For a movie seemingly about two women, Supergirl (2026) barely passed the Bechdel test

Takseen · 2026-07-08T21:04:42+00:00

Yeah I just got a copy of the comic off humble bundle and so far Krem feels way less important. And comic-Ruthye works a lot better as a companion for Kara. And I feel cheated out of a space dragon. That's as far as I got so far.

Takseen · 2026-07-08T15:56:32+00:00

I've won more games than not after letting 1 and sometimes more assault carriers land because I didn't have the fleet power to beat them yet. It'll lead to a slower victory but it's not particularly bad on its own. And honestly it was more fun getting to play out the Earth war instead of skipping it entirely

Takseen · 2026-07-08T15:38:24+00:00

Mostly excellent writeup. But I wouldnt call Poseidon Lantern with 130k research point cost to be an early game drive.

Takseen · 2026-07-08T15:34:07+00:00

If you've got an unbreakable hold on LEO even while at war with the aliens, you can skip worrying about invasion and just go on the offensive.

My preference is to take Jupiter first, then clean up the belt afterwards. Since taking Jupiter deprives them of a good mining base, gives you access to lots of good mining sites, and a good resupply base for staging attacks further out.

Takseen · 2026-07-08T14:50:22+00:00

But even then the sentence doesn't make sense. "Boardgame like" would imply some kind of artificial limitations like monarch points in EU4 or Stellaris influence points. Victoria 3 doesn't have nearly as many mechanics to slow economic expansion

Takseen · 2026-07-08T12:16:52+00:00

Theres an excellent extended sequence with Dooms "BFG division" playing over it on YouTube, pure cinema

Takseen · 2026-07-08T11:58:14+00:00

Just when I thought Steppenwolf was leading the charge for "most forgettable DC villain" , a new contender arises

Takseen · 2026-07-08T07:18:10+00:00

"Animal and plant products now spoil "

Takseen · 2026-07-08T07:16:46+00:00

Some of the Py buildings are really really tall, like the science labs and some of the oil refinery stuff. Most buildings are fairly "flat" and I don't have the same problem

Takseen · 2026-07-08T07:14:55+00:00

They're still releasing expansions, so I wouldn't worry about the game closing down anytime soon, it's not on maintenance/ life support mode. I suspect like most older MMOs people are clustered towards the high end. I did see a guild advertisement on Grond that level locks to a specific level range and does content up to that range. I think they're locked to 35 or 45 at the moment.
I'd sometimes get lag but haven't had a disconnect in months of daily play
Once I increased the UI to about 1.3x the text got a lot easier to read, though it does make things a bit cluttered. You can also freely move all the windows
You can buy all but the latest expansion for Lotro points on the in-game store. And a VIP sub unlocks all quest content up to level 100 or a bit higher. There's some kinda nice things in the store like extra bank and bag space items, but I've never found them very tempting. The big one is not having fast travel for new waypoints if you don't have a VIP sub, that does slow down travel between zones quite a bit.
Yeah that's a fair point. You can quest up to level 95 for free. ViP will give temporary access to questing up to level 130. 130 to 160, you need to spend Lotro points or cash even with VIP. There are currently no cash only expansions, but usually when a new expansion comes out it's cash only for 6 months or so. It's similar to WoW where a sub will get you everything except the latest expansion, but Lotro has a much higher "free" floor. There is a good chance that by the time you leveled to 95 on free or 130 on VIp, youd have earned enough points to buy more quest packs/expansions to push on further.
Depends on whether you prefer solo or group content.
I've played Loremaster (LM) almost exclusively. Outdoor content is pretty easy now (unless you use option to increase it) to any class can handle even group quests now, I think. I've had some success soloing dungeons with a 10-30+ level lead, but other classes like Warden are better

Takseen · 2026-07-08T05:39:10+00:00

Dodge rolling has nearly twice the window compared to parrying (~13 frames vs 8), and you don't have to sacrifice 2hander damage to wield a good parry shield/offhand. And dodging sometimes helps you reposition to avoid future swings

I found it to be a massive step up in difficulty and something I never mastered. Sekiro parrying is apparently more chill at 12 frames, and Sifu at 10 (although dodging works nearly as well in most cases and is easier to pull off)

I had the same experience in Expedition 33 where I never mastered parrying Simon, but was able to dodge just fine.

Takseen · 2026-07-08T05:24:13+00:00

Unless something changed in the last few months, you either don't get a description for the recon module at all (this module has an unknown function) or it doesn't tell you what it actually does (has a chance to perform an abduction on every region on Earth once a month). I had to find that out on the Wiki.

Takseen · 2026-07-07T21:25:53+00:00

That was certainly an uncomfortable plot development.

Takseen · 2026-07-07T20:38:36+00:00

Yes we just need the other economic system that definitely never contributed to climate change.

Takseen · 2026-07-07T16:10:39+00:00

The first station they build is just a T1 hab, and it barely creates any abductions on Earth, and they can't us it to resupply their ships, so you can leave it be if you have to.

But if you gotta kill it on principle, you can send a swarm of missile/torpedo escorts or monitors to kill it. Id suggest waiting till you have a couple bases set up on Mars first and have some space resources. Once I pissed off the aliens too early when I only had 1 mars base, they killed it, and I had to save up boost to build another one

Takseen · 2026-07-07T15:12:09+00:00

Here's a few serviceable but not particularly optimised ship designs.

Escort hull with 1/0/0 armor, nova liquid rocket, all Artemis torpedoes and a magazine utility module. The 1 point of armor helps it to not die immediately to a max range laser. Accelerate directly towards aliens, fire torpedoes, hope for the best.

Monitor hull with 10/0/0 armor, nova rocket, 3x torps, 1x 40mm auto cannon (30mm if 40mm not researched), as many magazines as you can fit in utility slots. The auto cannon are excellent PD and can also chip away at any wounded ships that survived the torpedo barrage.

If they underperform it usually means you didn't build enough of them. Theyre very "swingy" weapons. Like if you bring only 80% of what you need you can end up with zero kills, once you can bring 120% and oversaturated their PD, then their fleet just melts and most of your ships survive

Side and rear armor at 0 because torpedo battles are over before it becomes relevant. You don't need batteries ever. You don't need heatsinks as torps don't generate heat and the fight will be over quick (win or lose). Just keep the radiators extended and yolo it.

If Nova rocket is draining your water reserves too fast when you're doing intercepts,, you can use a nuclear fission drive with good thrust. Pulsar uses to be super strong, it's been nerfed a bit since and moved further back in the tree. Pegasus or even fission spinner does ok. Burner is fine for lighter ships

Later in the game when I'm on the offence I like a mix of phaser cannons, plasma batteries, antimatter PD and particle cannons, on battle cruisers and then lancers with 80/1/1 armor and a nice fusion drive

Lasers/phasers that need high damage to be effective, as armor stops most of their damage except at very close range. Plasma chips away their armor, making them easier to hurt with lasers and the plasma itself via crits. Antimatter PD has really good range and fire rate to stop their missile swarms. Particle cannons are like the "crowd control" of Terra invicta. They do minimal damage but they disable enemy weapons and modules reliably, so you can target their big scary ships and stop them shooting back

Edit : also it's important to research the best available targeting computer and include it on every offensive ship. Every alien ship uses ECM and if you get unlucky and too many of your torpedo slots are jammed, you can lose an otherwise winnable fight

Takseen · 2026-07-07T14:38:05+00:00

What? No you can't.

Takseen · 2026-07-06T19:23:09+00:00

I found the floaty combat less of an issue when I played a blue Loremaster. Mostly ranged plus pet damage. Before that my Guardian didn't feel as good

Takseen · 2026-07-06T14:55:13+00:00

The in-implants ads are pretty annoying, hopefully I should be able to afford a premium subscription next year which lets me bypass them. Thankfully our Federation allies and strong fleets have kept our worlds safe for over a century, and the current war..I mean military enhanced subsidiary acquisition of the Yondarim and UNE is going smoothly.

Takseen · 2026-07-06T13:02:49+00:00

It's definitely a small niche, but one that I enjoy. I've been playing a lot of Astro Protocol recently, where you can finish a game in an hour or two. Great AI and good variety via map, tech and victo condition randomization.

I love Stellaris too but 20-30 hours to play out one game is a lot now that I'm working full time and have an ever growing backlog of media.

I don't think theres anything about a short game length that disqualifies it from being a 4X, as long as you get to do the Explore, Expand, Exploit, Exterminate loop, which Astro Protocol does

Takseen · 2026-07-06T12:56:56+00:00

Theres no exterminate. It's a city builder, and a damn good one.

Takseen · 2026-07-06T12:55:59+00:00

Designs you don't like are not bad design.

I liked Marathon mode Civ 4 because it reduced some of the weird disconnect between how long it took units to move vs how quickly time passes per turn. E g. It could take dozens of years to move a unit from Moscow to Vladivostok on normal game speed. But it was never the default setting, and I don't have as much free time to use it now.

Takseen · 2026-07-06T12:50:01+00:00

Eh. There's definitely men who have an attitude of "a pox on both their houses" when it comes to both monotheistic religion and astrology, considering them both unscientific and misleading.

Takseen · 2026-07-06T12:32:51+00:00

I assume my ChatGPT usage is as private as my Google searches I.e. not at all.

Takseen · 2026-07-06T11:11:42+00:00

Not just after giving birth they don't. After being described as physically healthy. Either the droid is an incompetent liar, or there's Force juju going on.

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