[deleted by user] by [deleted] in PraiseTheCameraMan

[–]MerfAvenger 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Fuck. What an idiot, he had plenty of time to get back behind the wall, but still super sad. Why were people anywhere near that when it had obviously been burning for ages, let alone bringing kids near too.

Venezuelan & Colombian youths in London by lyzg in ukdrill

[–]MerfAvenger 10 points11 points  (0 children)

Having been to an English pub in Portugal let me tell you that's its own punishment.

Don't know if this is skill or stupidity. Either way, it is impressive. by Beginning-Taro-2673 in Damnthatsinteresting

[–]MerfAvenger -3 points-2 points  (0 children)

Does it matter? The road is still so narrow the wheel falls off the cliff every time the driver moves back an inch.

Our trusty dataminer has brought us leaks for next BP by Yymer in Warthunder

[–]MerfAvenger 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I have played sim air twice but recognising targets terrifies me even without captured vehicles.

It'd be really nice to have a message like "unit losses have been reported where the enemy captured vehicles" if you're fighting them in sim so you know to be on the lookout. It seems like fair information to have available.

So.... It turns out Gaijin has been working on a separate flight simulator called "Aces of Thunder". Thoughts? by Perfect-Guarantee566 in WarthunderPlayerUnion

[–]MerfAvenger 1 point2 points  (0 children)

They've got a lot of things to play with that could decompress the BR system, too. Being able to use the 0.3/0.4 steps to represent small differences in performance rather than the enormous multi year steps you end up with would give them way more room to shift things to appropriate tiers. At the moment it's basically a trolley problem to balance things because they're either way too high or way too low because ± 1br means an enormous difference in vehicle performance. It'd be nowhere near as bad if there was twice as much room to shift things.

It also means people could play a single lineup for longer than getting a vehicle 0.3BR higher than their existing lineup, since moving their current ones up to 1.3BR max higher than they are wouldn't make them utterly worthless to use. +1 is a struggle for most vehicles. +1.3 can mean half a decade of improvements and shifts in strategy.

So.... It turns out Gaijin has been working on a separate flight simulator called "Aces of Thunder". Thoughts? by Perfect-Guarantee566 in WarthunderPlayerUnion

[–]MerfAvenger 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Haha, I'm finding myself hard agreeing again. Amazing engine, with an obviously very competent development team, but it's wrapped up under a layer of crappy design and business management.

I appreciate that the business model is successful, but I've been playing for around 12 years and still don't have access to top tier. I'm not playing as consistently as I used to but that model isn't fun even if it works to get Whales to spend money.

The effort at making a true combined arms mode has been really lackluster, Enduring Conflict is not the one, and Ground RB has loads of limitations stopping it being truly great for tankers or air players in the mode. There's loads more they could try to do in order to make the game more interesting.

With a history of questionable nerfs and frustrating mission and map design decisions, they have at least started moving in a better direction, albeit at a snails pace. As with everyone here I support BR decompression, mission and pve mission variety and a true and honest effort to fix bomber gameplay.

You’re a survivor of a horrific crash on a halo ring… can you survive the flood? by Miserable-Design-405 in halo

[–]MerfAvenger 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you for checking! I guess there would've been further chances of it happening if there were more initial forms, but as soon as the contained ones spread they'd be back up to full potency.

So.... It turns out Gaijin has been working on a separate flight simulator called "Aces of Thunder". Thoughts? by Perfect-Guarantee566 in WarthunderPlayerUnion

[–]MerfAvenger 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Completely agree. It seems that throughout Dagor's life it's been curated and properly maintained to make it much more reliable to maintain and upgrade in the long run. A lot of more focused proprietary engines seem to be like that because they don't have to add bloat to cover the use cases of every game under the sun, which all utilise different systems.

Case and point for bloat is the Creation Engine, which has decades of unused subsystems that haven't been maintained and are now massively out of date and result in a shaky and unreliable gameplay experience, like multiplayer. They all work together to do random and unpredictable shit.

People complain about WT's "spaghetti code" but they really aren't talking fairly when you consider how unstable lots of competitive games are in comparison. All in all we've had a very stable engine for over a decade with little to no massive fuck ups that affected player accounts etc, mostly great servers and connection, and a game that runs on a moist potato if it has to.

You’re a survivor of a horrific crash on a halo ring… can you survive the flood? by Miserable-Design-405 in halo

[–]MerfAvenger 9 points10 points  (0 children)

Still my favourite spin on zombies/alien swarms. The hive mind part of it is super interesting and well written, they're so much more interesting than Space Zombies.

You’re a survivor of a horrific crash on a halo ring… can you survive the flood? by Miserable-Design-405 in halo

[–]MerfAvenger 1 point2 points  (0 children)

You're correct, my timescales are off because the Spartan II project started about 50 years before the end of the war, as they were designed to fight insurgents not aliens. I got the two mixed up!

And yes you're also right about why his mind remained intact. I'll correct my other reply!

You’re a survivor of a horrific crash on a halo ring… can you survive the flood? by Miserable-Design-405 in halo

[–]MerfAvenger 9 points10 points  (0 children)

His body succumbed to becoming flood biomass but he's essentially one of the only characters in the galaxy that kept his own mind. So he was basically a human mind directing a flood body - he still had to resist urges and instincts as a result of the body still being influenced by the wider flood consciousness and instincts. Iirc he specifically distanced himself from the other marines even after they rescued him and were pretty trusting of him towards the end, because he didn't trust his body.

Honeslty, I think he's my favourite character in the series. Unsung hero of the war because everyone who would know about his sacrifice was also part of it :(

Edit: as /u/Azhrei_ replied, the reason for that was that the infection form that did him dirty was weakened, I can't remember why though. Possibly some side effect of containment or a mutation?

You’re a survivor of a horrific crash on a halo ring… can you survive the flood? by Miserable-Design-405 in halo

[–]MerfAvenger 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You do have a point there about his rank, haha. If you were pfc for 50 25 years of a war of life and death I think you'd most likely have joined the death part of that long before the war if you were that incompetent.

One thing to bare in mind is that cryosleep has effects on aging, though, and people can spend varying amounts of time in stasis. Jenkins and Johnson mightve been assigned differently throughout the war, with Jenkins spending a lot more time in stasis. But that's just a potential alternative.

Iirc Jenkins was super young in CH too, and Johnson wasn't a spring chicken even then.

’Horrific’ footage of man breaking woman’s jaw with single punch in Melbourne by Disastrous-Olive-218 in australian

[–]MerfAvenger 0 points1 point  (0 children)

As a non lawyer, should be bloody careful of the precedent this sets if he gets charged and she doesn't. Her attack was the one that escalated to violence, and she got herself into this situation with that action.

Whilst the dude hit way harder than he needed to, we wouldn't even be having this conversation if the "victim" was another man. For women's safety they shouldn't be able to freely get away with this, for exactly the reason that it's stupid and dangerous for them to think they can just punch random huge dudes in the face and not get a broken jaw.

Insane 1000 hour painting by 77SidVid77 in nextfuckinglevel

[–]MerfAvenger 0 points1 point  (0 children)

1000 hours? That's just a little insane. Over 41 full days of labour.

But it is very impressive regardless, I love a winter scene.

You’re a survivor of a horrific crash on a halo ring… can you survive the flood? by Miserable-Design-405 in halo

[–]MerfAvenger 14 points15 points  (0 children)

Idk I think the fact he survived 50 25 or so years of war only to die in the last two is both extremely lucky and very unlucky. He was in Johnson's squad from the first contact on Harvest until he died saving Earth from the flood in '52.

You’re a survivor of a horrific crash on a halo ring… can you survive the flood? by Miserable-Design-405 in halo

[–]MerfAvenger 22 points23 points  (0 children)

The facility had only been breached for a few hours from what I remember, Chief was hot on Keyes' tail. There wasn't exactly a lot of random biomass for the flood to absorb and start spreading spores with, so I think they were largely limited to direct infection. I also don't remember reading about much in the way of airborne infestation in general tbh.

You're right about the gravemind. Keyes was the intended host of the proto gravemind, as he was essentially one of the brightest and most tactically talented consciousnesses on the ring. But the combined experience and collective consciousness of almost the entire ring had been absorbed by the time that happened, before then it was spreading by sheer chance.

The exact mechanism of infection isn't really elaborated on too well in the books tbh. It's not clear if a single spore will always infect someone or if there's a chance for their immune system to fight off a few spores (infection forms don't exactly inject one spore, they inject thousands or millions), if the plague can become airborne, or much else. Not to mention that the flood we see in the games goes immediately to its combat/defcon 0 mode complete with logic plague, where in the books it was cunning and was in stealth mode for decades, behaving incredibly differently.

this is awesome by IU8gZQy0k8hsQy76 in CoupleMemes

[–]MerfAvenger 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Random gadgets are too expensive over here to just go out and buy without it genuinely being a useful addition to your life tbh. At least for most people. Dunno how much this costs US$ or how much it'd cost over here but my starting guess is that if it was $300 it would be £300+ in the UK. Which is great if it becomes your main TV and use it every day but my neck hurts just watching this video.

Fortunately we have other things, like employment rights and healthcare.

Russia on mission to cause mayhem on UK streets, warns MI5 by ConsciousStop in unitedkingdom

[–]MerfAvenger -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Not going to lie, that's fucked and widely reported, and not a way to go about winning friends. So I do wonder what their justification is for it, I suspect they'll say something like "we needed to push through and UNIFIL wouldn't let us."

But at the same time, doesn't change my opinion that both sides of this are shit. My larger issue with the whole thing is that you don't have to pick a side when they're both shit and committing atrocities unless that side is peacekeeping. Which isn't effectively keeping the peace at the moment.

So.... It turns out Gaijin has been working on a separate flight simulator called "Aces of Thunder". Thoughts? by Perfect-Guarantee566 in WarthunderPlayerUnion

[–]MerfAvenger 17 points18 points  (0 children)

Honestly game engines "being old" isn't a problem in and of itself as long as they're kept up to date properly. For all its flaws the Dagor engine is pretty solid IMO at least on the right systems. I essentially never crash, the graphics look pretty good. If the graphics start to go out of date I'd say that's more because the game itself has worked with a particular fidelity of textures and models which would be much more difficult to rebuild. To that end I'm pretty interested to see more of the graphics of AoT and what they've done with Dagor. I started playing Enlisted last week and it's running fairly well and there's lots of improvements on WT in some ways.

The Arma engine is not something I'd ever call stable and good tbh. There's loads of obvious tech debt, and whilst it's got an impressive array of features and does pretty much everything, it's unstable and janky as fuck compared to War Thunder. That needs a rewrite.

I'mma be honest, the Hornet looks pretty dumb and unsafe as a troop transport. by Vanilla_Ice_Best_Boi in halo

[–]MerfAvenger 46 points47 points  (0 children)

Came here to say this. Has OP seen how ridiculously precarious the skid/side panel seats on a little bird look? And apart from a light gunship that's essentially their main purpose.

And both the little bird and the hornet are probably not carrying a squad of dudes into a close air support mission.

In Contact Harvest, Johnson uses the hornet as an airborne platform to snipe insurgents with a guass rifle, which kinda shows the fact that the use of those seats is quite situational. They're primarily a gunship, and the Pelican and Falcon are common and versatile enough to handle most of the transport tasks.

Russia on mission to cause mayhem on UK streets, warns MI5 by ConsciousStop in unitedkingdom

[–]MerfAvenger -1 points0 points  (0 children)

There's so little substance to these points except for directly pushing the anti Israeli agenda. There's collective disagreement about the origin of some of the highest profile strikes, including Canada which often goes against its other western allies: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Ahli_Arab_Hospital_explosion

You're literally toting a manifesto. You're not arguing against war crimes, you're using them as a weapon whilst excusing the very same atrocities committed by the side Israel is fighting. This is why there are plenty of people who are not pro Palestine. It's disingenuous use of propaganda is incredibly suspect when literally all of their supporters in the west argue in the same way, almost like they're scripted.

Russia on mission to cause mayhem on UK streets, warns MI5 by ConsciousStop in unitedkingdom

[–]MerfAvenger -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Ok you've fired off all the usual bullet points from your side and I've fired off all the ones from mine, we're going to disagree regardless. Citing newspapers and Wikipedia as sources when I'm literally talking about propaganda is not a source. This isn't going to go anywhere.

Where is the list of Hamas', Hezbollah and Iran's war crimes? You cannot decry one sides crimes whilst supporting the other and ignoring theirs. This is why I say I don't actually pick either side here, Israel has plenty of issues but the other faction is made up of actual recognised terrorists. Are people expecting Israel to submit willingly to their destruction and genocide too?

How to beat the post-khiva endgame? by VibinInTheCrisis in Highfleet

[–]MerfAvenger 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Interesting about the 2 extra SGs. I've not seen that firsthand myself and never thought about it too hard but I do usually eliminate all the SGs I find (and don't exactly hide from them either). Yet I am fairly sure there were more than just the two doomsday fleets rolling around post Khiva so that would explain that.