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PaperclipPerfector  5d ago (text post)   2147 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for March 21, 2025

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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I won my fantasy basketball league! I really didn't think I would have much of a chance, because I didn't see a path to 5 wins (9-cat), but going into yesterday I led in 4 categories. I still didn't see the path to a 5th, but my team had a big night and I managed to win the 5th category by a single point. Yes, one point difference when we're scoring 700+ points each week. I had written it off and just checked last night before going to bed. What a nice surprise.

I know some leagues like to treat fbball like ffball and have all players just accumulated 'points' for the stats, but these were points scored by actual basketball players. One point! I should figure out who it was.

What was the buy-in/prize?

$50 buy in, winner takes 9x, 2nd 2x, 3rd 1x.

Game subthread.

Review of Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader in the child comment here. (if putting it like this, let the mods remind me of not doing this)

The Pathologic 3 prologue is now available, but I don't know if I recommend it. The structure isn't linear temporally, and the imsim elements were a big part of the draw of the first two for me. You play as the bachelor, and like in the second game you do a lot of diagnosing people, but as the bachelor has a proper education diagnosing makes a lot more sense to me than as the haruspex (which I appreciated) but the gameplay loop is very similar. The new survival mechanics are... Odd. This time you have to manage the bachelor's mood, and maintain a balance between depression and mania, with differential actions tilting you one way or the other, and drugs maintaining the balance. So if you see a dead kid on the sid of the road you tilt towards depression and if you see people fighting you tilt towards mania, and you can take morphine to lower mania and amphetamines to lower depression. It works alright mostly, but I think it's bugged because the bachelor is perpetually one diagnosis mistake away from blowing his brains out. Also you have to assign your drugs to hotkeys to use them without going to the inventory but it doesn't indicate what's in your hotkeys, so I keep accidentally blowing my brains out when I forget which drug is where. It does make me want to play pathologic 2 again though, I wonder if there are any good mods for it?

I also played a neat little indie horror game called Rooten which I do recommend, it's an adventure game (with minor combat elements) that sees you dropped off in a forest near a small research camp whose researchers discovered a new fungus but now have all disappeared. There's none of what I'd call handholding, but you have an objective beyond 'explore' so I don't think it would be a good fit for @coffee_enjoyer's request. (Proteus is the only game I can think of like that, but unlike @problem_redditor I don't think it gets away with anything, for the past decade it's been my go to 'this is why you need at least some direction in video games' example.) However if you like games like yume nikki and strange telephone, Rooten might tickle your tights.

but unlike @problem_redditor I don't think it gets away with anything, for the past decade it's been my go to 'this is why you need at least some direction in video games' example.

Proteus is a game that's certainly not for most people and I think it could absolutely grate on a player (it's not my preferred style of game either, I'm a very extrinsically-motivated player); it's just fine-tuned to a hyper-specific target audience which it seems @coffee_enjoyer falls into, which is what made me recommend it.

In general I’m just a fan of very targeted experiences that don’t reek of overengineering. From the start there are no pretensions that it's going for any kind of mass appeal, and I respect a game that firmly markets itself to a specialised niche without compromise, far more than I do a game that seems to be trying to achieve several mutually exclusive goals in an attempt to be a widely acclaimed hit. Most open world games in my opinion are juggling contradictory goals of telling a linear story and maintaining a constant stream of content while at the same time still trying to maximise player freedom, and as a result they very rarely deliver on most of what they promise. At the very least Proteus actually does successfully achieve what it is going for, whether the experience it's optimising for appeals to you or not is a different question. There's a difference between a bad game (i.e. one that doesn't achieve what it intended to) and a game that does what it set out to do but isn't catering to you.

Yume Nikki is actually another great example of an exploration-based game without any clear direction, can't believe I forgot that one. I can't say I like that game, but I certainly appreciate it.

I really like the premise and I'm going to watch the game carefully if it ripens into something worthy of attention.

I've been really enjoying Paradise Killer. It's a detective game in a vaporwave + visual novel style, but you still walk around the world in a regular first person perspective.

The plot is that you are a mildly disgraced immortal member of a satanic (?) murder cult that's trying to resurrect dead cosmic gods and also build a perfect paradisiacal island in a pocket dimension so that you have a place to put all the cool gods you resurrected. Unfortunately, demons keep pouring in to your pocket dimension, so periodically your cult has to slaughter the mere mortals that have been abducted to serve as slave labor on your island and all the cultists move on to the next island in pursuit of perfection.

The game starts at the end of island 24. Tragically, the entire nomenklatura of your cult has been murdered in a locked room just as the island is being wound down. The island gates are shut, none of the remaining cultists can leave, and you are brought back from your three million days of solitary confinement to figure out who killed the nomenklatura. You can't even visit the crime scene at the start, so you have to walk around the island, chat with your old cultist friends, find the clues and find the killer.

I keep being amazed and horrified at the amounts of heresy US indie game devs are capable of summoning up.

The game I mentioned has some truly choice lines for this..

Believe it or not, it's a UK based studio.

Same thing really except in the UK the rot is even more advanced.

Tried No Rest For The Wicked, a top-down ARPG soulslike. Nice actually. No real penalty for dying, so it's relaxed even though the bossfights are damn tough. It's in EA and there's a big update with a wipe coming up at the end of April, so I quit playing for now and will pick it up again after that. A little annoying, but that's what I get for EA.

A friend of mine asked me to play Space Marine 2 with him. We used to play various games back when, including Factorio and high-ish level Darktide, and we've always conflicted on how challenging and complex a game should be. I like mine to be barely beatable and only if you carefully theorycraft for an hour before playing and do an analysis session afterwards, and he likes to win by showing up. So Space Marine 2, a game so shallow and casual that I fall asleep thinking about it. He won, I guess. We even play on the lowest difficulty. Can't recommend, it's absolute console trash, but what don't I do for friendship.

That same friend also gave me a gift copy of Selaco, a boomer shooter. It's alright. The maps are too confusing for me, though.

And I'm further refining my playstile in Nebulous: Fleet Command. By relying on my allies to supply an Intel Center and getting rid of most of my Damage Control, I was able to free up enough budget on my three destroyers to give each a VLS with six cells of large, decently-built hybrid missiles. Too easily softkilled to take down capital ships or fleets, but just right for taking out lone scouts that might spot my origami ships. Switched to drives that offered better power economy and top speed but gutted my angular acceleration so that I now ned to pre-aim my spinal weapons well in advance, and I used the extra power to combine goood RADAR, EWAR, Fire Control and high-powered Point Defence on top of heavily-buffed Beam Cannons all in one, and all in the green power-wise. It's a sneaky fleet that can hide in plain sight, shoot down spotters at range, kill anything within 6km (provided I aim at it five minutes in advance), and evaporates as soon as it's spotted. Oh why can't I ever find anyone to play Nebulous with me...

What are some games that focus on exploration and vibes but with zero gamification elements? Something I’ve noticed is that games will try to nudge you into exploring an area by giving you an “exploration point”, or some other sort of positive reinforcer. But whenever this happens, it actually reduces your interest in exploring for its own sake, because the extrinsic reward interferes with the intrinsic reward processing. So when you get that point or that notification telling you that this is a new area, you now want to explore a new area already instead of actually taking in and experiencing the area you ostensibly have just discovered.

Is there any game that doesn’t do this? That encourages the intrinsic exploration element simply by not encouraging anything at all? (An old game which did this, that I recall playing briefly as a child, is The Endless Forest)

Honestly, Minecraft. Even after all these years, it's still my go-to whenever I get that freeform exploration itch. No objectives, no waypoints, no maps, just me and my terrible architectural skills. With just enough of a survival gameplay loop to keep the sandbox from getting stale.

If you've never gotten around to it, or haven't played in a decade, I'd really recommend it. That first few hours after starting up a new Minecraft world is something special I've never quite replicated in another game.

It's simplistic but there's https://slowroads.io/

Peripeteia is an immersive sim that could fit. There are some elements like that, like there are some secret stashes, but overall you're given huge levels without much direction, and it's up to you to explore them.

It has a demo on Steam, which is the first level of the game. If you don't like the demo, you won't like the game. It is in early access, but the demo works well as a self contained experience too. I played it for 10 hours, when you can finish it in one pretty comfortably.

Otherwise for games with minimal elements like that you can look at Thief 1 and 2, or The Dark Mod fan missions. You still have a mechanical goal to accomplish to finish the mission, meaning obtain enough gold, and steal something specific. But otherwise you're free to explore.

Factorio maybe? Exploration is not strictly required but is beneficial if you want more resources to exploit.

Underrail. It actively discourages exploration. It's an RPG whose entire plots takes place on roughly.. 1/4 of the game world. The rest is wholly optional. The vibes of exploring it are impeccable.

You will suffer if you try to explore. Especially if you see red mushrooms. The rewards were pain, tears and more pain and an ungodly amount of money spent on antidotes. because the reason places on the map are unexplored is a species of a cryptic, adaptive visual camo using .. insect that has a habit of sneaking up on people, traumatically injecting them with a paralyzing poison and eating them alive after it kicks in.

You have five seconds to slam an antidote or you're dead. Or be a psyker and set yourself on fire.. Oh, and there's a subspecies of crawler that, if you slam said antidote, almost kill you through forcing anaphylatic shock.

Or be a god-tier electronics guys and cobble together an energy shield out of very rare components that will bounce off their stingers (possible but very hard).

Or simply stay out of those places and keep to the 'civilized' bits of the game.

It's not entirely.. unreasonable to explore, there are a few locations with interesting gear - but generally, the rewards are very slim.

The second half of Wind Waker is pretty good. Basically, you are given a goal (collect the 8 plot coupons and restore your weapon to full power) and absolutely no direction on how to accomplish it. It's up to you to sail around the 50 islands that make up the game map exploring landmarks and talking to people and doing random quests until you eventually get rewarded with a treasure map revealing the location of a MacGuffin shard or manage to get into the two dungeons you must clear to upgrade your blade.

People hated the exploration phase so much that Wind Waker HD gave you a fast sail and reduced the number of steps needed to complete the game, but I really liked it.

The big problem I had was the two-hundred-rupee-a-pop deciphering fee for each of the eight McGuffin shard maps. That made the whole thing feel bloated and not worth replaying.

And the lack of tacking.

I believe what you are looking for is the 2013 indie game Proteus. There is no extrinsic goal or gamification at all, and the entire point of the game is to wander around a large procedurally generated world with strange fauna and sights to see. It's a world made solely so the player can explore it.

I share your sentiments about this by the way - I find that many open worlds have so many gamified elements and nudge you in the right direction so much that it barely even feels free anymore. Sure, you can deviate from the main quest markers if you want to have some fun, but you always know you're going to be returning to the main story, and the world is generally such a content desert that it barely gives incentive to explore. Sure, you can circumvent the quest markers and skip major sections of the story, but you'd only do that on a first playthrough if you want to have a significantly worse experience and miss most of the properly fleshed-out content in the game. This was my exact issue with Breath of the Wild - it felt very gamified and on-rails, and the open world not only seemed irrelevant but was also fairly unrewarding. And don't even get me started on the goddamn weapon durability system.

Games like Proteus are also empty. But games that are explicitly all about exploration and vibes get away with liminality and emptiness better than stuff that tries to meld it with a plot and a combat system and collectibles does. The latter frames itself in a goal-driven way which leads you to approach its open world in the same manner, the former does not. This is why "gamifying" open worlds barely ever works.

I've spent last two months playing the roughly 2 year old CRPG Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader.

TL;DR: "What if X-com was an RPG, had a personality, Doom levels of gore, brain-melting amount of builds and a few waifus that drop you if you flub one dialogue option?" (also husbandos, ranging from nice chekist to a sadistic serial killer elf)

I really, really enjoyed it. I'm not 100% sure of it, but it seems to me to be almost as enjoyable as classics like Jagged Alliance 2 or Baldur's Gate 2.

  1. if replying/discussing, please use spoiler tags when appropriate
  2. if you have questions, feel free to ask
  3. the review:

Short review, no spoilers here:

It's an A production game, so the budget was probably <20 million$. There is one DLC -it's a must have, seamlessly integrated, makes the game better, very high quality. There'll be more later I'm told. The story is pretty simple: you are a distant relative of a Rogue Trader, and because said relative learned that you're a fairly capable individual, recruited by the same to act as a middle manager for someone who is basically a dictator of a fairly large tributary empire. Something like 40 billion people over five planets. Yes, in the grim darkness of far future, it's tributary empires all the way down.

Fans of the setting say that lore wise, the game stays pretty true to the setting. I enjoyed it bigly. I'd say moreso than BG3, perhaps almost as much as I enjoyed BG2 or Jagged Alliance 2 when I first played those absolute classics. If you liked either, I think you'd like this one, so don't read the spoilers here!

Looks pretty nice - almost as nice from tactical view as BG3, but character models are much less detailed up close, there's no face animations etc and it's almost always drone's PoV. The explosions, magic effects and blood look just fine. The only thing that's missing is human/ xenos torches but the game has a 'T' rating which is really funny as it's, at times, very grisly and a heretical playthrough requires doing stuff that makes Auschwitz look like a tea party. Generally the really grisly stuff is only in dialogue / decisions so, off screen. Indeed, being in charge of a large starship, there are gigadeath decisions at times.

It's a combination of tactical combat, two layers of it - personal(95%) and ship (5%), the personal part being pretty much like BG3 or X-com, though more convoluted if not greatly more complex and of a fairly decent RPG with ..lots of text and pretty good writing. And also has a light 3x layer, where you manage planetary development. That part is almost completely optional.

It's no Disco Elysium but it's actually quite good. I'd say it's easily on par with BG2, perhaps better at times. It has a three variable alignment system, with the axes being dogmatic, iconoclast and heretic. Iconoclast here means being a bleeding heart do gooder, too good for the setting.

There are romances, and they're notably well more done than in BG3. E.g. there's a few horny characters who will make advances, but generally the romance options are believable. E.g. the noble lady will drop you like a bad transmission if you violate propriety, the attractive religious fanatic has no time for romance, the century old magical chekist is of course straight and an option but it'll take time. The incredibly arrogant (optional) eldar party member sees people as little more than animals and has a hilarious sequence of complaining about having had advances made toward them. etc.

Overall, the party members are well written, generally not annoying, sorta believable and in some cases incredibly voice acted. If the game has any weaknesses, it's mostly technical - the engine is not well optimized, there's sometimes 20 second loading times on a PC that can run C2077 in RTX at 4k / 40 fps. There are a few bugs still, there were a lot on release.

After playing through it, I discovered that with the exception of voice acting, it was written entirely by Russians. Coded too, ditto for graphics iirc. That explains the refreshing paucity of marvelesque dialogue and cringe, something that marred by enjoyment of Baldur's Gate 3.

Tried it, hated the combat. "Use a dozen skills to completely cheese the action economy, then stack a million buffs on your guys and pulverize the enemy in one turn. Else, die.", repeat ad nauseum for every fight.

That was my experience with Mechanicus, a game that I really enjoyed until I was beating every fight in a single turn. Except it was so easy to fall into that part of character-build-space that you didn't even have the "else, die" to worry about.

I went into WH40K Rogue Trader blind except with the experience of having played Underrail three times and have gotten 3/4 through it on the 'Dominating' difficulty. Underrail is actually not that hard .. if you're an RPG veteran and listen to the advice to optimize and not waffle. Apparently RockPaperShotgun doesn't have such people reviewing Underrail and panned the game for being 'too hard'. Kek.. It's really not.

Unless you're playing on Dominating where you're always one slightest misstep from getting killed and it's actually somewhat tedious.

Rogue Trader - The second hardest difficulty level (with saving) was pleasantly difficult, at first, but got not that difficult as game passed. It's probably pretty doable on the hardest if you don't mind save-scumming a bit.

Underrail has a .. complicated build system but that's nothing to Rogue Trader lol. But RT's is.. not really balanced. There's nothing much in the way of infinity turns like there was at the start I think..

..there were some exploits like that early but it's not like that now. Seems to me, based on what I've read. People said something about infinite turns.

You can extend everyone's turn by 50% now using the officer class. But not more, because after being targetted, the beneficiary gets 'overxerted' for 1 round. Unless you use a heroic act right out, but that's only doable late game with a specific build. Then you can have 2.5 turns for one character. There's a few other abilities but I don't think any is equally powerful.

Certain psykers also can take slightly more turns by time related fuckery but it's like 3 turns when others have 2 and also a mid to late game thing.

The big problem I noticed was that it took forever to fight battles bc buff animations are turned on by default. Once I turned it off, it got a lot smoother.

then stack a million buffs on your guys and pulverize the enemy in one turn.

If it's like that you can just up the difficulty. It was getting like that for me on my first playthrough towards the end unless it was a boss fight.

But it's not unfair to say that the tactical gameplay is often

  • be put into a completely unfair situation
  • use your completely unfair builds to make it even and win

If it's like that you can just up the difficulty. It was getting like that for me on my first playthrough towards the end unless it was a boss fight.

The problem with that is that by upping the difficulty, you shift the balance so that instead of merely being able to break the game with cheesy overpowerd builds, you are required to do so.

"OwlCat makes least intuitive RPG level up system and perk tree, asked to leave".

Seriously. I played about a third of the way through the game before I gave up on trying to build my own characters up and just re-rolled them with an online guide. It's so damn unintuitive, and the vast majority of builds are underwhelming.

Another gripe I had with it was the gear system. A Rogue Trader, even one down on their luck, has more money than God. I should be able to buy the vast majority of weaponry with cash, no questions asked. I can understand very rare or heretical weaponry being gated behind the expenditure of influence or building rep with factions, but it pissed me off no end that Slightly Better Bolter/Lasgun was something I couldn't just buy.

The game also ends up with damage-spongy enemies the moment you cross the early game. You can ameliorate this to an extent, since the game has the great feature of letting you tune damage sliders in the settings with decent granularity. Even so, I think it ruins immersion for a bog-standard human Cultist to take more than a couple Bolter rounds to the chest and not be reduced to a puddle.

I enjoyed the writing, but I wished the game had a wider variety of recruitable characters, or that you had more freedom to choose back stories for your player character. You can recruit a member of the Mechanicus, but I want to be able to be one myself.

I would also have appreciated more in the way of enemy variety, beyond Chaos and flavors of Eldar. Where are the Orks? They should be everywhere.

Honestly, I would loved to have more DLC if it meant that we had more potential companions and enemy diversity.

It's a good game, but I ended up dropping it for above-mentioned reasons well before the end of the story, and I don't see myself replaying over 50 hours to get to that point without drastic additions in terms of new content.

Another gripe I had with it was the gear system. A Rogue Trader, even one down on their luck, has more money than God.

I personally felt the gear system did a really good job of capturing that. There's no such thing as money for you, you can always afford to buy everything that the vendors have on offer. The only gating factor is rep and game progression (which is really what profit factor boils down to). The latter wouldn't be a thing in the fluff, but eh... the nature of video games requires that the player have a power curve, so I give them a pass on that one.

I'm happy to concede that RT does a far better job at diegetically gating stronger gear than the average RPG, and the setting of 40k makes rare relic gear and one-of-a-kind antiques very easy to justify.

I still felt that the profit factor was wack, a single gun could cost as much as you deciding to be merciful and preventing a planet from starving by providing subsidized grain. It very much wasn't the kind of gear where that would make sense, such as some kind of adrathic weapon or a set of Terminator armor.

I'd much rather have had some form of accounting, even if the units of exchange you had to bother to consider were millions of Thrones, or have the weapons be doled out through quests or loot drops in the kind of scenarios where that makes eminent sense.

Maybe I just didn't get far enough in the game (I'm only in chapter 2), but I never saw a situation where you spent profit factor to get gear. It was always a check where as long as you had enough profit factor, you could buy everything the vendor had and not take a hit (because as you said, rogue traders have more money than God). The only times where I would gain or lose profit factor were based on quest decisions I made.

It's entirely possible that I'm the one remembering things wrong. If that's the case, my criticism would lean more towards the rather disproportionately high profit factor that certain weapons were locked behind.

While I could see the gameplay justification behind doing so, there were things like krak grenades, explosive charges and standard med kits that were limited purchases.

I can only reiterate the level of ludonarrative dissonance that induced in me. Even an impoverished RT should be able to buy enough explosives to blow a factory sky high. They can certainly afford standard issue militarum medkits. It would have made far more sense to limit players in how many could be brought at once into a mission, which is already the case thanks to inventory limits.

If you do nothing with your planets, it's going to get impossibly high, but if you develop them which costs you only a little of time on decisions, you're going to easily have the profit factor.

It's not hard at all.

Also the weapons don't cost you anything - you simply unlock them by having

  • enough trader reputation unlocked by giving them common items they likeň
  • are in general rich enough

...isn't it copied from the TTRPG ? I used no guides and ...enjoyed the finding out but I do admit to feeling a little overwhelmed with the variety.

There's a lot of stuff there, yeah. Too much? I don't think so.

Could be more balanced I think, could be harder/ longer fights.. I'd also enjoy a more realistic style with going prone etc but .. this is fine.

human Cultist to take more than a couple Bolter rounds to the chest and not be reduced to a puddle.

Depends on the armor. IF you're using a bad build and a low quality bolter, someone with high deflection can shrug off most of it. I saw the 'Annihilating Astartes Bolter' which increases your crit damage with every round or something equally insane. A burst was doing 8x 200-300 damage per hit and turning greater demons into bits very fast.

I had a different problem - the hardest fight was the mini boss at end of chapter 1 the first time through. After that the game kept getting easier bc with more levels, you can build more broken builds and I don't think I got wiped out at all until some difficult fights in chapter 3 and 5.

Especially psykers.

Honestly, I would loved to have more DLC if it meant that we had more potential companions and enemy diversity.

There's going to be 2 more DLC, not sure how much content each.

wider variety of recruitable characters,

You can make custom fighters, but come on, how is this 'low variety' ?

  • very judgemental tech priest who's a holy terror with a plasma rifle

  • diviner/telepath psyker

  • slaughter nun

  • impossibly arrogant sniper

  • absolutely contemptible sadistic serial killer

  • actually pretty nice & reasonable magic chekist

  • young noble lady who's a bit snotty and sheltered but still a joy to have around because she loves seeing the world even if it's crap after a lifetime of boring study

-'what if Han Solo but a disabled MENA baddie and actually rich/successful'

-the very reasonable and very hinged death cultist

-a psycho space marine who makes Doomguy look like David French.

Personally my biggest complain is that there's so many awesome characters but you can only ever used six per one battle.

I'd not mind more party characters, sure, but ...too few? Nah.

A popular podcast recently had a four part series on Zizians and rationalists. I enjoyed it. In that Yudkowsky's writings in particular and rationalism in general is silly.

The Zizians are actually deranged and that makes for a good story. And they murdered a bunch of people and are now in jail due to a very special understanding of Timeless Decision Theory. "What if someone took your rhetoric literally and acted on it?" is a valid question in many contexts. I did not think it would particularly strike Yudkowsky, but he wrote that Harry Potter fan fiction and blew up about the basilisk, so here we are.

Sublight drive is a Star wars fan fiction. I started reading this based on a recommendation from either here or /r/rational. If it was here, thank you to whomever recommended it. Very enjoyable.

A person from earth is reincarnated in the star wars universe, and they are a ship captain with the separatists during the clone wars. The mc has some basic knowledge of star wars.

There is no boring lead up. It jumps right into the space opera action.

The characters are smart and facing very tough problems. But they are also not all perfectly intelligent. For example Jedi generals are often skilled in the force and have advantages that they use well, but they can often be outsmarted by other characters in fleet battles.

How close to done is this? I'm seeing epilogues in the latest chapters, so I'm hoping it's finishing up?

I've got a few web serials on my plate and the thing I've learned most is that it sucks to hit the wall of "most recent update" or worse "last updated 3 years ago", and I've realized I'm way happier if I just let them finish or not-finish the story before I commit my time.

I should look into... someone in the SSC diaspora had a cool story about "what if the person who became Superman was just kind of awful but took over the world anyway", I really enjoyed that but then hit the "most recent update" wall. It has to have been a few years at this point, maybe they're done. It's a shame I forgot the name.

How close to done is this?

There are 2 chapters left and the author posts a chapter a week.
I'm also seconding the book recommendation, I enjoyed it quite a lot. Solid 9/10

Perfect, I'll try and remember to grab it in a few weeks. Thanks!

Just slow role the 2000 pages and you'll hit the finish line by the time the last chapter comes out in a week. Or if your reading speed is not an excessive 300 pages a day then don't worry.

Related: I was complaining to a friend last week about the hollow worldbuilding in Star Wars, specifically about how automation should have eliminated most of the need for manual labor in this universe (but hasn't) and he sent me this surprisingly detailed Reddit post explaining how this could be explained by the story being set in a universe where P = NP: https://old.reddit.com/r/MawInstallation/comments/oysben/does_p_np_a_contemplation_of_electronic_security/

There is a proposed science-fiction genre, 'rocketpunk', which exists to respond to the basic problem of hard sci-fi: namely, computers are better in space than people. If I was a better writer with more time I'd make some. The basic idea is that it's an alternate reality where computer technology hit a wall very early on, justifying manned missions. I suspect to have workable science fiction, even as soft as star wars, then you need something on the spectrum at least.

In any case, we don't get a lot of glimpses of what the civilian economy in star wars looks like. It could be that the vast majority of the population lives on welfare and droids do the actual work.

The economics of Star Wars are a complete mess. They can build moon-sized battlestations that vaporize planets (not to mention Starkiller Base!), implying Kardashev II capabilities in mass and energy manipulation... that aren't displayed anywhere else in the setting.

Better not to think about it too hard. It really doesn't make sense for all key political events to be decided by the outcome of 1v1 lightsaber duels either but it's cool!

It really doesn't make sense for all key political events to be decided by the outcome of 1v1 lightsaber duels either but it's cool!

How about this: Jedis can see the future except where other Jedis are involved. If they tell an underling to do something, other Jedi/Sith will pretty much instantly know their plans. So, as much as possible, they have to:

  • Play things close to the chest. Give people instructions to put them in the right place at the right time, then call them once they're there and everything is set up to tell them what they'll actually be doing, just before they are to do it.
  • Do as much as possible personally. No Jedi can predict another Jedi (the possibilities of recursive precog quickly become unmanageable) so they're the only ones capable of truly secret movement.

I think you could write this into a pretty good setting--at its limits it totally justifies main character syndrome, because the Jedi are the only real agents in the universe.

All that is interesting, but why not bring say... ten droidekas with you as a personal escort, so you can beat any Jedi that pop out at you? Stalin had maybe 15-25 NKVD protecting him at all times but Yoda can walk right up to Darth Sidious in his throne room, knock out two guards and fight in a totally deserted senate hall?

Why weren't there at least 100 elite clone commandoes equipped with anti-jedi weaponry protecting the supreme chancellor in the hours after he launches a purge of the Jedi temple? None of it makes sense!

I think you'd say that the anti-precog field doesn't extend beyond your person. So a Jedi with an entourage is virtually undefeatable, yes, but also predictable and thus avoidable.

But yeah, this is obviously not what's actually happening in the setting, I just think it would be a fun tweak that would make for some interesting possibilities.

We can take upper kardashev II civilization for granted but there is a narrative reason for 1v1 duels to decide the outcomes of events.

In general the empire seemed to like big threatening super weapons that weren’t necessarily the most cost-effective use of resources but had value in being big and intimidating. It’s not like misallocation of military resources for signaling value is unheard of in our world. Poor resource allocation and leadership mistakes of the kinds predicted by imperial doctrine explain quite a bit about the plot.

If you have upper Kardashev II, then you wouldn't see space battles of maybe 80 big ships on both sides, like Endor or Coruscant. You'd see 80 billion ships slugging it out over months.

This is a setting where glorified teddy bears with sticks and stones manage to overcome thousands of highly trained professional soldiers with heavy weapons! It doesn't make sense and that's fine.

There are narrative reasons for this- namely imperial doctrine pushes for really big ships over more ships and the rebel fleet has to keep up, and it tends to centralize authority in one spot so a single fleet getting wiped out fractures imperial power, despite the existence of thousands more.

Lore tends points to a single star destroyer as basically a 1-1 match for a mid level industrialized world, which almost axiomatically points to the tax revenues from multiple planets being needed to find a single one. That also points to a security doctrine which needs to hold back a huge majority of the fleet to respond to rebellions and protests because it’s definitionally outnumbered badly. All this accords with stated imperial doctrine- eg the Tarkin doctrine. When push comes to shove the empire is undergunned(perhaps due to its unpopularity) and attempting to compensate with intimidation factor. Even small losses(what Endor objectively was) can unravel that fast and even small victories add up.

To steelman the imperial plan at Endor, the goal was to lure the rebel capital ship fleet into a trap and eliminate it, so that the privateering and insurgency would be crushable by smaller ships making up the bulk of the fleet(this fits with the old EU’s characterization), but the elimination of the top two figures along with multiple flag officers led to local governors and satraps declaring independence with the help of ambitious imperial military officers, which formed an imperial death spiral. It wasn’t battlefield losses that broke imperial military might- it was state failure.

I like the EU as much as anyone. I like how in the Thrawn books they try and rationalize the setting, make things seem more logical and explain Endor as the fleet being borg-slaved to the Emperor so it unravelled after he died... I like this ridiculously big EU political compass: https://old.reddit.com/r/TheDeepCore/comments/ll19bs/12x12_political_compass_for_star_wars/

But if 4km long, thin, pointy Star Destroyers are rare and expensive capital ships, how are the Imperials able to build a 160 km wide, spherical Death Star, then make good progress on an even bigger one 4 years after the first is lost? The black budget for superweapons surely can't be more than 5% of the economy, or even half the military budget. We only know of a few highly industrialized planets in the Empire, Kuat and Corellia for instance. There doesn't seem to be much broad-based wealth, nor does the administration seem very efficient if there are large pools of Hutts, smugglers and bounty hunters running around doing their own thing.

They should not be capable of building gigantic moonsized planetbusters if they can't field thousands and thousands of star destroyers.

Lucasfilm and Disney do not understand the logic of wealth and military procurement, there's no basic sense of understanding scale. Putting to one side all the expert analysis of Star Wars scale they do on spacebattles (for instance here: https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/star-wars-mass-of-a-star-destroyer.464536/) it just doesn't make any sense. The Kaminoans supplied 300,000 clones for the Republic with a million more well on the way! That's about enough to secure Ukraine, not the galaxy. The First Order somehow manage to produce an even bigger planetary superweapon that eats stars. Palpatine manages to throw together a gigantic fleet of Star Destroyers from a hidden planet at the edge of the galaxy.

The empire did have tens of thousands of imperial star destroyers, though, and tens of thousands more lesser capital ships. We see the pride of the fleet, but we don’t the the kinds of massive formations the empire is theoretically capable of, and there’s tons of reasons for this. How often do all twelve US carriers operate together?

What we see on screen is the equivalent of a single carrier strike group. There are hundreds more in the fleet and the empire disintegrates rather than being defeated in a war of attrition. The disintegration is likely a result of coup-proofing; both the big boss and his top guy are gone, and no one else has the loyalty of the entire fleet, so individual flag officers and moffs have every incentive to play hardball with both the central government and each other, and eventually to secede into warlordism.

Your political compass link takes me to a picture of a nice hat.

More comments

It seems apparent to me that digital computer technology in the Star Wars universe is roughly equivalent to human technology circa 1977. They exist and can be used to perform some tasks, perform data collection and analysis, and perform various forms of numerical control. But any electronic devices shown virtually never contain any advanced form of digital processing, and displays and controls are mostly analog or have rudimentary capabilities.

The one exception is the droids, seeming to possess artificial intelligence more advanced than we have with our vastly improved computational capabilities even today. Such computational power as they seem to exhibit implies powerful, tiny, and efficient digital electronics.

However, that is a case of us projecting our own AI developments onto the fictional world. I believe the most parsimonious explanation is that the droids are in fact cyborgs, that consist of a lab-grown and conventionally trained organic brains, embedded in a mechanical body.

Points in favor:

  • This handily explains the discrepency between the capabilities of electronic devices depicted and the capabilities of the droids.

  • We already know that medical technology in that world is more advanced than our own; e.g., Luke's replacement hand and Vader's elaborate mobile hyperbaric chamber. The most salient example is General Grievous, who, but for a few organs, is practically a droid already. Based on this it is reasonable to conclude that bio-electronic integration is more advanced than our own.

  • This explains the relative paucity of droids generally. They are expensive and somewhat rare because they take nontrivial time to grow and especially to train. They cannot be programmed like computers beyond simple instincts but must be trained via reinforcement feedback training to learn the jobs they are expected to perform as well as basic information about the world and how to behave.

  • This also explains why droids have very different language capabilities, based on the lab-induced growth of the language center of the brains. Presumably a mech droid like an R2 unit has a stunted one adapted for a tone-based pidgin, possibly adapted from a bird brain, and a droid like C3PO has a much larger one. Threepio also probably had to spend more time actually learning language nuances. With more advanced medical technology, it is plausibly possible to adapt the structures of the organic brains of a wide variety of species to select the traits most favorable to the droids you want to produce.

  • This also explains the seemingly genuine emotions the droids have. They exhibit these even when not interacting with humanoids, so this is not a case of performing emotions for the benefit of their owners. In reality, these are actually real emotions from real brains, expressed cybernetically.

  • This also explains frequent less-than-computer performance from the droids in tasks involving computation as well as their never being shown to perform tasks that should be trivial for a digital computer, such as high-speed communication between each other or between themselves and another piece of electronic equipment. Their ability to recall facts is also less than perfect and appears to be similar to how organic memory works.

There are a few pieces that don't fit and may be counted as points against:

  • C3PO, despite having his language enhanced, also appears to have computer-like ability to perform calculations, e.g., the odds of successfully navigating an asteroid field. However, this may only be a piece of recalled information, and as it turns out, he was probably not correct. In another case, R2D2 performs a similar probability calculation on the odds of Luke's survival, though as a tech droid it is plausible has a cybernetic pocket calculator embedded in his toolkit of a body. Such calculators are compatible with the circa 1977 level of electronics.

  • Droids are never shown to eat or consume any organic substances that would sustain their organic brains. However, this may simply never be shown, and it is possible that they have the capability to generate to synthesize ATP in a closed loop purely from the stored power we see used to charge them up as with R2D2 on Dagobah.

  • It would seem plausible, with this technology, to place these trained brains into ships and facilities, to act as integrated operators, but we typically see that things are always operated by humanoids. For example, why are there no self-flying TIE fighters? There may be several explanations. First, being partly organic, droids would require periods of rest and be subject to some of the same limits of focus and attention as humans, so their supremacy at given tasks may be minimal in the first place, and if you are going to have a slave, it would make sense to make as general purpose as practical. Second, if electronics are limited to circa 1977 levels, it is likely that droid vision is greatly inferior to the Mk. 1 eyeball, a considerable limitation in many applications. The brains may not easily be adapted to perform motor control of things not closely analogous to body parts, and as stated in Andor, it is highly probable that due to their self-replicating and self-training nature, fully organic humanoids are less expensive than trained and purpose-built droids, particularly for an organization like the Empire capable of conscription.

  • On a couple of occasions, a droid is seen communicating with a "computer", either internal to the ship or the Cloud City facility. These are suggestive of computers that actually do have droid-level intelligence. However, it seems likely that these are colloquial terms for cyborg agents and not digital computers. There are non-primary resources that suggest that the Falcon does actually have a salvaged droid brain integrated into it, which apparently has some sensor input but is not shown to be capable of directly controlling the ship. Luthen's ship Fondor is directly shown to have what appears to be a droid integrated into the ship as well, which evidently is capable of some control over ships systems, though never pilots it during critical moments and is implied to be a ship full of unusual and expensive upgrades. The Cloud City "central computer" talks to R2D2 over what is probably, given the speed of communication, a simple analog language channel like a telephone, and again is probably just a droid charged with administering simple facility operations such as work dispatch and security lockouts.

Probably the biggest counterargument is the droid army depicted in the phantom menace. These appear to be simple electronic robots and crucially they shut down when the central command center was destroyed. However, the cyborg theory is still salvageable if we assume that the organic brain in each battle droid is designed to be tiny and grown quickly in large quantities, and deployed with minimal training beyond instincts, explaining their dimwitted nature and inability to do much more in combat than advance and fire. Because of this, they could not be relied upon for reliable operation outside a command and control structure issuing a constant stream of detailed commands, likely from a smaller number of more advanced and remotely positioned command droids, and therefore it would make sense to engineer a simple failsafe shutdown mode in the event that command and control is lost that cannot be overridden by the local wetware. This would also explain why they were never used much in other conflicts – the trade federation had a unique combination of high wealth and low manpower, and while they were somewhat effective in combat, humanoid soldiers with initiative and capable of independent operation would invariably be superior soldiers. The more advanced combat droids were presumably capable of independent operation, but likely much more expensive than conscripts or even a volunteer army, with the resource better used on more advanced weapons and vehicles, as shown in the Republic Army.

So if droids are expensive and have these limitations, who would want one? They would be useful in several scenarios:

  • Where manpower is limited or unreliable, as with the droid army
  • Where they can be superior at specific tasks, such as mechanical maintenance and repair (R2) or translation (C3PO) or brute force (K2SO, IG88)
  • Where they need to work in harsh or unpleasant environments (R2)
  • As a personal servant with high up-front cost but lower TCO (C3-series)
  • As helper pets (B2, mouse droids)

In conclusion, what we see in the Start Wars universe is a world in which computer technology is circa Earth 1977, but with much improved medical technology, energy storage and production technology, and both gravitic and FTL technology (possibly related and possibly not). As a result, there are some substantial holes in their technology for computer processing and automation, but these are filled somewhat by the existence of cyborg slaves, which are manufactured using organic brains specially grown and requiring considerable training, but can perform basic and specialty tasks in harsh conditions and without pay. They will still have personalities and emotions, based on the characteristics of the brain and the training received, but are in nearly every case considered to be property.

I’m rather partial to the idea that this is a collapsed society in some sense. It really explains quite a lot.

First of all, the technology itself doesn’t seem to progress much throughout the series as we see it. The millennium falcon is high tech in ANH and is still high tech a full generation later. There are few if any improvements on much of anything. Even things like displays, weapons, communications devices, and tools don’t seem to improve over time. If anything, they’re worse.

Then looking at the way technology is used, kept up and repaired, it often appears that much of it is left over from a previous age and kept up by ad how repairs by the owner of the technology. Everything in that universe is old, used, breaking down, falling apart. The Falcon is in service for fifty years, and was a used ship won on a bet when Han got it. It might well have been built 75 or 100 years ago and repaired by the owner as needed. Speaking of which, I don’t think, other than the battle droid factory, there’s much evidence of wide scale production of high tech goods. There’s not even an advertisement for new models of personal spaceships.

Further evidence of the collapse is seen in the state of law and law enforcement. No matter who is in charge of the galaxy, it’s pretty lawless. Piracy is common, slavery is common in the outer rim, mafia like gangs hold entire planets along the outer rim. The Empire or Republic only really seem to have symbolic control. They stick up a flag, but other than that, I don’t think they actually control much beyond the core worlds. I’m not even convinced that most people know who runs the government of the galaxy, and even if they did, it’s too far away and weak to actually matter, where the local warlord governing your planet matters quite a bit in most people’s lives. Tatoine residents probably worry more about what Jabba thinks and wants than Palpatine or the current head of the Republic.

The Empire or Republic only really seem to have symbolic control. They stick up a flag, but other than that, I don’t think they actually control much beyond the core worlds.

I don't know how much made this into Disney canon, but in Legends a lot of power was held by regional governors, the Moffs. Someone out far from the Core wouldn't necessarily know much about the Emperor, but there was a local Imperial force with a Star Destroyer or two and plenty of stormtroopers that would be their local taste of the Empire and generally had pretty strong control (albeit with a lot of corruption).

Tatooine just wasn't a planet the local Moff cared about at all, which is why Jabba had his palace in the awful desert planet instead of a paradise planet like Naboo or even one that was kind of similar to Nal Hutta.

Most of the starfighters used by the rebels are relatively new: the B-Wing first saw combat 4 years before the Battle of Yavin, the X-Wing appears to have been less than 10 years old at that point as well, although there's no clear answer on when it was developed. Apparently originally pitched to the Imperials rather than the Republic though, so that's a cap on how old it can be.

It does seem like they have trouble making paradigm-shifting advances though: the Y-Wing is Clone Wars era and while it has problems, it's perfectly capable of performing on the same level as more modern fighters, it's not like we saw anyone complaining about getting assigned a Y-Wing instead of an X-Wing for the Death Star run.

Some weird regressions too: I initially thought Obi-Wan's hyperdrive ring in Attack of the Clones was something that got improved upon for the Imperial era, but the N-1 starfighters in Phantom Menace had integrated hyperdrives, so that was just a deliberate design choice.

Fighters with no hyperdrive are a thing in universe- TIE fighters don't have one either. The hyperdrive ring is probably an optional upgrade to a fighter not originally designed to operate a hyperdrive.

Yeah, but at least the TIEs have a reasonable case for skipping the hyperdrive: they're designed to be cheap and fast (which is why they don't have shields either), and they're always operating from a planetary base or capital ship because the Empire intends to have those everywhere it's going to be conducting operations.

Why the Jedi Starfighter doesn't have one (or rather, why they chose a non-hyperdrive-equipped fighter for the Jedi) is a mystery though: the Jedi typically go in very small numbers to out-of-the-way locations, and seem to have a pretty sizable budget. Agility and speed is clearly a benefit with Jedi precognition, but... what happens if your foe destroys your hyperdrive ring and now you're stuck in a middle-of-nowhere system? The answer's clearly "carve your way through the enemy base, steal their ship, and leave", but it's hard to imagine that you want that to be the plan.

I initially thought Obi-Wan's hyperdrive ring in Attack of the Clones was something that got improved upon for the Imperial era

Jedi Starfighters are fucking tiny and are designed more as infiltration ships than to be actual fighters.

The A-Wing is the closest Imperial age fighter to it, was designed by the same manufacturing firm as a mass-issue version of those design concepts (you kind of need to have better avionics if you aren't using the Force and it still requires absurd skill from its pilots), and has integrated hyperdrive, but it's also physically larger.

N-1s

N-1s are kind of a meme though. The Nubian government's idea of a defense was to send 12 fighters against a Trade Federation battleship and the only reason any of them survived was for bullshit Jedi reasons- they spared no expense with those fighters and it shows because they had no money left over for any other planetary defense.

(Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go play an old game.)

Huh, you're right, Jedi Starfighters are like half the area of an A-wing. That's wild, previously I would have said they were one of the larger starfighters in the series. Something about how the art and/or game cameras always show them up close, I guess?

Actually, something's off. Slave 1 is 21.5m x 21.3m x 7.8m= 3,572.01 m^3, a Jedi Starfighter is 8m x 3.92m x 1.44m= 45.1584 m^3. Now go look at the asteroid battle scene from Attack of the Clones: does the Slave 1 look nearly 80 times as big as the Jedi Starfighter?

Back to the broader point, I think this is inconsistent with Maiq's hypothesis: new military-grade hardware is coming out throughout the series and is apparently available enough that the Rebels can get their hands on it. We don't see the Rebels having to make do with Clone Wars tech (and even that would only be ~20 years old, the equivalent of someone using a F-22 Raptor from 2005 today): they're using some old fighters but also have fresh from the factory equipment regularly. And since the Rebels probably don't have special contracts with the military companies that are also selling to the Empire, that suggests that all you need to get a fresh-off-the-line ship is credits.

It does seem to support pusher_robot's hypothesis that they're having trouble making truly large jumps technologically: the new stuff and the old stuff are roughly equivalent in power level, it's just about optimizing how the same tools are used. That's how you end up with weird things like the B-Wing.

You'll definitely love sublight drive. A bunch of parts in the first book go into explaining some of these ship differences that appear.

The separatists preference for missiles is because they don't have access to some of the high quality gas needed for better blaster weapons.

Some of the ships are specifically adapted from private usages which gives them unique advantages and disadvantages, like e-warfare capabilities, or badly armored locations.

Mostly neither side is on a war footing for production when the clone wars start, so there is a sense early on of throwing ships meant for fighting pirates against full on navies, and then later in the series those same ships are far less effective because manufacturing and fleet doctrine has caught up. But ultimately the core worlds have far more production capabilities so it feels a bit like the American Civil war where the north had advantages in manufacturing and manpower, and the south had advantages in experience.

The Empire at least, seems to be able to produce new ships and even new ship designs. I think there are a couple of things happening, though.

First, technological advancement has stagnated, and given the apparent inability to develop integrated circuits, progress is severely limited by the lack of information processing. Other technologies appear to have been developed to about the limits of the in universe science, and as a result designs have been basically fully optimized for thousands of years already. New designs are still useful to make ships fit for purpose, but the technology level of new ships is not appreciable better, and so old ships can, with enough maintenance, perform just as well. (Similar to fantasy tropes where technology stays at late medievel level for thousands of years or longer.)

It also seems evident that while energy production is superior to our own, it is nowhere near a Kardeshev II civilization. While they are capable of orbiting and moving large masses, this is due to technological physics cheats such as gravity manipulation and not the expenditure of the kind of energy such things would otherwise imply. This explains why they are not post scarcity despite having interstellar space stations. It is a place with some advanced technology, things are still relatively expensive, partly due to the absence of microchips, but also because gravity manipulation, cybernetics, and FTL doesn't relieve you from still needing bucketwheels and giant smelters to mine metals.

Are there any good longer texts written on the topic of SW as a collapsed society? I'm intrigued.

That’s a fun fan theory! Another one I like for science fiction settings that don’t have advanced AI / automation is that there’s some kind of in-universe lower bound on transistor size such that you have hyper-optimization of like late-1980s chips over centuries. Would be interesting to see a sci fi setting pursue that earnestly.

Another redemption of hollow world building I like is the theory that Harry Potter is obviously post-scarcity (they can conjure and replicate objects, magic the dishes into doing themselves, teleport from anywhere to anywhere etc) but governed by such a deeply ingrained network of rules of propriety and good behavior that the class hierarchy, private property, deference, human labor, a form of simulated capitalism (likely borrowed from muggles in a bizarre and twisted form of cultural exchange, along with the school express, the magic bus) etc are followed unquestioningly. This also explains why so many people would find muggle-born wizards deeply vulgar and an affront to their society, and therefore enhances the general story. (To wizard society, the idea that a “poor” family like the Weasleys could just conjure themselves a giant mansion with 500 rooms with magic would be like suggesting someone should just shit on the street whenever they need to go).

Harry Potter is set in the modern west, which is post scarcity in the meaningful sense- there is functionally no one who dies from lack of access to necessities. People still work for access to positional goods and luxuries. We can assume that this is just a human universal and wizards will do the same thing.

the theory that Harry Potter is obviously post-scarcity

I feel like this is plainly inconsistent with the canon. We don't see the conjuration of everyday household items or food, and magical items such as wands and infinite-capcity containers are obviously scarce and valuable. And of course something like transmuting lead into gold is explicitly mentioned to be difficult if not impossible.

While manual labor and chores can obviously be automated with magic, there also isn't any mention of magical computing devices or AI, so professional work hasn't been made obsolete either.

I feel like this is plainly inconsistent with the canon. We don't see the conjuration of everyday household items or food, and magical items such as wands and infinite-capcity containers are obviously scarce and valuable. And of course something like transmuting lead into gold is explicitly mentioned to be difficult if not impossible.

You don’t need to conjure food or water when you can just Apparate to a fresh mountain stream or tree laden with fruit whenever you want (transatlantic teleporting is made out to be difficult, but the length of the UK between, say, Scotland and London is easy and common enough). At the world quidditch championship, the Weasleys also conjure up an entire camp the size of a small home from almost nothing, suggesting that shelter is also post-scarcity in every real sense.

Items imbued with certain magical essences that can seemingly only be created by human craftsmen are not abundant, sure. But other than wands, these are essentially luxury goods (an adult wizard has no need for a broom, and the other things that money is needed to buy are things like rare artifacts, magical candy and toys - presumably handmade - and so on). The financial system exists for the sake of itself. The magical night bus doesn’t need a driver, since magical objects can act and think for themselves many times in the series. It has one because it should have one, or something.

The same is true for white collar employment. Magical automation clearly exists (see the hate mail envelopes, the automation of memos in the ministry, automated magical maps, automated dictation tools / pens, interactive magical videos in picture frames and - most significantly - magical portraits, which are clearly generative AI trained on an artist’s impression of the subject, and which would appear to be capable of complex thought and therefore white collar labor), its use is governed by something other than possibility or efficiency.

Consider the aurors who trace misuse of magic. Are they actually necessary? The ministry has the ability to track, seemingly, every use of magic in all of England. If it doesn’t do so it is purely by choice. This is what I mean by propriety, the magical society is governed by its own code that involves this manual labor and a simulated quasi-market or capitalist economy in some aspects, with strict rules (like that you can’t conjure money) enforced arbitrarily.

Not sure I buy this. Lack of cryptography doesn't even need to make password based authentication impossible.

Firstly, to compromise a system, even one that's not encrypted, you must be able to execute arbitrary commands. A system that's locked down and limited to a few hardened interfaces with the rest of the world is naturally robust to this. You can try pulling out the memory and read/manipulate it directly, but there are low tech (put the components behind steel plate) and high tech mitigations that don't rely on cryptography. And if you're in a position to circumvent those, you can probably just replace the controller of whatever system you're trying to compromise with your own controller anyway.

Secondly, P=NP would make reversing hashes doable, but when you're trying to break into a system you (usually) don't have the password hash you're trying to guess. So you're stuck trying to guess it (unless you can read it from memory, see point 1), and that's going to take forever regardless of P vs NP.

Most of the droids we see in Star Wars are pretty rickety and often not humanoid - maybe they don’t have droids that can perform manual labour at the appropriate price point?

That is a really cool post, thanks for sharing.

Can't say that this fanfiction totally follows along. There is something weird going on with the droids in the FF, buts it's never full elaborated on, and we are starting to get epilogues, so I assume it won't be clarified.

Court opinion:

  • Elizabeth is driving a 2016 Honda CR-V at 50 miles per hour on a two-lane undivided road. She drifts over the centerline and hits an oncoming car, driven by Ann. Both Elizabeth and Ann are killed in the crash. Ann's estate sues Elizabeth's estate, and presumably extracts a large settlement.

  • Ann's estate also sues Honda. The estate's theory is that the CR-V counts as an unsafe vehicle, making Honda liable for the crash, because Honda failed to make "lane-departure warning" and "lane-keeping assist" technologies standard rather than optional in that vehicle.

  • The trial judge rejects this argument and dismisses the case, and the appeals panel affirms. A manufacturer does not have a duty to install every available safety-enhancing technology. The base 2016 CR-V has a steering system sufficient to enable the motorist to keep the vehicle in its lane, so it counts as "safe".

I like these court opinions that you (and others) post. For an outsider like me, it's nice to get some insight into how the legal system works and to not only be exposed to "activist judge did XXX" type cases.

Thanks :)

an outsider like me

Feel free to post opinions from your own country's judicial system.

I'm an outsider to the legal system, not to the US :)

So am I. You don't need to be a lawyer in order to find interesting court opinions.

Anyone built a PC recently?

I'm pretty close to biting the bullet on a new high-end, pre-built system.

Before anyone jumps and says that it would cheaper to build it myself (I've been there haha), I've decided the added premium is something I'm willing to pay, especially when it comes with a warranty on parts. I've built several PCs myself, but the last time I did so, I was cursed with pernicious crashing that I couldn't for the life of me solve for good.

The two most important components I've more or less fixed are a Ryzen 9800x3d and an RTX 5080. All I really expect this machine to be used for is gaming, and I want to emphasize single-core performance as my favorite games tend to be CPU bottlenecked. I'd have loved to get a 4090, but the prices are ridiculous. I could get a 9070 XT, but my budget does go further than that. I don't think I'll be using it much for local AI, though I'm occasionally tempted to tinker.

I intend to buy models with 32gb of fast DDR5 memory, and a decent NVME SSD with room for me to buy and install more myself.

I haven't looked too closely at the various flavors of motherboard on offer, but I expect at this price range they're roughly equivalent. It might be a pain to get wired internet, so I'm willing to settle for the speed and latency hit from running wifi-only if I have to.

I intend to skimp on a pre-installed license for Windows. I can get it from [REDACTED] for free.

I haven't decided on all the peripherals yet, but I'll probably get a 100% mechanical keyboard, I own a decent mouse. I'd like a 27" or larger monitor high refresh rate monitor, with QHD being a resolution I'm happy with. I might end up splurging for 4k or an OLED if I feel like it. No need for speakers, as I use Bluetooth earphones and don't usually notice the latency.

I've been looking at an array of retailers, and most seem to provide this in the 2500-2900 GBP range.

Questions:

  1. Anything obviously wrong here? Any clearly suboptimal choices (beyond buying pre-built)?

  2. Can I cheap out on something without noticeable downsides?

  3. My impression, from watching LTT if nothing else, is that watercooling is usually not worth the hassle. I've never used it before, and would need to figure it out if I ever have to swap out parts. I think that a decent air cooler is more than sufficient for people who aren't OC maxxing.

  4. Anyone own an OLED monitor? Did you notice any burn-in? I intend to take reasonable precautions in the first place.

9070 xt

A buddy of mine recently got one of these and he is absolutely blown away by how much AMD seems to have improved with this generation.

If you can score one at MSRP, they seem like a great deal.

The 9070 XT is an excellent card.

Unfortunately, it's very hard to get at MSRP in the UK. Any other time, I'd have been tempted away from team green (my first two GPUs were AMD), but sadly they don't have anything in the performance or price range of the 5080.

That's half the reason I'm buying a pre-built, getting cards at MSRP is an uphill struggle, and when you account for prevailing direct to consumer prices, the markup isn't bad at all.

If you're going to be installing like three or more (modern AAA) games at once then I'd recommend getting a secondary SSD (nvme or otherwise) on top of whatever you get. The install sizes are insane nowadays and unless you want to uninstall and reinstall games all the time then you probably want at least an extra 500GB SSD (which would be lucky to get you five modern AAA games). Most new games will be at least 100GB if not 150 and they're only getting bigger. I haven't noticed that much difference with an NVME drive compared to a regular SSD but NVME is a bit of future proofing if they finally start doing stuff with direct storage. The best part about NVME is the form factor, it just feels so much better to install than a big clunky box with wires.

If your wi-fi connection drops sometimes I'd recommend getting a powerline adapter. It should be about equal to wi-fi if your wiring is good/new but more importantly it will be stable and won't drop connection if you're going to play games online. If your wi-fi is rock solid it doesn't matter though.

Without pre-installed windows make sure you at least have a usb thumb drive available so you can put an installer on it.

For a mechanical keyboard Gateron switches for mechanical keyboards are usually cheaper and better than cherry switches in most people's experience because they're smoother. They usually try to sell you red, brown, or blue switches. Red is light, smooth, almost mushy in comparison to others. Brown gives you feedback but no clacks. Blue gives you feedback and clacks, like a typewriter. I prefer blues the most but they will be annoying if you hate clicky-clacks or share a space with someone who is annoyed by that (or also play games online with people over an open mic). I'm not that much help on this because mechanical keyboard people seem a lot like audiophiles or wine snobs where I feel like most people will not notice things aside from the major descriptors. For example, red switches feel very much like membrane keyboards to me and I know that's sacrilege.

Another bit of sacrilege, I would recommend getting a controller. Not simply because some of them play better with that (classic example being dark souls but anything with analog movement) but because kb&m tends to hurt my hands after extended play whereas controller usually just wears out the tip of my thumb at most, and more important to me is the lean-back experience is so much nicer than lean forward when it comes to playing games and relaxing. Your mileage my vary and I certainly am not saying it's better in any way but comfort but pretty much all first person shooters/third person action games I default to controller. I know if it's pvp you're getting murdered but as someone that doesn't play pvp games that doesn't matter to me. They are quite expensive though and buying a nice one is important. Also, this depends heavily on the type of game you're playing if you aren't into old emulated games/platformers/third person action games it doesn't really matter (i still play any strategy/rpg/sim with a kb&m). I'd recommend an 8bitdo pro 2 but some people really like asymmetrical sticks.

Sorry, I realize I'm talking as if you don't know how to do anything or what anything is and I assume you know most of this stuff but I thought I'd chime in.

Good points!

Leaving aside AAA games, I download an absurd number of mods for games that support it. I think vanilla Rimworld is less than a gig, I have a dozen times that just in mods. Arma 3 is like 30 gb, and I had 500 more in mods.

I'll just go with the option that has a decent sized primary SSD and buy plenty more as needed. They're quite cheap these days.

If your wi-fi connection drops sometimes I'd recommend getting a powerline adapter. It should be about equal to wi-fi if your wiring is good/new but more importantly it will be stable and won't drop connection if you're going to play games online. If your wi-fi is rock solid it doesn't matter though.

I haven't heard of this before, I'll have to take a look into how this works.

Another bit of sacrilege, I would recommend getting a controller. Not simply because some of them play better with that (classic example being dark souls but anything with analog movement) but because kb&m tends to hurt my hands after extended play whereas controller usually just wears out the tip of my thumb at most, and more important to me is the lean-back experience is so much nicer than lean forward when it comes to playing games and relaxing

Good advice, but unfortunately the majority of games I play, such as FPS titles, RTS games or colony builders, don't play well with a controller. For racing games (which I do occasionally play), I 100% agree that it's a more comfortable and enjoyable experience, especially with haptic feedback.

For a mechanical keyboard Gateron switches for mechanical keyboards are usually cheaper and better than cherry switches in most people's experience because they're smoother.

I strongly prefer mechanical keyboards over rubber domes, but I deliberately refrain from becoming too obsessed with the finer aspects of switches. That wha lies bankruptcy! Even a cheapo mech beats the best membrane I've ever tried. My old Chinesium keyboard had Kailh Browns, and they were perfectly decent.

powerline adapter

I'd recommend paying the extra for power passthrough so as to not lose a socket, and wifi for the added connectivity. All the gains with none of the trade offs.

How much future proofing you trying to do?

Only thing I'd recommend is make sure you have extra memory slots to expand to 64gb in the future. I noticed recently that Doom: The Dark Ages has 32gb as it's recommended amount of ram. So you know, the 32gb you are getting is enough. Probably be enough for the next few years. But I built my PC at the tail end of 2019 and I put 32gb in it then. It's starting to feel like it's getting to be about the time to future proof with at least the option of 64gb in the future.

Also, if you ever plan on abandoning windows for linux, maybe go with the AMD card? Drivers are supposed to be better, and this latest generation seems to have finally got it's shit together in terms of ray tracing performance. Still lacks a lot of features like ray reconstruction or frame generation, and DLSS is the superior upscaling technology. But I'm currently taking a 20-30% haircut on my FPS for raytraced games in Linux that use DX12. I'm under the impression AMD does not have this problem.

The AMD gpus are still pretty poor at raytracing. If high end gaming is the priority, you don't really have a choice other than an expensive Nvidia gpu. If you look at the benchmarks for a game like the new Indiana Jones or Black Myth Wukong etc, it's brutal for AMD.

I'm going to be in my part of Scotland for a minimum of 3 years. I expect this system to hold up using extravagant settings on the most demanding titles till then.

Only thing I'd recommend is make sure you have extra memory slots to expand to 64gb in the future. I noticed recently that Doom: The Dark Ages has 32gb as it's recommended amount of ram. So you know, the 32gb you are getting is enough. Probably be enough for the next few years. But I built my PC at the tail end of 2019 and I put 32gb in it then. It's starting to feel like it's getting to be about the time to future proof with at least the option of 64gb in the future.

Finances meant I was always behind on the RAM train, nursing 16 gigs at subpar speeds till very recently.

I would be surprised if AAA games were that RAM constrained, they're optimized for consoles which are lucky to have 16 gigs of unified memory, and 32 is a healthy margin. If it ever seems inadequate, it's about the easiest upgrade you can make to a PC.

Also, if you ever plan on abandoning windows for linux, maybe go with the AMD card? Drivers are supposed to be better, and this latest generation seems to have finally got it's shit together in terms of ray tracing performance. Still lacks a lot of features like ray reconstruction or frame generation, and DLSS is the superior upscaling technology. But I'm currently taking a 20-30% haircut on my FPS for raytraced games in Linux that use DX12. I'm under the impression AMD does not have this problem.

If I can get a legitimate copy of Windows, I can debloat it and disable telemetry. While Linux compatibility is excellent these days, courtesy of Valve, I don't see much reason to contemplate a change of OS in the near future.

It's certainly not so likely that I would take the large performance hit from dropping from a 5080 to a 9070 XT, even if the latter is a very decent card, especially at that price. I could have easily been swayed if I didn't have the luxury of a bigger budget that can't be better spent elsewhere.

I could have easily been swayed if I didn't have the luxury of a bigger budget that can't be better spent elsewhere.

Kids these days. There is always the S&P500 :P

Seriously though, enjoy your prestige build.

The 9800x3d is a great choice. Unless you're worried about saving 100-200 pounds, going down to a 7800x3d is not something I'd do. Might as well go all out on the cpu and have one that'll be great for 5 years.

Motherboard - I have an ASRock one, and I'm wary of recommending it. They have some sort of cpu destroying issue that they refuse to speak up on. It's quite rare but it keeps happening on ASRock much more frequently than on any other manufacturer's mb. I think MSI is the best choice for mbs.

You don't have to worry about melting on the RTX 5080. It doesn't use all that much power. And you should look into undervolting it. It's simple and saves power consumption (and thus heat and noise production) without sacrificing performance. I've undervolted both my 9800x3d and my RTX 5090. Anyway, afaik, the melting is mostly caused by old power supply units that weren't designed for modern gpus. Make sure you get a good PSU. That's the last part anyone should skimp on.

32 gb of ram is probably sufficient for the next several years. Probably. I went with 64 though. Because I was told mbs don't like having 4 sticks of ram. So if you go with 2x16 sticks now, you may have trouble doubling that amount later.

Water cooling might be worthwhile if you are very sensitive to noise, because the prices are so low these days, and they are more efficient at cooling. But going with air cooling for a 9800x3d is fine as well. A good air cooler will probably last longer without needing to be replaced after 4-5 years.

OLED is awesome. I don't have it on my PC monitor, but I've been using my OLED TV for some of my PC usage (connected via hdmi) for 4 years. No issues. If you take your precautions you should probably avoid burn-in. For gaming there's nothing else that comes close. You get perfect blacks and vivid colors, great response time, and high refresh rates all in one.

Thank you! That's a very thorough answer, and addresses all of my concerns.

32 gb of ram is probably sufficient for the next several years. Probably. I went with 64 though. Because I was told mbs don't like having 4 sticks of ram. So if you go with 2x16 sticks now, you may have trouble doubling that amount later.

Hmm.. There's plenty of DDR4 still kicking around, so I doubt it would be a real issue. I don't think using RAM from different SKUs is a problem if they're the same nominal frequency and timings, but I could be wrong.

OLED is awesome. I don't have it on my PC monitor, but I've been using my OLED TV for some of my PC usage (connected via hdmi) for 4 years. No issues. If you take your precautions you should probably avoid burn-in. For gaming there's nothing else that comes close. You get perfect blacks and vivid colors, great response time, and high refresh rates all in one.

A 50 inch OLED TV with VRR is barely more expensive than a 27" OLED monitor, for some god forsaken reason that probably has to do with its niche appeal. That's what I'm aiming for, but I might begrudgingly have to settle if there's simply no room on my rather cramped desk.

You're welcome!

AM5 motherboards require DDR5 ram! You can't combine ddr5 with ddr4. And mbs are now more "picky eaters" of ram than ever, I think. There's a reason the sticks are sold in pairs/sets. They don't play well with others. And they should be inserted in the A2 + B2 slots. The PC might not even boot if A1+B1 are used instead. Mb producers provide a "QVL list" of ram skus that are tested to work with the mb.

Yes, OLED monitors are often absurdly expensive per inch. Some people go for 42" oled tvs and place them on their desk. They seem quite happy.

Sometimes there's a deal to be had on a 34" ultrawide oled monitor. They're nice. Beware that both oled and ultrawide are techs you're likely to never want to abandon once you've started using them. You're locking yourself into a new and somewhat expensive computering lifestyle. :)

AM5 motherboards require DDR5 ram! You can't combine ddr5 with ddr4. And mbs are now more "picky eaters" of ram than ever, I think. There's a reason the sticks are sold in pairs/sets. They don't play well with others. And they should be inserted in the A2 + B2 slots. The PC might not even boot if A1+B1 are used instead. Mb producers provide a "QVL list" of ram skus that are tested to work with the mb.

Oh, I meant it in the sense that old RAM variants tend to be commercially available (and cheap) well past when they're obsolete. But thank you for elaborating on making sure that the kits match up, in the worst case if I can't find identical models, it probably won't break the bank to buy a fresh set!

Sometimes there's a deal to be had on a 34" ultrawide oled monitor. They're nice. Beware that both oled and ultrawide are techs you're likely to never want to abandon once you've started using them. You're locking yourself into a new and somewhat expensive computering lifestyle. :)

I've had OLED phones for a long time, so I know the perks. I'm hooked to high refresh rates, so what's ultra-wide or OLED in comparison? They're down to steep but understandable prices, and unlike GPUs, they're likely to keep getting cheaper. I've been a good boy, so I'm going to treat myself to all the sweet candy haha.

Ah, I misunderstood you. Yes, the current ddr5 sets are likely to stay on the market and go down in price over the next 5 years, so you might get a 2x32 gb set in 2030 for the price you're paying for a 2x16 gb set now. Though this can be highly cyclical. Some years, all ram is expensive, some years, all are cheap.

A few more pieces of advice to touch on your "what can I safely skimp on" q:

The motherboards have diminishing returns above a certain price point. Above £300 or so they're likely to have features you don't need. Though, if you intend on using a wireless PS5 controller (bluetooth) or something, you'll want wifi. The wifi module includes the bluetooth module. They should all have wired internet connection capability btw. That's not a premium feature.

"OC" editions of gpus are mostly bs. All gpus can be overclocked and undervolted. You don't need a factory oc'ed thing. What might be worth paying for is the better cooling on some, not all, of these premium models. Look up a review and look at the noise test page.

The case: diminishing returns above £150-175. RGB fans - not for me.

You don't need a mouse with a 4000 hz polling rate. 1000 hz is very nice and there's extremely diminishing returns above that. Keyboards - get a mechanical one, but don't go above £150.

You don't need a "gen 5" SSD. Gen 4 is plenty fast. Get a high quality gen 4 one for your operating system and perhaps a decent one for storage. Yes, you can use an ssd as a storage drive. They're silent, as opposed to the constant whirr of mechanical drives.

You don't need to pay for Windows or Office. There are perfectly good activation scripts readily available. The ISOs for Windows 10/11 can be legally downloaded.

And just to repeat the PSU claim: don't skimp on power supply.

Thank you again! The cheapest build, the one I linked to in a separate comment, has an 850w PSU from a reputable brand. I presume that's going to tide me over for a long time unless I ever get a 5090 successor.

The case: diminishing returns above £150-175.

I had a PC "built" by assembling the pieces in the cardboard box the motherboard came in, so you can tell I'm not overly fussy about cases ;)

850w with 80+ certification is enough for a 5080, yes.

I had a PC "built" by assembling the pieces in the cardboard box the motherboard came in, so you can tell I'm not overly fussy about cases ;)

Slob! :P

  • I’ve seen multiple articles about some 50xx models melting power supply connectors under load. I’d research that a bit more before pulling the trigger.
  • Depends on the games you play, 9800x3d would be such an overkill for me. I know I’m always tempted by the latest and greatest but I built a cheaper system 4 years ago and haven’t regretted it at all. Of course YMMV based on the games you play - you know your needs better than anyone

Hmm.. While I can see reports of 5080 connectors melting, it seems far less likely than a 5090. I'd consider a different card, if there was anything but older 4080 Supers and Tis in that price bracket.

Depends on the games you play, 9800x3d would be such an overkill for me. I know I’m always tempted by the latest and greatest but I built a cheaper system 4 years ago and haven’t regretted it at all. Of course YMMV based on the games you play - you know your needs better than anyone

I'm treating myself haha. I've already convinced myself that a 9950x3d would be gross overkill. Besides, CPUs are far more reasonably priced than GPUs.

This PC should last me at least another 3 years, and if the parts still perform at that point, I'll cannibalize what I can.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/B01J471364/ref=ox_sc_act_title_1?smid=AOJUIW65VI5BZ&psc=1

That's the cheapest one with roughly the same specs. GBP 2349

FYI Gamers Nexus reviewed either that exact model or something similar from CyberPowerPC and found the CPU was hitting 95C and getting thermal throttled.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=XqCweJmlZc0

You might need to either replace the heat sink entirely or remount it yourself if you get it.

Huh. Luckily the pre-built I'm eyeing (because it's cheap) has a watercooled system, so that should keep me safe.

The one tested in that video was water-cooled as well. They found a wire wrapped around one of the screws holding the water cooler in contact with the CPU that might have caused enough of an air gap to prevent heat from transferring effectively from the CPU to the cooler.

Interventions -

A close friend of mine who is doing his masters at a decent uni here has been doing pretty poorly and a whole bunch of us, his friends want to hold an intervention for him where we can convince him to start being honest with us and help him fix his life. I was able to get mine on track, so any suggestions as to how to do it would be appreciated.

Spring -

I'll meet some friends again at the golf club or maybe at their house. I look forward to the weekends now that I'm tired after working. It doesn't need much, The weather here is ideal as it's 30-35 degrees Celsius so you can sit out in the open and see all the trees come to life. It sounds strange but glass bottles of coke and just soaking in the weather go well if it's nice out.

Gaming -

Which reminds me, I fired up Quake Live after my last comment and had a k/d of 1/20, it's a dead game and I'm terrible at fps but it's so fun. Everything is fast-paced. I'm tempted to pick up video games again but it's hard just to play one match or play for just half an hour.

I'm terrible at fps but it's so fun.

Have you played Counter-Strike?

I highly, highly, cannot recommend enough the books “Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents” by Lindsay G. and “Running on Empty” by Jonice W. Those books are absolute cheat sheets on how to successfully identify the type of emotional support a person needs and how to provide it, which is likely what your intervention is trying to do.

Will check em out. People here don't have much in terms of understanding with regards to complex issues like emotional support so I want to help him out.

It's nice to see you comment on threads besides the CW!!! Those books look cool.

I saw her comment a few weeks ago too about laundromats. Haven't seen what she writes on CW stuff since I've been inactive internet usage.

My favorite threads are Friday ones besides the CW.

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