fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
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User ID: 3415
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
1mo ago
VP nerfs the wonders too much for my liking, and the wars turn into long slogfests and meatgrinders. The AI fights them more skillfully, I'll give them that. But it wasn't necessarily super fun after a while.
I use every "more wonders" submod and I find them in a pretty good place, but that's also personal taste.
Supply reducing mods are mandatory, they can be found on the forum
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
1mo ago
Looking at my game files, I don't seem to have any(??). It doesn't even have a Steam workshop.
I can't remember why I bought the game, as you seem to be able to pirate the whole thing.
Maybe I wanted mods but never got around to it because I was enjoying vanilla.
Extended power plant range was on the list of mods I wanted though, kind of cheaty, but it gets tedious.
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
1mo ago
Does Rimworld have curated mod packs a la Wabbajack for Skyrim? My patience to manage mods has a strongly inverse correlation with my age lol
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
1mo ago
Definitely play vanilla first just so you get a sense of what the game is like, just enough that you can win fights against evenly matched up fleets up until mid-game so you don't suck and don't get overwhelmed
Then get into mods and it'll be less overwhelming
I hate vanilla purists though, I recommend getting QoL and UI mods immediately
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
1mo ago
Genuinely I have no idea
I'm willing to be the first to cooperate vs defect as I believe in the power of human win/win coordination
But I am a single human with 0 political power
Honestly I'm mildly a doomer about all of this, I just refuse to say "fuck it" and embrace the zero sum game
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
1mo ago
Kind of?
Until you're both way worse off at the end of it all. Although I guess you're both worse off together.
Would much prefer an unwinding of the political cold war and a commitment towards shared prosperity (as that's worked quite well for the last 10,000 years) but that brings us back to "the current crop of western political leaders are myopic morons"
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
1mo ago
You may like Starsector.
It's basically "mount and blade in space" but with an incredibly well designed and tight gameplay loop for the 2D ship to ship combat.
The mod scene is also exceptional (Nexerilin is basically a DLC that massively improves the game by making it a 4x-lite). Although filled with unbelievable amounts of discord drama (totally ignorable, but hilarious).
Your allied ship AI is quite stupid, but my god it's so fun to space battle.
You can also get a free CD key from the Sseth review video (meme-y video game review channel) if you want to try it, developer approved as he's a very chill guy.
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
1mo ago
Factorio is really fun but you basically are forced to restart a few times because it's easier to start from scratch than it is to totally refactor your mineral bus once you've spaghetti-maxxed
It'll probably click for you and delete a few weeks though, it's incredibly compelling, the factory must grow.
I usually start getting burnt out from the complexity around oil, and I tried playing a while ago with a new update, played for a while (got to oil), and then saw the tech/production tree for nuclear and promptly quit and uninstalled the game. Started to feel like I was studying or working to play the game.
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
1mo ago
I've definitely been alpha-widowed by my favorite games, lol
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
1mo ago
We have pretty similar taste in games, although I find ARMA way too boring and love battlefield (as much as they keep insisting on fucking it up).
I too bounce off games really hard, and I basically only enjoy gaming now if I also take cannabis, otherwise it's kind of boring and I stop after 45 mins.
I had the exact same experience with BG3, I feel like I should love it, but I just kinda... stopped.
I tried getting back into modded Skyrim after learning Wabbajack existed (I don't have the patience to manage massive mod lists) and it was INCREDIBLE but again after getting not that far into a run, I just... drifted away
I really want to get into Rimworld and Total war (played Shogun a bit, then stopped) but haven't gotten around to it (lol)
I basically just play heavily modded civ5 (seriously vox populi is insanely good) and Victoria 3, I don't even find either of those games super duper fun anymore as I've played them a lot, but I always end up back on them instead of diving into something new.
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
1mo ago
You ever play with the vox populi mod?
It actually makes it the 4x GOAT imo, civ5 with VP may never be topped
Easily the highest quality mod overhaul I've ever had the privilege of playing
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
1mo ago
"What's the biggest brand in the world? If you said Trump, you're not wrong."
Talk about brand dilution, this is fucking embarrassing lmao
I adore the concept of the "shining city on the hill" and I admire America's national mythos.
I actually like the concept of this initative.
But mortgaging America's brand to leverage your own? Cringe
I got into Anno 1800 (pro tip: you can get the base game cheap and cream API the DLC for free) about a year ago and Holy. Fucking. Shit.
I haven't had a game touch my dopamine receptors like that since I was a teenager first getting into gaming.
It was un-ironically as close as I've ever gotten to wire-heading. The temptation to play at the expense of food, sleep, work performance, sex, socialization was intense.
What made it so addicting:
The production chains being complex enough to be challenging while not so complex as to shut down from overwhelm.
Ship logistics was a ton of fun, getting better at that and seeing it pay off was sweet.
The Victorian aesthetic I find really compelling, and the tense action against the other AI (who you later realize are absolutely useless at the game) makes for a really fun juggling balance and tension.
The different areas provide variety and a steady march of new challenges to wrap your brain around.
Each phase of the game has a distinct feel, and is fun on its own merits. Desperate economic balancing when you're on an island or two. Balancing wide/tall expansion with conflict in mid game. And finally hyper-optimizing and paper-clipping in end game once you've wiped out everything else.
I finally stopped playing incredibly suddenly once I was at about 150,000 investors and had just started the final production chains for the higher level skyscraper goods. The level of optimization required at that point (my goal was 1,000,000 investors) meant I was largely following templates I found on the German (lol) template sites, including their researched specialist stacks. At that point I wasn't really playing anymore, I was just following digital Lego instructions. I was also getting mildly tired of having to raze and re-design suboptimal islands repeatedly as I got better/learned how the game worked. I guess I could have continued to play blind and try to get to 1mil myself, but that would have taken so long, and required even more "raze and re-design" moments, so I got bored and stopped. Sucked a good couple hundred hours of me before I did though.
How do you feel in the midst of that mechanic:
Fucking incredible, it was the perfect level of challenge and the challenge level contributed to increase at a pace that allowed you to skill up perfectly in sync with it.
It was seriously so compelling and so fucking fun.
It was basically an instant drop into flow state on command, it was magical.
The sudden end was kind of surprising to me. I went from being so compelled to play it to basically 0 interest over night. Other games I adore (civilization, paradox games, battlefield) I have played for decades and will continue to play for decades. Anno was a whirlwind romance in comparison.
Highly recommend.
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
1mo ago
I would posit the GM share ownership was as a result of a huge exigent circumstances, which Intel is not facing.
I also think this makes the Dems more likely to do it, as Trump is moving the Overton window towards doing this whenever you feel like it and towards companies that aren't on the verge of total collapse (although maybe Intel is, lol).
How would you feel if the Dems started buying equity shares in solar panel manufacturers because "the climate is an urgent crisis we must address"?
But overall I am a fan of your comment and mostly agree with you. Thanks for sharing!
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
1mo ago
My rules are also "no government control of companies."
I'm pretty equitable, I think the motivations and intellectual caliber of both the left and right are stupid as fuck. Americans are of course, as with many things, at the cutting edge of this trend.
I find your response quite fascinating. It strikes me that both American parties in a multi-turn prisoners dilemma game where the payoff for "defect" is a temporary gain in political power, which is then offset by the other side doing the same thing, and american governance/institutions/leadership being overall degraded as a result. Both sides are so myopic they seem to only have the capacity to smash the "defect" button over and over again, as American institutions rot, economic and military dominance over the world wanes, and the government gets worse and worse at doing... anything.
And your response to this is "yes! Smash the defect button before they do! Smash it!!!"
I know you don't want to be the first one to cooperate while the other side defects and gets a leg up, but damn, you must all realize this isn't going to end well for your children right?
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
1mo ago
Thank you so much for putting this into words better than I could
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
1mo ago
Subsidies don't have to lose money if they have a positive multiplier.
I'm not entirely sure what treasury ownership you're referring to? Social security?
Because in that case, that's the government owning a Treasury issued by the government. The interest paid is real it's paid by the way everything else is, taxes or debt.
I fully agree social security is a shitshow nightmare from numerous perspectives. I think they should move to the "Canadian model" a la CPP, where investments are managed by an extremely competent and largely independent team.
I would like to reiterate that the executive branch borderline randomly scooping up equity stakes in flavor of the month companies is not this. Also, it's likely a transfer of welfare from taxpayers to equity holders AND it will definitely fuck heavily with equity price discovery, leading to a less efficient market overall.
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
1mo ago
Why is that an improvement? This seems like a terrible way to allocate capital.
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
1mo ago
different incentives than making the best product or most money
I think they absolutely have these incentives and are just out of touch idiots like most of the """elite""" class in the West at this point in history.
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
1mo ago
The idea seems to be to make money
Why not buy units in private equity funds then? Much better returns than Intel lmao
Furthermore, if that is the goal, why do we think government bureaucrats and elected officials are better capital allocators than Wall St et. al? Are we pretending government employees are hyper competent now?
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
1mo ago
"the Government taking a direct share in owning companies isn't a state-owned enterprise, it's simply market-flavored convergent evolution (??????)"
The government owning common shares in a company makes it (partially) state-owned, the state has a share of ownership. No amount of word games will change this underlying fact.
If it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, the duck owning shares in something has an amount of ownership proportional to the % of shares owned (moderated by shareholders agreements).
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
1mo ago
why not get something in return?
The question is how much return. Do we trust the government to be a great asset manager? Why not just have governments dump money into PE funds if you're trying to IRR-maxx?
Do we think government agencies/employees are better capital allocators than the current cohort of capitalists and Wall St et. al?
What?!?!? This is silly
There are very few non-functional alcoholics or potheads.
Also on the scale of shitty behaviors alcoholics have worse outcomes for others and health outcomes for themselves.
I also doubt police opinions on weed smokers is anything more than "I don't care" given the actual drug users they have to interact with. But you're also American so you folk still have ridiculous takes on weed.
I am not blatantly pro weed either, I'm very against teenagers having access to cheap distillate weed pens, etc
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