Dark Reign is a real-time strategy game in the tradition of WarCraft II and Command & Conquer. Groundbreaking features include true line-of-sight warfare, the largest playing maps in the genre, and a Mission Construction Kit that players can use to build their own Dark Reign levels. With 40+ more pages than a competing title, this strategy guide will offer more comprehensive coverage at the same price.
StarCraft (Blizzard Entertainment, 1998) is a real-time strategy video game, placing the player in command of three extraterrestrial races fighting against each other for strategic control of resources, terrain, and power. Simon Dor examines the game’s unanticipated effect by delving into the history of the game and the two core competencies it encouraged: decoding and foreseeing. Although StarCraft was not designed as an e-sport, its role in developing foreseeing skills helped give rise to one of the earliest e-sport communities in South Korea. Apart from the game’s clear landmark status, StarCraft offers a unique insight into changes in gaming culture and, more broadly, the marketability and profit of previously niche areas of interest. The book places StarCraft in the history of real-time strategy games in the 1990s—Dune II, Command & Conquer, Age of Empires—in terms of visual style, narrative tropes, and control. It shows how design decisions, technological infrastructures, and a strong contribution from its gaming community through Battle.net and its campaign editor were necessary conditions for the flexibility it needed to grow its success. In exploring the fanatic clusters of competitive players who formed the first tournaments and professionalized gaming, StarCraft shows that the game was key to the transition towards foreseeing play and essential to competitive gaming and e-sports.
The Thunderbolts, a band of reformed villains trying to do good, have always sought justice from America. Their earnest attempts to regain the faith of the people have only made them slow progress toward that goal, and r has always been an elusive prize. But now, in the aftermath of CIVIL WAR, the tables have turned: It's time for the Thunderbolts to inflict a little justice on America. At a time when the country has lost faith in its heroes, it is ready to put its faith in monsters. Now is the time for the Thunderbolts! Warren Ellis and Mike Deodato's modern masterpiece challenges readers with a thought-provoking story that offers a steady stream of explosive action! Collecting THUNDERBOLTS #110-121 and material from CIVIL WAR: THE INITIATIVE
Impending technological advances will widen an adversary’s attack plane over the next decade. Visualizing what the future will hold, and what new threat vectors could emerge, is a task that traditional planning mechanisms struggle to accomplish given the wide range of potential issues. Understanding and preparing for the future operating environment is the basis of an analytical method known as Threatcasting. It is a method that gives researchers a structured way to envision and plan for risks ten years in the future. Threatcasting uses input from social science, technical research, cultural history, economics, trends, expert interviews, and even a little science fiction to recognize future threats and design potential futures. During this human-centric process, participants brainstorm what actions can be taken to identify, track, disrupt, mitigate, and recover from the possible threats. Specifically, groups explore how to transform the future they desire into reality while avoiding an undesired future. The Threatcasting method also exposes what events could happen that indicate the progression toward an increasingly possible threat landscape. This book begins with an overview of the Threatcasting method with examples and case studies to enhance the academic foundation. Along with end-of-chapter exercises to enhance the reader’s understanding of the concepts, there is also a full project where the reader can conduct a mock Threatcasting on the topic of “the next biological public health crisis.” The second half of the book is designed as a practitioner’s handbook. It has three separate chapters (based on the general size of the Threatcasting group) that walk the reader through how to apply the knowledge from Part I to conduct an actual Threatcasting activity. This book will be useful for a wide audience (from student to practitioner) and will hopefully promote new dialogues across communities and novel developments in the area.
"Political Warfare provides a well-researched and wide-ranging overview of the nature of the People's Republic of China (PRC) threat and the political warfare strategies, doctrines, and operational practices used by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The author offers detailed and illuminating case studies of PRC political warfare operations designed to undermine Thailand, a U.S. treaty ally, and Taiwan, a close friend"--
DigiCat presents to you this unique SF collection, designed and formatted to the highest digital standards and adjusted for readability on all devices. Contents: Ayn Rand: Anthem Jack London: Iron Heel H. G. Wells: The Time Machine The First Men in the Moon When The Sleeper Wakes Edward Bulwer-Lytton: The Coming Race Hugh Benson: Lord of the World Edward Bellamy: Looking Backward: 2000–1887 Equality Mary Shelley: The Last Man Edgar Allan Poe: The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion Owen Gregory: Meccania the Super-State Jonathan Swift Gulliver's Travels William Hope Hodgson: The Night Land Fred M. White: The Doom of London Series The Four White Days The Four Days' Night The Dust of Death A Bubble Burst The Invisible Force The River of Death Ignatius Donnelly: Caesar's Column Ernest Bramah: The Secret of the League (aka What Might Have Been) Milo Hastings: City of Endless Night Arthur Dudley Vinton: Looking Further Backward Gertrude Barrows Bennett (aka Francis Stevens): The Heads of Cerberus E. M. Forster: The Machine Stops Richard Jefferies: After London Samuel Butler: Erewhon Edwin A. Abbott: Flatland Anthony Trollope: The Fixed Period Fritz Leiber: The Night of the Long Knives Richard Stockham: Perchance to Dream Irving E. Cox: The Guardians Cleveland Moffett: The Conquest of America Richard Jefferies: After London William Dean Howells: A Traveler from Altruria Through the Eye of the Needle Philip Francis Nowlan: Armageddon–2419 A.D. The Airlords of Han (Sequel) Anonymous: The Great Romance Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain: Sultana's Dream George Griffith: The Angel of the Revolution The Syren of the Skies (Sequel)
Taiwan "is becoming the most dangerous flash point in the world for a possible war that involves the United States, China, and probably other major powers," warn Robert D. Blackwill, Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) Henry A. Kissinger senior fellow for U.S. foreign policy, and Philip Zelikow, University of Virginia White Burkett Miller professor of history. In a new Council Special Report, The United States, China, and Taiwan: A Strategy to Prevent War, the authors argue that the United States should change and clarify its strategy to prevent war over Taiwan. "The U.S. strategic objective regarding Taiwan should be to preserve its political and economic autonomy, its dynamism as a free society, and U.S.-allied deterrence-without triggering a Chinese attack on Taiwan." "We do not think it is politically or militarily realistic to count on a U.S. military defeat of various kinds of Chinese assaults on Taiwan, uncoordinated with allies. Nor is it realistic to presume that, after such a frustrating clash, the United States would or should simply escalate to some sort of wide-scale war against China with comprehensive blockades or strikes against targets on the Chinese mainland." "If U.S. campaign plans postulate such unrealistic scenarios," the authors add, "they will likely be rejected by an American president and by the U.S. Congress." But, they observe, "the resulting U.S. paralysis would not be the result of presidential weakness or timidity. It might arise because the most powerful country in the world did not have credible options prepared for the most dangerous military crisis looming in front of it." Proposing "a realistic strategic objective for Taiwan, and the associated policy prescriptions, to sustain the political balance that has kept the peace for the last fifty years," the authors urge the Joe Biden administration to affirm that it is not trying to change Taiwan's status; work with its allies, especially Japan, to prepare new plans that could challenge Chinese military moves against Taiwan and help Taiwan defend itself, yet put the burden of widening a war on China; and visibly plan, beforehand, for the disruption and mobilization that could follow a wider war, but without assuming that such a war would or should escalate to the Chinese, Japanese, or American homelands. "The horrendous global consequences of a war between the United States and China, most likely over Taiwan, should preoccupy the Biden team, beginning with the president," the authors conclude.
