site banner
PaperclipPerfector  4d ago (text post)   2548 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for January 9, 2026

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

2
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Video game thread! What did you get over the holidays, what are you playing?

Having a blast playing Skyrim modded. Been playing a lot and also just looking through modlists. This is one area I've found AI to be extremely fun and useful to work with, which has been rare for me lately.

I was feeling an urge to play XCOM 2 over the Christmas break. When I opened it from Steam, I found that it gave me the option to play the War of the Chosen DLC, which I didn't remember buying. It adds so much new content to the base game that it's a bit overwhelming at first brush, but the base game is so addictive that I got into the swing of it pretty quickly, and I think I've logged a few dozen hours into it so far, having killed my first of the three Chosen assassins.

War of the Chosen is great. @Southkraut actually just mentioned The Long War, have you ever heard of that mod for XCOM? It's also awesome.

Hah. Allow my partial disagreement - War of the Chosen is a complete mess, and if XCOM2 hadn't already jumped the shark on its and with its other DLCs, WotC would have been the final nail in its coffin.

Mechanically XCOM2 tactical combat is pretty good - the stealth mechanics for example are a nice addition. But the whole theme, plot and writing are superhero-movie-tier trash, the strategy layer is a mess, the visual design of the entire game is godawful, the character building has gotten far out of hand with mutiple overlapping systems, and the DLCs make it all even worse by adding more systems that barely fit together.

If I want a cartoonish everything-and-the-kitchen-sink XCOM game, I'l play X-Piratez, thank you very much. At least that one knows what it is.

I used to think that Xenonauts was too boring compared to XCOM, but after XCOM2 I actually found myself appreciating Xenonauts 2 for being less messy and more grounded.

Ultimately, my favorite turn-based tactics game isn't XCOM at all but Battle Brothers. Maybe Menace, coincidentally by the same developers, will be the go-to in the future...but that one isn't out yet.

XCOM:EW with LW is very good though, IMO. Showing its age by now, and they couldn't fix some of the base game's issues (pod mechanics, stupid-looking weapons), and the mod isn't perfect itself (too many MEC classes), but at the time that one was pretty much non plus ultra.

I tried Battle Brothers and got murked hard in my 2nd battle. Maybe I had the difficulty too high? Haven't been back but should really dust it off again.

Perfectly fair to start with a lower difficulty. Battle Brothers has a bit of a learning curve early on, as you need to pick a few fights you shouldn't have, and make a bunch of mistakes you could've avoided, just to get your bearings. It's a game for risk assessments and pragmatism, and you need to have a minimum of painful experience to do that.

FWIW, ordering a retreat mid-battle is perfectly valid. Unlike in earlier versions of the game, ordering a retreat will even disable enemy Zones of Control and they will stop pursuing you. It will lower your company's morale and cost you some reputation, but that's generally preferable to getting Game Overed. So it's a very safe panic button.

If you like turn-based tactics, then I highly recommend giving it another few tries. Yes, multiples - as said, you absolutely cannot expect your first few runs and your first few battles to go your way.

Here's a few more tips to get you started:

  • As said, feel free to retreat when you feel a battle isn't going your way. Losing a bunch of brothers unnecessarily is worse for morale than running away and abandoning a contract, and you can regain the lost reputation more quickly when you don't need to spend weeks getting back up to strength.
  • Similarly, don't hesitate to abandon a contract when you notice that it's more than you bargained for.
  • If you ruin your rep with a given client, just go work somewhere else until they forget about it.
  • The rewards for a given job scale with your reputation and with your relationship with the client. Early on, contract payout won't even cover your expenses - your early sources of income are mostly in selling loot, and possibly in trading when you buy low and sell high.
  • When you hire a brother, you also pay for the equipment they bring with them. Early on, avoid recruits with expensive items.
  • The main source for equipment should be loot. Only buy equipment when you urgently need something and you have no luck with the looting.
  • Contract difficulty scales with the number and levels of your brothers, but not with their equipment or their actual stats. Upgrading equipment and getting brothers with better skills relative to their level is an important edge in the mid-game, while having lots of low-quality, possibly crippled, poorly-equipped but high-level brothers can be a bit of a trap.
  • You should absolutely attack and loot enemy camps that have nothing to do with contracts. Those always contain a good deal of loot. The difficulty of those camps scales with time, and with their distance from civilization.
  • Hiring cannon fodder is absolutely valid. Cheap brothers with cheap equipment are effectively ablative armor for your core brothers.
  • If possible, don't send your guys into battle naked. Even a straw hat is better than bare skin.
  • Swords get a bonus to hit chance. Spears even more so. Brothers with poor melee skill should use those.
  • Shields are mandatory for brothers with low melee defense. Only with decent melee defense and a good plan for what happens when you get hit (i.e., armor and the right perks) can a brother use two-handed weapons and expect to survive.
  • Don't over-equip brothers that rely on skills with high fatigue costs, or who don't have much stamina to begin with. Not everyone is suitable for heavy armor.
  • Sometimes the dice are against you and you're going to sufffer permanent injuries, deaths and failures that seem like they shouldn't have happened. That is of course a misconception - they are bound to happen sooner or later.
  • Each enemy type brings a different strategy to the table. They'll probably take you by surprise the first time you encounter them. It takes some doing to learn which tools give you the upper hand against a specific opponent, and which you are better off avoiding with a given team configuration.

Anyways, I like Battle Brothers a lot. Even read the novelizations. It's not perfect, but I wouldn't know of any turn-based tactics game I'd rather play.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats