Starflight came out in 1986, and if you liked Mass Effect, you should give it a try. IMO it has a deeper and more interesting implementation of the space/planet exploration mechanics, not to mention a solid story to tie it all together.
The UI looks dated, of course, but it’s straightforward enough to use. It influenced the Star Control games, another series that holds up (but just barely misses the 1990 cutoff).
This is tough to answer, because a lot of pirated stuff is literally priceless, i.e., can’t be bought at all.
I’d be happy to pay for the recent Ace Combat 5 and 6 upscaled ports, but they were only available briefly with preorders for AC7 on consoles I don’t have. They haven’t been sold outside of that brief window several years ago. Even if you tracked down unopened copies from 2019 and bought them from third parties, the license codes they contained expired long ago.
Fortunately, the Ace Combat community has put a lot work into making emulation work. The older games are playable, just not in a way you can pay money for.
No, not least because almost nothing in this area is self-evident due to the state of caselaw at the moment.
Putting aside for the moment the question of whether “generative” implies “transformative” in the specific sense under discussion in copyright law, the definition of “transformative” in this context is highly contentious, and courts have avoided defining it in an unambiguous way. Even here, the courts will probably avoid answering these questions if at all practical.
This is a big part of why fair use is in such a bad state right now: no predictability in how courts will rule on it as a defense, plus no way to keep you out of courts in the first place.
For sure. It’s kind of fascinating, in a grim way, to contrast Haiti’s revolutionary course with the US, where basically every major power was cool with them a few years after their revolution.
One wonders how history would be different if the nations of the world had spent centuries screwing the US with debt and propping up their worst leaders and left Haiti to do its own thing.
Right? Most of this stuff was already the case in 2012, so it barely even counts as a prediction.
China’s lead in rare earth production doesn’t exactly come out of nowhere, nor does Haiti having a crisis of some sort or terrorists being called freedom fighters. And having AI do the targeting work in place of humans has been floating around as an idea since what, when The Forbin Project came out? 1970 or so?
See also Brigador: apart from the various lasers, exotic ballistics, and nightmarish chemical weapons it includes, there’s also the prosaic “Mãe Dois.” The tech entry leaves no doubt about what it is:
He’s decided you’re not on his level, but he thinks you’re cool all the same.
Biblically-accurate Ace Combat aircraft.
A turret toss does seem like it would be effective as reactive armor. Is this how tanks evolve to survive drone predation? Main turret autotomy to give the smaller turret buds a chance to flee?
Some ships do have emergency antimatter generators per the TNG Technical Manual, but they’re hideously energy-intensive to run–something like a 10:1 ratio of deuterium used for each unit of antimatter. They only make sense to run in the rare situation you absolutely need to warp to safety when you somehow have deuterium and a warp core but no antimatter.
But holodecks apparently have their own infinite power supply incompatible with any other Starfleet technology, so perhaps Voyager used the holodeck replicators to generate deuterium to run their antimatter generator whenever the Doctor isn’t practicing his sermons.
Efficiency would be abysmal even by the normal standards of this process, but it beats walking back to the Alpha Quadrant.
The microwave thing? I couldn’t even guess, though I personally wouldn’t want to stand next to it even if it works. A big microwave emitter on the battlefield is just asking to catch a HARM.
It really doesn’t seem like anyone knows for sure what to do about drones right now.
Large, non-nuclear EMPs mostly use explosives. Covering a large battlefield means you’re essentially bringing a massive, single-use explosive charge to the battlefield, staying uncomfortably close enough to benefit from it, and trying to set it off at exactly the right time, because they’re not reloadable. And your enemy is probably thrilled you’re doing this, because it saves them from hauling their own explosives there. (On that note, why are you sitting on this thing instead of dropping it on the enemy?)
This is in addition to whatever shielding you brought, which is likely bulky and conspicuous. And you’re probably not doing combined arms, because shielding infantry and light vehicles from massive explosions is, it is fair to say, something of an unsolved problem.
But wait, you might be thinking. I know there are non-explosive ways to generate EMPs. Yes, there are, but you need a power source for those, and if you have a really good, portable one of those and a consistent supply of fuel to run it, you probably have better uses for it, like powering a modest laser. Oh, also, you’re 100% sure your shielding works perfectly, right? You’ll find out quick if you don’t.
Nobody:
Absolutely nobody:
The ghost of Sam Hughes: Okay but have you considered
Oof, I definitely did that once or twice.
It really does seem like they decided to bring this sequence up to introduce settlement building and power armor early. I get why they did it, but man, I do not think it ultimately has the effect they wanted.
Maybe a controversial suggestion, but my advice is to ignore the Minutemen stuff until late in the game. Just don’t even go to the museum until you’ve followed some leads and want something else to do for a bit.
This is definitely not the intended way to play, but I promise the story flows so much better without it. Setting out to find your kidnapped son just to immediately get sidetracked helping some uncharismatic misfits set up mattresses is just an underwhelming start to an otherwise decent game.
Doing all this stuff later on, when you’ve actually demonstrated you’re a badass survivor and the OP gear you get free from the Minutemen quest actually feels earned, just feels much smoother. It’s a great coda that they unf put two minutes into the game for some reason.
I’m always pumped when an article titled “Beast/Monster of <location>” is an actual cryptid and not just the nickname for a serial killer. This is way more interesting!
While the adulteration surely didn’t help, I don’t think I’d trust pure milk from these cows, either:
Swill milk dairies were noted for their filthy conditions and overpowering stench both caused by the close confinement of hundreds (sometimes thousands) of cows in narrow stalls where, once they were tied, they would stay for the rest of their lives, often standing in their own manure, covered with flies and sores, and suffering from a range of virulent diseases. These cows were fed boiling distillery waste, often leaving the cows with rotting teeth and other maladies.
I’d agree with that. The updated version from the early 90s is the one I played, and it’s probably the easiest to find unless you really go looking for the old version.
I still think it counts. It’s still the same fundamental Starflight experience.