Profile for Student of Trinity
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Displayed name | Student of Trinity |
| Member number | 3431 |
| Title | Electric Sheep One |
| Postcount | 3335 |
| Homepage | |
| Registered | Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
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| Author | Recent posts |
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| the finest games in town in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Friday, March 23 2007 12:23
Profile
quote:Grinding is fun? -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| What's in the hintbooks? in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Friday, March 23 2007 12:20
Profile
The G3 Gamefaqs FAQ was compiled by Schrodinger, with input from the whole 'first generation' of players on these boards. It may be short, but I think it's actually pretty thorough. It isn't absolutely complete. For instance it lists only one location for a couple of artifact components that I'm sure appear in two places. And it won't generally tell you exactly where some object is on a given map, unless it's in some particularly tricky place. But if you're like me, you don't want to play the game with one finger following along in the cookbook; you just want to be sure you don't miss anything interesting. And I think the Schrodinger FAQ is good for this. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Splitclaw in Geneforge Series | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Friday, March 23 2007 01:46
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I seem to remember that I was able to kill Splitclaw, after locking Hoge in his bedroom or something like that. But this made everything in the school hostile to me, including the servant mind, so I decided it was not a thing to do. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Are Drakons superior beings? in Geneforge 4: Rebellion | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Thursday, March 22 2007 23:03
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FWIW my quick read of this debate is that both sides have made good points, but have gotten too frustrated with each other to acknowledge it. I think the problem is that 'superior' is ill-defined. It's like looking at two trees, one tall and spindly, one round and bushy, and asking which one is bigger. In some respects drakons obviously are 'superior'. Physically, for instance. In others they are obviously inferior. They have much less history, for example; their entire present society is mostly younger than Ghaldring, and their Taker precursors go back no more than a century or so. Their population is also clearly much smaller than that of humans. I don't think the games provide enough information to assess this question in any kind of generality. A new, small culture of humans, formed and continuing in a war of extermination, would have many of the limitations we see in the drakons' culture. I suspect that, because in this war the drakons' main weapon has been the reshaping of their race for military supremacy, drakons may well be more narrowly and rigidly specialized than humans. They may excel in violence, and be doomed to lag in other areas. If this turns out to be true, it will be a situation poorly summarized by calling either side 'superior'; and at present the games do not prove or disprove this specialization theory, anyway. And the reshaping issue may render the whole discussion moot in another way. If 'superior' is ill defined, so also are 'drakon', and 'human'. The human and drakon sprites stay fixed because of game engine limitations, but continuous self-shaping is effectively redefining humanity and drakonity alike. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Are Drakons superior beings? in Geneforge 4: Rebellion | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Thursday, March 22 2007 10:55
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Actually, that's something I've wondered about for some time. How did Augustus pull it off, turning a republic into an empire in republican form? As I understand it, he was not dictator. The dictatorship was an emergency measure Rome had used on rare occasions for centuries, and it had a very short term. Asking to be made dictator for life was too obvious, apparently. Rather, what I remember is that the only civil powers Augustus got the senate to confer on him were the 'tribunician' powers, namely personal immunity from prosecution plus a veto over any new proposed laws. All his other titles and offices -- including the title of 'Augustus' by which Octavian Caesar is better known -- were just honorific. The office of tribune had been created a century or two before Augustus, in response to a sort of general strike by the entire working and middle classes. Several of them were elected for fixed terms, by the common people, whose interests they were supposed to defend. The tribunate was probably the first exercise in republican checking and balancing of powers. Evidently it was a bit too heavy handed. It checked the senate all right, but it was the means by which the republic became the empire. Especially once Octavian got himself appointed tribune for life. What I'm fuzzy on is just how Octavian succeeded, where Marius, Sulla, Pompey and his uncle C. Julius before him all failed. All were generals whose troops were prepared to obey them against the government. Was Octavian just the last man standing, with everyone exhausted enough to prefer a stable dictatorship in a republican mask, rather than endure another decade of civil war? Was his military situation somehow superior to the others? Or was he clever in fashioning his republican mask out of the tribunate, instead of going for the dictatorship? -------------------- 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 | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Thursday, March 22 2007 04:52
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To some extent that does happen, and every party has multiple wings. But past that point, parties exert discipline and mount single official platforms, so that at least those things have a chance of getting done. The trick is to move your set of views, within a party, from minority wing to official policy. That may not be quick or easy, but it has got to be quicker and easier than simply starting from scratch, trying to mobilize the population from outside the two party system. And if you ever did succeed in building a popular movement from outside, you can bet that one or both of the two parties would steal your platform the moment it started getting popular. So you may as well get inside early. -------------------- 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 | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Thursday, March 22 2007 00:32
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Somewhere I read this argument about how anyone who wants to change the United States has to work through the American two-party system: If you can't convince a majority of any half the people, how do you think you can convince a majority of them all? The point is that, apart from the general tendency of Democrats to be leftward from Republicans, both parties are ideological mercenaries, and will gradually swing around to any sufficiently popular platform that they can claim. So proclaiming oneself to be outside the two-party system amounts to proclaiming satisfaction with irrelevancy, or disdain for democracy. Obviously not all truth is to be found within the two parties. But if you're left of the Democrats, and serious about accomplishing something, then I would think that the thing to do would be to emphasize the voices within the Democratic Party that are swinging your way. Or point out how much of the main Democratic platform is actually consistent with your own views, and is only being warped out of line by a few ill-fitting planks that had better be replaced. The Democrats aren't this irrelevant party that you're ignoring. They're the party that you are going to take over. Right? -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Rebel Fort in Geneforge 4: Rebellion | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Wednesday, March 21 2007 23:31
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This is a really tough fight, and your character doesn't seem to be very powerful: a level 28 warrior and one fyora are just not really up to it. The enemies come in strength and numbers, and you need some really heavy firepower to take them out fast, before they kill you. Like, several wingbolts of your own, or a pack of drayks; or some high-level offensive spells, with high skill levels and many hundreds of points of spell energy to burn. Or really good mental magic, to charm the enemies and make them fight each other. To beef up this character enough to handle this fight, I think you'd want something like five more levels, and pump up Intelligence a lot in order to make more creations. Then get several drayks. You might try dropping the difficulty level to Easy. Or just skip it: this fight is optional. You could come back much later, or just decide that this one has to be one more loss for the rebels. They're used to it. -------------------- 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 | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Monday, March 19 2007 06:10
Profile
History is written by everyone who cares to write it, and wildly divergent versions of the Iraq occupation will likely persist for decades. But with no draft, I doubt it will be anywhere near as big an item in American history as Vietnam. Iraqi history will be another story. What I wish I understood, or anyone understood, is just what went wrong. Obviously lots of things went wrong; but tons of things would have gone wrong in even the best realistic case. Wars and their aftermaths are inevitably appallingly wasteful, and the best realistic case would still have been Iraq emerging from Saddam's overthrow like a family escaping from their burning house. The question is which of the many errors made the difference that led to the case that is so much worse than that. Was there in fact ever any real chance for a much better outcome? Four years ago it seemed so, but was that an illusion? It would be nice to salvage from the mess at least some understanding of why it has happened, which might help prevent it happening again. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Wingbolts are over-rated in Geneforge 4: Rebellion | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Monday, March 19 2007 01:21
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One problem with Drayks is that Fyoras are less useful than Artilas, since with simple tactics you can usually keep your Artilas out of melee attacks, and just benefit from their better ranged damage. (You'd think the AP changes would reduce this effect, but somehow I've never noticed this.) And Roamers are so lame in comparison to Vlish. So by the time you can get Drayks, you've probably got a few more points in Magic Shaping than in Fire. Collective health is less important than you'd think, because when your Wingbolt loses half its health, then in the first place its attack is undiminished, and in the second place you can pump it right back up with a single Heal. Whereas if you lose half the collective health of your pair of Drayks, you lose half of their attacks, and you can't bring it back. And fewer bigger creations, instead of more smaller ones, are easier to buff up with things like Essence Armor. Now that I think about it, that may have been what made the difference for me in my one-Wingbolt struggle with Monarch. Certainly I never had much trouble with WIngbolts panicking, but perhaps my heavy use of blessing magic had some effect on this. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| National anthem for the rebels in Geneforge 4: Rebellion | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Sunday, March 18 2007 08:15
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('Minette' was a bizarre Google translation artifact; the corrected version is above. My French is really only good enough to have done about half of the changes without a dictionary.) quote: -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| National anthem for the rebels in Geneforge 4: Rebellion | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Sunday, March 18 2007 06:29
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Allons produits d'la cuverie, le jour de gloire est arrivé! Contre nous de la tyrannie l'étandard trèflé est levé. Entendez vous dans les marais, mugir ces féroces glacques? Ils viennent jusque sous nos becs, absorber nos fils et nos copains! Aux armes, créations! Formez vos battaillons! Marchons, marchons! Que leur essence abreuve nos sillons! Edit: Google translation gave me a bizarre French for 'trefoil'. The corrected version also scans better, yay. [ Sunday, March 18, 2007 08:03: Message edited by: Student of Trinity ] -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Unbound a little small? in Geneforge 4: Rebellion | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Sunday, March 18 2007 05:25
Profile
Would you believe that the thing the Unbound is shoulder pressing is actually a War Trall? Edit: I'm no great shakes at Spanish, but shouldn't it be "vive los Takers" and "viva Ghaldring"? [ Sunday, March 18, 2007 05:30: Message edited by: Student of Trinity ] -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Time Magazine: Shaper of the Year in Geneforge 4: Rebellion | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Saturday, March 17 2007 23:42
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This is the best poll idea I've seen in a long time. I had to go with Barzahl, somewhat to my surprise. Actually generating new types of intelligent and mobile creations seems like the biggest step to me, more or less on grounds of coolness, and Barzahl gave us several powerful creations, apparently single-handedly. I sort of wish, now, that G2 could have had more scripting and plotting, like G4. Maybe then Barzahl himself wouldn't be stuck in my memory as this idiot who just stood there glowing while you gradually destroyed his empire, and finally him. Thinking back now, it seems he deserved better. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Wingbolts are over-rated in Geneforge 4: Rebellion | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Saturday, March 17 2007 23:34
Profile
Hmmm, I killed Monarch with nothing but a single Wingbolt, though I guess it had gained a couple of levels by that point, since I made it as soon as possible. I had no troubles with 'Snakey' running away; he was a trouper, and quite tough. But it was an epic battle, which Snakey and I only just survived. Maybe two Drayks would have been easier. And I'm fuzzy now on whether or not Jeff might have nerfed Wingbolts a bit after my experience. I don't think so, but the beta testing and the final version are a bit blurred together in my memory now. -------------------- 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 | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Saturday, March 17 2007 02:03
Profile
Just beefing up battle creations would probably fix them nicely, making them less negligible both as allies and as enemies. But it's a good thing this is all it would take, because I think Jeff's other options are limited by the fact that PC creations are the same stock types as all the monsters you fight. Turning PC magic creations into glass cannons would be better for balance versus PC battle creations, but it would also turn all the Vlish and Gazers that you encounter into pushovers. The player can compensate for fragility with good tactics, but making a comparably effective AI is probably beyond the scope of shareware. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Where You At Now? in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Saturday, March 17 2007 01:31
Profile
quote:You've got a while to think about this yet of course, but two PhD's are very rare, for good reason. A PhD takes a long time, especially in the humanities. Most people are quite sick of being a student after the first one, and want to get on with doing something with their lives. Nor does high ability really allow you to speed up the process: if you're really good at the stuff, pumping out an average thesis in half the time will only destroy your CV, so the thing to do is produce a really good book over the usual six years. And there's no real need to take two degrees. University departments are arbitrary divisions, and the words on your diploma are irrelevant. What matters is just what your advisor does, what you learn, and what publications you write. None of these is constrained by departmental affiliation. Writing off all American econ programs seems a bit hasty. There are definitely American versus European preferences in any field, but American academia is huge, and I'm sure you can find any viewpoint in the world represented with distinction by some US academic. But why restrict yourself to the US, anyway? Higher education is global. And for the interests you state, I would think you'd really better train in economics, or you might spend your life haranguing about how things should be, and getting shot down by people who claim to know how they must be. Being able to fight fire with fire is a good asset. -------------------- 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 | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Thursday, March 15 2007 04:54
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quote:This is a good point. But I think I'd rather have it resolved a bit less crudely, through a somewhat extended version of my #2 proposal. You only get Create Drakon if you have already absorbed enough 'lower level' canisters to prepare you. It could be that if you haven't completed the required series of prior treatments, then you get some warped or crippled version of the ability, or even get warped or crippled yourself. You don't want to go too far with this, because the whole point of canisters is to offer easy power. But perhaps it can still be easy without being totally trivial, in that you may have to take the right course of canisters, perhaps combined with other easy, but pyscho-genetically dangerous, actions. And this would all tend to make canister management into a big aspect of the game. But that would be cool, I think. Canisters have always been a big part of the games, even though their mechanics have so far been trivial. Why not give them a bit more strategy? -------------------- 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 | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Thursday, March 15 2007 03:35
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That's something that has always bothered me. In principle it seems very reasonable that the effect of a canister might be impossible to tell in advance, if you didn't make it yourself. And then since using it is irreversible, you're really rolling the dice every time you touch one. This adds to the canister mystique. Except you're totally not, because you always save, and reload if the skill gained isn't worth the countdown towards a changed ending. Which is just tedious. Since disabling saving is not a good idea, I see two basic options for improvement. 1) Let the player recognize in advance what the canister will do. By now canisters are well known, and a rebel PC might be trained in recognizing them. 2) Do some clever stuff with timers and SDFs to give canister effects that don't appear for some time, or until some specific things are done (such as using another canister, or entering some special environment). By the time you fully realize what that canister did to you, you've played too much more of the game to want to go back. Some delayed effects could even be made random, so that consulting a walkthrough wouldn't remove the risk. I like option 2) best, but it could be combined with 1), in that player knowledge of canisters could be unreliable or incomplete. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Why is Battle shaping unpopular? in Geneforge 4: Rebellion | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Thursday, March 15 2007 03:24
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It's worth pointing out that meat shields can be used aggressively a bit more now than before. It's not about trying to form a wall around the quarterback. A pair of Rotghroths, for instance, generally move first and can be placed far forward, right in the enemies' faces, without even wasting their attack. And this usually keeps the enemy occupied exchanging whacks with your very tough Rotghroths, getting gradually worn down, while your Wingbolts and your PC go unmolested. Even enemies with dangerous ranged attacks will usually target the Rotghroth in their face instead of a more distant party member, and in confined quarters they can often be forced into melee. I think my Lifecrafter's use of a Rotghroth pair was a big reason why he was so free to move about the battlefied healing and dispatching wounded, without getting shot. If the Geneforge AI were more advanced, one might speak about using battle creations to seize the initiative. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| I have a confession. in Richard White Games | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Monday, March 12 2007 23:56
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The weaponized aerosol implant spores are working well so far. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Episode 3 Continued in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Monday, March 5 2007 13:13
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You know, that Dr. Strange cover has some pretty weird anatomy. And the 'most mystical hero' becomes substantially less impressive when you consider that he's going to do all his adventures in sock feet. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| On the Road to Weapons of Mass Destruction in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Monday, March 5 2007 00:15
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quote:The importance of filtering the Bible in this way is pretty much the traditional Roman Catholic line, though of course one might disagree that the authoritative filter is the Bishop of Rome. If all you want is moral slogans, to express content pre-determined by your moral filter, then no book is anything but a moralist's rhyming dictionary. If your filter is good, your quest for slogans won't make you a danger to society. But it's like anything: if you take it seriously, there's a lot more to it. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Illuminati in Richard White Games | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Sunday, March 4 2007 11:31
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Sometimes, hanging around on these boards, I think I detect veiled hints and rumors about, like, secret societies or something. So I wondered. Anyone here ever play the old Steve Jackson game, Illuminati? -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Because I Can: The Masochist's Guide To G4 in Geneforge 4: Rebellion | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Sunday, March 4 2007 08:51
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No love means never having to share your kebabs. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |