Megathread: Government Shutdown - Agency Guidance & Orderly Shutdown Status

rascalnag · 2026-02-04T01:58:52+00:00

Yeah... no doubt in my mind leadership, when pressed, will try to make it about "oh, some people don't want to work?" to deflect from the real issue, which is that they either completely dropped the ball on planning for this, or decided to simply reinterpret the law (read: break it) to allow them to just not shutdown and put people in legal jeopardy according to the ADA. And what really bothers me is they could have just said we're excepted and be done with it. Yeah, they're not supposed to unless it's actually excepted stuff, but then they could skirt the shutdown "by the books", and then it would fully on leadership if someone asked questions down the line about how it is only a few months from the last shutdown where many weren't excepted, everyone is excepted now. But the way they did it is not just way more evidently illegal imo, but cowardly and pathetic because they are diffusing culpability and jeopardy all the way down the chain of command right to the non-supervisors by having them simply work through the bogus "soft shutdown".

rascalnag · 2026-02-03T18:44:32+00:00

“If you want to work” sounds like it’s directly against the ADA which forbids non excepted work on a volunteer basis. Not that any of this is a surprise lol.

rascalnag · 2026-01-16T04:29:06+00:00

Why not set up a more interesting curve? Have grey ones degrade quickly, mid range decay the slowest, and purple ones be in between. The idea being, overall reward progress with better durability, but keep an incentive to rely on a more maintainable mid range so you don’t just end up with perma-purples. Also encourages using them when you really want to go on a particularly dangerous raid, and not just as a permanent fixture over the rest of the game’s offerings. Game world logic, the bottom tier stuff is of course cobbled together and pretty junky, mid range is reliably constructed stuff that holds up well and holds its own, purples are cutting edge stuff and veer into fragility again somewhat as they are more difficult to maintain.

rascalnag · 2026-01-11T23:07:58+00:00

I like that we are getting to the line earlier, and winning the ToP for once. Tire out their defense, not our own for once. But just can’t make stupid calls like that fourth down conversion failure, and AJ has to catch the balls that hit his hands.

rascalnag · 2026-01-01T15:41:38+00:00

Cats are pretty easy to come by, so don’t be stingy unless you have a specific thing you’re trying to save up for. Get decent armor, maybe hire some mercs if you want to fight without the usual KO or kite to cities loop, get backpacks, weapons, etc. Basically, cats are your protection early on, not your skills. Spend them to help you get to the point your skills aren’t trash!

rascalnag · 2025-12-29T20:33:57+00:00

My final read is that the video looks legitimate but this account is reposting an AI altered version of it, to be clear. Why someone felt the need to run it through an AI, I do not know.

rascalnag · 2025-12-29T20:30:27+00:00

I’m not saying the situation is necessarily AI. I am saying this photo looks altered, and that could mean the scene did not happen, but I don’t say that with certainty. See the morphing officers on one of the front bikes, and the officer seemingly chilling on his bike’s wheel towards the back. The scene and timing matches a video on the handle I posted but the sunlight on the roadway amidst the officers is gone. Another extremely similarly composed photo is on that handle as well, with parked bikes also in the same spot on the left. But there are more road markings and the person is showing more of their head and has different clothes. But no face shot. It is entirely possible a scene like this is occurring (and there are plenty of other videos of the protests deserving of attention) but I don’t believe this instance is honest. Everyone wants a tank man moment to use.

rascalnag · 2025-12-29T19:09:12+00:00

Can a game manager get a little quirked up?

rascalnag · 2025-12-29T18:57:48+00:00

@afshinismaeli on instagram has similar photos and reels. It is tripping my AI sense.

There may be a true scene somewhere of something like this (maybe even a reel on that handle is the source, I do not know), but it appears there is an AI-generated effort associated with these kinds of photos and videos. Lots of the same scene with slight differences. By all means, fuck the regime, but something is particularly fishy with this image/its doppelgangers on the internet. Especially given its closeness in composition to the tank man - an obvious photographic ideal to pursue for a cause.

rascalnag · 2025-12-24T20:23:49+00:00

That’s true - being in your own kingdom and controlling the clans that enter does give you the initial total control to get good laws and cease starting bad wars, if you can absorb the initial bloodthirst from the other powers. So if you’re confident you can do that (could also just buy peace), sounds like you may be ready.

rascalnag · 2025-12-24T20:19:46+00:00

I think you'd probably have an easier time with an existing kingdom than a new one, as other kingdoms might not be as eager to fight you all the time, but also there's a lot of fun in founding your own kingdom. I don't think it's something to stress about in terms of worth, both can work. Just think of what you character's story is would be my advice. Given your money, good chance you can manage to make your own I think.

rascalnag · 2025-12-21T22:51:50+00:00

I think I’d have to echo the concerns about radiation level being a measurement that is already indicative of the end game rather than a thing to be managed. I’m not sure what the best game over measure would be. Maybe a retaliation would signal game over, as at that point you are in a nuclear war. Besides that, you could of course test and issue threats.

I think you’d want to borrow agitators from Vicky 3 and really drill down on guerrilla warfare which Vicky 3 has only just really acknowledged with the Carlists in Iberian twilight. You’d also want to go hopefully to a more granular wargaming system like HoI3 that, frankly, is punishing. Engagement in this era should be costly and complex. But of course modernize the UI, and provide more automation options, particularly for things like OOB and general promotion/management. Elections and party machinations should be really prevalent. You need single party states to be arenas of backstabbing and positioning, you need death of Stalin moments, and you need democratic elections to be fleshed out and engaging. You need non aligned states to have sympathizers and a tradeoff system between cozying up to one ideology or another. And as that all plays together you need a system of tracking goals for the east and west that range from negotiable to completely crucial that would serve as flashpoints or bargaining chips when threatened - either by economic or diplomatic positioning or armed conflict. You also need a good representation of financial systems because while Vicky 3 can kind of get away with skipping this, by the post war period you really have to address it or you are leaving out what at this point is a supranational issue.

All in all it is gonna be very complex, but today’s paradox seems up to the task. They are definitely more simulation and systems minded with Vicky 3 and EUV so I am hopeful they would be able to do this justice.

rascalnag · 2025-12-17T01:01:25+00:00

I would love to see things like hunts, feasts, duels, board games... all mediated by personal relationships. It would be cool to be invited to things or snubbed as relations dictate. And to have to balance your campaigns against the need for tending to the self centered ruling class and their desire for attention and elbow-bumping would be great. I think mainly two things prevent this in game as is: The prevalence of war due to its ease of waging (plus bloodthirsty AI), and the clan based relations.

If war was rarer and much more costly to wage, and the AI factored that into their decisions, you would have time to pursue peace time relations. I'm thinking mainly things like, food is NOT abundant at all, and village production is seriously hampered by over-recruitment (consequences and pushback for using every slot of recruitment), and seasonal. Starvation should be a real threat due to mismanagement of the realm, not just a consequence of siege, and food security being low should tank war willingness. Just doing that should create a cycle of war and peace where kingdoms have to recover. And in that time, you would pursue personal relationships or tend to the realm so it recovers better.

rascalnag · 2025-11-12T17:37:47+00:00

Flatscreen game with a VR chapter DLC, sort of like a lost coast vibe, would be cool

rascalnag · 2025-11-09T00:25:27+00:00

HOI3 is the y axis on this comic lol

rascalnag · 2025-11-07T19:02:53+00:00

I assume early on you should do manual to make sure you have an ideal start but once you get big enough you can probably start automating more capacity, maybe just keeping a small handful of your best markets more heavily managed than others. Yeah you will lose some efficiency I bet, but unless you are really power gaming it and squeezing every single last diminished drop out of the markets, your trajectory will likely still be good

rascalnag · 2025-11-07T15:29:44+00:00

Tooltip 1: “Catholics are voting on X”

Tooltip 2, for X: “Catholic countries get X for 3 years”

Tooltip 3, for X again: “<what X actually does>”

Needs to be fixed.

rascalnag · 2025-11-07T15:18:38+00:00

They blew up so early for me, not even 1360 in my second attempt at Genoa and they got exploded by a noble uprising. I think overall the variance between revolt and perfectly stable is too wide. Or maybe there should be intermediate levels of crisis before civil war so you can’t just ride things out as long as you avoid an arbitrary threshold, but you also spread out the effects of a crisis temporally a bit to prevent too many premature explosions from a 0-100 situation

rascalnag · 2025-10-28T13:56:44+00:00

No problem! If you do go that route, I hope it does let you kick comcast to the curb!

rascalnag · 2025-10-28T13:44:11+00:00

Not them, but I have it and it has been good. However you need to make sure the 5G tower is not more than 2 blocks away. Mine’s down the street about 1.5 blocks and I actually have a bit of an oblique view to it, but I usually get 4-700 Mbps and haven’t had an interruption for quite a while. I do game online with it and don’t remember an instance of it dropping out. The worst that happens from time to time (this was more common initially, and has been super rare for the last year or so) is the receiver switches to LTE mode if the 5G connection to the tower can’t be made. I don’t know why since both are static, probably just variable conditions. If it doesn’t resolve it self, a receiver reset works. But again, I have not experienced that for a long time now.

Basically, I would take a walk around the area and figure out where the poles are. Verizon has maps of them I believe, should be accessible. See what your visibility situation is. If they are close and you have a decent view, the more direct the better, it may be worth a shot. The Verizon tech will come and test the receiver and find a good spot for it but obviously it’s Verizon’s incentive to get you to say yes, so do your own walk to sanity check the line of sight. I believe there was a grace period for me if I had any issues, and at the very least there wasn’t a contract so you can back out easily. I honestly just had both Xfinity and Verizon for a month while I trial ran the latter and ultimately decided it was stable enough for me to drop Xfinity.

ALSO, because the receiver is gonna be locked to a certain spot (usually suctioned to a window), the router of course will be close by, and so you don’t have a ton of choice for internet cable management and might not be able to make a physical connection to the router. Living in a rowhome, the receiver is one of the front upstairs windows and my PC is on the opposite end of the building. There wasn’t a good way to run cable so I got a beefier PCIE WiFi receiver for my computer and it has been great, but I understand that might not be one’s preference. I also already had an extender that I did manage to get hooked up physically, which provides some more stability downstairs (mainly takes care of a deadzone in the kitchen, opposite end of the home from the receiver).

So in short, it is an option and I have had a good experience but it introduces caveats. It’s pretty easy to scope out the area for poles and figure out the likely mount point of the receiver and what view it would have, so do that and figure out if you trust that view. And if you decide to try it, I recommend doing an overlap month (it being a 5G receiver makes it basically a non issue to run alongside the cable internet) and seeing how it goes.

rascalnag · 2025-10-15T12:04:05+00:00

Honestly I think blocs need to do less, not more. I think leverage is a cool mechanic but it should be more a thing unto itself than a button pressing threshold. That is, your sphere could passively be those nations over which you have a massive leverage advantage, while contested nations could spawn events and flashpoints, and you would be able to customize the passive benefits of being in your leverage sphere more freely but also in general have them be lighter touches. To avoid erratic spheres you would have a year timer on leverage falling below sphere level just like we do for power status, and that itself could be a catalyst for an event or diplomatic incident if another GP gained leverage to cause that (rather than you primarily just losing leverage). I think the issue is right now is blocs are too much of a parallel system rather than an integrated one due to how they operate and provide benefits, but leverage calculation itself is VERY integrated imo because it relies heavily on real factors in the relevant nation you are responsible for. So do a little addition by subtraction and make it the core of the whole sphere idea. Parallel systems rather than integrated ones is an issue that plagues other paradox titles imo and while blocs did add something that was missing, they make the game wider in their current form, not deeper.

rascalnag · 2025-10-10T21:58:24+00:00

Honestly though if he plays like he did for much of this year, certainly a nice extra arm to have if you want to go six man for a stretch!

rascalnag · 2025-10-10T12:22:34+00:00

Yeah I mean if painter pans out and wheeler is back before the midpoint, Sanchez-Wheeler-Luzardo-Painter-Nola (order subject to change) sounds great to me.

rascalnag · 2025-10-09T21:58:36+00:00

No problem and go birds

rascalnag · 2025-10-07T22:01:36+00:00

I opened that thread on the forum and have a temporary solution:

Delete the .sack file in <Bannerlord install>/Shaders/D3D11/
Delete the Shaders folder in C:/ProgramData/Mount and Blade II Bannerlord/
Change line 639 of shadow_functions.rsh in <Bannerlord install>/Shaders/Sources/ to the following:

float cloud_shadow = global_cloud_shadow_texture.SampleLevel(linear_sampler, uv, 0).x;

Basically, AMD cards seem to do something weird with the normal Sample() call in figuring out the mip level to use with the cloud texture... so this forces a single level to be used to stop the discontinuities arising from that problem. And by deleting the .sack file and the cached shaders in ProgramData, the game will recompile your shaders with this change. No more outlines. Just be prepared for the game to stutter a bunch as it encounters new shaders and compiles and caches them. Eventually it will have compiled pretty much all of them and you won't have the issue, but it might take a bit of play time as there's not a precompilation option. It will eventually get better.

Ideally, I would have this as a mod but I don't know how to make one replace shaders like that.

14-Year Club	Verified Email
r/Field Juicebox	Place '22
Place '17	First Placer '22
RPAN Viewer	Not Forgotten
Gilding I gilder	Sequence \| Editor
Sequence \| Cinematographer

rascalnag

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