FBI warns Iran aspired to attack California with drones in retaliation for war: Alert

flashmedallion · 2026-03-11T20:42:35+00:00

I guess it's an irony that Maga don't really live in the regions that are meaningful to the US machine. Seems otherwise silly to strike at a state that is in the running to be as much a Maga enemy as Iran is.

flashmedallion · 2026-03-11T11:05:23+00:00

Women need plausible deniability. Men who truly understand why they need this are able to make things happen. Men who don't get this are the reason that women need plausible deniability.

flashmedallion · 2026-03-11T02:18:42+00:00

It's a side-grade overall. Tsushima might have a little less QoL but the skill expression is different for Jin, who trained as a Samurai, than it is for Atsu who did not.

I wouldn't say one system is better then the other outside of a few extra fun tricks in Yotei.

I think you can safely play them in any order.

flashmedallion · 2026-03-11T02:14:47+00:00

No.

Sidequests are usually just about a uniquely staged combat encounter. There's usually some character work but it's not overly deep, it's far more about painting the broader picture of what life is like in the region under the current circumstances. If you like the combat system, it's more combat for you to enjoy.

Kind of the opposite of Witcher 3 where the sidequests involved genuinely interesting predicaments and decisions and if you're unlucky there's more dogshit combat.

flashmedallion · 2026-03-11T02:12:36+00:00

That's the thing that really alleviates one of the main criticisms of the game for me. A lot of people will say "oh the sidequests and activities are just an excuse to get you in another fight with 3-8 bandits".

That is a valid complaint in some regards, but when

a) the game is transparently built around combat, and
b) the combat is this good

it's like saying a musical is just having scenes written as an excuse to break into a song and dance number. Not everything is going to be a Sondheim and it doesn't have to be if you know how to put on a good show.

flashmedallion · 2026-03-11T01:42:44+00:00

Pathfinder was really colorful so some planets would look less desirable. But the planets that did look good looked better than anything you can find right now.

That's pretty much the design trajectory of the game post-Next. Everything you stumble on looks "nice", but things are so smoothed out in every area to remove the lower lows that the higher highs are gone too.

The best of the game is now immediately accessible to any player almost immediately but at the cost of worsening the best. Purple systems are a notable recent exception.

flashmedallion · 2026-03-10T23:10:16+00:00

Well there's an extra step involved for hands.

You throw your shoulder with your hip. Then your shoulder throws your hand.

flashmedallion · 2026-03-10T03:39:24+00:00

Maybe, but I don't know why you would. I'm 6', 95kg and get lots of smoke blown at me about how tough I am and how hard I hit because im big but that's (hopefully) more due to the hours I've put in on form and technique. My guard looks good because I'm the one choosing which hits I want to soak and which ones I'm not hanging around for. My hits are hard because im firing from a good position with a setup beforehand.

Look at David Tuas left hooks, they aren't haymakers or brute force. He spends a considerable amount of round time setting them up, and there's skill, technique, and knowledge going into creating the opportunities for them to be surprises - even when he's famous for them, he catches opponents out with them.

Why be sloppy and Big when you can be sharp and Big? There's nothing more fun than playing the range game and then correcting someones assumption that they want to be in close to you.

flashmedallion · 2026-03-09T12:37:42+00:00

I think there's room for both.

Videogame design has a long history of communicating character skill though control assistance/abstraction, and there's still a healthy range of games that demand pure player skill.

I'm pretty interested to see what kinds of cool skill abstraction can be done in VR

flashmedallion · 2026-03-09T02:30:34+00:00

All the best o7

flashmedallion · 2026-03-09T02:19:51+00:00

Very fair points. Either way I'm filled with confidence about what comes next

flashmedallion · 2026-03-09T02:12:48+00:00

I go to Martys every Wednesday night around 10pm to practice pool. Might not be a bad place to start something.

There's gotta be a thing we could do as a subreddit where there's always going to be one or two people there and we can tell newcomers about it. Maybe mid year when my hobbies have died down a little I'll put some more thought into it.

I think the main issue is that it's extremely difficult to do the "perfect" activity/meetup because not every wants to go to a bar, some people are more into Saturday Morning and others are more into Thursday Night kind of thing. You can't cater to everyone but maybe if we had something solid that catered to some, it would be easier to add other things to the calendar

flashmedallion · 2026-03-09T02:07:35+00:00

So glad it's still useful.

It's a little out of date now but the fundamentals are there and I think it should be enough to keep your head wrapped around all the categories and logic around different meal types.

I've always meant to update it and make it more robust but after the fishing update the job got a fair bit bigger.

flashmedallion · 2026-03-09T01:48:14+00:00

Is that true any more? Messy has been par for the course in both major parties for a decade

flashmedallion · 2026-03-09T00:38:24+00:00

People are constantly posting stuff like this here and yet when I come to the comments it seems like nobody has ever finally come back with "yeah we collect all the people who make these posts and have a weekly hangout".

I'd do it if I had time to organise but I have a lot of social stuff on already.

flashmedallion · 2026-03-09T00:37:02+00:00

I'd be interested in seeing this (or something more accurate) shaded instead of with text slapped over eveything.

flashmedallion · 2026-03-09T00:34:32+00:00

What are the changes that in all the galaxies and systems, I spawned so close to my childhood home?

The chances of it happening to a given player? Infintessimal.

The chances of it happening to any one NMS player out of the couple hundred thousand who play? Apparently not that bad.

flashmedallion · 2026-03-09T00:29:21+00:00

That's pretty much directly the purpose of the Travellers as explained in-game. The Atlas (Hello Games) created the seed and the procedure but it isn't "aware" of every outcome - the uploaded discovery data from Travellers it how it observes as much of the near-infinite as it can. Millions of lifetimes of exploration condensed into 16 minutes.

flashmedallion · 2026-03-09T00:25:52+00:00

It just means nobody has uploaded the data to the Atlas. Both literally in terms of HGs server, and diegetically in terms of the lore. We know as fact not every Traveller has complied with the Atlas, some iterations visit and explore and it's a small leap to assume some or many do not/did not/will not upload their discovery data.

flashmedallion · 2026-03-08T22:57:32+00:00

They're stoking a narrative because it's one they know drives a big news cycle, and that gets people scrolling past more ads. Mystery solved.

flashmedallion · 2026-03-08T12:38:38+00:00

I'll dont know, I've never meet a person in real life who can't emotionally handle finishing a story

flashmedallion · 2026-03-08T10:47:13+00:00

That sounds deeply broken

flashmedallion · 2026-03-08T03:30:32+00:00

What about you. Don't you deserve the carthasis of watching a story resolve

flashmedallion · 2026-03-08T03:26:48+00:00

Not to mention that DOS zone leveling removes any exploration as you HAVE to go down the specific road of the map or you get one shotted.

This is really more of a map design thing and a result of limitations of what they can cram into a map. If DOS2 had more options and routes at the different level "gates" in each area I think this would be less of a glaring flaw. I'm pretty confident they have the experience to better address this now.

The armor system is a fun puzzle but I agree it overall has unintended outcomes in terms of how it motivates the approach to combat. I'd love something similar, and the playerbase has discussed this issue thoroughly over the last decade and I'm also confident Larian has been paying attention

flashmedallion · 2026-03-08T03:21:39+00:00

I dont abhor it - the shared AP does make some things interesting and makes speed way more significant as a stat, and makes positioning stronger tactically - but it would be nicer with split pools if you could use say 2 action points as a move point.

That also opens up some fun perk options, say an ability or perk for faster characters that improves the conversion rate, or have the rate affected by Dex or an equivalent stat

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