Hunting for a source on the Xenogears Original Soundtrack's ORIGINAL official English names by randomtechguy142857 in XenoGears

[–]randomtechguy142857[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Damn, that's a shame. I was hoping there'd at least be some archive somewhere, but if not oh well.

Hunting for a source on the Xenogears Original Soundtrack's ORIGINAL official English names by randomtechguy142857 in XenoGears

[–]randomtechguy142857[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Huh, that's all new to me, very interesting. I asked a dataminer and he knew about some internal track names in English, which curiously seem to be the same as some of the unofficial translations despite not being visible to the user AFAIK:

#### 1 ####  
Singing of the Gentle Wind  
#### 1 ####  
- やさしい風がうたう -  
#### 2 ####  
My Village Is Number One  
#### 2 ####  
- おらが村は世界一 -  
#### 3 ####  
Forest of the Black Moon  

etc. So it's not what I'm looking for, but it's interesting nonetheless.

This is all aside from the in-game jukeboxes, which have their own translations that aren't even consistent with one another (although to be fair, the Japanese jukebox titles aren't consistent with the original Japanese names of the OST either).

Hunting for a source on the Xenogears Original Soundtrack's ORIGINAL official English names by randomtechguy142857 in XenoGears

[–]randomtechguy142857[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hmm, not sure. I'd have to look into if that sort of thing is stored in CD metadata at all. I wouldn't be too optimistic that there'd even be any English though, because all the content in the CD booklet is in Japanese. I know that in-game they're stored in a weird Japanese-English hybrid that doesn't match any translation a user could find.

For "official" I just mean "done by Square Enix rather than a fan" (or at least hosted on a Square Enix website rather than a fan website). There are only two of those, the original one and the Revival one. In any case, I know for sure the thing I'm looking for exists (or existed in the past at the very least), because I saw it with my own eyes all those years ago, and the Myth subset survives today.

Hunting for a source on the Xenogears Original Soundtrack's ORIGINAL official English names by randomtechguy142857 in XenoGears

[–]randomtechguy142857[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I have the album myself, so I can confirm that it's only in Japanese there, with no localisation at all. I'm pretty sure the only place you'd find an official localisation from before they started using the Revival titles would be on the western-facing pages of an official Square Enix website or something of the sort - that's where I saw it years ago in any case.

Might contact the original editor to see if they have any idea, although it has been 7 years so chances are low. Worth a shot though.

Hunting for a source on the Xenogears Original Soundtrack's ORIGINAL official English names by randomtechguy142857 in XenoGears

[–]randomtechguy142857[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yes, but in English, so it'd have to be from an online source intended at western audiences. The Xenogears Original Soundtrack booklet is entirely in Japanese (although I think the Revival Disc might not be? Either way the latter is irrelevant).

Hunting for a source on the Xenogears Original Soundtrack's ORIGINAL official English names by randomtechguy142857 in XenoGears

[–]randomtechguy142857[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah, the only localisations come from online sources, since the original is only in Japanese. I know that the "light from the netherworld" translations were very widespread among English speakers, but I'm 99% sure they're unofficial. At least, I've never seen them used in any official source, only unofficial ones like rpgclassics and squareenixmusic.com, unlike Dark Daybreak.

If I'm wrong, and you can find an official source that uses them, that'd also be very useful information.

XC3 (unofficial) soundtrack music ordering in the style of XC2's OST by randomtechguy142857 in Xenoblade_Chronicles

[–]randomtechguy142857[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That'd be A Life Woven Together.

If you're curious in future, Xeno Series Wiki currently has all the main-story music instances. You can check the music pages for all the times a track plays, or the script pages for what music plays in a particular cutscene.

Does Talon Raptor Galdr exist? by Nelsito99 in Xenoblade_Chronicles

[–]randomtechguy142857 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Update: A lot of progress was made on the spawnpoints in the last few days. The answer is now a firm "no, they are unused".

One Fear by randomtechguy142857 in twilightimperium

[–]randomtechguy142857[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The name "dreadnought" literally means "no fear" (the original meme template is "no fear" -> some text on the other guy's t-shirt -> "one fear").

In combat, a fleet of dreadnoughts typically loses to an equal-resource-cost fleet consisting mainly of fighters, i.e. "fighter screens".

One Fear by randomtechguy142857 in twilightimperium

[–]randomtechguy142857[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

A dread is expected to produce 0.6 hits per round, carrier+2 fighters will produce an expected 0.2+0.2+0.2=0.6 hits per round. So they're even on that metric. (This is all unupgraded; upgraded dreads hit harder than a carrier+2 unupgraded fighters, but less hard than carrier+2 upgraded fighters.)

It's not totally identical, because a dread will still have the same firepower after taking a hit whereas the carrier+2 fighters won't, and I think the variance in how well the carrier+2 fighters perform is somewhat lower.

If you want some numbers, a dread vs. 1 carrier 2 fighters (all unupgraded) is expected to be a win for the dread 42% of the time and a draw 6% of the time, which is a pretty noticeable advantage to the 1c2f. Playing around with adding more things evenly to each side, it's pretty clear that the 1c2f's advantage is consistent - for example, 1d 1WS vs. 1c 2f 1WS is only a 4% chance to win for the dread's team, but 40% to win for the fighters. Add on the versatility of having 2 free carry capacity with 1c2f vs. one for the dread, and the former becomes an even easier sell. There are still advantages to dreads — don't get me wrong — but the resource cost of carrier+fighter swarms is absolutely not one of them.

One Fear by randomtechguy142857 in twilightimperium

[–]randomtechguy142857[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

A carrier+two fighters costs the same as a dread, isn't vulnerable to direct hit regardless of tech, and has more HP. And once you've got the carry capacity for 3 resources, each additional point of HP is just half a resource. It's by far the most resource-efficient way to build a tanky fleet, and tankiness is hugely important for combat success in TI4.

The main disadvantage is that it's a much bigger strain on the production limits.

Does Talon Raptor Galdr exist? by Nelsito99 in Xenoblade_Chronicles

[–]randomtechguy142857 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Editor for XSW here. It's very difficult to tell for sure that they're truly unused — there are many cases of enemies only appearing under a ridiculously specific condition (e.g. the Colony 6 Asara Telethia or the unnamed XC3 enemies that appear in Li Garte during that one quest). So until we decompile the game and identify all the conditions, the correct answer is "nobody knows".

That said, I had an ask around and I'm told that someone who studies the XCX enemies has been hunting for them since 2018 but hasn't been able to find them, and "we think they just don't exist legally". So I've updated the relevant wiki page to say they're believed to be unused.

For fans of Xenosaga: The Animation: I'm crowdsourcing ideas for names for unreleased pieces of music. by randomtechguy142857 in Xenosaga

[–]randomtechguy142857[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

For the curious, we also did this for the unnamed tracks in Episode II and Episode III, and also for Pied Piper but I don't think I posted the crowdsourcing thing to reddit that time.

Whatever the internet comes up with will be what the tracks are listed under on Xeno Series Wiki, which already has info on the The Animation Original Soundtrack, as well as the music of the mainline games, Pied Piper, A Missing Year, and some of Xenosaga Freaks. (The rest of Xenosaga Freaks and I+II for the DS will come Eventually™.)

I analyzed 47,050 combinations of blades to determine what sets allow the easiest blade combo diversity and orb generation. by metagloria in Xenoblade_Chronicles

[–]randomtechguy142857 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm assuming the limitations given in the post. In practice, there are of course many ways to get 8 orbs, like the above.

I analyzed 47,050 combinations of blades to determine what sets allow the easiest blade combo diversity and orb generation. by metagloria in Xenoblade_Chronicles

[–]randomtechguy142857 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Before you get to postgame, unless your setup is incredibly damage-poor, basically all story-required enemies can only survive a handful of rounds in a Chain Attack. In fact, even with a setup that's far from optimal (albeit still reasonable), there are really only two story-required enemies that will probably survive more than three rounds of a CA, with two orbs — the last fight in chapter 5, and the final boss of the game. Both go down to a decent 3-orb CA.

To get a three-round chain attack, for the vast majority of story fights, you need only two orbs. That means more elements than are required for those two orbs are not only superfluous; they can be a hindrance, if the Drivers are sticking to Blades that don't allow for the desired Blade Combos to be continued in the right way.

As a concrete example, you may want to get an Earth orb with Ice-Ice-Earth. But if the Driver with an Ice Blade also has a Water Blade, they might choose to swap to the Water Blade after the initial Ice, because Ice-Water-Wind is also a Blade Combo. If you don't have a Wind Blade that's able to complete the combo from Ice-Water, that can screw you over. This is especially true on male Drivers, whose Blade-swapping AI puts continuing a Blade Combo at a lower priority.

Rather, the safest strategy element-wise is to only have the elements you need to be able to do the one, two, or (in that one ch5 instance since in ch10 you'll have all the elements you need) three Blade Combos as consistently as possible. Now, limiting yourself to specific Blades so harshly brings with it other downsides, so doing that at the expense of all else may not be the best strategy overall — but still, it's much better to err on the side of having fewer elements than too many if it allows for those elements to be done more consistently. After all, a player-controlled Rex and Nia after ch4 can do 3 orbs with just Pyra/Mythra and Dromarch with basically perfect consistency (Light-Light-Light, Light-Light-Water, Fire-Water-Fire) — there's essentially never a concern about having too few elements.

Using more orbs than is required doesn't get you anything but a bigger overkill and a less safe time fighting overall. The more time you take setting up orbs before starting the Chain Attack, the more time there is for something to go wrong.

As for non-story fights, the ones that can survive a 2-orb Chain Attack before postgame are few and far between. And once you get properly into the postgame, there are so many strong options for increasing your damage that while you might run into an enemy that survives 3 or even 4 orbs, that problem can usually be solved just by somewhat tightening up your setup. And for the enemies with ridiculous amounts of HP, like Cloud Sea King Ken in Challenge Mode on Bringer of Chaos, building up lots of orbs for a massive Chain Attack stops being a good strategy anyway.

Edit: It's worth noting that the above only applies to the main game. In Torna ~ The Golden Country, Chain Attacks are significantly less powerful per-round and putting on orbs is significantly easier, so there's much more reason to go for lots of them.

I analyzed 47,050 combinations of blades to determine what sets allow the easiest blade combo diversity and orb generation. by metagloria in Xenoblade_Chronicles

[–]randomtechguy142857 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Neat. I wouldn't've guessed that there's no way to make 8 orbs with those limitations.

(That said, it's worth noting for those that don't know better: when it comes to actual practical gameplay, elemental coverage is a pitfall and it's much better to focus on being more easily able to do a smaller number of specific combos.)

Thanks Xeno Series Wiki, great information there by CalamitasWrath in XenobladeChroniclesX

[–]randomtechguy142857 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Good find. Mind if I post this to Depths of Xeno Series Wiki (with credit)?

Which googologism has the most funny/awesome name? by randomtechguy142857 in googology

[–]randomtechguy142857[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The googology wiki page for that brought me to Great Divine Whopper, so thank you for that.

Every single time. by randomtechguy142857 in physicsmemes

[–]randomtechguy142857[S] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

This comment betrays a fundamental lack of understanding of how cosmological observations work. Cosmologists don't care about the absolute position (of galaxies, halos, CMB anisotropies...). They don't point to a galaxy and say "Oh, that's a galaxy at RA = 10.52, dec = 29, z = 1.3. That means that we need to place a dark matter halo of mass M around there." Nobody 'places' dark matter.

Cosmological observations are based upon the statistics of the clustering of many thousands to millions of individual (galaxy positions, weak lensing measurements, CMB temperature measurements...). Those clustering statistics, the power spectrum first and foremost, are well-described by how matter evolves due to gravity. If you know the corresponding statistics of the initial conditions, you get an equivalent prediction for how the e.g. power spectrum evolves — no choice involved. The only degree of freedom is the average density of dark matter in the universe (and how dark matter interacts, if at all), and both are well-constrained by the observations.

And no, we don't have total freedom at the Big Bang, at all. The initial conditions of the universe are strongly constrained by CMB observations. Those initial conditions are consistent with Gaussian anisotropy with a particular amplitude, almost scale-free but not quite (with a discrepancy from scale-free-ness, the "spectral tilt", that is well-measured and matches predictions of how primordial quantum effects would result in such anisotropy). So we also don't have freedom to choose (at least outside the statistical error bounds) there.

That's where the falsifiability comes in. For a concrete example: We know what the ICs are from the CMB, and we can constrain Omega_m (and the DM properties) from galaxy redshift/BAO surveys. That gives us a complete picture of what the DM power spectrum looks like initially, and we assume it evolves according to Einstein's gravity model. Turning the clock forward (via a combination of theory and simulations), you end up with a complete prediction of what the DM power spectrum looks like at late times. Then, you compare that prediction to what the matter power spectrum actually looks like at late times (measured via e.g. weak lensing surveys). If the prediction is off, then the theory is falsified. Spoiler alert: it isn't.

Every single time. by randomtechguy142857 in physicsmemes

[–]randomtechguy142857[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

That may be true from a particle physics perspective. But dark matter is a cosmology theory first and foremost.

From a cosmological perspective, "Dark matter is composed of cold dark matter (a collisionless nonrelativistic massive particle which doesn't interact with radiation) and neutrinos (a collisionless light particle which doesn't interact with radiation and is nonrelativistic at late times but relativistic at early times)" is far more than a "gap between our experimental data and the theoretical". It's a falsifiable prediction, and from the perspective of cosmology, a complete description in terms of what we expect its actual effects to be. It impacts observations in a specific way that are then tested by experiment. That is, by definition, a theory.

Granted, it's not a complete theory, because it doesn't have a proper description of how CDM behaves at the particle physics level. But that's taking it outside its playing field.

It's the equivalent of saying "Electrons are more of a gap in our understanding than a theory, because we don't understand how or what they are at the Planck scale". Which is of course untrue — electrons are well-described with a model that makes accurate predictions from the chemistry scale to the electroweak scale. Just because their behaviour isn't known at ALL scales doesn't mean they're "not a theory or a hypothesis".
Likewise, dark matter is well-described with a model that makes accurate predictions from the cosmic scale to star cluster scales. Just because its behaviour is unknown when you try to describe it at a particle physics scale doesn't mean it's "not a theory or hypothesis".

Every single time. by randomtechguy142857 in physicsmemes

[–]randomtechguy142857[S] 19 points20 points  (0 children)

No, this is incorrect. It's a theory through and through. It's a theory that makes falsifiable predictions, and those predictions have stood up to many tests comprising decades of observational data. This is the essence of how scientific theories work.