I conclude that scheming is a disturbingly plausible outcome of using baseline machine learning methods to train goal-directed AIs sophisticated enough to scheme (my subjective probability on such an outcome, given these conditions, is ~25%).
Out: vibes and guesswork
In: "subjective probability"
I felt the exact same way about the conversation you mentioned. I really liked the idea of the quest, but way they handled it just utterly drained all the stakes. And as you noted, it's weird to see a misstep like this after they nailed it once in Sumeru.
You get medals and requisition points from playing that you can use to unlock new stratagems, which includes everything from weapons to orbital bombardment. Medals get you new weapons, cosmetics, etc. You also find samples you can collect on missions, and these unlock permanent upgrades for stratagems. There are player levels, but these just unlock new titles once you get past the basics.
The battle pass equivalent is Warbonds, which include new weapons, armor, cosmetics, etc. Unlike most games, warbonds don't expire and you can find enough premium currency while playing to get them without too much trouble.
On the whole, new warbond weapons tend to be different rather than obvious upgrades. The default assault rifle you get stays perfectly viable throughout the game.
All I really know is shoot bug and if you aren’t getting friendly fired to hell and back you’re playing wrong
You've pretty much got it down, though you also shoot terminators.
If they're really lucky, they'll end up working for the Laundry only once. Residual Human Resources is a bad way to go out.
Charles Stross' Laundry series is basically this concept set in the present day: magic is a branch of mathematics, which means it can be computed and programmed.
It is perhaps worth noting at this point the series genre is cosmic horror.
FWIW, the shield backpack and either AMR or Quasar/EAT have served me well against bots, but I typically run light armor. I bring the grenade pistol to handle factories.
If you aren't already using it, there's never been a better time to get into the AMR now that they buffed the damage and finally zeroed in the scope.
Orbital stratagem timings make no sense, and are strictly a gameplay balance issue that *cannot* be realistic: the loading screen shows the first helldiver drops well outside the atmosphere and take several minutes to reach the ground, but turrets take 3 seconds to deploy?
I assumed this was because equipment can endure acceleration that would make a person pass out, or at least be combat-ineffective on landing. A trip from the Karman line to the ground in a few seconds would involve some deeply unpleasant G-forces...in opposite directions, back-to-back.
Come to think of it, this might explain why different gear has different call down times, as more fragile stuff might require a slower and (relatively) gentler drop.
Rockets seem more useful to me, since I can't count on tanks going where I want.
On the other hand, if the IRL combat footage videos are any indication, there might be black comedy potential with the AT mines I'm overlooking.
I'll preface this by noting that the sin of sloth has traditionally been understood to be a sin of omission, not just commission, i.e., you are insufficiently devoted to the things you ought to be.
Which means you could, in theory, have a (reflavored tiefling) devil paladin so devoted to sloth he works against evil causes. He's not interested in good per se, it's just that advancing the interests of good and traveling with a good adventuring party has the best ROI for failing to carry out his evil responsibilities.
Naturally, this has caused a fair amount of controversy among sloth devils, and there is a multi-century trial going on in the Hells about whether this ought to be allowed. This is not expected to be resolved in the foreseeable future because the advocates for both parties keep filing their responses well after petition deadlines expire.
Oof, I definitely did that once or twice.
It really does seem like they decided to bring this sequence up to introduce settlement building and power armor early. I get why they did it, but man, I do not think it ultimately has the effect they wanted.
Even if falling doesn't result in a complete kill, it would be neat if it at least resulted in a mobility kill. That has to be hard on the tracks.
I think video art and art commentary is great, but lumping it all in here would make this place less interesting to me. I'm also not sure anyone looking for video art would think to look here for it. Maybe having periodic threads to post commentary or non-image art could be a good compromise?
I acknowledge that's somewhat arbitrary, but I don't think we can ever eliminate that entirely where art is concerned.
Maybe a controversial suggestion, but my advice is to ignore the Minutemen stuff until late in the game. Just don't even go to the museum until you've followed some leads and want something else to do for a bit.
This is definitely not the intended way to play, but I promise the story flows so much better without it. Setting out to find your kidnapped son just to immediately get sidetracked helping some uncharismatic misfits set up mattresses is just an underwhelming start to an otherwise decent game.
Doing all this stuff later on, when you've actually demonstrated you're a badass survivor and the OP gear you get free from the Minutemen quest actually feels earned, just feels much smoother. It's a great coda that they unf put two minutes into the game for some reason.
It's safe to say it's better, though I couldn't tell you if it's actually fun yet. For one thing, they've moved away from some of the wackiest design decisions, like the lack of NPCs.
Spotlights on photographers or projects would be really cool, though I know they're a lot more work. It's really interesting seeing how someone works and how they came to see a particular photo where someone else wouldn't have.
I'm always pumped when an article titled "Beast/Monster of <location>" is an actual cryptid and not just the nickname for a serial killer. This is way more interesting!
I'd really like that. Enriching posts with this kind of metadata is what sets this apart from just a Google Image search, IMO.
Like you said, it's important context, and it's really helpful to have when I want to learn more about an artist or image. I'm way more likely to revisit something if I have more than just a title or author to go on, especially since traditional art isn't guaranteed to be online or easily researchable.
While the adulteration surely didn't help, I don't think I'd trust pure milk from these cows, either:
Swill milk dairies were noted for their filthy conditions and overpowering stench both caused by the close confinement of hundreds (sometimes thousands) of cows in narrow stalls where, once they were tied, they would stay for the rest of their lives, often standing in their own manure, covered with flies and sores, and suffering from a range of virulent diseases. These cows were fed boiling distillery waste, often leaving the cows with rotting teeth and other maladies.