it's pretty wild how arbitrary the shape of a gun is. this almost reminds me of those soviet ROKS-2 flamethrowers that were designed to look like a normal rifle and a normal backpack so they didn't get prioritized as targets

but i don't think this SMG is intentionally deceptive as much as just early in SMG development before they decided on optimal form factors, a lot of early SMGs just look like rifles with magazines sticking out the bottom or side afaik

(not that it matters or proves anything in a singleplayer game but) countless stalkers lie as smouldering wreckage in the wake of my MW5 Battlemaster squad with all rear armor reduced to 10 and all other armor maxed out. if nothing else the snail pace max speed makes piloting the stalker painful imo. i tried DPS builds for so long before just armormaxxing, now i literally never even lose a single point of structural limb damage on any mech any more, just armor damage to be cheaply repaired. if you play smart nothing will get behind you long enough to pierce the 10 armor points and the consistent quad M lasers + dual L arm MGs + SRM6 (sometimes SRM4 with more ammo) + occasional melee attack (i love that they added mech punching in a free update with their paid DLCs that introduced melee weapons) with plenty of ammo and heat sinks has been enough to shred enemy forces with much more tonnage than my unit. i even deploy overtonnage on easier missions and eat the deployment cost increase because i never get damaged enough to need expensive repairs or replacement weapons/ammo/mechs. as much as i like PPCs aesthetically and conceptually, every time i tried a mech with a PPC i was overheating constantly or agonizing over lethargic cooldowns during climactic fights, unless i removed most armor and weapons to put in heat sinks. the cooldown for PPCs is already so slow without having to take a 30 second break every time i get into a real fight. larger autocannons i kept running out of ammo and never had enough weight for the armor, ammo, weapons, and heat sinks i needed, and unless you use an ultra autocannon and risk jamming it, they have cooldowns just about as slow as the PPC, and are very unsatisfying to use. i wish they were all automatic like real-world autocannons, i hate the slow tank-cannon style loading times. the Banshee worked out decently but they are just so much uglier than a Battlemaster imo and not that much less time to kill against enemy mechs. I think i do better with beam weapons usually in MW5, i can kind of guide the aim-assist to specifically target the cockpit window for insta-kills with lasers, i'm often surprised when nothing but my chainfiring quad short burst M Lasers gets a bizarrely fast kill on an enemy Awesome or Mauler or Atlas, while with autocannons or LRMs i can never seem to consistently hit the same place, with the damage getting spread around multiple body parts and sets of armor and HP.

edit: also it might be 'cheating' but i play with the optional FPS-style controls instead of the default classic tank style controls, it doesn't make sense to me to have a bipedal robot that can't easily strafe and handles identically to a very tall tank. idk exactly how that might break the default enemy AI, it definitely makes juking back and forth to avoid damage easier tho.

the Atlas is basically too slow (48 km/h or so) to be useful in mechwarrior 5 imo, you get better performance if you take a Battlemaster (about 64 km/h) and move all its rear armor to the front. set the 4 medium lasers in the chest to chainfire instead of all at once and you will have excellent damage output without a risk of overheating, while your left arm MGs blast away with negligible heat buildup and your shoulder SRM can be saved to finish off damaged enemies. (LRMs are heavy and useless against lighter/faster enemies since they will close to within your minimum range, they don't even do great damage ime at their optimal range unless your entire AI squad is LRM carriers and you are their spotter)

also i hate the transparent cockpit designs on battletech mechs, they should either have remote operated camera pods or tank-style periscopes unless they are particularly lightweight imo. the setting makes the mechs out to be ancient storied machines that no one knows how to build anymore, passed down through generations of space feudalism and kept barely functional, but they all look like freshly mass produced clean 1980's angular space robots. they should have like clan banners and family names and engravings and retrofit low-tech parts and stuff if the lore is meant to be at all meaningful.

i can't watch the video thru this link but from what i gather its like the boston dynamics robodog but with wheels for feet. adding wheels to robot legs is probably the Coolest design choice possible. it's ingenious really, you need something to be the 'foot', and that something might as well have built-in shock absorption and also spin to provide a traversal option that circumvents the major disadvantage of legged vehicles, speed on flat ground, without removing the capacity to use the legs to traverse more complicated terrain. skating quadruped robots might even handle terrain at speed that a car or traditional UGV might not ever be able to handle, using the agility provided by legs to position wheels. i want my car to be an oversized one of these so badly. i can't wait until someone makes a useable larger bipedal version of this, make my skating mecha dreams come true!

frankly tho i would just put the wheels on the main chassis separate from the legs for simplicity's sake, used with legs folded more like a traditional wheeled craft, so the wheels are still useable if the legs break and you don't have to put electric motors or wiring or whatever in inconvenient places through the legs. it would lose a little agility without 'mech skating' but i think it might be worth it for reliability/ease of manufacture/repair.

it is a 'design' that spits in the face of aero-and hydro- dynamics, it invokes the wrath of the very elements if not the gods themselves. it is not 'designed' as much as 'not designed' as in: 'the cybertruck is not designed to withstand a pressure washing' or 'the cybertruck is not designed to be safely handled by unprotected human hands' or 'the cybertruck is not designed to cross even shallow water without failing'

there hasn't been any snow yet where i live

ponchos, loose jumpsuits with lots of pockets, and sci fi helmet + flowing robe combos will all be the future of fashion.

crossbows were more likely to be wholly owned by the local lord/baron and given out during wartime and taken back after, while longbows were relatively commonly available (if not exactly cheap or easy to make) civillian hunting tools as well as weapons of war. crossbows are the rich lord's peasant levy weapon of choice since it leaves the peasants disarmed afterwards as the crossbows are too expensive (difficult to manufacture metal crank parts etc. compared to 'self bows' like the english longbow that can be made entirely out of one piece of wood with a little experience with curing) to not take back after issuing. plus, since crossbows are simpler to use and require less training, the lords would invest less in military training for their civilians/militias, leaving the more vulnerable to military domination when they didn't have their lord's crossbows in hand, whereas many places encouraged longbow practice and military tradition to ensure they had enough bowmen should they need them for war, creating a decentralized military power base and cultural attitude of resilience and self-reliance among the populace. crossbows were a way to centralize military power in the hands of the aristocracy, not some kind of proletarian worker's weapon of choice (which was probably either a staff, a club, a repurposed woodcutting axe, an improvised spear, or a simple hunting bow). there were exceptions to this general trend like the Taborites (who were a peasant indurgency that was famous for using crossbows, murray bookchin claims they were a kind of proto-anarcho-communism), especially in places without bow traditions (mainland europe for example) and as time went on and political power in general became more centralized (in places with longer traditions of centralized power, china for example, the crossbow was more common due to more standardized 'state armies' compared to ad-hoc european feudal militias). its kind of like early factories, sure there might be nothing inherently and essentially wrong with the centralization of production itself, but the way it was used historically was at the behest of and for the benefit of the ruling classes. for example, the prominence of crossbows in continental Europe (they abhorred missile weapons compared to many other cultures, bow training had to be forced by decree after military experience proved this to be disastrous) is almost solely due to Italian city states (such as Genoa) mustering entire platoons of only crossbowmen that they would hire out as mecenaries. Crossbowmen often were paid double that of an archer, even though the bow took more training. think about why that might have been if they are supposedly the 'weapon of the people'

being bad at things we enjoy is existentially invalidating despite the lack of 'real stakes'. it's like having receding hairline, like obviously it's toxic AF to judge someone in a moral/ethical sense for balding, but as someone who is losing their hair it makes you feel like something is fundamentally 'inferior' about you compared to those who are not. you see people that have what you always wanted to have with no effort, they seem like they are just intuitively, instinctually, effortlessly 'better than you'. one of my best friends has always been effortlessly good at FPS games like that, constantly getting ridiculous scores like 100 kills to 17 deaths in short fast paced multiplayer games like call of duty, and its like they don't even play more than me, they haven't been doing it as long as me, i put in at least as much effort if not more so to win, but i can never even approach that level of skill. my K:D ratio is constantly negative, i can hardly ever break even let alone go 3:2 with 100 kills in less than 7 minutes. my thumbs are simply not that dextrous on the controller joysticks and never will be. it makes me feel like my existence is invalidated, that i was stupid for being interested in the things that i enjoyed doing and the games i enjoy playing, that my life is a waste of time that will only end in meaningless failure. i don't think its even 'irrational' as much as it is 'overly rational' in the sense of nihilistic naturalistic fallacy vulgar materialism. it's objectively better to win than to lose, 'self improvement' doesn't matter if you can't achieve it no matter how much effort an analysis you put into it. i don't lose in FPS games due to tactical mistakes, they are simply all faster at aiming than me because i am in my mid 30's and they are younger and have more efficiently functioning nervous systems. I am physically, objectively worse than them in a very real if limited and low stakes sense, and regardless of the fact that it is 'not an important arena' it is existentially invalidating in the sense that we all want to be the Effortless Beautiful Chosen Hero that succeeds inevitably and instinctually. failure reminds us that we 'are not special', that we have no special talent or skill that makes us unique, that the universe does not care about our success or failure any more than any other random chaotic physics event, that we are just another blank, bland NPC in the background of the rich beautiful successful people's lives and we will never be like them no matter how hard we work or try because the deterministic chain of causality just did not work out that way for us and its too late to do anything about it.

semi-optimism edit: in terms of actually successfully dealing with these kinds of thoughts, i just honestly ask myself if i really want to live/have lived the way it would take to acquire whatever skill i lack. sure, i might be jealous of the victor's success in the moment, but am i really jealous of the way they had to live to train hard enough to get that good? am i really jealous of the hours a day spent trying and failing over and over until improvement? would i rather have spent my time playing nothing but a single multiplayer game until i completely mastered it instead of experiencing a diverse array of different games? do i even want to have the same level of memorized map knowledge that renders a thrilling diegetic experience into a context-free standardized 'playing field'? do i really wish i spent all of my earlier years learning how to draw better or how to do complicated maths or program computers etc. instead of chilling and playing video games and having what scant few social experiences i could manage and studying a larger set of topics and hobbies? the answer to these questions is usually: not really. i might wish to retroactively spend my time on say, pursuing meaningful romantic relationshps instead of whatever i ended up actually doing, but not on 'more call of duty/halo/etc.'.

i think 'psychological horror' has to touch on less literal or obvious or physical threats to focus on the existential implications of whatever horror phenomena. even if there is a literal physical threat like in silent hill, the themes focus on things like the fallibility of perception and epistemological uncertainty about what is going on. you don't just fight monsters in a silent hill game, you fight the environment, you fight your own character's perception of reality, mostly safe abandoned rooms transform into rusty bloodsoaked horror dungeons, the people around you are often untrustworthy and just as dangerous as the monsters, no one knows why any of this happened in the first place and there really isn't a coherent scientific explanation.

compare the above example of silent hill to something like Resident Evil or the film Dawn of the Dead. Both resident evil and dawn of the dead do use their settings and lore to address more fundamental issues, but this is only via metaphor, and usually points to something less existential and more sociological or political. RE and DotD both have more or less scientifically plausible 'zombies', that the characters more or less understand as a mundane physical threat like a natural disaster or a terrorist attack. the existence of the horror elements may cause them to question society (consumerism in DotD, rampant military-industrial complex corruption/dysregulation/corporate terrorism in RE) but not reality or their own minds. its more of a sci-fi intrigue or a post-apocalypse scenario than a mind bending psychedelic terror experience.

i don't think i have enough kkkash to leave and even if i did i depend on weed to keep myself sane and can't get a job and don't speak anything but english so i don't think there are any options that are any better than amerikkka. i would 'organize' but i am a material/labor/morale burden on anyone around me, normal people don't want to talk to large adult visibly neurodivergent failpersons with resting face. there is no option other than further alienation and isolation and self-censorship (or futile adventurism) in this cursed hellscape for someone like me, but that was true before this election as well.

i actually sanded the pieces to a model kit before assembly for the first time today. there were a few places i was sure i over-sanded but the parts seem to fit together perfectly regardless. the next skill i need to master is using capillary action to apply extra thin plastic cement, i saw a youtube video of a guy just holding pieces together and painting glue on the outside of the seam almost like a welding gun and was super impressed, it looked way easier than applying glue to one part at a time and rushing to put them together before it dries, and i appreciate when a modelling technique kind of resembles a real world construction technique, like using a pin vise to drill holes to attach other parts, makes me feel like a giant soviet propaganda poster industrial laborer . i also need to learn how to use gap fill material on all the models i have botched with lack of proper equipment/technique, or else i'll be tempted to risk breaking them trying to dissasemble for maintenance.

hell yea heavy metal guitar noises

i think you are correct, google images says the following are MICLIC carrying vehicles and they look very similar.

i've heard of MICLICs ('MIne Clearing LInear Charges' for those not problematically obsessed with tools of war, a bunch of explosives attached in a line for clearing paths through minefields) before but have never seen how they are carried or deployed, it's especially interesting how it seems like the MICLIC tubes are inside of the 'turret' hull, underneath what i presume are at least lightly armored panels that fold out. I would usually expect something like that to be mounted on the outside of a vehicle in a tube or something (like a TOW launcher would be on the side of a Bradley turret in an external box). I wonder if the charges are particularly volatile or susceptible to incidental detonation or something.

bonus sci fi pic - this fashionable lad also carries a MICLIC tube!

I don't agree with that. I don't see what's impossible about understanding consciousness as an emergent property of matter in the same way that many individual ants collectively bring feats that you can't explain looking at a single ant.

the problem is that every ant in the ant colony is ostensibly a purely physical phenomena (at least, we usually do not concern ourselves with the ant's subjective experience as much as their information processing capabilities - we watch their movement, monitor pheromones and chemical signals, note the structure and changes to their nest, etc., all very physical and mutually compatible ideas), whereas something like the concept of subjectivity is entirely incompatible with our ideas about physics. you can do 'information processing' without subjectivity very efficiently, as with any calculator or computer, so subjectivity seems entirely superfluous in the sense of a purely physical explanation.

The fact that we haven't gotten there just yet doesn't mean it can't be done, or that biology is completely independent from physics and/or psychology completely independent from biology.

you have to prove something is true before you believe it, assuming 'we will figure it out later with no significant modifications to our theory' is intellectual laziness/unsound epistemology. no one is saying that biology is completely independent from physics or that psychology is completely independent from biology, i am only saying that our understanding of such topics are far from a unified 'theory of everything' and are therefore incomplete in a non-trivial way at best, and fundamentally flawed or incorrect at worst. obviously the subjective component of human consciousness is somehow related to brain function, we can prove and accept this empirically without any kind of metaphysical claims or assumptions tacked on. obviously physics isn't completely BS, it helps us solve a lot of problems. but at the same time, we cannot fully explain (i.e. reduce, hence why i am arguing against 'reductivist physicalist realism' and not non-reductivist versions of physicalist realism such as the one you seem to espouse) psychology in terms of atoms and their locations and velocities and mass without losing information. the fact that you believe in 'emergent processes' itself means you are likely not a 'reductivist' physicalist realist like i am arguing against.

I just don't see how from "we don't understand consciousness" it follows "therefore it can't possibly be explained with physics in the way we understand physics".

usually when a theory fails to account for a phenomena, it is assumed to be flawed or incomplete somehow, and the significant explanatory gap for subjectivity in physics and information processing (what information processing algorithm produces a first-person experience? is there a fundamental particle or wave of subjectivity, a 'subjectron'?) would seem to imply a non-trivial incompleteness or flaw.

i don't think i'm confusing anything, for further clarification i am specifically arguing that reductivist physicalist realism - the belief that all of reality including consciousness can be 'reduced to' or entirely explained in terms of our current understanding of physics or a trivially modified version of it - a relatively common belief among 'reddit atheists' (see 'love is just chemicals' trope, 'meat computer' ideas, etc.) - entirely precludes the possibility of any kind of subjectivity whatsoever as an inherent logical consequence of its base assumptions. A mostly unmodified version of our current understanding of physics or information processing has no explanation for things like 'subjectivity' or 'consciousness' at a fundamental level, and therefore any worldview that would explain such phenomena in terms of physics will necessarily fail to account for, or erroneously posit the lack of existence of, such characteristics ('consciousness is an illusion'). kind of like the difficulty of finding a coherent way to unify quantum physics and 'macro' physics into a single 'theory of everything', the ideas in use are more or less incompatible - you can't really 'reduce' a thrown baseball and explain it purely in terms of quantum physics without losing important information, even though quantum physics is smaller scale/more 'fundamental' to macro phenomena.

i am a militant agnostic. i don't know if there is a god, and neither do you. its crazy to me to fully believe in any specific spiritual lore without like direct personal experience, like maybe there is 'a god' but maybe its completely inhuman and incomprehensible, maybe its a giant fish, maybe its mind is composed of the EM activity of stars, idfk why people assume our language or our thought could capture something like that, if it even exists. believing that there is Definitely No God or Anything Else Humans Don't/Can't Understand seems epistemologically invalid. like yeah, i'm not going to decide how to live my life based on some bronze age account of some Sky Warlord who wants me to sacrifice my children and cut off parts of my penis and beat my slaves and never do anything thats Too Fun, idfk why people would assume bronze age patriarchical slave-owning mysoginists would have the FInal Say on stuff like that, but i'm also not going to just assume that reality is completely pointless and that we are all meaningless meat computers waiting for our homeostatic processes to fizzle out. I agree with 'materialism' in the sense that i think there are parts of reality that are outside my personal mind, but strict physicalist realism is metaphysically and existentially and semiotically barren as an ideology, why should i care if i or anyone else has healthcare/rights/life if our existence is pointless nonsense, lifeless particles knocking into each other deterministically, human consciousness an evolutionary spandrel, an information-processing fluke that only makes us suffer from our knowledge of the universe's meaninglessness. I have to believe that there might possibly be some reason for me to keep collecting new experiences or i would simply stop. i have to believe that , under better conditions such as communism, humans could spend more time on the questions and ideas that matter on a more fundamental level, instead of constantly struggling just to physically survive, and that there might be semiotically interesting paradigms to discover. i have to believe that conscious experience matters, or should matter, to me, that there really is something that differentiates living thinking beings from lifeless particles and the unconscious information processing of a calculator. otherwise there is nothing to distinguish humanity from a cancerous growth or mold, if 'nothing' is the beginning and the end i'd rather just cut out the middleman and get back to it and save myself and everyone else a whole heck of a lot of trouble and misery.

i am willing to defect to the aliens, especially if they let me pilot an alien mecha against the imperialists

SERIOUSLY! i read the lore entries in-game and almost every single thing they mentioned about the Hegemony was incredibly based despite being presented as some unspeakable orwellian evil lmao. like way more lines saying stuff like 'hegemony citizens all get healthcare and food and housing' than the bad stuff like 'they are ruled by a class of orphan oligarchs'.

death to all IP lawyers. modern games are all fortnite clone over-the-shoulder battle royale microtransaction games, even single player games have microtransactions and locked over-the-right-shoulder cameras. every time i see a new game i have to temper my excitement until i see gameplay footage to check if it has that godawful fortnite locked-to-the-right-shoulder camera perspective, which they almost always do. all 3rd person games should either have centered cameras or the ability to switch which side the camera is on so i can aim around cover to the left sometimes instead of always moving right or having the disadvantage against those who can.

i hate modern gaming, i'm going to go play Terra Nova: Strike Force Centauri (the Terran Hegemony did nothing wrong)