No. This is turn based, it doesn't play like any RTS game.

> Sure they were small games and had lots of game play for some defintion of game play. I enjoyed them immensely. But it's hard to go back to just a few colors, low-res graphics, often no way to save, etc... for me at least, the modern affordances mean something.

On one hand, you're of course right. It is hard to go back, except for the nostalgia.

On the other, do you know there is a scene of people still making brand new games for the Commodore 64 (and other home computers)? And selling them, too, these are not just free games. Of course the target audience is themselves, they make, sell and buy games within the community, but the point is it still exists.

Also there are artists making art in C64 graphics resolutions and color modes, and even PETSCII art enthusiasts (PETSCII is C64's text mode, which had some interesting symbols which facilitate creativity).

Last Ninja has my favorite music from the C64 era.

Have you listened to the live versions by the Fastloaders? They had Ben Daglish before he passed away.

I will now :D

> We're privileged because we generally don't do really dumb and awful things

Except for right now, right?

> "I'd kill you but you just haven't made me mad enough yet". Sounds like an unhinged viewpoint to me.

How do you feel about most things coming out of your president Trump's mouth, or Hegseth's (when he's sober)? Those guys are deranged. Hegseth is on a mission from God to purge the unclean.

Talk about unhinged.

> Vietnam - actually has great relations with the US and we won the peace.

They won the peace (and the war). You didn't win shit. You lost, badly. The wound in the American psyche by this defeat will never heal, to the point we have to witness claims such as yours.

> Afghanistan - We wanted to provide schooling for little girls and stuff like that and, well, the population didn't want it. So at some point you cut your losses.

So you lost. Mainly because you went on a military adventure, with unclear goals, with a population you didn't understand. Much like in Vietnam!

And here you are, in Iran.

I think the one lesson you did learn is to heavily control the media and the narrative. Body bags and mission failures are bad press. Lesson learned.

Forget about pee, I always wondered about fighter pilots in one of those long, multi-hour flights, what happens if they really need to go number 2? I suppose they self-select as people without this kind of problems, but it can happen to anyone really.

I suppose in an emergency they just shit their pants, but I wonder what the ground crew says when they touch down.

Honestly this isn't something people select for at all--by the time you've made it through that many rounds of selection you aren't going to let GI issues keep you from the finish. I've heard of some creative solutions to the problem involving safing the ejection seat and getting out of your gear, but I don't really believe any of them. If you think it's a significant risk, you basically have two options: talk to the squadron flight surgeon and get medically grounded, or wear a diaper. Almost everyone is too proud to do either of those things, so a number of pilots have call signs related to shitting themselves in flight. Yes, everyone will make fun of you after the fact--if you're a decent person, you'll at least clean out the cockpit yourself.

I suppose you could avoid eating hours before a mission, and not eat gassy foods.

That's one option, although for longer missions your preparation generally needs to start the night before and I wouldn't recommend flying on an empty stomach (unless it works for you, but it makes most people more susceptible to airsickness). There isn't one consistent method that works for everyone--I think the book Sled Driver has a section where they talk about physiological preparation for SR-71 flights, and the only consistent habit the crew had was NOT eating the "traditional," low-residue steak-and-eggs breakfast.

Good news for gassy food lovers is the cabin pressure changes make everyone fart, there's no one else in the cockpit to hear or smell you, and even if there was it'd be loud and they'd be wearing an oxygen mask. Little victories.

I don't pack liquids when flying as the lowered air pressure forces the liquid out of the container. Factory sealed is ok.

Imodium also does wonders for slowing things down and avoiding bowel movements, provided you use it carefully and infrequently such that you don't totally mess up your normal gut functioning.

I wonder if hunger can affect your focus and reflexes though.

If missing a meal causes that, I suspect we would have died out as a species long ago.

The context is piloting a fighter aircraft in a multi-hour combat mission though. I think missing meal might matter for mission critical, uh, missions.

I'm not talking doing menial work while skipping lunch.

A full gut makes you sleepy and lethargic, as the blood moves to your gut to help digest. There's a reason many societies have a siesta after lunch.

A full belly can causes problem if you get wounded.

Besides, I doubt our ancestors went on the hunt with full bellies. I go jogging, but never after a meal.

If I'm busy, I also do not notice being hungry, even if I haven't eaten in 16+ hours.

One more thing. I hitched a ride with autocross racer. While I was strapped in tight, when he'd make a hard turn my guts would slosh over to the side, which was rather painful. The fix was to bear down hard on my abdominal muscles. I expect it would be much worse with a full belly, and a fighter pilot is going to be pulling lots of g's.

Oh, believe me, I know about the need for siestas.

But surely there's a middle ground between "heavy lunch" and "skipping lunch entirely" for a multi hour combat sortie?

Many people cannot focus (especially over long periods of time) on an empty stomach.

> If I'm busy, I also do not notice being hungry, even if I haven't eaten in 16+ hours.

Combat sorties are hours of boredom where you have to keep attention just in case, followed by an explosion of frantic action. Unless you're a combat pilot I'd say your experience doesn't apply here?

I'm not a combat pilot, but my dad was. Flying over enemy territory requires constant alertness, for many hours at a stretch. You can be attacked at any time, by flak or enemy fighters, who love to catch an enemy napping.

A favorite Luftwaffe tactic was to come up from behind, catch the tailgunner unawares, and rake it with cannon fire and get an easy kill. If the tailgunner was awake, he'd fire a few rounds of tracers (while out of range) to let the 109 know he was on the bounce, and the 109 would usually back off.

His cohort suffered 80% casualties.

> Many people

are not fit to be combat pilots. The AF is very selective. (I didn't qualify, as I wear glasses.) They work hard to weed out slackers, people of low intelligence, sloppy people, unhealthy people, dishonest people, etc. They'll even reject you for a speeding ticket.

First, thanks for sharing your dad's experience! Very interesting.

I did say I thought it required constant alertness... over long periods of boredom, a bad combination. It's hours of nothing punctuated by frantic action. Worse to be keeping a watchful eye on a completely empty stomach, I'd say. Happy to be contradicted if your dad told you he flew long combat missions on an empty stomach...

I also think long combat flights with aerial refueling are longer now than in the WW2 era, right? Excluding maybe bombers, but surely bombers did have toilets, even if minimalistic?

> [many people] are not fit to be combat pilots. The AF is very selective.

I'm sure of this, but we're discussing a very specific thing. The other person who replied to my topmost comment, who also seems to be speaking from experience, assured me pilots don't select on this particular basis. In fact, this person said fighter pilots do shit themselves and earn nicknames because of it.

I'd certainly ask my dad, and if he were around he'd be 104!

I once went parachute jumping. I did not eat beforehand (and we were advised not to!).

spurous reasoning because it relies on performance being a binary thing and not a gradiant.

in WWII they had to avoid serving gassy foods to bomber crews because at high altitudes intestinal issues could go from uncomfortable to lethal.

I didn't know that! But I do know that crews got eggs before flights. Nobody else did.

When RAF pilots went to the Soviet Union to help the Soviets, when the first frost came the pilots were horrified when the women brought out big vats of fat and ladled it out. But after flying in those cold temperatures, they realized the fat was just the thing to keep them warm!

We seem to make a disconnect with our own children. I certainly did. But it doesn't extend to even other people's kids!

> But it doesn't extend to even other people's kids!

I think it's a question of exposure and tolerance, otherwise it'd be much harder for daycare workers, for instance.

It seems maladaptive. I faint (sometimes) at the sight of my own blood, and must look away when nurses draw it. I also get queasy when even talking about blood or reading about it. I can't think of any good reason this would be helpful; in fact keeping my cool would be advantageous.

And yes, I do have a very vivid imagination.

Space debris would have an additional meaning.

How on earth could they skip streaming the final 10 seconds countdown? That's beyond incompetence.

Nobody important enough was in charge of the presentation with full context.

This, of course, is a bad sign about the reliability of the mission. Folks have been raising serious safety red flags.

If the video of the launch goes off that poorly it says things about how in a row their ducks are.

or, yknow, focusing on astronaut safety was more important than taking care of how things look on tv

If you have to make that trade off you’re already in trouble.

This program has cost nearly $100 billion to date. Yesterday's launch alone accounted for $4.1 billion in direct costs.

Saying "it was either this or that" doesn't make sense at these magnitudes. They could have hired a professional aerospace filming team for a ridiculously overpriced $10 million and it would be an _actual_ rounding error.

queue the new moon hoax theory