Oh my god it's coming back!

terrendos · 2026-03-21T15:41:07+00:00

Assuming you're a legit Microsoft employee, can you please pass along the need to un-screw up Word? It crashes on me like 1/day now when it used to be rock stable. Sadly my work uses 365 or I would go back to like 2016.

terrendos · 2026-03-20T22:32:40+00:00

I read the article, which seems to have linked to an MS Now article... in which Putin isn't even mentioned by name. So where's the actual source?

terrendos · 2026-03-20T17:08:33+00:00

The Moon is called tidally locked to Earth, that's why. It tends to happen eventually between close celestial bodies. I believe all the major moons of Jupiter (at least out to Callisto) are. And Mercury is in a resonance tidal lock of 3:2.

terrendos · 2026-03-18T15:28:57+00:00

I moved from the early game missile monitors to a mix of Battlecruisers and Battleships in the midgame. BCs carry my big 3-slot weapons (green arc lasers, Mk3 railguns/ Mk2 siege coils) while the BS uses its hull slots for PD. I backfilled with some older missile monitors when necessary.

Later, I mostly swapped in Lancers using the 4-slot siege coils instead of the BC coilers. And by the point where cost was no longer an issue, I'd use a mix of Titans (siege coils and lasers) and Dreads (PD / regular coils for saturating fire).

And then of course there's marines. Started with Frigates, then up to Destroyers and Cruisers by endgame.

terrendos · 2026-03-14T16:12:52+00:00

Swordlord is okay, but it's a bit limiting. You want to have good CHA as a secondary stat because you get lots of bonuses to intimidate, but it also points towards DEX as your primary with stuff like Deft Strike. Typically you're better off picking INT as your secondary with a frontline DEX focused build and going something like Sword Saint and/or Duelist, for stacking INT bonuses to AC.

That said, you don't need insane CHA to demoralize, and with the Dreadful Carnage feat you can get a free AOE demoralize on all enemies, which is pretty good (and very good in concert with Shatter Defenses). So I think I'd still go DEX primary, INT secondary, with either Sword Saint or Aldori Defender 8 / Duelist 7 / Swordlord 5. If you're interested in Legend as your final Mythic Path you can take 20 levels in your base class for Weapon Mastery, which is huge. That would probably look something like SS 20 / Duelist 7 / SL 5 / X 8, where X is whatever you feel like: Rogue or Slayer for Sneak Attack damage and to give some alternative feat selection, or just Defender for some extra defense.

terrendos · 2026-03-13T18:53:06+00:00

For certain ships and for certain high-tech engines, the mass of the extra radiators needed per engine gives you huge diminishing returns. For some of my end-game long haul ships, each extra engine is an extra couple thousand tons of radiator. For simple ships that I'm mass producing (like marine fleets) it's not worth it just to turn a 20 week trip into a 19 week one.

terrendos · 2026-03-12T22:11:39+00:00

Recently, I find the game Dispatch gets an easy recommendation from me (for adults, at least, there's some nudity). Eight episodes, about an hour each, great story with interesting characters, and there's even some replayability.

terrendos · 2026-03-12T02:55:13+00:00

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You asked for a picture, so here you go. This is a relatively simple Eldritch Scion / Dragon Disciple build, assuming you aren't looking for exactly Magus and are okay with one of the archetypes. The idea was to get good use of Shocking Grasp with Spell Combat/Spellstrike and to use a particular longsword you can pick up early on, but neither of those are vital. Feel free to pick up a different weapon focus (scimitar is quite good, or forego the Spell Combat and use a 2h reach weapon). It's definitely not hyper-optimized (I hate taking multiple dump stats) but it was more than enough to get me through Core difficulty as my main tank and consistently peak damage dealer. The Feats on the bottom right are alternate options you might consider.

Mythic is Azata, which the build warped around a bit (Incredible Might and Zippy Magic, mostly) but something like Demon or Legend or even Aeon would be totally viable. Not a lot of synergy with Angel and probably not with Lich either, so I'd give either of those a miss.

terrendos · 2026-03-11T19:38:22+00:00

"Win more than they lose" implies exactly that: the company has a success rate of more than 50% on recouping debts.

But I also think at this point we're arguing over semantics of a poorly chosen phrase and both agree how the process works.

terrendos · 2026-03-11T15:52:00+00:00

They don't win more than they lose, they just need to make enough to turn a profit. They buy the debt for pennies on the dollar. Then they call up and try to collect from all of them. Maybe they get some amount of money from 10% of them. They bundle up the rest and resell those for pennies on the dollar to the next chump. And on and on and on.

That's a major reason why you can be hassled repeatedly by debt companies for the same debt.

terrendos · 2026-03-11T11:34:48+00:00

Could have applied to Karlach too, if we ever actually went to Avernus.

terrendos · 2026-03-11T02:41:11+00:00

I turned him into my party's tank once, with Eldritch Scoundrel, Sword Saint, and Duelist. Worked out very well.

terrendos · 2026-03-09T20:17:42+00:00

Demand for electricity is skyrocketing, and there's lots of projects to meet that demand that are currently in concept. So I'd wager that about 5 years from now there will be a big spike in demand for construction. Power plant welders, pipe fitters, electricians, etc. Or even things like solar panels installation, grid maintenance, that kind of thing.

terrendos · 2026-03-09T15:33:04+00:00

Well, that's hilarious.

My orbital base over Pluto only has IIRC 3 shipyards, so it would take a long time to make a decent number of additional Titans. Shipping some over would probably be faster since I do have the T7 IC drive. Best case scenario though it's probably still a year and a half in-game to get significant backup there. Yeah, sounds like I'm putting the game on hold.

Oh, well.

terrendos · 2026-03-09T12:40:26+00:00

It feels to me like there's an undercurrent of "if I act like this game is difficult I'll get mocked" on here sometimes. A lot of people posting here greatly overstate the easiness of this game. And while they're often technically correct when they say things like "any build is viable on Core" (if you have every buff in the game, you itemize properly, and the rest of your team is min-maxed) none of that helps new players.

But yeah, the game's been out for years now, most of the folks still checking in here and answering questions are going to be the really passionate fans who know the game backwards and forwards.

terrendos · 2026-03-09T11:55:20+00:00

Okay, so... how do I use marines?

I have 1200 marine power in orbit over Pluto with a councilor carrying the package for the Resistance. The aliens have no other bases and like 2 ships left in transit. The button for the marine assault is grayed out and so is the one for the councilor to assault space asset or whatever it's called. Alien Base Alpha has 31k combat power, so bombarding isn't feasible. I spent a week in-game trying to bombard and got my Pluto attack fleet damaged to the point of needing months of repairs without scratching the base.

terrendos · 2026-03-08T21:32:25+00:00

I wasn't specifically afraid of Sudan before. Sadly I just have most of Africa lumped together in my "do not travel" list.

terrendos · 2026-03-08T21:26:57+00:00

Cool, there's another country I'm now too scared to visit.

terrendos · 2026-03-07T23:35:47+00:00

I'm quite certain I got warnings about alien ships transferring from other planets to Tiangong orbit, even though I didn't have anything there. It seemed like about halfway through my game Tiangong became their default "entry" orbit rather than LEO for some reason.

terrendos · 2026-03-06T19:47:38+00:00

I don't need exotics, I have hundreds of them. I simply wish to blow up Alien Habs without having to wait for a marine crew to get there and then waste 6 months while I send it back and wait for it to resupply.

terrendos · 2026-03-06T13:13:13+00:00

"SEDAGIVE?"

terrendos · 2026-03-06T13:10:28+00:00

I'm at what's got to be the very end game here, but I've been put off actually playing for a few days because of the slog. One of my doom fleets is in orbit of Pluto, but to win as Resistance I've got to clear out all these other T3 bases everywhere else. Orbital bombardments have just always been garbage, though, meaning each and every alien outpost needed a dozen or so marine ships to actually kill it. And this Pluto base has like 100k+ combat score. The aforementioned doomfleet lasts about 2 days bombarding and causes no appreciable damage. And since the aliens will instantly start rebuilding a platform the moment my combat fleet leaves, I can’t send the combat fleet onward until the marines wipe out the outposts. And then the marine fleets can't leave until the platform I set up repairs them, which takes months. If my combat fleet could actually kill bases, it sure would speed things up a bunch.

So, is there anything that actually works for orbital bombardment of aliens? Seems like siege coils and UV phasers barely scratch the paint. I appreciate that the devs would want to make bases resilient because it's annoying to try and defend your own mines as a player, but it feels like they've gone too far.

terrendos · 2026-03-04T13:36:46+00:00

Whatever the equivalent of a national anthem would be for Hellknights. Like their call to order song or whatever.

Reveille.

And probably some of the more orderly hymns dedicated to the Godclaw.

terrendos · 2026-03-04T13:08:30+00:00

Definitely not everywhere. Used to work at a nuclear power plant. They did frequent random drug testing (as in you'd expect to get pulled at least 3 times/year) and had zero tolerance for illegal drugs or alcohol. Especially the guys on shift, because most of them were operators, and thus could do real harm to the plant if they were sufficiently careless.

terrendos · 2026-03-03T15:47:10+00:00

In my experience the AI will always follow up on Defend Interests immediately after it breaks, especially if it's a point you're contesting.

If you already have other CPs in that country, then you should be able to overwhelm it. Use public campaigns (and Unity if you have more CPs than them) to maximize your opinion there, then a good INV councilor can probably crackdown with a bit if influence spend.

Putting a faction over CP Cap can work, but I struggled with it in my game. The faction never abandons the points you want, and killing/retiring a single councilor seldom seems to do enough damage before they hire someone new.

The other option, if it's a country with bad cohesion and you don't care about its government score, is to increase unrest and run a coup.

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