Video Games - Legendary Edition

[A True Kaniggit]

19 minutes ago, RumHam said:

Yesterday. Apparently you can be the endgame crisis now. I haven't gotten that far yet. 

Yeah. I saw that in the development diaries. Which is why the galaxy shall tremble.

 

But I don't want to start until at least the worst kinks have been worked out.

My mechs will cleanse the universe of organics.

[Fez]

I thought about starting a new game of Stellaris, first one in about 6 months, but then I read about the changes to population growth and noped the fuck out of there. Sounds like a terrible band-aid to deal with the lag issue that breaks just about every system in the game.

So instead I started by first game of CK3 in a while, so far I united the lowlands under the Kingdom of Frisia. And there's been absolutely no murder or incest, just good old fashioned war.

I'm also still playing Trails of Cold Steel 2; gods that game is anime as fuck.

[Rhom]

On 3/21/2021 at 3:20 AM, Ramsay B. said:

I’m glad more people are playing and enjoying GoT.

@Tywin et al.

  Hide contents

Did you kill the uncle or spare him? 

 

 

On 3/21/2021 at 5:41 AM, Tywin et al. said:

 

  Hide contents

Killed him. I was surprised you fight him immediately after the Khan. The ending kind came as a surprise, just like with GTA5.

 

I finished the game tonight finally.  Wound up with all the Haiku/Hot Springs/Bamboo Stands/Vanity gear.

I only got all the vanity gear because I was using the guiding wind thinking it would help me find the last Haiku... only to discover that it was automatically part of the last mission!  

Spoiler

I struggled to decide what to do with the Uncle before I finally spared him.  Loved the line: “I have no honor, but I will not kill my family.”

Such a great game.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

8 hours ago, Rhom said:

 

I finished the game tonight finally.  Wound up with all the Haiku/Hot Springs/Bamboo Stands/Vanity gear.

I only got all the vanity gear because I was using the guiding wind thinking it would help me find the last Haiku... only to discover that it was automatically part of the last mission!  

  Hide contents

I struggled to decide what to do with the Uncle before I finally spared him.  Loved the line: “I have no honor, but I will not kill my family.”

Such a great game.

 

Spoiler

I killed his bitch ass.

 

[Werthead]

Alas, the saga of Emperor Gigaknight Excelsior in Crusader Kings 3 has ended. Dying at the age of 129, after 114 years on the throne (having married his own great-granddaughter as his final wife), he was succeeded by his son Emperor LinkedIn. However, LinkedIn has eleven brothers and sisters now scheming for supremacy, consisting of Boastus, Bum Eggs, Horse Boy, Wretch Knight, Bloodmaster, Sausage & Chips, Beast Knight, Dukeroonie, Grinchard, Chimpo and, of course, Hustlers Microwaveable Burger.

Quote

It was… a trip. Gigaknight was, quite simply, a conquest machine. Any battle involving him was, by definition, one-sided: he waded around Christendom in a permanent re-enactment of that bit from the start of Lord Of The Rings, where Sauron won’t stop monstering people with his huge spiky hammer. He tended to start wars in batches of five or six, so as to save time, and on one occasion even defeated the Faroe Islands singlehandedly, after the rest of his army starved to death during the boat crossing from Andalusia. What’s more, thanks to Gigaknight’s unparalleled genius, every territory he conquered was transformed into an economic powerhouse at breakneck speed, packed to the brim with coin-belching temples, castles, and cities teeming with man-fuel for the furnace of his ambition. And he did this all, while simultaneously dragging his empire to the cusp of the high medieval period in the space of a hundred years, and casually replacing Catholicism with the worship of the ancient Greek gods.

 

[RumHam]

11 hours ago, Fez said:

I thought about starting a new game of Stellaris, first one in about 6 months, but then I read about the changes to population growth and noped the fuck out of there. Sounds like a terrible band-aid to deal with the lag issue that breaks just about every system in the game.

Oh wow I just read about that after seeing your post.  I haven't gotten far along enough that I've noticed a difference but man people are not happy. Hopefully they'll patch it soon. 

Is it really the pops that cause the lag? I would expect them to basically just be a number for each planet. or a list numbers indicating what jobs they all have. I don't know how the game is coded though. My attempt at making one of those games did not get very far.

I also don't remember what the controls were so if you're going to try to play that, good luck! I know a borg cube spawns in the delta quadrant on it's way to earth when the game loads. 

Edit: found the controls! It's still not finished though but as I recall it is possible to befriend enough of the other civilizations before the cube gets there and destroy it before it assimilates earth. I haven't touched this thing since 2014 so it's all fuzzy. 

SPACE: Set game speed to 0
main.js:1156 ESC: Evacuate a ship or back out of a menu.
main.js:1156 HOME: Jump to homeworld
main.js:1156 END: Jump to Bord cube
main.js:1156 UP: Manual Control: Increase Speed.  Otherwise moves the camera
main.js:1156 RIGHT: Manual Control: Turn Speed.  Otherwise moves the camera
main.js:1156 DOWN: Manual Control: Decrese Speed.  Otherwise moves the camera
main.js:1156 LEFT: Manual Control: Turns ship.  Otherwise moves the camera
main.js:1156 TAB: Cycle through your ships
main.js:1156 SHIFT: Hold to increase camera pan speed
main.js:1156 P: Toggle Planets.  this might not do anything anymore.
main.js:1156 U: Manually fire phasers
main.js:1156 B: Deploy tractor beam
main.js:1156 N: Target tractor beam
main.js:1156 I: Transporter
main.js:1156 A: Target transporter
main.js:1156 K: dunno
main.js:1156 O: Increase gamespeed
main.js:1156 L: Decrease gamespeed
main.js:1156 G: 
main.js:1156 H: You just pressed it.
main.js:1156 M: Deploy Mine
main.js:1156 C: Display crew pool
main.js:1156 DEL: Target weapons
main.js:1156 J: Order a fleet to attack*
main.js:1156 RETURN: Call your allies to defend Earth
main.js:1156 Z: Colonize?
main.js:1156 0: Set the gamespeed to maximum
main.js:1156 1: Display debug info
main.js:1156 2: Toggle display of ship info panel
main.js:1156 3: Toggle AI control of player Civilization
main.js:1156 4: Mute / unmute
main.js:1156 5: Cycle through civilizations on civilzation screen
main.js:1156 6: Display civilization screen
main.js:1156 7: Toggle selected ship's shields, if availible
main.js:1156 8: Display the map
main.js:1156 9: Clear the map trails
main.js:1156 SPACE: Set game speed to 0
main.js:1156 ESC: Evacuate a ship or back out of a menu.
main.js:1156 HOME: Jump to homeworld
main.js:1156 END: Jump to Bord cube
main.js:1156 UP: Manual Control: Increase Speed.  Otherwise moves the camera
main.js:1156 RIGHT: Manual Control: Turn Speed.  Otherwise moves the camera
main.js:1156 DOWN: Manual Control: Decrese Speed.  Otherwise moves the camera
main.js:1156 LEFT: Manual Control: Turns ship.  Otherwise moves the camera
main.js:1156 TAB: Cycle through your ships
main.js:1156 SHIFT: Hold to increase camera pan speed
main.js:1156 P: Toggle Planets.  this might not do anything anymore.
main.js:1156 U: Manually fire phasers
main.js:1156 B: Deploy tractor beam
main.js:1156 N: Target tractor beam
main.js:1156 I: Transporter
main.js:1156 A: Target transporter
main.js:1156 K: dunno
main.js:1156 O: Increase gamespeed
main.js:1156 L: Decrease gamespeed
main.js:1156 G: 
main.js:1156 H: You just pressed it.
main.js:1156 M: Deploy Mine
main.js:1156 C: Display crew pool
main.js:1156 DEL: Target weapons
main.js:1156 J: Order a fleet to attack*
main.js:1156 RETURN: Call your allies to defend Earth
main.js:1156 Z: Colonize?
main.js:1156 0: Set the gamespeed to maximum
main.js:1156 1: Display debug info
main.js:1156 2: Toggle display of ship info panel
main.js:1156 3: Toggle AI control of player Civilization
main.js:1156 4: Mute / unmute
main.js:1156 5: Cycle through civilizations on civilzation screen
main.js:1156 6: Display civilization screen
main.js:1156 7: Toggle selected ship's shields, if availible
main.js:1156 8: Display the map
main.js:1156 9: Clear the map trails

[Fez]

1 hour ago, RumHam said:

Oh wow I just read about that after seeing your post.  I haven't gotten far along enough that I've noticed a difference but man people are not happy. Hopefully they'll patch it soon. 

Is it really the pops that cause the lag? I would expect them to basically just be a number for each planet. or a list numbers indicating what jobs they all have. I don't know how the game is coded though. My attempt at making one of those games did not get very far.

My understanding is yes, it's the populations. The problem is that the way the game works, each population is a independent unit, with a huge number of variables attached to it: all the different variables that impact happiness, growth, upkeep costs, ethics attraction, migration odds, and so on each need to be calculated for each unit of population for each month. I don't know exactly how many variables there are, but considering how many mechanics in the game there are, I wouldn't be surprised if its in the thousands.

Its no big deal early on, but later in the game where there's thousands, or even tens of thousands (in a huge map) of population units, that means there's likely millions of variables that need to be calculated each month.

Making the matter worse, there's some underlying flaw in the game engine that requires almost all processing to go through a single CPU core. It's a bottleneck that you can't overcome with a more powerful PC.

Now my personal preference would be to change the population system so that these things are calculated at a higher level (even just per species per population would help). It means some nuance would be lost, you could no longer have things like specific loyalist vs. rebel populations on a planet; but the current change means the game is losing its ability to be a Sci-Fi epic at all.

[Luzifer's right hand]

2 hours ago, Fez said:

My understanding is yes, it's the populations. The problem is that the way the game works, each population is a independent unit, with a huge number of variables attached to it: all the different variables that impact happiness, growth, upkeep costs, ethics attraction, migration odds, and so on each need to be calculated for each unit of population for each month. I don't know exactly how many variables there are, but considering how many mechanics in the game there are, I wouldn't be surprised if its in the thousands.

Its no big deal early on, but later in the game where there's thousands, or even tens of thousands (in a huge map) of population units, that means there's likely millions of variables that need to be calculated each month.

Making the matter worse, there's some underlying flaw in the game engine that requires almost all processing to go through a single CPU core. It's a bottleneck that you can't overcome with a more powerful PC.

Now my personal preference would be to change the population system so that these things are calculated at a higher level (even just per species per population would help). It means some nuance would be lost, you could no longer have things like specific loyalist vs. rebel populations on a planet; but the current change means the game is losing its ability to be a Sci-Fi epic at all.

I remember hitting single digit FPS late game with my gaming laptop... It did run better one the PC I got later but that was an overclocked 7700k that hit 4.8 ghz. Single cores of modern high end CPUs are not much faster. 

It was my favorite game by far until the patched the fun out of it for me and the AI got worse with every patch(well the mechanics got more and more complicated and the AI did not improve). 

Edit: I am tempted to install it with an older patch to see how well it runs on my new PC. I think 1.9.1 was the sweet spot for me. 

 

[Toth]

2 hours ago, Fez said:

Its no big deal early on, but later in the game where there's thousands, or even tens of thousands (in a huge map) of population units, that means there's likely millions of variables that need to be calculated each month.

Making the matter worse, there's some underlying flaw in the game engine that requires almost all processing to go through a single CPU core. It's a bottleneck that you can't overcome with a more powerful PC.

Okay, if that's the problem, how the hell did they manage the pops in Victoria II? There were thousands upon thousands upon thousands of pops already existing at the beginning of the game and it had to calculate their political leanings, culture, chance to emigrate, chance to rebel, their growth, their replenishment of attached troops... honestly I was and still am baffled how smoothly the game manages to simulate all that.

How come Stellaris has problems doing the same?

[Luzifer's right hand]

16 minutes ago, Toth said:

Okay, if that's the problem, how the hell did they manage the pops in Victoria II? There were thousands upon thousands upon thousands of pops already existing at the beginning of the game and it had to calculate their political leanings, culture, chance to emigrate, chance to rebel, their growth, their replenishment of attached troops... honestly I was and still am baffled how smoothly the game manages to simulate all that.

How come Stellaris has problems doing the same?

Stellaris has individual "pops" (representing an unknown number of lore pops a billion is the usually guess). Each could be different from the next with ethos and traits and stuff was calculated for each individual pop. In other Paradox games pops are just numbers and the cpu time needed for a subpopulation with 1k or 1000k is the same in them afaik. Hyperlane pathing is also a nightmare afaik. The game ran much smother in warp only games before they patched the other FTL types out. 

[Toth]

3 minutes ago, Luzifer's right hand said:

Stellaris has individual "pops" (representing an unknown number of lore pops a billion is the usually guess). Each could be different from the next with ethos and traits and stuff was calculated for each individual pop.

That sounds about the same as in Victoria:

https://lparchive.org/Victoria-II/Update 10/4-v2game_2013-08-02_12-48-49-00.png

All these calculations needed to be done there as well.

[Luzifer's right hand]

Just now, Toth said:

That sounds about the same as in Victoria:

https://lparchive.org/Victoria-II/Update 10/4-v2game_2013-08-02_12-48-49-00.png

All these calculations needed to be done there as well.

But far less complicated than Victoria afaik. Whatever the problem is it runs like shit with thousands of pops and things improved of you cleansed all organics from a galaxy as a machine empire for example even if the actually number of pops in a galaxy increased. 

Before the FTL change the game also ran smoother once every empire switched to old style jump drives which had even simpler pathing than warp. 

[Fez]

22 minutes ago, Toth said:

That sounds about the same as in Victoria:

https://lparchive.org/Victoria-II/Update 10/4-v2game_2013-08-02_12-48-49-00.png

All these calculations needed to be done there as well.

I've only played a bit of Vicky 2, but my understanding is that there are far fewer variables that need to be calculated on a per pop unit basis. It's a more complicated game, but not everything is tied directly to the populations. Whereas in Stellaris, everything except your starbases and ships are tied to populations. And its not just the bigger things like upkeep, every single population every single month needs to be checked for rarer things like: is it being purged; if yes, how fast is it being purged; what variables are effecting the rate of the purge; and on and on. There's just a ton of checks that need to happen, and it gets bad by late game.

[Toth]

I get that, but Victoria 2 had these checks as well. Because all these variables the pops had could change any day with a certain probability. Pops could grow or shrink, they could change their job, culture, religion, political issues and votes, they could emigrate to a different county, they had to fulfill their needs by buying wares according to their strata, their unrest and consciousness as well as their literacy needed to be recalculated. And the game needed to do that every day for all provinces of Earth with dozens of pops in each.

I should note that I played both extensively... Victoria's pops always felt MASSIVELY more dynamic than the pops in Stellaris ever did.

[Poobah]

All this Stellaris talk is kinda making me want to play it again but urgh it's also really not if you know what I mean? The complete dismantling and remaking of all the major game systems left me with quite a bitter taste in my mouth. I dunno if it's a better game now in terms of how the pops and economy work (seems to be making a lot of lag though!) but it's not the game I a) learned to play & b) very much enjoyed.

And I know I can set it to whatever version through steam but those old versions lack new features and mod support so that's a bit of a cop out answer really.

[mcbigski]

Looks like while they reduces the pop growth, they also increased the bonuses from the tech tree and added some new ones to compensate.  

Not sure yet how the new industrial districts will work out but having the various forge buildings have a planetwide bonus with a one per planet limit seems like less micro which is good.

[Werthead]

I enjoyed this Marxist analysis of Dragon Age II:

Quote

DA2 is an interesting marxist take on the genre. The game holds to the "unstoppable forces" view of history, rather than "great men". You are swept along in the waves of history, your power is enough to keep you afloat, and those of your companions that you choose to, but you can not hold back the waves, caused by inherent contradictions and instability in the structure of the world you are in:

- The conflict between the pure communist Qun, and the feudal/ capitalist Free Marches cannot be avoided by liberal "lets all get along" platitudes. The two systems cannot co-exist. Seeing their compliant and subjugated labour force flock to the Qun, the Kirkwall power structure must act. The Arishok recognises this, and launches a pre-emptive revolutionary uprising.

- The conflict between the Templar, and the Circle. Again whatever you believe or try to do, conflict is utterly inevitable. Sure, one could argue that Meredith/ Anders are taking a "great man" role, but Anders himself says that this is something he is just speeding up, and the views of Meredith are the views of the Templars, taken to their logical end. You learn that there have been 17 annulments so far, it is a feature, not a bug. The power, and proneness to possession, of mages means the Circle probably is the best middle ground between killing all mages as soon as they emerge, or Tevinter. But is an unstable equilibrium, that is subject to frequent upset. You just happen to be around when one happens...

Interesting contrast to most RPG's, where you are given great man status to fundamentally change the world, here, well, you get to choose who lives/ dies/ succeeds in your circle, but beyond that you are sound and fury, signifying nothing.

 

[Werthead]

Finished MechWarrior 5. Huge amount of fun (with the mods) and a really compelling, great game experience. I'd hesitate to recommend it without mods - which raises the question of how the Xbox One/X version is going to play and review - but with them, it sings.

I've actually been inspired to replay BattleTech (the game's slightly older, turn-based cousin), since I never got around to playing it with the DLC before (I did a couple of flashpoints but never bothered with urban warfare or the heavy metal stuff).

[Martell Spy]

8 hours ago, Werthead said:

Finished MechWarrior 5. Huge amount of fun (with the mods) and a really compelling, great game experience. I'd hesitate to recommend it without mods - which raises the question of how the Xbox One/X version is going to play and review - but with them, it sings.

I've actually been inspired to replay BattleTech (the game's slightly older, turn-based cousin), since I never got around to playing it with the DLC before (I did a couple of flashpoints but never bothered with urban warfare or the heavy metal stuff).

I happen to be playing Battletech. I beat it when it was new a couple times and haven't touched it since. They created a free career mode update since. I went back to the game andI've been playing a ton of that lately. It's pretty addictive. The scoring system is pretty crappy, but you can ignore that. (They for example score heavily based on how many systems/regions you travelled to, seems kind of dumb to me as it has little to do with how good of a mercenary commander you are)

 

I haven't bought any of the DLC at all. I'm really not sure they are necessary. Really loving the career mode though, even more than the main campaign.

[Werthead]

10 hours ago, Martell Spy said:

I haven't bought any of the DLC at all. I'm really not sure they are necessary. Really loving the career mode though, even more than the main campaign.

They do seem to be pretty good. Urban Combat adds varied battlegrounds, Flashpoints adds more multi-mission story-esque campaigns and Heavy Metal adds a bunch more iconic mechs to the game (the Annihilator and Rifleman, which are both in MW5 as default mechs) plus a new story campaign. I think the QOL improvements they added (like being able to hit enemy units with fire that misses the main target) were patched in for free though.