Remember folks, always carry your epibeanis pen.
D61
joined 4 years ago
"Israeli plan for Gaza 'concentration camp' to cost [US taxpayers] billions"
Title fixed.
oohhh.. interesting....
The artwork from screen shots looks absolutely amazing.
I've been obsessively playing the original Master of Orion for weeks now.
I started the series with the second one in the late 90's and looking at screen shots of the game had always made it seem a bit incomprehensible to me. Over the years I'd tried to find a cracked copy of MOO and get in to it but I could just never seem to get "stuck in" properly.
Fired up a copy a month ago or so. Found the ship building a hugely difficult hurdle to get over. Stumbled into some ancient "Let's Play"s for Huge/Impossible/Five Races that went into some of the mechanics of the game. Got a handle on things and really started playing properly.
Did some skimming through the internet about MOO race strategies, most of which boiled down to "good race to play/bad race to play" or "broken and overpowered / poorly balanced".
Things I've learned by actually playing obsessively (on two computers in two locations because I work a job without supervision):
-
The Races are less "classes" that are supposed to have a different play style and strategies and more ways to change the difficulty of the game. Klackon/Psilon/Sakkra reduces the difficulty. Human doesn't modify the difficulty that much one way or the other. Bulrathi moves toward increasing the difficulty. Mrrshan is for masochists who want to fight a protracted intergalactic war against everybody that ultimately sees you lose your worlds one by one or you just get voted out of the galaxy about the time you get enough of an industrial base going to start . Darlok/Akari I haven't spent any time playing yet as I'm stuck obsessing over the Mrsshan.
-
Anything that hurts research into the Construction field greatly increases the difficulty. Turns out, you absolutely HAVE to have regular upgrades in Industrial Tech (reduces the cost of building a factory to the number in the name) or else you are just turbo boned. Mrsshan being the only race that has a research penalty in the Construction tech tree is a huge handicap. Its hard to build a huge stack of tiny ships, its hard to get a large ship (like colony ships) built, its hard to get a new colony built up enough to be productive or defend itself with missile bases, its hard to invade other races colonies as you're behind on colonizing and building up your own worlds do such a degree that you're research is always lagging in one area or another. I don't think I've felt the need to constantly look at research and shipbuilding as an either/or proposition with the other races I've played as I have with the Mrsshan.
Who thought that the real world equivalent of "System Shock" would be this lame...
Real...
... moment there.
Edit: my joke didn't land....
Whomst amongst us... 
Even better. You get to walk around in a pond or gently float round in a boat.
Nina Simone wasn't building a brand right she was a revolution with a piano a voice and a terrifying confrontational level of honesty. So, this episode is going to reject palatability as a business strategy. Look into monetizing truth by refusing to let your business be a place of placation, a sight of silence, because your voice could dismantle empires.
My promotional plan NordVPN service is about due for renewal.
I was wondering if any tech support hexbears had any suggestions. The basic plan for Nord is going to run about 150$ US at its full price.
So far I've stumbled across some favorable mentions of Mullvad and the price seems better at about 60$ a year. I'm going to assume that all VPN services are going to make it difficult to seed anything, but if there still some around that dont block all the porta I would like to know more.
Mostly i just fart around on the hexbear at home or with my cell phone. I'm not serious about torrenting but there are things I'm interested in and I've notived are hard to find and don't have many seeds, wouldn't mind helping out without having to figure out how to set up a whole other server to do the thing.
Edit:
Survey says!
-AirVPN
So far its been okay. Bit of a slog getting it on my phone but seems to work okay.
Also a bit of a slog getting things set up to actually seed the occassional thing but that's just because I know about 25% of what I think I know.
Actually got one of those online coupon things to knock a few bucks off as well.
Thanks everbody, you're all swell. 
So, in my recent transition from an ancient Windows OS to a Linux distribution I installed Transmission for torrenting. I had a decent experience as a user who isn't super nerdy about this stuff with the Windows version I was using.
Using it with Linux has been similarly easy but for one thing. When trying to seed torrents, after about 10ish minutes, the torrents in the list will turn red and with the word "Stalled". I can pause and restart the seeding and it clears the "Stalled" from the item on the list but it will come back after a short while.
This never happened when I was using the Windows version and I haven't been able to find an answer about what this is supposed to mean in this context online.
Anybody have any ideas what this means and what I should do to fix this if its a problem on my end?
Edit: NordVPN is blocking the ports. Weird thing is, earlier this year before switching this PC to Linux, my ancient Windows OS was running Transmission and leeching/seeding just fine through NordVPN. 
For whatever reason my brain has decided to think about this.
VLC will record the Desktop and Space Rangers but not Transformers: Devastation Though the game screen it captures for is a different size than what is captured with the Desktop while either game is running. Seeing what happens when Transformers runs results in a white screen being recorded while the game window is in focus.
My ancient Radeon graphics card and Windows 7 operating system (don't at me Linux folks, I know I know) has some screen recording stuff build into it. Will record the Desktop just fine, records only a black screen while the game is running and its window is focused for one game but records the other game just fine and at an appropriate size.
For curiosity's sake what would I be looking for as reasons or solutions to this?
Edit:
Running everything as Administrator seems to help in OBS. Who knew? 
OBS seems to play nice with Transformers: Devastation now, lets me draw the bounding box in the Game Source instead of trying to use the Display source.
Still haven't figured out why OBS is being wonky with Space Rangers not recording in "Game Source" but did get a lead on why the size is wonky in the recording of "Display Source". The max resolution for the CD version (the one I've got) is 1024x768 and my monitor is 1920x1080. (Unsure why there's a difference between what I see playing the game and what the software is recording.) And the only resolution patch I've found doesn't work on the CD version... :whomp-whomp:
... but I finally did it.
For whatever silly reason, I decided to play the 2005 version of Space Rangers ( a kinda difficult game on its easy mode) on its hardest difficulty setting and after a handful of bad starts and one very loooonnnng good run I managed to finish.
To celebrate I will use this emoji
spoiler
And as penance I will start reading Capital Volume 1 as linked by comrade Vampire in their "get in nerds we're reading all volumes of Capital" reading group.
view more: next ›
A real "del ." moment.