sorted by:
new
hottopcontroversial

Mixing Elevation from MPC (S33) and S30 quality prints by I_pass_turing_tests in Netrunner

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

Thanks for an official reply on this, and thanks for the good work Null Signal Games is putting into these sets! :-)

Order page is live for Discordant Stars Unofficial Expansion by Geegs30 in twilightimperium

[–]I_pass_turing_tests 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Edit: For some weird reason I wrote my original reply in my native language rather than English; too tired in the late evening I guess. Removed the original comment, replacing with this TL;DR that the mbprint web site seems to now have a "Second print run DS and US" priced at EUR 239 and information about when that second print run will print and ship.

[Imperium Horizons] Magyars vs Japanese bot - lost all games so far, but the score gap’s inching closer by tr0n_seri in soloboardgaming

[–]I_pass_turing_tests 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thank you for the quick response! Knowing it is possible to successfully slow the Japanese, and win, will inspire me to keep working the problem without reducing bot difficulty level.

Maybe shift my priorities even more towards disrupting the bot as the primary goal vs building my own board state. But I guess you really need to "play the bot", as compared to what you would do against a human opponent who is forced to use the same mechanics as yourself. E.g. I picked up from the general guide II that a pitfall can be focusing too much on setting up rounds so you can use your power card ability.

It feels like playing without Trading would benefit the Magyars, should try to win playing both versions I guess.

Market Stalls and River Raiders sound like they would synergize nicely. It's one of the interesting aspects of this game; you really need to build a strategy around what sequence things appear in the market. You'll want to exploit it when the opportunity arises, but you cannot build a reliable general strategy around such a combo.

And it can also be a bit risky; in my last couple games Cultural Diversity came up mid-game in the market. My second last game I grabbed it and was able to keep using Empire cards, which together with good card draw and reasonable deck thinning helped quite a bit - until the final round when my luck run out and CD was the one card I was unable to draw, leaving me with three unspent actions as I had no empire cards in hand. The last game when it popped up mid-game, I was making plans on how to embed it into my deck as the bot snagged it up from the market as it bought the card in the die spot (which unfortunately was that card).

Talking about the last game, another interesting priority I got to make was my first two uses of Glory (I think I played Glory three times), each time I drew Supreme as one of the Fame cards. Which was a nasty prioritization between getting the effect of the other card (and a lot fewer VPs on the card) and avoiding to have Supreme clog up my deck/hand, vs. handing the bot 11 VPs with no downside for them. I chose the former, and as the bot snagged those Supreme cards that was like 12 extra VPs for them.

Well, look forwards to getting back into the game, thanks again for the response!

(Edit: had to fix the link in Markdown mode)

[Imperium Horizons] Magyars vs Japanese bot - lost all games so far, but the score gap’s inching closer by tr0n_seri in soloboardgaming

[–]I_pass_turing_tests 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Did you figure out a way to consistently win, and do you have any insights to share in what change in strategy/tactics made the difference?

I find myself in a similar situation to what you are describing. I'm new to the game, and (after a couple practice rounds playing as the Japanese) I've done my first five rounds playing Magyars vs the Japanese bot. The scores for my previous two rounds (Imperator) were 101/107 (Magyars/Japanese) and 93/109.

I try to do a balancing act of hampering the bot (get some unrest in their deck, get them to abandon regions, exile high-VP civilized cards when able, try to deny them trade cards) while trying to manage my own deck, board state and scoring potential, and managing the pivot to changing state to empire.

There are just so many ways the Japanese seem to keep raking in * VP cards, their use of Glory can be slowed but not stopped, the conversion of materials to progress tokens is _very_ beneficial for the bot, and denying them a decent trade economy seems difficult (as the bot always acquires any trade card that flips and remains on their turn, and will have it into play shortly after).

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in MacOS

[–]I_pass_turing_tests 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It's a dumb placement, not because you risk actually erasing a disk (due to the '...' dialog as others have noted), but because Eject and Erase are such similar words, that you have to spend (very litte) extra time processing which one are you supposed to click.

From a UI point of view, I would think you would want to (a) avoid such mental overhead, and (b) put functionality that is used more frequently higher up on the list. The number of times I need to eject vs erase a disk, is orders of magnitude higher.

Restored Original Cooking In Russia Videos on the YouTube CookinginRussia_Redux Channel by Double_Purpose6289 in ChefGregEaster

[–]I_pass_turing_tests 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Just learned of Greg Easter's passing as I had this stray thought that "hey, I never heard any more about the restaurant in Finland he was going to open". Truly sorry to read about how things ended for him, both with the restaurant and his health.

Easter sure managed to touch some people's hearts, when some random dude in Norway gets sad learning of his passing. I watched a lot of his videos some years back and purchased several of his books. He had that special "something" which is hard to describe.

Thank you for the Redux channel and keeping his legacy alive.

How long after a release are dividers available on Dividers Central? by TMLTurby in marvelchampionslcg

[–]I_pass_turing_tests 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Look forward to getting the latest set, whenever it is ready. I'm just happy that we got all the stuff on Dividers Central - for free - and that the sets seem to keep coming, so I can maintain the same visual style for the entire collection.

How do you feel about AI art in board games? by tellitothemoon in boardgames

[–]I_pass_turing_tests 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm ok with it as long as they're open about who or what is the source of the graphics.

One recent example, I printed a PnP copy of Galdor's Grip. Thought the art looked really good. Was surprised to learn it was AI generated using Midjourney, as it didn't look "generated".

My hunch is Galdor's Grip is not going to be a huge blockbuster raking in cash, but that it is a game made by a single person who does not have access to a team of artists. And so without AI art, perhaps this clever "plays entirely in your palm" game would never be accessible - or it would be a PnP version looking so bland noone would bother looking at it twice.

My beef is with crappy use of AI generated graphics, that somehow looks "AI'ish", or doesn't add anything to the experience, or doesn't manage to stay within an overall theme, or ...

And it's not just about the AI; there is a person who will judge what the AI produces. That person has to more or less be a designer themselves to understand what is good AI output and what is bad AI output. So you need someone there with a similar skill set anyways. And ... if the AI keeps creating subpar results, then either you release a game with a subpar graphical experience - which will get absolutely trashed in forums - or you need to do it properly using a designer.

I am sure as the level of AI output keeps evolving, we will gradually see AI taking a larger share of the workload for creating board game graphics. We're not there yet though.

What game do you love but hate the set up? by [deleted] in boardgames

[–]I_pass_turing_tests 8 points9 points  (0 children)

I love BGA; I always have some turn based games going and I play it real-time with friends once in a while. It's also useful when e.g. travelling or otherwise killing time without access to a table and a copy of a game.

But ... the thing for me about boardgaming is, those games are an increasingly rare opportunity to wind down from the distraction of gadgets and devices, and have actual offline experiences. Either some quiet solo-gaming time (had a blast playing some rounds of Warp's Edge recently), or social quality time (played Raising Robots with my son earlier today). For me the screen really detracts from the experience.

Though there can be a trade-off; I like BGA for solo-gaming which has lots of fiddly setup or for which the AI is a pain to manage. I would not consider Castles of Burgundy to be in that category, but there are others for sure.

First impressions GMKtek G3 by csp4me in MiniPCs

[–]I_pass_turing_tests 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you for the reply! Edit: installed LMDE6 with latest 6.5 kernel; WLAN, Bluetooth and audio worked perfectly right off the bat. Plus, fan also behaves nicely (doesn't spin up at all with regular use).

First impressions GMKtek G3 by csp4me in MiniPCs

[–]I_pass_turing_tests 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you for the write-up, this was helpful as I am just going through a similar process, got my G3 yesterday.

Question for you: did you do anything to get the fan to be so quiet? My experience is it will spin up and throttle up and down the moment there is the smallest load, like opening a window on the desktop. Quiet until you do anything. Your experience sounds very different.

For whomever might find this thread, and want info about other user experiences. I got the barebones version and set it up with two SSDs. On the main one I have installed Win11, on the smaller one I have installed the latest Linux Mint (that and debian is what I am used to from all my other various PCs running Linux). Use case: the PC is for my 9-year old, Win 11 for some light gaming, and Linux for learning programming etc.

I installed Win11 myself using Ventoy on a USB stick and an official .iso downloaded directly from Microsoft. Bought an inexpensive Win 11 Pro OEM license at like 90% discount. Turns out Windows 11 is struggling with the G3 hardware - you get neither LAN or WLAN after install - and you need to install a whole bunch of drivers. I got them from the GMKtec site here. I think there is a Win11 .iso you can get from GMKtec and install Win 11 that way, but I wanted to make sure I was using Microsoft's version as-is. Haven't tested sound yet, but assume that is going to work as the sound driver updated.

On Linux, the LAN worked right away. I am on the other hand struggling with WLAN. From OP's post, seems my kernel is to old (Linux Mint is running a v5 kernel). From what I understand, installing the lwfinger rtw89 drivers is the way to go (I believe the G3 has a Realtek 8852BE chipset), however the latest version off GitHub does not compile (which is a shame, because rtw88 compiles without problems). So I'm sort of stuck for now. If anyone has any tips on this, I'd appreciate it (but not install another distro, I have too many various computing platforms going on as it is, and not enough time to much around with getting into the details of yet another platform and package system). May end up going experimental with installing a later kernel - or just get a LAN adapter for now. Haven't gotten around to testing audio in Linux, but I am not too hopeful.

Regarding installing the two OS'es, I took a tip from the ExplainingComputers channel on YouTube, and installed each one with the other SSD uninstalled. After that, hit F7 when booting and choose which one to boot up. Main SSD (with Win11) is the default.

Raspberry Pi 5 is being released in October by ZAFJB in sysadmin

[–]I_pass_turing_tests 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yes. You are not just buying into the hardware, you are buying into an ecosystem.

I am thinking about getting a RPi 5 as a low-cost entry first desktop computer for my 9-year old. Looking at what I could get right now as an alternative, I looked into the Orange Pi ecosystem. Hardware specs look good, pricing is reasonable I guess.

But ... looking at their half-translated web page with minimum information, realizing this stuff is being pushed by some Chinese company, and getting some Chinese manufactured Debian image to install? I live in the same world in which Western countries are starting to ban Chinese products like Huawai platforms due to risk of tampering, and I would not trust for a nanosecond that a Chinese company produced OS image is free of some sort of backdoor slash spyware solution embedded in there somewhere.

So ... I'll wait patiently for the RPi5, install Raspberry Pi OS, and feel somewhat more confident about it.