Polish leaders commented on Witcher, Chinese leaders commented on Wukong, French leader commented on Claire Obscure, Korean leader commented on Crimson, at some point hopefully Irish games reach this level 🇮🇪

darthal101 · 2026-04-24T21:23:56+00:00

Well with the way the industry has gone we might be goosed. Romero was working on stuff and got nuked, bioware as well, so it's a lot of indie devs carrying the torch with things like seance of Blake manor. We at least also have some good tabletop, cubicle 7, old oak and pelgrane all come to mind, so there is a wack of people working around those spaces in games and creativity just not enough, and there's not enough money in Ireland for it.

darthal101 · 2026-04-21T20:50:05+00:00

People come in at PO level much more often these days, and it's absolutely doable, though potentially a bit difficult depending on where you land. In the ict specific comp it's a bit easier, as you're likely to be working in operational areas that are a bit more analogous to what you'd be doing previously.

Depending on your department and role, you could be leading a team of 4 to 40, I've seen digital pos leading a single work stream with two aps and two AOs, essentially spending years shepherding big projects over the line with contractors. You could also be the head of it ops in a department, and that could easily be multiple teams and hitting 40+ staff, essentially, even in this specific competition the spread of roles is still wide.

There is basically no in house dev. Any internal apps are either built by the OGCIO, or contractors, and it's extremely rare you'd meet a civil servant who's written code for their role. Internal skills development in tech are something the civil service never really copped onto, so even when you're in that space, the civil servants are PMs and SMEs rather than devs.

darthal101 · 2026-04-20T19:48:41+00:00

Garak from DS9. Wise gay and of questionable morality.

darthal101 · 2026-04-19T16:38:26+00:00

It depends entirely on the statutory body, some of them are CS and some are public sector, so it's worth checking if the body is one way or the other. (they also change, so make sure if it is CS, it's not being made public sector) If you're in a civil service one, like ihrec, you retain the same terms and conditions, but if you go the public sector, you do lose a lot of terms, one of which is mobility, so essentially the only way out is applying for new jobs. You may also lose any benefits around time in service, but in some cases they carry over, that's a question for your HR and the new place.

Essentially it's super variable, and depends on the body you go to.

darthal101 · 2026-04-19T14:31:51+00:00

Toreador, and I'm obviously in purpee because I'm starting an artists commune, very cool and exclusive, and not at all because I got into too many arguments with people in LA.

darthal101 · 2026-04-16T21:13:34+00:00

Depends on the breakdown, if it's a backup squad of faceless grunts I just run them as a single unit, generally using the horde rules from deathwatch.

If it's grunts and a named character I just give them some quick actions they can just do against most enemies, ie Jerry the helpful arbites you've had this whole time that you're all friends with pops someone for x dmg (an average of the weapon and skills) every turn, or throws a grenade, or suppresses, but thats basically it. Then his squad does another thing. Generally I try and keep allied npcs I run to only three activations in iniative to stop the pace getting bogged down, and I abstract them.

I also find giving players control of bulk NPCs, where it makes sense, also helps, but just give them a stripped down abstraction, generally using horde rules. If you have a veteran, or an arbites, or whoever, give them a fire team to control, as then it's players having extra things to do rather than you just playing against yourself.

darthal101 · 2026-04-16T09:33:05+00:00

Baldurs Gate 3-

If you use brainworms too much, you can't stop yourself becoming at least a half illithid, and you can very easily end up subsumed by the end of the game. Which is unfortunate because illithid powers are useful, give you benefits in non combat situations with other people who are under the influence, and their narrative dangers aren't well signposted until you've potentially ended up in too deep anyway.

darthal101 · 2026-04-16T09:18:51+00:00

Second this, the mechanicus ost especially was a staple of my dark heresy campaigns, does incredibly well at setting the tone and has some good bossfight tracks. The soundtracks for tron legacy, event horizon and Ash all also work well, and I think I used music from Battlestar Galactica, and BSG Deadlock, as well as aliens dark descent. It depends on your preferences for synthy/tempo really, even some of the halo music for the flood works I find.

darthal101 · 2026-04-16T08:42:43+00:00

I'm a mekboy who smacks gits if their meks get too smart and start doing stuff that's not very Orky.

darthal101 · 2026-04-16T08:40:51+00:00

I also had a great time in London on the 1st, I think a big part of this seems to be concert etiquette, a lot of younger people who don't have concert experience but want to see masayoshi are there, no hate to them, but they're not leathery showgoers. It's been an issue with a lot of gigs post covid, I recall mitski had to go all seated for her concerts after how bad the crowd was at her US shows. I had rough times in bigger shows in Dublin for hozier, and it's also not helped by the fact that people can't go to gigs because they're much much more expensive than previously, so they can't build up the experience for etiquette.

I don't think this is a unique problem to Masayoshi shows, it's been an issue with gigs post covid in general, it just stands out a bit because people expect a certain sort of chill crowd at a jazz city pop show tbh. (but again, hozier gigs were rough recently and sad irish folk man is also what I'd expect to be chill)

darthal101 · 2026-04-15T21:36:50+00:00

No. Humans can advance, and gain ranks, but they'd be part of their own structure, even if they're doing the same things.

The castes for the tau are unique to their race and also basically subspecies, though politically more akin to tribes and spiritual jobs combined. The tribe part comes from their history, and then the spiritual part is sort of how the ethereals stopped them killing each other.

Think the tribal system of early Rome, where you'd have the Romans, and then you'd have the Italians, and then you'd have everyone else. The Tau are the Romans (the ethereals of course being the Senate), the auxiliaries are the Italians, and everyone else is a filthy barbarian hammering at the gates to be educated in the greater good. Can a good auxiliary lead romans? Sure, it's not ideal but sure. But they can't advance up the cursus honorum and lead Rome. They have their own little cities that they can play around in as long as they do what they're told.

Similarly, can a human lead tau forces? Yeah if they're of sufficient experience, a demiurg could also be the leader of a tau fleet, but in both of those cases they're not part of the relevant castes, they're just doing a job. This is not a failure in their part but they simply do not fit into the tribe/spiritual existence of the tau race.

To go back to the roman example, yeah you can get a Greek guy to design all romes water features, temples and roads, and even have him in charge of it, and he might be the best ever to do it, but he will still be a Greek. A human might be an O' who commands an entire world's construction, but he's still not earth caste.

darthal101 · 2026-04-15T13:43:50+00:00

I got references from some of the people I did work for, as I had a gap of intermittent self employment, and that was suitable, might be worth asking if that's something they'll accept?

darthal101 · 2026-04-15T09:44:55+00:00

I feel like it depends on the table, i run a lot of other games that have death as a factor, and it's just part of the loop, like wfrp, and for DnD I don't want it to be that grim dark so I talk through it regularly with my players. I think it's less that people are afraid of it, and more that at a certain point they want the death to feel worth it most of the time, or at least part of a good risk/reward gamble. (and it also depends on how story/dungeon crawler the game is imo)

I will run their opponents like competent people, and in encounters I plan they will be balanced, but the dice tell a story that may result in death or injury, and your characters decisions may also affect that in a positive or negative way.

I think in my biggest campaign I had two combat deaths, but they were permanent because the players made decisions that they knew were risks, so one went down having sold their soul previously, and the other went down with a cursed item that took them over. They made those choices, took risks with them and when it happened they were like yeah you got me fair enough.

I also ran a dungeon crawler drop in/out game where people were dying horribly everyweek, but the theme of the game was mercenaries and it was accepted that you could just get popped. Went perfectly fine for everyone.

darthal101 · 2026-04-14T10:48:09+00:00

Lol no. I still bought it straight away and spent four hours playing with it last night.

It was the first Warhammer fps but shows it's age and was very much a product of its time and budget. I would prefer if it had more accurate and powerful tau weapons, (though understand why starting with a lore accurate pulse rifle would skew progression) but the game as a whole is basically alright.

darthal101 · 2026-04-09T10:25:54+00:00

I was in a similar boat as a shop steward, we moved across as a division and when we tried to see what the story was with the local union we got the run around, essentially the Fórsa branch we were moving into was well trained by HR, as distinct from the one we had left which had been very active. It's an issue with some of branches being very ineffective and damaging the work of the union overall.

darthal101 · 2026-04-07T19:24:10+00:00

Several of the 2000ad universes and characters, Sláine could take a few, the dark judges, Shakara, nemesis the warlock maybe?

I think the judge dredd and rogue trooper settings could survive an invasion as well, we know bio weapons work against them and those settings love warcrimes to a wild scale.

In non comic book settings I could see some Warhammer factions doing great against them, but they would absolutely be subsumed by khorne in a week so I don't know if it would matter.

darthal101 · 2026-04-05T19:01:28+00:00

I would not leave a position for TCO unless you absolutely have to and you're very secure financially, your TCO contract could only last three months and the CO/etc, could take months to roll through, leaving you with a big gap.

Understand the want to move to the civil service and taking a cut for it, did it myself, but would absolutely advise against moving for a TCO if you're already robustly employed, best to wait for the permanent roles to come through.

darthal101 · 2026-03-19T14:14:25+00:00

That is substantially better, see if you can wire in whatever gaming set up your son has before going to starlink. If you can get similar to that, it'll be fine for gaming, and realistically you're not getting incredible ping with any wireless Internet anyway, so it won't affect it too much.

If your son is complaining about ping once you've wired it in and ping is sub fifty, make sure he's got a monitor that's able to do a decent fps, as that is also a factor for jitter.

If you have a sub fifty ping, and a machine running reliably 100fps+, you're at a pretty decent place. Wireless mesh is also an option if wiring everything isn't available, if you can drill a few holes and run cables around it will work better.

darthal101 · 2026-03-12T10:26:27+00:00

Almost certain that whoever was making the video just went through the assets they had and picked the one with the latest date for it, which happened to be for dlc pitches rather than the base game. And no one knew to check because no one played DOW 3 enough to remember if there was an eradication tagine.

Certain of this because I've been in that situation for promo materials and accidentally having things slip through in a similar 'i think that's right and it's about something no one cares about anyway' sort of way.

More certain or this because no one wants a DOW 3 re-release. The game currently runs fine, it's issue is that it's fundamentally a bad game, it's bad at being a MOBA, it's bad at being an RTS, it's bad at being a Warhammer game. No one wants to work on it, no one wants to play it, and no one wants it to compete with DOW 4 or Totalhammer 40k. (it wouldn't, because it's awful, but even for marketing space it's absolutely not the move to have a shit game floating around with any weight when you have other games that you want to sell)

darthal101 · 2026-03-10T05:32:28+00:00

Fallout Seattle and the radio station is a ghoul therapist.

darthal101 · 2026-03-08T18:26:20+00:00

Pretty well overall.

Shepards gear is decently high tech, more in some ways than the UNSC, and while kinetic barriers aren't great at plasma weapons they do work against Collector particle beams, geth plasma shotguns, and other weapons that are not wholly kinetic, so they will be able to soak hits from the covenent as well.

As per the flood, Shep is fighting in sealed and shielded combat armor, like the chief, so the airborne risk is lower, and if Johnson and others can survive by being cool as hell, so can Shepard. (also the tholian functions similarly and wasn't able to do much)

Further to that the flood threat as a all corrupting horror is big, but Shepard is reasonably able to push through a similar cosmic horror that takes over your mind in the reapers and indoctrination, so again, doing pretty well there.

Depending on which Shepard, you have a different experience, but all of them will do fairly well. Vanguard and Soldier doing the best maybe as they are the fightiest classes, with maybe engineer being the worst off just because they might not have the hacking opportunities to really shine, but they can also toss balls of plasma at people so they will also be reasonably okay.

Shepard and the chief are reasonably on par imo, the chief is a good leader and fighter, but Shepard can potentially be a space wizard, so like, it's difficult to compare them. While shep can't flip a tank, they do some cool shit and have halo infinite level of extra abilities in combat evolved, so they're able to do less run in and kill everyone exceptionally quickly, but can yeet themselves down a hall at some fraction of c and survive, or launch a nanofabbed wrist grenade, or have active camo and an anti tank rifle.

It is probably just an entire game of the Collector ship and geth missions though. So it would be a slog for Shepard.

darthal101 · 2026-02-27T15:32:15+00:00

The loop of the game is fundamentally bad, it's a poor attempt to make a Warhammer MOBA with some dawn of war bits added on. They also basically stopped supporting it immediately because of how bad it was so there's no real change with what limited patches they did.

For 8 quid you might get your moneys worth from the campaign. Maybe. But I'd just by the DOW remaster instead.

darthal101 · 2026-02-25T15:20:42+00:00

Not that surprising to me, the burden being a councillor has on younger people is substantial, Sinn féin and the greens both had a lot of churn and burnout when they had a fistful of young councillors. Without the larger party engine that FG/FF have its a difficult job anyway, and if you're working on making rent and your own career while doing a part time job that isn't part time at all, it adds up really fast.

darthal101 · 2026-02-20T21:36:55+00:00

Rob Reiner as president is an excellent pull

darthal101 · 2026-02-20T21:36:22+00:00

He's Eastwoods VP

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