I figure that the Swiss Army knife my dad got me for Boy Scouts is really up there. Self explanatory why I suppose.

While the Ordnance Department made a lot of terrible decisions, I don’t think the development of 5.56mm as a caliber was delayed much by them. Armalite was doing it’s thing and dealing with Remington to fine tune their design. The US ended up adopting a 5.56mm rifle only 5 years after the Soviets had gotten the AKM production up and running. 5.56mm is a lot better for general use than 7.62x39mm so the delay may have been worth not just making a ballistically crude round as the 7.62x39mm.

We can go back and forth on if the .280 British should have been adopted, but it did have legitimate accuracy problems in both US and UK testing that at least make it’s non-adoption understandable.

While I can somewhat excuse the adoption of 7.62x51mm in the post-war, what I find indefensible is the M14 itself. The idea of reusing the M1 tooling to cut costs should have been obvious nonsense. The FN FAL was a much better design for a service rifle. Add to this the idea of removing both SMGs and squad automatic weapons from service in favor of using an M14 in their place was clearly a doomed endeavor.

Though if the US hadn’t adopted something as awful as the M14 maybe the Air Force wouldn’t have bought AR-15s and we never get the timeline where the AR-15 wins, so. Eh.

I could have sworn Discovery was connected with Bad Robot, but it looks like I was wrong.

It still has a “JJ Abrams sensibility” - frantic space combat, overly emotional characters, a lot of flashy but meaningless tech (the hologram communicators as an easy example) and visuals (the way the bridge was often shot). It was very much trying to be loud and new, while throwing in a lot of surface level references to try and give it some franchise credibility (this USS Discovery is a rejected Phase 2 concept design).

It all came together in a loud, unlikable soup that felt inauthentic to the franchise. There was some course correction later on, but too little, too late. Strange New Worlds went the right direction, while the Section 31 movie tripled down on all the worst aspects of Discovery.

In any case, I agree - the D&D movie was a lot of fun, and while I wouldn’t want a ST movie to strike that tone, I’m interested to see what they cook up.

I don’t want the Trek movie to have the DND movie tone either, but more like when that movie was made they understood the correct tone to match the franchise. It felt authentic to what DND players experience. If the Trek movie has the same care in figuring out what long time fans want, it will be good.

That’s good. The repercussions of the Bad Robot era have really derailed Trek in a way it’s just started healing from.

While Discovery wasn’t in the Kelvinverse, the connection to Bad Robot probably gave it that similar style. The Section 31 movie wasn’t connected directly to Bad Robot as company, but it did share a writer.

Strange New Worlds has been a huge step in the right direction, though it came directly out of Discovery, making it kind of a prototype for modern live action Trek trying to both be “gritty” and classic Trek at the same time. I think it has mostly succeeded, but now that it’s proven there’s an appetite away from Bad Robot era Trek, I hope the new series goes further.

While I hope whatever they make doesn’t share a tone with the new DND movie, I appreciate that the DND movie was obviously well versed in the setting and knew what fans were about. Applying that same mindset to Trek would be great.

Wow this is a 2e era mini.

I like the choice of big flat areas of color with chunky highlights. It fits the sculpt.

I’m just saying, that’s a lot of work to record and add in every bit of player character dialog (male and female character voices). It still takes development time to go through and make sure the dialog animations don’t look (too) messed up and make sure characters aren’t talking over eachother and things like that.

There’s also the fact that during game development, dialogs can change. Which means if an earlier version of a dialog was recorded, it needs to be re-recorded. It’s an extra layer of hassle compared to just changing a text box.

Part of the reason most RPGs don’t do voiced player dialog is the amount of extra work it takes. The end result in Fallout 4 was underwhelming because of the writing, but it was still a lot of (potentially misguided) effort to have everything voiced.

It’s a shame that Fallout 4 really locked you into a character with a pre-written name, a fairly detailed backstory, and dialog (both the actual words and the voice delivery) that gave a sense of laser focused motivation. I felt absolutely nothing for Shaun, and therefore the entire main quest was a chore.

It would have been so easy to just have some plot other than getting Shaun back. Removing that as motivation and removing some of the player character backstory would open things up for players.

I assume because there was a ton of voice acting and animating for all that dialog. That is a lot of work. Problem is just because it was a lot of work didn’t make it automatically good.

The “problem” with those mods is they lay bare how thin the dialog choices really are.

at times the short option summaries felt wildly disconnected from the actual dialogue the MC spoke

The number of [sarcastic] dialog options that were actually just unhinged threats was wild. I’m convinced whoever wrote those doesn’t know what sarcasm is.

Also Wasteland isn’t just the inspiration for Fallout. Fargo wanted to make a sequel to Wasteland but no longer owned the rights to it, so they tweaked it into what we know and love.

According to Tim Cain on his YouTube channel, not exactly. Cain was a fan of Wasteland which lead to some elements (mainly he liked the idea of morally ambiguous quests more than anything) being in Fallout, but Fallout wasn’t developed as Off-Brand Wasteland. Some time in development, after Fallout had been pretty crystallized there was a discussion by the studio about getting the Wasteland rights and reworking Fallout into Wasteland 2. That ended up falling through. I believe Cain has mentioned being relieved because Fallout had turned into a unique creation, and it was already having to deal with one license for GURPS so having the Wasteland license would have doubled the amount of people looking over his shoulder.

As for the connection to Fallout 3, really it’s just because Fallout 3 transported a lot of content from the first two games regardless of how tenuous the connection was.

In New Vegas, the Rangers obviously are a more natural fit to the game and as a continuation from the reference in the original. In FNV the Rangers were an independent group which has been absorbed by the NCR, though they still have a lot of autonomy. That’s what that big statue at Interstate 15 is about.

I’m actually a little shocked there aren’t (to my knowledge) any Roger’s Rangers references in Fallout 4, given that the are Minutemen LARPing around.

If they are going to be inside of a well preserved tomb structure, perhaps no texture. But if they are going to be somewhere more dilapidated or sandy then some sand added with PVA works. Painted and then drybrushed to bring out the texture.

Colors depending on intended environment. I find that painting the sand black and then drybrushing it gently with a sky blue creates a non-distracting non-specific location look.

I was responding to what tanks would be needed to counter T-14s with my own question on if they had even successfully made it to the battlefield and gotten into tank fights. If T-14s don’t enter the field, it doesn’t really matter what’s needed to kill them. A weapon never used is a non-factor.

As for the engine and all that. I’ve seen the youtubers slapfight about it. Until somebody in the west gets a T-14 and tears it apart, I don’t want to get too into the details of the design. It obviously is troubled, given it taking until 2023 to show up to an ongoing war only for it to be promptly removed from service. That says it’s terrible. The exact details of how it’s terrible, like into the weeds, I will wait on more than memes and pig themed youtubers as my sole source of technical info.

Skeletons are a great beginner friendly mini. I like the yellowed tone choice over a brighter white for the bones.

If you want to get a little more ambitious, you can base them in whatever way fits your game to get some basing practice in.i personally feel like a completed base elevates a mini.

T-14 Armata

I know they were briefly used in 2023 and then pulled, but were any even killed?

It’s very spotty finding combat information about them, and I can’t find information if they ever actually made it into combat or if they tried to deploy and just couldn’t even do that.

The T-14 is a non-factor given the unsubstantial numbers. The real practical tank in the field is the T-90M, which is pretty dated.

From what I read of the Panther, much of its design changes are seemingly focused on dealing with a drone heavy battlefield. Even if the T-14 is cited in press releases as a reason for the design, I doubt any engineers actually took it seriously.

Soviets had the ability to both design and produce effective equipment. Sometimes it was oversold (with the US government happy to oversell the abilities), but they did have some legitimately good or cutting edge equipment.

Russia I’ve noticed has a pattern of making weapons that make impressive big booms if you aren’t paying attention to the details. BMPT and KA52 come to mind. They can fly in and just drop huge amounts of firepower. I suspect this is so they can do bombastic demonstrations and export their hardware to make some money.

Russia lacks the production base of the USSR. Even if they could design new equipment, they struggle to actually build it in appreciable numbers.

The “modernization” effort of the Russian military starting around 2012 amounted to issuing new uniforms. Uniforms are both cheap and very visible. It’s a low cost way to pump up military image without sinking money into buying boring, expensive, and important things.

OTOH, while US military spending has historically been huge, it usually for the most part resulted in gains. Equipment developed and widely procured in the GWOT was mostly (mostly ok, I know about UCP) good. Since the GWOT ended, it seems like US military procurement has lost its mind with seemingly little unity between branches and doctrinal priorities constantly changing as it tries to figure out what the enemy will be and how to fight them. During these fluctuations it’s a lot of money going into deadend projects and Sig smartpistols.

I can’t agree more strongly. The ad for the Neo felt like a cult recruitment video. It’s targeting people in their feels, not appealing to sensibility. Huge red flag. 99% of footage of a Neo in motion has been with in remote controlled by a person in a VR headset.

I often agree with this, though for Death Trash given the slow pace of major updates I figured I’d just jump in. It only took me about 10 hours to beat the main content, and a few more hours poking around to feel finished with the game. This isn’t something like Zomboid with a big sandbox element to sink hours and hours into.

Honestly, at the pace it’s being updated I don’t know if it will get a huge proper ending.

I double checked myself on some Chauchat machinegun facts, and then kind of went into a rabbit hole of inter-war French armament.