Playing FF7R on PC just to play the Yuffie stuff. Now, this Midgar is SOOOO much more lively and diverse and you can tell they got to ignore the deficiencies of the PS4. There's more people in the square in front of the Seventh Heaven than I think there is in all of Sector 7 slums in vanilla FF7R. Also, Fort Condor is great for a minigame. I know it's just probably a clone of some mobile game, but as 2 minute time waster minigame ala Gwent, it's perfect. I'm glad Roche is around. He was one of the additions to the game I liked. He's so joyously camp. I'll be angry if I run into Leslie though, he fucking sucks ass.
I've been playing XCOM 2 with the Long War of the Chosen mod.
Holy crap on a crapstick, and I thought the game was hard before. It's even more complex and unforgiving now. New enemies, new gameplay mechanics, new soldier classes, it's a bit overwhelming at first. Let's see how badly this game is going to kick my ass now.
Holy crap on a crapstick, and I thought the game was hard before. It's even more complex and unforgiving now. New enemies, new gameplay mechanics, new soldier classes, it's a bit overwhelming at first. Let's see how badly this game is going to kick my ass now.
Finished up with Hardspace: Shipbreaker (Early Access) for the time being. Finished the story (which currently ends at Act II). Story is pretty good for something that involves characters that really don't interact with you beyond telling you about their lives or giving you gameplay tips. Gameplay is fun, though I never really found a use for the Demo Charges. You're supposed to use them on LVL 3 Cuts but the only LVL 3 Cuts can be by bypassed entirely with a bit of effort... worse, they cost a shit ton to use.
If I'm going to be honest, what this game needs is a tool to let you connect pieces to walls or something for when you're forced to perform a dangerous depressurization. There are some ships where you MUST perform a depressurization to get to reactor parts and such, but in which doing so is a crap shoot on whether or not you'll accidentally trigger the reactor meltdown before you've cut a hole to remove the damn thing. Give me a glue gun or something.
That said, I didn't have to repeat ships very often (something I remember @GasBandit mentioning being a problem) and every ship class has a very interesting and unique layout. I never felt bored of cutting ships.
I have some high hopes for this title once it comes out... I'd love a multiplayer mode or maybe a space station DLC where you have a longterm project you need to work on while trying to figure out what happened on the station. Highly recommended if you can get it on sale.
If I'm going to be honest, what this game needs is a tool to let you connect pieces to walls or something for when you're forced to perform a dangerous depressurization. There are some ships where you MUST perform a depressurization to get to reactor parts and such, but in which doing so is a crap shoot on whether or not you'll accidentally trigger the reactor meltdown before you've cut a hole to remove the damn thing. Give me a glue gun or something.
That said, I didn't have to repeat ships very often (something I remember @GasBandit mentioning being a problem) and every ship class has a very interesting and unique layout. I never felt bored of cutting ships.
I have some high hopes for this title once it comes out... I'd love a multiplayer mode or maybe a space station DLC where you have a longterm project you need to work on while trying to figure out what happened on the station. Highly recommended if you can get it on sale.
GasBandit
Staff member
Hrm, maybe they've addressed it with the addition of content. Mayhaps I'll give it another shot. These days I'm really scrounging for something that can hold my interest when I'm playing by myself.
To be clear, I'm about lvl 19 when I finish the story. Nowhere NEAR done with my debt or finishing the tug. And they did add a few ship types in the December 20th update (and maybe more, depending on when you last played).
GasBandit
Staff member
I last played march 2021, so there's probably been quite a bit since.
Me "See, by playing the Elerian, I can conquer planets completely unscathed and give them to you for free! Isn't that awesome?"
Son and @Squidleybits "It's awesome!"
GNN "The Elerian have conquered Orion."
Son and @Squidleybits
Son and @Squidleybits "It's awesome!"
GNN "The Elerian have conquered Orion."
Son and @Squidleybits
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Son and @Squidleybits "What race are you playing this game?"
Me "Terran."
"So will you be able to help us like last game."
GNN "The Terran have declared war on everyone."
Son and @Squidleybits
Me "Terran."
"So will you be able to help us like last game."
GNN "The Terran have declared war on everyone."
Son and @Squidleybits
Yes, but who won the first game?
figmentPez
Staff member
That sounds more like the Sillicoids.
I won an economic victory as them
figmentPez
Staff member
In MoO2 it's everyone, when you let the Darloks play. Stupid spying assholes, making everyone turn on each other. Which is why I usually play as a custom race version of the Darloks, just so I don't have to put up with being framed all the time.
I usually play as a custom race version of the Silicoids because you can never make deals with them, which means they often start attacking early.
At least with the Darloks I can get the other races on my good side early on before the Darloks start degrading everyone's relations with me. And then when war eventually breaks out, I'm usually at the point where I can build the Time Warp Facilitator/Phasing Cloak combo, so I'm going to win every battle.
I played Banished and it was sad. One house was freezing and people were dying of starvation even though I built a fishing dock, a gathering hut etc right away.
GasBandit
Staff member
Everybody's first (and sometimes second) village dies in horrible misery in Banished. It's very unforgiving of mistakes and too-rapid growth. Make sure you don't start by building more than 3 houses, and after that only build more houses at a rate of one per year, and only then when you have a demonstrable excess of food.
The early game trick is gathering, but it needs to be done in a dense forest for best results. Find a densely wooded area and build a forester, hunter, apothecary and gatherer hut in it. Gatherers operate year round and return the highest amount of food per worker if the forest is dense, so set the forester to plant but not cut. Next, start a max size farm (I think it is 15x15) and make sure it has 4 farmers on it. After harvest, Farmers will act like laborers until it's time to plant in spring again, so you can tag a large area to harvest wood and they'll spend all winter logging, and your woodcutter can make sure you have enough firewood from that.
Once you get good at Banished and are ready for a TRULY soul-crushing city management sim, look up Frostpunk.
#THECITYMUSTSURVIVE
GasBandit
Staff member
Also you WILL need a blacksmith and tailor ASAP. If people run out of warm clothes or tools, your town will enter a death spiral. Very shortly after that, you'll need a school because your initial colonists are educated, but the first generation of kids won't be - and uneducated workers perform tasks MUCH slower than educated ones. And tasks not getting done quickly can cause death spirals too.
Frostpunk is one of those games that I think people need to talk about more. Yes, it's soul crushingly hard... at first... but the game grinding you to a pulp is part of the point. People are counting on you, you can't be a fuck up and you need to have a vision of what your city needs to be in order to survive what is coming. And when you pull through? Nothing is more satisfying. I've gearing up to go back to Frostpunk before Frostpunk 2 comes out (not that it has a date) and this might be the kick I needed to reinstall it.
You should pick up the On The Edge and The Last Autumn DLCs. They completely change how the game plays during their scenarios and (in the case of On The Edge) provide closure to the fates of the rest of the scenarios. Just... radically different gameplay.
Y'know, I like city builder and economic sims and suchlike, and so often I see some modern (relatively speaking) similar game like these passing by, and I think, "hey ,that looks kinda good, and sure, viking village? Sounds like fun!" and then I read something like this and I remember why I don't play these and don't like them at all.
I'm not saying this is bad desing or wrong or whatever, there's definitely a market for it and if people enjoy it, go for it. Just not for me, but neither are realistic racing games or soccer games, nothing wrong with that.
I just wished there were more, more forgiving games in a similar vein, but those are in short supply now.
GasBandit
Staff member
You might like Northgard.
I'll second Northgard. It's pretty mellow and has a fun single player campaign, but with some modern takes on classic strategy elements.
I played last night for a while and our oldest helped. The Village of Turd Nugget (named by oldest) failed to thrive. I built the forestry hut etc way too far away and that caused issues in winter 1.
The village of Turd Nugget 2 is doing much better, but at year 10 suddenly I am without firewood. I also have people dying of old age, but the baby boom stopped. Likely as I don’t have spare homes. We have a silly amount of food though.
GasBandit
Staff member
Growth is a tough balancing act. You have to periodically check the houses to see how many 15 year olds (or older) are still living with their parents, and compare that with how many adults are getting to be over 50. When that ratio starts to tip toward the elders, it's time to build a house or two.
One thing that drives me nuts about this game is how every villager ages 5 years for every year that passes. I got a mod to make a year be a year for everyone and everything. It does have the side effect of making the game take a lot longer, though.
For firewood, "build" a stockpile right by a forest, then mark the forest to have its trees cut down. Everybody will take the wood to that closest stockpile. Then when they're done cutting, deconstruct the stockpile and they'll move the wood into the ones you have in town.
Also it's worth your time to upgrade houses to stone houses as soon as you can. It makes them use WAY less firewood. Just make sure you have a bunkhouse because whoever lives there will be homeless while it is renovated.
Thank you! I think I will start TN 3 tonight
TN3 was doing awesome and I built houses as you suggested and ran out of food. I thought I had tons available.
The village of Butterball is at year 10 and I have a whole second set of gathering/hunting going before the next round of houses.
The village of Butterball is at year 10 and I have a whole second set of gathering/hunting going before the next round of houses.
GasBandit
Staff member
Like I said - Growth is a tough balancing act. And you want to avoid "baby booms" as much as possible because that just leads to mass death down the line. You need to smooth the growth curve - you don't want everybody dying at the same time, so you have to make sure lots new children aren't conceived simultaneously - and those 16 year olds will start having babies INSTANTLY as soon as they have their own house. That's why I usually never build more than one (or rarely two) houses per year, and then only when there is at least 20,000 excess food.
Also, once you get going on farming a lot, bear in mind that - possibly counterintuitively - the time when your larders will be fullest will be in winter - because the harvests are in. The number you want to go off of is in mid-summer, when no harvests are in yet. That's where you measure your food surplus. So you may have 40k food in early winter and think "time to grow!" but that's a mistake. Rather, measure in summer before your first crop even comes in (and some crops like Beans will mature so fast that you'll actually harvest them in mid-late summer). So if you are scraping the bottom of the food barrel in mid summer, it's not safe to build houses that year.
One more thing - NEVER take in nomads. EVER, unless you have a MAJOR food surplus and two empty bunkhouses, as well as a completely unutilized hospital. They WILL infect your population with some plague or another. If you decide to ignore this advice, at least make sure to make a unique save of your game before you click to allow them to join.
Other misc tips -
Steel tools don't make work go faster than iron tools, they just last longer. So they merely reduce the number of blacksmiths you need and resources consumed, they don't make your other workers accomplish more, so that can be a slightly less critical upgrade. Still good to have, but maybe prioritize warm (leather+wool) clothes first. Warm clothes let workers work outside without having to go home to warm up for longer durations.
Always have at least 1, preferably 2 laborers in reserve. If a schoolteacher dies and you don't have a laborer waiting to take their place at the exact nanosecond they die, then all the students quit school and never go back, thus becoming uneducated workers for the rest of their lives.
Hunting is by far the least efficient-per-person food gathering profession. However, until you can get cows, it will be your only source of leather, so you'll need at least one until then.
The deer wandering the map are purely cosmetic and have no bearing on actual hunting. Hunting is like gathering - it just works better in dense forest.
DO NOT OVERLAP FISHING DOCKS' AREAS. It will reduce the amount of food each fisherman brings in.
Trading docks can be used as emergency food storage. When you think you have enough food to expand, build a trading dock first, and fill it with 1000 of every kind of food you generate for yourself. Then refill your normal stocks. Not only is this good for trading, but if you fuck up and food goes dry, you can then reduce the "desired" amount of food in your trading dock to 0 and the traders will put it back into the village stores.
Don't neglect roads. Even the basic road that requires no materials to make gives a noticeable improvement in travel time. ESPECIALLY to places like your herbologist/gatherer/etc clusters in the middle of forests.
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A small question to the people that own a Switch, do you have any recommendations for JRPGS? Maybe in the vein of Final Fantasy Tactics?
I am planning to buy a Switch, but since the games are so expensive (Darn you Nintedo!!!) I have to be a little more picky.
I am planning to buy a Switch, but since the games are so expensive (Darn you Nintedo!!!) I have to be a little more picky.
Triangle Strategy, from Square Enix, and directed by Tomoya Asano of Bravely Default and Octopath Traveler fame. Comes out on March 4th.
There's also a demo available if you wanna give it a try
I played multiple new games tonight.
Xeno Crisis: Too fucking hard and you literally cannot fight the last boss if you use a single continue. The game does not tell you this until you struggle to the last boss. Fuck this. I am too old to be treated like an 8 year old.
Daemon X Machina: The Epic freebie. This sure is a Switch port. Boy is it fucking ugly. Kinda lame too. Can;t really recommend this.
Ratropolis: It's a deck building, tower defense, city builder with little cartoon rats, one of which likes to constantly call it's enemies pussies, which is very, very odd. I finished all 30 rounds on my first try, which was a bit of shocker. At no point did my town feel in danger. I was able to spam cards without paying attention and win. I have to decide now I guess if I'm going to refund it or not. I could go either way with this one.
Not a great night. I ran out evening before I could try Star Renegades.
Xeno Crisis: Too fucking hard and you literally cannot fight the last boss if you use a single continue. The game does not tell you this until you struggle to the last boss. Fuck this. I am too old to be treated like an 8 year old.
Daemon X Machina: The Epic freebie. This sure is a Switch port. Boy is it fucking ugly. Kinda lame too. Can;t really recommend this.
Ratropolis: It's a deck building, tower defense, city builder with little cartoon rats, one of which likes to constantly call it's enemies pussies, which is very, very odd. I finished all 30 rounds on my first try, which was a bit of shocker. At no point did my town feel in danger. I was able to spam cards without paying attention and win. I have to decide now I guess if I'm going to refund it or not. I could go either way with this one.
Not a great night. I ran out evening before I could try Star Renegades.
Thank you for sharing all of this. The village of Butterball is doing really well!