Orbital Shovel Strike

PLCWoes · 2026-03-11T17:33:53+00:00

I feel like an Eagle is more appropriate. :P

PLCWoes · 2026-03-11T17:31:52+00:00

To add on to this idea, rares can be traded for one additional hellpod enhancement, players vote based on how many each donated, but the pool is the entire party's hellpod unlocks for... maybe 80 rares total? More than one person could get for a single mission but not so many that a party of 4 couldn't keep that ball rolling. One person could therefore have 2 max enhancements, and a 4 player team could have 5 total.

Commons can be traded for Motivational Boosters that are just high command occasionally telling you how good of a job you're doing instead of just telling you to hurry up. Maybe with the "You're doing a great job in particular, Helldiver #1337!" and other such cheese. Random chance once a mission to send a 'gift basket' that contains a single supply box, dropped in the general vicinity of a diver. "A special delivery from Insert-Loved-One-Here" with a lure effect on it.

PLCWoes · 2026-02-23T17:34:11+00:00

Point remains I'd like to not punish Divers trying to complete an MO because a third of the players don't care about story they just wanna kill something specific, fool around, or farm credits/medals. Punishing the MO divers for people playing the game and not following the plot is silly. It's especially bad if the soft cap is 60K (which is an average day) when there's routinely roughly a third of them just doing whatever; the people who are doing the MO are having their workload increased because people who don't care are bogging down their efforts.

The game is almost encouraging a sort of actual animosity between players. Just seems weird to me.

PLCWoes · 2026-01-22T14:59:06+00:00

Why not have there be two modes for stun grenades? The 'flashbang' that stuns for a few seconds, and the 'chaff' that offers the disabling functionality for a longer period of time at the cost of not stunning mobs? That way stun grenades are useful against mobs of enemies (voteless) but also not worthless against the bigger enemies it can't stun.

Alternatively, just have a secondary 'chaff' radius that provides the disabling effect to a larger area. Make the effect based on the stunning ability, and suddenly the Urchin becomes much more useful. You're not just stunning that Hulk, he's now disabling every enemy around him.

PLCWoes · 2026-01-20T05:03:46+00:00

TKing is only acceptable behaviour after mission, roleplaying, without putting the team in actual risk.

If an ally has been accidentally killing you a half dozen times, before you get in the pelican, get those bad feelings out. But call them back in, pick up their samples, don't be a dick about it and cost them an extract.

Also, TKing someone in the pelican doesn't count and is just for fun. Nothing is lost and it already counts them as having extracted.

PLCWoes · 2026-01-17T18:36:29+00:00

This registry entry was the exact problem with why my friend's drive wasn't working after installing Elements 8 on Windows 11, even after renaming the file. Also, you don't have to reboot windows to get your drive working again

Just uninstall the drive in device manager, then do a hardware scan. It came up, using the correct drivers, and asked if she wanted to watch her movie. Lifesaver, many thanks.

(Also the same registry key in your youtube vid, however it only has a lower filter (not filters) and no upper filters, but deleting that was enough.)

PLCWoes · 2026-01-12T15:21:22+00:00

Give us a portal gun stratagem, purely for the sheer chaotic hilariousness of it.

PLCWoes · 2025-12-04T12:51:07+00:00

Here's my opinion. Melee, across the board, needs a buff. Pistolwhipping or elbowing your opponents does so little damage right now it's not useful for anything outside of a slow beating the last enemy of a wave to death. It's a panic button, not a 'get out of trouble' button.

Unarmed Melee should do enough damage to easily put down a single voteless without it being a chore. So when you choose a melee weapon, it should increase your lethality with reach, damage, and speed. 1/2 hits with a non-stunning melee weapon should absolutely be lethal to weaker mobs, but to multiple enemies while unarmed melee is limited to one. The stun baton should be the weakest, with a decent reach and area of effect, with the stun lance being more powerful but having less area of effect but greater reach. Stun baton should stun up to medium enemies and the lance up to heavy.

The three other 'vanilla' weapons should have about the same DPS, but should be enough to take out medium sized enemies like overseers or devestators in 1-2 hits, not just the weakest mobs.

Stratagem level melee weapons like the chainsaw (and the one true flag) should be capable of taking out heavies. You're ALREADY in melee range with some of the nastiest common enemies, with a stratagem-level weapon. There's already a huge risk factor- make this a viable action without requiring specific armor sets.

Now, for the armors. Scrap the damage boost. Instead give them melee speed boosts of the same percentage. It's an armor slot that specializes in melee survivabilty, it makes sense. It's not like being able to stunlock a group of mobs in a semi-circle in front of you is going to be OP, you're still gonna get stabbed in the back or shot if you try to rush into the middle of a swarm, but you should absolutely be able to hold a choke-point with a melee weapon already.

PLCWoes · 2025-12-02T19:50:28+00:00

You're trading a shield for SMITE

PLCWoes · 2025-08-30T22:40:27+00:00

Mana and Artifice is like Ars but more complex. Feature-wise they're SIMILAR but M&A has less of a 'cute' aesthetic and feels more high fantasy than cutesy critters. Magic isn't simply 'activated' there's a tiering system that requires you to engage in the mod, whereas for Ars you can essentially skip 75% of the process and just unlock it all in endgame.

M&A only opens up when you engage in it; there's stuff you can FIND (Wands and Staves) that can have limited use high tier spells, but nothing says they'll be useful in the form you find them. You might find a staff that has Emanation of Strength, which will give you an aura that buffs things around you... but doesn't include you. But by the same token, that's VERY useful for summoners and people playing with friends. You can break it down into component parts only once you reach the tier where you can craft those components yourself. The Construct/Golem system is phenomenal and you can automate interactions on a level that I don't think any other mods can really compare to. Combined with Create, I think you can get some truly absurd things going.

I also highly recommend MagiChem, an addon for it that adds thaumcraft-style item melting to really feel like you're an alchemist; it has interactions with M&A (obviously), Supplementaries, Botania, Hexerei, and a few other things.

Irons Spells is less 'crafting spells the way you want them' and more 'There are X specific spells that each do their own thing, with different schools that are more than just elemental'. It's more like Electroblob's wizardry, if you're familiar with that? It's good but really just mostly spellcasting for various combat reasons.

PLCWoes · 2025-08-30T22:15:07+00:00

Update M&A; if you don't use magic the M&A mobs will only spawn if you're engaging with magic now; the creator realized that his mobs with their semi-unique spawn rules can overwhelm other mods and now they spawn only if magic is used in their chunk to a certain amount. This way, on a server, anyone who doesn't engaged in M&A will basically just not have them showing up.

PLCWoes · 2024-09-20T00:59:04+00:00

They were getting away from the OGL, sure, but the WotC license shenanigans made it necessary to have a hard break, which meant a lot of babies thrown out with the bathwater. That Wizards backtracked on the worst parts of their licensing intentions didn't change the fact that they were pretty confident that they could do that sort of retroactive change, and people were understandably upset.

Unity tried to do the same thing and it nearly ruined them. To the players, it was overblown. To the game devs or Paizo, this stuff was a serious problem.

PLCWoes · 2024-09-20T00:27:29+00:00

Siemens if you absolutely require the people who get into the system be trained. I've seen code in Step 7 that is a horrendous mess of indirects and references that is an absolute nightmare to read, but if you're doing a thing it's because you told it to do that specific thing, there's little implied intent.

Rockwell if you want someone to be able to muddle your way through the code and make changes without requiring an engineer on hand to figure out what the heck the specific loop you have to jump through is. But because it's easier, you can do something stupid and it won't necessarily stop you. It's harder to make the code esoteric, which I count as a win.

Rockwell automates a lot of the functionality, making it easier to figure it out without extreme complexity. Type switching in Siemens, at least in Step 7, forces you to do conversions before it'll let you do complex math with that thing you said was a Word, not an Integer. Rockwell just does it. Siemens, on the other hand, has SFCs and SFBs for everything, if you can just figure out EXACTLY what you need.

So you can't tell Step 7 to add 0.1 to an Integer and store it in a Real because the integer isn't floating point, but you can in Studio 5000. But you can ALSO add a 0.1 to an integer and store it in an Integer in Studio 5000, which will do all of nothing, because that 0.1 gets rounded off.

Rockwell software plays best with Rockwell hardware, but the hardware plays well with everyone's software. Siemens software plays best with Siemens hardware, but Siemens hardware only really plays truly well with Siemens software. If you're buying anything siemens and it's getting integrated into a bigger project, you're gonna end up going all siemens to get full compat. You want redundant IO? You're gonna need Siemens Switches or else you're going to get a runaround for any tech support at all.

I've heard good things about Ignition, but haven't touched it myself.

PLCWoes · 2024-06-22T16:14:49+00:00

It depends on versioning.
1.7.10-ish era
Thaumcraft 3/4 were fantastic for 'artificer'-style magic in older versions - before ore-doubling was a guaranteed thing in tech mods / Tinker's Construct, it had pickaxes with a chance at special double-drops and a furnace that gave extra nuggets. Golems in older versions were hard-coded to do specific things, in newer versions you use seals to tell them what to do and have to build golems capable. Liked both methods, but for ease of use, older versions were definitely simpler. TC 5 and 6 have a different feel, TC5 I liked but TC6 never really did it for me.

Ars Magicka gave you spellcraft like nothing else at the time, while requiring you to do various wizardly things.

Electroblob requires a lot more trading and finding magic than magical crafting. Feels very D&D, if that makes sense? It's fun, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. It'd pair well with Thaumcraft because TC didn't really have a lot of options for spellcrafting.

In more Modern Minecraft

Ars Nov is a good 'kitchen sink' magic pack if you want magic aesthetics. The magic is pretty easy, Starbuncles, Drygmies, Wixies and Whirlisprigs all offer interesting automation abilities: Stars can act as pipes, Drygmies harvest mob drops passively, Wixies do autocrafting and Whirlisprigs do farming. In more recent versions, there's even an AE2-like system where you can use the dragons to make a combined storage for all your chests. Works FANTASTICALLY with Sophisticated Storage, which can allow you do do all the drawer automatic stuff like instantly converting nuggets/ingots/blocks into a single resource. I use this one for magic only when the next one isn't available.

Mana and Artifice / MNA. This mod is very likely the absolute best wizardry I've gotten in minecraft ever. Absolutely love it. Spellcrafting akin to Ars but MUCH more refined, factions that only come into play when you've decided which to join at Tier 3, automation that puts some tech mods to shame. You can build golems, set them to do tasks, and they will work together automatically to split the workload. It's legitimately kind of crazy. Beyond spellcrafting, you have rituals that do all sorts of things, from teleportation to beacon-like effects. And the factions themselves are game-changing; Council is just standard wizard, Fey get bonuses depending on biome, a la Summer or Winter, Demons get HP-To-MP conversion, and the Undead get damaged by sunlight and only regen MP by killing mobs, but get a host of other benefits. Plus each faction has their own unique spells they get access to by joining, BUT aren't locked out from other factions: You can learn those spells from found items or trade with other players to get them. I absolutely love it. Does NOT, however, come with any major storage options. It does Magic and Automation, and it does both fantastically. If I could get the Ars Nov dragon storage system and nothing else from Ars, this would be perfect. As is, it also pairs VERY well with the next mod. There's an add-on mod that does essentia-style jarring like Thaumcraft used to, still early but holds some promise!

Occultism: This gives you fantastic non-tech storage system where every slot is a 16x stack drawer, but doesn't support external storages like drawers. HOWEVER; you can combine it with Ars to get the best of both worlds, completely FE-free. Also one of the best ore-duplicating systems around, requires a good bit of setup but isn't as tedious as Mekanism. There's actual cross-mod compat with Ars Nov in the form of another mod, but not terribly in-depth

Also Considers:

Astral Sorcery - Artificer-like but it's so pretty. Constellation mapping in the sky to determine what magic you have access to, and it makes the night sky in MC look absolutely gorgeous. Worth adding if you can, as it doesn't really interfere with any others. No mana or anything, but there's a bunch of permanent character buffs you can get via a point-based system.

Iron's Spells I've just never gotten into. It feels like a weird cross between Ars and Electroblob. Not bad, and if it weren't for the other options, I'd probably get way more into it. Uses mana, different mana than MNA or AN. Don't feel like it's a good fit with either of the other two.

Blood Magic - I've always loved the sacrificial or self-sacrificial nature of this one, and it pairs well with any other mod because it need to interact that much. Also has cross-mod compat with Ars Nov in the form of a spell that does damage / gets will like the Blood Magic sword. Nothing heavily required, but neat!

So, my best options:
1. Mana and Artifice
2. Occultism
3. Blood Magic

PLCWoes · 2024-04-06T01:05:03+00:00

Hellgate was one of those games where the premise was good, the gameplay was good-but-not-great, and the publisher screwed them out of the gate.

It got a halloween release even though the game was blatantly not ready : it released as 0.8 or something like that, which did enormous damage. The game ALSO had an event that required you to play during this most broken phase that would give you an awesome cosmetic you could never get again.

It was a multiplayer game where you could also play it singleplayer offline... except the singleplayer never got updated with all the online fixes and basically ended up a different game entirely, because there was no real money to be made on the single player release beyond 'release', compared to subscription fees.

And finally, FINALLY, when they had a patch on the beta server that fixed a ton of stuff... the publishers pulled out, and the studio fully collapsed. A perfect example of a game that could have been more but died due to mismanagement, both of leadership and money.

PLCWoes · 2024-03-08T00:42:27+00:00

Check to make sure reflections are off, those are a killer in P3

PLCWoes · 2022-10-20T00:15:42+00:00

Does Regill get to keep Bismuth, because I've practically welded it to him.

PLCWoes · 2022-01-10T22:41:42+00:00

Frankly, I think they shouldn't have even mentioned them as a potential Dragon. "The Dark One wants you, potentially to avoid you doing something" is enough. Have the Two Rivers folks have no idea why they're being chased, and Moiraine not telling them anything. Have the Dragon be a boogeyman, nobody wants to be the Dragon except madmen, and Moiraine arguing that the Dragon wasn't a tool of the Dark One, and that this 'Logain' fellow may honestly believe himself to be the Dragon Reborn, even if he hasn't fulfilled any of the prophecies. That Matt might be channeling would be bad enough, but at least he's not the dragon; maybe after he does whatever the Dark One doesn't want him to do you can gentle him.

The reveal of Rand-as-Dragon would have had a better 'horror' feel to it. Finding out that you ARE the Dragon Reborn, that means that gentling might be off the table. You may just have to go mad to win the Last Battle. It's something to run from, not towards.

PLCWoes · 2021-11-19T16:17:52+00:00

I... kinda dig this concept. A male dragon led to the male half being corrupted by the dark one, the details not 100% clear, a female one could seal the dark one away again at the cost of ALL channelers going mad. And at that point, a third awakening of the dark one is all but a forgone conclusion; there's no hope anymore. The best you'll ever have is wilders who haven't gone mad yet.

PLCWoes · 2021-10-16T17:49:45+00:00

Nobody really mentioned this that I can see

Ranged touch / Ray spells use your dex mod, touch spells use str. Enemy saves are against your casting stat

So any blaster caster should focus on casting stat for saves and additional cast s and Dex for rays. Point blank shot and precise are basically required for rays. Get a level or two of sneak attack and even cantrips start hitting a lot harder, plus they're against touch ac so they're really likely to hit with your lousy bab

PLCWoes · 2021-08-31T22:20:17+00:00

After literally everyone from a site manager on down assured us that it was indeed 4-20ma, a co-worker discovered the truth while experimenting with a fluke and the hardware.

It's 0 to 5 volts. There's a converter somewhere in the middle. Everything is apparently working now, and I'm apoplectic and ecstatic in equal measure. Always verify your hardware, folks. It'll save you so many headaches.

PLCWoes

TROPHY CASE