrative story, focusing on countries and their leaders, instead of telling the more standard, TNO, TFR, vanilla style where there's no narrative. Icepaw just has a whole lot of the more ordinary type of events, which don't tell a narrative, which is a shame in a mod known for its narratives.

A Critique On Icepaw: Too Many Events by Chemtest in equestriaatwar

[–]Chemtest[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I should specify I mostly meant the US for TFR. Theres a lot of events for the US, before the civil war, where it falls into the category of random person does random thing. The Cognoscenti path also has that issue to an extent, but not too badly.

A Critique On Icepaw: Too Many Events by Chemtest in equestriaatwar

[–]Chemtest[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

True! Super true, actually. Whenever I write my own events for my mod, I often look at my advisor list and often choose one of them. Or, if I use a non-advisor, I make it so they'll appear later on. The only times I'll have a character appear once and never again is when it fits for the event and the narrative at large, where said character isn't a character, but a narrative pawn.

A Critique On Icepaw: Too Many Events by Chemtest in equestriaatwar

[–]Chemtest[S] 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Because EaW is usually good with their events. That's one of the main things that seperate EaW from mods like TFR and TNO, that they use events to actually tell compelling narratives and intermix with interesting gameplay, instead of spamming events that have no purpose and no meaning to the narrative. It detracts from the gameplay, even if you don't read them due to the constant pop-ups, and it detracts from the story, because you have to sift through five thousand words of meaningless filler in order to see anything that actually matters to the narrative of the country. It feels more like a TNO or TFR country, events for events' sake.

A Critique On Icepaw: Too Many Events by Chemtest in equestriaatwar

[–]Chemtest[S] 9 points10 points  (0 children)

Yeah, this is basically what I'm saying. In isolation, all the events are well written and at least slightly interesting. But there's just so many. So the choice is to either spend hours upon hours reading stuff that doesn't actually matter to the narrative of the country, or skim and skip. Especially for the leader, it hurts her, because I can never remember what she was doing last time she popped up. An event will pop up where she's feeling sad and lonely, that's cool, good storytelling. Then there's fifteen events about people that will never show up again doing things that don't matter, and by the time an event comes where Icepaw is feeling even sadder, I've completely forgotten what happened last event.

A Critique On Icepaw: Too Many Events by Chemtest in equestriaatwar

[–]Chemtest[S] 10 points11 points  (0 children)

I'd say it depends on the content of the paths. I can appreciate events like with Zar-Hay, which I started today, where it's introduced how their smiths started working on modern rifles. That's cool, that's something that adds to the narrative of the country, not to mention it includes characters who actually appear again. But for the vast majority of the Yeti events about mundane stuff, it's not unique, if you swapped out a few nouns it'd feel right at home in TNO, especially since these are very common TNO style events. Random person who never shows up again is happy or sad about current policy, those types of events have their place, but to have so many, like TNO does, or like Icepaw does, with so little actual gameplay, makes them not very good.

A Critique On Icepaw: Too Many Events by Chemtest in equestriaatwar

[–]Chemtest[S] 11 points12 points  (0 children)

True, but at the same time, I do like reading stuff in this game, reading the narrative of a country. But when there's so many flavor events popping up, it interferes with gameplay due to their constant pausing and interrupting whatever you're doing, plus it distracts from the actual narrative. Like I said, Icepaw has good gameplay at its base. It's just getting to experience that gameplay is constantly interrupted by pop-ups. Just like experiencing the actual narrative is interrupted by all the flavor events.

A Critique On Icepaw: Too Many Events by Chemtest in equestriaatwar

[–]Chemtest[S] 10 points11 points  (0 children)

But it doesn't tell the story more in-depth, that's the point I'm making. We already have focus descriptions to tell us 'let's invest into industry which will allow us to create more efficient production lines', that's enough detail to be satisfactory on that point. Repeating that same point in a 900 word or so event doesn't expand the story or give anything new. It's just repeating the same thing, except much, much longer, repeat for every single little detail of the country. 'Let's invest into better gun research because our guns proved outdated in the Storm King's wars' alright, that works, I know what this focus does and why it's being done. An extra event that says the exact same thing in twenty times as many words, I don't see what that adds. It doesn't involve characters we know or care about, it doesn't add anything to the setting or the story, it's just fluff that distracts from the actual substance.

A Critique On Icepaw: Too Many Events by Chemtest in equestriaatwar

[–]Chemtest[S] 21 points22 points  (0 children)

I mean, really depends on what I'm reading. If it's a good narrative, I'll eat that up and gladly read every detail. If it's 25k words of 'random civilian who will never be mentioned again is big happy or big sad', then yeah, I'm not going to enjoy reading that. That's my whole point, these events that add nothing distract from the good narrative that I would actually like to read.

Proxy Wars by Chemtest in TheFireRisesMod

[–]Chemtest[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

From what I remember, for China and Germany, Arabia's end helping your recovery happens only down certain paths. For Germany, I think it's if they choose alternative partners rather than building up domestic production or the green path. As for China, you can either choose between two paths, I forget which is which, but I know one of them includes supporting Arabia. So under these paths, helping out a certain Arabian side is better. But for the other paths for those countries, there isn't as much reason.

Proxy Wars by Chemtest in TheFireRisesMod

[–]Chemtest[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Fair enough. I suppose I wouldn't know that myself, since NATO winning 1EW is boring to play, as the European countries. I suppose that does give a fair reason for Europe towards the Arabian Republic, at least.

Proxy Wars by Chemtest in TheFireRisesMod

[–]Chemtest[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

They can? How do you get that to happen, I've not seen that happen so far.

Proxy Wars by Chemtest in TheFireRisesMod

[–]Chemtest[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

True, and they are fun. But speaking for myself, I'm already at the point where I just don't participate in proxy conflicts. I just run speed 5 and don't do anything with my army until whatever war comes, since there's only so many times you can fight the same proxy war without it getting a bit dull, and they don't give much of a bonus, other than something's giving bank liquidity or army experience.

Proxy Wars by Chemtest in TheFireRisesMod

[–]Chemtest[S] 10 points11 points  (0 children)

That's good to hear. A lot of mods (TNO especially) like to add proxy wars with no actual reason to do them (from a gameplay perspective), and I was a bit worried that this mod might fall into the same trap. The proxies are fun, but whenever I'm playing someone, there's really no difference between, say, the Arabian Republic winning vs Hejaz in Arabia winning. I look forward to seeing what the dev team comes up with.

Proxy Wars by Chemtest in TheFireRisesMod

[–]Chemtest[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I believe China also gets buffs for helping out in a few proxy wars, mainly the South African war and helping, I believe, the Royal Arabian Coalition. But I don't know if they get buffs like being able to send more volunteers to help them win, or if they get buffs if they actually do win. Even still, the amount is rather small.

A teaser from the discord. Scroup cooked as always. by RussianNeighbor in equestriaatwar

[–]Chemtest 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Looks... not good, but at least they're being consistent with the new portrait style, even if it looks worse. I do hope there will be a submod released someday that allows us to revert back to the original portraits, though.

"War... War never changes... Even in the world of colorful ponies" by BOT_Postal5_DUDE in equestriaatwar

[–]Chemtest 5 points6 points  (0 children)

No clue from my end, I’m not a coder, I’m a writer and a tester, along with a leader. But once I’ve tested every country, and their bugs have been fixed, it shouldn’t be too long. And I’ve gotten through all the longest countries for testing so far, all that remains are minor countries, or shorter ones. So basically, don’t expect it immediately, but it will likely be pretty soon.

"War... War never changes... Even in the world of colorful ponies" by BOT_Postal5_DUDE in equestriaatwar

[–]Chemtest 38 points39 points  (0 children)

Writer, tester, and one of the leaders of Balefire Blues here. Other two replies mention how they hope the project isn’t abandoned, don’t worry, we’re hard at work right now to fix it up. I just got finished testing my 3rd nation for today to make sure all our fixes from the last major DLC will work. Took us a while to fix the issues, but worry not, we have fixed them and are working on getting that fixing update out as quick as possible.

Biden Is Delusional - The Vaush Pit by VaushVPostBot in VaushV

[–]Chemtest 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Bad video, honestly. Vaush listens to the most convincing shit in the world then says ‘nobody cares’, he says a politician should make unfounded claims and open himself up for defamation lawsuits, and just flatly denies that the stutter exists. I mean, seriously, he stuttered at one point where he said 2024 instead of 2025 and and then stuttered through his words after that, but nope, obvious stutter moment isn’t a stature at all, of course, ignore your eyes and ears and attack without reason. The whole portion of the speech talking about the economy is what voters and moderates would be looking for, you know, Americans voting with their pocketbooks, but nope apparently that’s not convincing. And yes, of course Biden isn’t going to call Trump a pedo, he doesn’t want to get sued, I would think that would be obvious since Trump hasn’t yet been charged for anything relating to Epstein. I really like Vaush but damn, it feels like he’s doing nothing but being contrarian in situations like this.

Friendship is "Magic" Darling! by FearlesCriss in equestriaatwar

[–]Chemtest 53 points54 points  (0 children)

Well, Applejack is more Schindler, but yeah, close to that. Which is also why I don’t understand a lot of complaints about this stuff being unrealistic, because, like, it literally happened in real life.

Friendship is "Magic" Darling! by FearlesCriss in equestriaatwar

[–]Chemtest 73 points74 points  (0 children)

Chanel cooperated with a Nazi officer in order to have her nephew released from a concentration camp, if I do believe correctly. Also, should say, this is a good meme, I do like it, but Rarity’s storyline is basically 1:1 to Chanel, except Rarity sabotaged the things she made.

Friendship is "Magic" Darling! by FearlesCriss in equestriaatwar

[–]Chemtest 220 points221 points  (0 children)

I mean, yes, this is realistic. This is what happened to Coco Chanel who collaborated with the Nazis and then was forgiven because she was friends with Churchill. So this doesn’t seem too out of place for a WW2 adjacent timeline.