Pentru a ajunge la o concluzie clară și rapidă putem studia ce s-a întamplat în Grecia.
Situație:
cheltuieli guvernametale în exces
colectare ineficientă a taxelor
lispă de competitvitate
corupție generalizată
Consecințe:
recesiune și somaj
măsuri de austeritate În schimbul unor împrumuturi de “salvare” de la FMI și de alte țari europene, Grecia a fost obligată să pună în aplicare măsuri dure de austeritate, inclusiv reduceri de cheltuieli și majorări de taxe. Aceste măsuri au cauzat probleme sociale semnificative și au dus la proteste larg răspândite, ajungând în final la dezastru.
criză umanitară Sărăcie, șomaj, scăderea calității serviciilor de săntătate, oameni care ramân fără locuințe.
criza datoriei Datorie de 100% din GDP in 2013
Vedeți ceva asemănări cu România?
Prostia cea mare se aplică și la noi acum: creșterea taxelor. Creșterea taxelor va duce la scăderea consumului, datorită banilor mai puțini disponibili pentru oamenii de rând. Daca oamenii nu au bani, vor scădea investițiile și oamenii nu vor mai cumpăra atât de mult, limitându-se în mare la a achiziționa lucrurile esențiale. Asta automat incetinește motorul “economiei”. Economie mai lenta înseamnă scăderea veniturilor la buget.
Și când iți scad veniturile după măsurile de austeritate ce faci? Pai, ca bouvacul, iei și mai multe măsuri de austeritate care te țin în bucla continuă ce te duce spre faliment efectiv.
Bun, veți spune că de constatat e ușor și de reparat e greu. Eu vă arăt că nu e greu. Se poate urma exemplul de redresare al Portugaliei, care după deficitul bugetar semnificativ din 2015, în 2019 ajunsese să aibă primul excedent din ultimii 50 de ani, iar pe un interval de cațiva ani a avut a doua cea mai mare reducere a deficitului din UE și a 3-a cea mai mare reducere a datoriei publice.
Ca atare, în loc de suprataxare trebuie pornit de pe 3 linii clare:
consolidare fiscală inteligentă
protecția categoriilor vulnerabile
eliminarea banilor care se risipesc pentru alte țari că așa este ordinul de la Noua Uniune Sovietică sau de la alții.
Efectiv:
prioritizare a eficienței colectării de taxe în locul creșterii taxelor și taxarea corectă a giganților care nu lasa un leu în țara
investiții în domenii productive și menținerea astfel a coeziunii sociale
eliminarea donațiilor și ajutoarelor către Ucraina și a oricăror beneficii preferențiale de care acum profită Moldova
bonus: încetarea plații tributului sub diverse forme către diverși ocupanți
Cu astea 3 ajungi în anul următor de la gaura aia record in UE la excedent bugetar. Da, la noi în România. La fel o faci doar cu bonus-ul. Cum ? Pai cu o conducere competentă și nesubordonată altora.
If you checked my previous S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 review , you have seen that the game was not at all ready to be released at that point.
After a few months I decided to re-check how fixed it is. Although there have been hundreds of fixes with each patch, I’m still not impressed.
By far, the most annoying things are the bugs in main and secondary quests.
The most notable bug is in the main quest Visions of Truth: C-Con, at which point (if you encounter it) there’s nothing you can actually do to progress except load a save game and wait for an emission to occur while in that area or trigger one manually. There are dozens of videos on this bug but none of the fixes described in them worked. Any debug method I tried does also not work and if you use a console command to bypass the quest, the next main quests will not trigger anymore, so this as also not a solution. I find such bugs totally unacceptable.
Note that the test run was done in April and there have been 2 more huge patches since then. Hopefully, this got fixed, but I can’t bet on it.
On the performance side, I did notice improvements, but I can’t be sure if it’s from patching or from using a different video card. In my initial run I used the RTX 4080 (OC) and in the second run I used the new Radeon 9070 XT, which performed significantly better. On the Radeon card there was no FPS drops at any point in the game while with the GeForce I did experience problems when too many enemies were around, when a landscape change was occurring extremely fast (like being on a cliff and suddenly opening the view towards a large valley or any new landscape) and when a specific type of weather was occurring (rain with heavy drops – which is strange because rain with small drops had no issue and the small drops were a lot more in numbers comparted to the heavy drops version). I tend to incline that the actual game design had a larger piece of the problem compared to the video card difference.
Other than that, there are many previously known issues/bugs which most of the time are fun and sad in the same time rather than game-braking, but they are still here.
Tempest Rising is a real time strategy game that launched just a few days ago. I’ve been following its development up for some time and a few months ago I said that it has a chance of bringing the true RTS Command & Conquer feeling back.
First of all I want to say that I admire and respect the hard work done by Tempest Rising team. The game had to be a lot more to meet my high expectations, but I consider it good enough anyway. I’ve completed both campaigns of the game and tested MP also. Let’s now see what it ended up being.
Tempest Rising is closest to Command & Conquer Tiberian Sun from all the C&C series. The 2 main factions are Global Defense Force, which has similarities to the classic GDI and acts like global domination force (good or evil depending on one’s perspective), the Tempest Dynasty which is their direct enemy (being a little similar to Nod) and a 3rd alien faction called Veti (that didn’t sound too good to me when I first heard it).
The action happens in an alternate timeline where the Cuban missile crisis went the nuke way and that in turn triggered the growth of a red nice-looking plant-vain-thing that can provide energy, which is the game’s main resource to be harvested. Pretty good ideas here to start with. The story line is unfortunately nearly missing at the start of the 1st few GDF missions and it lacks an initial bigger picture, while you do just some random “yes-sir”-like missions with no apparent logic, but evolves along the way, culminating with the most interesting part being at final missions of the Dynasty campaign. The map between missions has nearly no sense, you progress with one faction and the map keeps getting “conquered” by the opposite faction, until near the end of both campaigns when there’s a new faction on the map. The player faction seems to keep loosing land after you winning a mission. All action is in Europe, which may be good since there’s room to use other continents in possible expansions.
The single player is quite decent, there are plenty of mission types from commando-like to full base constructions. It does cover pretty much any type of mission doable in a single player campaign. Single player does makes you feel like you can evolve and adapt, mostly also due to the improvements you can make along the way for your faction and their adaptability to be deployed in battle considering the needs of the next mission available. If an upgrade is useless for the next mission you can just select others to use instead, from the ones you already unlocked. This system also unlocks vehicles from the other faction which is not that good of an idea to have in a campaign progress.
The general gameplay is similar to C&C games. You have your MCV, you can use engineers to capture enemy structures, you unlock new units when you have new structures or structure upgrades. Something new is the use of specialized commandos. Each faction has multiple commandos that are called specialists. This is a new approach that is an excellent idea because of 2 reasons: you can adapt to the in-game situation easier and use what is fit and you have stronger infantry units to work with, which can make infantry in the game be something more than meat-bags for the enemy to eradicate relatively easy. There are multiple turret types and tiers available which can make pretty decent defenses much more viable to stand against late-game more powerful units. Some may say there are too many defenses, but I liked this approach as it’s something I already use in my Red Alert 2 Yuri’s Revenge Apocalypse mod. Having silos I can’t say I liked; it’s something that’s just a useless addition in my opinion. In an RTS game you don’t most of the time need or get to store much and the exceptions are pretty rare.
In-game graphics do look quite good. The color use in structures is well fitting, the “ore” looks exceptionally well and structures have nice effects from power plants to the more advanced ones. Weapons fire effects are also good looking and well fit with the type of weapon fired. Armored units though are a little too big for my taste and this also leads to pathfinding issues. Cloaking is done relatively bad. I couldn’t tell by looking if my unit is cloaked or not. There’s no clear visible way to distinguish cloaked from non-cloaked units. And the truly ugly part of the graphics are the sidebar icons. They are too dull and washed-out. I’d prefer hands down some clear ones like RA2 had, the actual units in their environment, not some generic border-based drawings to represent them.
The SFx part did meet my overall expectations. The music is pretty decent, the unit sounds do fit the Fallout-like environment and the overall in-game sound effects are good, although they could use some default volume adjustments. The characters in the mission briefings could of used more “feeling” into their role. Properly synced music can add significantly to a single player experience, so small adjustments can be done here.
From a balance perspective, things are covered pretty good with small exceptions. Most units can decently shoot at anything, making them have their use in multiple situations. There’s a very good balance overall between the 2 active factions. A weird thing I found in the campaign was that the main Dynasty padded aircraft (which fires grenades) always has to go back to resupply ammo, which makes it almost entirely useless, while the GDF equivalent can still shoot fine even if the main weapon is depleted and even the main weapon slowly recharges. That I found even more absurd when paired with Dynasty’s late-game arty-gunship that can fire without resupply and is not pad-locked. The fact that you can build individual pads is nice but not viable. I would of made the padded aircraft bomb and reload, with no hover option, while keeping hovers (like transports and arty) as hoovers. Something relatively unbalanced is the structure construction difference. While GDF can queue and deploy multiple structures and that’s it, for Dynasty things get complicated by comparison as you have to deploy building post-construction and there are weird things happening along the way, like a building not being constructed in the queue due to no obvious reason, although the reason does exist and may vary depending on that else is happening (like upgrades of other building – no idea why this interferes with build queue). Extra side note: flames don’t seem to do DoT. Correct me if you tested and I’m wrong.
Now for the rest of things that I don’t like: some should of really been there and some are just personal opinions. 1st of all, there’s a 200 build limit cap, like in Starcraft. I hate this. Not sure if the limit is technical in nature or it had other purpose, but it really limits options way too much. There will be no epic vs epic army clash with such a cap. For multiplayer it should be adaptable and there should be the possibility to remove it. 2nd, another “we are in a hurry and won’t do it” thing is the impossibility of garrisoning civilian buildings. This would of been quite nice to have and would of mattered in the single player campaigns also. Pathfinding is sometimes bugged when yo have other units in the way of the moving one. The unit will keep trying to get out to an open path and fail. Also, a classic issue of if target unit is dead all units stop instead of going towards the destinations where some of them are already persists in this game too. 3rd, a minus for the missing 3rd faction. It’s understandable that it will probably show-up and be MP-usable in a future expansion, but since it’s basically missing, the single player campaign maybe went a little too far in presenting them. I would personally shown the 3rd side only in the last campaign mission, not earlier. 4th, the biggest minus of them all is: no superweapons. What’s a classic C&C-like RTS with no SW? Seriously, I did not expect that. There are some support powers available, but those are pretty weak and most of the time quite situational. No real SW in the game.
Future stuff I’d like to see in the game:
Superweapons. Let me know if you need ideas, I got plenty of unique ones.
Garrisonable civilian buildings.
Non-human creatures. Where’s the dog? Cyber Dog for GDF, Vein Creepling for Dynasty, Mutagenic organism for 3rd side. Those can have triple use: early scouting, anti-infantry and stealth detection.
200 cap removable.
Playable 3rd side and 3rd side campaign. 3-single player expansion set: 1. 3rd side, 2. GDF, 3. Dynasty with continuous story, not parallel action.
Naval units. May come hand in hand with a future campaign. Yes, it may be a lot of work for small practical benefit but could be worth it overall.
In the end, it’s a quite good overall game that I really enjoyed but it needs a lot more work to really get to rival the best. So, Tempest Team, keep up the good work and ask for community help when in doubt.
Time to talk about S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2, the most expected game in 2024.
I’m gonna get directly into the main subject: S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 is currently a technological failure. At the launch of the game I spent more time installing, waiting for “shader compilation”, reinstalling due to patching and repeating this a few times, while switching between GOG and non-GOG versions, hoping for a better experience. Of course one of the 1st things I did after the final reinstall and the 1st start of the newer version of the game was to disable the “shader compilation” that by some absurd reason happens every time you start the game. This is insanity, why recompile shaders if no hardware change has been done. Whatever… must be some kind of ukroid failed logic.
The main technical problem is that the engine has been switched from X-Ray to Unreal Engine 5. You may wonder what’s the problem here. Well, the problem is not actually UE5, but what you want to do with it. UE5 can do some things very well, some other things not that well and the end-result is up to the developers. You can’t just get a feature of UE5, drop it in a game and pray. Devs have to actually do a lot of work, not just do the minimum and hope for the best. In the case of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2, the result is an initial failure that will take a while to get fixed.
I’ve played multiple small games on UE5 and they all worked fine on a relatively old system with an old mid-range video card. S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 works extremely bad, and it’s not due to the system but due to the completely unfinished and unoptimized content. It works extremely bad in many cases on top-tier systems. UE5 was not designed for an environment like S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 needs. I can do it, but it can’t do it as good as X-Ray could of. Yes, X-Ray can do more S.T.A.L.K.E.R.-specifics with old DX compared to UE5. Basically, devs forces various things in UE5 and those implementations end up as over-kill. One example is the weather system. While on an updated X-Ray those effects would of worked fine, on UE5 they can struggle many times to properly work.
Let’s take a specific examples: I’ve seen 2 types of rain in S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: a type with small drops and a type with larger drops. The small drops rain is fine, does not seem to affect much, but the large-drop rain type will cause instant performance impact. This is one of the 3 main situations when this happens. Another is where you have multiple enemies around. In this case, you can get near zero-frames for no apparent reason. I did not dig around to find out the cause, but I see no reason this should happen since AI-processing of the enemies should be CPU-driven and the game ran on a very powerful CPU, even if the overall system can be considered mid-rage. The 3rd case when performance drops so hard the game becomes unplayable is just after some time. The time is variable from 15 to 30 minutes or so, but it does happen and to fix this you just need to pause the game (ESC to menu) wait for a couple of minutes while the game de-junks itself and then it will work fine once again. As I said, UE5 was not designed for such effects. You can do them, and things like emissions look superb, but it takes a lot more work from the devs compared to what they actually did at this point.
The game was released too early and this was proved by the hundreds of critical bug fixes that were visible on the patch notes (you can find the 1st set of fixes here: https://www.stalker2.com/news/patch-1-0-1). The initial release was so bad it could rival Gothic 3’s initial release. Fortunately, in the case of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2, fixes came out fast. For version 1.00 I managed to make it look worse than Quake 2 (no exaggeration !) while testing some tweaks. Fake resolutions helped a lot obtaining that.
On the tech side, the worst of them all (and the second main technical problem) is the implementation of TAA (Temporal AA) which basically can kill nearly any game. This is the worst thing that happened in game development history. There are a lot of places where you can talk about the failures of TAA so I’m not gonna cover it here (but here’s a place to start digging: https://www.reddit.com/r/FuckTAA/).
After 1.03 I was tired of reinstalling and switching versions and I’ve kept at that to do a complete game play though, which I did. The overall content is pretty good, there are plenty of weapons to go by, plenty of special anomalies that you can get and many other goodies around.
From an inventory space perspective, everything is quite good, as you need way less inventory space compared to other games. You can definitely play through with ease with only 2 main guns + the handgun so not much space needed there. You also don’t need nearly no med kits, liquids or food in your inventory because you find these actually at any soldier you eliminate. My supply inventory usually looks like this: 1 basic med pack (for quests) and around 3 superior ones (mil or sci), 3 cans, 1 bottle of something liquid, 4-5 bandages, 4-5 anti-rads. That’s it ! Nothing more is needed ! Almost all killed soldiers will have food, bandages and most of them med packs and anti-rads. So those are not needed to be carried around. Keep minimal stack and use the ones you find on corpses. You only need ammo for your guns and some F1 grenades (optional).
This makes the discussion end up in the weapons area. The F1s above is the grenades you want to keep when finding for more demanding situations. The offensive ones just use when you have them because they are not that strong and you will find hundreds of them in the game so it’s useless to stack them. For the actual weapons, the best pistol I found is an upgraded APSB, which basically you can shoot at extreme speed and it has a high cap mag. The by far best gun in the game I found to be a modified Zubr (rat killer with urban camo) with a mag size of 50 (under-barrel type) made to use 9x18mm just like the APSB. This can be used 99% of the time in the game. No other gun is needed. Even at the endgame I used this as primary and railgun only if enough ammo.
As a general guns tactic (since I said you only need 2 guns in this game) things are extremely simple: a primary gun should be something to work against meat with high cap mag. Since the early SMGs have a low cap mag of 20, try finding some with bigger mag. Use anti-personnel ammo on them to use vs various critters that will attack you. This anti-meatbag gun does not need and scope, only a laser mount is enough. If you add a scope later on, there’s no problem, that can happen later on in the game. The second gun that you need is something armor-piercing. This should be an assault rifle with a 4x scope. You will need this one to be your main when you fight soldiers. As a bonus, you have the initial pistol which is good enough for at least half the game when you can find an upgraded APSB. So yes, I’m recommending specialized ammo, unlike some youtubers, of course if you can find the proper amounts. For this, the same tactic as in previous S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games can be used: wherever you find special non-standard ammo of any type, keep it. You will probably need it later when you get better guns and you may switch calibers. What about DMRs and sniper rifles ? Nah…. You don’t need any. A scoped AR can do extremely well and it is more efficient compared to DMR/SR because most of the time you will encounter groups of enemies rather than isolated ones at a distance. I never used an RPG or GL mounts either. There’s no actual situation demanding it. To conclude: up to at least 2/3 of the game you can do fine with a 2 gun (SMG and AR) combo. Later on, when you find a 50-mag gun and scope it, the AR becomes redundant. Switch the SMG to AP ammo (of which you should have plenty now), drop the AR in favor of the Gauss. This combo works at end-game. You basically have your AP primary with 50-cap mag sustained by plenty of ammo. Gauss can be used in more situational scenarios that include fighting some bosses.
From a defensive perspective you can stick with armor + separate helmet/gasmask combo until you find Exos. At that point you can switch to those. Now, valid for both armors and guns: when to switch to a new one is pretty simple: when the new one that you find is better or at least near on-pair with the current one that you have fully upgraded.
I will not cover artifacts now, because there are plenty of reviews of them already. Just note that there are some special ones that may help a lot. Find them if you need them. I do recommend trying to get a good scanner as soon as possible. I did not hurry with this, but I can say it’s quite painful to artifact hunt with the initial one.
I will also not talk about the blueprints. Those are pretty well hidden, I’m not sure if there are more than 1 of each type and I did not bother looking for them (as I was making a relatively quick playthrough).
From an in-game money perspective, I don’t see any problems, even if some players complained. You can exploit many situations in an evil manner and make tons of money if needed. There are easy ways to make quite a lot of credits, but you can chew them up just as fast. This part will be probably balanced again in later patches (major changes have occurred since patch 1.01) so there is no point in talking about it in detail now.
Least but most important for me in a game: the story. I’d say this could of used more work and probably a completely different approach, but overall it’s pretty good. The story evolves in an interesting manner while every side or important character wants to draw you in on their side. Choices are pretty obvious compared to the initial S.T.A.L.K.E.R., so you will know when you need to make them. The main choices will affect the ending (which comes in 4 variants depending on those choices). Some side quests are nice too, worth doing them to find out interesting things or encounter special situations.
To conclude, as I said form day 1 of this release: wait 1 year and play the game then. It’s not worth the struggle at this point. After about 1 year of proper patching and fixing you will most likely get a completely new and significantly better experience.
In the mean-while, I’m betting that if one of the good S.T.A.L.K.E.R. modders out there takes up the challenge of porting S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 to X-Ray, it will end up better than the original in nearly all aspects.
-Later Edit-
I forgot to mention: the most annoying thing in the game is to die from a 2m jump because they just didn’t bother to make damage proportional to hieght.
And since I’m editing this, here’s the extra bonus: 200 funny things of which more than half are bugs:
An this is for those who don’t know what XRay engine AI could do 15 years ago:
De ceva vreme, de cand au facut o actualizare la site-ul lor, nu mai functioneaza sistemul de acces prin e-token. La sesizarea trimisa pe e-mail nu a raspuns nimeni de mai bine de o saptamana. Pentru cine nu stie, e-token-ul BCR este o mizerie de aplicatie care de mult a fost introdusa obligatoriu ca inlocuitor al token-ului fizic. Deci din momentul ala deja fara “smartphone” nu se mai puteau accesa serviciile BCR. Acum brusc ne-am trezit ca nici e-token-ul nu mai functioneaza. Vazand ca la nimeni nu mai functioneaza am zis hai sa ne programam o vizita la un sediu. Pagina de vizita ducea catre o pagina cu: instalati-va aplicatia “Gheorghe”.Sus in colt, o optiune cu scris mic era aia care ducea la pagina de programari. Ce sa vezi, pe pagina erau trecute locatiile sediilor BCR, ale ATM-urilor, dar nimic de programat. Daca programarea unei vizite nu functioneaza, am zis hai sa sunam la ei. Pe numarul ala raspunde o “IA” care pe scurt iti spune ca daca nu vrei sa-ti foloseasca vocea pentru ce vrea muschiul BCR-ului, sa le trimiti sesizare pe site. Pai facuram asta cu o saptamana inainte. Nu i-am zis nimic “IA” pentru ca nu suntem de acord cu prelucrarea de date personale doar ca sa aiba ei o colectie mai bogata.
Intre timp am vrut sa-l testam si pe “Gheorghe”. “Gheorghe” primul lucru iti cere o “recunoastere faciala” la care bineinteles am zis pas si am selectat alte variante de acces. Singura mai era notificarea pe e-mail de activare, care ghici ce: nu functioneaza si la final iti da frumos numarul de la “IA” sa suni pentru suport. Am considerat ca “Gheorghe” consumase prea multe bauturi alcoolice si avea timp de raspuns de cateva zile in loc de cateva secunde.
Epuizand variantele, am intrat peste ei in primul sediu care l-am intalnit in cale si i-am explicat lu’ tanti care era acolo ca: accesul prin token pe site nu functioneaza, programarea pe site nu functioneaza, sistemul de notificare “Gheorghe” nu functioneaza. Tanti de acolo se apuca si testeaza logarea prin e-token si constata ca nu functioneaza. Intre timp, vine si un nene de la BCR, tuns, frezat si parfumat si se logheaza cu “Gheorghe”. Dupa care concluzioneaza ca “merge”. I-am explicat ca ori e el cam “Gheorghe” sau poate o da chiar in “Ion” si ca noi vroiam sa confirmam ca accesul cu e-token-ul nu mai functioneaza, nu cu “Gheorghe”. In final reprezentantii spun ca sa sunam la nr de suport, ca ei nu pot deschide o sesizare ci doar “clientul”. Si sa asteptam pana se plictiseste “IA”, ca apoi intra un operator pe linie.
Asa facuram. Sunat IA, asteptat sa expire repetand ca “nu a inteles problema”, dupa care au intrat cateva minute bune de muzica enervanta si in sfarsit raspunde o tanti operator. Cand incercam sa ii explicam ca 3 lucruri diferite nu functioneaza la site, ea se apuca sa intrebe ca de ce am sunat dupa alt numar de telefon decat cel din baza lor de date. Asta dupa ce a solicitat data nastere, cifre de pe card client BCR, e-mail si detalii conturi bancare pentru “identificare”. N-a vrut sub nici o forma sa continuie discutia (desi i-am explicat ca nr pe care il au ei este acum folosit in alte scopuri si nu se mai pot efectua apeluri de pe sau inspre el) si a spus sa mergem la sediu pentru actualizare date personale apoi sa sunam iar de pe numarul actualizat. I-am zis macar sa faca programare, acum, nu peste nspe zile. A facut programarea. La sediu, pentru actualizare date, normal ca tre’ sa ai buletin identitate, dupa care ti se solicita specimen semnatura, te intreaba de fiecare bucatica inscrisa la ei daca mai e de actualitate si la final semnezi ca ti-ai actualizat corect si complet datele.
Dupa actualizare nr telefon, sunam iar la “IA”, o lasam sa se plictiseasca, intra muzica stresanta un nr mai mare minute ca prima data si raspunde in final un nene. Ii explicam din nou ca accesul pe site prin e-token nu functioneaza si el ne spune ca da, e posibil sa se fi dezactivat de tot si sa ramana doar “Gheorghe”. Pai bai boilor, nu era frumos sa trimiteti o notificare si sa spuneti ca sistemul de e-token se desfiinteaza ? Operatorului ii povestim ca “Gheorghe” nu se poate activa ca nu functioneaza notificarea pe e-mail. Genereaza el un cod si il trimite pe e-mail. Se activeaza in sfarsit marele “Gheorghe”. In timp ce operatorul intreba daca s-a activat, suna numarul ala tot cu robot care te intreaba daca chiar tu l-ai activat sau a fost una din personalitatile tale multiple. In invalmaseala de butonat la “Gheorghe”, apel venit peste apel in curs se ajunge la inchiderea ambelor apeluri. Dar macar a ramas in viata “Gheorghe”.
Ce concluzionam direct de aici:
Colectarea de date la ordinul ocupantului se face din ce in ce mai des, cu mai multe constrangeri indirecte si oriunde e posibil; in zilele noastre vor neaaparat voce si video.
Sistemele tehnice ale bancilor, desi pe hartie sunt top de top de ultramodere la cate standarde ISO trec, in practica nu prea functioneaza.
Suportul tehnic este aproape imposibil de obtinut in mod eficient.
BCR-ul este clar aliniata ocupantului strategic la toate capitolele posibile.
Ce au astea 3 în comun? Răspuns: nu doar culoarea, dar aia reprezintă totuși baza. Acest articol s-a încheiat aici. Cei cu adevărat înțelepți deja au priceput esențialul.
Acum pentru restul, care cît de cît pot gîndi, să detaliem un pic niște observații, iar apoi să dăm niște explicații și să facem niște extrapolări (că nu imi place termenul de previziuni).
Observații: Boivăcimea e și acum împarțită pe categorii, ca de obicei. Avem categoria oi cu buletin, cărora de pe acum le tremură mîna în somn pentru că visează că ei vor “vota”. Oimea va “vota” și atît. Nu va ține cont de nimic, de nimeni. “Votul” e important. Oimea l-a votat și pe Trump la ocupant acasă, dar ce să vezi: “ghinion” – sistemul l-a desemnat pe Putrezit. Același “ghinion” ca la Poantă vs Mutu’. Că așa e pe lume: unii selectează ce trebuie, alții fac circ pentru boivăcime, iar boivăcimea mugetă. Că veni vorba de circ, trecem la categoria maimuțe cu buletin, o categorie oarecum peste cea de oaie cu buletin, dar nu cu mult. Maimuțimea se manifestă, țipă, face scandal la modul galeriilor Steaua-Dinamo de pe vremuri. Maimuțimea respectă și aplică mult mai bine decît oimea dorința ocupantului: de a menține sistemul “dezbina și cucerește”. Maimuțele cu buletin fac un concurs continuu de aruncat banane în capetele maimuțelor de altă opinie decît ele. O maimuță vrea să “voteze” pe X, alta pe Y și alta pe Z. (Mai puțin pe Z că la prea mult Z ne scoate ocupantul litera asta din alfabet, că din dicționar deja multe cuvinte le-au interzis.) Pe lîngă adunaturile astea de maimuțe mai avem altă categorie de maimuțe care susține că maimuțele XYZ sînt proaste și că-s mai deștepte ele, maimuțele Anti. Maimuțele “A” denigrează maimuțele XYZ numindu-le deseori chiar oi. Maimuțele “A” spun ca ele nu votează deloc pentru că nimeni nu merită asta. Maimuțele “A” ajung sa înjure maimuțele XYZ că astea din urmă “voteză” iar maimuțele XYZ le injură pe maimuțele “A” că ele nu “votează”. Și așa ajungem din nou la dorința ocupantului: de a menține sistemul “dezbina și cucerește”. Nici maimuțimea și nici atît oimea nu au priceput că se află într-un scenariu “Kobayashi Maru”. Hai, fuga pe net și vedeți ce e ăla, dar nu vă va ajuta asta cu nimic. Nu stiți ce e ăla ? Nasol, înseamnă că nu aveți cultură cinematografică. Aia știti ce e ? E ceva mai eficient. Tot ce citiți voi în 7000 de cărți în sute de mii de ore din punct de vedere al transmiterii informației este echivalentul cu a vedea doar cîteva ore de secvențe video. Bineînteles, alea care trebuie, văzute cînd trebuie și înțelese cum trebuie. E vorba de fapt doar de eficiența transmiterii informației. Voi aia care faceți “live-uri” pe platformele ocupantului cu poze cu biblioteci pe fundal s-ar putea nici să nu stiți la ce folosește o carte. 99.9% din toată istoria planetei, din filozofia de orice natură, din toate evenimentele trecute, prezente și viitoare se explică în mod corect și complet în doar 3 serii de filme și seriale. Dacă le-ați fi văzut și înțeles p-astea cu adevărat, ați fi știut și tot ce urmează și tot ce aveți de făcut. Nu vă spun care, aveți indicii în articole anterioare. Acum, pentru cei care știu ce e un scenariu “Kobayashi Maru”, ar trebui să știți și metoda de a ieși din el. Dar ăștia sînteți undeva la maxim 1 din 2000. Și sînteți dezorganizați, separați prin toate colțurile lumii și în general cu durere în cot sau în alte părți. Ocupantul v-a făcut să nu mai mișcați nimic nici voi, chiar daca sînteți măcar într-o minima cunoștiință de cauză. Confortul vostu o să înceapă să doară, după modelul turcilor care aveau o mare plăcere la primii 20cm de țeapă, dar de la 21 în sus începeau să urle (iar între 20 și 21 sperau). Așa că recomandarea este să lăsați prostiile și să va reapucați de ce trebuie ! Hai să nu uităm de extrapolări. Deținătorii mămăligii și cașcavalului au decis să dea o felie de cașcaval ucenicilor lor, ca nu cumva să ajungă altcineva la mămăligă, că e risc sa puna pauză stocului de mălai. Prima extrapolare: Deținătorii mămăligii și cașcavalului vor reține o cotă-parte din cașcaval cam de 2-1 – 2.4 ori mai mare decît felia pe care o vor da ucenicilor. Restul, ca de obicei, vor primi coji și vor curăța strachina. Hai să traduc și pentru boivăcime: vreo 50% (plus 1-2 ca la ocupant) ca să se mențină cine trebuie la controlul stocului. Ucenicii mai au de învățat, deci n-au cum sa depășească 1/4 din total. Restul: deșeuri menajere pentru cățelușii care tot timpul stau cuminți cu limba scoasă să primească resturile. Rezultatul acestei extrapolări ne duce la a doua extrapolare: 1984 la puterea a 3-a, ca tot vă lăudați unii că ras-citiți. A doua extrapolare are o triplă semnificație. Vă las pe voi să descoperiți.
Many years ago I used to design “EA Suc|<s” logos due to how this company mocked many famous series continuing them with junk games, like in the case of Red Alert series and Command & Conquer series. I used to joke at that time saying they should make that Generals 2 since there’s not much to mess up for that one.
Well, now I had to deal with their support.
Part 1 – the new EA Fail APP
In short, in order to support Red Alert 2 Yuri’s Revenge modding, I wanted to see how mods work with the EA’s Origin launcher. For that purpose I just make a quick purchase of the C&C pack that includes RA2 & YR. That went fine. Then I wanted to install EA’s Origin launcher. It looks like I already had a version installed but it did not want to work anymore. so I went online for an update. The 1st surprise: there is no more EA Origin. It was replaced with something called EA App. All-right, moving on. That thing downloaded and the 1st thing it did is uninstall Origin completely and install itself. It did work with the same credentials, so at least that part was fine. I stated the new nice-looking “App” and downloaded RA2YR. I quickly checked the file structure on the game. The executables were not the original ones I was used to. Trying to launch them directly did not work in any manner because they were all pointing to the launcher instead. I opened the EA App interface and tried to launch from there. Surprise: it’s not working. I’m getting a completely illogical “this game requires permissions” message. “OK”-ing that button caused another error: “failed to launch the game” with a sub-message of trying later. After trying various permissions for the game, the APP, the launcher and other stuff like UAC off I quickly realized that this error has nothing to do with the local PC or the permissions. To confirm this, I installed other games from the pack. They all gave the same error and all of them were not starting.
Part 2 – The WTF searches
Since the above happened, I tried searching various solutions online. No help there; just a few people saying they reverted to Origin to play their games. Digging around EA forums there were a lot of similar complains in the games of many games, some even new enough to fit into a whole different era. The conclusion was clear: EA’s new “App” was a complete failure and was unable to run valid games. In the case of RA2YR: the old CD version works fine, other confirm that via Origin in offline mode it still works fine and of course there’s the rest of the people that confirm it’s not working at all (and this is the same for many games) via the new “App”. I confirmed on a couple of topics that I have the same problem and I opened my own that was practically ignored (just got a confirm from another player having similar problems there, but no official answer). There were many things people tried and I myself tried with no luck. And the forums were full of them. And yes, using WTF in front of a search while having a problem may increase the probability of related information. The important part here is that there was no official support on the forums, except a link towards the general help page of EA, which we’ll talk about later.
Part 3 – The incompetent and inexistent support
Well, it was clearly time to get some official “support”. I did just purchased a product after all and I actually expect it to work. I dug on the help site until managing to get to a template that sends an e-mail. I sent it. Of course there was a generic answer that had nothing to do with the problem. The ticket was put on hold with a tag saying “waiting for player”. I was unable to un-pause it since the option to do so redirects to a general (and useless) “help” page. I created a new 2nd request and then tried to used the different option: chat with someone. I thought that was quite good to actually talk to someone. For my surprise, only the intro part is AI-scripted and you then actually do talk to an operator. I got in touch with one and explained that EA App is not launching any games. He started pasting me old useless forum topics or other useless things like how to turn off UAC, how to make an admin user. None of them whatsoever were new things. I was struggling to explain that I tried all that already, but the operator seemed to be in a broken circle loop. After finally exiting the loop he said he cannot help at that point and that he will communicate to his higher tier support or something and get back to me. Of course, no-one got back to me.
Part 4 – “Satisfaction is not guaranteed“
There’s a Ferengi rule of acquisition that I used a title for part 4. Goes well with the 1st of these rules saying “Once you have their money, you never give it back.”. This is about my Samurai-like struggle to get a refund. There’s an actual “refund” option well hidden somewhere on the EA site but of course it’s not working. It always says “no product fits” and it has some rules stated below. One of the rules say you can refund if it’s not been more than 14 days from the purchase if you did not launch the games since purchase. Completely illogical, since a game can be completely broken and you can’t see that until you start playing it. But this time the fit was perfect: since none of the game worked, none were launched so I was complying with that official refund scenario. So I contacted chat again and ask for a refund. They asked some security things just to confirm it’s really me and then they asked details about the reason of refund. While that, I got an unrelated call which took around a minute. After alt-tabbing back to the chat, the chat was closed saying something that I’m AFK and saying to re-contact them. I entered DNFD mode and reopened chat. There was another operator. I explained all the above and then he started to “help” me fix “my” technical problem in order not to refund. He was going through all the initial BS his colleague from support went. After half hour of explaining that I tried already each of the useless things he was linking me I restated that my request is of a refund, not of a technical support. He finally gave up on this and tried another trick. He said the payment did not arrive and I should contact my bank to check. Seriously ? That transaction went off in the same day I ordered it, with bank confirmation. I told him that and he insisted payment did not arrive and that’s why the games are not working. I explained that there’s nothing I can do on my side, since the payment confirmation arrived. Then he said he will check with colleagues if a refund is possible. I told him that according to what is stated on their own site, a refund is possible and there’s nothing else needed for that. He finally have up after 1 hour of struggle and opened a refund request. Or so he said. It remains to be seen if that gets processed or “lost” along the way.
Part 5 – The logos are back.
Due to all of the above, along with the fact that some of the EA logos are more graphically advanced, here’s a 30-second one to remind them of who they are:
Nice and shiny texture.
Below, you can find the support feedback I gave them, although I’m almost sure no-one read it, as in most cases.
Clearly explained issues instead of being directly addresses are derailed to completely other topics unrelated to the reported problem.
There is no centralized way for problem solving. Talking to multiple operators about the same issue and repeating the same steps each time is a general waste of time for both the client and the support staff.
There is no viable way to report and track general bugs that affect everyone or a large number of people.
The forums are nearly abandoned and most of the serious reported issues there are just being ignored.
Support site (healp.ea) is very hard to practically use, many link that should get the user to the proper areas are just linking back to the general page.
Options form support page are counter-intuitive and sometimes not even work. Due to the above, EA support can currently be fit into catastrophic category. You need to improve you support and interact with considering feedback.
That’s pretty much it from my side. I’ll give them a few more years to fix themselves or be gone from the marked for the better good of the gaming community.
Console upgrade guide for the new Console – Advanced Engineering – Isomagnetic Plasma Distribution Manifold
I’m writing this because there’s a new top console in-game, better than the tactical vulnerability exploiters/locators. but it will cost you a lot to upgrade your ships with it. It adds 7.5 extra weapons power that stacks with each added console. Some of it will also go into other subsystems due to Warp Core’s Weapon-to-Shields/Aux/Impulse.
Initial things to consider before upgrading:
You budget: you will need around 175 Mil (assuming 7 consoles) per upgraded ship for the actual consoles costs + 50k dil for re-engineering + around 150k dil for upgrading them to top tier. You can also play Elite TFOs to get the mats needed and build the consoles, if you feel up to it. Even so, most of the below still applies.
You cannot use them with tactical vulnerability exploiters/locators. You will need to remove the exploiters/locators to be able to pot these in the eng slots.
Those are best used when you ship has a lot of engineering console slots (as battlecruisers have 5). If you have a ship with 5 tac and 4 eng it’s still worth the upgrade.
Emptying the tac slots will have other advantages: you will be able to use some set tac consoles, bellum tac consoles, colony proto infusers. That will end up in you having up to 12 consoles that directly boost damage.
Now let’s see how can you make this upgrade as cheap and efficient as possible. Planning is good for business.
Make a list with all your characters/ships that need the upgrade.
Consider how many actual consoles of each energy damage type you need in total: number of ships/char of that energy type * number of eng+universal console slots when ship is maxed at T6x2. So let’s say you have 2 disruptor ships on different characters and a plasma ship. You’ll need around 7×2 disruptor isomags and 7 plasma isomags (you need to calculate the exact number; just sum-up eng slots and univ slots).
The 2 paths. One path assumes you have all or most energy types (4 or more) that you use on various ships/chars. The other assumes you have few energy types (up to 3).
3.A. If you have most energy types in use, the way you want to upgrade is by re-engineering the cheapest consoles you can buy/make. Just filter the exchange for isomags and even the parts or sub-components (count price x5 for sub-components as you need 5 of them to make a primary component) and buy the total amount you will need or a little more. Then start re-engineering and/or building the consoles you need. When you reach the max number that you need for an energy type, you have the option to keep more as spare or re-re-engineer that energy type towards what remains needed. A few things to note here:
some energy types are more expensive, you may want to sell the excess of that type instead of re-eng
when you have full stock of what you need of at least 2 energy type, don’t re-eng the drops of that type; sell them instead, you will make a 10% up to x2 cost recovery on them depending on the market prices at that point.
3.B. If you only have 1 to 3 energy types then you’re not in luck. Making the consoles and/or re-eng’ing them is no longer worth the dil costs. You will have to hunt for them and buy them from the exchange. if your energy type is one of the very expensive ones, you’re in really bad luck, you can end up spending ~60Mil / console which is bad. You will have to gamble on waiting. Alternately, you can still apply 3.A., but with more patience – just sell the rest of the energy types that you don’t need or stock them up for future use.
Now that the painful part is over you will be left with a lot of MK2 consoles of pink or violet quality. You will have to wait for an upgrade weekend event. This is mandatory unless you are willing to spend up to x2 the dil to upgrade them to gold. When upgrade weekend comes up, you need a lot of Phoenix tokens to convert to Phoenix upgrades or, if you have stock of Superior Tech Upgrades you may use these also. Plan this through also, you don’t want ending up with no dil in the middle of your upgrade process. Make estimates and stack on Phoenix Upgrades. Until the dil weekend comes in, consider what will you put on your tac slots. There are 3+ options here.
[Only for ships that have energy + torps as secondary] – Protomatter Matrix Infuser consoles of the energy type you need. This will boost a lot your energy type, give a small boot to torps and give you a little protection from damage.
[For energy only ships] – Bellum Directed Energy Distribution Manifolds (from reputation store) that give crit chance alongside beam or cannon boost. Note: the resulting energy damage boost is lower than that of the Matrix Infusers.
[For tanks] – you may want to use Pax Directed Energy Distribution Manifolds (rep store also) that hive hull cap instead of crit chance alongside beam or cannon boost. Note: the energy damage boost is lower than that of the Bellums.
[For various uses] – other set/clickables that can’t fit science slots. I will not get into detail here, if you really needs some special consoles you can always use them instead of the ones at 1,2,3.
I just wanted to see what actual capacity a few known brands of standard R3/AAA batteries have so I went through all brands that I had and put them up to a test. 2 of them were not exactly new, so those results clearly may be better for new ones of the same brand.
Here are the test results:
The clear winner is Verbatim followed by the White-Yellow Varta. I would of bet on Varta, but apparently this Verbatim lot is quite something and ended up significantly ahead.
Here are their actual pictures, I did not want to stretch them into the table:
I will probably do some updated when I will get new lots, new brands. The silver Duracell and Arcas were not really near peak voltage, so probably that’s why the lower cap.
I decided to write about this subject after looking at the official feedback review of Milwaukee batteries on their official websites. There are quite some unexplained low ratings there while many ratings are very good or excellent. So there must be something wrong. Well, here comes the story.
In the power tools industry, just like in the Li-Ion cell industry there’s an invasion of fakes on the market. Just like you have the blue or striped “ultrafire” 18650 cells that are marked over 4000mAh and they actually have between 100 and 400 usually and that’s just for a few charges, you also have fakes for power tool batteries. In DeWalt’s case it’s a lot worse, there are low quality tools overmarked, nicely painted and sold as originals even if they are totally low entry level tools. Don’t get me wrong, may are actually usable and good for low power precision work but will instantly fail at work that suppose to be achievable for them. Batteries are even labeled 36V and have only 4 cells (so it’s a 14.4V tool). This is as far as things went for DeWalt.
But let’s get back at Milwaukee batteries. I had hundreds of such batteries ranging from 2Ah and ending up with 12Ah with most intermediaries between (3, 4, 5, 9 and the newer 3 and 8Ah). All originals were excellent, even very old ones. I have plenty of them still that are 4-5 years old and have more than 85% of their capacity intact. The only thing I found strange so far was a lot that I had from 2019-2020 of 5Ah ones that were practically self-discharging extremely fast, as in more than half capacity each month. Nothing else wrong with them; they had the stated capacity, the original cells, everything was good except this. I did not find something to explain this yet. But other than this, I can definitely rate the Milwaukee batteries as the best power tool batteries there. I will explain the details why in another article, as I want to focus now on fakes.
Given my experience with all types of their M18 batteries (which I also repair in my spare time as a hobby), reading the user product reviews, I could only come up with the conclusion that many people get fakes instead. And fakes are not only one type, they are multiple types, some totally junk, some nearly acceptable in quality. I will rate the fakes from highest to lowest quality: fakes that have original cells, fakes that have alternate cells (of high current or not of high current) and the junk fakes that have low capacity low current cells.
Grade B fakes (with original cells) – those are the best of the fakes. You actually get original Samsung cells but of lower capacity. Here’s an example of a 3Ah one having 1300mAh Samsung cells instead of 1500mAh ones:
Fake labelSamsung 1300mAh cellsFront of caseSide of caseStipe weldingsGrade B Fake – Original cells of lower capacity
You can clearly see that the soldering is done manually. So this is the best type of fake you can get: you have high current cells, you get near the stated capacity (2.6Ah instead of 3.0) but the electronics are usually pretty bad and won’t last too long. So let’s say you have almost 2 out of 3 reference points here.
Grade C fakes (with other cells) – for this type you may have 2 lottery tickets to draw: high current alternate cells and low current alternate cells. You may have variations from low current cells with all the stated capacity to high current cells with less capacity. The circuit can also vary in quality.
In the below case, a 9Ah battery has an actual capacity of 4Ah, because it’s using 1500mAh cells, but at least those support a good discharge current (I tested them and they were able to keep a load constantly throughout the discharge without overheating so they passed the current test).
Cells are YH, not SamsungNo Milwaukee logoFake label example, compare below with originalsGrade C fakes, cells not original, lower capacity
So a battery like this one you can safely use even for high power stuff but it will still not beat an original 5Ah. You will end up spending the $ you give for an original 5Ah and get something below that. And this is a best case scenario situation. If the cells are not high current you may end up with a fire. For this specific one the actual electronics looked pretty solid, but the connectivity was poor (low quality wires, low thickness for the battery nickel stripe, poor welding. I’d rate those 1.5 /3.
Grade D fakes(with junk everything inside). I don’t have inside pictures of such type of a fake anymore (but will publish them if I will get my hands on another battery of this type); I have just some overall external pics to show you:
Fakest of fakes – frontFakest of fakes – sideGrade D fakes – everything junk
This is the worst fake battery I ever tested. It’s marked as 6Ah. It actually has 2 at most and it has low current cells. When I put this in my saw, it took about 6 seconds of usage to turn off. Absolute trash. You can only use this for extremely light torque. You get only disadvantages: fake cells (low current, very low capacity), junk internals (wires, stripes, etc) and a very cheap circuit that can fry at any moment. The rating for these would be 0.5 / 3. You can use them for testing if a tool starts up, but in most cases that’s about it.
Now that we covered enough fakes, let’s talk about the originals. I am putting below an original 9Ah battery so you can spot the differences by comparing it with the fake.
Front original logoProper side markingsProper side textureLabel – top area markings: Cell Type, Nominal Voltage, Total Power, Chemistry, Model, Date, CodeThe backside label critical info: INR cells (left corner), manufacturing date (the 191124 in this case in YYMMDD format).
A few noticeable differences: the Milwaukee logo on the LED area, the shape of the LED indicators, the overall look from a side and most importantly the back side label. There you have multiple markings that prove the authenticity of the battery: the GMBH tag, the INR type of cell, the manufacturing date. Note here in regard to the INR markings that I also found what seemed to be original batteries with ICR (I’d consider these as Grade A batteries and the INRs as A+) markings and had original Sony cells inside , which are lower current than the Samsung cells but still fall under medium current category. It’s likely those were designed for usage in tools of up to medium power and they looked authentic by all criteria. It’s still go for INRs with Samsungs though. If anyone has any solid info on the possibly original ICRs, feel free to give some feedback.
That said, I’ll put here some more original labels so you can spot how they look.
UK versionSeen recently, assumed for US Original GMBHLeft-most the UK version, right most the original GMBH version, the most highly used; middle version for US (probably).
Another thing to note is the screws type. The originals are like in the 3 pictures below, it’s a hex screw. The fakes can have any type, hex included, but also cross or others (recent fake 9Ah had cross screws).
This was the label type up to 2015Classic label type from 2015 and later
This final ones are also original, this type of label from the right has been used widely until around 2019 when the QR code was added for some models. There’s one more type of label, similar to this one, but without the manufacturing date number. That is also original, but it’s for 2015 and earlier batteries. Quick update: I ‘ve added it to the left – as you can see, it still has INR tag but it’s on the label. There is no manufacturing date on the back. The manufacturing date can be determined by a special code which is written in the contacts area (I will not detail since these types are no longer use since 2015).
Now you should have an overall idea on fakes and what not to get. And please stop putting bad reviews on official sites due to using fakes. That contributes to lowering the reputation of originals and will only cause fakes to get even more spread and selling power.
If you encounter weird batteries that you are not sure about, don’t hesitate to drop a line here along with some pics and we’ll see what we deal with.
End note: I am not affiliated in any way with Milwaukee, DeWalt or any other tool manufacturer. I just use lots of their tools ranging from simple drills to chainsaw and I repaired many batteries so far so I’m quite familiar with many of the top or even mid range brands.
Master's zone 