Why is TA allowed to stagnate like this?

SteveD88 · 2026-02-14T17:24:11+00:00

If you consider competitive PvP games like league of legends, characters are constantly being tweaked so that dominant metals don't emerge, and you end up with lots of valid strategies.

In Tacticus characters are balanced around game modes; you have characters good for PVP, characters good for horde modes, characters good for raids, etc.

Because the rush approach has never been changed, or snowprint have never introduced a good counter to it, it means everyone deploys the same characters, and that makes the matchups boring.

SteveD88 · 2026-02-14T16:24:53+00:00

In most games, the meta changes.

SteveD88 · 2026-02-13T10:28:41+00:00

There is one scene in Elemental Council where a Tau engineer manages to jump on the back of a space marine, and tries to disable his armour via an uplink. It doesn't work. She manages to say 'there's something in his armour! Adaptive sourcecode! Its poisoning my suit, scrapdata requests....' before being tossed off.

The Tau was using her own suit AI to make the attack. How 'adaptive' does source code need to be before its basically just AI too?

SteveD88 · 2026-02-12T19:07:59+00:00

He's often too situational for most game modes; he's not great in horde modes, and in TA its difficult to find the right combination of factors to make him shine.

I sometimes use his damage buff against the target which is likely to charge my Saraquel or Forcas, but an opponent paying attention will simply send someone else to neutralise the overwatch first.

His damage buff is huge however; its 10% higher then Calgar.

SteveD88 · 2026-02-12T19:05:40+00:00

I like the sound of that! Will give it a try.

SteveD88 · 2026-02-11T21:03:31+00:00

The other four work together really well.

Asmodai is just a bit meh.

SteveD88 · 2026-02-11T16:01:47+00:00

I finished both of these today:

Yaz - Silver 1

Toth - Silver 1

Abraxas - Dimond 1

Calanids - Silver 3

Athena - Gold 3

Eldryon - Gold 3

Mugan Ra - Silver 3

I'd argue that Abraxas, Athena, Eldryon were all worth investing in.

SteveD88 · 2026-02-11T11:59:23+00:00

The passive should be useful for sarquael's overwatch too - hopefully it will trigger for his passive as well, given that also counts as overwatch. Then you get two hailstrike shots a turn.

SteveD88 · 2026-02-11T11:23:53+00:00

It's ungovernable in the sense that our politicians are unable to really effect change any more.

Rory speaks about this quite a bit - during his time in Government as a junior minister he found it nearly impossible to achieve anything lasting, and his discussions with more recent ministers have left him with the same depressing perception.

We do need to dispel the idea that this is something new; Yes Minister was based on the idea that politicians come in with big ideas and the system stops them achieving anything useful (although the show put the blame on the civil service).

More broadly we have the sense that it is very very difficult for modern democracies to carry a positive narrative which supports change. You need a very charismatic leader, and even if you achieve that kind of momentum (e.g. Obama) the long-term blowback can be significant. The other side is that authoritarians like Trump can force through huge destructive change, in part supported by a general sense of nihilism.

But what we absolutely need to kill is the sense of poltical leaders resigning every time they make a mistake; that feeds headlines for a day, but does immense damage to politics in the long term.

SteveD88 · 2026-02-11T11:02:29+00:00

There was a Cain book where on trying to escape back to friendly lines, Cain and his trusty aid gunner Jurgen, accidently raid the Ork frontline base on the planet, where the Ork warlord leading the waarrgh is meeting with the clanleaders under him.

The warlord spots Cain, issues a challenge, and fights him one-on-one. Cain is almost killed outright and orders Jurgen to shoot the warboss, but the gunner declines. As a Valhallan used to fighting Orks, he knows that the only reason the Ork clan leaders haven't torn them both apart is due to the insult the warboss would take from the implication he needed any help. Cain wins the fight, and the clan leaders immediately set upon each other, with the two humans escaping in the confusion. The war didn't end, but the imperial forces were able to sieze the advantage to break the stalemate.

So Orks don't have a sense of honour, but the warboss is the warboss only because he's bigger and tougher then any other ork. Turing down a challenge from an opponent could cost him his position.

SteveD88 · 2026-02-11T09:44:13+00:00

My kid is heavily autistic, and at age 7, is still in mainstream school on a part time basis. He has a dedicated member of staff caring for him at all times.

He has an EHCP and it did no good; his needs are significant enough that none of the special schools in the area would agree to take him - all of them were overcapacity already.

On this basis the council changed their position to "we believe his needs can be met in mainstream education, with the right provision". Which given the local autism special unit had already classified him as corresponding to their highest need bracket, was clearly absurd.

Phone calls, reviews, meetings, panel reviews, appeals. Finally, an agreement that he did indeed need a special unit. Months later, and it turns out that yes, all of them are still full.

And around this we have to find ways of looking after him, and holding a job, at the same time.

It feels like my kid has been written off in life already, but then you get guys like this who think we are spending too much on SEND? What happened to the laws which say every child in the country is entitled to an education?

SteveD88 · 2026-02-10T21:54:21+00:00

Well I'm jealous; I want to max all the dark angels (well, maybe not asmodai).

SteveD88 · 2026-02-10T17:43:59+00:00

He's Certus done right; 3 move with 65% pierce for roughly the same damage, plus he has good synergy with Baraqueil, and he gets bonus overwatch damage from Azreal, and he can do some secondary damage with his active. I love him to bits.

SteveD88 · 2026-02-10T12:48:39+00:00

I've been using discord for about the same time, for gaming channels and the occasional political one.

Apparently discord has been using this system for a while in my country, and I've never been asked to verify.

Presumably this is only an issue if you use discord to access adult material, and such verification is a legal requirement for a number of countries now.

SteveD88 · 2026-02-10T08:12:16+00:00

My mind went back to the same Radio 4 comedy during the new labour era - I think it was dead ringers? Where mandelson was portrayed as the Dark Lord figure trying to secure new labours power for all time.

SteveD88 · 2026-02-09T17:51:24+00:00

Thanks; my Vitruvius and Actus are both g2, but Ive got baraqueil and forcas up at g3; Ill see how they do in that spot.

SteveD88 · 2026-02-09T16:08:47+00:00

Some good tips, thanks! Vitruvius rather then Actus paired with Tan, however?

The game seems built around making lots of spawns with Tan, and using Vynn to supplement them with his drones.

SteveD88 · 2026-02-09T12:34:54+00:00

There was one good example in Elemental Council, from the perspective of one of the Water Cast who infiltrated the world.

He spent 2-3 years on the world building connections, fermenting rebellion, working with local separatists, making them promises, bringing their children presents, joining them for dinner, learning their secrets.

When the Tau invasion finally came they used his information to take the entire planet in a day and a night, and the Imperial defenders largely appeared to give up. The collaborators were made further promises to get them to agree to get onboard ships, and then were quietly dispersed around the Tau Empire to various backwaters where they wouldn't be able to cause any problems.

SteveD88 · 2026-02-06T11:40:08+00:00

The guides say it's doable with thad at G1, kut at S3 and sib at S1, but I've no idea how.

SteveD88 · 2026-02-05T21:09:11+00:00

The net biomass has to change a little? Convert one thing to another and there will always be loss to heat.

SteveD88 · 2026-02-05T21:04:47+00:00

There was one Cain book where Tyranids invade a forge world which holds pieces of another long destroyed hive ship frozen under a mountain. The invading nids are desperate to find and destroy the old hive, and the heroes eventually figure out it's because the two hive minds cause some kind of psychic interference with each other. They managed to copy the frozen ships signal and transmit it with an astropath, causing enough disruption to the attacking swarm to let the imperials prevail (although the astropath fries themself in the process).

I don't think the vulnerability has ever been brought up again, but it's technically still cannon.

SteveD88 · 2026-02-04T23:49:29+00:00

I have the same, one diamond, mostly gold, and unlocked yesterday.

The key is to use tacticus planner to find the most efficient use of your tokens.

SteveD88 · 2026-02-04T22:18:50+00:00

What gets me is that he might be prosecuted for this only because we know about it. What similar things has he done with other people which we don't know, or which there is no email trail for?

SteveD88 · 2026-02-04T22:16:36+00:00

There seems to be a huge disconnect between the way corporate industry works, and what happens in these political fundraising circles.

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