Halcyon 6: Starbase Commander

A new game from Massive Damage:

A rogue-like sci-fi strategy survival game with base building, tactical combat, crew management and emergent storytelling.

90% of the words in that sentence make me so happy. Feels like equal parts X-Com, Civilization, and FTL. It looks great, too. The visual aesthetic is this kind of atemporal “18-bit” style that never really existed. The whole thing is really well done. I can’t wait.

Math advice for paranoid aliens

John August crowd-sources answers to some screenwriting issues in his blog comments.

Far away on a distant planet, an intelligent but very paranoid species is constructing a series of terrestrial watchtowers to scan the heavens, making sure no space-traveling enemies sneak up on them.

You can think of these watchtowers as observatories, each one watching a 180-degree (half-sphere) swath of the sky. For this simplest version, you can ignore complications like atmospheric distortion or possible moons.

Question #1: For complete coverage, what is the minimum number of watchtowers they need to build?

Terry Pratchett on Doctor Who

Terry, who as he says himself was “there at the beginning”:

The unexpected, unadvertised solution which kisses it all better is known as a deus ex machina – literally, a god from the machine. And a god from the machine is what the Doctor now is. A decent detective story provides you with enough tantalising information to allow you to make a stab at a solution before the famous detective struts his stuff in the library. Doctor Who replaces this with speed, fast talking, and what appears to be that wonderful element “makeitupasyougalongeum”.