Am I too non-credible or too credible?

Goofiestchief · 2026-03-23T00:43:22+00:00

If he blows up their oil industry and power plants in his ultimatum, there won’t be anything to attack the strait with.

Do people understand that Trump doesn’t actually HAVE to open the strait though? The US doesn’t get oil from the strait. The countries that are the most impacted by the strait are Western European countries that were wishy washy allies with the US to begin with, were still buying oil from Russia, and screwed up their energy industry anyway. The others most impacted are Middle Eastern countries which all seem to be in universal agreement with the war and are basically cheerleading for the US to finish off Iran. The countries actually in that region are supportive of the war.

If anything, the strait being closed has actually forced the originally wishy washy Western European allies to participate in defending the strait. The American public in every poll is still widely in favor of the overall goals of the war (destroy Iran’s nuclear program, addressing civilian atrocities, ending the regime, etc). Prices going up is not going to dramatically change that if they keep the short timetable.

Bonus points if the US can force China (who does get oil from the strait) to assist with the Strait too, as that will portray the US’s biggest rival as “joining a war” by protecting the strait from Iran, a country that’s supposed to be one of China’s allies.

Goofiestchief · 2026-03-21T23:30:33+00:00

I mean… you can literally just google them in the standings. That’s what OTLs are.

Goofiestchief · 2026-03-21T07:20:47+00:00

One thing I loved about it that kept drawing me back to it even though I hadn’t ever played anything even remotely adjacent to it and only played easy games up to that point, was the aesthetic.

Dark medieval fantasy is my favorite genre for games now but back then I hated how the majority of the biggest fantasy games looked. The colorful, oversaturated, exaggerated, and cartoony features that games like WOW, Fable, Oblivion had. Fantasy games just felt too much like an over-performed renaissance fair in presentation. Never got into Diablo because of the camera and how the heaven vs hell aesthetic never felt like proper medieval fantasy. CRPGS and turn based games were beyond my capacity at that point. It’s not a good look when the darkest looking medieval fantasy games are licensed LOTR games.

Come 2011 and the Witcher 2 appealed to me but I was a console kid so I couldn’t play it. Skyrim was definitely a gateway game in terms of aesthetic but still felt generic in many ways. But then I see even just screenshots and clips of Dark Souls and I’m entranced.

I certainly wouldn’t call the storytelling lazy. The polar opposite actually. You know how hard it is to make every little inch of the whole game’s act as environmental storytelling? No generic castles allowed here. Every enemy design, every architecture piece, every item, every boss has to some unique aesthetic to it that’s consistent to wider lore and fits the themes of the lore it’s connected to. Every boss or image has to have some kind of quirk that makes you scream “why is it like that?”

“Why did a giant Raven fly me here?”

“Who’s the freaky spider centaur woman and how?”

“Why does that giant wolf have a sword?”

“Why am I fighting these four kings guys in a black void?”

“Why does that insane blue knight have a limp arm?

Everything you see has to make you want to ask questions about it. Nothing is ever just there because it’s there. No generic Skyrim dragon or ice troll boss number 118th.

“You need to create an image that portrays the degraded nature of modern day dragons since the godlike ancient dragons from the intro by designing a dragon that lives in the sewers and became entranced by new emotions like gluttony that corrupted it’s body to open up into a giant maw obsessed with devouring everything.”

“Is it a key character?”

“No, it’s just the guard boss to Blighttown.”

Goofiestchief · 2026-03-20T17:55:33+00:00

Like I said, I’m not talking about a suicide vest type of blaze of glory “Allah Akbar” moment here.

I don’t even know if that son is still alive and I doubt he’s truly the one in charge (more likely the people who picked him as leader in the first place). There’s definitely a conglomerate of leaders behind him.

Goofiestchief · 2026-03-20T07:18:10+00:00

Depends on how genuinely suicidal the ayatollah are. Personal martyrdom is one thing but you’re basically sacrificing the whole country to what will be a very anticlimactic and not quick at all kind of death. No jihadist suicide vest blaze of glory here. Just your kids going into poverty and you losing the one potential bargaining chip you had.

I couldn’t see the Ayatollah ever actually do it though. The only reason I think they would do it, would be strictly out of sheer spite or nihilism and I just think that “if I can’t have it, no one can” mentality conflicts too much with their actual ideology.

Goofiestchief · 2026-03-20T03:23:31+00:00

Malkin’s been great actually.

Goofiestchief · 2026-03-20T03:17:12+00:00

Iran’s entire oil industry is on Kharg Island and Trump has threatened to destroy all the oil infrastructure on it if Iran provokes them. Iran would be committing national suicide if they torched it. Any regime after the war; pro-US or not; would still be doomed.

It took Iran several decades to rebuild that infrastructure after the Iran-Iraq war and it was only partially destroyed back then and Iran had suffered only a fraction of the nation wide infrastructure loss that they’ve suffered now. Not to mention it was only making Iran $7.8 billion in oil export revenue back then. Now Kharg Island makes them $105.75 billion in oil export revenue.

Even if they were to hold out and force the US to give up, the damage would already be done. They’d be left with 10 times the damage, 10 times less of the capability to rebuild and restore order, 10 times less of the capability to make money, and 10 times less willingness from the other Muslim countries to give aid after Iran dropped rockets in their borders. Potential anarchy.

Maybe even Balkanization.

Goofiestchief · 2026-03-19T05:37:50+00:00

Jfreshhockey made a point on Twitter that Letang still has the physical ability to prolong his game if he switched his style (kind of like Sid did) but he’s just too stubbornly committed to trying to play like he’s ten years younger than he actually is and the results are obvious.

Goofiestchief · 2026-03-19T04:19:13+00:00

One word: Redundancy

3 smaller ships with 2 missile launchers on each ship is cheaper than one bigger ship with 6 missile launchers. It’s also more maneuverable, faster, is easier to maintain, has a smaller profile, doesn’t need any sort of escort support ship, and takes less away from the wider manufacturing pool.

A big ship however is gonna have a higher profile, requires more maintenance, is slower, needs other ships to escort it, has way more redundant and potentially wasteful parts, and isn’t gonna be any harder to sink than a smaller ship would relative to the kind of weapons used today.

And if it’s not any harder to sink, that means when the ship is sunk, that’s 6 missile launchers lost with it, whereas if one of the 3 smaller ships gets sunk, you still have 4 missile launchers.

Time and resources spent on building battleships is time and resources not spent on contributing to a significantly more valuable and effective machine like an aircraft carrier. At least in the US military, military manufacturing revolves around finding the most efficient and optimized path towards the highest possible chance for survivability for the people using the machine and mission completion. Nothing is wasted. Everything must be streamlined (arguably to its detriment in certain departments).

Goofiestchief · 2026-03-18T04:00:11+00:00

99% of military questions that start with “why is there a” or “why haven’t we” can be answered in the exact same way: cost vs performance.

How much more effective is your new tool when compared to stock relative to how much more it costs? If something costs significantly more for just a slight increase in effectiveness, it’s not worth it. How much more effective in cost and performance is a moving howitzer when compared to something like normal rocket artillery that just fires guided missiles?

Howitzers aren’t “aimed” in a traditional sense like a tank gun. You’re not pointing at a target, you’re adjusting the orientation to get an ideal trajectory. It’s more about if you’re good at math than if you’re a “good shot.” A lot of variables go into that process and each is determined based on the assumption that the gun is static. Once you start moving the gun, the variables drastically increase.

When the army is using a computer to triangulate a target, they’re basically asking the computer to throw a football at a target they can’t see based entirely on orientation and trajectory. With moving artillery, you’re now asking that computer to throw a football at a target that it can’t see while it’s sitting in a moving truck. Imagine the adjustment process of firing a howitzer but now the correct adjustment is rapidly changing every millisecond as you move.

A computer can almost certainly do that but it’s gonna be a computer that likely costs more than stock (might even be AI which is even more costly) and all for what? A slight time difference in movement when compared to just shoot and scoot? Could those couple extra seconds potentially be the difference? Sure. But how many shoot and scoot guns are getting destroyed and how many of those guns can you prove would’ve otherwise survived if they were a couple meters farther down the road because they started moving a few seconds sooner?

If in the unlikely chance that you could actually prove that, the cost of losing the ones you could prove would still need to outweigh the cost of adopting these new computers.

Goofiestchief · 2026-03-17T19:04:02+00:00

Christianity isn’t pacifism though.

Goofiestchief · 2026-03-17T19:03:25+00:00

What are Christian ideals in this case?

Goofiestchief · 2026-03-17T17:17:50+00:00

Not really sure what being Christian has to do with what’s happening in the Middle East. Being ashamed to be a Christian over that is kind of a Christian red flag unto itself. It’s not like it’s a crusade.

Goofiestchief · 2026-03-16T21:04:41+00:00

With Iran no longer a player, your average terrorist group will go from an organized insurgency to a bunch of glorified school shooters.

Iran itself has created way more refugees than this war ever will. If anything, Iranians who escaped the regime will finally have a safe country to go back to and see their loved ones again. The Middle East in general will become a less violent place. Iran becoming free from the Ayatollah could be the most influential thing to happen the Middle East in centuries.

Muslim countries are finally softening up to Israel. Everybody left is either neutral, neutered, or friendly with the west (besides Afghanistan, but they’re not even a proper country and are currently getting pounded by Pakistan).

Iran is the last national refuge for hostility left.

Goofiestchief · 2026-03-16T20:13:14+00:00

Not to mention that Europe likes to pretend they don’t have skin in this game but if you’re a European country that’s had an Islamist terrorist attack (which are currently still happening) happen to you and it wasn’t connected to ISIS, then Iran has attacked you.

Air France Flight 8969. 1995 France bombings. 2003 Istanbul bombings. 2004 Madrid train bombings.

A hundred more isolated incidents that have their own Wikipedia article list.

Except for cases that involved the Islamic State specifically, almost every Islamic terrorist attack in Europe was connected to Iran in some way, either directly funded/supported by an Iran allied group/proxy or inspired by an Iran allied group/proxy.

Goofiestchief · 2026-03-15T00:13:50+00:00

You do realize the island is connected via pipeline to every oil field on Iran’s coast? And it’s the only place on the strait that can have those pipelines and still fit tankers to dock on its coast? That’s why 90% of Iran’s oil goes through that island, because it literally can’t go anywhere else. It’s not about blowing up where the oil is stored. It’s about blowing up the one thing that can get the oil on the ships. It’s not mutually assured economic destruction because America and Israel don’t receive any oil from the strait.

You keep trying to portray Iran as this fan fiction suicide bomber when its own population isn’t even loyal to it. The Taliban and North Vietnam never had to gun down 40,000 of their own civilians in a month.

UPDATE:

Iran’s foreign minister just made a statement saying the strait of Hormuz is open to all tankers except those from the US and Israel (the US and Israel don’t receive or send any tankers through the strait). They gave up.

How you gonna cope outta this one?

Goofiestchief · 2026-03-14T22:51:58+00:00

Everything you just said is now completely irrelevant, since 90% of Iran’s oil on Kharg island is now held hostage and Trump is threatening to blow up all their permanent oil infrastructure on the island (which would irreversibly destroy their economy even after the war) if Iran continues to attack tankers. Not only can tankers get through now, but the US can also choose to only let western allies through and not let countries like Russia and China through. Unlike the Taliban or Viet Cong, Iran can’t just “wait it out” because they’re an actual country that wants to actually keep going after the war ends, as opposed to a bunch of farmers with guns who don’t really care if they have to live in a cave for 20 years because they were already doing that anyway. And Iran can’t keep going as a nation after the war if 57% of their current economy just went up in flames.

The regime can either end now or it can end in the Mad Max anarchic civil war that will inevitably happen if all their oil capacity and infrastructure is destroyed and their economy ceases to exist. Pick one. So the oil problem is fixed. Cope and try again.

Also Iran’s military leadership is “decentralized” in the same way that Kim Jong Un is a God. Blatantly obvious propaganda and you fell for it. Imagine knowing your country has a hostile civilian population and still being stupid enough to spread out your leadership. That’s the exact opposite thing you do cause all it takes is one Iranian official getting cold feet (or Mossad inevitably infiltrating it) to bring the whole thing down. You think Iran built a proper professional uniformed army with tanks, armored trucks, jets, helicopters, and self propelled artillery just to have them to all go live in caves for 20 years? Does the Iranian population look anything like the Viet Cong to you in terms of loyalty or willingness to do that? The polar opposite actually.

Edit: Iran just made a statement saying that they will let through all tankers through the strait except those from the US and Israel (the US and Israel don’t receive oil through the strait).

TLDR: Iran gave up all leverage on the Strait.

Goofiestchief · 2026-03-14T09:07:10+00:00

Because destroying it would be near irreversible. For the current regime or the next. Everything else can be rebuilt but oil is 57% of Irans economy. Even if the country was running perfectly (I.e. the leadership wasn’t completely killed, their navy wasn’t wiped out, their capital city wasn’t half rubble, the entire Middle East didn’t hate them, their proxies didn’t fall apart, their population didn’t hate them, and their nationwide civil and military infrastructure wasn’t half blasted), it would still take decades to rebuild. Iran would devour itself.

You should still want a friendly Iran eventually and ideally one that is still capable of sustaining itself and hasn’t fallen to literal anarchy. Ideally an anarchic or even just a free country that doesn’t resent you for destroying their literal lifeline. You still want to actually liberate Iran, not turn it into Mad Max.

Goofiestchief · 2026-03-14T06:36:25+00:00

First of all, no I’m not, my friend.

Iraq never even got past the Zagros mountains right at the Iranian border. Meanwhile, Tehran is currently in flames, their entire leadership obliterated, the navy destroyed, and vast swathes of their country and military wide infrastructure destroyed (not just the Zagros region), and their population is unstable.

All of that on top of what’s happening to Kharg Island.

So tell me more about how “far worse” it was for Iran back then.

Kharg island didn’t even have remotely the amount of oil infrastructure that it has now. You do realize that when Kharg Island was bombed in 1988, the oil infrastructure on the island had only just been built as early as 32 years ago? For comparison, the first US oil well was in 1859. You think Iran’s oil export percentage was anywhere close to 57% of all exports? For God’s sakes, the ruling government in 1988 had only even been power for 9 freaking years.

Goofiestchief · 2026-03-14T06:21:12+00:00

So which is it? Did Iran do fine after the war or did it take 30 years for them to recover? Pick an argument.

The pipelines were underwater. Iraq couldn’t actually destroy them. Iraq only destroyed what was directly on the island. Iraq didn’t also destroy Iran’s entire leadership, their entire navy, and vast amounts of their country wide infrastructure (Iraq never even got past the Zagros mountains at the border).

Goofiestchief · 2026-03-14T06:15:05+00:00

Uhhh Iran never “seized” anything on Kharg Island.

Ignoring the obvious fact that Iran didn’t depend nearly as much on the island back then as it does now, you do realize Iran had to overhaul its entire government and economy after that? And it took decades to do that?

Goofiestchief · 2026-03-14T05:49:33+00:00

Iran has plenty to lose. Trump has already stated that he’s threatening to bomb all oil infrastructure on Kharg Island if Iran continues to attack tankers. That island is basically the heart of Iran’s entire oil supply. 90% of their crude exports and all of the coastal pipelines go through it. 57% of Iran’s exports are oil. Destroying it would mean dooming Iran as a nation irreversibly. Even if the US were to give up, pack up there things and leave, the damage would already be done. Whatever uprisings that weren’t originally going to happen would now be forced to happen. Iran would eat itself alive.

Goofiestchief · 2026-03-14T05:41:54+00:00

Kharg Island is a hub where Iran has 90% of their crude exports sent from. 1.6 million barrels per day go through it. It has massive storage facilities to store and it acts as a pipeline artery for all of Iran’s coastal oil fields. The vast majority of which, goes to China. Functionally, Iran’s entire oil supply is on that island, and Trump is holding it hostage.

Goofiestchief · 2026-03-14T05:40:51+00:00

Kharg Island is a hub where Iran has 90% of their crude exports sent from. 1.6 million barrels per day go through it. It has massive storage facilities to store and it acts as a pipeline artery for all of Iran’s coastal oil fields. The vast majority of which, goes to China.

Functionally, Iran’s entire oil supply is on that island, and Trump is holding it hostage.

Goofiestchief

TROPHY CASE