Des

(somebody let me know the safest place to host a photo album these days)

It was a hastily planned road trip to hop around the Northeast and we didn't even know we were down the road from it. It was a pleasant surprise.

It's a shitty (but pretty) overpriced tourist town now, of course, for unrelated reasons you can read the wiki about. He was originally trying to make into an early utopian commune for freed slaves. Once at the massive rough stone cairn he was buried in we both begged him to stop moldering and come back and clean house. We promised we'd bring him whichever magic sword he wanted (hey it's a different time. maybe he would prefer the isikai slaver slayer or the Bolivar sword or just a well forged katana)

There were stories about various labor, social justice and pro-Palestine activists surrounding the grave which was really cool. More socialists/leftists then libs in that exhibit which was refreshing. The property was gorgeous except for the stupid ski lift visible over the trees. The state ranger/caretaker was an incredibly friendly old New England beard guy housed a few dozen yards away. He seemed to have a great gig and our dog tried to ride off with him in his cart.

If you are either the caretaker or he's your cool uncle let him/yourself know he's cool (and the only good type of cop).

B42 experimental. (sadly no MP yet) it added tons of stuff, better performance, and crafting to allow long term sustainability. and animals!

streamers are having fun with the Week One mod, which is interesting but too story driven.

if you want to experience a taste of the game's eventual finished state: get Knox Event Expanded (Npcs) (KEE) and combine it (optionally) with the Bandits Mod and the Custom Bandit creator.

these two mods are "incompatible" in that each other's npcs are hostile towards the other no matter how they are to the player. this is fine! you want only one type to be pure hostiles (the Bandits Mod).

KEE npcs are smart, capable of being assigned to safehouses and do basic chores as well as sent out to loot. they are generated dynamically at the beginning. they can easily defend themselves and work off screen. meanwhile the Bandits are using modified zombie behavior and make better hostiles. their friendly versions are pretty dumb so use the Creator to make all clans you want to use just hostile. I set zombie respawn to 0 for realism (and turned total count waaay up), and adjusted the bandits in the Creator to be different "phases" of hostiles (only) with very low spawn chances.

they get more Mad Max over time. first few weeks it's just looter gangs, then you get hostile redneck militas, small groups of renegade soldiers, eventually fading to become depraved cannibals and scrap metal gangs. (like in early Walking Dead, you go from the 1st season looters to the Governor to Neegan). after a year the only hostile NPC clan remaining are basically completely broken cultists and woods dwelling Ted K. types

What this does it basically made a simple, sandboxy State of Decay style game. you can clear zombies out but hostile NPC raiders are always a possible threat, just in low numbers. you can adjust but they can sabotage, break in, rob, etc. your safehouse NPCs will engage them if detected

the KEE npcs will continue to do their thing all over the map, becoming more hostile over time, but you can eventually build yourself a small community by convincing them to join you. it's been really fun just testing this combo out

i also use some basic QOL mods and extra vehicles, guns, custom pack stuff. no overhauls

try the Week One mod if you want to experience the actual start of the infection! (just make sure to adjust settings unless you only want a 7 day run). but if you want a good RP One Week Later try this combo

I basically scrapped half the timeline. I was trying to focus on historical material forces, basically writing out broad trends instead of just event, event, event, Great Person doing stuff. then backfill with events as the trends start to collide.

I'm reformatting it. will still mostly be by "month" instead of dates unless something important happens. going to be formatted like this (example): 1946 (North America) (Economic) March: Stuff here

location could be regional, national, global, or hemisphere. Economic, military, social, personality(ies). i need this to better organize the mess. also i'm getting stage fright i really don't want to come across as sectarian or whatever. this isn't a utopian wishcast project I have a narrative reason for stuff to happen as they do (it's going to be an RPG setting and I need conflict, antagonists, threats).

still though, my primary goal is to create a semi plausible modern world worth fighting for against forces beyond Earth. but the timeline should have utility for more historically accurate stuff, but be aware as it closes onto 1985 it will become increasingly cyberpunk (colonial powers) and solarpunk (socialist/progressive/communists). after 85 all bets are off and it will be my own personal project

first 5 years coming soon! enjoy seeing my creative process it's a messy bitch

it's pretty useful. you can do it by nations or sub-divisions within nations. great for alt-history

paid features aren't needed they are just extra frills.

something i'm working on. FDR dies in January of 1945 before the dems can replace Wallace with Truman, and he finishes WW2 without dropping the atom bomb and works towards cooperation with the Soviets while alienating the old European colonial powers.

i have a general timeline that I'm cleaning up right now and doing more historical fact checking and adding more granular events (right now it's just month to month and general summaries). the timeline is coherent and has a theme. I'm nervous about doing the Soviet Union stuff (it's been very vague) because i don't want to sound uneducated (i am). so I'm welcome to any suggestions. i'll post the first couple years shortly

but i'm afraid to embarass myself too much and come across as too libshit

my biggest struggle is what (if anything) would Stalin do if he no longer felt under siege (immediate post war)? did he have plans to clean up the party bureaucracy and bolster the constitutional order? assume he has extensive economic support, no threat of hostile intelligence ops, and a friendly U.S. admin sincerely trying to build a "one world, two systems, one end goal" order.

just know that in the end the U.S. is going to be more or less market-soc/dem-soc with one party (multiple faction) dominance, and the Soviets will be mostly centrally planned, embracing cybernetics, but maintaining an NEP style consumer economy. Market socialism (with various levels of planning, from full Cooperative economies to Dengist-style) will become the dominant and median economic ideology of the Free World, with various strains of social progressivism (much accelerated from our own timeline)

also expect a lot of thematic inversions from our timeline, mostly done for narrative reasons. I still need conflict and a sort of "cold war" to make a good story, it's not just pure utopian wishcasting. yes the nationalists win in China, but Mao gets to take his forces to Korea and helps lead Sung's forces to victory

EDIT: I will post the first couple years in a separate post. i need feedback on the Stalin stuff. so far it's just a secret meeting between Eleanor Roosevelt and Stalin, mediated through Eleanor's bestie Lyudmila Pavlichenko. She delivers him a letter (may or may not be legit) from the late FDR telling him to put on a big show about rooting out "corruption" and "ensuring full democratization" for the world stage. With the letter is a list of names of British and French agents, as well as some promises and call backs to them making fun of Churchhill for being cringe. FDR admits to being a liberal capitalist at his core, but tells Stalin Wallace may be more ideologically aligned with him then he believes.

Opinions? I've tried getting started a few times but it almost feels too "topical" and makes me depressed. but i'll still probably do a leftist radical revolt U.S. run.

for anyone that's tried: I see the PSL tree being pretty "lol tankie" with glory to the party and other tropes. the DSA on steroids seems like the only decent leftist path (lol no patsoc i'm glad that's the 'evil' path). maybe anarchist.

The soundtrack rocks, and I like anything synth/vapor wave in aesthetic. So give me your opinions

also field marshal

Didn't know where else to post this.

I was thinking while looking at Mexico's military force on paper vs say the U.S. for a hypothetical invasion/occupation. Like many modern non-NATO forces, it lacks heavy armor, combat aircraft, naval vessels, etc. But with dronewar now ascendant, could this be less a liability and more an advantage? Assuming one could rapidly equip and train their light infantry forces with a mix of both small and medium sized drones?

It seems it would be easier to acquire tens of thousands of commercial off the shelf drones and use old stockpiles of munitions and train young, gaming experienced soldiers to operate them then build or acquire increasingly rare tanks or fighters. And having such a light military means it should be easier to shift to this doctrine then say doing so with a lumbering NATO-style behemoth like the U.S. with it's MIC.

Could this be a cheap strategy especially for latin american nations to pump up their military forces in the face of U.S. aggression? Make it too costly to engage, as well as cozy up to China for cheap drone parts.

Besides drones, all the rest of the military spending would be best directed towards air defense systems. This is the only bottleneck I see since these are sophisticated systems on par with tanks and fighters. I mean the drones can save you from ground invasion but you can still be leveled from the sky. I suppose until we get cheap air defense drones, which I think might be the future. (imagine loitering long range air defense drones with simple stealth tech; the barrage balloon of the 2040s).

i know there's a vicky3 to hoi4 converter out there and I keep an eye on it's development, but it's not there yet.

All the HOI4 mods that try to cram in a century of historical events and alt-history into a few years do a heroic job but vicky 3 is so much better at setting up state of the world (social, economic, alliances, great powers, etc).

Full disclosure, I state this as someone that prefers the HOI4 build up phase over the warfare, but also think vicky 3 warfare is too simplistic and janky. So best keep vicky 3 focused purely on the set-up, the run up, the historical materialism and great social forces churning together in the shadow of industrialization.

Let HOI4 handle the big war and the frantic industrial conversion and tech rush. Why is that the "big war" vs a bunch of WW1 style great wars that broke out in vicky 3?

Nukes. Fundamentally, that's what HOI4 is about. It's the last, conventional war possible before everyone can just start flinging nukes at each other. It's a ticking clock. The rush before the great equalizers that promise untold destruction to all sides. Whether you are leading a glorious global communist revolution or just rapping the knuckles of some unruly fascists (how dare you turn colonialism inward! uncouth!)

Obviously if you achieve global communism by 1936 there might not be a fun playthrough there. Maybe a reactionary/capitalist uprising to put down, or World War Leftist Infighting.

i've actually thought that if I finish a good run of Vicky 3 and like the result that I might just transfer what I can using the converter and try to make a bunch of focus trees based on my game's historical lead up. Using whatever tools I can find since my modding skills are limited to edits.

Anyone else thought of this as something that sounds really great together? your peanut butter + chocolate?

small addition: this is about converting Vic3 playthrough to HOI4 and playing it as a "long HOI4", not actually combining the games into one system.

basically treated like that by everyone from TNG on.

and everyone still created and appreciated art. shows how this shit could be integrated into FALGSC

you know haha funny 5 person book club, selling papers, marxists.org

but if we are in the "dark age" of leftism currently are they the equivalent of Irish monks copying ancient Marxist texts for safekeeping?

maybe those 5 person book clubs are monastic circles with complex scholarly initiation rites

those papers, well somebody has got to retain the skills to publish physical media

and marxists.org is basically the marxism library of alexandria

(boy's love writers) admit i didn't read the whole article because it seems ridiculous and western reporting on China is like 90% fabrications. someone educate me on whatever this is. is it conservative local governments doing local government shit?

my partner loves this shit especially from China and i don't want to inform her about some made up BS designed to radicalize the slash and yaoi community against the CPC