In my second play-through of Ace Combat 7, I flew the Gripen E for Mission 10. The Gripen E is a multi-role fighter, so it excels in both air-to-air and air-to-ground missions. Mission 10 in particular has a good mix of both. The first part of the mission is comprised of taking out camouflaged SAM sites. While the tail end of the mission has you going up against a very agile prototype drone. In my opinion, the fight against the drone is harder than taking out the SAM sites. So, as much as I would like to have used the Gripen E's Land Attack Cruise Missiles, I opted to go with Short-Range Aerial Suppression Air-to-Air Missiles.
This first video shows footage of the Gripen E taking out SAM sites. You can see where having access to the long range Land Attack Cruise Missiles could have benefited me. At one point, while my plane was approaching two other SAM sites, I get hit head-on while trying to dodge at the last minute. Had I been able to use the Land Attack Cruise Missiles, I wouldn't even be that close to the SAM sites.
This is part 2 of the game play clips from Mission 09 with the Su-30M2 Flanker-F2. I don't know what it is about planes, but I just love looking at replays of them flying around. This is similar to how I spent time watching replays of cars racing in Gran Turismo years ago.
In hindsight, I should have included this video in the previous post. But I wasn't sure if YouTube was going to block my videos like Vimeo did, so I didn't upload multiple videos in succession.
The Su-30M2 Flanker-F2 is one of my favorite planes in Ace Combat 7. It is beautiful and flies really well. Since it is a multi-role fighter, you can use it for air-to-air or air-to-ground missions. In this video, I'm flying it on Mission 09 of the single player campaign. It has the Erusea livery/skin on.
Got tired of waiting for Vimeo to look into why they disabled my account. First, I created a PixelFed account. I could upload photos just fine, but for some reason it would error out when uploading videos. That was unfortunate. It's almost like Vimeo and PixelFed were pushing me to upload to YouTube instead. So, I gave YouTube a try.
When I started this online journal, one of my goals was to use it in place of social media. So, the idea was to post photos or videos here, instead of on Facebook or Instagram. Video game clips in particular was something I shared on Instagram. I no longer have a public Instagram account. And I'm running out of space on OneDrive because of my growing backlog of video game clips. So, I'm going to start a new series on here: Game Clips. These are going to contain video game clips from the various games I play/played.
To start off, I'm sharing a game clip from The Division. Before the release of the second game, this was one of my “go to” games. It is an online open-world tactical shooter that you can play solo. The story is engaging. The cover system in this game is really good, which makes combat enjoyable. It is a good game.
In my last play-through, I made a huge mistake of not keeping my army up to date. I went with defending cities with one Legion unit. Some cities had Pikeman units, and others had ancient Warrior units guarding them. This happened because I was taking a pacifist approach to the game. I was trying to win the game through religious victory. To win with a religious victory, you have to convert all other civilizations to your religion. You don't have to capture or invade cities belonging to other civilizations. So, my army was only for defense. I never started any wars against other civilizations. After clearing out the barbarians on my home continent, I let my guard down. I didn't notice that Japan, my next-door neighbor, was amassing Samurai units beyond my borders. Their target was my capital city of Rome.
It's been awhile, but tried playing The Division 2 again. I initially could not play because I was getting a “Bravo-09” error. I'm not sure what caused that error, though my guess is that it was caused by switching to a new Wifi router. I tried restoring my Xbox and fully shutting it down and turning it back on; didn't fix it. The only thing that seemed to fix it was uninstalling and re-installing the game. After re-installing it, I opened the game and it downloaded a patch/update. And then I was finally able to login and play the game.
On to the game itself, the Striker Drone skill really helps when you're playing Division 2 solo. It gives the bad guys something else to shoot at. I especially like using it when I'm going one on one against an elite enemy. In this situation it will draw fire away from me, allowing me to get better shots in, all while also dealing considerable damage to the enemy.
I pair the Striker Drone with the Reinforcer Chem Launcher skill, which helps you stay alive when playing solo. It is basically used to repair your armor during battles. And since it is a skill, it simply recharges over time. So, it's not like you will run out of potions or anything like that, which is why I think it is a very good skill when playing solo. I also found out that you can use it to stop yourself from burning.
In my previous PES2019 Game Log entry, I talked about contract renewals. In this one, I'll share some tips for managing your Master League lineup and keeping your salary budget in check.
Prioritize Contract Renewals on Transfer Windows
What I've started doing during Transfer Windows is before even looking to make a new signing, I try and get contract renewals for my players whose contract's are expiring within a year or two. Some players who are already old, or have already peaked, or have a lot of love for the team will be looking to extend their contracts for longer than 2 years. This is almost always a good deal as it will save you a lot of money in the long run. I was able to secure 4-5 year contract renewals from role players using this approach. This frees me up from not having to worry about them in the future, which means I can then focus on keeping or getting star players. Most star players in my experience will only extend their contracts for up to 2 years using this approach. So for those players, you will just have to wait until they ask for contract renewals themselves when their contracts are about to expire.
Some notes I made while playing Civilization 6 on the Xbox:
Builders only have 3 uses or charges. What this means is that after using their “Build Improvement” ability for the third time, the unit will be consumed and will disappear. You'll have to build a new one if you want to build more improvements. This is different to the Builders in Civilization 5, which stay in play for the duration of the game and don't have a limit on how many improvements they can build.
Archers are pretty useful with their ranged attacks. Useful in the sense that if they attack an enemy unit 2 tiles away, the enemy units won't be able to deal damage back to the Archers. However, out on the open field, they are a little vulnerable against melee units, so it is best to have them escorted by your own melee units.
I have found that having them garrison in a city makes them good defenders as they don't have to venture out of the city to attack enemy units; they can simply fire away from within safety of the city walls.
Keep the envoys and don't send them to other city-states until you really need to. – This one is actually a tip from Coney, who has played the game a lot on the PC.
Focus on sending envoys to city-states that are in close proximity to your cities. This is so that if you gain enough influence on them, they will not go against you when wars breakout.
You don't need to build Fishing Boats to build improvements on water tiles, instead you can just use the Builders. – Wasted a lot of turns on this, waiting for the game to allow me to build fishing boats >_<
Astrology is the early tech that gives you Holy Sites or unlocks buildings than can generate faith.
Be wary of constructing buildings as some buildings can only be built if you satisfy certain conditions. For instance, some buildings can only be built on a tile that is adjacent to a river.
F-15C Eagle out patrolling on a beautiful day.
It's been awhile, but tried playing The Division 2 again. I initially could not play because I was getting a “Bravo-09” error. I'm not sure what caused that error, though my guess is that it was caused by switching to a new Wifi router. I tried restoring my Xbox and fully shutting it down and turning it back on; didn't fix it. The only thing that seemed to fix it was uninstalling and re-installing the game. After re-installing it, I opened the game and it downloaded a patch/update. And then I was finally able to login and play the game.