FermiEstimate

OpenAI: "Our AI is so powerful it's an existential threat to humanity if we don't solve the alignment issue!"

Also OpenAI: "We can devote maybe 20% of our resources to solving this, tops. We need the rest for parlor tricks and cluttering search results."

If they're really lucky, they'll end up working for the Laundry only once. Residual Human Resources is a bad way to go out.

Charles Stross' Laundry series is basically this concept set in the present day: magic is a branch of mathematics, which means it can be computed and programmed.

It is perhaps worth noting at this point the series genre is cosmic horror.

FWIW, the shield backpack and either AMR or Quasar/EAT have served me well against bots, but I typically run light armor. I bring the grenade pistol to handle factories.

If you aren't already using it, there's never been a better time to get into the AMR now that they buffed the damage and finally zeroed in the scope.

Orbital stratagem timings make no sense, and are strictly a gameplay balance issue that *cannot* be realistic: the loading screen shows the first helldiver drops well outside the atmosphere and take several minutes to reach the ground, but turrets take 3 seconds to deploy?

I assumed this was because equipment can endure acceleration that would make a person pass out, or at least be combat-ineffective on landing. A trip from the Karman line to the ground in a few seconds would involve some deeply unpleasant G-forces...in opposite directions, back-to-back.

Come to think of it, this might explain why different gear has different call down times, as more fragile stuff might require a slower and (relatively) gentler drop.

Rockets seem more useful to me, since I can't count on tanks going where I want.

On the other hand, if the IRL combat footage videos are any indication, there might be black comedy potential with the AT mines I'm overlooking.

I'll preface this by noting that the sin of sloth has traditionally been understood to be a sin of omission, not just commission, i.e., you are insufficiently devoted to the things you ought to be.

Which means you could, in theory, have a (reflavored tiefling) devil paladin so devoted to sloth he works against evil causes. He's not interested in good per se, it's just that advancing the interests of good and traveling with a good adventuring party has the best ROI for failing to carry out his evil responsibilities.

Naturally, this has caused a fair amount of controversy among sloth devils, and there is a multi-century trial going on in the Hells about whether this ought to be allowed. This is not expected to be resolved in the foreseeable future because the advocates for both parties keep filing their responses well after petition deadlines expire.

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.

Even if falling doesn't result in a complete kill, it would be neat if it at least resulted in a mobility kill. That has to be hard on the tracks.

I think video art and art commentary is great, but lumping it all in here would make this place less interesting to me. I'm also not sure anyone looking for video art would think to look here for it. Maybe having periodic threads to post commentary or non-image art could be a good compromise?

I acknowledge that's somewhat arbitrary, but I don't think we can ever eliminate that entirely where art is concerned.

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.

Oh, he must have grabbed one of the barrage gunner helmets by mistake.