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The Anti-Targ

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Halo being made into a 10 part TV series. Was this generally known and I missed it?

https://editorial.rottentomatoes.com/article/halo-television-series-news-details/

I think TV series may be a better way to adapt epic video game stories. I think the best reviewed ever video game adaptation is now the Castlevania TV series, with 86% on Rotten Tomatoes? Perhaps it's the best way to adapt most video games. There is time to develop characters, do story and exposition and have some action set pieces.

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On 6/28/2018 at 6:23 PM, Werthead said:

I'd be interested if anyone with Hearts of Iron IV could take a gander at the Fallout mod. It's an odd fit, but apparently it works really, really well.

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2018/05/18/old-world-blues-translates-fallout-to-grand-strategy/

I have no idea what this has to do with me.

Anyway, just finished God of War, might take on the Valkyries down the line, but im really not in the mood for more of this game right now.

I'll re-try Witcher 3. Backlog-clearing for life.

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On 6/28/2018 at 2:29 PM, Red Tiger said:

Im about 66% in. Not a fan of the clunky gameplay (or honestly, the game in general), but i'll finish it for the sake of clearing out my backlog.

Yeah , the presentation is great and the game looks beautiful but the gameplay is awful . I really don't see why it got such high scores and raving reviews. 

On 6/28/2018 at 8:23 PM, Werthead said:

I'd be interested if anyone with Hearts of Iron IV could take a gander at the Fallout mod. It's an odd fit, but apparently it works really, really well.

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2018/05/18/old-world-blues-translates-fallout-to-grand-strategy/

 

Fallout is not my thing but hearts of iron is so I'll give it a go .

23 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

I just picked up Age of Empires II and III on the Steam sale for a ridiculously cheap price. I played the heck out of AoEII several years ago, but never got around to AoEIII. I also only got the Conqueror's expansion pack, and this bundle came with all the DLC and civilisations. So there's lot's more to do.

I hear AOE III isn't as good. But I'm still looking forward to giving it a go.

Aoe 2 is essentially one of the golden children of rts . Aoe3 polished some mechanics but simply didn't give the same feel .if I had to recommend an older rts I'd recommend rise of nations ,it's great mix of aoe and civ mechanics .

1 hour ago, Red Tiger said:

I have no idea what this has to do with me.

Anyway, just finished God of War, might take on the Valkyries down the line, but im really not in the mood for more of this game right now.

I'll re-try Witcher 3. Backlog-clearing for life.

I finished all the Valkyries . You'd think it'd be rewarding but not really and some of the Valkyries are straight up cheap fights . The absolute worst tho are the world tears , they were awful and I don't know why I did them all .

Try not get hung up on the combat in witcher 3 .

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38 minutes ago, Vin said:

Aoe 2 is essentially one of the golden children of rts . Aoe3 polished some mechanics but simply didn't give the same feel .if I had to recommend an older rts I'd recommend rise of nations ,it's great mix of aoe and civ mechanics .

Rise of Nations is awesome.

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Age of Empires III was very odd. Much smaller-scale game than AoE1 and 2, that I recall. I'd recommend Age of Mythology - which is essentially Age of Empires but with mythological units, gods, magic etc - over AoE 3, it's an excellent game.

Actually, I'm going to go and re-buy it. It's a fiver in the Steam sale with a brand-new expansion, which should be interesting.

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On 6/24/2018 at 8:21 PM, Toth said:

Several months later, I came back to just that situation. I now learned how war worked, focused more on my laser weaponry and also realized that the naval capacity is not set in stone. The penalty on ship maintenace you get for going over the limit is actually fairly negible as long as your economy is strong enough. And my economy was able to bear it. So as soon as the truce with the Nuurians ceased being an issue, I threw out a dozen more cruisers and invaded, with my admiral going: "Bitches, we are back! And we have figured out how war works!". It was a humiliating defeat for the Nuurians, but for some reason I still couldn't demand vassalization, only for them to release a couple of colonies and cede those stupid border systems with whom they had annexed my system back at the beginning of the game. I don't forget shit like that! Some time afterwards the time was ready to finish it. Like it took three wars to take down carthage, with the last one being a totally one-sided massacre, the Nuurians were also vanquished in three wars. I also reverse engineered their mass driver technology, while I was at it, just like the Romans copied the ships of the Carthaginians.

Soon afterwards I figured it would be neat trying out to found a Federation and be all benevolent space police. Unfortunately, none of my larger allies felt like it would be a good idea to join, so the only ones who did were those silly little pockets of leftover Nuurians. Come to think of it, my "Stellar Union" is awfully Roman in character. Given that its only members are... Rome... and those conquered by or dependants of it. Still... After that I had a fairly long lasting peace of at least 25 years, with the map of the galaxy now looking like this: http://fs1.directupload.net/images/180624/67srzran.png

This whole south-easter arm is proudly under the control of the Senate and the Roman people! It's now actually a bit boring... or rather, it was boring. I tried to antagonize the isolationist Bos'Pachtux Kingdom, but those suckers are fairly content not wanting anything to do with anyone else. Which irks me, given that they sit on the First League home-world and my archeologists are dying to get their hands on it. Everyone else remained good friends with each other, given that I conquered pretty much the only aggressive xenophobe assholes in the entire galaxy. Well, that was until the awakening...

You see that red dot in the upper left corner of the Varelviv Souvereignty? Well that's a Fallen Empire of the Regulator type. An extremely pissed off Fallen Empire at that! For seem reason they have decided that these uppidity young ones have grown too bold and are in need of a nuclear spanking. So they went and beat up the Canthan League first thing in the morning, then turned around and declared war on the Varelviv and Andigonj alliance. Meanwhile my Romans sit in their corner, watching warily. Trying to find out whether I can take on an Endgame crisis, I decided to make a different save-file and do something stupid: Thinking that the Awakened Empire would be too busy bullying its neighbors, I took my fleet of 53k and invaded their home world.

It was a fucking disaster! Their ring world was protected by two fleets of 110k strength each. Interestingly, the point defense screen of my Sacrosanctus class destroyers was holding their swarm of starfighters at bay, but their stupidly overpowered deathstar laser lances one-shotted my battleships at the back and I had to retreat. I lost 30k, but interestingly they lost 20k. Somehow. I have absolutely no idea how though...

Well then... I think I'm fucked right now. My Romans are now colonizing world after world to raise my fleet strength at all cost, but if an endgame crisis strikes now, I'm pretty much done for. For the moment, I really need to focus on developing lvl 5 mass drivers to better tear down shields and manage my sectors better to further boost my economy, all with the aim to drive mass production of ships ever higher. Those stupid frog bastards haven't seen the Roman Empire for the last time!

This game is hilarious.   

As long as your priority is relying on engineers and scientists to improve your weapon industry, there's nothing to be afraid of. 

If the others don't do the same....of course. If they did it would just be the end of the galaxy. :P

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17 hours ago, Meera of Tarth said:

As long as your priority is relying on engineers and scientists to improve your weapon industry, there's nothing to be afraid of. 

You think? I have read somewhere that Fallen Empire ground forces are ludicrously tough in order to prevent the player from easily conquering their home worlds. So... I asked my scientists what to do about that, and for some reason, their best proposal was this here: http://fs5.directupload.net/images/180701/96znj8lp.jpg

Sure. I can't see any way, this could ever go horribly wrong. I'm imagining the scene of how a Roman senate comittee had the scientists called to hold a presentation about their recent breakthrough. The lead senator asks:

"So what is this great project you have been spending the last two years at?"

The scientists exchange giddy glances, all of them having mad grins on their faces:

"We made chestbursters!"

The senators stare blankly.

"Like... from the horror movies?"

"Just so!"

"Why would you ever do something like this?"

"BECAUSE WE COULD!!!"

BTW, I'm still using my old-school legions for now. But if these haughty awakened Regulators attack me, I will sicc freaking Xenomorphs at them while laughing manically. If I ever get past their fleet, that is...

Thing is, they defeated the Varelviv Souvereignty and the Andigonj Empire, but didn't manage to turn them into a Satellite like they did with the Canthari League. This was actually my chance! Because with their pride broken like this, these two empires decided that the idea of making a Federation with me might be not that bad after all. Too bad that the Nuurian Republic, my current nominal partner (they are more a sidekick than anything else) freaked out and voted against them. That however pissed me off. Come on, we are stronger together! So I did the natural thing... I dissolved the Stellar Union with the Nuurians, formed a new Federation together with the Varelviv and Andigonj, renamed it Stellar Union and pretended that the Nuurian Republic was never in it. The Nuurians were actually too stumped to be angry about that. Therefore the Galaxy now looks like this: http://fs5.directupload.net/images/180701/7yry4slu.jpg

Well, not quite, actually. The Xo'Lukako Regulators (those purple frog dudes  in the upper left corner who conquered the Canthari League) have then attacked the next big independant blob, the Kirillian Republic, and by now also turned them into a purple satellite. Therefore the map is now only red and purple, with the only other independant factions being the Bos'Pachtux Kingdom and the Helvanni trade federation. The latter is still weak after the Kirillians messed them up in a short but bloody war very early in the game. They never recovered from that and nobody mistakes them for a big player because of that.

Interestingly, being in a Federation with two imperialistic slavers never gets boring. They apparently soon warmed up to us being such a mighty galaxy-shaking faction that after a little recovery phase, the Andigonj Empire proposed that we should further expand our Federation in order to better our chances against the Xo'Lukako. And since no other faction was currently in a mood to join us willingly, we could just as well make them...

With that thought, the Stellar Union declared war on the Bos'Pachtux Kingdom. Remember those pacifistic isolationists whom I had failed to bait into attacking me before? Well, that's them! Never again shall they poison the galaxy with their sinister plots of neutrality! Too bad that my fleet was gathered at the border to the Varelviv. While I was trying to catch up with my slow ass warp drives, the Andigonj jumped right into action... and got their asses handed to them. -.-

... okay, it seems I have to fight this war on my own. But since my fleet was approaching in a snail's pace, my first incursion was actually of a more civilian nature. Remember that I was pissed that the First League homeworld was within these borders that the Bos'Pachtux had closed? With a war raging on, there was little reason for me to respect that. Therefore I snuck an archeological team into the system in question: http://fs1.directupload.net/images/180701/4fchstng.jpg

Ha! Victory! Luckily, despite having several mining stations around, the Bos'Pachtux had no idea what kind of planet they were sitting on. Two freaking years later (I'm not fucking kidding!) my fleet arrived as well: http://fs5.directupload.net/images/180701/iye86ngf.jpg

I have to say, with both my neighbors using wormhole drives and the Bos'Pachtux themselves using ridiculously advances jump drives, my pitiful warp drives feel hopelessly outmatched. I have to traverse half the galaxy because our Federation is so large, so I need something better. Therefore (despite knowing the risk of causing an Endgame Crisis) I reverse engineered the jump drives the Bos'Pachtux are using. I have not yet upgraded my fleet, but I will do after the war. Because seriously, this is utterly ridiculous.

I'm also a bit iffed that despite defeating the Bos'Pachtux, I took rather heavy losses. Oddly enough, not when it comes to my corvettes... and my cruisers and destroyers essentially won the battle for me. But I lost almost all of my large battleships, the most expensive part of the fleet. Even more oddly, my brand new Pilum-class equipped with shield-piercing kinetic artillery that was supposed to be my ace against the Xo'Lukako... I lost all of them. To be fair, only two of them were actual Pilum-classes, the others were Nuurian battleships refitted with Pilum-class specs, but for the game it should make no difference. It seems my old Triarius-class battleships were somewhat more sturdy. Makes sense, since I've equipped them essentially with only cruiser weaponry, which allowed me to have spare power for more shields. But battleships playing cruiser doesn't really make sense. At least now I developped particle lances like the Xo'lukako use, so I refitted the Triarius-class to use that instead.

Well, I'm curious where this leads to... in any case, my Romans will do their best to keep this galaxy together.

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On 6/30/2018 at 11:22 PM, Vin said:

I finished all the Valkyries . You'd think it'd be rewarding but not really and some of the Valkyries are straight up cheap fights . The absolute worst tho are the world tears , they were awful and I don't know why I did them all .

Try not get hung up on the combat in witcher 3 .

What are you playing right now?

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4 hours ago, Toth said:

You think? I have read somewhere that Fallen Empire ground forces are ludicrously tough in order to prevent the player from easily conquering their home worlds. So... I asked my scientists what to do about that, and for some reason, their best proposal was this here: http://fs5.directupload.net/images/180701/96znj8lp.jpg

Sure. I can't see any way, this could ever go horribly wrong. I'm imagining the scene of how a Roman senate comittee had the scientists called to hold a presentation about their recent breakthrough. The lead senator asks:

"So what is this great project you have been spending the last two years at?"

The scientists exchange giddy glances, all of them having mad grins on their faces:

"We made chestbursters!"

The senators stare blankly.

"Like... from the horror movies?"

"Just so!"

"Why would you ever do something like this?"

"BECAUSE WE COULD!!!"


 

:lmao:This is exactly what this game lacks of, no? I suppose they don't start having these kind of conversations xd.

Seriously, you should write the stories when you finish this game.  After all, the basis for humour is there with those "people" and their behaviours.

Seriously, it's so hilarious to read...everything that happens!

Quote

TW, I'm still using my old-school legions for now. But if these haughty awakened Regulators attack me, I will sicc freaking Xenomorphs at them while laughing manically. If I ever get past their fleet, that is...

Thing is, they defeated the Varelviv Souvereignty and the Andigonj Empire, but didn't manage to turn them into a Satellite like they did with the Canthari League. This was actually my chance! Because with their pride broken like this, these two empires decided that the idea of making a Federation with me might be not that bad after all. Too bad that the Nuurian Republic, my current nominal partner (they are more a sidekick than anything else) freaked out and voted against them. That however pissed me off. Come on, we are stronger together! So I did the natural thing... I dissolved the Stellar Union with the Nuurians, formed a new Federation together with the Varelviv and Andigonj, renamed it Stellar Union and pretended that the Nuurian Republic was never in it. The Nuurians were actually too stumped to be angry about that. Therefore the Galaxy now looks like this: http://fs5.directupload.net/images/180701/7yry4slu.jpg

Well, not quite, actually. The Xo'Lukako Regulators (those purple frog dudes  in the upper left corner who conquered the Canthari League) have then attacked the next big independant blob, the Kirillian Republic, and by now also turned them into a purple satellite. Therefore the map is now only red and purple, with the only other independant factions being the Bos'Pachtux Kingdom and the Helvanni trade federation. The latter is still weak after the Kirillians messed them up in a short but bloody war very early in the game. They never recovered from that and nobody mistakes them for a big player because of that.

Interestingly, being in a Federation with two imperialistic slavers never gets boring. They apparently soon warmed up to us being such a mighty galaxy-shaking faction that after a little recovery phase, the Andigonj Empire proposed that we should further expand our Federation in order to better our chances against the Xo'Lukako. And since no other faction was currently in a mood to join us willingly, we could just as well make them...

With that thought, the Stellar Union declared war on the Bos'Pachtux Kingdom. Remember those pacifistic isolationists whom I had failed to bait into attacking me before? Well, that's them! Never again shall they poison the galaxy with their sinister plots of neutrality! Too bad that my fleet was gathered at the border to the Varelviv. While I was trying to catch up with my slow ass warp drives, the Andigonj jumped right into action... and got their asses handed to them. -.-

Mmm, to your questions, yeah they definitely rang a bell to me, but the amount of civilisations and events occurring in such a "short" span of time it's a little bit confusing!

Quote

... okay, it seems I have to fight this war on my own. But since my fleet was approaching in a snail's pace, my first incursion was actually of a more civilian nature. Remember that I was pissed that the First League homeworld was within these borders that the Bos'Pachtux had closed? With a war raging on, there was little reason for me to respect that. Therefore I snuck an archeological team into the system in question: http://fs1.directupload.net/images/180701/4fchstng.jpg

Ha! Victory! Luckily, despite having several mining stations around, the Bos'Pachtux had no idea what kind of planet they were sitting on. Two freaking years later (I'm not fucking kidding!) my fleet arrived as well: http://fs5.directupload.net/images/180701/iye86ngf.jpg

I can't help but pity that poor system. Why didn't anyone else...give them food? Didn't they have other allies or anything to offer in exchange? Knowledge?

It's so sad.

Quote

I have to say, with both my neighbors using wormhole drives and the Bos'Pachtux themselves using ridiculously advances jump drives, my pitiful warp drives feel hopelessly outmatched. I have to traverse half the galaxy because our Federation is so large, so I need something better. Therefore (despite knowing the risk of causing an Endgame Crisis) I reverse engineered the jump drives the Bos'Pachtux are using. I have not yet upgraded my fleet, but I will do after the war. Because seriously, this is utterly ridiculous.

Ok, this is interesting. What are you waiting for upgrading your fleet? Wormholes sound scary as hell, they can arrive at any time!

And reverse engineering? Again? And from those, from previously defeated fleet? Have you considered the possibility of a trap? It can't be as easy as doing reverse engineering again.

I'm seeing problem coming.... (apart from legal ones, maybe you can find a lawyer from those remains of Bos'Pachtux civilisation saying that this is not permissible even during war times :P ) 

(I have said nothing....just that, obviously, a certain TV series came to my mind....).

Quote

I'm also a bit iffed that despite defeating the Bos'Pachtux, I took rather heavy losses. Oddly enough, not when it comes to my corvettes... and my cruisers and destroyers essentially won the battle for me. But I lost almost all of my large battleships, the most expensive part of the fleet. Even more oddly, my brand new Pilum-class equipped with shield-piercing kinetic artillery that was supposed to be my ace against the Xo'Lukako... I lost all of them. To be fair, only two of them were actual Pilum-classes, the others were Nuurian battleships refitted with Pilum-class specs, but for the game it should make no difference. It seems my old Triarius-class battleships were somewhat more sturdy. Makes sense, since I've equipped them essentially with only cruiser weaponry, which allowed me to have spare power for more shields. But battleships playing cruiser doesn't really make sense. At least now I developped particle lances like the Xo'lukako use, so I refitted the Triarius-class to use that instead.

Well, I'm curious where this leads to... in any case, my Romans will do their best to keep this galaxy together.

Ok, looks like you know what you're doing in terms of weapons, so don't take into account what I said about reverse engineering :rolleyes: . However, you might invest more in developing new ways of driving faster.

Ok, and here the comments of a non-expert gamer  end for these days/week...... too busy too comment more. :P

(am I a gamer?....well....I used to be one!).

Keeeep going! And document your failed strategic points.

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14 hours ago, Meera of Tarth said:

Seriously, you should write the stories when you finish this game.  After all, the basis for humour is there with those "people" and their behaviours.

I have to admit, I am a bit inspired by all these other "After Action Reports" in the way I write what happens. Given how naturally the stories evolve from the gameplay in Paradox games, it is kinda a given that this writes itself.

14 hours ago, Meera of Tarth said:

I can't help but pity that poor system. Why didn't anyone else...give them food? Didn't they have other allies or anything to offer in exchange? Knowledge?

Mmh... they left the actual reason for the collapse of the First League out, so I can only speculate. It was a galaxy-wide political powerhouse with closely tied trade networks. When it collapsed, apparently all trade collapsed at once. There simply wasn't a feasable way to sustain this Coruscant-like cityplanet anymore.

14 hours ago, Meera of Tarth said:

And reverse engineering? Again? And from those, from previously defeated fleet?

Since you don't know Stellaris, I should better explain that part: You are right, when I say reverse-engineering, I using a science ship to study the debris field that appears after each battle. When you do that in Stellaris, you get a sizable boost for the research of the technology the enemy uses in his ships and you haven't developed yet yourself. In this case I studied enough debris to have had jump drives for 50% researched and then allocated a scientist to finish the work in the classical way. Even though I know that jump drives, a FTL propulsion that makes your ships go through an unknown dimension, has a possibility of angering the locals of aforementioned dimension.

But I have to. Warp Drives are reliable, but slow as hell. The wormhole drives of my allies have their downside as well. They are more like slingshots, in away, since you need to have a stationary stargate at the starting point and can only call back ships to other of your stargates in range. Therefore the Andigonj can throw their ships deep into enemy territory really fast and recall them just as fast, but they can't move freely within unknown star systems. This has screwed over the Varelviv in this war btw. Because they are too far away from the frontline they are forced to manually build a route of stargates through the Andigonj Empire in order to reach it. Even after three years of war they are only halfway there... making them effectively even slower than my Romans, only because the wormhole drives are so inflexible.

Funnily enough, they have totally revamped how space travel works in the more recent patches, all the options are only so painful because this is a game I started 5 months ago,

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Picked up Hollow Knight over the weekend on my switch for $15 and it's easily the best $15 video game I've every played.  The metroidvania style mixed with a dark souls 'esque story and progression and I'm just hooked.  About 10 hours into it and I think I still got at least 20-30 more given some of the progression maps I've looked at.  Super frustrating at times, but those are the games that draw me in.

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45 minutes ago, Toth said:

I have to admit, I am a bit inspired by all these other "After Action Reports" in the way I write what happens. Given how naturally the stories evolve from the gameplay in Paradox games, it is kinda a given that this writes itself.

So then it's as I suspected. From the start the game has lots of possibilities to offer sidesplitting stories based on itself. And I still think they'd be worth reading if properly narrated. Or at least that's the effect it has on me.

Quote

Since you don't know Stellaris, I should better explain that part: You are right, when I say reverse-engineering, I using a science ship to study the debris field that appears after each battle. When you do that in Stellaris, you get a sizable boost for the research of the technology the enemy uses in his ships and you haven't developed yet yourself. In this case I studied enough debris to have had jump drives for 50% researched and then allocated a scientist to finish the work in the classical way. Even though I know that jump drives, a FTL propulsion that makes your ships go through an unknown dimension, has a possibility of angering the locals of aforementioned dimension.

Not a gamer, but I also suspected it was the case more or less, thanks for explaining it more thoroughly, though!

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But I have to. Warp Drives are reliable, but slow as hell. The wormhole drives of my allies have their downside as well. They are more like slingshots, in away, since you need to have a stationary stargate at the starting point and can only call back ships to other of your stargates in range. Therefore the Andigonj can throw their ships deep into enemy territory really fast and recall them just as fast, but they can't move freely within unknown star systems. This has screwed over the Varelviv in this war btw. Because they are too far away from the frontline they are forced to manually build a route of stargates through the Andigonj Empire in order to reach it. Even after three years of war they are only halfway there... making them effectively even slower than my Romans, only because the wormhole drives are so inflexible.

Funnily enough, they have totally revamped how space travel works in the more recent patches, all the options are only so painful because this is a game I started 5 months ago,

bah, then it was just a cool name, but not the panacea I expected it to be! :P

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4 hours ago, aceluby said:

Picked up Hollow Knight over the weekend on my switch for $15 and it's easily the best $15 video game I've every played.  The metroidvania style mixed with a dark souls 'esque story and progression and I'm just hooked.  About 10 hours into it and I think I still got at least 20-30 more given some of the progression maps I've looked at.  Super frustrating at times, but those are the games that draw me in.

It really is great. I never finished it on PC but have put 54 hours into the switch version since it came out. (though some of that may have been me wandering off I'm not sure if it counts when you're paused.) I must be nearing the end but I still haven't fought any of the dreamers or found how to activate the DLC that comes with the Switch version. 

My only complaint is that at this point I think I've bought everything and have no use for all this geo I'm accumulating. Unless I missed a vendor. 

On 7/1/2018 at 1:52 PM, Toth said:

Never again shall they poison the galaxy with their sinister plots of neutrality!

Made me think of Futurama. "At least with enemies you know where you stand!" "If I don't make it, tell my wife 'hello.'" I need to play another round of Stellaris one of these days. I really liked the changes to FTL travel and was doing pretty well. But then some weird scourge came and ate everybody :( 

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20 hours ago, RumHam said:

Made me think of Futurama. "At least with enemies you know where you stand!" "If I don't make it, tell my wife 'hello.'" I need to play another round of Stellaris one of these days. I really liked the changes to FTL travel and was doing pretty well. But then some weird scourge came and ate everybody :( 

That was the idea! :P I just had to paraphrase Zapp Brannigan when I noticed that I ended up in a war against reptilian Gandhi. And I'd hope the scourge shows up soon. Then at least the awakened empire in my galaxy had something better to do than kicking around the younger races. Because that's what was happening yesterday evening:

While I was mopping up the last pockets of Bos'Pachtux resistance, the Xo'Lokaku Regulators made another go at subjugating the Varelviv, obviously dragging me into the fight. Me who had just lost most of his battleships in this war and was just about to replace them. Instead, after the Andigonj did the logical thing and made peace, I pulled back my fleet to the Nuurian homeworld for a major refit including new torpedoes, new flak and of course jump drives. Picking up new ships at Terra on the way, I then moved the fleet to my border systems to the Varelviv where I had already ordered even more ships to be build... and yet my fleet is now so fast it arrived there just as the first corvettes launched. With that... I had a fleet strength of 71k. Which is less than what I had just after I integrated the Nuurian Confederacy and added their 26k fleet to my own. Especially when I realized that the Varelviv fleet was already gone... and a single freakish 300k doomstack of the Xo'Lukako was pummeling its leftovers.

The Xo'Lukako Regulators already had a 20% warscore and the list of events only consisted of crushing defeats. I needed to do something fast to show my federation buddies that it is possible to kill those bastards. Also: I have to reverse engineer their technology asap in order to even the playing field. So I took my fleet and launched a raid on one of the systems the Xo'Lukako had annexed in their previous conflict with the Varelviv. It was now guarded by a scary looking fortress station of 20k strength. With my entire fleet it took ages to pummel it down, but my actual losses were few and it felt satisfying to see that I actually managed to decrease the warscore with this action. But for some reason, the fortress station didn't leave a debris field, making it seem a bit of a pointless effort. Even worse, while the battle was raging the Varelviv informed me that the 300k doomstack had broken off their pursuit and headed for my fleet. With most of my corvettes being heavily damaged from soaking up the shots of the fortress defense, I made a dash for the border of the system to jump back to safety... too bad that in this moment the Xo'Lukako jumped in, caught up with my fleet and engaged them while they were still preparing the jump drive. Damn it!

... with that, I changed my plan. Survival was the main priority, but I had to take out a few Xo'Lokaku for my science ship that waited in a neighboring system. I engaged them in battle, retreating just as the cruisers started engaging. Initially I was confident, because even though my already damaged corvettes took heavily losses, it looked like I shaved off an entire row of escorts from them... but when the battle stats came up, my heart plummeted. I destroyed 4! Just freaking 4 ships... I lost about 70...

My science ship jumped in right after the Xo'Lukako left to go after the Varelviv again. Even the debris field was not quite what I had hoped for. I wanted to copy their guns, but the disruptors used by their escorts were not very spectacular. The only valuable pieces were their armor and their sentient ship AI. I'm now researching both of them (knowing fully well that sentient AI might trigger a robot uprising), but still am quite shell-shocked about how ineffective my fleet was. Of course, they were sniping only my already beat up corvettes, but it was still heart-breaking to watch. I will have to take this risk just to increase their evasion ratio.

In any case, now I see three options:

#1: I fall back to my territory... and abandon the Varelviv. I'm going to preserve the ships still left to me and focus on further strengthening my economy. Since the sector AI is stupid and builds mostly farms despite being told otherwise I still have a ridiculous food surplus. Right now I'm selling it in exchange for minerals to my neighbors, but I would be better off just replacing the farms with mines, which of course is expensive. I also still want to change around my core sectors a bit, something that would likely decrease my income for a bit (right now I'm making 800 minerals per month and it is still absolutely not enough...).

#2: I fall back to my territory... and prepare for another suicide attack. I build up as many ships in as short a time as possible, then, upgrade them with the copied armor and computer systems, just to make another go at the Xo'Lokaku before the Varelviv fold it. My only objective is to destroy a single of their battlecruisers, hoping that it has better technology to salvage. This will likely cost me almost my entire fleet though... and even then, my chances of actually taking one down are absurdly low.

#3: I fall back to my territory... and prepare to defend myself there. I will build up my fleet, upgrade it, but not go for a desperation attack. Even after the Varelviv get turned into a satellite and have to leave my federation, there still will be a 10 year truce which would allow me to focus on both my fleet and my economy. I have to prepare for the long game, without wasting my resources at hand at an attack that will likely fail anyway.

Any suggestions from the other Stellaris players here?

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I’ve recently finished my first play through of Vampyr on PS4, quite an interesting game premise with lots of morality based choices, basically you grow much more powerful if you eat all the NPCs instead of helping cure them of ailments(you used to be a doctor) and doing their side quests.

I went for eating most of them and made myself really powerful towards the end, if I get time, maybe I will do any other playthrough where I’m good so don’t get the evil ending, ah who am I kidding I loved the evil ending :D

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Somebody modded the Warhammer and Marauder into Battletech, which is great. Basically the only iconic 'mechs missing from my game now are the Archer, Crusader, Phoenix Hawk, Wasp and Stinger. And the Rifleman, I guess, but the redesigned Jagermech fills that niche quite nicely.

Anyway, after modding these two in I continued the campaign I'd started with a lance of light 'mechs, which hadn't turned out that much more difficult, but virtually every 'mech I salvaged was useful, which was cool. First mission after adding the Marauder one showed up together with a Catapult, Jagermech and Shadowhawk. Was a tough fight against my Firestarter, Centurion and two Shadowhawks, but I came out of it with a Marauder. So full of confidence I picked my new 'mech, the Firestarter, Centurion and one Shadowhawk for the next mission, which was a lengthy escort during which I had to fight a Quickdraw, a couple of Wolverines, 2-3 Shadow Hawks, a Vindicator, Kintaro, Griffin, Hunchback (4G variety), a Manticore tank and another freaking Marauder. That may have been the toughest mission the game has ever thrown at me (not counting the couple of times I withdrew because the OpFor just looked way beyond my lance) and at the end I only had the Marauder (which had run out of ammo for its AC/5) and the Shadowhawk (which only had one leg and one lousy medium laser left) to take on the enemy Marauder. Now most of my 'mechwarriors are out of action for several months and it took me a whole month just to get 3 'mechs back into fighting shape so I could go make some money to stave off bankruptcy. I really love this game.

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8 minutes ago, Jon AS said:

Somebody modded the Warhammer and Marauder into Battletech, which is great. Basically the only iconic 'mechs missing from my game now are the Archer, Crusader, Phoenix Hawk, Wasp and Stinger. And the Rifleman, I guess, but the redesigned Jagermech fills that niche quite nicely.

Anyway, after modding these two in I continued the campaign I'd started with a lance of light 'mechs, which hadn't turned out that much more difficult, but virtually every 'mech I salvaged was useful, which was cool. First mission after adding the Marauder one showed up together with a Catapult, Jagermech and Shadowhawk. Was a tough fight against my Firestarter, Centurion and two Shadowhawks, but I came out of it with a Marauder. So full of confidence I picked my new 'mech, the Firestarter, Centurion and one Shadowhawk for the next mission, which was a lengthy escort during which I had to fight a Quickdraw, a couple of Wolverines, 2-3 Shadow Hawks, a Vindicator, Kintaro, Griffin, Hunchback (4G variety), a Manticore tank and another freaking Marauder. That may have been the toughest mission the game has ever thrown at me (not counting the couple of times I withdrew because the OpFor just looked way beyond my lance) and at the end I only had the Marauder (which had run out of ammo for its AC/5) and the Shadowhawk (which only had one leg and one lousy medium laser left) to take on the enemy Marauder. Now most of my 'mechwarriors are out of action for several months and it took me a whole month just to get 3 'mechs back into fighting shape so I could go make some money to stave off bankruptcy. I really love this game.

Started a new campaign right before going on vacation for the 4th. Now I'm scuba diving with the Dolphins and I can't stop thinking about how poorly equipped my 2nd SHADOWHAWK and VINDICATOR are bit I can't afford to take them out of service for refit if they're not damaged.

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On 7/1/2018 at 8:11 AM, Werthead said:

Age of Empires III was very odd. Much smaller-scale game than AoE1 and 2, that I recall. I'd recommend Age of Mythology - which is essentially Age of Empires but with mythological units, gods, magic etc - over AoE 3, it's an excellent game.

Actually, I'm going to go and re-buy it. It's a fiver in the Steam sale with a brand-new expansion, which should be interesting.

Yes, I played the heck out of AoM back in the day too. Main reason I got AoE III now was because I've never played it.

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