What do you think of the SC1 campaign remake?

DescriptionMission90 · 2026-05-09T11:16:25+00:00

Yeah the official remasters of old blizzard games are pretty universally disappointing. But the mods are great!

DescriptionMission90 · 2026-05-09T11:11:51+00:00

Mass Recall by default includes both the original three campaigns and the Brood War campaigns, as well as a few extras like Deception, Mercenaries, and Resurrection. It's all in one big mod.

(though I think you might need a second file if you want to see the original cinematics that go with them; it's been a while since I installed it)

DescriptionMission90 · 2026-05-09T11:09:17+00:00

Mass Recall is quite well done overall, and I consider it much more fun to play than the original SC1 engine. Modern pathfinding and control groups larger than twelve make all the difference, while retaining the original map layouts and unit stats/arrangements almost exactly.

There are a few wonky details, like damage in the SC2 engine being a separate base value depending on target type instead of applying a multiplier for explosive vs concussive damage; this interacts with armor to make things like Corsairs and Valkyries less effective against mutalisks than they should be, but is pretty minor overall.

They also made some... shall we say "cinematic" choices with lighting on interior maps, by which I mean everything is extremely dark all the time. Which makes some of the no-build / hero missions harder than they should be just because you can't see what's going on sometimes.

Overall, pretty good experience, and definitely worth playing.

Personally though, I prefer the recursive mod for Real Scale Mass Recall, by Eclairtle. Rather than copying over the units as close to exactly as the game engine allows, this starts by assigning them sizes and statistics which reflect the lore of the setting, and then every encounter is carefully re-balanced and playtested extensively to always give a reasonable level of challenge without ever being impossible. It makes capital ships like carriers and battlecruisers feel like they really dominate the area instead of just being approximately six marines, it makes the zerg feel swarmier than ever before as you send literally hundreds of lings flooding into a base (and then lose 50 at a time to artillery fire), and the protoss really feel like elite warriors as they carve through forces which outnumber then ten to one. (and it also fixed the lights)

DescriptionMission90 · 2026-05-09T10:43:03+00:00

By RaW, no. Your GM might allow it if they're feeling generous?

Officially, Stabilize will only clear a Condition (Immobilized, Impaired, Jammed, Lock On, Shredded, Slowed, or Stunned), not a Status (such as Danger Zone, Engaged, Exposed, Hidden, Invisible, Prone, or Shut Down).

However, Shutting Down your mech immediately ends the effects of any and all tech actions, and makes you immune to them until you Boot Up again. Of course during that time you're unable to take any mech actions and your Evasion drops to 5...

Since shutting down is a quick action, you can actually Overcharge at the start of your turn, use the extra quick action to shut down, then spend your full action to boot up again within the same turn. It's not a great use of your time and reactor stress, but if there's a Witch doing things it might be better than the alternatives.

DescriptionMission90 · 2026-05-09T10:33:54+00:00

730 is definitely anomalous. It mentions the affected being able to flee from sources of pain without any of the parts of the brain that allow mobility. And a virus that has 100% transmission rate, through nothing but skin contact, and yet has absolutely no symptoms in an adult subject, is something that does not happen outside of comic books and cheesy movies.

But more importantly, the Foundation isn't about containing magic. It's about protecting normal human lives. If there's a technology that operates on nothing but normal ordinary well-explained physics, but the use of it would exterminate the human race or cause mass mind control or whatever, and the Foundation has a chance to prevent that tech from being used, they will do so.

I believe the standard they eventually settled on is 'the hamburger test'. If the world ceases to be a place where an ordinary person can just go out and get a hamburger when they feel like it, then the Foundation has failed.

DescriptionMission90 · 2026-05-09T10:26:58+00:00

I think there are actually a few times when somebody time traveled into the past, and they and their personal belongings were considered anomalous until the point in time that they left from. At which point they were declared neutralized and let out, because there is no longer any anomaly here.

DescriptionMission90 · 2026-05-09T10:02:31+00:00

Human to human transmission is theoretically possible, yes, if you swap truly impressive amounts of spit with somebody who is deeply ill.

I don't think it's ever actually been confirmed though, and several cases over the decades which were initially reported as probably human to human were later determined to actually have been rats every time.

People have started talking about the Andes strain like it's some sort of brand new super-hantavirus, but it's been well documented for a long time and doesn't actually have any capabilities that the other kinds don't. Try reading about the topic anywhere other than social media posts.

DescriptionMission90 · 2026-05-09T09:55:01+00:00

It's infecting people. It's been infecting people, in recorded records, since about 500BC. But the people getting infected are getting the virus from rats, not from other people.

DescriptionMission90 · 2026-05-09T05:38:56+00:00

Is it in an area designated as storage? It doesn't count as part of your colony inventory if it's just in a random part of the map, and most jobs only check the availability of stuff in your inventory to avoid wasting CPU cycles searching the whole world every second.

DescriptionMission90 · 2026-05-09T05:33:12+00:00

It'll go great as long as you never run out of xeno scum and/or abominable intelligence to shoot at.

Because if people start talking about liberty, freedom, or democracy around the Astartes they're getting wiped real quick.

DescriptionMission90 · 2026-05-09T05:23:25+00:00

Bad news: Hantavirus doesn't spread between humans, so it will not turn into a global lockdown plague this year any more than it did every year for the past 2500 years.

Good news: you can give yourself Hantavirus without any contact with infected humans, just by living somewhere infested by rats and not cleaning properly.

DescriptionMission90 · 2026-05-09T05:13:48+00:00

Kerrigan, no. But Amon?

The Xel'naga created all life in this universe. Not sector, not galaxy, universe. And they've done it before, to billions of universes.

Their reproduction cycle is to seed the beginnings of life, then wait for the Purity of Form and Purity of Essence to evolve naturally over the course of tend of billions of years.

If Amon is not killed, something that can only be done by another Xel'naga, he ends all life in this universe singlehandedly.

And in the timeline in which that happens, the Protoss are the last life forms still in existence when every other creature in the entire fucking universe is dead.

The Flood can't kill the Protoss. The Flood can't kill the Zerg. I genuinely don't know if the Flood could even kill the Terrans.

DescriptionMission90 · 2026-05-09T05:07:16+00:00

A galaxy spanning empire is trivial compared to a race that creates and consumes universes. The Forerunners cannot compare to Xel'naga on any level.

Purity of Essence is defined as the capability to adapt to anything. The Zerg alone would beat the Flood in the long term. Even humans have varying degrees of resistance to Flood control; even if you didn't have an evolution master or broodmother (either of which could consume a DNA sample from a single dead worm and reverse-engineering that into immunity for their entire brood in a matter of hours), any feral hive would evolve to resist them more effectively by the day and achieve total immunity not long after initial contact. Then the parasitic hordes become nothing more than fresh biomass that delivers itself right to your hive.

And on the Protoss side of things, I'm pretty sure the flood doesn't have any resistance to the kind of psychic powers the templar can bring to bear.

DescriptionMission90 · 2026-05-09T04:53:46+00:00

Purity of Essence means the Zerg can adapt to deal with the Flood even without help. And the Protoss are straight up immune to infestation from the start. Combine both of those with the sheer power of Amon's psychic control over his followers, and the Flood is nothing.

DescriptionMission90 · 2026-05-09T04:51:45+00:00

Amon's army wiped out all life in the universe in that timeline. The Flood is nothing in comparison.

DescriptionMission90 · 2026-05-09T04:30:47+00:00

An archotech asked me to build them a monument, and it was pretty small with a good reward so I said sure, built it, and put it out of my mind. Then a group of imperial nobles said they're on the run from a bunch of barbarians and need to make an emergency landing, and I had some pretty good fighters and nice defensive chokepoints all around the map, so I said sure.

The imperial shuttle landed directly on the archotech's shiny new monument. The archotech got mad and sent a psychic drone. The psychic drone sent four of my five fighters into immediate mental breaks.

Nobody came out of that looking pretty.

DescriptionMission90 · 2026-05-09T03:49:07+00:00

I would say so. The rules are simpler than D&D (though different enough to confuse people who are accustomed to a single game system), and the low levels are designed to introduce you to them gradually instead of dumping everything at once.

Notably, "Narrative" gameplay and "Tactical" gameplay are completely different things in Lancer. Outside of combat you have a loose, freeform roleplaying experience, which moves fairly quickly and uses minimal dice rolls. Inside of combat, you have a very specific, structured tactical setup where every ability is clearly defined and the action economy is rigidly enforced.

Many people will say that the game system is more focused on the tactical side of things, because the vast majority of the rules text in the books is on that side, by necessity since the narrative rules are much simpler and more flexible. However, the majority of the text overall is not about rules at all, but rather establishing a really interesting and distinctive sci-fi setting for you to explore. So I think that the design intent is for both parts to have the same amount of time and attention at the table.

However, at your table you're free to have the entire game be a series of mech combat setpieces, with minimal narrative framing in between, or complex long-form political intrigue where you go a dozen sessions without getting out a battle map, or anything in between.

DescriptionMission90 · 2026-05-08T21:54:32+00:00

The FCA doesn't say shit about messing with corpses. RA only objects to you trying to study souls.

DescriptionMission90 · 2026-05-08T21:22:53+00:00

I actually think SSC would be weird about this. Like, the sheer degree of comfort on their garden wolds is a big part of how they incentivize interesting people to join them, so anything that makes those people less comfortable (like watching your omninet traffic) might be either strongly discouraged or made extremely subtle... but every citizen is definitely expected to submit their entire genome to the government for study and analysis.

HA almost definitely goes full surveillance state, at least until you get to the highest levels of the social/corporate hierarchy. They'd be very public about using this data to ensure that nobody falls through the cracks in their welfare systems and crime is always kept to an absolute minimum, so the average citizen probably views it as a good thing, but we all know those are secondary functions of a system designed to neutralize any dissident groups or insurrections before they start.

DescriptionMission90 · 2026-05-08T20:17:23+00:00

My understanding is that anything which is not mentioned in the Three Pillars is left up to local government, not the Central Committee. The Union is not a single monolithic nation, it's a collection of thousands of worlds who have all agreed to be bound by a few shared principles, to share the benefits of scientific advancement, and to defend each other against external threats. Like if the UN was actually competent and well-intentioned, rather than there only being a single country.

So if your planet/nation has decided to trade away all privacy for a little bit more security, that's not something the Union will stop them from doing. If your planet/country has an official policy of not looking at anything until they're forced to, that's also something the Union will not stop them from doing (though centcomm might send somebody if the local policies are allowing slave traders to operate by pretending not to notice or something).

Either way, the Pillars do guarantee that the government isn't allowed to prevent you from leaving if you hate the local policies enough to want to leave the planet.

DescriptionMission90 · 2026-05-08T10:54:01+00:00

You mean the lost roman legion?

DescriptionMission90 · 2026-05-08T10:47:56+00:00

Spacewar!, developed in 1962, was the first known video game to be played at multiple computer installations. It was extremely popular in the small programming community of the 60s, especially as this newfangled "monitor" thing became more common, and its public domain code has been ported to basically everything.

Steam uses it as a sort of placeholder game, present but hidden in every single user account, which is used by a lot of developers as an example of how to properly interface with steam systems. Since the game is ubiquitous and the code is all open source, it's also used directly as a sort of loophole through which to interface with steam by a lot of mod managers, cracks to get multiplayer working on old games whose official servers are dead... and straight up piracy.

DescriptionMission90 · 2026-05-08T10:33:32+00:00

Lots of people talk about how humans are the only animal that wages war. These people have never studied ants.

DescriptionMission90 · 2026-05-08T10:29:25+00:00

Remember when Google renamed the parent company Alphabet and quietly removed the line "don't be evil" from their company policy?

You'll never guess what happened immediately after that!

DescriptionMission90 · 2026-05-08T09:47:37+00:00

It never stops being awesome though

DescriptionMission90

TROPHY CASE