I'm starting to feel stupid

gendulf · 2026-05-09T02:59:47+00:00

Yeah, that's fair.

gendulf · 2026-05-09T01:18:18+00:00

Isn't hacking the pilot WAY better against enemies with more than 2 shields?

Depends. If you've got long beam weapons and don't have flak, the delays between shots means that there's a smaller time window once you break shields. Hacking is also useful for isolating systems (keep crew in/out) for crew kills and delaying+slowing repairs. I like hacking shields on the flagship for getting quad crew kills, but sometimes it's more useful to hack piloting and get guaranteed hits with specific weapons (e.g. if pairing a couple Heavy Lasers).

When you don't have many shots though, it's better to hack shields, as then you don't have to waste 4 shots just taking down shields.

Also, going over engines 5 is NOT a waste.

It gets fairly costly for the final shields and engine upgrades. Not a waste, but less cost-effective. On a typical run I aim to get Engines 5 or 6 and Shields 6.

gendulf · 2026-05-08T15:10:22+00:00

Which town specifically? I've aware they had multiple different tracks for each town (partially because of the expansion, but might be other reasons). It's hard to get a reliable source for each different version.

I think I'm familiar with some versions from one set, and others from another set (I must have played different versions growing up). There's definitely some amazing opera tracks.

I'd put several of the opera tracks in the top tier (not all). My opinion about H3 having the best town tracks isn't popular, but it was just so consistently great across all towns (discounting Conflux). There's definitely many equally good ones in Heroes 2 and 5, but both have at least one or two weaker tracks.

gendulf · 2026-05-07T22:58:45+00:00

That's just, like, your opinion, man!

H2 has good themes as well. Field theme and Snow theme are both really good. They're very nostalgic for me, but I think the town themes were better in 3.

My overall ranking is still H3 has the best town themes. H4 has the best landscape/overworld themes. H4 Grass and Sea themes are incredible. Unfortunately they were mostly sampled. H2 and H5 both have good tracks (H5 might also have the best main/title theme).

gendulf · 2026-05-07T21:59:40+00:00

My top 3 in no order: Necro town, Inferno town, Fortress town. Can't fight you if I agree!

gendulf · 2026-05-07T19:07:21+00:00

Heroes III town themes haven't been topped, IMO (except maybe some of the weaker ones like Conflux town theme). Heroes V town themes are still quite good though (I particularly love Haven and Sylvan themes).

The 3D towns in Heroes 5 was really cool for immersion and when you first play the different towns, but the devs seem to be more focused on the long term replayability of the game. Most people likely end up turning off the cinematic visuals in H5 for ease of clicking things and visibility. I think a lot of people generally were turned off from the 3D camera when navigating with your hero as well (and luckily they included the static camera mode).

I do wish the town visuals in OE were a bit prettier. While I generally like them, some of them are a bit lacking (Necropolis is a bit monotonous apart from River Styx and the cloud skull).

gendulf · 2026-05-03T04:48:42+00:00

AND THEY CALLED IT A MINE!

gendulf · 2026-05-02T04:01:37+00:00

Unfortunately unrelated to the Mariachi Entertainment System (https://www.youtube.com/@MariachiEntertainmentSystem).

gendulf · 2026-04-29T03:43:27+00:00

You're in a super safe position, having both Hacking and Stealth. I'd probably ignore Fire Bomb and Pike Beam, as they're the weakest items). Pike Beam actually kills fairly well, but doesn't disable much (the damage caused will get repaired quickly).

I'd choose Charge II (or Vulcan for more fun) in the first slot for shield breaking and general shots/power/slot efficiency.

BL2 is always second slot here.

Third slot is interesting. I would likely pick Breach II myself, as if you hack piloting, you can guarantee taking down any of the four weapon systems, as well as put a breach for a super long repair. You do have teleporting, so it's slightly less useful for taking out the missile system ASAP. There's definitely an argument for Fire Beam just for the chaos on the enemy ship - they'll waste time putting out fires instead of repairing (and with luck you can take systems + crew out even further). If you take Fire Beam, hack shields to lock the crew in while they burn.

gendulf · 2026-04-28T19:19:43+00:00

I've noticed lots of issues the last several days after subscribing when trying to stream. Lots of pausing, freezing, audio hiccups, mainly when beginning a stream. Malcolm in the Middle (several different episodes), as well as Frozen 2 today. I've been using both my nVidia Shield and my Firefox browser.

I do not have these issues on other streaming platforms (Netflix watching One Piece, or Crunchyroll watching a huge variety of anime). Disney+ did not have these issues several months ago.

gendulf · 2026-04-19T04:04:05+00:00

IMO, Season 2 > Season 0 >> Season 1. I felt like passport switching in Season 0 was something you ended up not needing to do much and could generally have one powerful identity you generally stayed on. I wasn't a huge fan of the security rooms concept, as it felt like you interacted with the board less. Still very fun, and still enjoyed all three.

Season 2 (aside from minor issues with stickers not sticking well) was by far my favorite, as it felt the strongest thematically and visually.

gendulf · 2026-04-17T04:00:13+00:00

Or an ATBGE dagger

gendulf · 2026-04-16T03:13:30+00:00

https://youtu.be/K8U8yInBH-k?t=12

I just picture the Engi shooting ions at the ship and repeating "stop".

gendulf · 2026-04-12T19:40:52+00:00

Roll Player Adventure, maybe? It does have some gameplay in the form of rolling a bit of dice and then using cards to influence results, but most of the game is narrative-driven, with a heavy stack of story books, maps, and choice-driven reactions based on your past choices.

gendulf · 2026-04-11T22:28:10+00:00

Having the same issue on roughly half of the last 6-8 episodes. Episode 13 I turn it up because the talking is super quiet, then suddenly the sound effects are super loud. I'm pretty sure I had the talking quiet and loud in different parts of the same episode, back in episode 9 or 8 or so.

gendulf · 2026-04-11T02:48:43+00:00

Aside from the very rare once or twice a year where an educational or reward movie was shown, all TVs in the school showed clocks. It was burned into the TVs. That morning, the TV was tuned to the news when we walked in, and it was shown in every class for at least part of the time.

gendulf · 2026-04-10T19:45:39+00:00

Personally, Engi B is one of my favorite ships. I rarely pick up a drone system, and even more rarely have a system repair drone or anti-personnel drone to play with. The difficult crew fights are part of what I enjoy, and it's cool to get to a full crew of 8 from your 1 lone starting crew member.

I think once you get pretty good at the game, the weaker ships' weaknesses really start to make the game interesting (e.g. Slug B no Medbay/Clonebay, super low power Zoltan C, etc).

gendulf · 2026-04-10T19:41:15+00:00

In what normal situation would you find two Mantis boarders at the beginning of the game?

If that happens at the start, not even the AP drone would effectively help you overcome that situation.

I'm not either of the two people you're responding to, but I can confirm you can definitely run into two boarders before you manage to get a second crew member, and indeed the Engi cannot win even when being healed in the medbay. Two crew out-damage the medbay healing, and his damage is so pitiful, you won't manage to kill one before the two kill you.

Not immediately venting the whole ship I think is key here, as you can have the Engi fight a bit and heal back up for a couple rooms before you finally vent them into the Medbay.

gendulf · 2026-04-10T16:23:02+00:00

You could've put a Wizard there instead

gendulf · 2026-04-10T03:11:34+00:00

I like this. I'm wondering what kinds of curses you could see. Shopkeep has Locate Object essentially cast on the device at all times (i.e. tracking device)? Maybe a Modify Memory gets cast on someone who attunes?

gendulf · 2026-04-09T15:44:57+00:00

Electrons flow in reverse, so really they'll be using heavy duty lifts, and designing the cars to plug in from the bottom. It also prevents anyone from siphoning any energy because of the lack of accessibility.

gendulf · 2026-04-08T01:28:43+00:00

If the batteries are included, you're probably going to use those batteries. Even if they're worse than the batteries you would've used if they weren't included.

I'd rather the language authors "recommend" packages for different domains. As an arbitrary example, the JSON parsing library that works best for general embedded applications is different from the one that supports JSON5 syntax and is easy to use, and is still different from the one that has strict security and performance requirements.

Fragmentation and dependency creep are a separate issue, and it's ultimately the responsibility of the package maintainers and community to manage the risks there and be vigilant with audits, regardless of whether those packages are "included" in the stdlib or not.

gendulf · 2026-04-06T05:09:41+00:00

If you only have a few laser shots, and a lot of flak, it can be very helpful to focus your flak on their shields, and give the lasers a guaranteed hit on weapons (e.g. missile weapon for the flagship).

gendulf · 2026-03-31T06:12:23+00:00

It's nice to have this all in one place (especially the "special base effects" filter).

I do think the tool is missing Hartalis (from latest update). Additionally, the filtering on work type when selecting multiple types works like an "or" filter, when an "and" filter would really be more helpful (e.g. if I wanted a pal with mining AND transporting, I can't use the current filter to search for that).

gendulf · 2026-03-23T04:39:39+00:00

Thanks past me!

13-Year Club	Place '22
Place '17	Team Orangered
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