The Very Many Questions-Not-Worth-Their-Own-Thread Thread ΛΓ

[Arakhor]

It's about as realistic as glass armor.......

Glass armour in Tamriel is actually made from an igneous green crystal that can be mined to produce a lightweight, translucent material suitable for smithing.

 

[Gori the Grey]

Well, okay, then; in that case, it's totes realistic.

 

[Lexicus]

igneous

I thought you misspelled ingenious at first

I'm using a glass sword that I enchanted with massive damage in my current Skyrim file right now

 

[The_J]

Using the bow as a slashing weapon would probably ruin the accuracy of it completely. An archer would not recommend.

 

[Takhisis]

Glass armour in Tamriel is actually made from an igneous green crystal that can be mined to produce a lightweight, translucent material suitable for smithing.

Yes, I could just handwave it with ‘it's a magical bow’ (there's a dragon in the setting somewhere), but that would raise the question of why I don't apply ‘magical’ to more or less anything.

 

[Cutlass]

Mmmmkay, I remember some '90s-early 2000s arcade games that had a bowman-class hero who had a blade attached to the end of his bowstave so that it could be used as a slashing weapon in close-quarters. Is it realistic in any way at all, or would the bowstave break at the first or second blow as I've always suspected?

No. A bow is useless as a melee weapon.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Okay, okay, you've broken me down. I'll give you all my onions.

Real question time: Is there any way to cherry pick DLCs in Sims 2? I have the complete version and I realized last time I played that I... well... don't use any features from them except for seasons and pets. I'd like to disable the ones I don't use...

... and I'd really like to make it switch to using the vanilla soundtrack. I love the original soundtrack of the game and really don't like the replacement music from all the DLC.

I saw no easy way of doing either of these things when last I played. This might be because of Origin's awful interface. @aimeeandbeatles?

Look into AnyGameStarter. I'm guessing from your comment on Origin that you're using the Ultimate Collection, so this is the one you want. Unfortunately because of limitations Mansions&Gardens has to be included but it's not a bad pack and if some of the new animations bother you there's mods to remove it.

 

[Synobun]

Look into AnyGameStarter. I'm guessing from your comment on Origin that you're using the Ultimate Collection, so this is the one you want. Unfortunately because of limitations Mansions&Gardens has to be included but it's not a bad pack and if some of the new animations bother you there's mods to remove it.

Thank you! I've never heard of this before. I'm glad that I wasn't missing something super obvious. I'll bookmark this and the links you PMed for when I try tweaking the game again.

 

[Arakhor]

I never even knew that such a thing existed and I played the hell out of The Sims 2 back in the day.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

It was made by Numenor, who was one of the big modders back in the day. He's retired from modding now but he recently came out of it to get AGS working with the Ultimate Collection. Sadly, a lot of the big modders are either retired and some have even passed on (such as Mootilda or Sunni from Plumb Bob Keep).

 

[Commodore]

How do you all determine how large you are going to make your military in 4x games? I usually base it on my income with 10% of my income being allocated to my "defense budget" if I'm not at war, and I bump it up to 25% when I am at war.

 

[Synobun]

I try to avoid building militaries for as long as possible because of the micromanagement it entails. In CK2, I'd keep a retinue and use that to deal with rebellions and early strikes.

In games like Civ, I only build troops when war is on the horizon. That is usually what I use my money for.

 

[GoodSarmatian]

How do you all determine how large you are going to make your military in 4x games? I usually base it on my income with 10% of my income being allocated to my "defense budget" if I'm not at war, and I bump it up to 25% when I am at war.

There's no specific number and it all depends on need, opportunity cost and the specific game's economy/military supply system.
The only 4x game I've played in the past two years is civ 6. I dedicate most of my early game production to military, usually 2 scouts, 5 warriors and 3 slingers. Sounds like a lot, but since tier 1 military units don't have any upkeep costs it's a pretty good investment, especially if you can upgrade those slingers to archers and conquer another civs capital in the ancient era.
After that I tend to neglect my military for a while. What I have is enough to deal with barbarians and I can focus on tech and economy. Should anyone attack me later, I have the tech and resources to quickly upgrade my forces and bring guns to swordfights. Should a protracted war break out, I'll dedicate one (in extreme case three) cities/planets to military production and go back to a peace economy (and delete the least experienced units to save on upkeep) as soon as possible.

That's pretty much my MO in most 4x games where it works. Early conquest, followed by peaceful investment that will allow to militarize very quickly.

 

[sophie]

At whatever level I feel comfortably able to maintain my defensive/military goals while still maintaining a desirable level of economic development/growth.

It varies from game to game (and even within the game itself), but basically I allocate resources in this order: 1) enough military to defend my lands, 2) enough economic/infrastructural investment to maintain a satisfactory level of growth, 3) all else goes into military.

 

[Farm Boy]

Any functionality I'm missing that removes visibility of likes from members you have ignored?

 

[Synobun]

There isn't, at least not natively. The 'ignore' feature isn't meant to be a 'block' feature (as you might expect from social media).

 

[Farm Boy]

Wouldn't know about social media. Ah well, guess it's not that important, just one more reason "likes r dumb" or whatever.

Thank you for letting me know!

 

[Valka D'Ur]

The "like" feature can sometimes have unexpected consequences. Over at TrekBBS there's a guy who was on my ignore list for years (due to the incessant trolling he threw at me just because I don't like the Abramstrek movies).

Fast-forward 8 years, and I noticed that he'd been dropping "likes" on some of my posts (that forum went XenForo long before CFC did). So out of curiosity I started investigating some of his posts, and it turns out that he and I agree that DiscoTrek is crap. I removed him from my ignore list and we've been getting along a lot better lately.

 

[Arakhor]

Nothing like a common enemy to unite people, eh?

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Nothing like a common enemy to unite people, eh?

I'm not naive enough to think we've become bosom buddies. The next time I say anything negative about Abramstrek, he'll say something snide. But he's mellowed somewhat over the years, so while it would be negative, it wouldn't be vicious.

But I'll take cautious cordiality over blanket trolling. It's my sincere hope that there won't be any more nuTrek movies, as the longer we go without a reason to discuss it, the less stressful the interactions are.