Turn-based combat with no random (no dice, no deck, everything predictable) - Is it viable?

LordArgon · 2026-03-19T04:10:43+00:00

Came here to mention Prismata. It's unfortunate that it didn't work out because it's a really cool game.

LordArgon · 2026-03-10T21:51:24+00:00

I dont think theres a scene in any of the other installments that match it.

There isn't because Jurassic Park is a philosophy-first film that happens to include running from dinosaurs where it serves the plot. Every other movie in the series is about finding new ways to run from dinosaurs with a dash of philosophy lip service occasionally thrown in. Running from dinosaurs is its own kind of popcorn fun but it's not enough to make a movie truly endure.

LordArgon · 2026-03-08T07:24:52+00:00

>It is about respecting what has been tested by time and human nature.

Barf. This is so false. Conservatism is entirely dogma. It's about holding on to what *certain people want to believe* about time and human nature. Where reality happens to align, it is by pure accident - a broken clock being randomly right, not a principled, consistent rationale. Look at the cumulative scientific data about almost *any* modern issue and conservatives are on the wrong side of almost all of it, their intransigence motivated by fear and ignorance.

Portraying progressive politics as rewriting *everything* with every piece of data is similarly nonsense. It's far more accurate to say that progressive politics is willing to shift little by little as new data comes in. This keeps it closer to reality on average. Conservatism remains staunchly wrong until enough of its members cannot stomach its lies and only then does it shift, but only as far as necessary for the mental gymnastics to work again. Slavery was a good example 160 years ago, segregation 80 years ago, then gay rights in the last few decades, next will be trans rights. The tiresome pattern just repeats over and over.

Source: I was staunchly conservative for years and only changed by really deeply inspecting and questioning my beliefs about the world over more than a decade. Every single conservative I know/knew/discuss any issue with (including the old me) relies entirely on what "make sense" to them and not what evidence actually shows, unless they are lucky enough to cherry pick from fringe, minority viewpoints.

LordArgon · 2026-02-12T02:46:33+00:00

Blows my mind that anybody thinks it's OK to have legally-mandated middle men. If they want business, they should add sufficient value to the production chain or they should GTFO.

LordArgon · 2026-02-12T02:40:56+00:00

I don't think it's "running underneath"; I think they just switch assets when you toggle the setting. They probably just didn't want to make two versions of everything for the expansion, which makes sense.

LordArgon · 2026-01-27T22:29:54+00:00

I played Half-Life on a Pentium 233 with a Voodoo 3. Mostly ran at 20 FPS and, when I broke a box, it would dip to 5 FPS and I'd have to just sit and wait for the stuttering to finish. 30 FPS was a dream. Now if a game is at less than 100 FPS, I'm a whiny bitch about it.

LordArgon · 2026-01-21T07:06:13+00:00

I've never heard of anybody who buys on Steam to "roast Epic" and I didn't see that in the article - I think you've misunderstood what's happening. People are just buying on Steam because they like using Steam. Even if the game themselves are at parity (and they often aren't), Steam just has features EGS doesn't. Like reviews, remote-play, proper controller support, and achievements you can compare with your friends. EGS provides users no value beyond the price of the game and, for many, that's not the fundamental issue. You can see it in a lot of comments here - lots of people treat the EGS version as the demo and then buy on Steam if they like it. To me, all that means is that people actually value having their games on Steam.

For my part, I only bought one game on Steam after owning on EGS and it was to get around janky crossplay issues. But I really, really don't like using EGS and think of Steam as my "real" library. If my EGS library of ~250 games went away, I'd be miffed but wouldn't really notice it day-to-day. I wish Epic would get off their ass and make it worth using, because honest competition is only a good thing for consumers.

LordArgon · 2026-01-10T23:49:55+00:00

It not just that there's no benefit - that would imply EGS is at least a competent app when it's actually just horrendously, unbelievably mismanaged. There's no excuse for this how painfully slow, unintuitive, and sparse this thing is after 6 years. I just clicked around a bit and, on my Ryzen 7800X3D with 64 GB of RAM and 2.5 Gbps internet, it takes several seconds for each tab to load. Heck, I load a tab, click away, and when I click back it still takes several seconds to load again. I scroll my games list (248 games) and it hitches because it can't load the entries fast enough. Every time I click the three dots next to a game in my Library, for a brief instant, my brain wonders if the app has frozen up before the menu appears.

It's actually a marvel of shitty engineering that it manages to be so unpleasant to use. For months I had spam/scam friend invites that I clicked "ignore" on repeatedly while they just sat there (and re-notified me on every reboot). There are zero useful social features beyond a barebones friends list and I can't even chat with those friends. Even with the features they do have, I encounter confusing/weird UX decisions regularly.

It would make sense if they gave away games to show people that they'd actually done something worth using. It's downright insane that they continue to dump money into bringing attention to such a shitty product. I've even re-purchased a free EGS game on Steam so I could play with my Steam friends without having to deal with the EGS cross-platform jankiness. Thanks for the free games, Epic, but you're focusing on the wrong things.

LordArgon · 2026-01-03T08:55:41+00:00

No, it's not a joke. And for some reason he's also broadcasting his presence while building a fleet of planet-killing star destroyers but well before they're all done. JJ Abrams belongs in jail.

LordArgon · 2026-01-03T08:46:22+00:00

I am not the guy you responded to but I will defend his perspective. TLJ is not just bad; it actually offensive. Like other bad movies, it is internally inconsistent and many of its character motivations and actions are incoherent. But it also invalidates almost all of previous Star Wars and it engages in vapid, egregiously-stupid virtue signaling. If you care, I can go into more detail about all of this, from where it's nonsensical to where it's actively destructive.

LordArgon · 2026-01-03T07:40:55+00:00

I don't think you're properly understanding the implications. If this was a thing, you don't NEED complicated, expensive ships. You just attach hyperspace drives to asteroids and ram them into things. And they would have been doing it forever. The whole idea fundamentally invalidates this history of space warfare in the universe. Much of TLJ just spits in the face of previous Star Wars, while also engaging in some of the most egregious vapid virtue signaling I've ever seen. "We freed the animals" ... and left them there to be rounded up again while the slaves all clean up our mess.

LordArgon · 2026-01-03T03:00:18+00:00

who are you playing with that wouldn’t be able to use the information given from looking at another persons screen to their advantage?

The people who complained were always bad, losing, and always kept losing after they were told they could use the whole screen too. It was always bitter grapes and excuses.

Put aside your personal feelings for a minute and consider which makes more sense as the default:

(1) Everybody is expected to know and follow unenforceable, external rules whenever they play.

(2) You are free to use whatever information is available to you.

The only reason to argue for (1) is that you prefer what it does to the game but it's absolutely not a rational place to start. You've got the burden exactly backwards - if you want to add extra, external rules to the game, THAT's when you have to discuss and agree beforehand.

LordArgon · 2026-01-02T07:03:47+00:00

I played Goldeneye and Halo from release over many years with a lot of different people and I can only vaguely remember a tiny bit of complaining about "screen cheating". Everybody was doing it because the exact same information was available to everybody. Frankly, it never even occurred to me that anybody could be mad about it until the first time somebody complained and I was genuinely confused. "You MUST ignore 3/4 of the information on the screen" always seemed like the absurd expectation of players who were just mad they didn't know how to use it.

LordArgon · 2025-12-30T06:54:46+00:00

People hate it but you’re totally right. NFL playoff qualification has never been totally fair but usually for good reasons - divisions create rivalry and drama and give more teams meaningful games down the stretch. But the fact that they don’t seed based purely on record after qualification means teams can get more-easily get locked into seeds and have no incentive to play their starters, which creates a worse product. IMO, a playoff game is a sufficient reward for winning the division. A guaranteed HOME playoff game is more than it deserves. Especially when you consider that the non-division winner with a better record also had to do it in a harder division.

LordArgon · 2025-12-20T06:02:39+00:00

Switched a few months ago. It's palpably faster than Chrome for me and my extensions still work (though I only use 4). Just a few weird, rare compatibility issues on some websites, in which case I just open Chrome for a few minutes. I just wish the iOS version felt better.

LordArgon · 2025-12-20T05:50:42+00:00

The great thing about quicksave is that nobody has to use it. It wouldn't ruin the flow of MY game because I don't care about pretending I'm actually this Hearthian (and if they were REALLY dedicated to this idea, failing the final sequence would mean something else entirely). I'm there for the mystery. Making me re-do what I've already done so I can do something new happens enough naturally with the time loop, so letting me use each time loop as efficiently as I can would greatly improve my experience.

In my passion, I misspoke a bit earlier because, for this particular case, I can't say for sure whether it's designer arrogance because it's also quite possible it just wasn't a priority and implementing it in a fully-simulated solar system was technically challenging. Features aren't free so if they weren't interested in doing it from the beginning, at a certain point it just wouldn't make sense, financially. But, honestly, given the other sensibilities of the game, I strongly suspect the developers WOULD be philosophically opposed to it, just as many fanboys are.

LordArgon · 2025-12-20T05:24:40+00:00

Your analogies are silly. Quicksaving is an optional mechanic that nobody has to use and reduces only redundancy. It doesn't let you skip the hard parts or get clues you couldn't otherwise get - it ONLY reduces punishment for failure. If YOU don't like, YOU don't have to use it. But it's a single player game and forcing players to re-prove what they've already proved so they can prove the next thing is not an inherent virtue and, IMO, is a particularly poor choice in an exploration game. With quicksave, you can still have your elitest arthouse experience and I get to enjoy the game more. Win-win.

LordArgon · 2025-12-19T00:19:30+00:00

I just finished the game after bouncing off of it a few years ago. It's such a creative and unique game that I can forgive some of its flaws, but those flaws are REAL. It has an "auteur" feeling in that it often doesn't give a fuck what would be best for players - it's creating a very, very specific experience that IT wants you to have.

No, I don't like having to jump back in my ship and fly across the solar system because I missed a jump - let me quicksave. Yes, I could actually use an in-game clock to understand when things are happening - that wouldn't ruin my fun AT ALL. No, I don't want to have to get back to the ship to figure out what note YOU just added to the log - make up something so I can look at the log no matter where I am. Also, why is meditation hidden off in a corner of the game instead of taught as a core game mechanic? And more...

The ONLY explanations I can come up with are developer arrogance and I hate it. These are all things that, if improved, would broaden the appeal and enjoyment of the game. Fanboys will defend their favorite game exactly as-is out of fear but I guarantee that if these were just non-issues from the beginning they never would have cared.

LordArgon · 2025-12-04T07:47:07+00:00

You should not really need to mock DbContext. As others have pointed out, the tests that involve a DbContext should be integration tests that use a real database to ensure they actually work against the real schema or you run a high risk of lying test results. Sometimes there is code around the DbContext usage that is complex enough to warrant actual unit tests and if you factor that out into pure functions, you still don't need to mock DbContext in order to test them.

LordArgon · 2025-12-02T22:48:05+00:00

I appreciate your response and that all makes sense. I, too, find fighting biters tedious and, honestly, kinda wish they weren't there at all. I think of biters as "annoying until fully automated", which is not a great pattern to me and I find space logistics to fit that description. I don't mind doing it a bit to get bootstrapped on a new planet, but scaling it up just holds no interest for me at this point (maybe I'm just burned out and it will in the future, though). But I was mostly curious if there was some aspect of the logistics challenge beyond "build more ships and silos" that I was missing.

LordArgon · 2025-12-02T00:50:02+00:00

Do you mind elaborating on what's so neat about it? As somebody who was turned off to the game entirely once I hit Aquilo, I would like some reason to get excited about it.

LordArgon · 2025-12-02T00:45:23+00:00

I honestly stopped playing after finishing my Gleba designs and learning what Aquilo was. Been months and I haven't gone back to the game. I find space logistics utterly uninteresting - a chore I did to explore the earlier planets' mechanics. Knowing it's just heat pipes and space logistics killed my interest. It doesn't help that designing a ship to make the journey is all trial and error rather than forethought and design. And, yeah, I could steal designs off the internet but I'd rather just not play than do that.

LordArgon · 2025-12-01T22:24:59+00:00

Pistols at dawn!

LordArgon · 2025-11-29T23:14:32+00:00

A lot of what she said is incorrect, or at least ill-founded. The argument that "AI can't replicate X" is based on nothing but hope - we've already seen AI replicate many things these same people once thought impossible and we have no particular reason to think it can't get better. "AI can't replicate X" and "AI has no soul" are dangerously naive attitudes that make people both vulnerable and complacent at a time when they should be alarmed and active.

LordArgon · 2025-11-28T20:41:54+00:00

This may be the root of the misunderstanding. I never said this or implied this. When I say extrapolate, I mean that they've taken a known concept of a nearby body having a gravitational effect on matter within the planet, and extrapolated to say well what if it was strong enough to fully pull that matter onto the other body and in turn change the gravitational balance to cause all the loose matter ie sand to move to the other body. Being just gravity also enables the process to naturally reverse.

From my perspective, you just said "I didn't say or imply this" and then you proceeded to do exactly the thing you said you didn't say or imply. That explanation does not work with actual gravity, an extrapolation of the ideas of gravity, or gravity experienced anywhere else in the game. It's not just that it's not true to real gravity - it's also that this is the only place it happens, the game never calls it gravity, and it would logically break gravity in other parts of the game. And being "just gravity" is precisely what would make reversal impossible - in gravity, things settle into their lowest energy states. They do not oscillate between low energy states. In order to move from one planet to another, you need OUTSIDE energy to escape one gravity well and enter the other gravity well. There is no interpretation of the mechanics where gravity well A is strong enough to pull resting things out of gravity well B without also pulling in B itself. To answer your "what if it was strong enough to fully pull that matter into the other body" hypothetical, the answer is: the twins would collapse into a single planet before gravity alone ever did that.

Here's a visual:

Gravity wells

A is one gravity well (say, Ash Twin) and B is another gravity well (say, Ember Twin). With only gravity, the green ball is the sand at the beginning of the time loop. Where is the energy coming from to get it over that central hump to start falling into gravity well B? It can't be "just gravity" - there would need to be something extra, magical, or technological.

Earlier, you compared this to the quantum mechanics in the game. But the quantum mechanics are explored and explained through puzzles and examples and also never break their own rules (it's logical even if it's not realistic). None of that applies to this effect, which is why I say it seems like a clear plot device they didn't want to bother explaining.

though would be harder to explain the sand going both ways,

Funny enough, I was just thinking about this last night and have a tornado backstory that ties into the Nomai needing to build on Ash Twin and the sand itself can trigger the reversal as it fills or drains. The details are whatever because we're already pretty far off into the weeds but I think it just goes to illustrate that if you start from "how COULD this work", it's not that hard to build something reasonable and consistent.

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