Video Games: Wallets Getting Steamed

[Fez]

You dont need to fight them. Just patrol your coast with enough ships to insure your tariff efficiency is at 100% and you have a patrol through the coastal waterways every 30 days.

Commissioning privateers on your enemies is very efficient when you want to reduce their income in preparation for going to war.

The problem is that I'm playing Norway and I have roughly 20 coastal regions and can only support 13 ships.

[Kouran]

The problem is that I'm playing Norway and I have roughly 20 coastal regions and can only support 13 ships.

You can patrol 20 costal areas with 13 ships. Create a couple of fleets of 3-5 ships and base them roughly equidistant from each other. Then select a fleet and order it to move to where the next fleet is stationed and then select patrol. The fleet will now leave port and patrol to the next port and then return to its home port until you order it to do otherwise.

Now be aware for the first little but while you are busting the pirates you will need to pay attention to the strength of your fleets ships. Once the pirates are gone you can keep them gone by continuing the patrols.

Alternatively you can build over your support limit to increase your available patrol force, but the cost scales rapidly. You can always mint and get a little inflation in the short term to keep the pirates down to fund your fleet. Always keep fleet support to max, you can cut back on the support of the army during peace just don't ever try that with your navy.

[Sad King Billy]

Considering you're norway: 99% of the time the sea zones to your south will be "patrolled" by other european nations, so don't worry about that. It's been a while since i played EU, but iirc if you hover over a seazone you'll see what ships last patrolled there to keep it safe. Don't bother with zones with a list of 3 or more fleets/ships (that aren't Norwegian, obv)

more generally (important for future colonisation), there are 2 ways to deal with pirates; the first is to have a ship in a port bordering your seazones. Expensive, and impractical; but very efficient in dealing with pirates.

The second is to create fleets. You see, ships patrolling don't actually need to be in the seazone. For each ship in your fleet, the "patrol range" of your fleet increases - basically, the more ships in a fleet, the wider the area that is considered patrolled. The distance that a single ship adds to a fleet is determined by naval tech, which also puts a hard cap per fleet (and the cap is less severe the better your tech). So: make a few fleets between 4-6 ships, and place them in a strategically placed port.

You should NOT have to set them on patrol routes, place them in ports and they'll be fine.

Note: this helps for preventing the spawning of NEW pirates. Pirates that already spawned will still have to be defeated the old-fashioned way.

[Slurms McKenzie]

I spent most of my time looting and crafting at the beginning, especially after clearing enough radio towers to get the shotgun. By the time I got bored of that, I was pretty overpowered and blitzkrieged through the rest of the game. That part was pretty fun, though other than that it was kind of forgettable. The Blood Dragon standalone expansion is hilarious and more fun. Dinosaurs roam the wild in that one.

I love your profile

[Clueless Northman]

You dont need to fight them. Just patrol your coast with enough ships to insure your tariff efficiency is at 100% and you have a patrol through the coastal waterways every 30 days.

That's 2 different things, actually.

Tariff efficiency means that you have to have a big or light ship for every single "overseas" province you own, to get 100% tariffs. Tooltip shows you actually how many ships you need.

Pirates appear in sea zones no other ship went through for the last 30 days, more or less. It means that as long as you don't dominate the Mediterranean, there'll be enough AI countries around and no pirates should appear there, for instance.

So, there are 2 ways of dealing with pirates: either you have one boat patrolling several coastal sea zones, or you put one boat in a harbour for every sea zone that borders your kingdom - which means you don't need a boat in every single harbour, since usually you have 2, and sometimes 3, harbours and provinces bordering a sea zone.

You don't even need to garrison the harbour with a big ship, a galley will be enough.

Though when you build a sizable colonial empire, you need a sizsable warship navy, meaning it's better to garrison harbours / sea zones with big or light ships, not with galleys or transports.

As far as I'm concerned, I prefer the "put a ship in the port and forget about it" option, because when I'm at war, the enemy will go after my patrols, and it's a pain in the ass to send each patrol to the safety of a harbour, and then to have to set up all the patrols again when peace comes...

[Werthead]

Project Eternity concept art and how it is translating into game screenshots. Mmm, isometric.

Development update on Torment: Tides of Numenera. Basically, they're gearing up as Wasteland 2 nears completion. However, T:ToN is not going to be quite as reactive as WL2 (i.e. some NPCs will be unkillable).

Existence of Left 4 Dead 3 and the Source 2 engine confirmed.

Company of Heroes 2 dropped for sale in Russia, because of complaints that CoH 2 is too biased against the Russians/insufficiently whitewashing of Russian war atrocities (delete as appropriate).

Civilisation Online is a thing, which is despair-inducing until you hear it's apparently inspired more by A Tale in the Desert or EVE than WoW. In particular, there is a huge emphasis on player cooperation (rather competition).

[Fez]

Civilisation Online is a thing, which is despair-inducing until you hear it's apparently inspired more by A Tale in the Desert or EVE than WoW. In particular, there is a huge emphasis on player cooperation (rather competition).

I... I don't know how I feel about this just yet.

[Poobah]

I think I'll stick to Civ 5.

[Slick Mongoose]

X-rebirth looks pretty awesome.

Edit: Although I hope the walking around bit isn't necessary. I don't play the X games to walk down a corridor.

[Stannis Eats No Peaches]

Civilisation Online is a thing, which is despair-inducing until you hear it's apparently inspired more by A Tale in the Desert or EVE than WoW. In particular, there is a huge emphasis on player cooperation (rather competition).

I...I don't...what? So are you all essentially all ants working towards a common goal?

[karaddin]

Civ online could be the best thing ever, or it could be a huge flop. I'll look forward to finding out either way.

[funkymonkey]

Europa Universalis IV playable demo is now out on Steam:

http://store.steampowered.com/app/236850/?snr=1_7_15__13

The demo features the tutorial and 4 playable factions

[TheEvilKing]

Project Eternity concept art and how it is translating into game screenshots. Mmm, isometric.

Development update on Torment: Tides of Numenera. Basically, they're gearing up as Wasteland 2 nears completion. However, T:ToN is not going to be quite as reactive as WL2 (i.e. some NPCs will be unkillable).

Existence of Left 4 Dead 3 and the Source 2 engine confirmed.

Company of Heroes 2 dropped for sale in Russia, because of complaints that CoH 2 is too biased against the Russians/insufficiently whitewashing of Russian war atrocities (delete as appropriate).

Civilisation Online is a thing, which is despair-inducing until you hear it's apparently inspired more by A Tale in the Desert or EVE than WoW. In particular, there is a huge emphasis on player cooperation (rather competition).

How much do RPS pay you for this? I got $5.00 just for quoting you.

[Werthead]

Bizarre.

Civilisation Online is going to be a South Korean-only release, initially.

Also,

Glorious X-Rebirth trailers.

How much do RPS pay you for this? I got $5.00 just for quoting you.

Ha. I just get most of my gaming news from RPS, since I game only on PC (very occasional and brief, guilt-laden dalliances on PS3 aside) and they're the best PC-only blog out there. Though Polygon has also done some excellent stuff as well recently.

[Werthead]

Saint's Row IV: The $1 Million Edition

For your $1 million, you get the game, a couple of cars, a holiday and a TRIP INTO SPACE. Plus a functional Dubstep Gun (though it only fires music, rather than blowing shit up with phat beats).

[KiDisaster]

Saint's Row IV: The $1 Million Edition

For your $1 million, you get the game, a couple of cars, a holiday and a TRIP INTO SPACE. Plus a functional Dubstep Gun (though it only fires music, rather than blowing shit up with phat beats).

Saw this on Reddit yesterday. Someone in the comments worked it out and supposedly if you bought all those items individually they'd end up costing between 650,000 to 800,000 dollars total depending on certain features on the cars and some other variables. Nice chunk of profit for Deep Silver there.

[Fez]

Saint's Row IV: The $1 Million Edition

For your $1 million, you get the game, a couple of cars, a holiday and a TRIP INTO SPACE. Plus a functional Dubstep Gun (though it only fires music, rather than blowing shit up with phat beats).

An over-the-top promotion for an over-the-top game. I approve.

[Knight of the Wineskin]

So how is the Saint's Row series, anyway? I've been debating whether to buy a current Humble Bundle package with games 2 and 3. Is there more to it than a Grand Theft Auto clone?

[andrew_]

So how is the Saint's Row series, anyway? I've been debating whether to buy a current Humble Bundle package with games 2 and 3. Is there more to it than a Grand Theft Auto clone?

Yes, its definitely got its own identity. The 2nd one was the best in the series, it provides a great mix of serious narrative with over the top set pieces, number 3 tends to lean towards the latter.

[Inigima]

So how is the Saint's Row series, anyway? I've been debating whether to buy a current Humble Bundle package with games 2 and 3. Is there more to it than a Grand Theft Auto clone?

It's kind of like GTA except it's fun. Saints Row 3 was the most fun I had with any game the year it came out. It is ridiculous and over the top and it knows it. Pick it up. Also, I hate GTA games.