Rail Project
For the last several months I have been working on a new digital project. The inspiration of which is from my SVNO fictional model railroad. However the concept of this project goes beyond just the SVNO. Read more
Gaming
Workers and Resources: Soviet Republic
What a great game this is! Honestly, this is pretty much my ideal game. Long ago I posted about my ideal game. At the same time I also posted the idea to some forums on Steam. I recall someone said that they had a good idea in response to my post. And a few years later this game was born! Perhaps I inspired them to create it! I hope so. Read more
Phasmophobia
I was gifted this wonderful game by my friend Dawson. Thanks man! What an amazing game.
Now, not much scares me. Things that probably should, don't. Which means that this game is pretty fun for me. Until I 'invest' a lot of game-money in equipment. Then I worry about losing the equipment when I die.
The following are some tips and tricks I have been working on to try to determine the ghost type, while lacking specific evidence. I am trying to list the Official Evidence in an order that seems to be from easiest to obtain, to hardest, for that specific ghost. The Personality is also being listed, so we can figure it out based on how it acts.
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Gaming: Supreme Ruler Tips - Be a Republican for success!
The following was a comment posted in a review of the game, that I fully agree with.
My favorite aspect is the economy. Lots of people toss this game because they act like Democrats. They spend tons of money on infrastructure. They don't have industry goods to produce any of the facilities. Therefore they import them driving the world market price through the roof. They go broke. Taxes eventually reach 99% as you run a full on socialist state. Inflation goes through the roof as your government spends and borrows wildly at the whims of the rulers. And because you.... the user.... has total control (ie big government) your complete mismanagement wrecks the entire nation for a generation.
Instead..... focus the economy on GDP. It's everything IMO. Higher GDP equals more tax revenue. You want the people to be prosperous. I've tried many economic models and found most to be somewhat realistic. I've use the common flat tax. It's fairly effective. The "fair tax" ie sales tax is an excellent model. The citizens only pay taxes on goods consumed. In a perfect world you produce most of what you consume..... and consume a lot. Domestic profits are much higher than exports. If you keep a healthy balance of supply and demand with a national sales tax of roughly 30%..... you're good. GDP will go up. You'll gain tax revenue everytime goods are sold to the populace. And you get general revenue from the sale. In the real world..... this is essentially a free market with a national sales tax (as the only source of income.) People scoff at the idea because they think THEY would end up paying everything at the counter while the rich walk away unscathed. Anyone with a brain knows that's what happens anyway. Raise taxes on corporations and they simply raise prices to match. A healthy business will always maintain a steady profit line. Taxes are nothing more than a business expese. Either way it goes taxes are always paid by the little guy. Even now..... your employer is responsible for a large portion of your taxes. People think.... "Great... the company pays that." Except for the reality that it's simply a business expense considered under "labor." Which means you. Therefore you are more expensive to the company and get paid less. Therefore you actually pay ALL taxes. Because if they did not exist.... then a healthy competitive market would drive wages up to the current line anyway. It doesn't matter who gets the money from the companies perspective. Either the government.... or you.... cost X amount of dollars for one employee per year.
Anyway if you choose to run a socialist economic model.... your goal is to export. You want to drive GDP down. In lamens terms.... you want the people poor. Poor people work for nothing. The end result of all socialist nations is poverty. Poverty keeps you in business. Look at China. When their people become to prosperous they print a ton of money and devalue their currency by half...... essentially making the people 50% poorer. The easiest way to make everyone poor.... is to jack taxes through the roof. You can simultaneously raise services to maintain public order. But the people will still be poor. The lower their GDP.... the cheaper you can produce goods (ie China).... the less people of your own country can afford goods like electricity and water..... and you'll have a ton of cheap goods available on the market. If they pile up.... simply do bulk sales with a minimal profit. Technologies can also reduce the cost of production. But GDP is a huge factor and you can crash it quickly. As a socialist nation you will make tons of money off consumer goods. They are always in demand. They fetch a nice profit. And the poorer your people are.... the richer you get. .... Gee.... isn't socialism great.
Overall don't be afraid to raise and lower taxes. The economy should be flexible. Don't build it around one strategy. Grow it in all directions. Don't be afraid to shut factories down if you can import goods cheaper than you can make them. Why pay your own people more money when another country can produce it cheaper? Unemployment isn't that difficult to control. (Higher unemployement also means less competition for workers.... which means lower wages... whicih means you can produce goods cheaper and drop GDP.) You want a healthy balance of everything. I typically start the game by building a few industrial goods complexes. I want enough to sustain a war. Then I identify the particular countries trade imbalance. Try to produce goods rather than import them (unless producing them is more expensive.) And eventually create a small surplus of various commodities for export. I try to run about a 20% overall tax rate usually focussing on the sales tax. You want the people rich and prosperous. Make sure you maintain a healthy budget surplus. And you'll be fine. The game is not about massively overhauling countries. It's about managing them over time with minor tweaks. Read more
Flying Circus WoW Install
The following are options to install the client files for the private WoW-like server. We are using version 3.3.5a and the Realmlist settings need to be set to 50.75.95.230.
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Server
We have a private WoW server. This is for my friends and I to enjoy. Yes, it is free.
This server runs WoW at 3.3.5a, Wrath of the Lich King. Probably one of the better builds of WoW in my opinion.
The server is a repack, based on the Trinity Repacks. What this means, is that it is essentially a rebuild of the WoW server, but it isn't quite an actual WoW server. So while most things are the same, there will be some oddities, and bugs that you will encounter. But everything is supposed to work as it should, most of the time. Read more
The Isle
The FlyingCircus Server: Read more
Cities: Skylines - A Guide to a realistic city
Cities: Skylines is a game I have had a lot of fun playing. It appeals to my desire to create, and also do some micro managing if I so desire.
I have had a lot of fun building realistic cities with this game. But I have found some questionable strategies out there about how the perfect city should be built. Indeed, there are unrealistic methods to make the happiest, most populated, and highest value city around, but you get a city that is so clumped together that it just looks like cookie cutter blobs. Where is the challenge?
Me, I like to watch things grow organically, before my eyes! So let us take a step back and ask ourselves how cities develop in the real world. Cities like New York and Toronto... And indeed Paris, France, have not always been there. They, like all cities, grow over time. Typically a city begins as a crossroad, where trade begins to occur. A trader from point A, ventures to the crossroad and meets a trader from point B. They do business, and return to their points of origin. This eventually caused the need for services to develop, and markets to spring up near these meeting points. Which then gave rise to great cities.
To grow a city organically, you must think along these lines. First of all, the best method for a most realistic outcome would be to use a few mods right away in Cities: Skylines, and start the game with all tiles unlocked. http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=405810376 is a mod I use to allow all 25 tiles to be purchasable. Once installed, you will need to activate this mod in the Content Manager menu of the game itself, under the category Mods. I also install the following mod to make the tiles free to purchase: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=406451121. Those two mods, plus the default "Unlock All - Progression Milestones" activated, will allow you to purchase the whole map for free right at the beginning of the game.
Now that those are activated, you enter a new game, and begin by purchasing all the 25 tiles. Then, I typically bulldoze or delete all highways and roads, except for a tiny bit where they enter the edges of the map. I then connect them all with single dirt country roads. The dirt roads cost less to maintain, and can handle the initial traffic of a new city, just fine. Keep in mind, we are starting from scratch here. Why would a barren patch of land have a whole highway network already built? That is a waste of taxpayers money...
Ah yes. So you have to kind of act like a politician when your planning this. Sure you could build massive underground tunnel systems and highway projects to solve some congestion. But.... while the game doesn't really charge you quite as much as it would cost to build such solutions, imagine what such things would cost in the real world? Could your city of 40,000 inhabitants, really afford a underground highway network? Always look for the cheapest realistic way to solve problems.
It might often take me a few tries to solve a problem however. I see this, and explain this as advanced study modeling... And imagine that only the final / best solution was the one which actually was put in place. Anyhow, let us examine a game I started this way, and view the progress of it...
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Arma 3: Liberation
As some of you may know, my favorite game these days is Arma 3. Being the realistic military simulator that it is, I can really appreciate the gameplay, and don't have to focus too much on skill points, or leveling my character.
Anyhow, I have a few game modes I really tend to enjoy on Arma 3. There is of course BECTI, which is a whole island, dynamic PvE/PvP mission involving pretty much every dynamic the game has to offer. It is a fun game mode, yes... But it is missing something.
Then there is Antistasi. Antistasi is a fun but challenging game mode where you play as a rebel leader, in a anti establishment based rebel group, whom is trying to overthrow an oppressive government. The small David, versus the giant Goliath in a way. The tactics involved there, and the fact that you have to win over hearts and minds in order to be successful, are a great gameplay aspect which BECTI doesn't have. But what it lacks is the firepower, and ability to call upon heavy military equipment as a full fledged army would.
Which brings us to Liberation. Liberation is a game mode which has indeed been out for a while. I will admit that I have played it before, but was a bit intimidated by its complexity and lack of any real explanations on how to really play. The in game tutorial is very basic, indeed. But to sum it up, it is basically BECTI, and Antistasi, combined. I say this because it is a whole island based dynamic mission, where the NATO forces (The player) has to capture and liberate the island, from the CSAT forces. There are a number of ways to do this, but CSAT will also respond dynamically and counter attack you if you are too aggressive, and push too hard, too fast.
Liberation also has a civilian element that traditional BECTI lacks. Civilians dynamically populate the towns and the roads, going about their business. Killing them will lessen support of the local town, for your cause, and killing too many may make a town no longer capturable.
Liberation may be played solo, with friends, or with AI in your group. Commanders may also recruit full AI squads, which they can control via the Zeus feature. Some sites and missions can be played with a single player, sniping from a distant hilltop. Others, such as the military bases generally require a full assault, with at least a platoon of troops. As with other missions in Arma 3, there are roles for everyone in Liberation. Support roles like Logistics, Medical, and Engineering, can be very vital roles for people to fill. And as always, the combat roles are just as varied as well, with the need for pilots, mechanized, snipers, and ground troops always at hand. Really, the game seems intimidating, however it is quick to learn. Really it is not as complex as it initially seems.
Liberation is PvE. It is a co-op game mode which is perpetual, and meant to take a while to play. The game is dynamically based to offer resistance based upon the number of players online at the time. If only a single player is online, it isn't going to trigger a huge CSAT offensive against your main FOB's. But if you have 10 guys on, CSAT is likely to become more aggressive.
Your FOB's or Forward Operations Base('s) are where you conduct most of your squad building ans resource management duties. They are where you may purchase vehicles, or squad members. You may also choose to para-drop anywhere on the map from these locations. Your main base, is typically a last resort respawn point, and doesn't allow you as many options as the FOB's do.
I am very happy with the performance of this game mode on my new server. It averages about 50fps both server side, and client side, with a view distance set to 7000 meters.
A rather long gameplay video is embedded below for those curious...
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Arma 3: BECTI Explained
Arma 3 is a computer game focused in the military simulation genre. It is easy to pass it off as just another shooter game, but it differs from the Call of Duty or Battlefield type games. Arma 3 focuses on realism. Yes, it may in fact take you 2 hours to prepare for a battle that only lasts ten minutes. Yes, you may get completely pinned down, and have to rely on other friendly groups to support you. Yes, you may get killed by friendly fire. These things happen in war.
BECTI is a semi popular game mode / dynamic mission for Arma 3, which has actually been around since the original Operation Flashpoint days. It has come a long way since the original CTI game mode was scripted. The goal is to capture the whole island, or playable area, by securing towns and cleansing them of the enemy presence. The enemy consists of, initially Independent forces (local forces). There are also two factions you can play, BLUFOR (NATO) or OPFOR (CSAT). In Arma 3, NATO is a futuristic Americanized fighting force, using a lot of newer technology, mixed between American, Isreali and other European technology. CSAT is the fictional, futuristic opposing force, which is supposed to be an Iranian force, which has allied with China and Russia presumably. CSAT uses fairly high tech weaponry as well, however originating from Russian and Chinese technology and development.
Both CSAT and NATO are trying to capture the island, and secure it. Presumably to use as a forward base of operations. Initially, as I hinted at, both player controlled forces begin at opposite sides of the island, and must clear the towns of Independent forces in a phase which is like a co-op PvE match. Eventually the battle phases into a CSAT vs NATO, PvP engagement in late game, where both player controlled teams fight for victory on the island.
How to play:
Upon loading into the version of BECTI which I run on my server, you will spawn in a fenced in area with a downed helicopter. There will be walls of text around you. These walls of text are meant to give new players basic information about this game mode, and the interface which is used. However this post is meant to dive into further topics that this basic tutorial does not cover, or glosses over.
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