A mini rant or two ... and mint choc planets

Hello everyone,

Still here, still doing that isolation thing, also back in that work thing too after having the week off before Easter. It's feeling odd though doing that switch from work mode to play mode though.

Saying that though, about 10 minutes after the work laptop shut down yesterday, I was in that internet spaceship pilot seat again. I'm having that thought that I'd like to be in a game again but ... which one ! Haha, part of the not being in game at the moment is due to the dinner being in the oven so that means game would be something like Motorsport Manager or one of that ilk where it's :

A - much more hands off than something like a first person shooter style
B - doesn't take up space on the desk like the flightstick in Elite does.

But first ... I have a couple of rants ... And of course, before that, we need a suitable thumbnail pic for the post.

What could be over the horizon ? I sense there are many tasty munchies over there (that I haven't burned in the oven) and some great company that'll have plenty of stories and things to talk about after we all emerge from quarantine. But at the same time, I don't want that to be too early because then the trend of infection will just bounce back, we'll be in isolation again and we'll have to get used to potentially even more friends and contacts no longer being with us. (I haven't been directly touched by it yet but you see the stories and it can get to you).

First rant ... You'll have seen, maybe, stories about science groups like Folding@Home and Rosetta asking for you to donate processing power in order to aid research into fighting this virus. The trouble is, some of them believe they have more rights to do their science than other people.

Folding@Home never got on to my machine for other reasons (they don't play with BOINC and it burns out graphics cards). But Rosetta's close to getting binned for been far too keen on sending work to the machine.

The default setting I have is to have 2 days worth of work on the machine. That's on an old understanding from almost back in dial up modem days so that the machine wouldn't be going to the network too often. It's also on an expectation that there would be about a week to return units. Rosetta seems to have cut that down to about 4 days. Not on. Oh and they'll also ignore the priority settings so that their work units get downloaded instead of another project's science. I turn the science off when I'm in games because it's like : My Computer and I get first call on its time. Shoving 2 days worth of work unit on to a machine and expecting it to be done in 3 is cheeky.

That's got other people (like LHC@Home) banned from using the machine as well and ... I set this one to clear all tasks today. When the system runs out off work, I'll turn on the work fetch again to see how it behaves but to be honest, we're reaching the time of year when I don't want the computer pushing out heat due to doing Sums.

Rant 1 done. I think we've earned a pic ...

Quite.

The other rant is about games .... I thought about putting a fair bit of time into Mordheim. It's a Warhammer game, based around small unit tactics. 2 matched warbands go into the streets and fight over the resources scattered around the map. It's most interesting feature is the amount of customisation you can put in to your people.

But those dice rolls ...

Some games attract a certain amount of infamy for their random number generation principles. Other games induce complete and utter rage.

Let's just say that Mordheim isn't on the machine any more after being uninstalled. It's not often something pushes me like that but when you confirm a stream of rolls that improbably go heavily against the probabilities quoted, any potential joy goes out of the game and you have to walk away.

One thing about strategy and tactics games is that you should not be fighting fair in order to win. You stack the deck through strategy in order to weight the fight in favour of your side. If you get caught out and lose, you should be able to figure out why you've lost and come up with an answer. Like having a favourite soldier in XCom 1/2 be lost because you left them out in the open and exposed. I'll accept that kind of loss in a game but if it's a case of crowding an enemy and then losing your people to crazy improbable streaks of dice rolls ... it's time to find a fun game instead of one that has hidden mechanics that are designed to torture the player.

And it doesn't help when the game continually saves status and doesn't let you roll back a save.

That probably sounds a bit petulant doesn't it. And you'd be right !

But at the end of the day, if the game isn't fun, walk away and find a different game. It might well be Pathfinder Kingmaker for me next. That's a D&D type system that emerged when people got a bit disgruntled at the lack of customisation in D&D 4th edition.

Should be good, although I didn't get that far in either of the Baldur's Gate games.

That's me done with the rants. I'm looking to allow my hands to recover a bit with Elite. They're not painful at the moment but they're giving me the starts of "If you're not careful, us hands we gonna flare" and it's best to obey those signals before the real pain starts or recovery takes longer and is more painful.

That's the Colonia Nebula and signaled my arrival at the second leg of Tea-89's journey.

Click for bigger on these by the way :-). This was the first Brown Alert moment for a little while. Sometimes you pop out of hyperspace at a close binary arrangement like this and the second star will be behind the one you enter the system at. You go through the corona of the star as you're coming in. You don't hit because there's a game mechanic which prevents that but ... it's still Brown Alert when you see it on screen.

I was flying further on the trip back and found this, thought it looked like a Firebird. Pretty.

Some places are odder than others ...

I found an abandoned exploration camp ...

Had a good look around. Note the sad lack of RGB'ing on the wheels ... I have actually been shamed for the red lighting on one of the discords. I sadly forgot to reapply it when switching the configuration of the ship around slightly but ....

Normality resumed. That's actually where I am at the moment but ... one last pic :

Another luminous green gas giant ! I do miss Mint Choc Chip ice cream, haven't had it for a little while.

Stay safe, be well.