i haven't bought anything but food in last 4 months, the only thing I bought before that was a table subsidized partially by work firm. i have this estimate/sense/quota whether if i've over spent recently, and if i splurge on something that quota gets filled that i spent too much and need to delay or let go of future non-essential stuff, but recently just paying inflated prices on grocery has been triggering that sense and therefore not really even considering spending on anything else. Really feel the difference when $30 gives you only one bag and not too long ago it was 4 bags worth of items. hell i'm eating more carrots and eggs now, just stings less to eat this then say fish which costs $9 for small piece, that you need two of per person to have sizable portion for one meal only.
Yes, it's easy to read this as an "Oh no, our economy!" article, but it's not. It's an "Oh no, our sector!" article for people in shipping and consumer goods.
If you look at charts of consumer spending, the pandemic caused an explosion in spending on goods, while spending on services "dropped off a cliff". Now stuff is going back down to pre-pandemic levels. What are services doing? Climbing back to pre-pandemic levels: https://www.statista.com/chart/23574/consumer-spending-on-go...
Obviously, we "should" be about two years of growth higher than pre-pandemic levels, and I'm not saying the economy is 100% fine and dandy, but this article needs to be understood as being about a sector of the economy, not the economy as a whole.
Natural Selection 2 is still active. 2 non-symetric teams of 7-10 players each have a commander who plays RTS. The rest are marines building resource towers, upgrade buildings, scanners, ammo depots that commander places. Commander may direct people to speccific tasks, but usually people just know to for groups of 2/3 and be effective. Commander then places building plans, and can heal/drop ammo/scan (and more) for marines on the field. Aliens are a little more individualists, and geberally only 1/2 players help make building happen faster.
The map design is amazing, game runs and looks great. Highly reccomend
Arma 3 is one possible implementation of this.
BUT, it requires to download and install mods, find (a lot) of people to play with.
The way it's made requires a lot of dedication -> gathering everyone, organisation to communicate can be tricky particularly if you want realistic kind of comms: teamspeak is still required (I don't think there's a realistic mod for Arma 3 compatible with Discord).
Nevertheless, Arma 3 has everything you need:
Big maps (open world)
An actual map (I am talking about the paper/GPS thing) -> with actual elevation information on it, etc.
Complex strategies and tactics possibilities
Communications
Vehicles: helicopters, tanks, cars, trucks, planes, boats, etc. etc.
A very WIDE set of weapons of all kinds: turrets, firearms, launchers, mortars, etc. etc.
All this adds up to the need of coordination, planning, preparing strategies, primary objectives, secondary objectives, backup plans, backup plans for your backup plans, etc.
There are two games that come to mind that are/were like this:
1) Total War series — it's not FPS per se but there is the idea of managing the macro situation (resources, where armies are, developing cities, etc.) and then when you actually attack another army or lay seige, you have more of a tactical view where you direct the action.
2) The original Rainbow Six (and maybe some of its immediate sequels). You would plan out exactly what you want every one of your special ops guys to do (e.g., when I give the signal throw a flashbang into this room) and then you get to play as one of them. Not sure if anyone has replicated this yet!
I feel like such game would be hard to balance, because everyone would want to be the boss. And even then, you'd need some very good ideas to provide compelling gameplay for both the commander and the commanded.
Actually it's kind of the opposite. No one wants to be the boss! So you either get a reluctant commander, a person who knows what they are doing and really want to command, or a person who doesn't and has to be brought up to speed through in-game voip while playing.
Honestly, NS and NS2 the commander was a fun position. You play to upgrade your units, grab resource nodes, and expand influence, while trying to direct non-compliant troops. (Really throws in a wrench to your RTS when you can't get your soldiers to do something you need). Another aspect is in the smaller team dynamic of NS, one or two good troopers can have an outsized effect on enabling the commanders gameplay.
Empire mod gets around this by having larger teams (15+ vs 15+) with vehicles, upgrades, weapon customization, tech trees, so it really plays like a war where you need to counter what the enemy brings to the field in terms of tech.
Hell Let Loose is an excellent game! A great balance of strategy and action, even as a grunt if you work with your squad there's a lot of strategy and tactics.
this is most stable weather not nicest ... "We’ll ignore any other weather characteristics like humidity, rain, wind, diurnal temperature difference, etc."
I am a Senior SRE at a FAANG and part of my job is mentoring junior members on the team. In my experience being remote and having tools has made mentoring easier. Between slack and zoom they get to talk to me and I get to send them relevant info that they can look back on for reference.
Also in situations where I may need to show something to a couple people, I have the option to record it. This allows for others to watch who couldn't attend and it can be reference for new members.
When in the office, someone stopping by or having me come to their desk was awkward and there was usually no paper trail to reference.
If I were to go back to the office I would continue mentoring this way as the tools help facilitate the sessions better than sitting at their desk talking to them.
> When in the office, someone stopping by or having me come to their desk was awkward and there was usually no paper trail to reference.
Just in general what I noticed about remote is that my engineering colleagues are much more easily reachable. I remember years ago at a place where I had to chase a colleague for months to mentor me about a certain topic - despite going to lunch together almost every other day. Ironically in the remote setting most of the people are even in for a synchronous call/quick screen share. What I also like is having to take much less notes.
That is my experience as well. I will usually drop what I am working on to help mentor or assist someone having problems right away. It is quick to connect and the problem is occurring right then. It basically cuts the transaction time in half compared to the in person version.
