Thoughts for ships

[UnsungProphet]

Is anyone else counting the days until the comic number equals the current year? Comic #2018, here we come!!! (July 11th, maybe?)

[addams]

Not until Now.
Now, I'll be watching.

[Sableagle]

Dragons in Moria / Angband / xAngband / zAngband had more of a grenade-launcher effect, targetting the victim or a spot on the floor and engulfing everything nearby in flame / frost / lightning / acid / poison / shadow / light / whatever other damage types got added in later versions.

If you want that delayed damage effect, the Spitter in Left 4 Dead 2 comes close to it. She hawks up a big ball of some kind of viscous reducing agent and spits that at you. Sometimes you can just keep running or back up fast. Sometimes you're on a ladder and it falls to the ground far beneath you. Sometimes, though, you're in a small room with no way out except through that pool and can't go that way fast enough. On contact with the air, that stuff starts to react and get hot, and as it gets hot it gets less viscous, so it spreads out into a pool, which has more air contact surface and thus reacts faster and gets hotter. It boils. You do not want to be near where that blob landed during the time the area is a pool of boiling green goo. She's usually not all that dangerous on her own, but she can't half disrupt a defensive plan.

There's also the Sticky Gourd power of LotRO Lore-Masters, which is basically a napalm grenade. Pick your target, get within range and throw it. That target and any other enemies near it get set on fire, and the places where they were standing get pools of fire that'll stick to any other enemies that run into them. It's rather effective against swarms of plague rats.

For some really odd gameplay, how about a dragon with Cure Disease breath or Turn Evil breath? Swarm of skeletal warrior? Huff! Skeletal warriors flee or disintegrate.

[Deva]

Recalls Alexstrasza (The Life-Binder, from World of Warcraft) roasting Bolvar Fordragon to life. Evidently grows plants too.

[Sableagle]

Hmm. Dragon-shaped wood golem, like four trees for legs with their branches woven together into the body and a thousand vines for the neck, that breathes Area-of-Effect Plant Growth VI? That could be the centre-piece of a campaign. It's out to save the world by reversing deforestation, the government's determined to expand its economy at any cost and you're caught between them, trying to keep a temple going because it happens to be the power-source maintaining a seal over a dimensional rift and stopping Earth from being invaded by twenty million Shoggoths.

Plant Growth: 1 year's growth in a single round. Plant Growth VI would presumably be 6 years' growth. Plant Growth VII would have a funny name, like Ycnadrev's Boon. They called Lighting Bolt VII Alset's Coil, after all. Under good conditions, a honeysuckle vine can grow an inch a day, and in a few years they get quite thick and woody. AoE Plant Growth VI on a patch of ground covered in sprawling honeysuckle would be very scary indeed.

[Sableagle]

Spotted this on the way back:

Same place, same view. Flood warning in place.

[heuristically_alone]

Is this one of those find the difference photo games?

[Sableagle]

Well, it's a different time of year, too.

Spoiler:

Where this was filmed, it looked like this:

Not much difference? It's quite a steep slope, as flatlands streams go, and a visibly higher water level, so there's a lot more flow. It's not as far up as the lower sections, though, so I think the town acts as a choke point and holds back the water, flooding itself.

It's not fully "down" again yet, but it's a lot lower than it was. Those trees give a good indication of where the edge of the water generally is in the larger river, and here's the weird from another angle when the river wasn't swollen:

[Sableagle]

It recognised THAT as a panda?

[SecondTalon]

Re:Flooding. The Ohio was up in February.

How up?

Spoiler:

[poxic]

Is that up? It looks uppish.

Oh, those are comparison photos (for those equally decaffeinated: first two pics are before/after, last two are after/before).

Yes, that's uppish.

[Sableagle]

I'd agree that that river was, indeed, up.

They're building new housing estates upstream of me. I think I should be unhappy about this.

[pogrmman]

Development seems to have a big impact on floods — see Houston as an example.

IDK whether or not I should be glad that I live somewhere where basically every flood is a flash flood. Sure, it means that the little creek in my neighborhood (almost always dry, like most creeks around here) can go from dry to over 6 feet deep in like an hour (or less), but it also means that the crests don’t last for very long (said creek will be entirely dry again within ~3 days if it’s not continuing to rain). Even the bigger rivers are the same — for instance, the Blanco River rose 35+’ in the space of a few hours, but was back to normal like two days later. I maen, it’s mostly unpredictable and carries high risk, but at least stuff doesn’t have to sit and fester underwater for days/weeks like in other places. And if you actually stay away from low water crossings when they’re closed (ie. have any water in them) and keep out of rivers/creeks for a couple days after it rains, you’re not at much risk of being hurt.

[HES]

They're building new housing estates upstream of me. I think I should be unhappy about this.

Nah. Planning regs these days force them to have pretty decent attenuation. May even improve things.

[Sableagle]

Spoilers for Star Wars.

Spoiler:

You know Ewoks? "Yub dub chubb" and dancing like children in fursuits, right?

You know how, at the end of Return of the Jedi, they're having a big celebration because the evil Empire has been defeated, and there's music and feasting and dancing and a big bonfire and much good cheer and Luke and Leia have that talk about their mother and so on, and it's all happy and cheerful?

Remember that one Ewok drumming on Stormtrooper helmets? You reckon those Stormtroopers were sent off bare-headed to a de-brainwashing camp, or given soldiers' funerals and laid out in a neat grid pattern somewhere?

Leia's first encounter with an Ewok went pretty well, sure, but remember how the Ewoks greeted the rest of the group.

What do you think they were all eating at that celebratory feast?