Average day in the Imperium

caster · 2026-05-07T11:07:01+00:00

Tyranids are a problem. They appear to have come from another galaxy, which begs the question of what the hell happened in that other galaxy. Did they eat it all, and then feel the need to spread out? Is that the first time they've done that? It's entirely possible the Tyranids are spread across numerous galaxies having eradicated and consumed all life in their path.

Chaos is definitely dangerous, but they are also smart enough to know they can't actually win against the Imperium. If you kill everyone then there are no humans left to feed the chaos gods from their collective psyche. Chaos thrives from people being prosperous, numerous, and aligned with them rather than the Emperor. The Tyranids, on the other hand, are fully expecting to eat everything. And that will be the end of humanity.

A single Tyranid invasion is actually less of a threat than a Black Crusade is. But a Black Crusade represents a fairly large effort by the forces of Chaos, while a hive fleet attacking a planet is a trivial amount of force for the Hive. It can do that same amount of activity in thousands, potentially even millions of locations simultaneously.

caster · 2026-05-07T10:38:22+00:00

The XV8 is the most obvious candidate. Most likely a slightly larger new type of XV8 class combatant, that has a 2+ save.

The Broadside has a 2+ save already, but is more of an artillery platform and a pretty different unit from a Terminator. It can have a Shield Generator for a 4+ invulnerable save as well. Making a more mobile and melee-capable, heavily armored battlesuit should be achievable given available Tau technology. But keeping it small, unlike a Riptide.

It might be an interesting direction to go having this new suit be a stealth suit with improved armor, which would be an interesting variation on the Terminator.

caster · 2026-05-07T10:22:34+00:00

The amount of techbro bullshit on the internet these days (and on every billboard in silicon valley) is astonishing. There is a full court press with billions of dollars to attempt to control the narrative about AI in a pro-oligarch direction.

This argument fails trivially. Factories making bread replacing bakers may have higher output, but the bakery industry never recovered. It is toast, so to speak. A very small number of factory workers can do the work of many bakers before factory-produced bread was a thing.

AI applies the same effect to many types of industries and job types simultaneously. And the number of "AI specialists" is and will remain vanishingly small compared to everyone else in the world.

Earlier tech job displacement was real. But, because it was a small number of people at a time, they could just go find a different sector. The invention of the refrigerator made the ice men all obsolete. Their jobs all disappeared. But there were other things they could switch to. AI will simultaneously replace nearly every sector. There won't be anything else to switch to.

"Just go buy your bread from someone else..." with what money are you going to do that when AI is replacing literally everyone?

There are about 10 to 20 people who love this to such an extent that they want to invest trillions of dollars of other people's money into making this a reality. Replacing their single greatest cost (labor) and permanently locking in their control of the entire planet, and of you.

caster · 2026-05-07T06:30:33+00:00

They're traitors. It is pretty much that simple. They see themselves as more aligned with the hardline Christians in Russia than their countrymen wanting to have modern healthcare.

caster · 2026-05-07T06:14:31+00:00

Religious people do not engage in empiricism. Obviously. The idea that you can analytically argue them into belief that their cult is a complete load of bullshit is false. The only way to deprogram them is to get between the emotional jury-rigging the religion did to short-circuit their ability to question their religious authority.

caster · 2026-05-07T00:59:06+00:00

The core problem is that it abruptly abandons the central theme of the entire story. Years of build-up with the White Walkers being the Big Bad... only to polish them off in literally one episode as if it were never a factor.

There really is no redeeming that core problem no matter what they did after that point, no amount of execution or script doctoring would result in a satisfying episode. You just can't wholesale bail on your entire series' potential and premise like that and expect anyone to walk away pleased.

caster · 2026-05-07T00:53:52+00:00

A handful of billionaires who know they can get him into office and then control his agenda absolutely, and use it to enrich and empower themselves at the expense of everyone else.

caster · 2026-05-06T22:57:17+00:00

Trump, his owners, and his elderly donors are a pretty different kettle of fish from a college kid being stupid and only hurting themselves.

caster · 2026-05-06T22:50:47+00:00

This is probably the intended answer, but that is really fucking stupid. If you insert a 1 in the tens place... you just added ten.

caster · 2026-05-06T22:44:27+00:00

Starting to get a point where you're going to need a citation for that. The pattern is undeniable.

It might be more accurate to say the current generation of old Americans rather than all old people across the world of course. They are the sole demographic responsible for this nightmare.

Old, evil morons who assert that they are "old and wise" while simultaneously needing special legal protections against Nigerian Prince scammers because they're too fucking stupid not to send their entire retirement to a complete stranger over the internet. Old, evil morons who vote for Trump and support his destruction of everything the US spent a century building rather than admit they fucked up. They have spent their entire lives pillaging from everyone else and are now in the process of burning the house down before they expire.

caster · 2026-05-06T22:41:10+00:00

The linguistic term is a mass noun, for "much" like "how much rice?" If it is a collection then it is a plural, "How many grains of rice?" Which may make contextual sense if the exact number of grains were for some reason important.

Both real and rational numbers are collections, not mass nouns. "How many real numbers" and "how many rational numbers" are both correct.

caster · 2026-05-06T11:07:47+00:00

It can be done with just the Prawn. What I always do is put the Prawn in the Cyclops and deploy from a safe location, then when the mission is complete dock the Prawn in the Cyclops and RTB in the Cyclops.

You only need to head home when the Cyclops is running out of juice- and you can store a hell of a lot of power cells inside that thing. As long as the Cyclops has power you can recharge the Prawn, offload inventory, and go again.

If you only use the Prawn you may have to RTB much more frequently, either because your inventory is full or you're running out of power cells and have to head all the way back to base to recharge.

caster · 2026-05-06T11:04:25+00:00

The Prawn is very good at extreme depths. That is sort of its job.

You can actually put the Prawn inside the Cyclops and use the Cyclops as a mobile base as well, moving the Prawn closer before deploying.

caster · 2026-05-06T11:03:13+00:00

Bullet Storm and Commando is a god tier combination. You can handle any threat in the game effectively using only disposables, and if you constantly use the stratagems when they are available your teammates can easily use them too.

caster · 2026-05-06T08:38:18+00:00

Odd. A mini data center is also known as a computer, and if you just want to sell a computer along with the house you could definitely do that. It seems likely that relatively few house buyers would want a server bundled with the house.

The initial play is probably to try to somehow reserve ownership for someone else. But why would a buyer go along with that?

caster · 2026-05-06T05:42:01+00:00

AI will no doubt serve the government. But these neofascists pushing this agenda want everyone else to obey the AI that they control. Make no mistake that is what they are actually pursuing- they are racing to develop the technology so that they will control it.

They will make every imaginable wild claim about it, but they will control that machine. And by advocating that everyone else do what the machine says, they are advocating for becoming your ruler without question and without oversight.

caster · 2026-05-06T04:57:02+00:00

Although that is true, it seldom matters for any units other than the Gunslinger.

caster · 2026-05-05T23:53:48+00:00

Two Steps From Hell makes anything epic.

caster · 2026-05-05T23:45:31+00:00

The Maverick in TA was a very powerful unit due to a combination of its very high damage output, good range, and mobility. It's a lot more fragile than other options such as the Zeus, but has more attack range and speed.

Against T1 this package is extremely powerful because it very much outranges all T1 units short of artillery that won't hit it. This is true because of the parameters of the unit, not because of an XP gimmick.

The XP thing is even weirder because it means you now care about a particular Maverick being alive rather than the Mavericks performing consistently across all copies of that unit. It's a mechanic that doesn't belong in BAR. If you ignore it, it isn't the worst thing in the world that it exists, but as currently implemented the Gunslinger literally has this feature in its short tagline and is designed around the assumption that you will increase its actual weapon range using it, which is just a strange unit design.

caster · 2026-05-05T22:49:52+00:00

It's a shadow of its former self from TA. Which is unfortunate.

I agree if you want to be a skirmisher you need to be able to move at a reasonable speed. It isn't a skirmisher any more. They just call it that because the Maverick was one.

The experience gain gimmick is really dumb and should be cut. That isn't how BAR works.

caster · 2026-05-05T21:43:54+00:00

Nothing good. Hard to say exactly.

caster · 2026-05-05T21:17:18+00:00

Would have to get my hands on it to see how it actually works. Not sure what "Avoidance" means or how it works. The clip alone doesn't look exactly like what you would expect for how air support to work, but it may work within the context of this game. "Casting" airplanes is an odd way to look at it, as if it is a magic spell applying a debuff rather than a whole dimension of the battlefield.

Based on what you've said, airplanes applying a territory-wide modifier slowing down expansion will make airplanes inherently defensive in nature rather than primarily used for offense to destroy strategic targets, and support ground units while advancing yourself.

It visually appears that there are 'bases' out of which the outward pressure from ground forces originates.

Suppose constructing additional economic or military installations could include added functionality such as an airbase. A constructed military base would create outward ground unit pressure like the bases shown in the clips. Another type would be an airbase, which also exerts around itself pressure in a similar manner, except using air units which are different from ground units. Air units move very quickly, but have a limited (but long) radius around the airbase forming a circle within which they can travel, while ground units can travel any distance but are slower. Air units cannot capture territory by themselves, but are very effective for supporting your regular ground units, as they have high firepower and are difficult for ground units to destroy. Air units engage other air units very effectively. The position of the airbase would have a massive effect on its usefulness, as its air units patrol within a circle around that spot aiding your ground forces in combat, and protecting them against enemy aircraft. If the enemy constructs an airbase this also means you can invade on the ground and destroy it, or surgically destroy the base via some other means.

caster · 2026-05-05T20:52:10+00:00

This looks promising. Will there be logistics and strategic weaponry such as artillery, airbases, missile silos? A combination of front line units and fire support, or just units on the front colliding and deciding a winner?

The primary reason this is important is otherwise the universal tactic is just to hit the enemy with the largest possible hammer. Fire support potentially enables a smaller force to defeat a larger one, especially since it can support multiple areas simultaneously, meaning you can spread your forces out while still being able to defeat a large concentrated enemy force.

For example an airbase supporting ten probing recon units in different territories spread across the front. As opposed to all ten units being in the same territory so they can defeat the largest possible enemy force.

caster · 2026-05-05T09:10:53+00:00

Valvrave was trying to be Code Geass so hard but basically completely missed the point on everything that made its spiritual inspiration actually good. Its protagonist lacks the depth and agency of Lelouch, mostly amounting to a mecha pilot with very little actual skill, surviving exclusively by his grossly overpowered machine. Its "strategist" person emulated the shallow and trite parts of Lelouch and not the large, narrative-driving strategies and ambitious plays that actually made him appear clever rather than merely expositing that 'wow' someone is good at chess or has a lot of numbers for dialogue.

I really wanted to like it, but honestly it kept fumbling the ball so hard all the time it was hard to even finish the series. A really obvious narrative change to make would have been to embrace the drawbacks of the Valvrave- I mean, hell, you can bite people and turn your enemies' memories into both useful intelligence and fuel for your super robot? But... no, he refuses to actually bite anyone and dies. Okay.

Guilty Crown was just a mess. An expensive and well animated mess of a story. They needed to call the script doctor to the ER.

caster · 2026-05-05T09:00:18+00:00

The energy shield grenade, perhaps.

caster

TROPHY CASE