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What did you think: Mirrors and Smoke

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  • postagepaidpostagepaid Member Posts: 2,899 Arc User
    Ran the mission on a lowbie alt and that flagship fight was clearly not designed with low levels in mind. Even knowing you have to hit them in the face it just takes so long to die.

    Except it doesnt die! It just flies off with zero reward for all the time spent tickling the thing to death, not even a shield battery or lockbox. If I run it on any other lowbies then it'll be partied with my f2p account purely for that fight.


    Storywise, the evil minister was far too obvious to be a baddie. Prime minister would have been potentially more interesting twist from a plot perspective, one hand in welcome the other with a blade kind of deal. The story was something any good english teacher would hand back with could do better written in red pen at the top.

    At this rate the entire lukari arc will all be a strange holosim or dream sequence.

    Kuumarke goes from inquisitive scientist to self righteous twat with hint of moron when she sees an obvious barricade and thinks its just a pile of junk. She's still got the best female voice acting in the game by far but the character itself went bipolar.

    City map was good but tiny. Moon map was bland.

    The story could easily have been all city/ground based with trek like helping civvies instead of seeing the sick person lying on the road and simply saying well they're screwed arent they.

    Could even have gone for, god forbid, a cliffhanger with the moon bombing happening as that mothership dies, could even have had the ship crash causing the death of the moon.

    That would allow for the next episode to cover the moon allowing for more time to fix the issue instead of the really contrived space magic and also make it a way more interesting ground map that tiny area with a wall and some sci-fi dooberies. Environment suits ahoy, missed opportunity.
  • spiritbornspiritborn Member Posts: 4,248 Arc User
    You can make a "clearly the antagonist" character intresting and relatively deep, I mean General Chang from TUC is clearly the bad guy but there's enough to him that he's intresting to watch (even if his constant quoting gets old at times). With Pentaaro (sadly my best nickname for him is NSFW) there's nothing, he's as shallow as a puddle and as sudtle as a nuclear explotion.
  • angrytargangrytarg Member Posts: 11,001 Arc User
    patrickngo wrote: »
    you confuse "Capitalist" with "Narcissist" there, and ascribing "altruism" to someone who doesn't want to drink or breathe poison is really stretching it hard.

    considering that the only countries that have embraced serious environmental safety regs are Capitalist countries you're also using a very false equivalency. Want to firnd the worst hellholes on earth, they're going to tend to be one form or another of dictatorship-and competition (a critical element of Capitalism) isn't something you find there. Instead it's usually some combination of "People's Democratic republic of...".
    \\
    Prime examples: Pre-Gorbachev USSR, People's Republic of China, People's Democratic Republic of Korea, etc. etc..

    Capitalism is also not compatible with Fascism, for the same reason it's not compatible with communism-state control... the descriptor you're looking for is "Autocratic Regime"-because those really DO pollute without giving a flying ****.

    they also tend to have non-competition to protect state owned or subsidized industries or industrial monopolies.

    No, I don't confuse "capitalist" with "narcissist". I know the fable of the competition regulating everything and ultimately saving us all, but the truth is that privatization and capitalism do not solve problems outside of a hypothetical scenario every form of economy has. In theory, communism works just fine - it just has never been tried, the term has just been utilized during the cold-war era to describe autocratic regimes, not a form of economy. But neither of us has to waste time and energy as our views are determined and colourful anecdotes don't change that pig-1.gif.​​
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  • warpangelwarpangel Member Posts: 9,427 Arc User
    patrickngo wrote: »
    warpangel wrote: »
    patrickngo wrote: »
    patrickngo wrote: »
    The economics don't work, even assuming a purely profit-motive driven industrial society, because the conditions kill your domestic market and your workforce.
    You act like that is bizarre when major corporation in the real world always fight for dumping waste and other hazardous **** into water supplies that feed into the local population's drinking water claiming there is no such thing as negative side effects.

    A dying workforce just means you have to pay them less, and can exploit them to pay you more for all number of "cures" to their problems.
    patrickngo wrote: »
    worse still, pollution levels that high, and you're wasting valuable (costs money) raw materials-the more efficient your production, the less money you're letting flow out the outflow as industrial waste. the tech doesn't support the situation...
    Again, have you seen the real world where companies are constantly trying to strip any and all regulations that enforce some level of efficiency because its hurting their profit?

    The problem with your whole post is that it only makes sense if corporations cared about the long term, they do not. Like all people, they are obsessed with short term gains, regardless of the fact they can't take it with them when they die.

    inefficiency is UNPROFITABLE Som..

    I work in an industrial environment, many of those 'environmental' laws actually result in sending ungodly tonnes of otherwise useable materials to Yucca Mountain, where they get to leech into the ground water of Nevada from containers that can't possibly hold them for the rest of the ten thousand or so years it'll take to naturally break down.

    on the other hand, a LOT of that stuff can be reprocessed at fairly low dollar costs, or even re-used.

    and some of them, if let to decay, actually get WORSE.

    Do you know why we don't have closed cycle nuclear? It's because Federal Regulations require disposal of spent nuclear fuel, instead of reprocessing it into nuclear fuel. IOW the spent cores get buried where they'll be hazardous for millenia, and new fuel has to be enriched, produced, and used instead.

    reprocessed fuel costs less than 'new' fuel, once you remove obstructive regulations written by guys who th en went off to work for the oil industry, or coal, or greenpeace.

    we've got dumpsters full of solvents in plastic baggies because federal regulations don't allow the stuff to be leeched out and processed, Som. those dumpsters aren't going to be recycled, they're going Yucca Mountain, or some other toxic waste disposal site, because it's illegal to do anything else...and guess what??

    those toxic waste sites are leaking into ground water, soil, and poisoning huge areas for centuries.

    see, what you don't get, is that regs aren't written by people who know anything except "Pollution bad"-they don't even 'get' how pollution happens, it's not scientists that write these things, it's Bureaucrats, and they read maybe the cover-page on their reports before they draft the next round of regs with an eye toward perpetuation, not solution, of problems-because as long as the problem persists, they still have a six to nine digit a year job.
    No, it's not scientists that write those regulations. It's corporate lobbyists.

    Just like on Kentari, I'd assume.

    IF they'd either not been so "Dreadfully SERIOUS" while making the 'bad guy' into a paper parody (more suitable to an SNL skit), or if they'd bothered to give a REASON (even if it's a bad one) why the Kentari were operating that way, either would have been workable as actual social commentary.

    as someone else pointed out, they skipped right past 'satire' and 'commentary' and dashed straight into "Propaganda aimed at American Political Audience"-and did a clumsy, half-**** ham-handed job of it.

    When you look at places that have genuinely BAD pollution problems, they're usually 'feeders' for enviromentally sensitive, long-term industrialized first world nations. Mexico's Merriolitos, China, etc. etc. all have the rampant pollution because they're basically where whitebread American and Europeans (concerned about the environment but also obsessed with cheaper goods) shipped the dirty industries.

    IOW, they're Exporting.

    Russia? same thing. The environmental catastrophe of the Aral Sea and Lake Baikal regions was a direct result of trying to "Export Revolution" (which is also why you find AK-47s and Combloc weapons all across the third world in places that still don't have the industrial base to build or support them.) Whether it's ideological export, or economic, industrialized nations that can support a first-world lifestyle (aka late 20th century first world or better) tend not to **** where they eat.

    but here's the Kentari, and they're supposed to be isolationist, industrialized, but careless to a degree that kills their own markets?

    It doesn't work.

    your industries themselves will collapse under that model-because in isolation and without exports, your populations aare both the labor force, and the customer base.

    only idiots kill their customers, and idiots don't build starships.
    The pollution clearly doesn't kill their customers fast enough to be a problem.

    What I did find unrealistic was that the rich elite would choose to live in skyscrapers "above the smog" instead of that that agricultural moon that must have been at least clean enough to grow crops on.

    But then again, they also had a lot of terrorists willing to die to defend their right to keep wallowing in their own toxic waste, so "unrealistic" seems to describe the kentari population across the class divide.
  • postagepaidpostagepaid Member Posts: 2,899 Arc User
    They probably pollute just enough to keep them alive enough to earn and spend on survival gear.

    Rich city dwellers who treat bank balance as a score sheet tend to go up instead of away from the city other than holiday homes. They see no point having that wealth if you can't show it off and looking down on the smog would only make them feel even more self important.
  • darakossdarakoss Member Posts: 850 Arc User
    patrickngo wrote: »
    warpangel wrote: »
    patrickngo wrote: »
    warpangel wrote: »
    patrickngo wrote: »
    patrickngo wrote: »
    The economics don't work, even assuming a purely profit-motive driven industrial society, because the conditions kill your domestic market and your workforce.
    You act like that is bizarre when major corporation in the real world always fight for dumping waste and other hazardous **** into water supplies that feed into the local population's drinking water claiming there is no such thing as negative side effects.

    A dying workforce just means you have to pay them less, and can exploit them to pay you more for all number of "cures" to their problems.
    patrickngo wrote: »
    worse still, pollution levels that high, and you're wasting valuable (costs money) raw materials-the more efficient your production, the less money you're letting flow out the outflow as industrial waste. the tech doesn't support the situation...
    Again, have you seen the real world where companies are constantly trying to strip any and all regulations that enforce some level of efficiency because its hurting their profit?

    The problem with your whole post is that it only makes sense if corporations cared about the long term, they do not. Like all people, they are obsessed with short term gains, regardless of the fact they can't take it with them when they die.

    inefficiency is UNPROFITABLE Som..

    I work in an industrial environment, many of those 'environmental' laws actually result in sending ungodly tonnes of otherwise useable materials to Yucca Mountain, where they get to leech into the ground water of Nevada from containers that can't possibly hold them for the rest of the ten thousand or so years it'll take to naturally break down.

    on the other hand, a LOT of that stuff can be reprocessed at fairly low dollar costs, or even re-used.

    and some of them, if let to decay, actually get WORSE.

    Do you know why we don't have closed cycle nuclear? It's because Federal Regulations require disposal of spent nuclear fuel, instead of reprocessing it into nuclear fuel. IOW the spent cores get buried where they'll be hazardous for millenia, and new fuel has to be enriched, produced, and used instead.

    reprocessed fuel costs less than 'new' fuel, once you remove obstructive regulations written by guys who th en went off to work for the oil industry, or coal, or greenpeace.

    we've got dumpsters full of solvents in plastic baggies because federal regulations don't allow the stuff to be leeched out and processed, Som. those dumpsters aren't going to be recycled, they're going Yucca Mountain, or some other toxic waste disposal site, because it's illegal to do anything else...and guess what??

    those toxic waste sites are leaking into ground water, soil, and poisoning huge areas for centuries.

    see, what you don't get, is that regs aren't written by people who know anything except "Pollution bad"-they don't even 'get' how pollution happens, it's not scientists that write these things, it's Bureaucrats, and they read maybe the cover-page on their reports before they draft the next round of regs with an eye toward perpetuation, not solution, of problems-because as long as the problem persists, they still have a six to nine digit a year job.
    No, it's not scientists that write those regulations. It's corporate lobbyists.

    Just like on Kentari, I'd assume.

    IF they'd either not been so "Dreadfully SERIOUS" while making the 'bad guy' into a paper parody (more suitable to an SNL skit), or if they'd bothered to give a REASON (even if it's a bad one) why the Kentari were operating that way, either would have been workable as actual social commentary.

    as someone else pointed out, they skipped right past 'satire' and 'commentary' and dashed straight into "Propaganda aimed at American Political Audience"-and did a clumsy, half-**** ham-handed job of it.

    When you look at places that have genuinely BAD pollution problems, they're usually 'feeders' for enviromentally sensitive, long-term industrialized first world nations. Mexico's Merriolitos, China, etc. etc. all have the rampant pollution because they're basically where whitebread American and Europeans (concerned about the environment but also obsessed with cheaper goods) shipped the dirty industries.

    IOW, they're Exporting.

    Russia? same thing. The environmental catastrophe of the Aral Sea and Lake Baikal regions was a direct result of trying to "Export Revolution" (which is also why you find AK-47s and Combloc weapons all across the third world in places that still don't have the industrial base to build or support them.) Whether it's ideological export, or economic, industrialized nations that can support a first-world lifestyle (aka late 20th century first world or better) tend not to **** where they eat.

    but here's the Kentari, and they're supposed to be isolationist, industrialized, but careless to a degree that kills their own markets?

    It doesn't work.

    your industries themselves will collapse under that model-because in isolation and without exports, your populations aare both the labor force, and the customer base.

    only idiots kill their customers, and idiots don't build starships.
    The pollution clearly doesn't kill their customers fast enough to be a problem.

    What I did find unrealistic was that the rich elite would choose to live in skyscrapers "above the smog" instead of that that agricultural moon that must have been at least clean enough to grow crops on.

    But then again, they also had a lot of terrorists willing to die to defend their right to keep wallowing in their own toxic waste, so "unrealistic" seems to describe the kentari population across the class divide.

    kind of in line. animals tend to prefer pleasure to pain, it's actually a survival trait, masochism is an anti-survival trait (which is why it's been at times classified as a mental illness.)

    There's no mention made of any addictive qualities to the pollution, and the leaking caustics indicate a pretty severe lack of maintenance, so all told t he whole situation is one that can only occur in a twisted version of an Aesop-the sort concocted as half-assed propaganda.

    Further underscoring this, is that this is supposed to be a Colony, and colonisation by people averse to basic survival really doesn't work out well for the colonists, certainly not well enough to be able to build cities that can become polluted. Specifically if the colony is founded via slowboat (sublight) methods of travel where survival shipboard would be ingrained on a generational level ("Don't let the equipment get leaky or we all die, maintain your life support, etc. etc.")

    the necessary habits to even conduct the operation of moving a viable population (for humans it's around 40,000 or so) from one world to another would make 'values' that are anti-survival into 'vices' that even the lowest-class and least educated (think:educated by verbal handmedown) would scorn at best, and persecute at worst. Slowboat colonists would likely be the most aggressively environmentalist on a base cultural level, just because of basic social darwinism-sloppy types would make accidents and the rest would not want to be victims of it after the first one.

    But there's still the root problem of economics here: you don't have enough of a market to justify suicidal industrial practices, even for the extreme wealthy (Who wold tend to be better fed, educated, etc.)

    The society as presented, doesn't work as anything but a packet of undesirable traits being used as a cheap substitute for real-world political enemies, a packet that excludes any and all consideration that those real-world types might have reasons for what they're doing or be under real-world constraints that the authors deliberately ignore to make themselves and their chosen supporters feel good about themselves.

    to wit: In the Real World, only First World economies can afford to consider environmental impacts-and they do, and it's not driven from the 'students' or from the lower classes, but from the very beneficiaries of the most rapacious previous methods (Strip mining, rampant smog, the Ohio River catching fire...)

    Europe and the U.S.. have massive enviromental regulatory regimes in part because they have the economic slack to afford them-the same reason that China and North Korea do not.

    The Ohio River never caught fire. That was the Cuyahoga River.
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  • spiritbornspiritborn Member Posts: 4,248 Arc User
    I'm pretty sure the exact name of the river isn't important, since as a rule of thumb rivers (or other large bodies of water) aren't suppose to catch fire.
  • legendarylycan#5411 legendarylycan Member Posts: 37,276 Arc User
    a CLEAN river isn't supposed to catch fire - obviously that one wasn't clean​​
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  • darakossdarakoss Member Posts: 850 Arc User
    edited May 2017
    spiritborn wrote: »
    I'm pretty sure the exact name of the river isn't important, since as a rule of thumb rivers (or other large bodies of water) aren't suppose to catch fire.

    Really??? Wow! :p Actually it was a good thing it did catch fire. It helped launch the Enviromental movement in the US almost fourty years ago and is now clean.
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  • darakossdarakoss Member Posts: 850 Arc User
    patrickngo wrote: »
    darakoss wrote: »
    spiritborn wrote: »
    I'm pretty sure the exact name of the river isn't important, since as a rule of thumb rivers (or other large bodies of water) aren't suppose to catch fire.

    Really??? Wow! :p Actually it was a good thing it did catch fire. It helped launch the Enviromental movement in the US almost fourty years ago and is now clean.

    point of order, it's not 'clean' it's just 'cleaner' and it was over fifty years ago, (1960s) not Forty (1970s) for the movement, and 45 years ago (1972) for the actual movement of the FEDERAL government to address the problem (Clean Water Act of 1972), Kay? and there were regional and state level laws passed prior to that.

    so closer to 50 years ago.

    The point still stands wrt to the mission-the society shown defies logic on a basic survival level. The problems begin with the simple fact these are supposed to be a colony that lived, when the lack of maintenance (which is how you get industriall waste leaking into the street) would have killed them before they could achieve major urban development. Espl. as a slowboat colony. (even if you froze the passengers).

    Major pollution happens in the transition phase from agricultural to industrial-that means y ou have to have an expanding export market with enough demand to finance runaway industrial development, as it's most often a result of rushing infrastructure in place. this is a single-culture world situation, the market and the labor force are all in the same isolated basket without the necessary developmental inequalities. Further, the tech level's too high in this monoculture to sustain that level of waste unless you're also looking at soviet-style communism where "They pretend to pay me, so I pretend to work" is a common attitude.

    Competition in a sealed jar tends to drive down waste-it has to. only when your government also holds the monopoly do you get the levels of apathy combined with ignorance that lets, for example, expensive and valuable processing chemicals run out onto the street from poorly or non-maintained pipe networks.

    These people are isolationist-that means they're operating in a sealed jar economy.

    aka "No exports" to drive the kind of reckless practices we see in the game.

    The traits shown are mutually contradictory, this is a problem because it makes the setting/environment about as realistic as a culture of circus clowns somehow evolving where everyone is a circus clown, but there's no audience or circus to go with it.

    in the end, what's presented is a story sabotaged by being arm-wrestled into a political parable so obvious it undermines the entertainment value and the message the author was trying to put out.

    One of those cases where if you're not already a true believer, you're not going to be converted. thus, it fails both as entertainment presenting a view of an alien culture, and as propaganda selling a particular viewpoint.



    [continues]

    Actually the big fire that did the most damage was in '56. But I digress and will drink a Burning River Pale Ale in your honor!
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  • darakossdarakoss Member Posts: 850 Arc User
    > @captain84101 said:
    > That was the most blatant left-wing propaganda piece I've ever seen. Considering how easy it was to fight the enemies, they didn't even want it to be a challenge. Just wanted to shove a narrative down your throat. Disappointed in Cryptic/STO.

    I'm a Liberal (and NOT a Progressive) and even I saw this. It was bad. To the point that it made the episode really fun because it was like a B-movie about conservatives. I laughed at all the cliche "traditionalist" silliness. Made for a very entertaining episode. :)

    Yeah...it was bad. The Trump caricature, the tradionalists, ect. If Kentars equivolent of Antifa showed up it would have been a party! My big problem still is the Federation meddling in the affairs of a non member world. Our captains should be reprimanded,
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  • smokebaileysmokebailey Member Posts: 4,659 Arc User
    darakoss wrote: »
    > @captain84101 said:
    > That was the most blatant left-wing propaganda piece I've ever seen. Considering how easy it was to fight the enemies, they didn't even want it to be a challenge. Just wanted to shove a narrative down your throat. Disappointed in Cryptic/STO.

    I'm a Liberal (and NOT a Progressive) and even I saw this. It was bad. To the point that it made the episode really fun because it was like a B-movie about conservatives. I laughed at all the cliche "traditionalist" silliness. Made for a very entertaining episode. :)

    Yeah...it was bad. The Trump caricature, the tradionalists, ect. If Kentars equivolent of Antifa showed up it would have been a party! My big problem still is the Federation meddling in the affairs of a non member world. Our captains should be reprimanded,

    not a trump I see, more of a military officer with xenophobia, a sort of MacArthur or the crazy religious guy from "contact" or the guy with shares in an oil company if anything else.

    And when the ships open fire on you, for no reason, it then becomes an affair for starfleet. Like Eminar from Taste of Armageddon
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  • smokebaileysmokebailey Member Posts: 4,659 Arc User
    > @darakoss said:
    > kabutotokugawa wrote: »
    >
    > > @captain84101 said:
    > > That was the most blatant left-wing propaganda piece I've ever seen. Considering how easy it was to fight the enemies, they didn't even want it to be a challenge. Just wanted to shove a narrative down your throat. Disappointed in Cryptic/STO.
    >
    > I'm a Liberal (and NOT a Progressive) and even I saw this. It was bad. To the point that it made the episode really fun because it was like a B-movie about conservatives. I laughed at all the cliche "traditionalist" silliness. Made for a very entertaining episode. :)
    >
    >
    >
    >
    > Yeah...it was bad. The Trump caricature, the tradionalists, ect. If Kentars equivolent of Antifa showed up it would have been a party! My big problem still is the Federation meddling in the affairs of a non member world. Our captains should be reprimanded,

    Maybe we Feds are the Russians?
    They are the Russian Federation nowadays aren't they. ;)

    I trust Russia far more than my own country/government these days ~shrug~
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  • jorantomalakjorantomalak Member Posts: 7,133 Arc User
    darakoss wrote: »
    > @captain84101 said:
    > That was the most blatant left-wing propaganda piece I've ever seen. Considering how easy it was to fight the enemies, they didn't even want it to be a challenge. Just wanted to shove a narrative down your throat. Disappointed in Cryptic/STO.

    I'm a Liberal (and NOT a Progressive) and even I saw this. It was bad. To the point that it made the episode really fun because it was like a B-movie about conservatives. I laughed at all the cliche "traditionalist" silliness. Made for a very entertaining episode. :)

    Yeah...it was bad. The Trump caricature, the tradionalists, ect. If Kentars equivolent of Antifa showed up it would have been a party! My big problem still is the Federation meddling in the affairs of a non member world. Our captains should be reprimanded,

    not a trump I see, more of a military officer with xenophobia, a sort of MacArthur or the crazy religious guy from "contact" or the guy with shares in an oil company if anything else.

    And when the ships open fire on you, for no reason, it then becomes an affair for starfleet. Like Eminar from Taste of Armageddon

    Tbh in a real world setting after disabling the ships our captain shouldve left the system and had the diplomatic core handle it, with pentaaro idk he seems to be putting his idealoligy infront of his peoples well being , when he says you force his hand i think at that point our captain is putting down a possible coupe de tat , seems like he had plans to seize power but our captain forced him to act before he was ready.

    as far as him being like trump or any other politician in todays world , i think thats is a stretch and people are reading more into it then what it really is, our captain actually is preventing a coup de tat by pentaaro, his actions is more like adolf hitler and his failed coup in the early 30s even some of his mannerisms.
  • drakethewhitedrakethewhite Member Posts: 1,240 Arc User
    a sort of MacArthur

    You do MacArthur a disservice, he accepted his firing and simply went away. There are historical third world military leaders that would have served your point far better.

  • drakethewhitedrakethewhite Member Posts: 1,240 Arc User
    They are the Russian Federation nowadays aren't they. ;)

    By pure definition...

    Since the founding of the USSR, they've been a Federation if one with a strong central government. So has the US, starting out with a weak central government although it has increased significantly in strength as it aged.

    IMO, the power and reach of the central governments in both however push the definition in the modern era. Both aren't far from becoming Unitary States, which after all is the most common type of government in the world today.
  • xyquarzexyquarze Member Posts: 2,114 Arc User
    To derail the thread a bit back towards the mission: I don't see any changes in the patch notes, but I have a feeling that the dreaded dread goes down way faster now. It still has its 600k+ HP, so that's not it, but it seems to target the player more often, giving us a shot at the weak front.

    And on a different note: how does the "Defend Kuumaarke" accolade work? I thought at first it was automatically given after finishing the moon ground part, but two of my toons just got it on their third playthrough, meaning they must have missed it twice...
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  • legendarylycan#5411 legendarylycan Member Posts: 37,276 Arc User
    xyquarze wrote: »
    To derail the thread a bit back towards the mission: I don't see any changes in the patch notes, but I have a feeling that the dreaded dread goes down way faster now. It still has its 600k+ HP, so that's not it, but it seems to target the player more often, giving us a shot at the weak front.

    And on a different note: how does the "Defend Kuumaarke" accolade work? I thought at first it was automatically given after finishing the moon ground part, but two of my toons just got it on their third playthrough, meaning they must have missed it twice...

    it's like that stupid drone accolade in step between stars; you have to finish that section within a certain amount of time - which means kuumaarke needs to not get shot, since that interrupts her​​
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    #LegalizeAwoo

    A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
    An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
    A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
    A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"


    "It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch."
    "We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
    Passion and Serenity are one.
    I gain power by understanding both.
    In the chaos of their battle, I bring order.
    I am a shadow, darkness born from light.
    The Force is united within me.
  • drakethewhitedrakethewhite Member Posts: 1,240 Arc User
    I agree. Our Liberal (classical) principles were lost when Teddy Roosevelt began his interventionist policies in the 1890s. From there the US (and the USSR when Stalin took power) has been sliding towards Empire. We are more like the Romulans or the Klingons at this point in my humble opinion.

    The ground work started well before then. It may (or may not) due to the simple fact that Federation is dependent upon significant travel times and communication delays. Meaning that once those are gone, the slide into a Unitary State is unavoidable.

    However, the US is not much of a Empire. Empires don't willingly give up conquered areas, and the US in the modern (post-WWII) era refuses to keep much of anything- from Japan and Germany to the oil fields of the middle east. It's just gets bored, and bored quickly, and then walks away from anything it does.

    It is in fact much like Star Trek's Federation- effectively unable to significantly affect the status quo or even maintain it over the long haul. Never defeating an enemy, never living up to its alliances and always losing the peace meaning they have to fight the Klingons again and again. Only in fiction can that be maintained in the long term.

    And the Klingons... they *were* the Soviets/Red China during the TOS. Afterwards, they were the cool kids who never do evil but act tough- because viewers needed something given that the Federation were such wimps.
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