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Video Games: A Far Cry From E3


KiDisaster

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10 minutes ago, Pony Empress Jace said:

Ptolemaic Egypt will rise again!

Pffft. Those wayward children? My Trueborn Macedonians will reclaim everything that was lost when Alexander died, and shall eventually surpass him!

Expanding not only in the East, but to the West as well.

Edit: https://www.pcgamer.com/imperator-rome-revealed-at-pdxcon-2018/

ugh. "Sometime next year"

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37 minutes ago, A True Kaniggit said:

Pffft. Those wayward children? My Trueborn Macedonians will reclaim everything that was lost when Alexander died, and shall eventually surpass him!

Expanding not only in the East, but to the West as well.

Edit: https://www.pcgamer.com/imperator-rome-revealed-at-pdxcon-2018/

ugh. "Sometime next year"

"Glory days of Athens."

Sparta will have thoughts on such a notion.

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Distant Stars/Niven is coming to Stellaris next week on Tuesday the 22nd. Looking forward to the L Cluster (A concept I thought they were using wormholes for, that I think they missed out on)

Then Detroit: Become Human is released 25 May. (should I be worried about the review embargo?)

 

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On 5/19/2018 at 6:58 AM, Jon AS said:

The Awesome 8Q and the unique Highlander are some of the best stock configurations in the game (though neither the heatsinks nor the gauss rifle in the highlander are replaceable, barring the exploit Werthead descibed above, which I kind of feel like trying now; King Crab with two gauss, hm...). I feel like messing with the default setup for the Highlander is kind of unnecessary, except for replacing basic weapons with better variants.

Finally finished the campaign, which is clearly not balanced for a full assault lance as the two last missions were really easy, even considering you can't repair any 'mechs in between. As a reward you get what should be the only Atlas II in the Inner Sphere and Periphery and can then travel to even more star systems. Presumably you'll be able to do missions for Kurita and Steiner up there, as I never encountered them anywhere else.

I  did that mission and now own the Highlander (sadly I didn't get a second Assault as salvage, but I got 1/3 of an Awesome, Zeus and Battlemaster each). I think how it works is that you need to get the Highlander's gauss gun shot off, or even the Highlander destroyed outright, but still finish the mission, which is a bit tricky (you really need the Highlander to help take out the 3 Assaults at the end).

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16 hours ago, Pony Empress Jace said:

Ptolemaic Egypt will rise again!

 

16 hours ago, A True Kaniggit said:

Pffft. Those wayward children? My Trueborn Macedonians will reclaim everything that was lost when Alexander died, and shall eventually surpass him!

Expanding not only in the East, but to the West as well.

Speaking of people in need of a good Roman conquest, Ancient Empires (mod for Attila) came out recently. 

I started a game as Rome, and it's been pretty fun. The game starts with the battle between Hannibal and Scipio. After beating Hannibal, I sent Scipio to siege Carthage (and later the city to the south). Hannibal has this annoying tactic where he waits in harbour with a sizeable army to force me into the starving the city rather than attacking, but then proceeds to sail away once I've withered down the garrison. I'm sending a second legion to hopefully blockade him in the next city he sails into.

Meanwhile in Spain, all the tribes are killing each other and calling me into their wars. The local legion was only at 1/4 strength and I don't think I can recruit soldiers in that region yet, so I've filled it with mercenaries. Imagining that it would be too hard to keep public order positive, I'm just sacking the local tribe cities rather than conquering them. Once I've dealt with Hannibal I'll send my two African legions to help conquer Spain.

Then, Egypt. 

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Because of the Paradox sale this weekend I finally caved and bought EUIV (also Stellaris, but that'll come later). Basic thing for now, no expansions except one that came rolled in it, but yeah.

Anyway, maaaaaaaaates this is a lot to take in. After a couple of false starts as the Ottomans (I know that shouldn't be possible, but despite all logic and every guide saying it's a good idea to take Albania and Constantinople asap, as soon as I tried, about four other nations pitched in and took a bunch of provinces on the other side of the empire to my armies), I decided to try somewhere with a few less moving parts just to get the hang of what button does what and what things I need to be keeping an eye on.

So now I'm Tunis, trying to maintain what seems like a fairly precarious position of power in North Africa.

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If your Highlander gets its arm with the unique Gauss weapon blown off, you lose it forever right?

I'm having a hard time completing the mission where you have to destroy enemy APCs before they reach their destination without incurring some heavy losses. Those fuckers take only 2 turns to get there, and mission fail if that happens, so I have to pretty much ignore all the enemy mechs and vehicles shooting at me. Also, doing this so you can get allied turrets activated is BS. AI controlled turrets suck, at best they'll help you take down 1-2 mechs.

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1 hour ago, Corvinus said:

If your Highlander gets its arm with the unique Gauss weapon blown off, you lose it forever right?

I'm having a hard time completing the mission where you have to destroy enemy APCs before they reach their destination without incurring some heavy losses. Those fuckers take only 2 turns to get there, and mission fail if that happens, so I have to pretty much ignore all the enemy mechs and vehicles shooting at me. Also, doing this so you can get allied turrets activated is BS. AI controlled turrets suck, at best they'll help you take down 1-2 mechs.

An allied turret got some much needed crits, injured the pilot, and landed me a Battlemaster Assault mech! Long live the turrets!

Don't think I have got that mission yet. How far into the game is it? I've just liberated Itriom(sp?) where I had to save 1/3 silos from being blown up. Do you have any LRM boats where you can Scout + Sensor lock + LRM the shit out of it?

The hardest mission I came across was fairly early on, where you had to save the ammo crates. But that's mostly because I tried to do all the side objectives. Took a good 6-7 restarts to figure out a workable strategy.

So, I've been incredibly lucky with some enemy pilot injuries (mainly because I knock em down 2-3 times before i can kill em.....) which has landed me a full lance of Assaults! I did have to finish a couple of really hard missions against a lance of heavy/assaults to nail down the Stalker and Victor, but so far I've got 3 Assault mechs through pilot incapacitate (through no skill of my own....). So spoiled at the moment, got a Highlander, Awesome, Battlemaster, Stalker and Victor.

The Stalker got 60 LRM :wideeyed:. But wow it can't move for shit, specially as i didn't put any jumpjets on it. Gets a bit annoying on hilly maps.

Pretty much purged all the Light and Medium Mechs from my setup. Using a couple of Dragons (full armour, 5 jumpjets with an AC45) as Scouts, mainly to sensor lock so my Highlander and Stalker can LRM the shit out of things.

On the negative side, all my pilots keep getting injured from head hits. I work hard to keep things out of LOS and high evasion stacks, but one attack from the enemy and bam, head hit. So damn annoying.

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21 minutes ago, The Winged Shadow said:

An allied turret got some much needed crits, injured the pilot, and landed me a Battlemaster Assault mech! Long live the turrets!

Don't think I have got that mission yet. How far into the game is it? I've just liberated Itriom(sp?) where I had to save 1/3 silos from being blown up. Do you have any LRM boats where you can Scout + Sensor lock + LRM the shit out of it?

The hardest mission I came across was fairly early on, where you had to save the ammo crates. But that's mostly because I tried to do all the side objectives. Took a good 6-7 restarts to figure out a workable strategy.

So, I've been incredibly lucky with some enemy pilot injuries (mainly because I knock em down 2-3 times before i can kill em.....) which has landed me a full lance of Assaults! I did have to finish a couple of really hard missions against a lance of heavy/assaults to nail down the Stalker and Victor, but so far I've got 3 Assault mechs through pilot incapacitate (through no skill of my own....). So spoiled at the moment, got a Highlander, Awesome, Battlemaster, Stalker and Victor.

The Stalker got 60 LRM :wideeyed:. But wow it can't move for shit, specially as i didn't put any jumpjets on it. Gets a bit annoying on hilly maps.

Pretty much purged all the Light and Medium Mechs from my setup. Using a couple of Dragons (full armour, 5 jumpjets with an AC45) as Scouts, mainly to sensor lock so my Highlander and Stalker can LRM the shit out of things.

On the negative side, all my pilots keep getting injured from head hits. I work hard to keep things out of LOS and high evasion stacks, but one attack from the enemy and bam, head hit. So damn annoying.

The mission is a couple away after that silos mission. I think I need to change my lance for it. I'm going with the Highlander I got as reward for saving Lady Kamea from that castle mission, a Battlemaster, a Grasshopper and a Thunderbolt. The mission requires a balance of mobility, firepower, and durability. I may have to remove the Thunderbolt and add a Dragon to improve my mobility.

I don't know what constitutes an assault mech, but besides the above mentioned, the only other heavy mech I have is a Quickdraw.

I agree that the mission with the ammo crates is the toughest in terms of being able to achieve all secondary objectives. I also found the castle mission with Lady Kamea to be tough. At the end, I chose to go around and make a run for it, rather than fight it out. I thought I would have gotten all those mechs if I got them out, not just the one as reward.

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1 minute ago, Corvinus said:

I don't know what constitutes an assault mech, but besides the above mentioned, the only other heavy mech I have is a Quickdraw. 

BattleMechs are categorised "light" (up to 35t), "medium" (up to 55t), "heavy" (up to 75t) and "assault" (80t+).

Within those classes different 'mechs can fulfill different roles (i.e. Spider and Panther are both light 'mechs, but the Spider is a scout whereas the Panther is made for fighting).

I have absolutely no memory of how I did that campaign mission, only that after a certain point I found most missions fairly trivial and I never bothered to switch away from just dropping with my heaviest hitters. The only exception being my fronline brawler, where I rotated a Grasshopper, Black Knight and Banshee.

 

Trying to play smarter in a seconod campaign, most notably trying to keep most of my 'mechwarriors alive (of the starting roster, only Behemoth lived to the end of my first campaign). Went pretty well until in one mission the last enemy 'mech standing, an armless Panther, walked up to Dekker and headbutted his 'mech's head right off. Seems Dekker really deserves that meme status.

I got incredibly lucky this time around in that I scored a couple of Orion's before even getting the Argo. They make for a pretty solid backbone for my lance, but now I could really do with a Grasshopper or Black Knight to complement them.

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26 minutes ago, Jon AS said:

BattleMechs are categorised "light" (up to 35t), "medium" (up to 55t), "heavy" (up to 75t) and "assault" (80t+).

Within those classes different 'mechs can fulfill different roles (i.e. Spider and Panther are both light 'mechs, but the Spider is a scout whereas the Panther is made for fighting).

I have absolutely no memory of how I did that campaign mission, only that after a certain point I found most missions fairly trivial and I never bothered to switch away from just dropping with my heaviest hitters. The only exception being my fronline brawler, where I rotated a Grasshopper, Black Knight and Banshee.

 

Trying to play smarter in a seconod campaign, most notably trying to keep most of my 'mechwarriors alive (of the starting roster, only Behemoth lived to the end of my first campaign). Went pretty well until in one mission the last enemy 'mech standing, an armless Panther, walked up to Dekker and headbutted his 'mech's head right off. Seems Dekker really deserves that meme status.

I got incredibly lucky this time around in that I scored a couple of Orion's before even getting the Argo. They make for a pretty solid backbone for my lance, but now I could really do with a Grasshopper or Black Knight to complement them.

Shit, I thought it was just light, medium, and heavy. 

Dekker died in my very first mission, when I had no clue what I was doing. :P Behemoth died somewhere along the way. Glitch is still going strong, and she's my most valuable mechwarrior, after the commander. Medusa keeps spending a lot of days in the med bay. The first pilot I hired is called Hooch, he is going strong, too. I nearly lost him in a recent mission, where he got down to 1 health point, and for the first time I used the eject option to take him out of the fight, which by that point I was going to win anyway.

I don't know how some of you guys got good heavy/assault mechs so early in the game.

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3 minutes ago, Corvinus said:

I don't know how some of you guys got good heavy/assault mechs so early in the game.

Mostly luck of the draw, I think. Those Orions showed up on a two skull mission near the Marik border.

The funny thing is that heavier 'mechs are easier to salvage as a whole, because you're unlikely to blow them up on accident while knocking them down repeatedly.

Of course usually I just try to take out 'mechs as quickly as possible. Better to get through a mission mostly unscathed and immediately be ready to go on another one than to waste time and risk injuries and major damage to your 'mechs while trying to get that extra part of salvage.

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1 minute ago, Jon AS said:

Mostly luck of the draw, I think. Those Orions showed up on a two skull mission near the Marik border.

Yeah, but early game you would have only light and medium mechs. Those Orions didn't wipe the floor with you? 

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Quote

 

Shit, I thought it was just light, medium, and heavy. 

 

Ha. The miniatures game and lore also has 100-130 ton Superheavies with names like Poseidon, Ares, Omega and Stone Rhino, although they're not very popular as they are a bit silly. Some of them have three legs and multiple crewmembers (shades of Pacific Rim) and are so slow that they lose whatever gains they make in a silly amount of weaponry for mobility. There's also OmniMechs, which fit into the existing classes but have customisable weapon pods. They don't show up until the Clan Invasion though (which I suspect will be a feature of a later expansion or sequel to this game). There's also armoured battle suits and mini-mechs (think of the power loaders from Aliens with more armour and weapons), although I don't think we'll see those unless the game is refitted to feature infantry.

I now have a Battlemaster as well as the Highlander and am getting through the game at a fair clip. The Gauss/AC20+++/LL+++/AC10+++/LRM15+++ combos my mechs are rocking are wiping out Lights with single hits, Mediums with a couple, Heavies with not much more, and knocking down Assaults in a single turn. As long as  I don't get swamped, everything is dying quickly. It helps that I refitted the Argo with maximum morale-boosting features, so now I get multiple morale boosters on the battlefield and can called-shot the CTs of every enemy mech in sight.

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1 hour ago, Corvinus said:

Yeah, but early game you would have only light and medium mechs. Those Orions didn't wipe the floor with you?  

Nah, got lucky: took one out with a headshot.

15 minutes ago, Werthead said:

The miniatures game and lore also has 100-130 ton Superheavies with names like Poseidon, Ares, Omega and Stone Rhino, although they're not very popular as they are a bit silly.

That's newer stuff, though, not appearing before about 100 years after this game.

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28 minutes ago, Jon AS said:

That's newer stuff, though, not appearing before about 100 years after this game.

The Matar and the Stone Rhino predate the game, although the Matar was a prototype so only a few were ever made and the Stone Rhinos were a Clan variant of the same (also, IIRC, the Stone Rhinos were lighter and fell into Assault class). But yeah, for the purposes of the video game they are effectively non-existent.

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4 minutes ago, Werthead said:

The Matar and the Stone Rhino predate the game, although the Matar was a prototype so only a few were ever made and the Stone Rhinos were a Clan variant of the same (also, IIRC, the Stone Rhinos were lighter and fell into Assault class). But yeah, for the purposes of the video game they are effectively non-existent. 

The Behemoth/Stone Rhino was assault, yeah.

The Matar is apparently from a sourcebook that came out in 2013, I'm not counting that as properly predating anything.;)

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Battletech has really turned into a grind for me. It's not a bad game, but I do think its a flawed one (lack of mission variety, lack of usefulness of light/mediums later in the game, lack of characters or writing) and a disappointment considering how great the Shadowrun games were. I'm gonna finish it off, I looked it up and I have 3 missions left, but I'll be glad to be done with the game.

Meantime, between the talk here and the 60% off sale I picked up HoI4, and oh boy is that a Paradox game. I started a game as New Zealand in 1936 and played for a few hours as a way to get familiar with the systems, and I'm ready for a real game now. I'm curious though how viable the minor countries are? I usually play small potatoes in Paradox games, but with the way the game is setup, I'm wondering if that's possible here. For instance, if I played as Belgium in 1936 is it possible to be in a position to stop the Nazis when the war comes or is getting steamrolled a foregone conclusion?

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25 minutes ago, Fez said:

Battletech has really turned into a grind for me. It's not a bad game, but I do think its a flawed one (lack of mission variety, lack of usefulness of light/mediums later in the game, lack of characters or writing) and a disappointment considering how great the Shadowrun games were. I'm gonna finish it off, I looked it up and I have 3 missions left, but I'll be glad to be done with the game.

Meantime, between the talk here and the 60% off sale I picked up HoI4, and oh boy is that a Paradox game. I started a game as New Zealand in 1936 and played for a few hours as a way to get familiar with the systems, and I'm ready for a real game now. I'm curious though how viable the minor countries are? I usually play small potatoes in Paradox games, but with the way the game is setup, I'm wondering if that's possible here. For instance, if I played as Belgium in 1936 is it possible to be in a position to stop the Nazis when the war comes or is getting steamrolled a foregone conclusion?

I have the most fun with the Balkan States, and if you have the Death Before Dishonor dlc they are viable if you play your cards right.

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11 hours ago, Corvinus said:

If your Highlander gets its arm with the unique Gauss weapon blown off, you lose it forever right?

I'm having a hard time completing the mission where you have to destroy enemy APCs before they reach their destination without incurring some heavy losses. Those fuckers take only 2 turns to get there, and mission fail if that happens, so I have to pretty much ignore all the enemy mechs and vehicles shooting at me. Also, doing this so you can get allied turrets activated is BS. AI controlled turrets suck, at best they'll help you take down 1-2 mechs.

Yes, if you lose either the Gauss rifle or its ammo, you don't get it back. There's supposedly a tiny probability of buying another one at planets which have a former Star League presence, but I've never seen one. In the mission you are talking about, I reloaded once because I lost it. That said, even if you lose the rifle and the double heat sinks, that particular Highlander is still way better than any other (it has more free tonnage).

The APC mission (like several of the other campaign ones) is not that difficult once you understand what it is asking of you, but it requires some rather precise choreography as well as the proper lance. First, you need a mech fast enough to make it to the top of the mountain and destroy the lone APC dropped off there. Unlike all of the other APCs, it's not very heavily armored... but you have very little time to reach it. I used a Shadowhawk which did nothing but sprint up until it killed that APC. The Star League Highlander went part of the way up, partly to provide a distraction and partly to deal with the two APCs that are coming down. The other mech responsible for dealing with those two was an Orion (with a pilot who had Bulwark) which also drew fire from the mechs between the mountain and the building.

My final mech for this mission was a Battlemaster and while it is not enough to destroy the two APCs coming from the side of the building in time, there is a trick here: both APCs need to come down the same ramp and if you position your mech on that ramp, they can't get through. As far as I can tell, they will simply stand there and you can destroy them at your leisure. One other thing to keep in mind is that just as you think you're winning, there's another APC dropped pretty close to your base... and this one comes along with an SRM carrier (or maybe LRM -- I don't remember, but it has a whole lot of missiles). I think you can block the ramp again, but make sure to kill the carrier quickly: the mechs you face don't do much damage, but this thing surely does.

Finally, the turrets aren't terribly powerful... but they make a great distraction. I believe the enemy tries to eliminate the low-armor threats first so they'll usually prefer the turrets allowing you to finish them off in peace.

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