Yes, the first one is goofy but it did the whole “what would an actually average person do with superhero powers” shtick before it was cool, and managed to make it funny and pretty sweet too.

I’ll give you that it’s been longer than I realized since the base game came out, however, Beyond Earth came out 10 years ago (2014) and Alpha Centauri was 25 years ago.

They need me ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I think one of the biggest issues with BE attempting to follow in AC’s footsteps is that the factions were not distinct, and it felt extremely generic. BE’s factions were all similar, played similarly, and all had the same options for development and could all take the same evolutions. In AC, not only were the faction leaders ideologies revealed in quotes in the tech tree and secret projects, it was inescapable in the game mechanics. The reason I feel Stellaris is a closer sibling is that it managed to mimic something of how it felt to be an idealogical leader attempting to make sure your values and your goals for the future were the ones that were supreme. BE was “civ in space”.

This scenario would mean major negligence on their part, as they had been with Cloudflare for years. When it was clear their services were costing more than the business plan paid for, that’s when they should have been contacted with clear numbers and a sheepish admission that “unlimited” doesn’t actually mean unlimited. It certainly seems shady to me that they attempted to make it about a TOS violation, that there’s no public information about enterprise level and pricing, and that the second they said they were talking to a competitor they had their data purged. It sounds like a failed attempt at extortion to me.

Haha it was a funny dynamic, we had a heavily good aligned party, I was the only one out on my own as “evil”. However her whole shtick, as was slowly revealed, was that she had ambitions to take down the leadership of the cult and then replace them with herself and those loyal to her. This meant that the party, who wanted to generally find non-violent means of dealing with conflict, aligned just fine with her own goals of not killing too many of her future minions. So she always acted in what she saw as the best interests of glorifying Her Chromatic Majesty, while still working with the party to stop the cult. Our DM peppered in more dragons and encounters with dragon magic than were in the official books I think, and we all tried to solve them through stealth, negotiation and avoidance. She hated to kill dragons, but if we had no choice but to fight then so be it. If they were too weak to kill us they were culled! She didn’t mind stopping the ritual to keep her from ascending because she believed Tiamat wouldn’t want the world to end, and just wanted as much treasure and followers as possible. So in the end the cult of the dragon queen became the Church of Dragonology, and her influence on the material plane had a net gain 😋

Lol my first character was a cleric of Tiamat. My DM and I worked out a blend of PHB domains so that I had appropriate cantrips, spell unlocks and CD’s. It was a lot of fun playing through the Rise of Tiamat with her, haha 🐉

They could definitely do a fake out after a time skip, even the book does that haha.

You can call me paranoid, but the first thing I thought of when I heard about it was how excited the Nazis would have been to access a database like that when they came into power. Imagine knowing the names and addresses of whatever Undesirables you wanted to single out, and exactly what percentage of “impure” they were. Ethnic makeup information can also be used against you in things like gerrymandering congressional districts to hand select voters and disenfranchise minorities. It’s pretty safe to assume that once your genetic profile has been gathered by a private company, it’s vulnerable to all sorts of bad actors gaining access and using that information. Would you want the KKK or the Proud Boys knowing just what percentage black you are? No thanks.

I read Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell recently and found it delightful and incredibly original. I haven’t heard anything about Piranesi, I’ll see if my library has it!

Nation by Terry Pratchett. It’s a beautiful and introspective book that has all of STP’s humor, humanity and insight but it’s completely self contained. I read it recently and wanted to read it again right away.

I might have lucked into some cheesey builds, I only maxed one character and have a few at 60. One mod I did get was a full respec mod, but the default reset of the last 3 levels was at least good enough for me to see if a skill was working for me or not. I agree that there seem to be too many “dud” skills, especially on embermage and engineer. My lvl 100 character I did without mods and I kind of liked how punishing it was. I get that that’s a preference though.

Ok, is a Diablo-like a thing I can call it then? It’s just such a specific type of game, the isometric top down view RPG with classes, customizable character leveling, randomly generated levels with area themes, randomized loot, a town hub and inventory etc. I’ve always heard those games called Rogue-likes but I never played Rogue.

I haven’t played it. My impression is that it was trying very hard to cater to the mobile market. I heard it suffered from a lot of design changes and ended up being sold and then patched up and released by a new team to cut their losses. Meanwhile, Torchlight 2 may be older but it was made with love and care and a strong vision. It’s dirt cheap now too so it’s not hard to get your money’s worth out of it.

Torchlight 2 spoiled me for basically the whole genre. It is a classic Roguelike but has so many thoughtful player centric quality of life features. Inventory is full but don’t want to stop kicking butt? You have a pet that can run back to town for you, sell your stuff, and even buy a “shopping list” of potions and scrolls for you. It’ll even run and pick up loot for you. I have trouble playing other games in the genre because I keep running into problems Torchlight 2 solved that I didn’t even think about. It also has mods available to add even more or keep things fresh. It’s getting old but because of that you can run it on anything. It’s a damn good game.

I’m compromising on those things right now with a phone that’s ten (!!) years old now. If I could get one running a current OS, that was between 120-150mm with a replaceable battery, headphone jack, usb c, and the ability to take a 1TB micro sd along with a physical sim, I would take that upgrade.

Yeah the older android version is what killed it for me really, as I would have even kept using it as a wireless device. I couldn’t install my preferred browser, email app, reddit is fun etc on it after enough years. I even rooted it and looked into installing a new version of Android on it but couldn’t haha. It was compact, comfortable to hold, but big enough to browse and read text or to use an onscreen keyboard without much trouble. I was really disappointed to learn that there just were no phones compatible with 4G/LTE running Android 8 or higher that size, not even cheapie ones.

I’m a staunch and unyielding small phone user and this does, admittedly, describe me. I used my LG Optimus (4.75" or 120mm) for something like 6 or 7 years and I loved it. I don’t use my phone for games or video and just want something I can always tuck in a pocket (on women’s clothes this means tiny). It was the perfect size for my hand. When it stopped working because of the 3G/4G change over I upgraded to the smallest, most decent phone I could find: a Samsung Galaxy S7. I am still using it something like 5 years later and I would never go bigger than this, it fits comfortably in one hand, is light, and the battery is replaceable and lasts me all day. It sticks out of pants pockets but fits in a coat or jacket pocket. I would be willing to pay a higher up front cost to get a new phone if it was exactly what I wanted though, about 5" with no bloatware, replaceable battery, headphone jack, and a great camera.