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1. Stargate Atlantis messeging
2. The new U.S.S. Enterprise
3. Pimp my ride
4. FBI demands SkyNet, uh, server in the sky…

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BlizzCast – Episode one of new Blizzard Entertainment podcast series, BlizzCast is here.

    To kick off our BlizzCast series, we’ve decided to begin where every great Blizzard idea begins, at the concept level. To speak with us we have Samwise Didier, our Art Director and concept artist to many of the popular Blizzard icons you’ve grown to love such as the Pandaren, Fel Orcs, Dark Templars, Zerglings, and many more.  We’ll be chatting with Samwise on how he came up with the characters he did, as well as what it is like to work on both the Warcraft and StarCraft franchises.
Be sure to view the transcript to see all of the artwork.

Download first episode in mp3 format or read the transcript.

1. Science fictionized movie posters photoshoping contest
2. Cloverfield review
3. Amphibious car
4. Batman – online comic
5. How to write a novel (part 1)

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1. Quick thoughts about Sarah Connor Chronicles
2. Heroes action figures
3. Torchwood personality test

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Fantasy Flight Games – In StarCraft: The Board Game, players take control of high-tech armies and battle for dominance in an ever-changing galaxy. Take command of your favorite race and set out to conquer!

Players
Two to six players each take the role of an important leader from the StarCraft universe – Jim Raynor, Arcturus Mengsk, Judicator Aldaris, Executor Tassadar, Sarah Kerrigan, or the Overmind – and take command of powerful armies. With three distinct races, each with two unique factions, each game of StarCraft: The Board Game will be different.

The Galaxy
At the beginning of the game, players assemble a galaxy of interconnected planets, each with regions containing resources such as valuable minerals, vespene gas, and conquest points. Planets are connected by both normal and z-axis navigation routes, representing the three-dimensional nature of space. By strategic placement of valuable worlds and navigation routes, players can create strongholds for themselves or connect their worlds to planets ripe for conquest.
Once the galaxy has been assembled, players place their initial bases and units and the conflict can begin!

Resources
There are three types of resources found on the planets in the StarCraft galaxy: minerals, vespene gas, and conquest points. Minerals and gas are harvested by workers and used to build units, research new technology, build new bases, and buy base upgrades. Conquest points are one way in which players win the game – having a unit or a base in the same region as a conquest point resource will add conquest points to a player’s total each turn, ultimately bringing her closer to winning.

In situations of dire need (or if a player suspects that she will lose control of a region), extra workers can be dispatched to aggressively harvest a region, depleting it. If a region is sufficiently depleted, it will become devoid of resources and cannot be used again. Only regions containing minerals and vespene gas can be depleted – conquest points are never harvested by workers.

Orders
Orders are the primary means by which players take action in StarCraft: The Board Game. Players have three distinct order types to choose from: Mobilize, which is used to move units and attack enemies, Build, which is used to construct bases and units, and Research, which is used to develop new technologies and draw event cards. Each turn each player places four orders on planets in the galaxy – either planets on which they already have units, or adjacent planets – thereby creating order stacks on each planet. Players take turns resolving orders on a last-in, first-out basis. Players who have no available orders must pass and draw an event card instead. This unique order-stacking mechanic allows clever players to, for example, delay enemy assaults or launch sneak attacks before a garrison can be reinforced, based on when each order is placed and where.
Each faction also has three enhanced orders, one of each type, that are only available once the prerequisite building upgrade has been purchased. These orders, which are printed in gold, are more powerful versions of the standard order. Each one can only be used once per turn, and only if a player has built the appropriate base upgrade.
Units
Each race has a variety of unique units, including battle-hardened Terran Marines, ravenous Zerglings, and deadly Protoss Zealots, each represented by highly detailed plastic figures in their faction color. Units are the means by which players expand and defend their territory. They can be used to start the colonization of a neutral planet and also to attack and seize enemy territory.
Units are either flying or ground units, and they have combat abilities against either land or ground units (or both!). A clever player will pay close attention to what sorts of units her opponents are building, being sure to build some units that are effective against fliers if her opponent builds a strong air force, for example.

Combat
In StarCraft: The Board Game, conflict is inevitable. Resources are limited and only one faction can win. Eventually, armies will invade and a battle will start.

Once a player uses a Mobilize order to invade, he moves units from elsewhere on the planet or from adjacent planets into the target region. These units are the attacking army. The units already present in the region become the defending army.

Battles are divided into skirmishes. The attacker selects pairs of front-line units – one attacker, one defender – to create each skirmish. If one side has more units than the other, then the surplus become supporting units and are added to other skirmishes to assist. Then, each player chooses a combat card from his hand for each skirmish, placing it (and potentially a bonus “reinforcement” card) facedown next to his units in each skirmish. If a player has no cards in his hand, or has no cards he wishes to play, then he can draw one from the top of his deck and place it without looking at it. When the players are done, the combat cards are revealed and the skirmishes are resolved.
Each combat card has both major and minor values for attack and health, as well as one or more unit icons on its face. If the card played matches the front-line unit of that skirmish, then the major values are used. Otherwise, the minor values are used. For example, one card may show Goliath and Wraith icons on its face, and have an attack strength of six and a health of seven for its major values. If used in a skirmish in which a Goliath or Wraith is the front-line unit, it will use these combat values. If played on a skirmish with a Marine as its front-line unit, for example, it would instead use the minor values – three and four, in this case. Cards that are keyed to different units can have wildly divergent combat strengths. The average strength of a Siege Tank or a Battlecruiser, for example, is much higher than that of a Zergling.

Combat cards may also have special abilities, which either modify their combat values or grant keywords such as “cloaking” or “splash damage” to key units. Often these abilities prove more valuable than the combat values on the cards!

Once both combat cards have been revealed and their total attack and defense values established, things start blowing up! In each skirmish, units are destroyed when the enemy attack value is equal to or higher than their own defense value. It is possible, although unlikely, for every skirmish in a battle to end with mutual annihilation!

After all skirmishes in a battle have been resolved, if there are any defending units remaining the attacker must retreat. (A wise attacker will attack with at least as many units as are present to defend a location!) If there is no suitable location to retreat to the surviving attackers are destroyed.

The Event Deck
Over the course of the game, players will draw event cards from the event deck (either in lieu of resolving an order, or as part of a Research order). This deck is carefully constructed at the start of the game so that as the game draws closer to its finale, the event cards become more and more exciting! Event cards may produce new units, give factions unique and powerful abilities, or hasten the end of the game.

Victory
While StarCraft: The Board Game does have standard victory conditions (more on these later), the core of the game is the unique victory conditions possessed by each faction. Whether establishing a certain number of bases or controlling a set number of regions, each faction has its own goal, its own way to win, and its own strategies for doing so! Even two factions of the same race play very differently due to these varied victory conditions, and knowing your own goal as well as those of your opponents is vital to success.

Don’t lose heart, however; even if your unique victory condition seems impossible, there are other ways to win. If a player reaches fifteen conquest points at the end of a turn, he is the winner! If the game ends due to the event deck game clock expiring (due to two “The End Draws Near” events being played), whoever has the most conquest points wins.

1. Mamoru Oshii turns to movies
2. Will Cloverfield live up to the hype?
3. Podcast of “The Hacker crackdown” has concluded
4. 17 sensational free and downloadable graphic novels

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List of all todays posts at our mother site Scifirama.com :

1. Elijah wood confirms dual Hobbit movie details
2. Shiny metal garbage city
3. US stem cell policy inspired by anti-authoritarian scifi
4. Free audiobook – “Gray” by Jon Armstrong

You can read all the non-gaming posts at www.scifirama.com

Fallout 3 official site – Emil Pagliarulo, lead designer of Fallout 3 is profiling a faction, well known to anyone how ever played one of Fallout games – Brotherhood of steel.

How, exactly, does one worship technology?

Is it as simple as praying to a golden, robotic calf? Perhaps “god” is recognized as some kind of sentient artificial intelligence who demands subservience in exchange for feats and favors?

Or maybe, just maybe, the human race has already answered this question: technology is worshipped, simply and plainly, through obsession and attainment. We are a people dominated by technology, from our electrically-powered cities right down to our scientifically engineered anti-depressant medications. And every Sunday mass we miss to stay home and watch football on our HDTVs is further proof that now, more than ever, technology is the deity we hold most dear.

Now imagine all of that compulsion, all of that addiction we as an entire race share, and encapsulate it into one group of people. Imagine the obsession and fervor, the unending need for technological superiority, and the ultimate futility of such a goal.

Imagine, if you will, the Brotherhood of Steel.

In Fallout 3, the Brotherhood of Steel is one of the most important and influential factions you’ll encounter. And while it’s true they are a military organization, the Brotherhood’s values and command structure are actually more representative of a medieval knightly order. Like the Templars of old, in their own eyes, the members of the Brotherhood of Steel are pure, they are just – they are truly human in a world filled with both physical and moral corruption.

But it is the worship of technology that truly defines and drives them. For a Brotherhood of Steel Paladin, Power Armor is his plate mail, a powered Super Sledge his warhammer. A non-combatant Scribe is more scientist than scholar, utilizing computers as a monk in the Middle Ages would a quill and ink.

It’s not enough for the Brotherhood of Steel’s members to use whatever high-tech gadgetry they’ve acquired, though. The organization’s entire existence is predicated on the acquisition of technology. Whatever they’ve got is never enough. Their best equipment? It could be better. Even if this endless search for high-tech toys means keeping the good stuff out of the hands of others who could really benefit from it, well, that’s okay with the Brotherhood of Steel.

So it really didn’t come as a surprise to anyone within the Brotherhood of Steel when the order’s ruling council, based in Southern California, decided to send a contingent of soldiers all the way to the East Coast, with two important objectives:

1. To scour the ruins of Washington D.C., once the nation’s capital, and recover any and all advanced technology. After all, D.C. was the home of the Pentagon, the very headquarters of the United States Department of Defense. Who knows what secrets – or equipment – they left behind?
2. To investigate the reports of Super Mutant activity in the area. Could these creatures be somehow related to those that fled eastward after the Master’s destruction (as depicted at the end of Fallout 1). Or were these Super Mutants something else entirely?

And so a small but hardened contingent of Brotherhood of Steel soldiers, led by an idealistic Paladin named Owyn Lyons (and accompanied by his friend and technological advisor Scribe Rothchild, as well as his seven year-old daughter Sarah) set out from the Lost Hills Bunker in California, and began the long trek east to what was once Washington D.C.

When the group finally arrived in the Capital Wasteland, it didn’t take long before they made some remarkable discoveries.

The Pentagon, as they had feared, was largely destroyed. But its sub-levels remained intact, and contained enough pre-war technology and weaponry to keep Lyons’ forces going indefinitely (once the defense robots were destroyed). But there was something else, as well… a technological marvel that, if restored, could help the Brotherhood rebuild a strength and reputation that had been declining steadily for years.

The discovery was significant enough to earn Paladin Lyons a battlefield promotion to Elder, and a new directive from his superiors – to establish a new, permanent Brotherhood base in the Capital Wasteland, and continue the search for any other advanced technology hidden in the capital’s ruins.

Lyons accepted his new post gladly, and founded the Citadel, built into and beneath the ruins of the Pentagon. It was a fortress the Brotherhood of Steel desperately needed, and one they rushed to fortify, thanks to their other great discovery – Super Mutants.

It didn’t take long for Lyons and the Brotherhood of Steel to find the Super Mutants, mostly because they didn’t have to: the Super Mutants found them. In the Capital Wasteland – particularly in the urban ruins of downtown D.C. – the Super Mutants simply couldn’t be avoided.

That’s why, for the people of the Capital Wasteland, the Brotherhood of Steel was the answer to their prayers. Scattered, hungry, and largely disorganized, they had lived with the constant threat of death or capture by the Super Mutants for as long as they could remember. Elder Lyons and his brave Knights and Paladins changed all that. For the first time, the Super Mutant tide was stemmed. The D.C. ruins were still Super Mutant controlled and uninhabitable, that was true, but the number of incursions against outlying settlements dropped significantly. Life was still harsh and unfair, but at least now the people of the Capital Wasteland had a fighting chance – and they had Elder Lyons and the Brotherhood to thank for that.

Fighting the Super Mutants, simply keeping them at bay, may have been enough for the area’s innocents, but for the Brotherhood, too many questions remained: how were these local Super Mutants created? Why were they capturing the people of the Capital Wasteland? Where were they taking them? Finding these answers would, ultimately, become Owyn Lyons’ obsession.

The years passed, but not in a way anyone had foreseen. Indeed, the Brotherhood of Steel’s importance to the people of the Capital Wasteland was not something that Lyons ever expected. Nor was it something his superiors back in California cared at all about. Their newest Elder had a clearly defined mission – to acquire advanced technologies in and around the ruins of Washington D.C. Finding the source of the Super Mutant threat and destroying it was important too, of course. But that shouldn’t take too long… right? Surely the Brotherhood of Steel could handle a few Super Mutants? How hard could it be to locate and eliminate their source? Lyons’ prime objective was, first and foremost, the acquisition of technology. The Super Mutants were his second priority. Thus was the subject of every communication from the Brotherhood of Steel leadership in California.

But Elder Owyn Lyons had another priority, one he considered more important than his original directive or any orders received since – the protection of the innocent people of the Capital Wasteland. And so, Lyons sent word to his superiors that he would continue his search for technology when he was damned good and ready, and would not sacrifice the people who had come to rely on the bravery and strength of the Brotherhood of Steel.

The Californian corridors of Lost Hills erupted in rumor and speculation. Had Owyn Lyons “gone native,” putting the needs of the people of D.C. above those of the Brotherhood itself? Or had a Brotherhood Elder finally exhibited the selfless behavior that should serve as a model for the entire order? Caught in the middle, the ruling Elders made the only decision they could – they would still recognize Elder Lyons as a leader of the Brotherhood of Steel, and the Citadel as their D.C. headquarters. But all support from the West Coast was thereby cut off. If Lyons wanted to pursue his own agenda on the East Coast, he would do it alone.

So that’s what the stalwart Elder did. The Capital Wasteland division of the Brotherhood of Steel, headquartered in the Citadel, became its own entity: still affiliated with the Brotherhood of Steel on the West Coast, and bound by its laws and customs, but otherwise completely independent.

Most of Elder Lyons’ soldiers supported his dedication to the people of the Capital Wasteland, and were proud of their leader’s commitment to honor and heroism. But there were those who voiced their opposition – loudly, and aggressively. They believed that by abandoning the Brotherhood of Steel’s primary mission of acquiring new technologies, Elder Lyons had abandoned the very values that defined the order itself.

One night, the dissenters departed from the Citadel, absconding with weapons, Power Armor, and other pieces of technology and equipment. This was, without question, Owyn Lyons’ darkest hour. He had become a man of compassion and understanding, and couldn’t help but sympathize with those who had left: he had abandoned the Brotherhood’s primary mission. He recognized that, and took full responsibility. Some of the Knights and Paladins who left had been his battle brothers for years. Together, they had shared victory and loss, pain and elation. But to those soldiers loyal to Elder Lyons, this dereliction of duty and theft of technology was an act of cowardice and treason. Lyons was left with little choice: he branded the dissenters “Outcasts,” traitors to the Brotherhood of Steel – it was a name they would ultimately wear like a badge of honor, proud of the distance it put between themselves and Lyons’ “soldier sycophants.”

Such is the state of the Brotherhood of Steel when you, the player, enter the picture, in the year 2277. The order is still dedicated to the protection of the people. Its members are tough, loyal, and bound by honor… and they’re also barely scraping by.

Elder Lyons’ daughter Sarah is now a grown woman, and one of the Brotherhood’s fiercest warriors; in fact, she’s the only member to have achieved the illustrious rank of Sentinel, and now commands her own elite squad, Lyons’ Pride.

The war with the Super Mutants – a conflict that has continued unceasingly for over twenty years – rages on, and the Brotherhood is feeling the strain of this extended conflict. Without reinforcements from the West Coast, Lyons has been forced to recruit locally, and the results have been less than stellar: most new conscripts are overeager, unskilled, or both, and as a result their survival rate is atrocious. So low, in fact, that that word has spread throughout the Capital Wasteland – join the Brotherhood of Steel, and you’ll be dead within the week.

The Outcasts have grown in power since their split from the Citadel, and have re-dedicated their lives to what they consider the Brotherhood of Steel’s only mission – the acquisition of new technologies.

It’s certainly not how Elder Owyn Lyons expected his life to turn out, not the way he imagined his command would be chronicled in the historical archives. Such is a career of a Brotherhood of Steel Elder.

Now, only one question remains – When the Brotherhood of Steel Scribes record the events to come, what will they say about you?