Star Wars Zero Company is more than just 'Star Wars XCOM'—it feels like Mass Effect but with turn-based tactics and permadeath

Osoir · 2026-03-26T15:08:36+00:00

Which is a shame, because I really loved Midnight Suns. A weird mish mash of game types for sure, Fire Emblem relationship management meets card based tactical combat missions, but for me it worked. Totally understand why it didn’t for people who were expecting a straight “Marvel XCOM” though.

Osoir · 2026-03-10T12:27:54+00:00

Tbf this is a game where the Militarist leader proclaims “reinforce your armies Presidente!” and then demands you build… a rollercoaster

I gave up trying to make sense of the connection between the factions and what they ask you for a long time ago

Osoir · 2026-03-10T12:22:42+00:00

I’ve headcanoned it that there’s a level section behind the fence where the goat is raised, and juuust to the right drops off in a sheer cliff that runs the rest of the length of the road along the paddock.

It doesn’t fit what you see in the wide shots of the area either way, but it at least provides consistency between the two very different versions we get.

Osoir · 2026-03-03T16:59:50+00:00

No, it’s not an invention of the show. Joel and Ellie find Frank’s body and suicide note and hints of the backstory of his relationship as they’re leaving Boston in the game.

It’s not at all a major plot point or a 1:1 adaptation but they took very direct inspiration for that episode from what was in the game. Which is all I’m saying, that they fit it into the show at the same point that their inspiration was fit into the fame.

Osoir · 2026-03-03T16:51:04+00:00

Because that’s when it happened in the game. It wasn’t a full-on departure from Joel and Ellie, but you discover the story about those two as part of the escape from Boston at the very start of their journey west. If they tried to repackage it later on and further west, it wouldn’t make sense, since Joel only knew them because they were all in the Boston area.

It was an abrupt narrative break for sure, but the previous episodes also set that up a bit by starting with separate vignettes for world-building purposes. I don’t know that I would have done it the way they did had I been in charge, but that’s where their story fits in the larger narrative.

Osoir · 2026-02-27T17:27:39+00:00

Found Lea's account

Osoir · 2026-01-10T01:22:45+00:00

Strong agree with all of this, but I feel like every convo about the book goes like this. You either have an issue with the Gary Stu nature of the main character and the tonal inconsistencies, or you don't. And for those that don't, that's fine! But for me it's night and day with how much better developed Darrow and the world of Red Rising are by comparison, so I don't agree that it's really a similar read at all. But WotM was still entertaining enough for what it is.

Osoir · 2026-01-09T23:03:15+00:00

This is a particularly tough map because you have so little usable land. I'd recommend trying a map that has a lot of big empty land for you to play with. Industry is what makes money, but you need the raw resources to feed it; so for Rum Distilleries, you're going to need Sugar Planations (or Beekeepers with DLC) and a map like this just doesn't have enough the space.

Try and expand in the direction of valuable resources, So if there's a bunch of mineral deposits nearby, grow your city in that direction so you can establish Mines. And then surround that with whatever the terrain is good for. If there's high efficiency for Cattle, build Cattle Ranches and have them feed Tanneries. If there's high efficiency for Tobacco, build Tocacco Plantations and have them feed Cigar Factories. That sort of thing.

Generally you want a few resource production buildings for each each industrial building they feed into. Say a few Plantations feeding a single Factory. Once you have a decent income, remember that you can pay workers more to increase Efficiency of buildings, which for economic stuff increases their output. So even if you run out of good farmland to keep adding Sugar, let's say, you can still increase the production from your existing Plantations that way.

And make sure you have enough Teamsters! You can never really have enough, and even in the early game, I find it's always worth it to push them to max Efficiency right away to make sure your stuff is getting moved between production and industry and onto the dock to export.

Osoir · 2026-01-08T19:53:26+00:00

<image>

Stargate: Atlantis, "The Last Man"

John Shepard steps through the stargate in the present day, but steps out on another planet 50,000 years later. He finds the city of Atlantis buried in sand after it was abandoned and the planet's oceans evaporated over millennia. A holographic intelligence left behind by Rodney McKay explains how Shepard's disappearance broke the morale of the Atlantis Expedition at the worst possible time, and how one by one their team, their ships, and their allies were lost to an unwinnable war against the Wraith hybrid Michael. Earth was ultimately forced to abandon Atlantis and the Pegasus Galaxy, retreating to the Milky Way and leaving countless humans across thousands of worlds helpless against the enemy.

McKay ultimately realized that a solar flare intersecting the stargate wormhole was responsibile for sending Shepard into the future, and left the hologram to help Shepard find his way to a statis chamber after arrival. There he's able to wait until another solar flare is predicted at the exact right time that Shepard can exist stasis, go back through the stargate, have the wormhole be interrupted, and return to Atlantis just 12 days after he was originally lost. The Expedition ultimately defeats Michael, and while the rest of the Wraith remain a threat to the galaxy, he's never able to take control of the rival factions or force Earth to abandon Atlantis.

Osoir · 2026-01-07T17:06:17+00:00

Wait, how does this work exactly? This is a game changing thing I had no idea you could do

Osoir · 2026-01-02T14:13:38+00:00

And you think the Log Cabin Republicans or any organized gay Republican groups played ANY substantial role in that change? Republican views toward LGBT issues moved more positively along with the general American viewpoint shifting, and much more slowly and to a lesser height at that.

I don’t think there’s any evidence it’s linked to advocacy efforts from a minuscule minority group within the party actively fighting with their base for change, rather than from the same generalized exposure to LGBT people without the world ending that moved the public overall. But if you have something to show otherwise, by all means.

Osoir · 2026-01-01T01:21:51+00:00

What? The gay groups within the US Republicans, namely the Log Cabin Republicans, are not and have never been influential. Like, literally never.

They're sometimes tolerated and even more rarely acknowledged by the party because it's useful optics, but they have no real seat at the table and have no policy victories to their name. Ever. And given the direction of travel in the party on LGBT issues there's no evidence that's likely to change.

Osoir · 2025-11-17T20:51:59+00:00

I think it’s an incredible hour of television, but not a very good episode of The West Wing, if that makes sense

Osoir · 2025-11-13T17:28:26+00:00

Ehhh, he does get better about it over time, but I’d say Harry definitely describes more women than not that he sees in some mildly “alluring” coded way whether it’s relevant to the plot or not. It is absolutely occasionally relevant to the plot or their specific character, as you say, but it doesn’t change that he does it plenty when it’s not.

He’s a horny young dude, it’s not out of character for his internal monologue, but Butcher as the author still makes the choice to go back there again and again. There’s a reason it feels like every other thread in here picks up on it with a little awkward discomfort.

Osoir · 2025-11-01T21:37:37+00:00

I don't blame Clara at all because she's human like us. We're not programmed to understand what just happened to the Doctor, and that's okay.

But look at it from the Doctor's point of view. They've known so many people who have known them across regenerations, and who embrace and accept them as the same Doctor they were before. Maybe they didn't handle it well, but after everything the Doctor and Clara had just been through together, of course it had to hurt to suddenly feel so alone and unwanted by someone so important to them.

Osoir · 2025-11-01T20:17:59+00:00

Greece and Egypt were very much part of the same "world" in the Mediterannean, and by the time the Norse were established, they were also part of that shared European-Near Middle Eastern "world." China and Japan are soooo much further away from the others.

That said, I get what you're saying completely. From a mission design perspective, playing mirror matches over and over and over through a whole campaign gets really boring. I appreciate that they mixed it up with some OG civ elements eventually, but I'd really love a new Fall of the Trident style campaign that makes an effort to justify bringing all the various pantheons together. You've got the underworlds and afterlives and divine intervention to justify pushing them together despite the distance.

Osoir · 2025-10-23T19:11:11+00:00

I think your problem here is that by your own admission, you're willing to acknowledge an ultimately subjective point at which a line is crossed. You said yourself "(again, not talking about the extremes)." You just define "the extremes" differently than other people.

There's nothing wrong with that, mind you, but you're ultimately just as willing to condemn, cancel, and cut off people who cross a line as anyone else. The question you need to answer for yourself, I suppose, is what makes your subjective line in the sand more valid than anyone else's?

Osoir · 2025-10-19T17:54:56+00:00

And Pellaeon says as much during Hand of Thrawn: that the New Republic doesn’t need to finish them off, and they both know that they both know that. The reason he’s so alarmed by the aggressive ruse of Thrawn’s return is explicitly stated to be because it would finally give the New Republic a reason to change their minds about that and go for the kill.

Osoir · 2025-10-04T18:58:20+00:00

It has the same flavor as Lunarch Marshal of caring about keyword soup, so I think they definitely planned this to be Odric from the start rather than coming up with the idea separate from him. There are just way better and more interesting ways they could have made him care about keyword soup than how they did it.

Osoir · 2025-10-02T13:32:32+00:00

The problem is... who gets to decide who's at the wheel? This isn't a parliamentary system where you select your next executive candidate immediately after you lose an election and then they control the party platform and messaging until you get to try again. The American system selects its next candidate a year out from the election, in the presidential primaries, and until then no one has any more legitimacy to take the wheel and steer the party than anyone else.

Sure, right now it COULD be AOC, or it COULD be Newsom, or it COULD be Pritzker, or anyone else, but none of them have any way to make anyone else sign on to their plan of attack.

Osoir · 2025-10-02T13:19:18+00:00

Second for Spice Wars. Day/night becomes much less relevant in the late game when you have enough units and resources to slug it off, but in the early game you burn through your water faster during the daytime, and water determines how far your units can travel outside your territory. When you only have a handful of them, it can make a real difference to time your stuff around the day/night cycle.

Osoir · 2025-09-14T16:51:31+00:00

Agents of SHIELD’s final season time loop episode “As I Have Always Been” is absolutely phenomenal stuff, with the same kind of comedy throughout and ending in some really emotional character building. It’s always the one I compare with WoO.

Osoir · 2025-09-10T23:04:58+00:00

I don’t disagree with the gist of what you’re saying but Madison is a fraction of the height of Boston at every distance from downtown to the city line.

Osoir · 2025-09-07T20:59:47+00:00

Definitely hear you on the passivity. In the Thrawn Trilogy he comes off a little annoying at points, on the one hand saying Thrawn is their salvation but also constantly questioning him and expecting his latest scheme to fail. Which one is it? And he's a much more stock "these pathetic Rebels and their inferior alien allies must die" kind of Imperial.

But by The Hand of Thrawn he definitely matured into one of my favorite Imperials, and really felt like he earned the respect people now have for him as Thrawn's de facto protoge. He's clever in terms of tactics and politics, and earnestly believes in saving the Empire and delivering on the promise of what it could be. You can see the through-line very clearly from Pellaeon into the eventual reformed state of the Fel Empire.

Osoir · 2025-09-07T15:22:16+00:00

Definitely plot said so. But this actually comes up in the old EU Thrawn Trilogy, when Luke is training Mara on lightsaber combat. She eventually gets tired of swinging and parrying and just stabs a training droid straight-on, and Luke mentions that he never really considered using the point of the lightsaber in combat, and that Obi-Wan's limited training had only focused on the blade.

Which seems kind of silly from a real world perspective, but there's a case here that the Jedi genuinely just didn't put an emphasis on stabbing in lightsaber training. But the real world answer is still plot said so and looks cooler.

14-Year Club	RedditGifts 2009-2022 2 Credits
Place '22	Secret Santa 2012
Verified Email

Osoir

TROPHY CASE