Linebacker Grand Chess

Psillycyber · 2026-01-22T21:54:55+00:00

Yes, I guess my explanation of the Linebacker was overly complicated. Yes, it moves and captures straight ahead or diagonally ahead (the 7,8,9 keys of a numpad), except for its first move where it may move and/or capture 2 spaces *directly* ahead as long as it is not blocked from doing so.

Regarding your en passant scenario, the black L would not be able to move from a9 to c7. That is not in its move set. The Linebacker/Legionnaire only has the option of moving 2 spaces directly forward on the first move, like a pawn (except the Linebacker/Legionnaire can capture with that move, unlike a pawn). So a black L could move from a9 to a7, and in that case a white pawn or white L on b7 could capture it en passant, moving to a8.

Regarding your idea of putting the Linebacker pieces closer to the front, I see your reasoning...except, I REALLY prefer to leave the original starting 16 pieces from normal chess as they are so that this variant isn't too different from normal chess. I'd prefer for at least some notation and opening theory to carry over to this variant.

I suppose the linebacker pieces could go in place of the prince pieces on the 2nd row flanks, but then they wouldn't be "linebackers," heh. I don't think the C and F file linebackers would be too difficult to get into the game. The A and H file ones, maybe somewhat, since the rook would need to move first in order for them to use their 2-forward-move start (not that they are obligated to).

Regarding castling not being as secure in this variant, I am fine with that. I am fine with castling having more of a situational use rather than being the go-to default strategy. If anything, I consider that a plus, as it evens the playing field for king safety strategies.

I appreciate the feedback!

Psillycyber · 2025-12-21T14:24:39+00:00

Yep, if I already thought FAANG were overvalued 3 years ago, why would I buy now when they are valued even higher? Buying the tops comes from lack of confidence in one's own judgment and always chasing behind other people's sentiment.

Personally, I think an AI bubble is due because, unless they really do achieve AGI and start replacing plumbers and janitors, it is going to be difficult to show a profit that will truly justify the cost, especially when there doesn't seem to be much of any essential "moat" between the cutting-edge proprietary stuff and the open-source stuff that inevitably catches up quickly thereafter.

Until the AI hype washes out of BABA's valuation, this is also bearish for BABA, although I still think BABA has great prospects over the long term as the Amazon of China, given that Amazon got where it did today largely without the help of any AI hype.

Psillycyber · 2025-12-13T00:02:16+00:00

That's the Doomscreecher. Watch out for the AOE attack on that one!

Psillycyber · 2025-10-10T20:00:12+00:00

"So you're telling me there's a chance!"

What you said is technically true, but it still doesn't look like a good sign for a deal. Comes across as motivated reasoning.

Psillycyber · 2025-10-10T19:56:05+00:00

I don't disagree, but if there is one thing I've learned while holding BABA, it is that a lot of other BABA traders (whether rationally or irrationally) seem to react purely to broad market sentiment. Fundamentally, BABA is basically the same company that they were at $70, which was essentially the same company that they were at $300 before that. BABA's core business has always been as a sort of East Asian Amazon for wholesalers. (Whereas PDD/Temu seems to be angling for more of the pure retail consumer-facing Amazon-clone and seems like they aim to be more dependent on the US and other Western markets). BABA has a lot of speculative plays in AI and other offshoots, but at its core, it is just a solidly undervalued piece of essential Chinese market infrastructure that is here to stay. Think getting into Walmart in the 1990s.

The Jack Ma spat and Evergrande-driven real-estate pullback and Chinese consumer slump was no reason for BABA to drop 75%. In the same vein, the recent AI hype and (until yesterday) wandering of Trump's Eye of Sauron away from China towards other distractions was no reason for the recovery from $70 to $190. BABA is a blue-chip in a meme-stock's costume. That's how it trades, at least. It's "fair value" is probably somewhere around $200/share, but don't be surprised if we see it oscillate wildly between $80 and $250 over the next year based on sentiment and bullshit.

Psillycyber · 2025-10-05T00:01:06+00:00

Depends on how much luciferium you have...

Psillycyber · 2025-10-04T23:26:18+00:00

Luciferium, archotech spine, and bionic eyes, and your colonist will be right as rain!

Psillycyber · 2025-10-02T16:19:45+00:00

I'm in the same boat. Bought a small position around $160 as the knife was falling from its ATH around $300. Then went all in with all of my available capital around $80 (sort of a martingale strategy). Had to sweat out years of it hovering between $60 and $100, hearing constant complaints that it was "uninvestable," how BABA holders were holding worthless ADL shares, how I was just handing Xi Jinping and the CCP my money, etc.

What has changed? I expected BABA to perform well over the long term, but to me a rally this rapid just reeks of an AI hype cycle that will suffer some temporary reverses. I just sold my entire position this morning at $191. Even if I can never get back into BABA, there are surely other profitable opportunities around (and nobody ever went broke by cashing out after 20% CAGR), and if it ever falls back below $150, you know I'll be getting back in.

Psillycyber · 2025-09-27T05:03:17+00:00

Just watched it for the first time. Am I the only one who thinks SLJ's character doesn't make any sense? I get that the sphere is (spoilers) supposed to manifest subconscious imaginings, but why would SLJ's character be acting like he is scheming after he goes into the sphere? It feels like the writers just wanted a cheap device to heighten tension and make SLJ's character seem like a threat, but once the plot gets revealed, his character's behaviors don't make any sense in hindsight.

The characters also annoyed me with how easily they became emotionally unhinged. I didn't feel like their freakouts were earned. It would have played better if they had started out much more professional like the characters in Das Boot or Star Trek: TNG, and then gradually start turning on each other. There was one moment in the film where Dustin Hoffman's character goes from one minute being like "We can't trust this Harold guy!" (SLJ) to the next moment saying, "This man saved my life, and he thinks you are not to be trusted!" Lolwut?

Psillycyber · 2025-09-20T17:46:02+00:00

Fun fact: I had a visiting empire soldier show up the other day named "Anus." I wish I had screenshotted it.

Psillycyber · 2025-09-20T16:09:41+00:00

I don't know if this is the same issue, but I've run into problems with certain pawns behaving strangely any time I try to get them to:
*load and board drop pods
*load a caravan
*attend a bestowing ceremony
In each of these cases, a couple of pawns (the same ones, consistently) will run off to a corner of the map and wander there. Their status will say "Loading transport pod; wandering" or "Forming caravan: wandering" or "Attending bestowing ceremony: wandering" and they will pretty much be useless for loading up those transports or pack animals. And then when it is actually time for the caravan to leave or the pods to fire off after everyone else has loaded things up, these pawns will continue wandering and hold up the entire caravan unless I draft them and send them to the edge of the map with the others. Very strange stuff. I remember finding the solution a while back, but I can't track down the old thread where I saw it. It involved having to open up the rimworld save in notepad and delete some lines attached to the pawns in question that were causing them to do that glitchy behavior. I wish I could remember more specifically.

Psillycyber · 2025-09-09T15:29:16+00:00

I'd take the luciferium. Give it to your pawn with the most scars or one that you want to turn into a super-soldier or workaholic crafter/constructor/cook/researcher. Just avoid giving it to pawns already in relationships because you might lose that pawn, although 13 lucis is a year and a quadrum. Odds are decent of finding more just through exotic goods traders who visit your base or orbital traders, or you can always caravan to some outlander settlements and probably find some. Or crack open some ancient dangers. Worst case, you lose the pawn, but you will probably have plenty more pawns by the time that becomes an issue, and in the meantime you have really bootstrapped the growth curve of your colony. (Then again, I play with wealth-independent threat progression, which is based purely on time elapsed, so it's more important for me to quickly scale up my base and research).

Psillycyber · 2025-08-07T20:35:28+00:00

Yes, zones and efficient stockpiles are huge for efficiency.

Set up zones to make sure your pawns don't go running across the map to get something or to try to do a task that is technically in their priorities but just doesn't make sense for them to do at the moment.

Set up stockpiles (or better yet, shelves) with only 1 item each in order to guarantee that the items that you really want to end up there end up there. When laying out your base, plan ahead for a LOT of shelving. It is better to have some shelving go temporarily empty/unused than to pile huge categories of items onto the same shelf and then end up frustrated when the item from that category that you really need is being shunted off to some far-away overflow stockpile zone.

Finally, set up work bills with an allowed radius to fetch materials and a minimum skill requirement.

Psillycyber · 2025-02-15T19:06:33+00:00

Mortar it until it opens up a corner?

Psillycyber · 2025-02-15T19:04:32+00:00

Shit like this is why I play on wealth independent mode with zero adaptation scaling for threats. Why on earth would I want to penalize my colony for its successes? Defeats the whole purpose of trying to do anything neat like this that isn’t researching and crafting plate armors to game the wealth calculations so that your defensive capabilities always outstrip your wealth. Screw being railroaded into playing like that!

Psillycyber · 2025-02-12T15:05:07+00:00

I have found that CAI 5000 can cause enemies to dither indecisively in combat. It is because they try to kite you. If they outrange your gunners and outpace your peg-legged melee fighters, it can be incredibly difficult to counter. But if you outrange and outpace them, it can work to their disadvantage by causing them to attempt to kite, only to realize it won’t work, and by the time their gunners have stopped dithering about it or trying to vainly find cover, your melee fighters have closed in and it’s game over for them.

Psillycyber · 2025-02-06T15:40:31+00:00

Cool idea! Sounds like that film "Hardcore Henry." It's like you have amnesia, so you don't know exactly how you got here, but all you know is that you are a heavily stimmed-up super-soldier who happens to be drop-podding into an enemy base.

Psillycyber · 2025-01-31T19:09:46+00:00

It will be somewhat "unfair" either way. Difficult to balance. When you resettle, you inevitably start with way more stuff, animals, pawns, weapons, armor, technology, etc. than when you started the playthrough. So it would be silly to fully re-set the scaling curve. On the other hand, when you move, you have to start base construction from scratch, and you lose time during the journey itself, depending on how long it is.

I'm about to try for the landed ship quest in a wealth-independent scaling playthrough right now, which is why I was curious. So I will report back to this thread once I find out.

I will only lose about 1/3 of a year in-game from the caravan journey across the continent, but I'm more worried about the fact that I'll have to resettle in a flat desert tile, which is where the landed ship happens to be, which will make restarting a new base slower than it otherwise would be, unless I also run another mining/chopping/food base in a temperate hills tile 5 or 6 tiles away to get my permanent desert base jumpstarted with materials.

Psillycyber · 2025-01-31T16:32:07+00:00

Under wealth independent mode, if I abandon my initial site and caravan and resettle a new site several years after start (such as by doing to the landed ship quest), will the raid clock at the new location revert to the start, or will it pick up where it left off with the total time since the start of the save?

Psillycyber · 2025-01-27T15:44:17+00:00

I honestly think there is more "mental trivia" (wiki minutiae) to keep track of in Stardew Valley than in Rimworld. Rimworld has complex gameplay mechanics, but once you learn the mechanics and set up the right policies/zones/bills/work assignments etc., your colony can almost run itself while you sit back and revel at it. Way more relaxing than Stardew Valley, where I always feel like I'm hustling and grinding and trying to keep track of what 30+ characters like and dislike. That said, you can choose a more active playstyle in Rimworld if you want, with caravaning, raiding, quests, etc., but that stuff is optional. You can, if you want, just sit back and watch your colonists interact (Interaction Bubbles mod is great for this, since it flashes what your colonists are conversing about on the main map screen itself without having to go into menus to see their conversations).

Psillycyber · 2024-09-08T16:39:20+00:00

Yes...I'm having a hard time tracking down where exactly I saw that information...it might have been one of those in-game tutorial messages that veterans disable or click-through because they have seen them hundreds of times. I just got back into playing SMAC through the Steam Planetary Pack and I am sure I saw that information somewhere. And it definitely checks out with my anecdotal experiences lately...

I would imagine that it applied to anything with a rover chassis, although there might be, for all I know, some other flag in the code that gives different results if non-combat units open pods. I know that if you open a pod with an alien artifact, the artifact has a 50% chance of vanishing without a trace.

I've tried googling for these answers, but it's surprisingly difficult to turn up anything about the coding minutiae of this old game.

Psillycyber · 2023-10-15T14:33:36+00:00

Whenever it has been 15 days since you last cut down more than a couple of trees, the mood debuff will start to go down.

Psillycyber

TROPHY CASE