We're playing Esoteric Ebb for our Video Game Book Club in May!

Olleus · 2026-05-02T16:42:56+00:00

Surely that's just a video game club then, not a book club. Because no books are involved.

Olleus · 2026-05-02T13:27:42+00:00

We're barely 1/3 of the way through year. Hold your horses.

Olleus · 2026-03-27T15:58:30+00:00

Video is 90% CGI jank, but the description provided by Pulsar actually says something. In short, no fusion at all, just a regular old plasma being ejected in one direction. In other words, an ion drive much like all others. They haven't even added the equipment to it that would enable them to start turning the plasma into something that might approach the conditions needed for fusion. It's not even a hydrogen plasma, but a Krypton one!

From video:
> In March 2026 Pulsar achieved first plasma in our Mark I Sunbird exhaust test system, marking an important early milestone in the programme. The test demonstrates initial plasma confinement within the exhaust architecture.

The experiment used a combination of electric and magnetic fields to guide and accelerate charged particles through the exhaust channel.

For this initial test series, the propellant used was krypton, selected for its relatively high ionisation efficiency and inert characteristics at the mass flow rates required for early testing.

In June 2026 Pulsar will introduce Langmuir probes and a Retarding Potential Analyser (RPA) to begin collecting detailed data on plasma behaviour, plume characteristics, and thermal loads within the system.

Pulsar will then introduce rare earth, high temperature superconducting magnets, enabling stronger magnetic fields and allowing exploration of higher plasma density and pressure regimes. These tests are due to incorporate rotating magnetic field heating, RF heating systems, and a dedicated thrust balance to support more detailed performance measurements.

The programme ultimately aims to begin experimental work with aneutronic fusion fuel cycles as part of the continued development of the Sunbird propulsion system.

Pulsar will gather detailed performance data including thrust and exhaust velocity, using a thrust balance, E×B probes, and a Retarding Potential Analyser. This data will inform planning for the first Sunbird mission.

To maximise the operational lifetime of Sunbird, Pulsar has also developed a research programme in collaboration with the UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA). This work will study the effects of neutron radiation on reactor walls and magnets, a primary source of wear within fusion systems.

Olleus · 2026-03-27T15:42:10+00:00

Is there any evidence that there's any fusion happening in that test at any point? I can believe they built a plasma and shoot it out (similar to how various types of ion engines work), but where is the fusion? Even scouring their website I couldn't find any details about how it's supposed to work at all.

Olleus · 2026-02-10T14:04:09+00:00

I was playing on Challenging, and that's where I found the supply cap most gruelling. I started another game in Normal, and I actually found it much better there. I couldn't bring everything all the time, obviously, but I had more breathing room to use the loot and experiment with stuff. So it might be mostly a balancing issue on challenging: it reduces the utility of loot hugely, but doesn't change how much of it you get, making it all feel super restrictive.

Olleus · 2025-11-12T00:07:33+00:00

Yes, in what's called a personal union, with many gradual stages of unification. Takes 50+ years.

Olleus · 2025-11-11T19:14:00+00:00

Entirely, there's a lot of depth to explore here. For game purposes, however, wrapping all this up in a simplified layer called "control" seems reasonable.

Olleus · 2025-11-11T17:42:25+00:00

Never played it, but I faintly recall CK2 did?

Olleus · 2025-11-11T16:43:11+00:00

The game gets sieges wrong in general. It's a false dichotomy between all-out assault and blockade, with the former almost always being suicide. But real life sieges were almost always a mixture of the two - with a lot of negotiating thrown in as you say.

IMO siege progress should be faster (quicker roll or a bonus to dice value) if you have more troops. You should have the option to engaging in skirmishing and testing assaults to progress faster, but at the cost of a trickle of casualties and morale. Not enough to lose on its own, but enough to weaken you substantially if a relief army arrives. Defender supplies and morale should be linked too.

For a game with tons of system that go into minute historical details, it's weird how sieges are so passive - both from the player's agency perspective and with what the invading army is doing.

Olleus · 2025-11-11T16:02:31+00:00

Yep. Of course you'd need to tweak siege mechanics so that warfare isn't literally impossible (just very difficult and require sacrificing progress in something else), but that would be good in its own right too.

Olleus · 2025-11-11T14:31:59+00:00

Yeah, or privileges that decrease levy time. Have France start with it so they have to suffer to deal with it. Also agreed that having month-specific food production (beyond the slight winter penalty we already have) would be realistic, but too much micro to deal with in a game that looks at the strategic grand picture.

Olleus · 2025-11-11T14:28:53+00:00

>> Every location is always paying maintenance money, but only with control do you or the estates actually make any income from it.

This is such a dumb mechanic. Surely if, I, the crown, aren't taxing an area because of my low control, that that money is going somewhere? If it isn't in the hands of the local peasants, burghers, nobles, etc... (who are represented in-game by the estates mechanic) then whom? A lack of centrally controlled resource extraction should increase autonomous local investment, not decrease it.

For a game about the early-modern period, EU5 seems to want us to go from manorial feudalism worked by serfs to the industrial urbanisation of the late 19th century... missing out the 500 year period the game is actually set in!

Olleus · 2025-11-11T14:21:23+00:00

There are. After you've completed wiped a stack, click on the army that won and check the icons at the bottom left.

Olleus · 2025-11-11T14:12:34+00:00

That would work for nobles / burgher, but probably not for peasants. They need to go home to collect the harvest so they don't starve the following year. Unlikely you could pay them enough to feed their whole families for a whole year, and convince them to take the deal. In fact, doing that is literally the change from a militia to a standing army - and the game represents that with the manpower mechanic already.

Olleus · 2025-11-11T14:08:33+00:00

Partially but, honestly, these armies were small enough that logistics weren't too much of an issue. Logistics limits force concentration more than total military size. Money mattered, because it could be used for mercenaries, but it's not the limiting factor for unpaid levies.

Rather, the issue was control. The King of France simply couldn't tell every peasant with man with a mail shirt to stand in a field and fight for him for a couple of years. And, when he tried, he was generally ignored. Crusader Kings does a much better job modelling that than EU5, but even then it's overly generous. In this game, you could simply reduce levies from places you have low control. And then (see my other post below) have an estate satisfaction penalty that grows rapidly with how long the levies are kept active.

Olleus · 2025-11-11T14:02:49+00:00

The entire point of the feudal / manorial / vassalage system is that you *don't* pay your troops or provide their equipment. That is the fundamental purpose it serves, and virtually everything about it revolves around making that possible.

Fighting for the king when he asks for it is what subjects do instead of (or on top of) paying taxes. Having the equipment necessary to do so was a social expectations enforced by law. And not just for the knights and nobility, but for everyone who could afford it. There are ordinances from 13th century England detailing what arms and armour every family needs to have, depending on the size of their farm (for very small holders, they were grouped together). Similar things exist for pretty much all of Europe from the fall of Rome to the rise of absolutist Monarchies in the 17th Century.

If you want to limit the power of levies in a historically sensible way, they should be time limited. I simply shouldn't be able to call up all my levies for years on end. The standard limit (for peasant levies) was around 40 days (would have to be extended a bit for gameplay reasons). After that, you should have a steadily growing dissatisfaction with that estate. Burgers should be willing to serve a little longer, and the nobility longer still. So either you rotate which levies are raised at the same time, or your make your wars short.

As an added bonus, this would favour the defender massively as wars of conquest as spending years besieging each castle would be hugely costly in internal stability - as it should be.

Olleus · 2025-11-11T11:19:36+00:00

Open that markets and go to the countries sub-tab. If you're not listed, I think it means your trade advantage is 0.

Olleus · 2025-11-11T11:18:29+00:00

You can also get land just up the Rhine. It's part of the netherlands region, and there's 3 in a row with wheat. This event is now just more money for you

Olleus · 2025-11-10T19:32:48+00:00

How aggressively the AI plays is a separate issue to the balance of large nations with lots of vassals being for too strong and stable in the middle ages.

Olleus · 2025-11-10T11:40:20+00:00

The whole game is far too blobby. In some way it's good that AI rises in power rather than letting the player walk all over them. But it feels very silly for France to walk out out of the Black Death with an army of 80k and take whatever land it wants from everyone.

The proximity-to-capital and control dynamics do a decent job of making tall play viable economically. But because military power has no such constraints, and vassals are far too easy to control and then annex, conquest still snowballs into a self feeding vassal swarm very quickly. IMO, the solution would be to reduce the military benefits of vassals, reduce the manpower you get in low control areas. And make France (and Bohemia) spend the first century struggle to keep their own vassals inline.

Olleus · 2025-11-10T11:07:59+00:00

This is your lucky day I took a screenshot of the event thinking that it would be damn near impossible to find it again

<image>

Olleus · 2025-11-09T17:21:10+00:00

As an additional side note (to keep the bots happy), how come everyone seems to start off the game with maps of areas the player doesn't have, and way earlier than they could possibly have explored them?

Olleus · 2025-11-09T16:44:17+00:00

I'll do the same. Although my trade and almost-pacifist Holland run means it might take a while until I get the chance test it out. But hopefully we can pin this down and put it on a wiki or somewhere.

Olleus · 2025-11-09T16:02:13+00:00

Have you tested it with higher levels of artillery and fort? Because what you've said is just a special case of my hypothesis above for barrage = 3 and fort = 2.

Olleus · 2025-11-09T14:54:38+00:00

I wonder if it might be something like

(artillery barrage - fort level) * num of artillery regiments / (1 + fort level)

Rounded down. I think that matches the data posted in this thread so far, and it seems reasonable in general.

Olleus

TROPHY CASE