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      Welcome!   03/05/2016

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The Old Hack

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Posts posted by The Old Hack

  5. Posted

    5 hours ago, mlooney said:

    You say that, but one broke down during their first parade.  They blamed it on driver error, but it took 30+ minutes to get it going again.

    That was the tank itself, not the parade. I was talking about direct attacks on it, like throwing flower petals or confetti at it. It should be able to deal with that.

    Well, as long as they only hit the front glacis. If they hit it in the side or (God forbid) the rear, it might be in trouble.

  8. Posted

    13 hours ago, The Old Hack said:

    Putin's newest superweapon: zombies. He has raised the maximum enlistment age in Russia to 70. Average lifespan for Russian males is 66 years.

    Coming soon in a major production from Nyetflix: The new hit TV series "Z Nation: Attack of the Walking Dead."

    I just had this clarified. Putin isn't actually sending press gangs to retirement homes and hauling random septuagenarians off to the front line, which was my own initial impression. This is about recalling retired personnel and it is actually graded on rank. High ranking officers may be recalled if they are up to 70 years old. Middle rankers may be recalled if they are 65 years old. Low ranking officers may be recalled up till the age of 60. As for actual ground pounders -- NCOs and enlisted personnel -- they only get recalled if they are up to 55 years old.

    It's still not a good sign, mind you. Putin desperately needs personnel without actually ordering a general mobilization and he is clearly scraping the bottom of the barrel. But to be fair to him, his position can't exactly be compared to that of Revolutionary France in 1793. When they issued their levée en masse, large numbers of French patriots mustered to fight for their country. Putin is afraid that if he tries that, large numbers of Russians will take to the streets and protest against the war. Given how much his throne is tottering at the moment, that might make it topple altogether.

  11. Posted

    With Putin raising the maximum enlistment age to 70 I am seriously wondering how long he has left. As I recall it, Hitler did something similar in 1945 when he mustered teens of down to age 16 and old men up to age 64 into Volksturm militia units. How are you supposed to fight at that age? I am only 57 but I am not really in the kind of shape required to function on the front lines any more. At least teens are pretty energetic.

  13. Posted

    On 7/18/2023 at 3:10 AM, mlooney said:

    It's a completely alien concept for me to not have individual weapons.  Given the Russian's habit of taking non infantry units and using them as assault infantry, they really don't have an excuse to not arm the whole unit.  Meh.  Keep doing weird ass things Russia, I want you to lose anyway.

    I was a paramedic in the Danish Army and even we were issued weapons. Granted, we were issued M-1 Garand rifles at a point in time where nearly everybody else received automatic weapons. Even so I would still take the M-1 over being completely unarmed. And it was a pretty damn good rifle. Still is, for that matter.

  15. Posted

    On 7/15/2023 at 3:16 PM, mlooney said:

    Those are great at higher levels, but I have to deal with lower level characters that want magical instakills.   

    You could magically instakill them? Then if they complain, tell them to be more careful what they wish for. :danshiftyeyes:

  16. Posted

    This just in: Shoigu states that in retaliation to Ukraine deploying cluster munitions, Russia will do so as well! Of course this threat rings a little hollow based on the fact that there were registered Russian use of a cluster bomb strike as early as February 24 last year where a cluster bomb artillery strike hit a hospital. For that matter, Ukraine has employed cluster munitions earlier in the war as well either from old stock or imported Turkish materiel.

    In short, Shoigu's dire threat is the equivalent of him stating that in response to this unprovoked non-escalation, Russia will continue to issue its soldiers ammunition.

  17. Posted

    20 hours ago, mlooney said:

    As a long time DM I would rule that you can't do that.  Something about tanning the leather prevents it from becoming flesh again as my hand wave.  Of course, no player has tried that, they tend towards the various create/destroy/purify water spells cast on a living target as their low lever one shot kills effect.

    Easiest way is to say that the animal is happy in Elysium where it is and refuses to be resurrected. It's been a rule in the game for a long time that you can't raise or resurrect anyone or anything against their will, presumably to keep players from repeatedly raising and killing an enemy until their limit has been reached and they cannot be raised any more.

    As for me, my necromancer preferred to use Finger of Death or Wail of the Banshee as her one shot kill effects. They were quite effective, particularly at the insane DC she had her saving throw at.

  18. Posted

    1 hour ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

    This reminds me of DC's Legion of Superheros, where every member of an alien species would have an amazing ability.  At least compared to humans.  But only a few would attempt to exploit these abilities in the wider galaxy.

    To be fair, some of these abilities have rather limited application. Arm-Fall-Off Lad and Double Header spring to mind.

  19. Posted

    5 hours ago, mlooney said:

    Just for the record, character death in the current playable versions of Traveller is a very optional rule.  And even in Classic Traveller there was an optional rule that made failing a survival check just mean that you aged 2 years instead of 4 and started play at that point. 

    An old friend of mine somehow managed to cram the entirety of Classic Traveller's character generation system into an ABC-80 with 32K of RAM. It was amazing. We could generate characters very quickly and could even automate the process entirely. Near as I could tell it was entirely bug free.

    Then my friend had a brilliant idea. He wanted to make an invincible supercharacter. So he set the function that rolled 2D6 to get an automatic outcome of 12.

    (Stats are rolled with 2D6 in Classic Traveller, which was just where the fun began.)

    So this guy with perfect and more than perfect stats enlisted in the Navy. He of course made all his commission and promotion rolls. He accumulated massive amounts of skills and laughed at survival rolls. He was unstoppable. And when the time for aging rolls arrived, he obviously breezed past them as well.

    That was when his one little problem arrived. He was finishing his seventh and supposedly last term at age 46. He was looking forward to some truly epic mustering out benefits. But then it developed that he was not mustering out after all.

    You see, if you rolled a '12' on your survival check, it meant that you were automatically re-enlisted for another term of service. Even if you were 46 or older. So the Navy refused to let him go. The same event of course repeated when he turned 50. And 54. He suffered mandatory re-enlistment again and again. And of course he never aged due to his amazing rolls. He was literally unstoppable. He couldn't stop even if he wanted to.

    By the time he turned 134 years old my friend gave up and ended the program. At this time the guy had the skill set of a particularly obsessive-compulsive demigod and had presumably been promoted to command every single naval force in that entire galactic spiral arm regardless of its government of origin. His piloting skill was so high that he could make a moped perform a hyperspace jump. He was a living legend that wouldn't and couldn't die. He was tougher than Kimball Kinnison and John Carter of Mars put together. I think he had maybe one stat that wasn't an E or an F.

    This guy would clearly have been an amazing PC but he would never arrive at that point. The Navy knew a good thing when it saw it. It was never letting him go. And I am kind of having a hard time blaming them. :danshiftyeyes:

    Darth Fluffy reacted to this

  21. Posted

    50 minutes ago, mlooney said:

    Middle aged women in SUV are out to get me. Had one pull out to make a right hand turn just as I, on my ebike, entered the intersection and was about half way through it.. I had right of way and she had a stop sign. Just barely avoided smacking in to her. If had been about 10 feet further in the intersection she would have hit me. Still shaking from it.

    Good heavens. I am glad you are okay.

  25. Posted

    14 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

    The opposite of 'woke' is 'asleep' . . .

    Indeed, the entire point of the original employment of the term. I am sure the irony completely escapes the right wingers.