u/FToaster1

I got an airbrush about 5 years ago and it's absolutely worth it.

- Priming is much easier. No need for rattlecans

- Varnishing is also much easier.

- White and other bright colours are now easy to do. It's especially useful for Legion if you play Empire or Republic

- Sharp lines and designs, especially on larger miniatures are easy to do with airbrush + masking tape

- Much much easier to paint large models with consistent coverage

- Fun to do glow effects and soft transitions

BigNewy and 9Line have mentioned on discord that Devs have been shifted away from the Hellcat and WW2 stuff towards other priorities.

Who painted the sistine chapel ceiling?  Michaelangelo or the guy who paid him and told him what to do.  Telling someone or something else to create art is hugely different from developing the manual skill to actually create art. 

https://preview.redd.it/eqoc94kalekh1.png?width=1649&format=png&auto=webp&s=31e320413813d410c4e5f4c9deae3bcb47698e81

At the moment everyone going in/out of the city is sent along that one main road, along with half the people going from the west to the East of the city. Let people on the right exit the city without going through the rest of it.
Try adding another connection to the exit along the north of the city, something like this:

You can see Mount Kilimanjaro rising through the clouds from the plane (but not from the Serengeti, it's too far away).

I was at Kilimanjaro airport a few weeks ago, and immigration was nice and smooth and fast.
It probably helped that I came in on a 737 and was near the front of the plane, and I had done the visa online.

Central european? Central US? 

I create campaigns for my group, and just use the mission editor.  You really do not need a lot of stuff to make a fun and interesting scenario. In fact too much stuff can give people performance issues. Doing it as a campaign also helps: you can take mission one, then copy and rename it to have the core of mission two. This is much faster than always creating stuff from scratch; just remember to change/delete anything that needs it.  Generally I act as GCI/AWACS/gamemaster during the missions, and will manually trigger things like spawning enemy aircraft, moving troops, and so on. That helps a lot. 

I did it a month or so back, and 2024 feels much better.
2024 has better graphics, and seems to have better performance (I haven't measured, but it feels better).
I'm even enjoying the career mode, despite some funny bugs (especially relating to taxiways).

Have you tried to get anything started in person, instead of online?
Try to find some people in person, and be willing to GM.
Wherever you live probably has an RPG group on Facebook or some other social media. If you advertise that you are running a game you will almost certainly get interested people. For a venue, many gaming shops allow people to play RPGs but it would be a good idea to check first.

Elite has amazing FTL capability, coupled with very fast in-system travel. They do have the strange (from a sci-fi setting point of view) requirement to slow down to absurdly slow speeds to fire weapons, however. From a space travel point of view the ships are practically stationary when employing weapons.

Weapon ranges are completely abysmal though. Laughably short for any conceivable space battle. Modern air to air weapons outrange Elite weapons by an order of magnitude.

So Elite ships could get almost anywhere insanely fast, but due to needing to effectively stop to use weapons, and those weapons having a crazy short range, they couldn't really do much once they get to their destination. Weapons might be powerful, but needing to get to within a few kms to fire means there is a fair chance any Elite ship gets blasted out of space before it's in range to shoot.

I must not feel terror; terror is the mind-killer.

This.
It's not the size that counts, but the point.
I use a size 2 for most stuff, even detail work. However I do use a good natural fibre brush. They are expensive, but are worth it.

I'd try to get one more activation there.
You could easily drop the Jedi Guardian, as it doesn't make a lot of sense with the ARFs. They are a long range unit and the jedi boosts melee hits.
Similarly I don't much like the DC-15x with the ARCs as it's long range and the ARCs are short range.
Dropping them (and maybe force push, as it's expensive) should get you points to add something else.

https://preview.redd.it/onm0xqwzfh0g1.jpeg?width=2560&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=febb1cd8fe1320b4bfca8d4166f811bbc3b96940

Landed on an asteroid, got out of my ship, and glitched inside the asteroid.

My Panther is "fatboy wide"

I'm just starting a game, and I'm using 2050. However I'm not focusing too much on what the Actual Lore says happens between 2045 and 2050. Essentially it's 2045 with a few tweaks.

Rain is no longer toxic (because I want the "it's 2am and raining" aesthetic)
The hotzone is smaller, rebuilding has progressed a bit more.
Corpos are growing in power a bit, but are not at 2020 levels.
The supply chain is functioning better so there is less of a 'post-apo' scarcity feeling.
The metro works better (my PCs don't have a car, so this will help)

So really just a few tweaks that change the feel of the world in a way I prefer.

It depends on how much use you will get out of them.
If you are SP only, Kola has a few campaigns, but I don't think Sinai does. Still, there are more campaigns for other maps, so buying neither and saving money is a good option.
If you play MP on public servers, save your money and buy neither.
If you play MP with a squadron, you should know what your squadron flies.

They are coming in the paywall Pacific asset pack.

I found it particularly amusing that the main character acknowledges that nobody really memorises what all the numbers mean, they just know a couple of things like what the good numbers for size/atmosphere/etc. are.

Full Thrust is old and excellent. It technically has a miniatures line, but also has a very robust ship creation system and a lot of people have created Star Wars ships.

Nope. It used to be 50% off your first module. However it was removed a year or so back with promises of revamping the miles program into "something better".
Still remains to be seen what the "something better" will be.

The Yeoman. Because when the target stops to laugh at how ridiculous it looks, you blast them with many LRMS.

Same.
Now it's less usable with the weird spacing (I've tried the different settings, they are all bad)

I messaged Mongoose a few weeks ago asking if you could get the PDF of a physical book you bought elsewhere.
The reply was "Yeap just send us your proof of purchase and/or a photo of the physical product and we will send you the PDF via DriveThru.RPG, not matter where your purchased the books"