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[GF3] Tips for higher difficulty settings? Also, batons and Daze? Also, tip @ Rahul. in Geneforge Series
Student of Trinity
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
 written Thursday, March 29 2007 15:40 Profile #2
Getting Rahul's gear was the main push my Guardian needed on Torment. Before that he had quite a hard time with the Vlish on Harmony, and all I can suggest is to hoard speed pods and icy crystals as much as possible until then. Buy all you can, since they're cheap.

Once you get to Rahul and rob his bedroom, it should be clear sailing. I usually don't bother with creations or mental magic as a Guardian, but I can't resist pumping intelligence and blessing magic enough to get Speed. Speed is good. Build the Shroud as early as you can, then upgrade to the Chestguard later. Keep Quick Action high enough that you always act first. With 15 AP not much can go wrong.

Every weapon except crystals takes the same 5 AP to use, so whatever difference you noticed with your two swords, it must have been due to something else.

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We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty.
Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
The U.S. and Iraq in General
Student of Trinity
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
 written Thursday, March 29 2007 13:30 Profile #132
Whether a CS gas grenade counts as a pyrotechnic or not is a fine technical point that can be argued either way, not a matter of the FBI getting caught lying. It is certainly not an incendiary, and is not going to ignite anything that isn't extremely inflammable. So whether or not it's a pyrotechnic isn't at all important.

I got a good whiff of CS once, and I can say that it's not the tears that really bother you, it's the feeling of suffocation. But its effects disappeared pretty quickly once I got out of the cloud. The CS attack on the Koresh compound sounds like an excellent and humane plan to me, and the only way it could have started a deadly fire would be if the place had been doused with fuel from inside.

The stuff about infrared images showing gunfire got me interested enough to dig around. All the claims that the FLIR films showed the FBI firing into the compound were kind of suspicious, because they all repeated exactly the same vague phrases. Then I found site with a lot of detail, including the actual IR images. I find it much more persuasive.

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We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty.
Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
What happened to... *POSSIBLE SPOILERS) in Geneforge 4: Rebellion
Student of Trinity
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
 written Thursday, March 29 2007 02:12 Profile #20
How do we know G5 will be the end? Jeff did speak at one point of G1-3 as the 'first half' of the series, but clearly he could have been rounding. And I could certainly see the plot ending soonish; but I could also see it continuing a bit longer. There might be enough interesting stuff for two games if, for instance, the Sholai came in, or the Shapers splintered into factions. Has Jeff actually said anything about winding it up with one more game?

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We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty.
Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
Chili con quessa-uss in Geneforge 4: Rebellion
Student of Trinity
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
 written Thursday, March 29 2007 02:06 Profile #5
Maybe in G5 we learn that the Shapers torched the Grayghost range, but one mighty eyebeast in a sealed room was overlooked ...

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We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty.
Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
The U.S. and Iraq in General
Student of Trinity
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
 written Thursday, March 29 2007 01:50 Profile #121
Bill Clinton's presidency was a ploy to distract attention from his murder spree; but that's nothing. The American Revolution let George Washington get away with selling watered rum for decades. Lincoln's secret was fake hickory veneer.

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We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty.
Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
Now is the time ... in General
Student of Trinity
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
 written Wednesday, March 28 2007 12:02 Profile #37
Everybody complains about IQ tests and standardized psychiatric tests. They are extremely crude instruments for measuring stuff that nobody remotely understands, and that may very well not even exist in anything like the forms the tests presuppose. The people who design these tests are presumably doing their best under the circumstances, but that best is lousy.

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We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty.
Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
Thou hast not shown thy compassion well. Be more kind unto others! in General
Student of Trinity
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
 written Wednesday, March 28 2007 09:05 Profile #84
[tale of woe]

I actually entered good and early, but my brilliant plan was to ignore ALL secondary amendments, and go for the Basic win. Straight down and up, flat out. Hardly anyone even remembers that it's an option.

Commando watchcap, face blacked, dark clothing: check. Pick and shovel, check. Spare shovel blades: twelve, all sharp. And since there's no restriction on backpack items: sawbacked carpenter's rule, 10 kilo Toblerone bar, blowtorch, and big bundle of laser pointers jammed in a rubber band and piped into a single mode fiber (the good ol' 'Poor Man's Death Star'). So I started digging.

Yeah, the blowtorch had to go on the rats. Duh. But hindsight is 20/20, okay? I claim no originality in cutting through the shotcrete with the laser pack, but I am rather proud of how well the chocolate shavings worked. I'll explain my trick later, if no-one can figure it out.

Well, it was as tough as usual, but with only one tourniquet, and two shovel blades not even touched yet, my pick swung up (from below of course) into the blinding green lights (thanks to the II goggles) of Mornington Crescent station.

And as I drew breath for a victory whoop, I realized I had lost my hat.

I have no idea where. Really none.

So I'm scratched, and if anybody sees me hugging the tunnel walls on the Circle Line, torching rats and shining laser pointers into any hole where my hat might be, don't even wave. I'm too disgusted.

[/tale of woe]

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We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty.
Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
Something I never understood in Geneforge 4: Rebellion
Student of Trinity
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
 written Tuesday, March 27 2007 11:15 Profile #19
quote:
Originally written by Sir Spiff:

I always thought Glaahks were supposed to double as mounts. They look ridable to me.
But think of their attack routine.

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We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty.
Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
What a long strange trip... in General
Student of Trinity
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
 written Tuesday, March 27 2007 09:13 Profile #27
To be fair, the towering beast of toxic slime that he grew from a few amino acids didn't even do much damage. The problem was that it sued him.

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We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty.
Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
Geneforge 5: Improvements, Innovations etc in Geneforge 4: Rebellion
Student of Trinity
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
 written Monday, March 26 2007 13:22 Profile #69
quote:
Originally written by Thuryl:

The core problem of AI design is that while easy combat and difficult combat are both trivial to design, the true goal is to make combat that feels harder than it actually is, and that involves at least as much manipulation of human intelligence as of machine intelligence. Continually tricking the average player into believing he has made extraordinary accomplishments is no mean feat.
Ha! That's focusing the problem very nicely, and it's much more interesting than the problem of balancing battle creations.

I can think of two basic things the AI has to do to accomplish its true goal of making the player feel smart.

1) Don't do things that are obviously dumb.

2) Do things that are obviously not dumb.

1) is essentially a debugging task, but no doubt it's hard. It probably hits the frame problem.

2) is just a matter of doing a bunch of different things, all of which have some obvious tactical purpose. Ostentatiously put ranged creations behind barriers, spring ambushes, send a guy running off for help. Every Avernum fort with archers behind windows makes me feel smart.

Doing things that are actually smart is not the point. But sometimes you do want to have an adversary that is supposed to be very intelligent, and then you somehow have to make them do things that do look brilliant, without auto-killing the party.

My favorite realization of fake brilliance is Adam Cadre's IF masterpiece, Varicella, in which the ultimate fake genius is the PC. Varicella is iterature: you die your way to outwitting clever opponents with a complex plan. In a Spiderweb game, perhaps a tree of death messages could guide an average player towards thwarting a brilliant enemy. But that might still be too disheartening to be popular.

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We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty.
Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
Now is the time ... in General
Student of Trinity
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
 written Monday, March 26 2007 12:37 Profile #0
... for all good political scientists to explain to us what political parties are all about.

Why do we have parties? What do they do? Why do we have the numbers of them that we do? What makes them grow or die?

I don't think any constitutions define explicit roles for political parties. Even the Soviet constitution was vague in stipulating the 'leading' role of the Communist Party. The American Constitution was drafted in hopes that no political parties would ever form. In parliamentary systems, the head of state is generally free in principle to appoint anyone to head the government. It is the requirement that the government retain the confidence of the legislature that makes it impractical to appoint anyone but the leader of a legislative party.

As far as I can see, formation of parties is a natural process that follows from the principle of majority rule. If I vote alone, I will probably not command a majority on any topic, and nothing I want will come to pass. But if enough people can agree on a compromise platform, they may be able to get it approved.

Clearly there is a tendency for people to support larger parties, and for smaller parties to merge, since that increases the chance of achieving things by force of majority vote. As a party approaches majority size, its incentive to compromise to bring in more members grows sharply; but once it achieves majority size, that incentive quickly drops. So a super-majority party is bound to fragment. A pair of nearly equal parties, jostling fiercely for narrow majorities by courting the swing vote, seems like the most stable situation.

Most democracies do seem to possess two major parties. But most do also have some minor parties, which are able to win concessions from major parties in return for supporting them.

And it is only at this point that the real question of political parties seems to be raised. All the members of any single party are presumably winning concessions from the other party members, in return for supporting them. So just what is the real difference between a minor party which supports a major party temporarily, and a political wing within a party?

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We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty.
Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
The U.S. and Iraq in General
Student of Trinity
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
 written Monday, March 26 2007 11:56 Profile #87
quote:
Originally written by Alex:

A majority of the party leadership isn't necessarily the same as the majority of the voters. Would you say the same about a one-party system?
The crucial thing about having more than one serious party is that every party's leadership has to care about winning elections. The party leadership that follows the majority of the voters gets to run the country; a party leadership that misses this loses even the party leadership.
quote:

Voters can swing to sufficiently popular platforms, too, at least this has happened in other democracies. I appreciate your realism, but "disdain for democracy" is a bit too much.
Again, the point is that if you're really going to sway a majority of the whole population, then on the way you're first going to sway a majority of one party. So people who refuse to take this seriously as an intermediate goal must either not be serious about their goals, or not be serious about the requirement to convince a majority of people in order to achieve them.

Note that I'm by no means convinced that a strictly two-party system is the only way to run a democracy. It's probably some kind of consequence of the American constitution, with its separate legislature and executive. Parliamentary systems generally tend to have two major parties plus some minor parties that never form governments, but periodically share power in coalitions. I'm just saying that, given the way the American system works, I don't see any good reason not to work within that system.

I'm kind of getting interested, actually, in just what parties do in democracies. I think I'll start a separate thread about this.

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We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty.
Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
Range of Experience in Richard White Games
Student of Trinity
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
 written Monday, March 26 2007 06:12 Profile #24
quote:
Originally written by Drew:

... glutting yourself on the body and blood of a diety ...
At least you'll lose weight.

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We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty.
Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
The U.S. and Iraq in General
Student of Trinity
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
 written Monday, March 26 2007 02:17 Profile #80
quote:
Originally written by Excalibur:

I wonder how long these boards will actually last.
When Vlish conquer the earth, these boards will be preserved forever as holy writ. This very message will be cited frequently in explanation. These last sentences will support the institution, as fulfilled prophecies.

There. It feels good to have gotten in another shot at immortality, even if it's a bit of a long one.

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We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty.
Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
Where You At Now? in General
Student of Trinity
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
 written Monday, March 26 2007 02:08 Profile #72
quote:
Originally written by saunders:

...
Worked, married, had 3 children, worked
PhD in mathematics education
Worked
Stopped working to cope with high maintenance family.
Please ignore the question if you don't want to talk about it, but how do you feel about that last item? My wife and I are both still working, and our daughter is very low maintenance as five year olds go, but that's not really all that low, and our careers are rather high maintenance. I don't think we're really thinking of changing anything soon, but we're definitely thinking about the issues.

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We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty.
Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
Member numbers in General
Student of Trinity
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
 written Sunday, March 25 2007 22:19 Profile #33
There was some news story on the web about Titanic's tenth anniversary, and I said, Yikes. It has always been that recent big movie that I never saw, and now it's that old big movie that I never saw.

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We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty.
Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
Where You At Now? in General
Student of Trinity
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
 written Sunday, March 25 2007 22:14 Profile #71
Good luck, Schrodinger.

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We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty.
Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
Member numbers in General
Student of Trinity
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
 written Sunday, March 25 2007 11:56 Profile #0
I suddenly realized that people have member numbers in the 8000's now. How does that happen? I also suddenly realized that Titanic was ten years ago, so this could just be me getting old. But there is no way that much more than 500 new people have come through here in any visible way in my time.

Do thousands of people really bother to register here, but never post? Or is it mostly bots?

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We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty.
Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
Why were these game decisions made? in Geneforge Series
Student of Trinity
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
 written Sunday, March 25 2007 07:43 Profile #15
Jeff's fan base consists largely of kids who just want to bash sprites, plus a few perfectionists whose demands would put him out of business. He listens to it just enough to stay in business, and that's all I think we can expect.

Likewise for editing his scripts. As a beta tester, I have hassled Jeff plenty over things I think could be improved easily. But at the end of the day, I'm just an armchair game designer, and he's the guy with the real world track record. I'd actually rather he acted by his own lights, since it's his assets on the line, and he's more likely than me to keep Spiderweb afloat for future games. If my own ideas are so great, it's a free internet; I can always start my own shareware game company.

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We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty.
Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
Geneforge 5 in Geneforge Series
Student of Trinity
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
 written Sunday, March 25 2007 07:28 Profile #5
2100 is only plausible if Jeff becomes a crystal soul.

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We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty.
Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
Why were these game decisions made? in Geneforge Series
Student of Trinity
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
 written Saturday, March 24 2007 13:44 Profile #9
What exactly is wrong with the G3 FAQ? I have no proprietary interest in it. It's just that I've used it, and I think it's fine.

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We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty.
Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
The U.S. and Iraq in General
Student of Trinity
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
 written Saturday, March 24 2007 04:53 Profile #63
quote:
Originally written by Excalibur:

The problem with this system used in America, is that only Democrats and Republicans are likely to win presidential elections.
But this is just the point: if a Libertarian has some policies they want to enact, they are perfectly free to persuade a majority of either Democrats or Republicans that the policies are good, and bingo, their ideas are in the platform of one of the two major parties.

A third party member who complains about having no chances beyond running a distant third is someone who admits they can't persuade half of the people, but still thinks they could persuade all the people if they only had a chance.

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We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty.
Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
Carcassonne, Caylus, and Catan in General
Student of Trinity
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
 written Saturday, March 24 2007 00:57 Profile #0
These three boardgames are very popular in my family, and in a lot of others, especially in Germany. They're all ingenious strategy games, with simple rules but a wide range of balanced but divergent strategies.

Their rules are simple enough, in fact, that the games could be given almost any theme or setting. But they are all cast as 'development' games in medieval or perhaps renaissance Europe (or in the case of Catan, a small hexagonal island being colonized in European style). And this flavor seems to fit well with the games' mechanics. No doubt the medieval development themes were established very early in the game design processes, and inspired much of them.

But could it be that much of the appeal of these games comes directly from their setting? Is their popularity a symptom of nostalgia for a period when building more stuff was not merely permissible, but unquestionably good?

Humans may well possess evolved instincts for building and expanding. Certainly our cultures have grown over millennia of struggling to build cities and produce goods. Then two giddy centuries of industrialization took us from the plow to the moon, and suddenly the music changed. Recent generations have grown up with energy crises, pollution crises, and climate crises, in steady succession, for the past thirty years. By now it must be sinking into our souls, somehow, that these are not just a series of isolated technical challenges. The collective unconscious is absorbing the awful news that growth isn't good anymore.

At this point my academic instincts to present two sides to everything have kicked in, and I have thought of an alternative, optimistic interpretation of all of this. But I'll wait and see if anyone else has comments first.

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We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty.
Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
the finest games in town in General
Student of Trinity
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
 written Friday, March 23 2007 14:30 Profile #24
I found KoL fun, too, for a while, but the ultimate joke of it seems to be that it reproduces grinding. Which is also funny, I guess, but the punchline is too long. After my tenth barbecue team, my enthusiasm waned.

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We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty.
Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
About special skills (lethal blow etc.) in Avernum 4
Student of Trinity
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
 written Friday, March 23 2007 12:31 Profile #6
BladeOrPoleIt'sAllTheSameToALivingWeaponLikeMeMaster was too long to fit on the panel.

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We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty.
Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00

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