I've stayed off the beta branch, so this is my first chance to see the new changes. In general: I like it, especially the new overlay stuff like being able to pin a window with achievements you want to keep in mind as you play. Haven't found any major show-stoppers yet.

It's sort-of fixed a bug I had with Cinammon on Debian, where if I had Steam running when I put my computer to sleep, upon re-awakening the Steam window would look like MissingNo channeling Picasso, which I could only fix by fully quitting Steam and restarting it. It's still not perfect upon reawakening now, but I can just close the window with the 'X' button and re-open it from the task bar icon to fix it, which is a lot quicker.

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To save a few clicks, according to the hackmd post in the article you can check if a Linux system has been infected by looking for the presence of the file "~/.config/.data/lib.jar". Normally "~/.config/.data" isn't used, so its presence is a pretty good indicator of being hit (and its absence likewise suggests you're fine).

I created a new FTB server on April 22 and it appears to be OK, thankfully.

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Quoting: Purple Library GuyAnd it is annoying that one country's bad law gets to cause problems for people in all other countries.

This makes me wonder if Valve could've simply said "OK, it's going up but won't be available in the US" and there'd be nothing Nintendo could do about it. I Am Not A Lawyer (thank goodness), so I have no idea…

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Need more games with Sumerian-Akkadian mythology in them. :happy:

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Quoting: lukas333Fights in Tight Spaces is super fun.

I've got it on my wishlist, but haven't committed. Does it play well on the Deck, do you know?

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Sounds like I'll continue to wait for it to be fixed and come to the stable branch, then.

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Quoting: Purple Library GuyUm. I'm not sure what I think of that. I don't play 4X space games to be an RPG, I play them to explore the galaxy and manage economies and research mindboggling technologies.

Totally fair. I should mention that CK II never really hooked me like Stellaris does, so I was (pleasantly) surprised that adding seemingly similar mechanics would be so interesting to me. I think the difference is that CK II has so many characters, and they're constantly dying and being replaced with new ones, and they're all just various randomly-generated collections of traits and stats with little you can do about your own traits and nothing about anyone else's (except your kids). Here, the number of leaders you'll have has been pared down quite a bit, and unless you're playing an Overtuned origin there probably won't be a huge turnover, so you can actually get invested in your leaders a bit more. Being able to choose their traits at each level up, at least for me, really made more engaged in their progress, rather than "Oh look, scientist #14 leveled up again and got an exploring trait that they'll never use because they're leading engineering with their Spark of Genius trait already." When I said it was like an RPG, that's all I meant; you're not going to be having extended talks with all your leaders around the space-campfire or anything like that. (I think the legendary Paragons might have a bit more flavor and event chains, but there are only 8 of them and you'll only [possibly] see the 2 or 3 corresponding to your ethics, from what I gather.)

Considering that some traits are now "Council" traits that provide bonuses to your entire empire (like more mineral production, or faster research) when a leader is on the council, choosing traits at level up can also affect the managing of your economy and how fast your research progresses on mindboggling technologies :smile:. It's the same underlying gameplay, it's just that leaders have now been made a much more integrated and interesting part of it.

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In its continuing quest to be every Paradox grand strategy game ever made (…in SPAAAACE!), Stellaris has taken more than a few pages out of Crusader King's playbook with its latest 'Gemini' update and DLC Galactic Paragons. This is huge. I played for an hour or so this evening, and wow does this update change the game.

Some updates/DLCs focus more on end-game stuff that you won't see for hours into a campaign (like becoming the crisis in Nemesis, or Colossi from Apocalypse). The leader and government changes in the Gemini update, in contrast, change your very first decisions of the game, and look likely to remain relevant all the way through the game. You now get to pick a trait for each leader when they level up, which instantly makes them 2000% more engaging; I had to unlearn my knee-jerk reaction of instantly dismissing the pop-up about a leader gaining a new level, because now they're actually interactive and interesting. Some traits are "council traits", which only give their effects when the leader is on your council, which makes choosing traits (and which leaders to put on the council) an interesting choice. Since leaders require more attention you'll also have fewer of them at once, at least in the early game before you increase your soft cap (no more 5+ exploring science ships in the first decade, and honestly, I don't think I'll miss it). It feels a bit more like an RPG, leveling up your party members to get better and better, and I quite enjoy it. I also like that you can further customize your starting leader with a trait (possibly more depending on starting choices?) and an optional biography if you want.

(As an aside, I love that they've gotten rid of scientists having two roles; they're only explorers now, save for whoever is your head of research, who acts as chief scientist for all three research branches simultaneously. The conflict between the two roles is much diminished now, since research-affecting traits are only council traits now from what I saw, meaning you only have to worry about one scientist dual-classing [and they can still command a science ship while being councilor].)

With the two additional tradition trees from Galactic Paragons (focused on producing better leaders, and the governing council specifically), I counted sixteen traditions tree to choose from in my game. For the first time since they were introduced all the way back in Utopia, I finally felt like I had to make hard choices about which ones to get, and I love it! Picking a new tradition tree shouldn't feel like a no-brainer, and there are enough now that I can actually feel like I'm giving something meaningful up by picking another one. The council has something new called Agendas which are empire-wide bonuses that take some time to enact, and different tradition trees (along with ethics, government type, etc.) give you different ones. It remains to be seen how well it works (they take long enough to enact that I only saw a handful in my time playing), but it seems like a decent system.

I didn't take the new origin, so I can't speak to it, though it sounds solid enough. (I have this weird habit of essentially playing the last expansion [or a least a previous one] whenever a new one comes out, hence my Ocean Paradise Angler Aquatics running a MegaCorps this time around. :grin:)

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Those certainly are some of the color choices of all time. :whistle:

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I think this is a good example of the kind of way current VR devices need to go in order to see wider adoption. Can't wait for it to get to the point where it's just a pair of glasses with video and power sent wirelessly from a transmitter on your desk. :smile:

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