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SIGSEGV posted:I want to, simply because I find the idea of free will to be quite inapplicable anyways. People make the decisions they believe to be the best at any point, including satisfying their spite, hate, love, desire to spend more time thinking on it and so on and so associate a value to those things. Therefore any decision they make was "the best decision" at the moment it was made. There's no free will if the only freedom is to make the best decision as it appears. This is false, because I consistently make decisions that I am aware beforehand to be the worst choice I could make, but then I do it anyways.
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May 19, 2017 00:18
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Tatumje posted:Determinism trumps free will. Wrong, read Alfred Mele nerd. Mazed posted:It continues to be apparent that the machines have the mentality of children while the androids have the mentality of adolescents. And we all know how Drakengard and Nier feel about children 
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May 19, 2017 00:22
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DanielCross posted:This is false, because I consistently make decisions that I am aware beforehand to be the worst choice I could make, but then I do it anyways. The worst you can make over what time period? People are imperfect optimizers, but there's also a question of how your value decays over time. "I'll gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today", and all that. If the decay is very large then you can get people doing things that will go badly for them in 5 minutes or a day or a year but which give them benefits in the shorter term.
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May 19, 2017 00:23
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Discussion reminded me of this: nature.com- Brain makes decisions before you even know it Kinda feel like 2B's inner monologue points at genuine emotion, but wonder if the individual machines are doing a Chinese Room kinda thing...
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May 19, 2017 00:35
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silentbrains posted:Discussion reminded me of this: nature.com- Brain makes decisions before you even know it The Libet experiments are some over-hyped crypto-dualist nonsense. Read Alfred Mele, nerd.
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May 19, 2017 00:36
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Begemot posted:Woah woah woah there buddy, you're already working on all sorts of unprovable suppositions. Talkin' about thoughts coming from brains as if sensation was reliable proof of anything. I will not ever not think, when I hear that kind of talk, of the character from a Star Trek book - some kind of glass spider - whose response to said philosophizing was to bite the philosopher in the leg.
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May 19, 2017 00:59
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Episode XXIX: Repairs.jpg) YoRHa back at it again with the sidequests. We’re going to go back to the main plot in the next couple updates. Cool it. This is one of like two portions of the game that may as well have a big flashing “go gently caress off and do some sidequests to get some level-ups ya dingus” sign flashing.  Music: Rays of Light (Quiet) .jpg) Today’s quest is one that’s actually kind of easy to miss if you’re not vigilant running around examining everything like an overly curious jackass. So about that destroyed Engels Goliath unit that’s taken residency in the City Ruins. There’s no quest marker for this initially. But if 2B happens to hop on top of the some destroyed roadway in front of Engles... .jpg)  Hmm? This machine is still alive. So destroy it. Maybe we should hold off. Its main drive has been trashed, so there’s no way it can attack us. And we might be able to learn something interesting if we study it. You’re the nerd in this partnership here, 9S. If this gets us killed, this is entirely on you. So let’s examine this trashed Engels... .jpg) Why? So we can learn more about the machines! Don’t you think it’s at least worth a shot? If you say so. Hmm... I’m going to need a pristine screw in order to finish the repairs. We might be able to find one in the remains of other enemies. Pod, search for the locations of relevant enemies.  Target location data obtained. Marking on map. .jpg) So begins the sidequest: Machine Examination 1. Never a good sign when a quest ends in a numeral... Oh well. What’s the worst that can happen? We fight another Engels? Pfft. We’ve trashed like three of them at this point in just gameplay segments. They’re no problem. .jpg) Pod marks the location of a .jpg) The more data we have the better, right?Music: Memories of Dust .jpg) If you say so, 9S. This is your dumbass experiment. Anyway, now hanging out in the Desert buffer zone is a Goliath Biped. We technically hadn’t seen the stock version of these guys yet, have we? They’re 100% exactly the same as their Façade Cosplay cousins. .jpg) So we’ll just skip past the formalities and trash this thing immediately. Any enemies spawned for a quest yield a guaranteed material drop necessary for the quest. That said, it’s entirely possible to have a drop fall into some awkward, impossible to reach place. In which case... umm... hopefully you’ve got a save nearby and can give that another shot... It’s worth noting that these Goliath Biped boys are worth a TON of experience for this point in the game for not a whole lot of effort honestly. 2B blazes up two and a half levels during this quest’s course. .jpg) We can use this screw to repair that big machine.Music: Rays of Light (Quiet) .jpg) I really like the visual of 9S just jamming this one really well cleaned, shiny screw somewhere into this five story tall mechanical monstrosity and the whole thing being good to go... .jpg) Especially since it took him the better part of an hour to jam the screw it just the right place... .jpg)  I a......cal......gles 110...... I was manu......huma...... Request......ation of......stat...... This thing can talk? It seems to be replaying some kind of data. Machines don’t have a conscious mind, you know. ...... I managed to pull some data out of its memory. It seems to be info on the factory where it was constructed. I’ll save it in a readable format. .jpg) And that concludes the first part of this quest. Somehow G has manifested itself from the ether. I’m not complaining. .jpg) ...More importantly, we have some new lore to check in on. Completing this quest unlocks the Intel > Engel’s Memories. Let’s take a look. .jpg) Nothing too interesting here. But I dig the full title of this unit is “Engels Fortress Destroyer Transformable Combination Infantry”. Powerful title. .jpg) No, it seems there’s more. But I need additional parts to access the rest. Let’s see... Four pristine screws and one large gear should be enough to bridge the gap in its memory circuits. Fair enough. Target location data obtained. Marking on map.So we jump immediately from Machine Examination 1 to Machine Examination 2... .jpg) Just how it was manufactured. Pretty boring, actually. There’s still a lot about machines that we don’t understand. Gather as much data as you can, no matter how irrelevant it may seem..jpg) Well, our work is cut out for us here. There are FOUR new locations on the map with machine lifeform piñatas containing more Pristine Screws. Music: Rays of Light (Medium) .jpg) Like the previous materials, this once more involves destroying a Goliath Biped. Same level as last time. Same exact enemy. So let’s just skip ahead a bit, eh? The first one is in the stream just outside the Resistance Camp. .jpg) The second one was loitering outside the pylon tower on the northeastern edge of the city. He almost killed a moose during that battle. What a dick! I’m glad he’s dead. .jpg) The third one took up residence just south of Jackass’s Desert Camp. You know she would not have appreciated this idiot lumbering onto her turf. It’s probably for the best we were the ones to take it out... .jpg) .jpg) And finally, certainly most annoyingly, was a Goliath Biped chilling in the sinkhole with those obnoxious rear end worm boys swarming around being a nuisance. I love this game. Those are some of the most poorly designed enemies in anything I’ve played this year... Anyway! .jpg) Destroying all four of those Goliath Bipeds results in four Pristine Screws we can use to repair that trashed Engels. For science... Let’s head back and see what results from this thought experiment... Music: Rays of Light (Quiet) .jpg) I like to imagine there is 53 minutes of 2B sighing deeply as 9S desperately combs every inch of Engels looking for places to insert these screws... .jpg)  AWW BEANS! .jpg)  I was manufactured in February of the human calendar year 11,934 A.D. My first deployment was in August of that same year. Requesting confirmation of current status. This thing’s getting chattier. Requesting confirmation of current status. Um... well, you were defeated by us androids. That’s why you can’t move. At this point, you should probably just hand over any classified information in your possession. Understood..jpg) And with that Engels barfs out a mess of G and a not too shabby amount of EXP. That was... surprisingly easy. .jpg) More importantly, there’s more lore to be had. Let’s take a look...  If nothing, we’ve discovered the machines still retain a Platinum Games Combo and Points system even if our androids have cast that bullshit aside. That seems important... You think they go only up to S Rank or SSS Rank? .jpg) My mission has already been accomplished. My commander is absent. I have no orders to withhold classified information. But as a combat weapon. I do not possess a great deal of data. You should not expect much. We’ll keep that in mind. .jpg) And thus... kinda... completes that quest. Not really. We’ve gotten all the mission rewards we can out of interacting with this surprisingly friendly Engels unit. But the quest itself remains active. As, well... If we try to depart... .jpg) That’s not quite what’s happening here. Please visit me again. Why? Because I have nothing to do. Are you trying to say you’re bored? .jpg) Yeah... So Engels is a .jpg) Like using all the cash we looted murdering all of those Goliath Bipeds to get the final Chip Capacity Upgrade! We don’t have anything spectacular new to slot in here that we haven’t already seen. But this is the biggest boon in the game overall. So it’s good we already have that maxed out. Anyway, back to Engels 110-B... .jpg) I have nothing to do. Tell me a story. What? Er, there isn’t much we can tell you. Most of our data is classified. A story of the past would be fine. Tell me about how this city used to be. Well, I suppose we can try. This city was once home to a great number of humans. Numbers beyond counting? Something like that. Don’t you remember driving them out of here? Humans were already gone at the time of my manufacture. All I know is ruin. And androids. Regardless, don’t expect us to forgive you for the sins of your people. Machine lifeforms do not comprehend the concept of “sin.” Let’s go, 2B. Sounds good. .jpg) And that concludes our moral relativism with another robot species. We’ll have further melancholy chats with Engels 110-B in the future. But for now, back to YoRHa business...    Video: Episode 29 Highlight Reel   Goliath Biped Concept Art – Strong arm boy. The Dark Id fucked around with this message at 21:28 on May 19, 2017 |
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May 19, 2017 01:21
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A lot of these arguments are basically: That said, there is still some actual reading in actual philosophy around a lot of this stuff. Moral philosophers have long entertained the notion of synderesis, or the universal will to good. It holds that people do what they think is right, but also notably holds that this is more or less only true by definition, because it makes no claims of its own about what good is (that's meta-ethics' problem (that said, the concept was popularised by Christian philosophers so it's safe to assume they had other ideas about how to argue what good is)). When you get down to it a belief in synderesis is really just a roundabout acknowledgement of a particular tenet of virtue ethics, namely, that what one does defines what one thinks is good, and what one thinks is good is more or less as meaningful as moral judgements get. Namely, if you murder a bunch of people, I can claim not that you are a bad person but that you think murder is okay. Synderisis has kind of an obvious utility to people who want to argue that all final judgement is reserved for God and we're all little lost humans or whatever, but it's an important aspect to consider when we try to decide what moral statements are actually talking about. Notably, this is roughly the same as the observation that a machine just follows its programming, and does stuff. So do we, it turns out. The notion of the possible meaninglessness of any given notion in the context of us possibly being brains in jars in simulations or whatever is basically the interest of logical positivism. If you instinctively think philosophy is inclined to a lot of people talking a lot of bullshit you're probably going to like logical positivism. The logical positivists sought to nail down, basically, what things are worth talking about and what aren't. Their conclusion (eventually) (paraphrasing) was that it's only those things whose truth or falsehood would change anything empirically observable. A typical example; it is broadly meaningless to discuss the existence of God, because God's non-existence is not provable (enormous honking caveat: this is not the same as saying religion is meaningless, because the decision to be religious very infrequently has anything to do with being rationally satisfied that God exists). This doesn't really have a lot to do with NieR but it's something to bear in mind if you're going to argue about any given line of thought just being academic wankery. To use a recent example from a few posts back, the Libet experiments into free will and brain signals, and the "censor of volitions" hypothesis of free will are meaningful (whether or not it is true) because either its truth or its falsehood will have distinct and observable consequences as well as academic knock-on effects concerning what actions we can or cannot hold ourselves morally responsible for. I like to think that a lot of this would have occurred to the Engels machine in the update that went up while I was writing all of this poo poo.
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May 19, 2017 01:32
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Machines are better off not knowing the concept of "sin". It is a stupid concept. also it's worth bringing Karl Popper in if we're going to talk about the extent to which we can know or be sure of anything we observe. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_rationalism he applies this to science, but one can easily apply it to everything. I accept the commonly accepted explanations for many things only because there's nothing compelling to falsify those explanations. I don't know any of those things. I accept them in absence of anything better. also... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombie If the machines and androids do not have actual sentience, but act as if they do, how would we know? It would make more sense to afford that they do until proven they do not, rather than the reverse. If it moves like a duck, quacks like a duck, then it is prudent to assume it is probably a duck until presented with evidence suggesting otherwise.
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May 19, 2017 01:40
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I did not even know this sidequest existed 
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May 19, 2017 01:59
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The Dark Id posted:
Ruh roh. I don't like any of the options for what he's said here...
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May 19, 2017 02:01
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MysticalMachineGun posted:Ruh roh. I don't like any of the options for what he's said here... [ah, I was hasty in nuking this post. whoops. -fedule] Somebody fucked around with this message at 02:18 on May 19, 2017 |
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May 19, 2017 02:07
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^Delete this.
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May 19, 2017 02:08
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What the hell do you people think "Don't post about anything not covered yet" means?
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May 19, 2017 02:10
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You know, Engels saying that he does not understand the concept of sin makes Adam and Eve's names seem even more suspect. Adam and Eve don't fit the naming scheme of the other machines of being after famous philosophers.
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May 19, 2017 02:11
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Waffleman_ posted:What the hell do you people think "Don't post about anything not covered yet" means? It was covered in the post. DarkId did part 2 of the quest in that update. Edit: looks like he missed a line, it should show up before "My first deployment was in August of that same year" Tarezax fucked around with this message at 02:18 on May 19, 2017 |
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May 19, 2017 02:16
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I like Engels 
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May 19, 2017 02:18
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Tarezax posted:It was covered in the post. DarkId did part 2 of the quest in that update. Yeah... I don't know what you all are going on about...
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May 19, 2017 02:18
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Ah shucks, I guess I just read it all as one phase because it was in a single update.
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May 19, 2017 02:19
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Your threads drive people nuts.
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May 19, 2017 02:19
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I apologize, it was my own fault for not paying close enough attention to the update and misreading the post as a "LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT SOMETHING THAT HAPPENS LATER"
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May 19, 2017 02:22
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Engels is a good guy. I only found out about this sidequest way later in the game after reading about it online, and I'm glad I did because it's one of my favorites. It's insane how easy it is to miss, they really should have stuck a quest marker on that rock or had an NPC mention him or something.
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May 19, 2017 02:22
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The Dark Id posted:Yeah... I don't know what you all are going on about... I think what threw everybody was... The Dark Id posted:
...that I think the line in question is missing from about this point.
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May 19, 2017 02:24
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GunnerJ posted:[ah, I was hasty in nuking this post. whoops. -fedule] lol
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May 19, 2017 02:25
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Fedule posted:I think what threw everybody was... It was in the video which is how I knew. I will exercise greater vigilance in anticipating what the minds of others may conceive of as being a spoiler henceforth!!
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May 19, 2017 02:26
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Fedule posted:I think what threw everybody was... Welp poo poo. Yep, I missed a line and a series of misunderstandings happened. THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU WRITE AN UPDATE AFTER 18 HOURS OF TRAVEL. (I am transcribing all of this manually.)  I was manufactured in February of the human calendar year 11,934 A.D.
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May 19, 2017 02:29
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Tell engels about the bunnies
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May 19, 2017 02:31
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Spatula City posted:
Philosophical zombies are kind of dumb, because their basic concept pretty much disproves themselves. What if something was different but everything was the same? http://lesswrong.com/lw/pn/zombies_the_movie/
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May 19, 2017 02:42
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Someone has posted Less Wrong unironically. It's true what they told me about only reading the updates of TDI threads
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May 19, 2017 02:43
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MysticalMachineGun posted:Ruh roh. I don't like any of the options for what he's said here... Well, that turned out to be mostly benign. Oh well!
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May 19, 2017 02:45
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GunnerJ posted:It was in the video which is how I knew. I will exercise greater vigilance in anticipating what the minds of others may conceive of as being a spoiler henceforth!!
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May 19, 2017 02:49
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Rangpur posted:But can any of us truly know what constitutes a spoiler in the minds of others? What does Sartre have to say about this? he doesn't care
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May 19, 2017 02:51
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The Dark Id posted:Like using all the cash we looted murdering all of those Goliath Bipeds to get the final Chip Capacity Upgrade! We don’t have anything spectacular new to slot in here that we haven’t already scene. But this is the biggest boon in the game overall. So it’s good we already have that maxed out. I'm helping!  This is one of those "how was I supposed to know that was there?" quests, there isn't any quest marker and it only pops is you stand on that little raised platform in front of it.
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May 19, 2017 02:52
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There's a marker of some sort there, but yeah, unless you stand in front of him you wont trigger the prompt.
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May 19, 2017 02:53
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I'm sort of surprised that Engels' serial number is only four characters long, given that the war he was built to fight in has lasted longer than literally all of history at this point. Maybe it's an abbreviation. Or a robo-nickname.
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May 19, 2017 02:54
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A kill count of 11345? And a max combo of 234? Either Engles is exaggerating his accomplishments, or previous outbreaks of the war had the Council of Humanity trying to win through mass production of cheap units.
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May 19, 2017 03:00
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You can lock on to Engels and exploring around his head should bring up the indicator that there's something there.
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May 19, 2017 03:02
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StandardVC10 posted:I'm sort of surprised that Engels' serial number is only four characters long, given that the war he was built to fight in has lasted longer than literally all of history at this point. Maybe it's an abbreviation. Or a robo-nickname. Androids cost equivalent to a modern fighter jet. Flight units are ten times that or something. So I don't even want to think about the price of a giant robot. Probably not exactly something you mass produce by the thousand. Come to think of it, I wonder how much money went down the drain during the opening mission. 7 Flight Units, 5 Androids, 2 Android bodies (with minds retrieved), 5 Giant Robots? There goes the national budget.
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May 19, 2017 03:04
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Engels Fortress Destroyer Transformable Combination Infantry might be a relatively recent model of Fortress Destroyer Transformable Combination Infantry units.
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May 19, 2017 03:05
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StandardVC10 posted:I'm sort of surprised that Engels' serial number is only four characters long, given that the war he was built to fight in has lasted longer than literally all of history at this point. Maybe it's an abbreviation. Or a robo-nickname. maybe they hit the integer limit and looped around back to zero
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May 19, 2017 03:06
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