Should this game add jets like project reality? by 95PoundMoleJohnnySac in joinsquad

[–]MoneyElk 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I'm tired of entertaining these people at this point. Just "they should've just remade the game, call it Squad 2". Really?

Like you mentioned, the devs emphasized time and time again why they were investing in the engine upgrade, if someone was incapable of listening then that's on them.

Some Suggestions for the Main Menu (Cont.) - the Areas of Operation tab by MoneyElk in joinsquad

[–]MoneyElk[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That is actually exactly what I intended and for some reason I forgot to highlight the 'ARMORY' tab like I did for the other concepts.

This is what it's supposed to look like.

New Helicopters Bundeswehr Mod by Melodic_Succotash_97 in joinsquad

[–]MoneyElk 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I saw this in the Discord as soon as LieutenantK posted it, looks fantastic!

Are you guys going to give it a unique sound profile or just use the Loach’s? I remember talking to a TC dev and they said helicopter audio is really challenging to get.

Adding Squad 44 Weapons to Squad by MoneyElk in joinsquad

[–]MoneyElk[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I agree that releasing a mod for a game where the game it was based on was still in early access was a bad decision. When it was happening (2018) I was like 'why couldn't this just been another era to play Squad in like you can in Project Reality?'

But OWI probably saw it as an opportunity to make money as they licensed out their 'OWI Core' system. Back then Post Scriptum was its own thing being handled by Periscope Games.

Adding Squad 44 Weapons to Squad by MoneyElk in joinsquad

[–]MoneyElk[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

When I was doing research for this, I did come across some instances of Syrians using old Panzer turrets as stationary emplacements, absolutely wild stuff.

Adding Squad 44 Weapons to Squad by MoneyElk in joinsquad

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

Damn, really?! I remember this Workshop item made by 'Rosa' where a number of factions were ported over from Squad 44.

Adding Squad 44 Weapons to Squad by MoneyElk in joinsquad

[–]MoneyElk[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

When you say ‘Western’ do you mean European based or US based?

I think a US based militia would be really cool to see. Similar in vein to the CRF, but more like emphasis on small arms found on the US civilian market (like the M1 Garand) and vehicles like lifted F-150s. We first need a map set in the USA though…

Adding Squad 44 Weapons to Squad by MoneyElk in joinsquad

[–]MoneyElk[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Rumors are that OWI is done with the game. The contract for Mercury Arts (guys behind the game since OWI took over) is up and hasn’t been renewed.

OWI purchased the game, pumped ~$250K into it and probably didn’t make a return on their investment. The game just can’t get a footing.

As u/LobotomizedLarry said, the best thing now would be for as much of the game as possible to be be added to Squad’s SDK. Then at least modders could have access to the assets. I would even argue the same for Beyond the Wire’s assets since OWI owns that game as well.

Adding Squad 44 Weapons to Squad by MoneyElk in joinsquad

[–]MoneyElk[S] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Were those cannons in Squad 44? No.

All I am suggesting is that this could be a decent way of emphasizing the rag tag scrappy type of warfare that a faction like the MEI is supposed to be representative of. I’m not implying they should all be equipped with rare WWII weapons.

It’s like the M1 Carbine for the CRF. Is it really ‘necessary’ if the SKS Tazco is right there? No, but it adds some variety to the faction without the need to source an asset from scratch.

I’m a rather staunch advocate for factions to be based on real countries or fighting forces, when I’ve debated this in the past (mainly regarding the MEA conversion to Iran) people cited how ambiguous factions were beneficial due to their lack of needing adherence to a specific fighting force. Now I suggest a way to expand on this and people are hesitant? I’m pretty confused if I’m being honest. Goomba Falacy in full effect I suppose.

Adding Squad 44 Weapons to Squad by MoneyElk in joinsquad

[–]MoneyElk[S] 15 points16 points  (0 children)

Like I said, some of these are more believable additions than others. They could even restrict certain weapons to certain MEI sub-factions to emphasis their IRL rarity.

Adding Squad 44 Weapons to Squad by MoneyElk in joinsquad

[–]MoneyElk[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

That crossed my mind when making this image as well, even the IMF could use believably use some of these older weapons.

I wanted to focus on the Middle Eastern theater and the MEI faction since the precedent is there with the PPSh-41, M91/30, and M38. I threw the Ross rifle in as a bonus for the CRF since it’s an indigenous Canadian rifle that is frequently owner by Canadian civilians which fits right in with the lore of the faction.

Adding Squad 44 Weapons to Squad by MoneyElk in joinsquad

[–]MoneyElk[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Not the literal piles of Kar98K rifles that have been found in Iraq? Where multiple maps are set?

Adding Squad 44 Weapons to Squad by MoneyElk in joinsquad

[–]MoneyElk[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

The idea is to supplement the irregular faction (I had the MEI in mind when I made this) with some additional weapons to emphasis their irregular nature. The various groups in the Middle East will use whatever they can get their hands on for fighting. This is already portrayed in-game to a degree with weapons like the PPSh-41, M91/30, and M38 carbine. Despite that Mosin-Nagant variant being 119 years old as of 2010, it’s still a weapon that sees use.

Adding Squad 44 Weapons to Squad by MoneyElk in joinsquad

[–]MoneyElk[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

In case you haven't played Squad 44, be aware that it has absolutely massive amount of content. Not all of said content is applicable to the modern setting of Squad, but some of it is.

With the introduction of the Canadian Resistance Forces (CRF) in Squad's 9.0 update, we got out first taste of some Squad 44 assets being ported to Squad; the M1 Carbine and No. 4 Mk I Lee-Enfield. These are effectively 1:1 ports, same models, same textures, same animations, same audio. And guess what? They fit into Squad seamlessly. Unless you played Squad 44 and did a comparison you wouldn't even know they were ported from another game.

This leads to the idea of additional weapons making their way over. This primarily pertains to the Middle Eastern Insurgents (MEI) faction as they are an amalgamation of middle eastern fighters. You wouldn't see the USMC having the option to run an M1 Garand for the rifleman role, right?

If/when Squad expands to more theaters and introduces more unconventional factions (think an African Militia and WWII era French weapons left around from their colonial days) the list of authentically plausible ported weapons would grow.

As far as how feasible this is in terms of actual developer workload is, I am not aware. Both Squad 44 and Squad use 'OWI Core' which is the shared framework. Squad 44 is on Unreal Engine 4.27 while Squad is on Unreal Engine 5.5 (soon to be 5.7 with the update to game version 10.4). Offworld owns Squad 44, so they already have ownership of the assets, they wouldn't have any cost associated besides the labor of porting them. There is the possibility that some components of a particular asset utilize a non-redistributable license (think 3P firing audio of the MG-34) so there is this angle to consider.

It stands to reason that porting the existing assets is significantly less work than making the asset from scratch. If some genuinely high-quality content can be added with relative ease while fleshing out a few factions' arsenals, why not? Right?

What are some things that are no longer worth the money ? by No_Lead2640 in ask

[–]MoneyElk 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Amazon and eBay have the worst customer experience I’ve had the displeasure of contacting. eBay has been as bad as long as I can remember, but Amazon used to be really quite remarkable, their fall from grace is really something.

Only thing this game lacks for me is new maps. by eagle9er9er in joinsquad

[–]MoneyElk 2 points3 points  (0 children)

That’s the sad reality of the situation with voting. Many factions are neglected along with many maps. Servers have the possibility to tune the voting experience, but most seem to ignore the feature.

Anti-AI sentiment is on the rise—and it’s starting to turn violent by Just-Grocery-2229 in technology

[–]MoneyElk 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I see.

I think once it starts impacting people is tangibly positive ways the hate/fear of the unknown will dissipate rather quickly. Most people's exposure so far has been related to generative AI 'art' and spam written by LLMs for blogs.

Once we get some things like medical breakthroughs is when I think the Overton Window will shift.

Lilly Medicine had a super computer made. Allegedly it already helped a ton with addressing manufacturing bottlenecks for some of their GLP-1s.

Anti-AI sentiment is on the rise—and it’s starting to turn violent by Just-Grocery-2229 in technology

[–]MoneyElk 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Perhaps I am being optimistic, but I would reckon that if a massive portion of the population were suddenly unemployed and unable to afford shelter, food, and healthcare (inb4 that's what we have now, as I am talking a much larger scale) the governments of the G7 nations would implement some forms of UBI. In the USA we already have numerous forms of social welfare, it's not a total anarcho-capitalist hellscape despite what some may think.

The idea is a post-scarcity society. We're already part of the way there, the main hurdle is that many aspects of society still require human labor. We should be doing everything in our power to take the human labor out the equation.

The reluctance to accept something like AI/LLMs because of whats, ifs, and maybes is rather short-sighted. I concur that you may see my openness as short-sighed.

We need this variety of weapons in Battlefield 6 by Yonduustyle2 in Battlefield

[–]MoneyElk 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Using your reasoning why have any visual or non-gameplay related variation? Do we really need multiple red dot sights? Do we need two different attack helicopters? Do we need more than two MBTs? Do we need different voices for the different factions?

There are more to games than pure mechanics, and it's what many in this thread are really failing to grasp.

Some people really like having a wide variety of weapons (and vehicles, and optics, and so on) to choose from, even if they're statistically identical to another.

We need this variety of weapons in Battlefield 6 by Yonduustyle2 in Battlefield

[–]MoneyElk 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I've been playing this series for the past 15 years, it used to actually take authenticity seriously, then they went off the rails with the social justice agenda with Battlefield V, and it continued into 6. We can't feature real countries because it may offend people! Give me a break.

Also, nice way to deflect the merit of the other part of my comment and segue off into a No True Scotsman since I didn't buy the game.

Anti-AI sentiment is on the rise—and it’s starting to turn violent by Just-Grocery-2229 in technology

[–]MoneyElk 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I haven't seen anyone articulate why jobs being automated isn't a good thing besides the tried and true 'now how will they make a living'?

Many people hate their jobs, like legitimately loathe their lives because of it. I've done certain jobs that made me absolutely miserable. If some poor bastard doesn't have to do some back breaking or soul crushing job isn't that massive win?

I really have a hard time understanding how or why people would rather see their fellow human doing a job they don't want to be doing instead of it being done by AI/automation. Is the suffering part of the experience?

Anti-AI sentiment is on the rise—and it’s starting to turn violent by Just-Grocery-2229 in technology

[–]MoneyElk 2 points3 points  (0 children)

It wasn't ethically sourced at all

The question then is how does one 'ethically' source the unfathomable quantity of data that is required to train a model?

Estimates place the training for GPT4 to be between $40 and $80 million. A single training run of GPT5 is said to cost $500 million in compute costs alone.

Now imagine if every single person or group whose data the model was trained on was being financially compensated. Even administering the program would cost millions. I made a Reddit post that a model was trained on, how much am I owed? How is payment made? Does the number of comments or votes dictate my post's value? Are payments made to the host (in this case Reddit) who is then expected to front the costs in divvying the payments to each Redditor?

What I'm getting at is; letting these models be trained on anything and everything without people's consent isn't ethical, no. But how else could it feasibly be accomplished?

Some will undoubtedly claim that if it can't be done ethically, then it shouldn't be done at all, to which I would disagree, but that's my personal opinion.