It was so effective that the expansion and the entire sequel was built to break the ability for it to work
And it didn't even work at first. 'The Beaglerush Maneuver' specifically "exploited" overwatch by having a soldier intentionally set off a patrol during the alien turn by standing out in the open. The pod would then try to run for cover only to get caught in an overwatch trap.
This was hot fixed so that any pod stumbling upon a soldier in the open like this would instead just shoot the very flanked X-Com operative, which meant a lot of bonuses to the attack being made and likely a soon to be very dead X-Com operative.
One of the best things about X-Com 2 is that is was made alongside planned workshop content, which is why Long War Studio/Pavonis was able to release 3 content mods on release day because Firaxis had not only been working with them to help improve the workshop setup for launch, but also letting them play test things. It's why the actual upload dates for those 3 mods are before the release day.
Later on LWS/Pavonis would release the actual Long War 2 mod which included the 3 smaller mods and a whole revamp of the game which gave it a refreshing second wind between the original release and eventual War of the Chosen DLC which yet again revamped how the baseline game worked.
Throw in all the various other mods and you got a game with at least 3 ish "official" modes and a lot of other PGCs/Player Generated Content that meant significantly more content than most games would have expected from just the official devs.
There are ways to remove the risk (explosives) but that comes with a cost of materials or cover for yourself depending on the game. Higher difficulties teach you that those removals are the biggest part of early game strategy
That wonderful moment in the TLP DLC where you realise there is no loot to worry about and suddenly grenade spam is back on the menu. 💥
The game values information. You have to move to get information.
This is why Reapers were so OP in WotC. They could end up telling you everything about a map and do so while in stealth and often almost right next a hostile. Getting them before the other factions could literally make or break some playthroughs they were that good.
The region perk for a bonus ally was a complete waste of a perk slot, and even if you had no others the actual performance would be so bad you were asking for shit to go wrong.
Baseline stats, so they would fail to hit anything. Baseline gear, so even if you were rocking T3 guns and gear you'd find yourself with maybe a T2 groupie that was never going to do much vs all the armour and hp late game brought with it. Even just the shitty grenades they had were pointless as frags had shit shredding, shit damage, and shit aoe.
I'd take any other perk over those if I could, even the ones for stupid shit like sending lightly injured soldiers into combat, which I'd never do in the first place!
I'm not saying story is a bad thing
I am. A lot of current writers are completely shit which leads to reusing old ideas in the hope nobody notices, a reminder that regardless of how shit the ending to ME3 was the 3 choices at the end were literally the same 3 choices from Deus Ex in 2000, or some incompetent tumblr tier fanfic writer who throws new OCs into year old franchises and fucks things up so badly there is no going back. See all the criticism the BFA and SL expansions from WoW get for an example of this. To make matters worse a lot of players suddenly think Blizz brining back Chris Metzan is going to solve these problems when he's already shown to be suffering from "Death of the author" and virtue signalling his own fuckups as if they were a good idea on any level. See his comments about letting his daughter comment and influence game design changes when she's 5 years below the age rating for the game.
If you want a real case of self inflicted whiplash look up the unaired alt pilot for TBBT. Sheldon is a completely different kind of character, same actor however, and was very quickly changed from a potential Chad to what the show went with.
Remember that's how the first episode starts, with Roy being introduced at his desk eating something while the phone is going leading to that conversation.
Then later on when he's physically checking one of the computers the bloody thing isn't plugged in!
Just... never watch the attempted US version of the show.
Brock Lesner tried a shooting star press on Kurt Angle and he fucked it up so bad I believe he gave himself a concussion for real.
I remember watching that live and the botch was horrifying. He's lucky he didn't paralyse himself or worse. He gave interviews later that he couldn't remember the last few minutes of the match because of the self inflicted concussion.
So mosquitoes are something I know quite a bit about due to uni and other things. This advise is to the surprise of nobody both extremely stupid and attempting to peddle a vague mandate in the name of public safety.
"Mosquitoes" refers to over 3000 species of fly from the Genera Culicidae, and while carriers of diseases are far more specific, literally based on the species, unless someone is very well trained and extremely perceptive you can rare ID a mosquito in the wild without it being complete stationary or scanned by a laser sensor.
The former is next to impossible because trying to get close to one will startle it. The latter is costly because even just the scanning component of a photonic fence is going to be expensive and they're not abundant enough to work like that, not are they deployed in 1st world countries for reasons despite the ones that would get deployed in 3rd world counties being stolen and scavenged.
The simple fact is mosquitoes are never, ever going to be eradicated. There are just too many species of them and the only places on Earth they are not found are Antarctica and for reasons relating to just how batshit insane the weather can be, Iceland. That's it. If you want to avoid mosquitoes either move to a land inhabited by penguins and insane research scientists, or a land with so many active volcanos the actual land is still increasing in mass. So either you freeze to death, burn to death, or suffer mosquitoes.
A quick check on EEE says:
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It's a Togavirus/Togaviridae, which means it's quite distant from other more common mosquito viruses such as the Flaviviridae which includes Dengue, West Nile, Yellow Fever [hence the name Flavi = yellow in Latin], Japanese Encephalitis, and others.
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It is transmitted by Culiseta mosquitoes which transmit the virus between various bird hosts that are then fed upon by other mosquitoes such as Aedes [known for carryiny Dengue], Coquillettidia, and Culex [known for carrying West Nile] which can transfer EEE to mammals.
Some quick searches suggest Culiseta mosquitoes are active in the evening however this might not be the case for all of them and regardless even if it is the presence of other genera/species in the mix means it doesn't matter because if they are active outwith the times being suggested for the curfew then it won't fucking matter!
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It was first recognised in Massachusetts in 1831 when 75 horses died.
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Florida gets 1 to 2 cases in humans a year with over 60 equine cases.
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This can rise to over 200 when conditions favour the virus.
So it's been going on for at least 200 years, because it will have been around before the first reports just nobody realised or cared, and never caused anything more than a few hundred horse deaths, which yes would be financially significant to those affected and moreso 200 years ago but not to the point it should shut down an entire city in 2024.
Also,
EEEV was one of more than a dozen agents that the United States researched as potential biological weapons before the nation suspended its biological-weapons program in 1969, a few years before signing (1972) and then ratifying (1975) the Biological Weapons Convention.
🙄
Wow, that's a lot of nuclear power plants to build in only 5 years, right? Right?! 🤔