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Speedball posted:(are the character portrait names distracting or good?) Very helpful for easily-confused old fools like myself 
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Aug 28, 2014 12:50
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I'm very worried, my friends. Very worried. 
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Aug 31, 2014 12:09
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Aw, man... 
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Sep 5, 2014 23:05
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Outsider Shards. Because you can't go wrong loving around with eldritch abominations from outside time. Event Horizon. Because you can't go wrong loving around with eldritch abominations from outside time. Arkham Horror. Because you can't go wrong loving around with eldritch abominations from outside time. and Officer Development. Because you need the right chops to go loving around with eldritch abominations from outside time.
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Sep 21, 2014 22:41
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habeasdorkus posted:Speaking as an Alpha++ CisHet-kin SJW Uh. I'm trying my best to parse that. It appears to mean that your true Soul and Self is that of an utterly self-obsessed jock, and so you fight to preserve male advantages?
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Sep 24, 2014 14:03
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quote:Commander’s Poll: Muscle Fiber Density. Because I have auto-immune arthritis, and miss going for long walks. 
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Sep 27, 2014 23:07
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I've never played XCOM (or earlier iterations), despite my abiding love of Julian Gollop's "Chaos". So I don't have any gameplay reasons for my prejudice against Thin Men. Just the whole Matthew Lillard thing. gently caress Thin Men.
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Sep 29, 2014 23:21
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Speedball posted:
 I don't imagine we'll meet much in the way of friendly aliens in an XCOM game...
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Oct 4, 2014 00:36
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Is it just a story, or is she so embarrassed she’ll never admit it’s true? You’ll never know! Mua-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!
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Poor Fermi. A vastly important scientific genius who helped shape the modern era and literally gave his life for science -- he died at 53, from cancer caused by his exposure to radiation in experiments -- and all we remember him for is a light-hearted lunch conversation.  Fermi never intended his 'paradox' to be any sort of scientific statement. More than anything else, it's a statement about how much we assume. Broadly speaking, the idea that "Where are they?" implies "They're not out there" hinges on seven assumptions: 1. We recognize alien life and its activity when seen. 2. Access to our region of space is unrestricted. 3. They are not, in fact, already here, and we're just not being told. 4. That our region of space is interesting enough to attract attention/colonization. 5. That faster-than-light travel is possible. 6. That we've been looking when they've been doing something we could detect. 7. That they want to do visible things, and wouldn't just stay at home. Given the ludicrous immensity of the universe, it is overwhelmingly likely that they're out there. As to why we're not already part of some vast galactic polity, all we can do is shrug. We know so little... We can't even begin to make a guess as to whether they ever will (or already have) drop by. After all, just about anything could be going on out there. The solar system is moving through space at around 1.8 million miles an hour, a reasonable fraction (~1/400th) of light-speed. Who the gently caress could possibly know what happens next?
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Oct 4, 2014 12:59
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pun pundit posted:That assumption is not made. The argument is that an alien culture that achieves space travel and gets off their home world has protection from extinction events by redundancy; even destroying their home world, or half their space-based stuff, is not going to kill them as a species. So, if they procreate and spread like life on Earth does, they will eventually go to other systems - not faster-than-light, but at sub-light speeds - and given the age of the galaxy (and the age of many of the stars in it), if such cultures existed they would have spread to everywhere in the galaxy by now, even at sub-light speeds. That only holds true for this galaxy, and perhaps the rest of the Virgo supercluster -- greatly decreasing the pool of potential colonist life-forms we're talking about. Also, note the "if they procreate and spread like life on Earth does", which is of course a massive assumption. The Milky Way is 120,000 light-years across, more or less. A colonist species could easily cross it in the time the galaxy has been around. But that's very different to actually hitting the solar system (and deciding Earth is the best bet for a take-over). There are up to 400 billion stars to pick from. It wouldn't be possible to route between them all in serial in galactic life-time so far. So you'd need a radiating species, and to have a chance, it would have to be one that replicated quickly enough to send fractional populations in all directions, but still have each fraction strong enough to build up quickly enough to be able to split again every new star. Once again, we very rapidly get bogged down in whole rafts of massive assumption. FTL would make the process of colonizing an entire galaxy far more plausible. Besides, saying that there are certain situations where we wouldn't need to assume FTL for "local" colonist species hardly invalidates any of the other assumptions. (Total aside: at 50mph, it would take 160 trillion years to drive from one edge of the galaxy to the other. Without toilet breaks. That's some serious trucking.)
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Oct 4, 2014 14:02
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I am so ridiculously pleased that no-one died! I loved the "you shall become our shoes!" thing, too.
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Oct 19, 2014 01:34
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Mister Bates posted:big gently caress-off energy weapons just randomly showing up in the hands of whoever can afford them. I kinda assumed we were inadvertently arming the Defias (uh, EXALT) and before Enemy Within, we just didn't realise it.
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Oct 19, 2014 15:35
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Wow, poor old Zinchenko really is rubbish.
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Nov 3, 2014 00:51
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Speedball posted:Working on story proposal for sci-fi anthology, except I'm afraid I am going to get totally outclassed. I've got great ideas and am working with a better artist who is amazing, but one of the confirmed contributoris the Kill Six Billion Demons guy and there are 70 known submissions at this time. Also this editor has rejected me in the past. I was excited a week ago but right now it seems hopeless. You'd be amazed how lovely most submissions to ANYTHING are. It's always worth trying, and at the very least, you're an entertaining writer who knows how a sentence works. That puts you in the top 25% right there. (Source: I am a publisher and author)
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Nov 7, 2014 14:45
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Speedball posted:Just sent in the submission. Feeling better about it now. The working title is Crystal Baby. In a weird dimension of crystal people, a doctor, her daughter, and two visiting human doctors go on a road trip to a village to deliver a budding crystal baby and fight a huge flying monster that shoots laser beams from its tentacles. That sounds strangely awesome...
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Nov 11, 2014 01:56
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Oh, Gods. Toastboy. WHY?
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Nov 11, 2014 12:30
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Sounds like a lot of fun
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Nov 12, 2014 20:37
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Speedball posted:XCOM Part 25: Battle Within The Mind! Nice!
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Dec 23, 2014 17:44
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Epic stuff, Speedball!  Good to see Allen again.
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Jan 21, 2015 00:12
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Akira is wonderful, but it's gotta be The Shining.
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May 24, 2015 10:56
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Speedball posted:(sorry if this one ran a bit long, I wasn't sure where to snip...) It was cool, nothing to apologise for. Favourite zombie fic probably has to be Shaun of the Dead for me too. Least favourite... well, Dead Rising is tempting, but the crown goes to a truly craptacular Z-movie called Hood of the Living Dead. Man, that sucked.
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Jun 1, 2015 15:58
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Hideous, dude Let us know if we've gotta come break you out of there.
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Jun 24, 2015 22:31
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Awesome stuff, Speedball. I can't quite imagine any real-world news crew deciding to give anyone privacy *grin*, but I guess knowing that the person you're filming could annihilate you with a half-second of effort is a powerful motivator
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Jun 28, 2015 11:35
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Speedball is awesome, I love our XCOM team, and trolls go on 'ignore user'. Obviously.
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Jul 7, 2015 23:14
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Speedball posted:Something may or may not happen to me today. So wish me luck! Good luck, Speedball.
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Jul 13, 2015 21:40
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2. FRESH MEAT. I can't even look at something made of meat and not drool. 7. Mostly, I get my meals from the local religious sanctuary.
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Jul 24, 2015 16:46
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Aug 11, 2015 12:33
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Rorahusky posted:Well, EXALT's leader being Carter Read that as Cartman. For a horrible moment, it made sense.
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Aug 21, 2015 22:51
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| # ¿ Apr 29, 2024 11:06 |
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Speedball posted:Well I just saw two giant flaming green meteors almost hit the earth near me TWICE in one night. That's gotta be a sign. "The chances of anything coming from Mars are a million to one," he said. The chances of anything coming from Mars are a million to one -- and still they come.
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Oct 24, 2015 12:21
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