Starting, Ending, and Powering Up

Daily Ramble 147: Starting, Ending, and Powering Up

I spent some time today watching the Incredible launch of the Falcon Heavy rocket and it was great to see Americans getting back into the space program even though it’s based on a private company. As an avid fan of the Letter 44 comic book, I don’t see how America could even be considered a “super power” when it’s locked on this planet and dependent on foreign powers to take their astronauts into space.

I also took a bit of time to play some Neverwinter Online and I’m definitely enjoying the game more this time than in previous attempts. I think it might be due to being a Paladin.

Sadly though, I think the writing may be on the wall for Spain in my Civilization game. Arabia has declared war and while I recently discovered another continent, I really don’t see how I’m gonna hold up against a determined warlike power right on my doorstep. Maybe I can bring Egypt into the fight on my side?

SpaceX Starting Up

Today was a day for history as a private company launched an enormous rocket into orbit and landed most of it back safely on Earth. SpaceX’ Falcon Heavy test launch was a resounding success even though the central core section didn’t land properly. The other two side rockets had no issue making it back to Florida and landing and the Tesla car payload had no issue launching into space so the whole thing was deemed a success.

I watched the whole thing live on YouTube since I really miss the days when we sent to Space Shuttle into orbit on a regular basis. It’s been a sad period of history to be living in when we moved from a near space-faring country to one that relies on other nations to carry our astronauts into space.

The government still can’t send people into space but a private company is getting real close to taking over that role. It’ll be nice when we don’t have to rely on nations we don’t always get along with to take care of our adventures in space.

Beginning of the End?

Hmmm…I’m not sure I’m gonna be in this Civilization game much longer. Arabia has declared a surprise war on me and after spending so much time dealing with Barbarians, I turned to religion and away from my military. Arabia is pretty well armed though.

As you can see, they’ve landed 3 Mamluks and a Swordsman next to Barcelona and all I have there for defense is a Spearman. This could get ugly in the near term. Not only is this a surprise war, it’s the first war I’ve had to deal with so I’m not too sure how to conduct it. Sure, I’m gonna be pretty defensive but I gotta figure out how to turn things around to my advantage if I can.

Powering Up

One thing that I’ve kinda figured out in Neverwinter Online is that the powers are set up so you pretty much have to take them all to a certain degree. Basically, there are limitations on how you can allocate points and in particular, you have to reach 20 points assigned before you can move up to rank 3 on any of the skills. This then, makes you spread out your points to skills you’re not gonna be using much.

Right now, the powers I’m using most are the one’s I focused on getting to rank 2 first. These include Buring Light, Radiant Strike, and Sacred Weapon. These three abilities give me a decent amount of damage to deal out to the bad guys.

I usually start with Radiant Strike since it lunges me towards the bad guys. It also does AOE damage so I hit everything around my target.

After that, I throw out a Sacred Weapon so that my next 3 attacks do bonus damage.

Finally I use Burning Light to stun everyone around me so I don’t take as much damage.

The three work pretty well and I throw in some Valorous Strikes to do more damage until Radiant Strike is available again.