I take your money.

I make a show of returning a fraction of what I took.

Look how generous I am!

it rose from its grave

Aviassembly.

Its fun in the way that building airplanes in KSP is fun. The game is small, and the physics are simple, but for $10 its a good value.

that number needs 2 more zeros

Running a scream test for a scrappy small business on a shoestring budget is sensible.

USA should have better options.

In PlanetSide, there’s just one big map that never resets.

The team I played with would try to bring the front line to a bridge before logging off for the night. Contested bridges were notoriously difficult to cross, so you could count on no major territorial changes happening while you sleep. The zerg was content to snipe across the bridge all night, and when organized Ops resumed the next day, the bridge would simply be bypassed by mass airlift.

IIRC, there have been a few times when one of the three factions controlled the entire map, but it never lasted more than a few minutes. During the PlanetSide 2 beta test, one side came close to taking the entire map, but the whole game crashed because the entire population of all three factions was trying to pile into the same base at the same time. They eventually implemented a mechanic where if too many people were in the same place, the ones who arrived most recently would be teleported to an adjacent map tile.

I’m still kinda salty that my computer would crash every time I tried landing something bigger than a probe on Eve.

PlanetSide 1, the MMOFPS that was the former record holder of “Most players in an online FPS battle,” which was eventually surpassed by PlanetSide 2.

In its heyday it was a fascinating sociology study.

During EU prime time, players would self-organize into squads of about 10 players. They would apply light pressure to the entire map simultaneously. Territorial gains would be made by attacking undefended bases.

During USA prime time, players would self-organize into platoons of about 30 players. They would press a few strategic locations with medium force. Territorial gains came from fixing operations (using a small force in an easy to defend location to keep a large population of opponents busy) and local numeric superiority at lightly defended bases.

During Chinese prime time, players would group up into a singular mass. Everyone just ran face first into the meatgrinder. No territorial gains were made.

deleted by creator

i comfort myself with the knowledge that most worlds are totally dead

zero wildlife is the normal state of things

extinction is only sad to the survivors, and soon enough there will be none left to mourn

IP law itself is a band-aid over capitalism’s disincentivizing of humanity’s innate tendency toward ingenuity, innovation, and iteration

public domain is the default - its IP law and the artificial scarcity it creates which is useful to the capitalists

I wonder if the trend we all noticed where it became progressively dumber over time was a result of an intentional lobotomy to make it more conservative?

thoughts and prayers for their tooth

Shutting down the Inflation Reduction Act smells like lobbying from the fracking industry. Everyone but natural gas merchants benefits. Taxpayers lower their energy bills. The Federal government becomes more energy secure. Electric utilities see their profit margins increase as the delta between Summer and Winter seasonal loads normalizes, allowing for enhanced optimization of real estate holdings related to having spare capacity on hand to cover load spikes (the extra capacity is a source of constant expense, but only occasionally runs & generates revenue).

Even if the electricity used to run the heat pump comes from a gas burning generator, it will still use less gas compared to burning it in a furnace in someone’s home. Heat pumps don’t create heat, they just move it to and from the outdoors, so they’re able to reach efficiencies over 500%. They’re still over 100% efficiency even after accounting for the -40% hit taken at the electrical utility’s gas generator and the -5% hit taken over the electrical transmission lines. Comparatively, the best furnaces are only 95% efficient.

The Axis Unseen is about hunting (while being hunted by) cryptids from a large variety of mythologies.

What’s Tatars precious?

Not freeware, but currently $2.39 on GOG:
Master of Magic

Its like Civilization with wizards and dragons.

Canada needs a plan in case launching missiles becomes necessary.

But why was there a road there?

There are no minable deposits of rare earths anywhere. That’s why they’re called rare earth elements. Nowhere on Earth are there geologic processes that concentrate them into ores. The only way to get them is to process absolutely enormous volumes of dirt, at great expense in terms of energy used and pollution created.

Every country has them.

Who sells it is a question of which country is willing to render some portion of their territory uninhabitable for the foreseeable future, while also making a larger portion of their territory sick and dirty.