Profound Nonsense

The Lone Wanderer of the Waste, the player character of Fallout 3, has a birthday of July 13, 2258. This evidently ties into several other Biblical references in the game, referencing the scripture, Micah 7:13: "The earth will become desolate because of its inhabitants, as the result of their deeds."

Well played, Bethesda. Well played....

Is it just me, or does the idea of eating the flesh of a bipedeal humanoid, even a crustacean, seem a bit wrong? The mirelurks of Fallout 3 are bipedeal giant crabs, and their colony leaders look like the Creature from the Black Lagoon. And yet, the mirelurk flesh has some of the most potent healing of any food product in the game.

I keep expecting a "Gotcha!" involving the fact that my character is eating a biped with opposable thumbs.

This is not Warcraft. Warcraft (the RTS games, not WoW) is all about attrition. Resources are finite; you can run out of gold and lumber (or ore and vespene gas in Starcraft). In Dawn of War, it's about controlling the board. The more strategic points you control, the more production you have. The more production you have, the faster you can upgrade, build, and/or reinforce units.

I'm still having trouble with the fast seizing of strategic points. Trying to juggle units claiming territory, upgrading the base, dispatching builders to reinforce strategic points, and building and upgrading units to defend the base and take additional strategic points is tricky. I'm astonished at how fast the enemy moves to take points when I'm playing standard opponents. It makes me honestly wonder if I can take the enemy base early in the game by just blizting his base while he's deploying his units to take points. Probably not, but it might be worth a try.

I've at least figured out the Necrons. Lots and lots of gun emplacements, with nice cover fire. Get your artie/indirect fire weapons out as fast as possible (Whirlwinds, Basilisk, grenade launchers); they make enemy infantry break. Watch your clustering; direct fire weapons don't affect your other units, but indirect do. (It is my personal opinion that the Basilisk Mobile Howitzer crews have serious issues with the infantry units of the Imperial Guard. They think nothing of pitching artie shells into a scrum between Guardsmen units and enemy units, leading to both units getting knocked around the battlefield and losing health and morale. Fortunately, Commissars have a solution for that.*)

This tactic works well, most of the time. There have been engagements in the Dark Crusade single-player where the enemy has thrown heavy units at me almost immediately. Which makes me think the AI might be cheating. Or I'm not mobilizing fast enough. Further investigation is warranted.

* Imperial Guard Commissars can be attached to infantry units as commanders, increasing morale and adding firepower. Should the unit a Commissar is attached to break, the Commissar can be ordered to restore morale by shooting one of the soldiers. "For the charge of cowardice, the sentence is death! *BLAM*" and the number of soldiers in the unit drops by one as the morale resets. Wacky, but fun.

(Hrm. Need a DoW icon.)