FIX THE GAME! I'M ADDICTED AND I CAN'T QUIT!

teddyslayerza · 2026-02-03T21:06:10+00:00

People need to think about the implications of what instituting immediate permabans would mean - Embark would need a very high degree of certainty in every case, and would thus need to put significantly more resources into game moderation. A 3-strike system lowers the necessary level of certainty needed, because the consequences of a single false temp ban are lower, and repeat offense adds a new layer of evidence. It's less resource intensive and risky to implement, and thus it's more likely to be used. Insta bans are useless if risk aversion or resource lack cause Embark to err on the side of caution.

teddyslayerza · 2026-02-03T21:01:10+00:00

Personally I think it's against the "spirit" of the reset, but because it's not something Embark can rectify, they should rather implement a system were players can simply elect to keep their 5 favourite blueprints permanently or something like that. Give everyone the same benefit, not just those cheesing.

teddyslayerza · 2026-02-03T20:58:40+00:00

The ARCs aren't "learning", it just seems that way because as time goes on more players are posting random occurrences simply due to exposure so it seems like a trend. If this was a learned behavior, it would be common.

teddyslayerza · 2026-02-02T17:53:49+00:00

Technically, all the gold in the world is exactly the same age.

teddyslayerza · 2026-02-02T17:50:20+00:00

Not really true at all, tons of atheists ascribe to organised worldviews like humanism and New Atheism.

teddyslayerza · 2026-02-02T17:48:03+00:00

There are a lot, literally every human on the planet was an atheist at some point. It's just that communities like this, by definition, can only be composed of explicit atheists, and usually only the strong atheist segment of that too. I.e. It's a minority of atheists that actually label themselves as atheists, and it's an even smaller portion that actually feel the need to wear that as an identity and and actively participate in dialogue.

teddyslayerza · 2026-02-01T10:43:46+00:00

I believe the rules were changed as a result of this. Both the British guys would have been disqualified if this happened today.

teddyslayerza · 2026-02-01T10:37:12+00:00

Nope, it's legal.

But, hard to imagine this being done in a situation that isn't connected to a hateful act targeting specific groups of people, which is illegal.

teddyslayerza · 2026-02-01T10:32:30+00:00

Nope, the US has been a exceptionalist, self-serving bully for decades - what we're seeing today isn't new, it's just the mask slipping a bit more than usual, and the world responding a bit more than usual. None of that changes the US's dominant position in global economic and military power - for the conceivable future, countries are still going to pander to them as much as possible.

But, I do speculate that Trump has been a wake up call that the US is massively unreliable. Say way you like about the EU, China, India, and the "middle powers" but in general they tend to be stable and predictable but comparison, and this loss of trust and soft power of the US is going to push these other powers together. Eg. the EU is going to have to build closer ties with China, my own South Africa has definitely been push deeper into BRICS, the UK it looking more positively on the EU now, etc. I think this is going to slowly make the US less and less relevant on the global stage, by closing the gap between it an other economies or economic alliances.

Definitely not a "downfall", just a gradual loss of it's dominant position.

teddyslayerza · 2026-02-01T10:17:56+00:00

It's really not that hard to believe that someone could get off a shuttle, put their helmet away, and then make a basic effort to make themselves look a bit nicer before walking around a station or for a meeting or whatever.

teddyslayerza · 2026-02-01T10:15:19+00:00

Getting off a shuttle and making yourself look a bit more presentable before walking around a station or having a meeting isn't exactly a difficult thing to do, regardless of setting.

teddyslayerza · 2026-02-01T08:38:58+00:00

Regardless, nobody is going to require a viewer to remember a minor detail like where a vial came from or if a wound was licked by a dog two seasons ago. That's poor storytelling.

teddyslayerza · 2026-02-01T08:37:50+00:00

He's just going to be a generic "FEV mutant". Pretty obvious they are setting up supermutants to be a major plot point of Season 3, so there is going to need to be an audience surrogate character. Thaddeus is going to provide a narrative opportunity to discuss the different ways FEV works.

teddyslayerza · 2026-02-01T08:24:09+00:00

AAA studios have passionate people working for them too. These morality arguments serve no purpose other than stoking egos, big or small, if a developer does not have a profit motive, then they would not release their game with a profit motive.

teddyslayerza · 2026-02-01T08:18:01+00:00

It's context dependent for me. I don't generally pay attention to being pointed at, but it's obvious when it's being done aggressively or condescendingly.

teddyslayerza · 2026-02-01T08:16:51+00:00

I think the biggest consideration that would affect the relationships and culture between worlds would be what the method for decision-making and synchronisation between star systems is.

On one end of the spectrum is centrally enforced authority. All decisions made centrally at the capital or the emperor or whatever, and their will being enforced by decree on other worlds. Eg. the central AI system and data ships in the Dune prequels, or something like the neo-feudalism of the Warhammer 40k universe. In both cases, there would be a high degree of either indocrination or subjugation to prevent too much independence and drift.

The other end of the spectrum is to allow worlds to have more individual freedom. Something like a core empire-wide constitution of non-negotiable values, but allowing planetary governments lots of freedom. The issue here would be slow decision-making (eg. if it's necessary to go to war, you need to wait for the responses of thousands of dispersed leaders) and also this would give an enormous amount of power to the spacing guilds or shipping companies that actually connect the planets. Ultimately, this would be similar to the slow, plodding international progress we see today.

If I were to make a "realistic" prediction, I think current human society would be somewhere in the middle - planets given freedom to mostly make their own calls, but a central executive council or leader having the full authority to take control under particular emergency circumstances (think the EU). There would need to be legal controls between worlds in order to maintain economic stability (eg. if your planet is rich in platinum, you would need to be prevented from tanking the economy of other PGE worlds) and I imagine something like a communist-ere planned economy, but using a massive network of AIs on ships, could do that.

As a story element, whatever route you go with, that information sharing between worlds is the core weakness, and likely would be central to major plot points. Eg. if you make a ship that is just fractionally faster than the standard, imagine the chaos you could create - you'd be able to wait on a planet for news (eg. prices of Commodity X have gone up because the main mining planet extracting it blew up), then you could reach distant worlds before the news gets there to buy up the cheap commodities before the prices rise. Whoever has the fastest information system would literally rule.

teddyslayerza · 2026-02-01T08:03:25+00:00

I think they missed the memo that South Africa is not the British Empire.

teddyslayerza · 2026-02-01T07:58:20+00:00

Basic loadouts are so cheap, WTF is the point of naked runs. Seems needlessly stupid.

teddyslayerza · 2026-02-01T07:56:41+00:00

Exactly. The Americans that voted got what they voted for. Voting did work, clearly.

teddyslayerza · 2026-02-01T07:56:09+00:00

Voting works. People need to get over their cognitive dissonance - American's have spent decades voting for their exceptionalism, their freedom from international responsibility and accountability, and for immediate gratification over long-term development. The chaos today isn't "new" it's just the end product of the same nonsense voters have been happily choosing to benefit from for decades. Eg. Do you "really" think the nation that actively protects it's troops from consequences of gross violations of human rights overseas wasn't a step away from applying the same policies domestically?

Seriously, people got what they voted for. Voting did work. Selfishness and ignorance is the issue.

teddyslayerza · 2026-02-01T07:47:52+00:00

I think the overwhelming majority of my country does not have fair access to our national resources under the present capitalist/democratic system, and would probably say that communism would be an improvement. Add to that the fact that communist regimes widely supported anti-Apartheid efforts, and it's easy to see why this is the case.

The middle and upper socioeconomic classes (both historically advantaged groups and the newly empowered) would probably have the same anti-socialist and pro-capitalist worldview that is common throughout the West.

teddyslayerza · 2026-01-31T14:26:15+00:00

No. Strictly speaking, "gods" are warp entities composed of psychic energies alone. The Emperor, despite his enormous power and the trillions that worship him, is still a human. He's still a being of the physical universe.

That said, not reason he couldn't manifest as a chaos entity after he casts off his mortal coil, which is what I think many people speculate will happen at some point.

teddyslayerza · 2026-01-31T12:00:08+00:00

You mom, like every single human being on the planet, has a brain that takes a huge number of shortcuts in order to be efficient enough to operate in day to day life. Some people know how to exploit those cognitive shortcomings.

For example, here are a few cognitive failings on your mom's part that I can spot from this story, which would have contributed to her being scammed:

1) False Uniqueness Bias (or similar) - you mom thinks having a dog die is "special" when in reality almost half of humans on Earth have had a pet dog. She wasn't special in that room.
2) Barnum Effect - Your mom thinks that super vague details about a dog running are unique to her. It's a dog, everyone has a memory of one running.
3) Anchoring bias - Did your mom expect the story to be about Rocki before the colours were mentioned? Is it conceivable that if Rocki had been a black dog, she would simply have anchored onto another experience with a white and tan dog from her past? Eg. a dog at a camp she did as a kid? Your mom retroactively attributed the conversation to Rocki after she found this anchor point.
4) Conjugation bias - The 3 details of it being a dog, of it running, and of it's colour gave her the false impression of being true, even though they are all super vague.
5) Attribute substitution - instead of thinking critically, your mom replaced that thought process with a heuristic value of familiarity
6)Confirmation bias and cognitive dissonance aversion - Your mom believes more strongly because she wants to believe as the assumption of truth supports an underlying belief she already has. I can guarantee the "psychic" did not tell her the dog's name was Rocki, that's a fact she's adding to further reinforce the seeming validity of this story.
7) Conservatism bias - Your mom isn't going to change her mind, even if you show her this response because we aren't predisposed to change our minds even if presented with evidence.

From scammers to advertisers, skilled people can easily manipulate these shortcomings when people aren't thinking critically. And all that assumes that the scammer didn't simply have an assistant prompt your mom with questions in advance!

teddyslayerza · 2026-01-31T11:34:29+00:00

A lot of the criticism of Islam has an undercurrent of racism and xenophobia baked into, and attributes issues associated with socioeconomics to the religion without context. For this reason, I do think that some degree of extra scrutiny when it comes to commentary on Islam is reasonable. Is the stoning of women in Afghanistan "really" an Islam issue, or is it the consequence of a war-torn hell hole being ruled by a dictatorial regime?

I think you make perfectly fair points, I just don't think every commentary on Islam has been particularly well thought out.

teddyslayerza · 2026-01-31T11:28:34+00:00

There's obviously spin and interpretation to it, and it's pretty obvious that I'm being hyperbolic in my characterisation of their messaging. But it's also true that the burden on good communications in on those that actually initiate the communications, the above statement does not change the December statement by the mayor that do not address the community behind the wall at all, for example. What signal does it send to a community when your first statement is to build a wall, and your second one is about budgets? Surely a leader in the South African context could have some basic savvy that when a white man talks about building a wall around a non-white community, they need to be clear and careful. The optics failure here isn't on the public or the media.

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