JedocIn the scupperswith the staggers and jagsRegistered Userregular
edited November 2020
My Steam awards this year: I spent the whole time playing Subnautica, Battletech, Into the Breach, Stardew Valley, and Slay the Spire, and fuck you for expecting me to branch out and try something risky in these, the only safe minutes I have available in this radioactive ash heap of a year.
Edit: that was meant to be a rough chuckle, but it came out significantly too rough especially for a contextless top of the page post. I'm not actually mad at folks picking their best games of the year, I just didn't play too many new titles this year.
The Steam awards are dumb. (They were dumb when you could pick any game no matter when it came out, and they're dumb now with "You can only pick a game once.")
The Keighley's feel like they have an active disdain for the awards they give out. Like it's a huge ask for them to stop showing trailers for five minutes so they can talk about who won the zillion categories they made and clearly don't care about enough to dedicate a show to.
I remember I went to a talk that Geoff had at PAX and he was talking about how they had "more" to show this year than they had in the past, but also they wanted to dedicate more time to the awards. So I just flat out asked him if the show was going to be longer because of it. He didn't really give a direct answer IIRC, but spoiler alert: it wasn't, and the awards got the shaft again.
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Librarian's ghostLibrarian, Ghostbuster, and TimSporkRegistered Userregular
I really enjoyed G String and i think it is really innovative
i guess it's mostly really innovative for a half life 2 mod? like, so much of what i like about it is how it riffs on that design and plays off that kinda design
I really want to play Alyx but also don't want to pay $1060 to play Alyx.
You can get away with playing it on a much cheaper headset, but that's still a big investment so I empathize.
The Quest 2 is the cheapest and has a higher resolution than the index. The FOV is larger on index but for like a 1/3rd the price and gaining complete wireless capability it is awesome.
I mean you gotta sell yourself to Facebook, but I’ve sold myself to much worse so was easy for me.
The only thing I like about game of the year time is it lets me think back about the year and what all i've played, then putting those feelings into words is a nice exercise. The ordered list is basically secondary. Then once I have it all down it's nice having a record of previous years so I can go back and remember what I thought about various things.
As of this moment my game of the year is going to be AC Valhalla or V:TM Night Road. Unless Cyberpunk is a flaming dumpster fire it'll probably show up on the list as well. It's been a slow year for me and current-year releases.
Putting down all the Ubisoft and CDPR shit that must necessarily be put in an asterisk for those games will be interesting.
StraightziHere we may reign secure, and in my choice,To reign is worth ambition though in HellRegistered Userregular
I've gotten one of the rarer achievements in Crusader Kings 3, in a moment that made me legitimately laugh out loud when it happened.
So background, I've been working on trying to unite all of Africa under a single imperial banner (starting as Daurama Daura in 867, a semi-mythical African queen) - I don't think I'm going to pull it off at this point, as it's nearly 1400 and there are still a couple of big power players that will take some significant effort to chip into.
The theme for this dynasty has been a lot of selective breeding, so most of my characters have been Beautiful Genius Amazons, and a select few have had some minor inbreeding issues. It's been working pretty well, and the character in question for this story was a woman known as The Blood Mother, due to the strength of the bloodline. She was, at the point that this happened, about sixty years old, and while she had those three good congenital traits, she also had a bad one that cropped up later in life - she was a lunatic.
Anyways, what happens is I get a very standard diplomacy event - you need to get a new outfit. You can spend a lot of money in order to get some prestige boosts, you can attempt a test to try and wear local/traditional clothing and get a popular opinion boost, or you can say that what you have is good enough for a quick dose of piety. If you've played the game a bit, you probably know the event that I'm talking about - it's very one of those ones that you get so regularly that you don't need to read anymore and can just automatically click your preferred choice.
But this time, I got a fourth option, one unlocked because I had two traits - beautiful and lunatic. I got the option to say that I didn't need clothes at all, and my character became a nudist for the rest of her life.
And that's when the The Emperor's New Clothes achievement popped.
I think the UNN Ramsey Recruitment Centre is around here somewhere.
I feel like putting references to other, VASTLY SUPERIOR games about flying around in space in your own busted-arse game about flying around in space that fucking sucks out loud on multiple levels and in many special and unique ways is a bad idea?
Why remind people of games they would almost certainly much rather be playing inside your broken shitheap of an "experience"?
I'm not alone in this, right?
You know the game FTL didn't come up with the term FTL, right?
They didn't?!?
I am shocked, SHOCKED at this devastating revelation!
Only just noticed that one sentence quote between Brolo's and yours. What's the UNN Ramsey a reference to?
cB557 on
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BroloBroseidonLord of the BroceanRegistered Userregular
I think the UNN Ramsey Recruitment Centre is around here somewhere.
I feel like putting references to other, VASTLY SUPERIOR games about flying around in space in your own busted-arse game about flying around in space that fucking sucks out loud on multiple levels and in many special and unique ways is a bad idea?
Why remind people of games they would almost certainly much rather be playing inside your broken shitheap of an "experience"?
I'm not alone in this, right?
You know the game FTL didn't come up with the term FTL, right?
They didn't?!?
I am shocked, SHOCKED at this devastating revelation!
Only just noticed that one sentence quote between Brolo's and yours. What's the UNN Ramsey a reference to?
My Steam awards this year: I spent the whole time playing Subnautica, Battletech, Into the Breach, Stardew Valley, and Slay the Spire, and fuck you for expecting me to branch out and try something risky in these, the only safe minutes I have available in this radioactive ash heap of a year.
Edit: that was meant to be a rough chuckle, but it came out significantly too rough especially for a contextless top of the page post. I'm not actually mad at folks picking their best games of the year, I just didn't play too many new titles this year.
Slay the Spire is my most played game 2 years in a row. I don't see why it shouldn't be able to win goty again.
Der Waffle MousBlame this on the misfortune of your birth.New Yark, New Yark.Registered Userregular
Warhammer 40000 Gladius trip report:
What if Civ, but with endlessly respawning hordes of barbarians who hate your guts. Sometimes the barbarians have tanks, or can mind control your units, who take at least like 7 turns to build.
I think I've directly interacted with another faction's unit like once.
lol
(...I uh, may have accidentally posted this in the webcomics thread)
I dunno.
Seems like it'd fit in just fine there, since this is comical, and also on the web.
+2
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Brovid Hasselsmof[Growling historic on the fury road]Registered Userregular
I'm not doing the awards thing but it provoked me to just think about all the games I've actually played this year
Finished The Witcher 2
The Witcher 3
Red Dead Redemption 2
Started Dark Souls
Replayed Dishonored
Tried Euro Truck Simulator 2
Tried Elite Dangerous
Too many hours of Cities: Skylines
And I think that's it.
I played 3 entire games from start to end this year which for me has got to be a record.
What if Civ, but with endlessly respawning hordes of barbarians who hate your guts. Sometimes the barbarians have tanks, or can mind control your units, who take at least like 7 turns to build.
I think I've directly interacted with another faction's unit like once.
So I really like gladius but here’s the big secret about it.
It’s not a Civ.
Sure it looks a bit like one, but in reality it’s a brutal wargame. The people who make it normally make grognardy games about ww2 battles and such.
If your struggling with the the neutral units, getting into a fight with another faction will be bad, bad news.
The game is a bastard about hiding important things in its big old encyclopaedia.
Some general things about neutral units.
They won’t come out of their general area unless provoked. Use this fact to avoid certain units until later in the game. The ad mech robots, the enslaver, ambulls and the devil nest need more advanced units to deal with.
The other neutral units are easily dealt with if you rapid fire them. What’s rapid fire? Well the game dosn’t explain this outside of a tool tip for those little weapon symbols, but rapid fire units have significantly increased firepower if they are adjacent to an enemy unit rather than firing from max range. All of the basic units you can build (except maybe Orks and nids) have this ability. Two marine or necron squads rapid firing will kill most of the neutral units, or deplete them enough to neuter the attack back.
Doing your faction specific questline will spawn neutral armies with powerful units. This generally means you want to avoid doing them if at all possible until you have a sizeable force. They can and will mess you up and it makes the quests a bit of a trap.
Some other general tips.
The number of dudes in the units isn’t just a representation of health. Damage is calculated per each of those little guys, so a marine squad with 3 guys left only has 3/5th the damage output. This makes all the vehicles very good because they don’t degrade.
Running away is preferable to death. It’s ok to kill an enemy unit then bug out. You will win the attrition game over time. Necrons are the best faction to learn the game for this reason. This is especially important for heroes who can become total monsters with enough levels and gear, but if they did that’s all lost.
Use a tough unit to soak overwatch like a rhino.
A unit with both a melee weapon and a range weapon will use both. This means you should always be looking to have these units at the front line or you’ll lose output (terminators, dreadnoughts and so on).
Every factions economy works slightly differently but the one key rule is not to expand too fast.it’s easy to be losing resources from having too much upkeep. Snagging the special resources is important because it’s “free” resources that don’t need buildings on them.
Look at the tiny weapon icons. Different weapons are drastically different against different units and most units have multiple different weapons.
Grenades! Some factions can give their units grenades. They’re extremely powerful in this game because each grenade thrown by your unit hits “each” enemy dude. So a unit of five marines tosses a grenade. Each grenade does the same damage as a bolter shot, but is multiplied by the number of enemies. So a squad of five marines target 10 GSC cultists generate the equivalent 50 shots.
Brovid Hasselsmof[Growling historic on the fury road]Registered Userregular
Elite questions for today:
My ship modules all have a designation like 2E, 1F, etc. What does that mean? I assumed the number means size and the letter means class but I thought classes only went A-D so I'm not sure what E and F mean.
Secondly, sometimes when I'm in supercruise towards a destination my ship slows down automatically and then I get a prompt to drop out of cruise when I'm close enough. Other times it doesn't slow down, flashes a red "Slow down!" message at me, and then I overshoot because inevitably it doesn't respond quickly enough to me throttling down. Anyone know what causes this? In both cases I always have my destination locked and the throttle set in the blue zone.
Thirdly, I'm tempted to buy a couple of the early new ships, an eagle for doing some bounty hunting and a hauler for doing some trade/mining. I know I could just save up for better stuff but I feel like trying different things out and making money doesn't seem that hard. I just don't know if it's worth upgrading my sidewinder to fill a specialist role instead? It is annoyingly sluggish for fighting but maybe that's just cos it has all the worst components?
The number is the size, yes, and the letter is the “quality.” Generally, closer to A means better (more heat efficient), but there are a couple of wrinkles. D-rated are the lightest, and are good for when you want to boost your jump distance. B-rated are the heaviest, because they’re individually armored and can take a pounding without failing. E means “factory stock.”
Weapons have a slightly different scale, where the rating corresponds roughly to the weapon’s DPS. “D” is roughly equivalent to 15 DPS.
For approaching without overshooting, you can either adjust your course to pass closer to a gravity well (which slows you down*) or use the “7s trick.” Basically , stay at full throttle until your ETA is ~7s. Then, drop your throttle to the bottom of the blue section - making small adjustments to keep your ETA at 7s until you get close enough to drop out of friendship drive and cruise the rest of the way.
Hell yeah, buy another ship. The Cobra is a good choice for a second ship because, with tweaking, it can do basically anything well. But Eagles are relatively cheap to buy (though fully kitting it out will be expensive) so it can be a fun way to get more combat practice in early in something more maneuverable than your Sidewinder. If you’re trading in your Sidewinder (you don’t have to when buying a new ship) make sure to either store your upgraded modules or revert to the starting E-rated modules first. That maximizes your money back.
* - You can use this to your advantage on long, cross-system travel by first climbing up out of the plane of the ecliptic before traveling towards your destination. Doing so avoids passing near planets, moons, and asteroid belts which slow you down, sometimes considerably, and can cut large amounts of time off your journey.
Brovid Hasselsmof[Growling historic on the fury road]Registered Userregular
Thanks Elvenshae. That is a good tip about the gravity wells, I hadn't thought of that. I'm guessing my problem is happening when I approach a dock that's got a massive great planet behind it.
I'm playing through Star Wars Battlefront 2's (the newer one) campaign, and it's surprising how mediocre the singleplayer is. The story is laughable (Between the near instant faceturn of the protagonist to the repeated shoehorning in of famous Star Wars characters, it's just so inept.) the gameplay is mediocre. And it's still buggy despite being out for several years now. And the story feels like "we want these levels for multiplayer, so come up with reasons to use those tilesets in the campaign, please."
It looks very pretty though. It's like someone took a cheap licensed game of yore and slapped some AAA graphics on top of it.
But if you don't have a newish motherboard from the last few years you will probably need a SATA drive that plugs into the same cable as your platter drive(s). It's not a huge difference anyway.
My ship modules all have a designation like 2E, 1F, etc. What does that mean? I assumed the number means size and the letter means class but I thought classes only went A-D so I'm not sure what E and F mean.
Secondly, sometimes when I'm in supercruise towards a destination my ship slows down automatically and then I get a prompt to drop out of cruise when I'm close enough. Other times it doesn't slow down, flashes a red "Slow down!" message at me, and then I overshoot because inevitably it doesn't respond quickly enough to me throttling down. Anyone know what causes this? In both cases I always have my destination locked and the throttle set in the blue zone.
Thirdly, I'm tempted to buy a couple of the early new ships, an eagle for doing some bounty hunting and a hauler for doing some trade/mining. I know I could just save up for better stuff but I feel like trying different things out and making money doesn't seem that hard. I just don't know if it's worth upgrading my sidewinder to fill a specialist role instead? It is annoyingly sluggish for fighting but maybe that's just cos it has all the worst components?
What tripped me a lot was that you can't engage the supercruise assist from regular space. You have to already be in supercruise. So sometimes I thought I had it active when I didn't really and slammed into a ring system.
I haven't really tried manual supercruising other than as the occasional way to get out from behind a star when my destination is occluded. It's the year 30xx I should be able to tell my ship computer where I want to go dangit.
Posts
Edit: that was meant to be a rough chuckle, but it came out significantly too rough especially for a contextless top of the page post. I'm not actually mad at folks picking their best games of the year, I just didn't play too many new titles this year.
You can get away with playing it on a much cheaper headset, but that's still a big investment so I empathize.
See its not even the show aspect that bothers me about awards stuff.
At least I can watch the keighleys for WORLD PREMIERES and goof em ups like the razor blade robot...
But game awards like all awards imply a hierarchy of quality that makes me weirdly uncomfortable.
The Keighley's feel like they have an active disdain for the awards they give out. Like it's a huge ask for them to stop showing trailers for five minutes so they can talk about who won the zillion categories they made and clearly don't care about enough to dedicate a show to.
I remember I went to a talk that Geoff had at PAX and he was talking about how they had "more" to show this year than they had in the past, but also they wanted to dedicate more time to the awards. So I just flat out asked him if the show was going to be longer because of it. He didn't really give a direct answer IIRC, but spoiler alert: it wasn't, and the awards got the shaft again.
I played it on an Oculus Quest I already owned. It worked very well doing wireless to my PC via Virtual Desktop.
i guess it's mostly really innovative for a half life 2 mod? like, so much of what i like about it is how it riffs on that design and plays off that kinda design
Steam // Secret Satan
You can buy icons and animated stickers for chat and backgrounds for your steam profile with them.
https://store.steampowered.com/points/shop
The Quest 2 is the cheapest and has a higher resolution than the index. The FOV is larger on index but for like a 1/3rd the price and gaining complete wireless capability it is awesome.
I mean you gotta sell yourself to Facebook, but I’ve sold myself to much worse so was easy for me.
I guess you also need the GPU though...
As of this moment my game of the year is going to be AC Valhalla or V:TM Night Road. Unless Cyberpunk is a flaming dumpster fire it'll probably show up on the list as well. It's been a slow year for me and current-year releases.
Putting down all the Ubisoft and CDPR shit that must necessarily be put in an asterisk for those games will be interesting.
My shade has read all of Moby Dick.
Only 395 days, 4 hours, 54 minutes and 57 seconds until the King awakens.
anyone knows if a second part is planned?
So background, I've been working on trying to unite all of Africa under a single imperial banner (starting as Daurama Daura in 867, a semi-mythical African queen) - I don't think I'm going to pull it off at this point, as it's nearly 1400 and there are still a couple of big power players that will take some significant effort to chip into.
The theme for this dynasty has been a lot of selective breeding, so most of my characters have been Beautiful Genius Amazons, and a select few have had some minor inbreeding issues. It's been working pretty well, and the character in question for this story was a woman known as The Blood Mother, due to the strength of the bloodline. She was, at the point that this happened, about sixty years old, and while she had those three good congenital traits, she also had a bad one that cropped up later in life - she was a lunatic.
Anyways, what happens is I get a very standard diplomacy event - you need to get a new outfit. You can spend a lot of money in order to get some prestige boosts, you can attempt a test to try and wear local/traditional clothing and get a popular opinion boost, or you can say that what you have is good enough for a quick dose of piety. If you've played the game a bit, you probably know the event that I'm talking about - it's very one of those ones that you get so regularly that you don't need to read anymore and can just automatically click your preferred choice.
But this time, I got a fourth option, one unlocked because I had two traits - beautiful and lunatic. I got the option to say that I didn't need clothes at all, and my character became a nudist for the rest of her life.
And that's when the The Emperor's New Clothes achievement popped.
tutorial area from system shock 2
https://shodan.fandom.com/wiki/Ramsey_Recruitment_Center
lol
(...I uh, may have accidentally posted this in the webcomics thread)
Slay the Spire is my most played game 2 years in a row. I don't see why it shouldn't be able to win goty again.
What if Civ, but with endlessly respawning hordes of barbarians who hate your guts. Sometimes the barbarians have tanks, or can mind control your units, who take at least like 7 turns to build.
I think I've directly interacted with another faction's unit like once.
I dunno.
Seems like it'd fit in just fine there, since this is comical, and also on the web.
Finished The Witcher 2
The Witcher 3
Red Dead Redemption 2
Started Dark Souls
Replayed Dishonored
Tried Euro Truck Simulator 2
Tried Elite Dangerous
Too many hours of Cities: Skylines
And I think that's it.
I played 3 entire games from start to end this year which for me has got to be a record.
So I really like gladius but here’s the big secret about it.
It’s not a Civ.
Sure it looks a bit like one, but in reality it’s a brutal wargame. The people who make it normally make grognardy games about ww2 battles and such.
If your struggling with the the neutral units, getting into a fight with another faction will be bad, bad news.
The game is a bastard about hiding important things in its big old encyclopaedia.
Some general things about neutral units.
They won’t come out of their general area unless provoked. Use this fact to avoid certain units until later in the game. The ad mech robots, the enslaver, ambulls and the devil nest need more advanced units to deal with.
The other neutral units are easily dealt with if you rapid fire them. What’s rapid fire? Well the game dosn’t explain this outside of a tool tip for those little weapon symbols, but rapid fire units have significantly increased firepower if they are adjacent to an enemy unit rather than firing from max range. All of the basic units you can build (except maybe Orks and nids) have this ability. Two marine or necron squads rapid firing will kill most of the neutral units, or deplete them enough to neuter the attack back.
Doing your faction specific questline will spawn neutral armies with powerful units. This generally means you want to avoid doing them if at all possible until you have a sizeable force. They can and will mess you up and it makes the quests a bit of a trap.
Some other general tips.
The number of dudes in the units isn’t just a representation of health. Damage is calculated per each of those little guys, so a marine squad with 3 guys left only has 3/5th the damage output. This makes all the vehicles very good because they don’t degrade.
Running away is preferable to death. It’s ok to kill an enemy unit then bug out. You will win the attrition game over time. Necrons are the best faction to learn the game for this reason. This is especially important for heroes who can become total monsters with enough levels and gear, but if they did that’s all lost.
Use a tough unit to soak overwatch like a rhino.
A unit with both a melee weapon and a range weapon will use both. This means you should always be looking to have these units at the front line or you’ll lose output (terminators, dreadnoughts and so on).
Every factions economy works slightly differently but the one key rule is not to expand too fast.it’s easy to be losing resources from having too much upkeep. Snagging the special resources is important because it’s “free” resources that don’t need buildings on them.
Look at the tiny weapon icons. Different weapons are drastically different against different units and most units have multiple different weapons.
Grenades! Some factions can give their units grenades. They’re extremely powerful in this game because each grenade thrown by your unit hits “each” enemy dude. So a unit of five marines tosses a grenade. Each grenade does the same damage as a bolter shot, but is multiplied by the number of enemies. So a squad of five marines target 10 GSC cultists generate the equivalent 50 shots.
My ship modules all have a designation like 2E, 1F, etc. What does that mean? I assumed the number means size and the letter means class but I thought classes only went A-D so I'm not sure what E and F mean.
Secondly, sometimes when I'm in supercruise towards a destination my ship slows down automatically and then I get a prompt to drop out of cruise when I'm close enough. Other times it doesn't slow down, flashes a red "Slow down!" message at me, and then I overshoot because inevitably it doesn't respond quickly enough to me throttling down. Anyone know what causes this? In both cases I always have my destination locked and the throttle set in the blue zone.
Thirdly, I'm tempted to buy a couple of the early new ships, an eagle for doing some bounty hunting and a hauler for doing some trade/mining. I know I could just save up for better stuff but I feel like trying different things out and making money doesn't seem that hard. I just don't know if it's worth upgrading my sidewinder to fill a specialist role instead? It is annoyingly sluggish for fighting but maybe that's just cos it has all the worst components?
The number is the size, yes, and the letter is the “quality.” Generally, closer to A means better (more heat efficient), but there are a couple of wrinkles. D-rated are the lightest, and are good for when you want to boost your jump distance. B-rated are the heaviest, because they’re individually armored and can take a pounding without failing. E means “factory stock.”
Weapons have a slightly different scale, where the rating corresponds roughly to the weapon’s DPS. “D” is roughly equivalent to 15 DPS.
For approaching without overshooting, you can either adjust your course to pass closer to a gravity well (which slows you down*) or use the “7s trick.” Basically , stay at full throttle until your ETA is ~7s. Then, drop your throttle to the bottom of the blue section - making small adjustments to keep your ETA at 7s until you get close enough to drop out of friendship drive and cruise the rest of the way.
Hell yeah, buy another ship. The Cobra is a good choice for a second ship because, with tweaking, it can do basically anything well. But Eagles are relatively cheap to buy (though fully kitting it out will be expensive) so it can be a fun way to get more combat practice in early in something more maneuverable than your Sidewinder. If you’re trading in your Sidewinder (you don’t have to when buying a new ship) make sure to either store your upgraded modules or revert to the starting E-rated modules first. That maximizes your money back.
* - You can use this to your advantage on long, cross-system travel by first climbing up out of the plane of the ecliptic before traveling towards your destination. Doing so avoids passing near planets, moons, and asteroid belts which slow you down, sometimes considerably, and can cut large amounts of time off your journey.
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
It looks very pretty though. It's like someone took a cheap licensed game of yore and slapped some AAA graphics on top of it.
Wait is there fuel in Elite Dangerous I guess that would conclude the experiment
https://www.paypal.me/hobnailtaylor
You go into Space.
And then run out of fuel.
And then make life HELL for the Fuel Rat who has to somehow get out to you.
There is fuel. Though I've yet to see it get depleted by anything other than hyperspace jumps.
I just went to a wargames area to try the combat. It did not end well. Combat in this seems real hard.
case in point, m.2 Nvme is the best, fastest option, if available
What tripped me a lot was that you can't engage the supercruise assist from regular space. You have to already be in supercruise. So sometimes I thought I had it active when I didn't really and slammed into a ring system.
I haven't really tried manual supercruising other than as the occasional way to get out from behind a star when my destination is occluded. It's the year 30xx I should be able to tell my ship computer where I want to go dangit.