site banner
PaperclipPerfector  18hr ago (text post)   712 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for July 31, 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.

Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Video Game Thread

What are you playing? Are you having fun or just killing time?

This week I was able to sink quite a few hours into Deus Ex. I'm going to use spoiler tags because there's always someone who has not yet played the game but might want to do so.

I let Lebedev live. I used the LAM trick to kill Anna Navarre when she came for Lebedev, and now I've got an angry mech (Gunther) on my ass.

During the 'Paul's apartment' sequence I managed to electric prod stun one of the Men in Black mechs, to keep him from exploding along with his loot. Picked up the auto-shotgun and applied a couple of recoil mods to it. I let Paul do most of the killing because he seemed invulnerable, while I, being stealth based and playing on Hard difficulty, can only survive a couple of hits to the chest/head.

I surrendered to the arrest squad and let Daedalus get me out of my cell and onwards to the Armory. Most of my grenades were not kept. I think I had 7 LAMs when I was arrested and only recovered 1 or 2 in the Armory. Oh well. My weapons with their mods were intact. I'm still carrying the GEP gun from the start of Liberty Island, because it's so useful against bots (and cameras, in some situations).

Despite having played almost exclusively non-lethal up to this point, I ended up wiping out most of the MJ12 guards and doctors, because, hey, they know what they're doing is wrong. I let the Mechanic who sells you stuff live though, he seemed alright. While it would have been fun to receive the killphrase for Gunther in Paris from doctor Jaime, I elected to tell him to join me in Hong Kong for roleplaying purposes; gotta keep my bros with me. He was relieved.

Manderley got a rocket straight to the face. Walton Simmons, in the hologram, was unmoved by my lethal prejudice.

I'm now in Hong Kong and have picked up the Dragon's Tooth almost immediately, because I found my way to Maggie Chow's apartment, and then went collecting evidence from the police station, and returned to Maggie's place to find her gone and MJ12 guards swarming out of hidden doors. Turns out Miss Chow is a nasty piece of work. I'll hopefully get to chop her into pieces with the Dragon's Tooth at some point.

Something that's always pissed me off to no end in the Deus Ex games is the energy management running on consumable power cells. I suffer from a bad case of videogame hoarding disorder, and I've beaten most of them without ever using any of the damn things, at significant cost to my sanity.

Its 20XX, just stick your dick in a convenient power socket, you're a fucking cyborg Denton/Adam.

The newer games do, from memory, let you automatically recharge a few pips with time, but that's lame. I'd rather not play a game set in a parallel timeline where the Note 7 debacle put an end to the development of battery technology.

I've been playing Rimworld again, courtesy of creating a mod for it. Miraculously, the 450 strong modpack of last year somehow worked, even after I threw in another 50 for taste. My runs usually die of boredom, TPS death (a 9800x3d and a 5080 only go so far in this game), or modpack instability/conflict. And I never play without dev mode enabled, because some modders have interesting takes on balance.

For example, I installed a mod that adds a bunch of cool guns and armor. It also, for no real reason, adds a spacer-tech faction that's intent on making a Banana Republic a reality in 5500 - you have one in game year to raise a massive crop of GMO fruit for them, or they'll clap your ass. I forgot about it, and was raided by 2 pawns with armor that could stand up to the scrutiny of God himself, and guns that could give him a migraine. My poor colonists lasted all of 30 seconds, and then I reloaded and deleted the enemy from existence because there is no God but me in these parts. Not quite VOID level, but goddamn. One year?? You're lucky to have a fabrication bench by then.

Something that's always pissed me off to no end in the Deus Ex games is the energy management running on consumable power cells. I suffer from a bad case of videogame hoarding disorder, and I've beaten most of them without ever using any of the damn things, at significant cost to my sanity.

Its 20XX, just stick your dick in a convenient power socket, you're a fucking cyborg Denton/Adam.

The newer games do, from memory, let you automatically recharge a few pips with time, but that's lame. I'd rather not play a game set in a parallel timeline where the Note 7 debacle put an end to the development of battery technology.

Wha? Did you miss all those orange repair-bots that recharge your energy?

I think time based auto-regen of hp or any other resource is pretty silly. I think the console-gamers-first cover-shooters were what started the trend.

It's been somewhere in the ballpark of 15 years since I played the OG Deus Ex. Even then, the recharge bots were rare. Power outlets are... not rare.

Battery packs or capacitors are not like HP, and it does not break immersion to allow them to be recharged at a reasonable pace in-game.

at a reasonable pace

I feel like this is the only catch ... but how much of a catch?

Wiki says your 100 units of bioelectric energy will power Speed Enhancement for 150 seconds, which increases your running speed by a max of 80%. 80% of athletic-human running power is going to be something like 250 watts, and 150 seconds of that is about 10 Wh, which means your recharge time at a decent 1kW power outlet is only going to take you under 40 seconds.

Yeah, other assumptions might bump me up by a factor of 2 here, but that still seems fine. Even if we assume that standard electrical power can only be converted into "bioelectric energy" slowly, 10 Wh is small for a phone battery; just keep a supercapacitor or something in your pocket, charge that quickly, and use that to recharge your bioelectric energy slowly.

I think the only thing that makes the mechanic work is if we assume that making "bioelectric energy" is less like recharging a battery and more like synthesizing a fuel, something that requires slow and/or bulky equipment.

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