Edgwyn

SoT, plenty of people get killed by improper use of cars each year. While pistol rounds, especially in small calibers are not as effective as incapacitating a hostile target as rifle rounds, they are both equally safe or equally dangerous. Knives, guns, cars, and arguably hands can all be indiscriminately deadly if used improperly or in an unsafe manner.

If you look at SAS, Delta, GSG-9, etc they tend to use relatively short weapons that fire pistol class rounds for close quarters work, saving long guns firing rifle class rounds for outdoors and sniper type work. I do not know why that is the case, I believe that it is in part because of faster aiming with a shorter weapon. They also choose to put multiple pistol class rounds in a target instead of using rifle rounds at close quarters, making up for a pistol rounds lower lethality with repetition (two to center of mass or two to center of mass followed by one to the head).

About calvary using their pistols to shoot their own horses, it is as you pointed out a dumb idea, but not much dumber than calvary charging a prepared square with bayoneted fire arms or pikes which certainly happened plenty of times. Calvary carried multiple pistols (a brace) for a while because muskets/rifles were single shot weapons, impossible to reload on horseback so four to six single shot pistols provided more firepower than a single shot long gun did during a charge, plus could be used one handed more easily than a long gun could.

A full body slash has a leverage advantage over a full body thrust, though my billiards analogy was not very good. Also, a slash covers more area and is harder to step aside from.

The last post was way long, and I wanted to address Goldenking's first paragraph and did not, so here goes.

The NSA leaks and the budget crisis/congressional approval ratings are separate problems. The issue with the NSA is that it is an executive branch agency that has become too effective. We all want a government (which basically means executive branch) that efficiently uses our tax dollars, but we do not want it to be so efficient that it takes away our freedoms. The legislative branch and judicial branch are supposed to provide the checks and balances that prevents the executive branch from becoming too powerful. Unfortunately, the legislative branch has given up more and more authority to the executive branch since at least the 1970s and executive branch regulations do not receive the public oversight that legislative branch laws receive.

The problem with congress is that it is getting less and less effective at doing its constitutional and traditional job. Much of its responsibilities under Article I Section 8 have been turned over to the executive branch. This transfer of authority was mitigated by congress controlling the purse strings and passing each year approximately a dozen budget bills and a dozen appropriation acts providing detailed direction on the spending of public monies by the executive branch agencies. While this level of oversight was not necessarily as much as intended, it worked pretty well and was probably as much oversight as was practical. The constitution forbids the spending of federal money without a congressional appropriation. There are very few details in the constitution so legislation has been passed setting the US government's fiscal year to be 1 Oct to 30 Sep. Therefore, budgets and appropriations need to be passed prior to 1 Oct of each year.

For the majority of the last 20 years, this has not happened. The bills have passed late. The last few years have been worse with omnibus bills that fund the government as a whole without the detailed oversight that used to be provided. If you go with the position that the members of congress are employed by the people of the United States to govern the country in accordance with the laws and constitution, then we have a set of employees who have been late to work for 15 or so out of the last 20 years and have not performed basic elements of their jobs in an adequate manner for the last four years. Normally, that would result in firing. Instead we have well deserved dismal approval ratings and completely undeserved re-elections of the vast majority.

As congress gave up control to the executive branch it kept its checks and balances role on the executive branch by controlling high level executive branch appointments and the budget. Over the last 20 years, congress has reduced its oversight of the budget and in the last year, congress has reduced the hurdle to executive branch appointments. It makes me wonder what useful function these people and their staffs who exempt themselves from laws that effect the rest of us are currently performing.

While it has been 20 years since I have been a true resident of California, I agree with Kelandon that California is the state that is the closest to a direct democracy, due to the initiative system as laid out in the state constitution that makes it very easy for voters to put items on the statewide election ballot. This has contributed to my lack of faith in direct democracy as it has turned CA into a place that is almost ungovernable. The voters of California consistently put bond measures to fund police, fire, colleges, social services, infrastructure projects, etc on the ballot, they get approved and are now must pay bills leaving the Governor and Legislature with almost zero control of state spending. While I support many of the fixes listed in Kelandon's post, you cannot govern/manage an entity if you have no control over the budget. It does not matter if it is a country, state or company, if you do not control the purse strings, you do not control the entity.

The reference to "Bread and Circuses" is to the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Basic human nature is that we all want, or at least are willing to take, something for nothing. Among the issues that led to the fall of the Roman empire were an expectation that the government would provide for the basic needs of the people without the people needing to contribute to the government (Bread). There were many signs of problems (wars, public corruption, etc), but public spectacles or "Circuses" (killing slaves/beasts, chariot races, and mock naval battles in the Colosseum) successfully distracted the population from worrying about and therefore doing something about the problems. There was a huge decline in social responsibility, or a citizens duty to support the body politic.

if politician X tells the voters that the government should provide you a middle class standard of living while you sit on your couch and watch the Kardashians all day long, while politician Y tells you that America is the land of opportunity and hard work is the way to get ahead, the majority of the voters will vote for politician X. They will also develop a culture of entitlement (a strong belief that they should get something for nothing) and a lack of social responsibility (the body politic owes me, I do not owe the body politic anything). There ain't no such thing as a free lunch, but politicians of both parties will continue to promise it and voters will continue to believe it.

I agree with Randomizer's first paragraph completely, but have issues with the second paragraph. In my opinion, the issue goes back to the great depression. The government took on a lot of debt to spend our way out of the crisis. This was almost definitely necessary, but a lot of temporary programs that were created to deal with the economic crisis became permanent while everyone was distracted with WW II. This was not an immediate problem due to the unique post WW II economic situation that we found ourselves in, but set us up for long term problems. The next major crisis was during Vietnam where the decision was to have both "guns and butter" with an emergency increase in debt due to war combined with a non-emergency increase in debt to fund social programs. The Reagan administration took on more debt to win the Cold War, which allowed the Clinton administration to actually reduce the budget deficit via the "peace dividend". The Clinton administration's deficit reduction was achieved by both parties reducing one segment of government spending to historically low levels while allowing other areas of government spending to remain at historically high levels. Under Bush II, it was obvious that this historically low spending in that one segment of the government was a bad idea, so both parties took advantage of the crisis to fund the people paying for their re-election and other special interests and between that and poor strategic decisions a lot of money was completely wasted. Of course emergency deficit spending needs to be effective in order to ease the current economic crisis while not creating a future economic crisis, and it is debatable as to how effective the emergency deficit spending was during the Bush/Obama transition period and during the early Obama administration.

One final thought on the subject of the economy. As an individual, deficit spending to live a lifestyle you cannot afford is a poor policy that leads to personal financial ruin. The same thing is true for a government. As an individual, you are advised to spend no more than X% of you income on housing, Y% on luxury goods (computers, TVs, netflix, high speed internet and smart phones are all examples of luxury goods), Z% on a car, etc. As a government, the same basic principles apply. Over the last 50 years, the % of our budget spent on entitlements (social programs) and debt service has increased while everything else has fallen. You cannot run a family budget on deficit spending forever and the only way to financial independence is to get out of debt. The only way to do that is to cut your spending so that you can pay down your debt. When you do this, the amount you are spending on servicing your debt drops and the process accelerates and you eventually become financially healthy. You cannot cut your families spending by labeling the largest segment of that spending non-discretionary. A social safety net is necessary, government entitlements as a way of life is not sustainable.

The people didn't have a direct vote or even mush of an indirect vote on the abolition of slavery, though I would love to believe that it would not have mattered (that is not necessarily the same thing as saying that I believe that it would not have mattered). The 13th amendment was approved by both houses of congress and the state legislatures. It went through so quickly (less than a year) that there was not an election cycle for voters to give their opinions of candidates who were for or against until after it was ratified.

I am using Safari 6.1.1 on my MacBook Pro without any issues.

The other advantage that slashing weapons like most swords, axes, maces and flails have over thrusting weapons like the pike and spear is that you get an extra advantage in power (compare hitting a baseball to hitting a billiard ball). This can make a big difference against an opponent who can afford metal armor.

Plenty of people who carry weapons for the sole purpose of shooting carry both a rifle and pistol if they can, especially if they are engaged in mounted ops where weight is less of an issue. In addition to the fact that they are easy to carry, pistols are good close quarters weapons because they are fast to point, which is essential at close range. Rifles are for the outdoors, so-so in a city and great in the wilderness where you are looking at making shots at a much longer range than you can dream of with a pistol, but can be challenging indoors. Many of the special purpose door kicker organizations use SMGs which fire pistol rounds out of a barrel much shorter than that of a rifle, in some cases, barely longer than an open carry pistol's barrell. The US military has transitioned a lot of personnel to a Carbine which is handier than a rifle while not giving up a whole bunch of accuracy at longer ranges. But like any choice it is a debatable compromise as well.

I play the Spiderweb games because I am looking for an old school dungeon crawl CRPG ala Wizardry or the Bard's Tale, so my advice/opinions are biased. I have not played Genforge and the concept doesn't really appeal to me, no matter how well executed it may be.

Its kind of like the person with the curse in Nethergate, the game does not allow you to solve everyone's problems as much as we would all like to. I personally would love to have the option to end the Eternal Prisoner's suffering in Avadon 3 or whenever Redbeard is officially no longer the keeper. As to Folker, it may very well be that somethings cannot be cured, though I am not sure why he has a seemingly hopeless outcome while the wandering eye seems to have hope.

I am totally uninterested in a MMO option, but I fail to see why there is the nay saying about the time zone issue. Yes, it is hard to interact in real time with people who are many time zones away. Not creating an option to interact because it is hard to interact does not make sense. That is kind of like saying lets restrict live chats, Skype/face time and phone calls to only work in adjacent time zones because it would be hard to use them with people who are farther away.

The bad guys can afford to bribe the captain, but they can hardly afford to bribe all the passengers.

Unfortunately our politicians of both parties do in fact bribe the passengers. It started out with big city machine politicians purchasing alcohol for semi-disenfranchised emigrants on/right before election night in exchange for votes and has moved into full out bread and circus mode. The democratic party's new push for "income equality" is open pandering for votes by making promises that will drive our country further into economic collapse. Unfortunately, the Republican party's record on funding for various special interests is not much better, they just pretend to be ashamed about it while executing most of the same destructive policies as the Democrats.

The people of the United States have found that they can vote themselves unending bread, circuses and benefits and ignore the fact that a bill will come due in the future. The vast majority of the political class (of both parties), the media and college professors would rather be enablers than be unpopular. Direct democracy would just make this worse. We have been unable to find/vote into federal office 535 legislators whose sense of responsibility to the country is higher than their desire to be re-elected, there is no way we can find 50%+1 of nearly 300M voters with a sense of responsibility. I personally think direct election of senators is possibly the worst amendment to our constitution. And would support term limits of 3 terms in the House and two terms in the Senate.

The dysfunction of the American people is so evident when Congress has a single digit approval rating yet each member has a 90% re-election rate. Obviously the majority of the people who actually vote have allowed themselves to be convinced that the 3 federal legislators that they vote for are the only good ones, despite frequent and compelling evidence to the contrary.

That said, I do not have an answer for fixing the system. Increasing the requirements for eligibility to vote is problematic for both the question of "what should the requirements be" and for the fact that making voting hard seems un-American to many of us.

There is a Sylak item that generates trash. If you have that item in your pack, trash will fall out once your pack is full.

The longer the spear, the more that you need both hands, to the point where a Pike is completely unemployable with one hand. While the Greeks used short spears in their Phalanx, the Romans ended up using a short sword instead. While the Roman Sword was primarily a thrusting weapon, with a large shield to block the enemy spear or knock it out of the way, you could either destroy the spear with your sword or stab the enemy with your sword. So while class distinctions did help to make the sword the upper class weapon of choice, in properly trained hands (like the roman legions) the sword was more effective against infantry. Long spears do have some advantages against calvary that they do not have against infantry. Of course, mass heavy calvary charges against a prepared opponent are a really bad idea. Light calvary has many uses, heavy calvary is only really effective if you can arrange to catch your opponent on the move.

Interestingly enough, Shaka ended up going to a very Roman type weapons mix during his military reforms, with light spears for throwing and a hybrid spear/sword for stabbing, replacing spears.

Peasant weapons (spears, flails, bows, etc) could be effective in the defense, but were not as good offensive weapons as swords. Bows may be an exception, but there was a lot of training and practice involved in using a long bow properly, and they were a lot harder to make than a spear or flail.

In the US military, one of the last swords intended for calvary combat use was designed by a former olympian, 2Lt George S. Patton, Jr. It was already obsolete by that point though many military swords were turned into machetes in the pacific theater of WWII.

but next to nothing in terms of new, interesting ideas. It's starting to feel like a game of Mad Libs, swapping proper nouns and incidental plot details from game to game, but always fitting into the same (increasingly rote-feeling) formula of "EPIC fantasy adventure, huge world, dozens of dungeons, *the choice is yours*!" Even the writing - something which is consistently, and to my mind, inexplicably touted as the company's strong suit - makes no effort to mature. 20 years after Exile we have moved from fighting an evil Empire to "the Corruption." Corruption. Really?

To me, the Avadon series is new and interesting. There is moral ambiguity and the Tinkermage class is quite different and innovative, and the Corruption is different than Wretch/Ogre/Titan bashing.

Yes, Jeff spends a lot of time keeping Exile current and up to date for financial stability. One of the reasons that I have not purchased the Avernum series is that I am waiting for the remakes. If I sat down and completed A2-6, I would have no interest in the remakes for years. I have had to take long breaks from Star Trek and Star Wars because there has not been a lot of chance since the late 60s (Star Trek) or late 70s (Star Wars), then after a few years I am able to return. To me, Fantasy RPGs, computer or paper are the same way. The basic ideas were new and innovative in the early 70s but have been repeated countless times since then. I take a few years off and then I return.

I think that is a good choice. I would then do the Avadon series next.

I would also add that the various hint and strategy guides assume that you are playing the vanilla game. There are tactical and character build differences if you are playing with one of the remixes.

I definitely agree with playing it vanilla the first time and then doing the remixes later.

Real time does not work particularly well for me, the old format is a lot easier to participate in.

In 1st Ed AD&D, your basic attributes (Str, Int, Wis, Dex, Con, Cha) did not change once they were generated when you created your character (barring rare exceptions). Leveling up improved your hit points every level, number of spells every level, thief abilities every level, to hit every few levels and saving throws (resistances) every few levels. That said, few of the old CRPGs followed that convention.

Also, I would rather have an analog level than a digital (smart phone) level if I am leveling anything that I care about.

Sir Winston Turtle

Parts of the Peer Gynt suite and Ride of the Valkeries are very appropriate for adventure game music. I thought that there was even a reference to Pee Gynt in Colossal Cave Adventure, but it has been a really long time since I played it.

I spent the first half of the game bringing Dedrick with me for his healing since I was playing a TM. Later on as a hoarded more potions and then got the second scarab, I was able to use the SO more. If you focus the Shaman on spells versus summoning you get some options to the energy attack.

The perspective on your icon does not help. I find it hard to have nightmares over something that it looks like I could just step on it. Now, if we had to look up to see those 12" teeth, that would be different.

Only if we get to respond with a Golf Clap

I did a search for Remy and did not find anything so please disregard my previous post.

I seem to remember a Remy from A:EftP, I have not played enough of the games to speak to the other three.

email to me mentioned it was on the list. I'm going to be beta testing until I die or they lock me up as insane, whichever comes first.

Why would being locked up because you are insane interfere with your usefulness as a beta tester? I would think that everything around here would start making sense once you got to the point of being locked up.