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Soylent Pudding posted:VN beserkers were one of the more fun enemies in Sword of the Stars Everytime someone mentions SotS I stare wistfully into distance for a couple seconds while I imagine a SotS2 that was playable
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# ? Apr 19, 2018 18:14 |
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# ? May 25, 2024 02:27 |
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Well there's a 2.0.4 opt-in beta now, that may fix the bugs in 2.0.3:quote:Hi all, quote:2.0.4 is 2.0.3 plus the four fixes mentioned in the opening post.
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# ? Apr 19, 2018 18:36 |
Splicer posted:With Pournelle! He and Niven do good work together. If you liked Mote read Footfall. This has to be a troll. I say that as someone who kinda likes Footfall.
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# ? Apr 19, 2018 18:59 |
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Arrath posted:This has to be a troll. Better? PittTheElder posted:Well there's a 2.0.4 opt-in beta now, that may fix the bugs in 2.0.3: Splicer fucked around with this message at 19:39 on Apr 19, 2018 |
# ? Apr 19, 2018 19:27 |
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footfall is at least readable, but wasn't lucifer's hammer which features post apocalyptic suburban dads fighting against an alliance of religious fundamentalists and drug dealers or was that a different pournelle book
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# ? Apr 19, 2018 19:52 |
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Has anyone put in some time with the beta patch yet? Should I bother or wait until a proper patch comes along? I used to really like this game and I'm eager to like it again but it's been too buggy for it to be fun for a while now
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# ? Apr 19, 2018 19:54 |
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I'm starting to have serious doubts about turn of the millennium Splicer's taste in sci fi.
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# ? Apr 19, 2018 20:01 |
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Splicer posted:I'm starting to have serious doubts about turn of the millennium Splicer's taste in sci fi. Looking at most of the things I liked two decades ago is a trip down cringe lane that's for sure.
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# ? Apr 19, 2018 20:07 |
Splicer posted:If you liked the exploration of an alien mindset and the consequences thereof in Mote read Footfall which carries a similar theme, marred by the weird self-fellatio of scifi writers. Sure, the caveat helps. As I said I liked it, but thats a rather niche opinion it seems. Really tho an Orion drive spaceship with battleship cannon turrets and space shuttles filled with boarding marines is who can't love that. StashAugustine posted:footfall is at least readable, but wasn't lucifer's hammer which features post apocalyptic suburban dads fighting against an alliance of religious fundamentalists and drug dealers or was that a different pournelle book Wait weren't the drug dealers allied with the dads against the fundies?
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# ? Apr 19, 2018 20:09 |
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SickZip posted:Everytime someone mentions SotS I stare wistfully into distance for a couple seconds while I imagine a SotS2 that was playable I had the day off that SoTS2 came out. Was pumped to play with all the new things in the game and well, SoTS2 happened. At least I had the day off I guess. Having VN probes or Gort show up in this would be great. Be nice to get a problem that you can't can't solve, and just have to deal with for awhile. Or be really sneaky about. Like me using cloaked Liir fleets with Bioweapons on enemy planets. For some reason this didn't trigger the Peacekeeper to intervene (not sure if it was intended.) So I'd show up, infect some planets and then disappear. If they massed ships to fight back, there was a good chance that they'd lose them.
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# ? Apr 19, 2018 20:32 |
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CitizenKain posted:I had the day off that SoTS2 came out. Was pumped to play with all the new things in the game and well, SoTS2 happened. This is like finding out someone cut your drugs with cleaning solution or something. I feel bad for everyone that had SotS2 happen to them. The first game was pretty fun though, its maybe the best upgrade to the original Master of Orion that I've played (and I played way too much Master of Orion. Actually I still go play it sometimes). Abstract out colony stuff into sliders, focus on building ships and tactical play. Most games iterate off of MoO2, but I really enjoyed having a bunch of aspects abstracted out instead of being fiddly bits. Strangely, I don't mind Stellaris tiles so much but MoO2 planetary buildings were always somewhat annoying (maybe something with number of buildings and such?).
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# ? Apr 19, 2018 21:11 |
Boing posted:I don't think the spiritualism/materialism divide is a 'faith' vs 'scientific method' thing. Spiritualists are dualists and materialists are... well, materialists, in that spiritualists believe there is something transcendental and ineffable about consciousness, while materialists think that consciousness and personhood are mechanical properties of matter. This is why spiritualists distrust AI (no matter how you make a machine, it can never be truly conscious and alive) and why materialists never stumble upon psionics (because no matter how ineffable a process is, you can always make a machine that approximates it). It's actually both of them that are wrong, since in Stellaris we can clearly see that advanced-enough robots really are sentient and conscious, but also there is this whole plane of existence that they have no access to because biological consciousness is transcendental in some way. I think you're overstating your case. Biologically ascended empires don't have shroud access either, after all. The game currently doesn't let you get psychic robots, but nowhere is it confirmed that's impossible in principle. Besides, materialist FEs have access to at least some shroud tech since they can block your probes, so knowledge of the Shroud doesn't seem to be a problem for materialists. On the other hand, if biological consciousness is transcendental, would it really be so inaccurate to say that robots aren't truly conscious? I wouldn't say either materialism or sipiritualism is conclusively wrong in Stellaris (which is good, no ethic should be straight up wrong about verifiable facts). And to reiterate, materialists absolutely can go psychic, I've done it before. You just need to roll a psionics expert.
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# ? Apr 19, 2018 21:14 |
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ZypherIM posted:This is like finding out someone cut your drugs with cleaning solution or something. I feel bad for everyone that had SotS2 happen to them. Yeah moo had the vastly superior planet management over moo2 with its civ style buildings you ended up building all of them on every planet and there was just a couple correct optimal orders to build them in. Auto-build wouldn't build in the optimal order but with a system like moo2 the AI doesn't have to be perfect because it's only inefficient in the short term because in the end you just want everything on all planets. With something like tiles though, a bad AI fucks you over in all terms by making your planet bad.
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# ? Apr 19, 2018 21:14 |
Arrath posted:Wait weren't the drug dealers allied with the dads against the fundies? Lucifer's Hammer is a comet hitting Earth leading to postapocalyptica including Army units turning to cannibalism and recruiting folks from the inner city. (To give Pournelle grudging credit, the cannibalism was the Army's idea.) Footfall is basically similar to Lucifer's Hammer but the comet was steered by some baby elephants from space who were swinging by in their ships.
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# ? Apr 19, 2018 21:43 |
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ZypherIM posted:This is like finding out someone cut your drugs with cleaning solution or something. I feel bad for everyone that had SotS2 happen to them.
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# ? Apr 19, 2018 21:47 |
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Arrath posted:Sure, the caveat helps. As I said I liked it, but thats a rather niche opinion it seems. Idk I was going off the war nerd episode about fascist sci-fi
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# ? Apr 19, 2018 22:26 |
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I've just had The Contingency spawn. Other than replacing all the armor on my ships with shields, what other tips for fleet-composition might help me not die here?
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# ? Apr 20, 2018 00:20 |
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Are Disrupters good? They sound good.
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# ? Apr 20, 2018 00:25 |
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PittTheElder posted:Are Disrupters good? They sound good. They are poop. I'm pretty sure you'd need someone with all shields to make them match the 2xPlasma/Autocannon corvette combo. I guess if you're going missiles, they might be a decent supplement, but even then, I'm pretty sure they're poop. I've tried them several times, and every time my conclusion is that they're just worse at basically everything.
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# ? Apr 20, 2018 00:57 |
PittTheElder posted:Are Disrupters good? They sound good. Someone suggested they may be situationaly useful loaded into all M slots on a cruiser, with the right computers and aux slots they can hit near 100% against corvettes, right through their defenses to start pinging their hulls and possibly causing them to disengage, thinning the herd. Now, whether that's desirable or if you even come across AI using enough corvettes for that to be useful is another factor. Or if your cruisers even shoot at the drat things. I've setup ships like that but haven't run enough observed battles to see if it really matters. Anyway, generally, since they are balanced to do super low damage as they pierce defense, they're pretty much crap.
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# ? Apr 20, 2018 01:14 |
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PittTheElder posted:Are Disrupters good? They sound good. They have lower base damage in exchange for the complete penetration. And they have silly high accuracy, even in the medium slot size. If you're doing an all-penetration loadout they're not bad, but once you have to go through armor (missiles for example) they're strictly worse than something with a bonus to shields. There is a large weapon from one of the space monsters that bypasses both, and there's an XL slot that does as well. You can make a cruiser with all medium disruptors that has 90% accuracy against 90% evasion corvettes, so with some setup you could tailor an anti-corvette fleet based on disruptors. The nice thing about something like this is you could then retrofit it into being good against large things if needed.
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# ? Apr 20, 2018 01:24 |
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Hungry posted:I've just had The Contingency spawn. Other than replacing all the armor on my ships with shields, what other tips for fleet-composition might help me not die here? I've seen it mentioned repeatedly that Contingency fleets have high shields and armor but low hp. So go for weapons like arc emitters that bypass both and hit hull directly.
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# ? Apr 20, 2018 01:27 |
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quote:There is a large weapon from one of the space monsters that bypasses both Cloud Lightning. 'Early' Arc Emitter(Though as noted it's L rather than X of actual Arc Emitters) with perfect accuracy and an actual tracking score-40%. Nasty stuff, even disregarding the sheer cool factor of pouring out multiple lightning bolts from your big ships. All the Monster Weapons are vaguely worth your time these days, depending on what shows up and when. Mining Lasers are early Plasma weapons with the mods reversed(Less + vs Armour, but more to Hull), Energy Siphon is a very good shield destroyer, Amoeba have problems(As all Strike Craft do right now) but are effectively Tier 2.5 bombers. Bloodly fucked around with this message at 02:34 on Apr 20, 2018 |
# ? Apr 20, 2018 02:29 |
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Strikecraft need to get upgrades based on the level of technology you have for your actual ships. It's lovely when you get to lategame and your carrier-type ships move faster than the goddamn strikecraft and leave them behind while flying towards a target, because strikecraft have the brilliant mechanic of 'leave host ship as soon as aggroed, fan outwards, head towards the target after making a pretty lightshow.' Or, at least, have a shorter range of 'firing' so they don't all fly out of their carrier when it arrives in the system and then slowly fly across the system while the whole time the enemies are just shooting their regular guns at your ships. Black Pants fucked around with this message at 02:59 on Apr 20, 2018 |
# ? Apr 20, 2018 02:56 |
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Splicer posted:Mecron once said something along the lines of "SotS1 worked so well because it wasn't a 4x, it was a miniatures skirmish game disguised as a 4x." 99% of everything that man ever thought or did was idiocy, but I think he was on the money on that one. I kind of disagree. The skirmish was definitely the centerpiece but the strategic level felt like a complement rather then a afterthought. It abstracted alot of the pointless busywork of the standard 4X into a small set of more meaningful choices. In retrospect, SotS really was a happy accident.
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# ? Apr 20, 2018 03:07 |
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I kinda like the idea of missiles and strike craft getting e.g., speed and evasion bonuses with thruster tech or accuracy/tracking bonuses with sensor tech to reflect the fact that they're basically miniature spacecraft.
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# ? Apr 20, 2018 03:10 |
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Yeah, they don't need like their own entry in the ship designer or anything, they can just get their stats updated automatically like the civilian ships do.
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# ? Apr 20, 2018 03:50 |
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Strike craft start at Speed 300, and advance with the tiers to speed 400.(Amoeba are Speed 300). Strike craft do advance their evasion as they go up tiers, advancing from 50%(Scout Wing, the only 'Fighter-type' craft left(And thus will chase down missiles and other fighters. All the others are 'bomber-type' and hit ships only). to 80% at tier 3. Strike craft inherit tracking and accuracy mods on their host. This has been found only recently by direct testing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XwLWJsJ9xfk . This is not a concern for requlars precisely, has they already have 100% accuracy and 50-70 tracking baseline, but is a concern for the Amoeba, whose base accuracy is 70% to make up for their damage. Strike craft weapons are range 8. Amoeba are 10. Scouts have range 8, but prefer to be in Range 5 to shoot. All have cooldown of 2, except the amoeba, which is 5(Again, I imagine, to compensate for their damage). The biggest problem is their turning circles combined with their lack of range. They turn at the same speed as a Corvette(Who usually engage at range 30). That's a problem. A big one. They're not on target a lot of the time. Not that Flak or Point Defence can really shoot them down, either. Strike Craft and missiles alike are simply too fast for either to deal with before they hit/shoot, and strike craft(Even Amoeba, who have health 50 and no armour/shield, unlike the higher tier fighters) have so much health it takes about 10 shots+ to kill a single strike craft of a group of 8. That's 10 full passes from a bomber or fighter, given their speed means the flak/point defence only gets one shot coming in, and none coming out, given the 0.5 firing rate of those. Even a basic Nuclear Missile needs to be shot down in 1.6 days before it hits, given the range on flak/point defence is 30, and the damage isn't there. It gets worse for anti-missile as you go up the missile tree. Stellaris/common/component_templates/00_strike_craft.txt and 00_weapons_critters_amoeba.txt has most of these. I've been kinda screwing around with strike craft data a bit lately. Also missiles. Trying to understand. Bloodly fucked around with this message at 04:58 on Apr 20, 2018 |
# ? Apr 20, 2018 04:24 |
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Just got some way overpowered defensive platforms after upgrading them. Happened in a game that used the newest patch followed by the beta
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# ? Apr 20, 2018 05:19 |
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Cynic Jester posted:They are poop. I'm pretty sure you'd need someone with all shields to make them match the 2xPlasma/Autocannon corvette combo. I guess if you're going missiles, they might be a decent supplement, but even then, I'm pretty sure they're poop. I've tried them several times, and every time my conclusion is that they're just worse at basically everything. Weird, I had the opposite experience. I'm always mixing in interceptors, combat destroyers and some cruisers with 100% disruptors and it works really well so far. As long as I keep away from systems with shield-nullifying effects, that is. A swarm of disruptor ships is ideal to just delete enemy corvettes and destroyers outright, while your missile- and torp ships can then deal with the heavier ships.
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# ? Apr 20, 2018 05:24 |
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That's reasonable. The thing is, those ships might only do 1/2 to 1/3 the damage, but they also need to chew through only half to 1/3 or...more? Less?(Depending on whether Crystal Infused/Forged plating is in play, and it may not. Also if ship type health upgrades are present) of the HP, despite the positive mods against armour and shields of the others. The more HP the thing has, the less Disruptor can be worth. The more Armour and Shield are in play as defences, the better Disruptor can do. The AI tends to use balanced defences by default. It's actually kinda hard not to if you use Shields at all, as shields are energy hogs, so you fill the other slots with armour or crystal plating as you have available. Full armour or full health is less of a problem that way in terms of energy, but that's inviting the enemy to go full Plasma and/or Autocannons and melt you, and even the AI could do that much. If it were actually working. Like, my generic Interceptor design is one Mass Driver(initial range, anti-shield), one Autocannon(For close work, Anti-shield and hull) and one Plasma(Anti Armour/Hull). Nothing's actively penalised vs hull like with armour or shields. There are only buffs vs hull. Thus. similar setups continue up the size slots of weapons, with only minor variations given Autocannons are Small Only, and the extreme Large weapons like the Proton/Neutron Blasters and the X-sizes which are their own thing in themselves. A mix of laser/plasma and kinetics serves you well against most things, always. In a way it's....kinda dull. The only real opponents you might have to truly use all of one or another is space monsters, because they usually have very extreme defences in one direction or another. Bloodly fucked around with this message at 06:53 on Apr 20, 2018 |
# ? Apr 20, 2018 06:35 |
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So does this temporary patch fix everything major that people were saying utterly broke 2.03
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# ? Apr 20, 2018 08:10 |
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It's supposed to but they aren't taking chances this time, it seems.
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# ? Apr 20, 2018 08:37 |
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Black Pants posted:It's supposed to but they aren't taking chances this time, it seems. Is there any particular reason they don't generally release patches as opt-in betas two days before full release? I don't think anyone would complain.
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# ? Apr 20, 2018 08:43 |
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Platonicsolid posted:At what point does Stellaris become Tradewars 2002? When they let you withdraw negative credits from the bank so you can instantly buy the best ship to fly around in.
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# ? Apr 20, 2018 08:45 |
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Nemo2342 posted:When they let you withdraw negative credits from the bank so you can instantly buy the best ship to fly around in. I would say when they add trade. I'm kind of hoping the next major patch is a civilian economy rework. I don't need simulated ships running trade routes, but I definitely want a simulation of the "no two countries with a McDonald's have gone to war" rule
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# ? Apr 20, 2018 08:51 |
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SickZip posted:I kind of disagree. The skirmish was definitely the centerpiece but the strategic level felt like a complement rather then a afterthought. It abstracted alot of the pointless busywork of the standard 4X into a small set of more meaningful choices. Given SotS2 though I'm not going to argue against this being something Mecron entirely lucked into, or something someone else on the team forced through back before Mecron went full Lucas. Stellaris is similar in that it's (in theory) a grand strategy game with 4x elements. I'm really enjoying the bits that require attention proportional to their grand strategy implications, like early game tile management and exploration and the recent elimination of empire-specific edicts. The bits I don't like are the bits that require attention disproportionate to their grand strategy implications, like late game tile management, or parts of the grand strategy bits that are still too barebones, like diplomacy. The current design scope of the War system is, I think, perfect for the games design goals. The really influential decisions are made on a galaxy level and the actual combat is mostly there to give those decisions teeth, or force you to reevaluate them if it all goes wrong. The move away from One Decisive War-Winning Battle really supports this.
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# ? Apr 20, 2018 09:19 |
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Captain Invictus posted:So does this temporary patch fix everything major that people were saying utterly broke 2.03 i'm using the beta patch on a game i started in 2.03 and it all seemed to be working fine, wars start and end as they should
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# ? Apr 20, 2018 15:00 |
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So sometimes Stellaris just decides to use 100% of my graphics card, like opening the ship designer causes it to happen but sometimes it just happens for seemingly no reason. What's the deal with that and why haven't they fixed it yet?
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# ? Apr 20, 2018 15:56 |
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# ? May 25, 2024 02:27 |
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Bloodly posted:Most are certain that by default it's completely random. Martout posted:I used to really like this game and I'm eager to like it again but it's been too buggy for it to be fun for a while now
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# ? Apr 20, 2018 17:38 |