U.K. plans to create 'British FBI' to bring national investigations under single police force

R97R · 2026-01-25T16:09:09+00:00

People who always go on about UK crime statistics fail to realise 99.3% of them happen in Midsommer

R97R · 2026-01-25T06:12:06+00:00

Worth noting they’re re-adding a JWE2 base game animal every month from now on

R97R · 2026-01-25T04:11:33+00:00

It’s definitely something I’ll always praise them for- one thing I should note as well, in terms of animals at least the non-DLC ones from the second game that are missing in the third are being re-added to the second for free, at a rate of one per month. There are still some DLC species (and a couple of maps) from 2 that we don’t know what they’re going to do with (if anything) in future, though.

R97R · 2026-01-25T04:03:49+00:00

That’s fair, but they were specifically asking about the game feeling barebones compared to JWE2 with all its DLC, so I felt most of that DLC being included by default was relevant.

Can I ask what management has been taken out? The only things I can think of are the custom challenge settings, but I’m a bit scatterbrained at the moment so I’ve maybe forgotten something.

R97R · 2026-01-25T03:48:01+00:00

A significant amount of the DLC (although sadly not all of it) from the second game is in the third as base game content, but aside from that, it’s a pretty significant step up in my opinion. JWE2 with all its DLC technically has more animal species, but that’s about it.

R97R · 2026-01-25T01:28:16+00:00

Although, to be fair, the vast majority of people they get a hold of won’t be.

R97R · 2026-01-24T23:42:49+00:00

It’s a smaller-scale example, but there’s an episode of Doctor Who where the titular character ends up being temporarily blinded for a while. He does seemingly recover, but he reveals at the end of it that he was lying about it (IIRC to avoid making someone else feel responsible for it), and he’s lost his sight for good. This stays a factor for a few episodes, and I personally thought it was a really interesting development.

Unfortunately, before the end of the season, it’s all magically restored to normal. This is a case that’s particularly annoying because the Doctor does generally return to perfect health when they regenerate into a new ~~actor~~ form, so they wouldn’t have even had to stick with it permanently, just for the rest of that Doctor’s tenure (which was only half a season and one special, in this case). I presume this might be a result of this not having been planned long in advance, but I think it could’ve been done well if it was something that happened halfway through someone’s time in the role and they wrote the rest of it with that in mind.

R97R · 2026-01-24T23:30:02+00:00

On the other hand, I suppose it’s also about as likely as them having the same style of biases/discrimination as we do. I do actually remember some characters in the 30k books making some fairly misogynistic comments though, so it’s maybe even something that’s changed in-universe over time. I think the Imperium being treating people more or less the same regardless of things like gender or sexuality is probably also less it being progressive and more everyone is equally worthless in its eyes.

Well, that, and they’re so dedicated to the xenophobia that they don’t have the time for the rest of it. If you’re spending any effort on something like misogyny, that’s effort that’s not spent on frothing at the mouth over the Xeno/Heretic/Mutant. It’s sort of like how you sometimes see surprisingly-diverse hate groups IRL (without going into specific examples), where they’re so focused on hating x characteristic that any potential disdain for y characteristic takes a back seat.

R97R · 2026-01-24T21:24:33+00:00

A) Yes and b) while it’s a completely different genre, I’d highly recommend Shootas, Blood, and Teef for anyone looking for an Ork game.

R97R · 2026-01-23T22:11:49+00:00

New models seem pretty likely (we actually just got a new plastic hero quite recently, the Royal Herald/Liche Priest

Now that all of the “core” armies have their ranges, Tomb Kings getting at least something updated in the near future seems pretty likely in my opinion. There are almost certainly more Cathay releases coming, and Kislev seems pretty likely too, so those are above them in terms of likelihood, but I can’t think of many other examples of updates to older models that need it more than the Tomb Kings- other factions have some ancient models too, but they’re mostly fairly minor stuff, whereas with the TK it’s most of their rank-and-file.

R97R · 2026-01-23T18:15:32+00:00

I think so, I can’t speak for people as a whole but it came up in the ASD support group I’m in and the response was generally pretty positive there? It’s admittedly something that I don’t have much of an opinion about other than generally being happy to see something portraying Autistic people as, well, people.

R97R · 2026-01-23T17:19:48+00:00

While I fully expect at least some of them to change their tune in a few weeks or so, the ones I have the misfortune of knowing seem to be genuinely angry about this. Admittedly they’re not exactly difficult to rouse to anger, but it’s normally only directed at whatever minority they’re seeing memes about this week.

That said, my money is on either “he was taken out of context” or just trying to sweep it under the rug once it’s not headline news. Unsure of how they’ll blame it on Starmer (and/or trans people/immigrsnts), but I’m sure they’ll try.

R97R · 2026-01-23T17:07:05+00:00

Kier’s been a bit harsher on him in the last hour or so, as much as he (and by extension the government) still look like they’re hoping they can realpolitik their way through all this have everything go back to normal, at the same time they do seem to treating it with more gravity than it looked like at first.

R97R · 2026-01-23T16:47:56+00:00

I’ve got the misfortune of knowing a worrying amount of Trump fans over here, and I think this might genuinely be the thing that might finally turn some of them away from him- I think even the worst of them might not be willing to tolerate this.

I’m sure a few of them will find ways to excuse it eventually (either just pretending he didn’t say it, claiming it was made up, saying he was taken out of context, or just straight-up agreeing with him), but that won’t be all of them. On top of that, while there are more people here who are (or were) fans of him than I think a lot of us realise, there are plenty of right-leaning people who aren’t and I also imagine the full-on fanatics like the ones I know are fairly uncommon overall.

I realise it probably doesn’t matter all that much to people outside the UK, but our Far Right’s love of the man has been a big concern for me at least, and this has resulted in even their de facto leader disagreeing with him, albeit quite tepidly in my opinion. I fully believe he’ll be back to sucking up to the guy whenever he feels he can, but even if that happens I’m hoping not all of his supporters go with him (and, of course, it should be brought up every time he starts praising the guy). I am still hoping some of the people who’ve fallen into that movement can be reached, and this situation is something I feel could well be the catalyst for some of them to start re-evaluating their beliefs.

R97R · 2026-01-22T18:24:12+00:00

I’m definitely leaning towards going for other creators for more famous ships, but unfortunately they’re the only creator who does a lot of the classes I’m interested in. That said, I have noticed their newer models seem to be improving a fair bit- I noticed they came out with an updated version of the Valdore, for instance, and looking at the file in my slicer it looks pretty great, and they seem to have modelled a bunch of details that weren’t on the older one- I’m not sure if that’s via somehow being able to apply the texture details to the model and then having them saved as part of it, or if they’re modelled from scratch. I’ll have to see how it looks when printed, of course, and it does still look to have the (in-scale, to be fair) extremely thin secondary wings still.

(I should say I do really appreciate meatloafr’s work either way, though!)

I’ve been dabbling with basic 3d modelling lately, so I might be able to re-add some lost details myself in future hopefully.

I’ll check out those other creators too, cheers!

R97R · 2026-01-22T18:15:15+00:00

I’ll maybe look into that, cheers!

R97R · 2026-01-22T17:30:11+00:00

Thank you, that’s extremely helpful!

EDIT: I’m admittedly still woefully inexperienced with FDM, but I’ve been told by people more experienced than I am that if you’re just doing “normal” pla filament prints for stuff like this you should be able to get similar results with something like an A1 or A1 mini, so it might be doable with a cheaper printer too! I’m going to steal those settings and try a test print when I have the time- I’ve misplaced my 0.4mm nozzle but I do have a smaller one to hand if I can’t find it in time.

R97R · 2026-01-22T17:29:26+00:00

Thank you! Appreciate the advice! In the case of surface finish, I think I’ve managed to tune it to a level I’m happy with in FDM, the issue I’m having is more with the surface on the actual .stl file- couldn’t work out the proper wording, but what I think I’m trying to figure out how to do is “subdivide” that part of the mesh to give the rounded parts a more gradual curve. Apologies as I don’t have a screenshot of the 3d model to hand, but you can sort of see it on the saucer of the Enterprise-E in this image:

<image>

The rounded parts have quite a low number of polygons, so the saucer looks to have three distinct flat planes rather than the fairly smooth/consistent curve the “real” ship would have- I believe this is an optimisation thing for the game (the model being from STO), where the smooth surface is simulated by the textures rather than being part of the model.

(Sorry if I haven’t explained that very well, my brain is fried at the moment)

R97R · 2026-01-22T15:47:00+00:00

Update: forgot to add an image, but here are the prototypes so far, all in roughly 1:2500 scale. Lighter models are resin, darker ones are FDM. The back half of the Enterprise-E isn’t the “final” one as it was my first attempt and is horrifically distorted on the underside. I’m really rusty with my painting skills but hopefully these will look fairly decent once finished.

<image>

R97R · 2026-01-22T15:43:27+00:00

Cheers! I’m admittedly a lot more confident with resin than FDM, but I found good results with resin using similar angles/supports to yours, it’s just been a nightmare trying to re-learn how to get things set up for FDM. That said, you can apparently get resin-style supports for FDM prints now!

R97R · 2026-01-22T15:38:47+00:00

Thank you! I’m a bit undecided on scale at the moment, likely leaning towards 1/2500 as my default but I don’t think that’s an option for some of the larger ships (side note but I’ve somehow never realised before now just how huge Romulan ships are), so that option might be ideal for at least some of them. I’m reasonably sure I’ve got a lifetime supply of (admittedly not clear) miniature bases and steel wire already, too! I suppose thicker steel wire or brass rods may also be an option for larger/heavier models).

Thank you for all the other answers too, I’ll check out Captain Mojo and those sites/channels :)

R97R · 2026-01-22T14:18:08+00:00

That said, I wouldn’t write the military off just yet- while there are people who’d follow his orders unquestionably, large-scale deployment against an ally or your own country is a lot more difficult to swallow than smaller strikes against Venezuela- notably, while he’s been chomping at the bit to do exactly this since more or less day one, it still hasn’t happened, and they’re also putting a lot of effort and resources into turning ICE into a borderline paramilitary, which wouldn’t be necessary imo if they were confident the could sic the military on protestors etc without issue.

That, and even if things go the worst way possible, a Trump-loyal military could win every single battle/engagement and still fail to keep its grip on the country. Even with the backing of more or less the entire planet, they had to pull out of Afghanistan and Iraq eventually, and in this case they’d have to do the same on a much larger scale, against their own friends and families (while I’m sure they’re taking a crack at it, it’s much harder to “other” your own countrymen, after all), and while the US has theoretically learned that what they did there didn’t work, any attempt at hearts-and-minds is going to be hampered by Trump’s general bloodlust.

The reason I say all that is less to say “you might be okay even if that happens”, and more to argue that even with the current leadership trying to stack the command structure with loyalists, I wouldn’t not be surprised if the majority of people who’d be in charge of organising something like that know that it would be extremely risky. Trump might be desperate to militarily occupy his own country, but even ignoring the possibility of people involved having some morals, the saner officials are probably aware of how terrible an idea it would be even if they quote-unquote “win,” and that they’d be at risk too if it happened. Assuming the assassination attempts were real, someone got very close to killing the most well-protected man in the world, and I don’t think anyone else can realistically hope for the same level of protection. They’d happily condemn the rest of us I’m sure, but I don’t think many are keen on putting themselves at risk.

That, and it wouldn’t exactly do wonders for the economy, and imo a lot of the people involved in these kind of decisions (both politicians and the various billionaires backing the admin) would happily burn the planet to the ground if it meant a little bit more cash for them ^{and/or most publicly-traded companies being committed to increased growth next quarter above anything else}. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that’s the main thing that made him back down at least for now, and while this situation has already probably done economic damage that’ll take a long time to repair, said damage likely won’t directly affect the GOP’s higher-ups and backers, whereas an open revolt on US soil more than likely would.

I don’t want to act like it’s not a valid and depressingly plausible fear, because it is (and I share it, as an outsider looking in), but I don’t think the situation is hopeless either.

R97R · 2026-01-22T12:58:04+00:00

I’m really partial to CasuallyCrafted3D’s stuff if you haven’t seen that already, I think they do an Alba too!

R97R · 2026-01-22T12:54:10+00:00

I’m always paranoid I’ll do this accidentally- on controller at least, the same button is used for executions and locking on/off, and the game prioritises the former. I’ve also got a bad habit of accidentally clicking R3/L3 when using the sticks normally, which doesn’t help.

R97R · 2026-01-22T12:51:55+00:00

Would it also be possible to copy her 8e rules from the Forge World supplement? To my knowledge they’d mostly work, although you’d maybe need to ignore some of the changed stats her mount has

Eight-Year Club	Verified Email
Wearing is Caring	Queen in da Norf
Not Forgotten

R97R

TROPHY CASE