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Libluini posted:
Animal people, huh. Are they a separate species? Humans with cosmetic augments?
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Sep 3, 2023 20:32
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PurpleXVI posted:Animal people, huh. Are they a separate species? Humans with cosmetic augments? Dao-Lin (the girl on the cover) is specifially a Kartanin, a humanoid species that comes from another loving universe, Tarkan. Dao-Lin starts off not knowing this, as she comes from a separate group of Kartanin that managed to cross over long ago, to prepare the crossing of their homegalaxy. But due to cultural drift, that knowledge was eventually lost, until plot conveniently gets moving again, thanks to Perry & Friends. There are multiple other felinoid species, though they tend to be all a bit different, like the different Lemurid humanoids all look like slightly different kinds of naked apes. The Gurrads for example, look like humans with a lion head. The Kartanin are more cat-like, but the exact features tend to depend on how the author in question remembers or interprets the fundamentals. (The Gurrads are even relatively close, they live in the Magellanic Clouds.) In-universe, there's some speculation that the Kartanin in Tarkan evolved into the same metaphysical space then Terrans did in our universe. (Ironically, the main humanoid species of Tarkan are the Hauri, who look like desiccated human corpses. They are also the opposite of nice, and ended up being a servant race of the Powers of Chaos.) To give some context, the Powers of Orders are basically the transuniversal bureaucracy keeping everything nice and orderly. Sadly, not much of what they do is comprehensible to our level. They're really good at creepily planning out their genocides very well. Order wants to keep up the LAW (there's only the one, so it's capitalized) and spread intelligent life, because that gives a universe some kind of tangible physical stability. The Powers of Chaos want the exact opposite. One of their goals is the reduction of life itself, so there are more genocides on their end. It's also important to note that the end of all natural laws is the end result of what Chaos plans to do, which can get annoying for us meatbags. We really don't want our planetary atmospheres just one day walking off the planet, gravity switching off or other dumb shenanigans. Makes raising kids suffocatingly hard. Ironically, the Powers of Chaos are all about control and oppression, since that leads to chaotic breakdown when dictatorships overdo it. In Warhammer 40K terms, the Powers of Order would send a galaxy-destroying super-weapon to end the Imperium, while the Powers of Chaos from the Perryverse are already ruling the Imperium. Oh yeah, sorry. The Kartanin. They're evolved enough they're only superficially cat-like. They still have retractable claws and a dense, but short fur covering their bodies. Men have bigger and longer whiskers, and women have tits. That's as far as dimorphism goes. Like Lemurids, they've been hanging around for long enough they've created a lot of related sister-races all over the place. Dao-Lin comes from the galaxy Ardustaar, and her people have formed a matriarchy, but that's just one of many Kartanin-states. They're as developed and diverse as Lemurids, just in their case it's cats, not apes. Libluini fucked around with this message at 23:32 on Sep 3, 2023 |
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Sep 3, 2023 23:27
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Libluini posted:To give some context, the Powers of Orders are basically the transuniversal bureaucracy keeping everything nice and orderly. Sadly, not much of what they do is comprehensible to our level. They're really good at creepily planning out their genocides very well. Order wants to keep up the LAW (there's only the one, so it's capitalized) and spread intelligent life, because that gives a universe some kind of tangible physical stability. Didn't know that Perry Rhodan had an Elric crossover.
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Sep 4, 2023 10:15
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PurpleXVI posted:Didn't know that Perry Rhodan had an Elric crossover. Mind you, I was compressing 60+ years of fiction writing, so a little bit of nuance may have been lost.  Looking Elric up on Wikipedia revealed to me that the first novel came out in loving 1961. That's a lot older than I thought! For some reason I always assumed Elrlic's Adventures started in the 1970s. So yeah, I can't exclude the chance that some PR-authors got inspired there, considering they're all avid readers of SF and fantasy. (Except for some of the dead ones, who preferred SF exclusively.)
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Sep 4, 2023 19:21
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I absolutely adore the background write-ups. Even more so than Master of Orion ones.
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Sep 4, 2023 20:49
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If the terror worms are so intelligent, does that actually matter if they can't build anything of note? Is the intelligence just to point out that they're genocidal maniacs liquidating worlds on purpose?
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Sep 8, 2023 13:13
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Decoy Badger posted:If the terror worms are so intelligent, does that actually matter if they can't build anything of note? Is the intelligence just to point out that they're genocidal maniacs liquidating worlds on purpose? I feel like I should re-iterate that it's the Blues that put their eggs on inhabited worlds. And ironically, that was done by enemies of the Gataser. Because those guys preferred genocide by ray gun. The Terror Worms were perfectly fine with having their eggs transported to planets without intelligent life on it. More would be spoilers, we aren't done with them yet.
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Sep 8, 2023 19:24
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This thread pushed me into reading the original books… in German. I’m at a B2 level, maaaaybe stretching to C1 when talking, so this is a bit of work, but I was looking for a German-language book to practice reading. It’s… not bad at all? I’ve read a bunch of Asimov and Dick to not be thrown off by the 60s sci-fi theme. It’s also surprising how much the authors get into technical details, describing how ships are build and using which materials, what fuel the engines use, etc.
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Sep 8, 2023 21:17
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Mokotow posted:This thread pushed me into reading the original books… in German. I’m at a B2 level, maaaaybe stretching to C1 when talking, so this is a bit of work, but I was looking for a German-language book to practice reading. The old Perry Rhodan are ... peculiar. Definitly a product of their time. But the world building is done well and most action sequences as well. Reading is a great way to brush up your foreign languages. Viel Spaß mit der Sprache der Dichter und Denker!
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Sep 8, 2023 21:38
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So wahr mit Gott helfe.
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Sep 8, 2023 21:42
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Mokotow posted:This thread pushed me into reading the original books… in German. I’m at a B2 level, maaaaybe stretching to C1 when talking, so this is a bit of work, but I was looking for a German-language book to practice reading. Are you reading the original novellas or the silver volume books? The latter got some serious re-editing to remove the most silly and bad poo poo. (Especially the Cappin-stories from the late 60s came from a rather rough patch in the series history, with sales breaking in and everything. Some of those novellas were bad and the silver volumes did a lot of work to make those stories readable.) The silver volumes are also filled with little updates when series and actual IRL science clashed too much. Early PR had stories set on Venus, for example. But early PR was also before any of the Venera-probes reached Venus, and so the series ran on assumptions based on 1950s knowledge. Which meant Venus was a jungle planet with dinosaurs. (And I read a legit astronomy book from the 50s, that poo poo was seriously in there. We just couldn't see the dinosaurs because of the dense cloud covers.) Needless to say, the re-edited silver volume stories quietly deleted all Venus dinosaurs. Another funny bit came from stories that were written in the 1970s: There were two important robot characters that their programming changed by plug-in boards. And later the tech was upgraded to floppy discs. The editor "modernized" that poo poo, to prevent modern readers from dying of laughter. The original novellas still have some helluva sweet covers, though Libluini fucked around with this message at 23:12 on Sep 8, 2023 |
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Sep 8, 2023 23:10
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It’s this one: https://amzn.eu/esnfOfv 
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Sep 8, 2023 23:16
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Mokotow posted:It’s this one: https://amzn.eu/esnfOfv Ah, that's interesting. Didn't know you could get the originals on Amazon. (After switching to eBooks myself, I eventually just cut out the middleman and started buying directly from the publisher, Pabel-Möwig) The publisher has basically everything as eBook nowadays, including the weird old fantasy series like Mythor, which were written by PR-authors This is mainly the edition I've been reading, apart from following the current main series sometimes. If you use a Kindle however, I can understand not wanting to go through the hassle of moving your downloaded eBooks to your Kindle one by one. It's why I'm mainly using the Kindle-App on my phone to read bizarrely bad Kindle Unlimited trash and use a big tablet with a generic reader app for "real" books.
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Sep 8, 2023 23:33
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but sadly the eBooks lack the awesome blueprints.
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Sep 9, 2023 11:00
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I mean, plugin boards are valid way to reprogram robots for modern readers? Except we call them data cartridge or flash dongle or memory card, whatever, but it's totally plug-in board, condensed.
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Sep 9, 2023 11:15
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NHO posted:I mean, plugin boards are valid way to reprogram robots for modern readers? Except we call them data cartridge or flash dongle or memory card, whatever, but it's totally plug-in board, condensed. To be more precise, since there's apparently a difference in translation that didn't make it, I meant https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steckplatine these things. They were just ripping out entire PCBs with electronic circuits on them, which is really not enough to reprogram something that approaches human-level intelligence
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Sep 9, 2023 11:39
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Libluini posted:To be more precise, since there's apparently a difference in translation that didn't make it, I meant https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steckplatine these things. They were just ripping out entire PCBs with electronic circuits on them, which is really not enough to reprogram something that approaches human-level intelligence If I read that I would assume the writer meant Steckkarte and was used to a dialect or intending to sound fancy without knowing that Steckplatine is something different.
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Sep 9, 2023 14:36
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VictualSquid posted:If I read that I would assume the writer meant Steckkarte and was used to a dialect or intending to sound fancy without knowing that Steckplatine is something different. Sadly, the exact explanation of what the editor changed and why is in the foreword of one of my paper hardcopies. Ironically, one of the last I bought before changing to eBooks. The gist of it is, he found something that was hilariously outdated, and updated it. The exact details weren't important to me at the time, and now that book is lost in the giant stacks of books that fill up most of my apartment.
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Sep 9, 2023 17:00
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Say, Libluini, this post from the Schadenfreude thread made me wonder: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=4042273&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=16#post535016062 https://gmkeros.wordpress.com/2011/09/02/terry-pratchett-and-the-maggi-soup-adverts/ quote:Back in the 90s (starting with Moving Pictures) Terry Pratchett (yet to be knighted) changed his German publisher. -did anything like this ever happen to Perry Rhodan. At least with such a long running series, I figure there must have been some sort of exciting publisher drama from time to time.
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Oct 4, 2023 00:32
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PurpleXVI posted:Say, Libluini, this post from the Schadenfreude thread made me wonder: Pabel-Moewig is the publisher of PR, and yeah, since the main publishing is done in the Penny Dreadful format, traditionally the first and last pages are often filled with ads. Sometimes it's just for another novella-series published by P-M, or some other spin-off of the main series even, sometimes it's Ankerkraut: Spices for People with Too Much Money. I remember reading the thing with the Pratchett-Soup Ad, that was hilarious. Ads in books are rarer, but they did occasionally happen. But I don't really remember seeing any since the late 90s And eventually I switched my PR from print to e-book, and the last page of the epub-edition has the ad replaced by a "What is Perry Rhodan?"-explanation in plain text. But I promise, the next time I'm in a train station, I'll look in one of the local shops to see if the print edition still has them.
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Oct 4, 2023 14:25
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I dimly recall an add for "5-Minuten Terrine" (basically German ramen) in a Star Trek novelization, disguised as Kirk getting hungry in-universe. Offensive, but somehow admirable for how brazen it was.
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Oct 4, 2023 17:32
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Again, this thread isn't dead, I'm just really pushing to get my other LP about the three masters of Orion finished this year. This thread will resume in January.
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Dec 19, 2023 19:05
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* Fires a disintegeator at Libluni *
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Feb 4, 2024 00:12
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Let the man bask in glory and relief of finally dumping MoO3 LP.
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Feb 4, 2024 09:14
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NHO posted:Let the man bask in glory and relief of finally dumping MoO3 LP. Is it finished? I still have it bookmarked, but I haven't been reading it for some time. Time to binge the thread then.
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Feb 4, 2024 13:20
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Torrannor posted:Is it finished? I still have it bookmarked, but I haven't been reading it for some time. Time to binge the thread then. Yes, I finally killed it. I then de-installed the game from my notebook, gifted the notebook to my mother, and then put the game CD in an old AOL-case I had lying around for some reason. The game is dead, done, humiliated. It is over. And now I'm aiming for this thread, believe me. Because this game is also fairly close to being finished, and since I'm planning to go visit a whole bunch of Perry Rhodan games in the future, I can also guilt-free dump all my weird lore posts on that future thread, instead of holding this one hostage. I've learned my lesson: No two screenshot-LPs running at the same time.
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Feb 4, 2024 13:30
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Libluini posted:Yes, I finally killed it. I then de-installed the game from my notebook, gifted the notebook to my mother, and then put the game CD in an old AOL-case I had lying around for some reason. The game is dead, done, humiliated. It is over. Congrats for finishing MoO3! I always had a soft spot for that game, even if it's a mess in many places. I'm looking forward to reading your finished thread. What other RP games are there? Only RPGs iirc? This is the only strategy Rhodan game I'm aware of, which is a shame since the setting deserves some good strategy games.
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Feb 4, 2024 13:55
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Torrannor posted:Congrats for finishing MoO3! I always had a soft spot for that game, even if it's a mess in many places. I'm looking forward to reading your finished thread. Thanks! And worse, the only Non-P&P Perry Rhodan RPG only made it to a non-playable demo. The other games, except for this one, are all adventure games. Since most of them are either short, or non-playable for various reasons*, I decided to just throw them all together into one big thread. I've not decided yet on the format: It'll either be a hybrid of screenshot and videos, or only video. It'll also take some preparations, due to how old Perry Rhodan is. The series started in loving 1961, after all. And when video games appeared, people on this side of course thought "how could we use this to make more money", and for the longest time, they weren't discouraged from trying, I think because making games was a lot cheaper than making movies, and the games are mostly fondly remembered, while the movie was a disaster and a joke. *Pabel Moewig, the publisher of PR, made a deal with Atari to put the Perry Rhodan brand on some of their games. Technically speaking, they were just bog-standard Atari-games like any other, made not specifically for the series. Playing them would be pointless, they were literally on the level of "Perry Rhodan Pong" cheap trash. The other games are then finishing this march through time: The RPG-demo runs on DOS, then the adventures slowly walk through various Windows-systems until the last two can even run on my modern PC! I'm still trying to get the older ones run, as their ancient programming does not like being run on a virtual machine, and they're from an awkward point in time where true PC emulation is already too slow: They need Pentium-CPU-speeds even a state-of-the-art PC couldn't run in real time, and my aging i7 certainly can't. I got a tip though from another German YouTuber, and soon I'll try again. It'll take time and effort, though. Meanwhile, why I have Ascendancy right here, and can record it and poo poo. So that game takes precedence to this wild PR-project.
Libluini fucked around with this message at 14:31 on Feb 4, 2024 |
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Feb 4, 2024 14:17
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Libluini posted:Yes, I finally killed it. I then de-installed the game from my notebook, gifted the notebook to my mother, and then put the game CD in an old AOL-case I had lying around for some reason. The game is dead, done, humiliated. It is over. There are more Perry Rhodan games? Holy poo poo! You've gotten me into the series so I won't spoil myself going looking for them, you're doing a great job introducing the universe. Can't wait.
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Feb 4, 2024 14:20
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Libluini posted:And worse, the only Non-P&P Perry Rhodan RPG only made it to a non-playable demo. The other games, except for this one, are all adventure games. Since most of them are either short, or non-playable for various reasons*, I decided to just throw them all together into one big thread. I've not decided yet on the format: It'll either be a hybrid of screenshot and videos, or only video. I remember the movie. I think it has some kind of trashy 80s vibe appeal, but that's about all I can say about it without descending into an insane rant about how bad it is. Libluini posted:Meanwhile, why I have Ascendancy right here, and can record it and poo poo. So that game takes precedence to this wild PR-project. Ascendancy is one of my all-time favorite games. The music alone is incredible. Some of the pieces had this incredibly epic feel to it. And it was just fitting. The Minions had this computer sound, the happy diplomatic rodents had a very upbeat theme, and the warmongers like the Shevar of Frutmaka had suitably threatening OSTs. The tech tree was also really cool, especially when you jumped far ahead when searching through ruins. The races special abilities were also pretty cool, even if they were mostly the same outside of these. I'm really excited to hear that you will be LPing Ascendancy. Fake edit: Oh, and their different ships were also cool. Chamachies best race, because of their cool special abilities, and because their second biggest ship class looked like the White Star from Babylon 5.
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Feb 5, 2024 03:40
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OK, I finally moved this thread along, and immediately regretted my choice. What is it with me playing games with lovely battle engines? Anyway, I have to deal with some screenshot links first, but the next update is written. I'll post it today if I can, tomorrow after work at the latest.
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Feb 18, 2024 19:10
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 Reptile Rising 18: When Akons Attack Yes! We’re back! And the game immediately punished me for waiting so long by having multiple, drawn-out battles to fight through.  Mission Log 017: 19th November 2326 If it isn’t one thing, then another. Just as we’re preparing to defend our colonies from the Blues, the Akons are biting our tails. Not much time left to finish this log, I have to take personal command of one of our fleets, since the Akons are attacking at multiple points and not enough of my subordinates are trained and able enough to command against a full Humanoid onslaught. Ob-Tubthor Eresh-Thel, commanding officer Project Egg-Layer  Last time, the game had just rolled into turn 327. Now, after taking some time to get my bearings, it’s turn 329. Currently, we’re two-thirds towards meeting our victory condition, the Terrans want to trade, and I’m still trying to rush the final Light Industry level of our research, mainly to unlock the final research buildings, as otherwise I’d be old and gray before I can show off the final few techs we can unlock. Oh wait, I forgot. There are also massive fleets from our old friends, the arrogant, angry space racists, incoming to kill us all. No, not those ones. Not those ones either, it’s the ones with ships were someone sawed off the top and down halves. Akons.  After sorting things out a bit, I can find two inbound fleets, one of them targeting Shaulires-II itself, our capital. We have 50 ships here, which is the maximum number the game’s battle engine can handle, so sending reinforcements would be pointless.  Turn 331: Battle is imminent, and I take a look at our cluster map. It’s a cluster alright: A total clusterfuck of moving ships and fleets. Even with the different colors, it’s hard to see what is going. The only other way to find out you’re targeted is going through your planets one by one, which the menu doesn’t make easy, since the planet build menu is a couple clicks away from that planet’s system menu, and of course the planet view doesn’t give you info on what’s targeting the planet, don’t be silly. That’s for other menus to deal with. There’s also the female voice loudly saying “battle detected” (in German) if ships are fighting somewhere in your combined sensor ranges. That’s nice and only totally unhelpful.  The first assault begins in turn 332: Akons attack Scusatan VII-5, a moon we took from the Akons ages ago, and which they still want back. The fleet hanging around here is still mostly the same fleet that took the colony originally, but I think I send some reinforcements at some point, also ages ago (IRL). As always, the game first demands that you place your ships, in random number, in concentric hexagonal rings, around your colony, one by one. Even with the fleet size capped at 50 ships, that’s a lot of clicks. And only turn 1.  A couple battle turns later: Our colony destroys any ship that gets close enough, our fleet, not so much. This is the strength of the average Akon ship attacking us.  And that’s one of ours! We have some stronger ships, but not as many of them. That tiny blue bauble in the middle is the firepower of that ship. The yellow dots are experience, which some of our ships have thanks to the first battle fought here. It gives some bonuses to hitting and doing damage. The dark green row at the top are the movement points per turn. The enemy sacrificed a bit of speed, and so even our ancient frigates are a little bit faster. Light blue dots are shield strength, which our ships are also struggling with, and red is hull strength. Ships with light blue bar still have shields protecting them, and when repeated fire has broken down the shields, they go offline and you get a red bar representing the ship hull instead. Having sturdy hulls is literally the only thing our ships have going for them. Orange dots represent range in hexagon tiles. A lot of our ships also have terrible range, as you can see.  Far too much clicking later: Thanks to enemy AI, we actually didn’t have any major losses so far, and concentrated fire brings down one Akon ship after another. You see a neat thing here: The weird bubble info window updates in battles, and as you can see here, this drifting wreck has no shields anymore, and most of the hull is gone. It can still shoot and move at full strength, though. There are limits to the simulation.  After only one hostile ship is left, I lose patience and give the task of clicking all our ships to the AI. Hence the crossed finger. The auto-battle system is bad and barely any faster than a human player. I suggest getting a coffee or something if you use it. I also suggest praying to any gods, spirits or other divine entities you believe in, as the AI is terrible at making decisions. Except larger battles to run for half an hour or longer, and end in one-sided defeats of you, the player.  The outcome of our first clash with the Akons: Our fleet took zero losses, but 14 ships are in various stages of disrepair. Sadly, I can’t abuse the local yards for some repairs, because there’s another fleet incoming soon, and we don’t have the time. Our damaged fleet has to hold the line.  This time, it’s a full block of 50 ships bearing down on this colony. As a sidenote, it could very well be that both fleets actually arrived at the same time, but as the interface does not allow fleet battles with more than 50 ships, and has no messages to tell a player why ships can’t join, it’s very possible that this fleet was already here, and the AI just sorted ships oddly. We can’t actually know for sure, lacking the necessary information. I’d guess here the Akons hosed up, but it would be equally weird for the AI to cut their fleets in half, since you can actively make fleets move slower to make them join up at the target point. Something a human player can easily forget, the AI never.  A lot of damage on our local fleet. Too bad some of our most modern ships got hit the hardest. Oh, well.  Unexpectedly, the game picks our capital defense as the first battle next turn: This is the second big battle of this update, with 50 Akon ships against 50 Topsid ships over Shaulires-II. To make sure to make things extra stupid, I then do something dumb. Realizing just how many clicks I would have to do to get through this battle, I panicked and hit the auto-battle button a couple turns in. This is my fleet dying.  A rare screenshot of our ships hitting an unshielded vessel.  After approx. 15 minutes of trading shots, our fleet is reduced to just being a wall allowing our colony to take pot shots with its stronger weapons. Too bad for us Shaulires-II doesn’t actually have that much stronger weapons, as our capital and first colony, there’s not much defense here since first there was no good defense weapons available, and then there was no free space left to place them. (Also I may have trusted too much in the 1-ship retreat defense. A strategy that only works if a planet is left totally undefended, as otherwise enemy ships can open fire in passing when following your ship, resetting the turn timer and making it nearly impossible to pull this trick of.) Inevitably, the AI fucks up so bad, it lets the Akons bombard the planet into submission, taking the defenses offline. Now it’s just our ships against theirs, and not even retreat can safe our dignity here: Repairing ships this damaged would cost nearly as much as just making new ones, and repairing the older ones is completely pointless anyway.  Another rare shot: Up in the north of the screenshot, you can see an Akonic ship taking hits to their shields, hence the shield bubble animation. Meanwhile, the game still tells us range and firepower of our no not longer shooting ground weapons: It may be lacking in comparison to the defenses I’ve built up on other planets, but it’s still a lot more blue bubbles than our ships got.  Then it finally ends. The last of our ships are executed like mad dogs, and there are still far too many highly advanced Akon ships left. Their smug grin is well deserved this time.  The game then immediately throws us into the next battle, with reversed odds: The second attack sends a full 50 ships against our smaller, now even battered fleet. Scusatan VII-5 will surely fall now.  But turns out I’m wrong again! By carefully positioning ships like a wall to keep the enemy away from the colony, I can destroy one ship after another, while our sturdy hulls keep tanking hits beyond reasons. And as you can see, many of the enemy ships are not the strong, modern vessels our capital had to face. Those older ships can be easily destroyed even by our ships. Well, the more modern ones at least. But good enough.  After another half an hour of clicking, it’s done, and the last Akonic ship blows up.  This terrible turn leaves me with a problem: 30 nearly undamaged, modern Akonic warships keeping watch over our ex-capital. Too much for our own modern reinforcements to take. But I also now know that I can fight battles a lot better than the auto-battle AI, and so I curse myself and reload the last turn, and re-fight both battles. Another full hour of my life goes by, never to return.   At least the re-do gives me some other poo poo to change: I’m carefully sending colony ships paired with tiny explorers out from Shaulires-II, targeting some random death worlds to make our victory ticker go up. And making sure our 50 ships in the next battle won’t accidentally exclude some of our modern battleships. Which was another reason the first go went so badly: Multiple ships were just our tiny explorers, and a single salvo from each enemy ship was able to blow them up instantly. Meanwhile, several battleships were sitting out the battle and then expelled from the planet after the battle was lost.  With another batch of colonizers streaming off from our nearby secondary colony, the map becomes even more unreadable.  And then the re-fights begin.  For a while, things seem optimistic: I keep the bulk of our fleet between our colony and the enemy, abusing the latter’s guns as long-range artillery. Steadily, the enemy fleet is destroyed one by one. But eventually, the superior firepower and range keeps telling, as more and more of our really sturdy ships get taken down, and the AI finally manages to target the colony behind our shrinking fleet wall.  After the loss of our capital defenses, the re-battle turns into a tedious slog, one we only don’t lose immediately because the enemy sprays their shots all over the place, while I’m carefully aim at one or two ships at a time, and then hammer them down from my compact ball of semi-floating debris with guns.  But after a while, we reach the stage were most of my ships can be taken out by any random shot, and the balance shifts decisively. The 19 surviving enemy ships crush all our surviving wrecks in a single turn. Painful, but compare this to the earlier version of this fight, where the auto-battle function was so bad at its job we got 30 surviving enemy ships instead. I don’t think a better result could be squeezed from this particular stone. Also I don’t want to spend a third hour repeating this poo poo.  Of course, now we also have to fight the second battle again! Scusatan VII-5, to arms!  Ridiculously, I’m still not tired enough to gently caress up, and the second battle repeat goes as well as the first one: 14 ships damaged, zero losses. With the losses over Shaulires-II, the Akons actually lost over a hundred ships to our 50. As the Akons don’t have a third fleet left over, I deem Scusatan VII-5 safe for now and bundle all the damaged ships into the yards for repairs. Luckily, the AI-controlled local industry can handle the strain. Barely.  And now the encore: Of course we can’t let those evil bastards just run around on our capital, that would be icky. And so I carefully select the most modern ships from our nearby second fleet and go into counter-attack, betting at both the 19 enemy ships not being enough and 1 turn not enough to restore local defenses. As a reminder, since the game has no mechanic for ruling foreign population, and since the game was forced to fit into the peacenic, leftist politics of Perry Rhodan lore, all enemy population after a surrender is forced to leave via the colony’s transmitter network. (And apparently they teleport straight home, away from this cursed star cluster, as that population is as lost to you as if they had been disintegrated instead.) In conclusion, this means Shaulires-II is not actually usable for the Akons until they transfer tons of population over there. And if we retake the planet next turn, the just arriving population will be  And so the fifth battle in a row begins, and immediately ends a couple turns later. Turns out the Akons just immediately left, leaving our colony undefended. We take Shaulires-II back after hammering down the planetary defenses, as they’re too weak after a single turn of rebuilding to do much.  Turn 334: Well, that was a pointless waste of life. Three space battles, over a hundred starships and their crews lost, two orbital bombardments, two populations politely asked to leave, and we’re back where we started, just with less poo poo for both of us. Akons, you suck. Also, a toast to the auto-battle AI, which was so bad they nearly cost us our capital for good, and forced me to repeat over an hour of battles.  The damage to our capital is severe: The population is gone, of course, and needs to be replaced to make any of this poo poo working again, and worse: The AI over-zealously ripped down any building it deemed too old and replaced it with a newer version. Or at least tried too: Most of the colony is now covered in empty construction sites.  But far worse awaits us: Retaking a planet makes the game think it’s a completely new colony, and puts it at the very back of our colony list. I foresee lots of inescapable scrolling in our future.   First step in negating the damage of the Akon Invasion is importing population. Luckily, our other major colonies were already nearly full and taking off a couple thousand units each brings Shaulires-II back to at least semi-normality. 7250(0) Topsiders travel to the planet over the transmitter network and begin working before the day of the battle is even over. Amazingly, the AI only replaced old buildings, and did not delete anything just because, as far as I can see. The bad thing is, they replaced nearly everything. Something we can’t pull off, lacking the heavy resource bonuses the AI gets. Restoration will be a multi-step process.  We still have 3 other colonies capable of churning out ships, and so I order modern battleships all around, to replace losses and prepare for the inevitable next strike. One of the “changes” the Akons did to Shaulires-II was ripping down our old yards and ports to make space for more advanced versions, and even though each turn more and more of the new poo poo they put down is ready to go online, it will take some time until the local industry is capable of finishing the crude and massive modernization wave the Akons started. Until then: No new ships. At least this way we learn the building AI is smart enough to not just demolish buildings it finds on a player colony. Someone on the developer’s side was clearly smart enough to realize that the player will always be better at this stuff than the AI would be, and utilized it for the AI itself: If you lose a good colony to the AI, they won’t be eager to just tear everything down because it doesn’t fit their script. Instead, the AI happily agrees that whatever the player did must have been a better idea than its own script, and keeps what it finds, only modernizing everything into newer versions, if applicable. That said, I certainly don’t want to test how long it takes for the AI to go off the rails, as that would mean I would need to lose an important planet for multiple turns, and gently caress that.  Over the next couple turns, our panic colonizers reach their first targets. +5 colonies for us. If this seems cruel, there are worse planets. Our colonists just need good insulation and some warm clothing.  The situation at turn 338: We still have some ways to go, tech-wise. Especially our ship technology is lagging behind, we really need those final research buildings. But we’re also at 45 out of 64 colonized systems to win the game.  Important to note is, we left this stack of 20 colonizers and some change behind for our retaking of Shaulires-II. This stack alone would end the game for us. In all honesty, if we hadn’t managed to retake our capital, I’d have been forced to send them out immediately, forcing a win before the Akons can grind us down.  Still, currently I’m trading a lot of poo poo to our space neighbors to not make them mad. We can deal with one enemy, but thanks to difficulty bonuses, all of our enemies have huge stacks of hard-to-crack super-ships hanging around. We weathered this attack, but if we can’t get our research up in time, or replace our losses in time, Operation Advanced Diplomacy may still be a go. But I’m well aware this is even more ridiculous than the giant slog of my Master of Orion III LP: Instead of having to obstinately drudge my way to the goal, I can end this game at any point from now on. I just refuse to do so. Thread Vote So I’m putting this to a thread vote: Do you want me to continue until at least the research tree is done (including 2-3 more lore updates in the middle)? Or do you want me to shelf all my Perry Rhodan Lore for another, future PR-related thread and just end this now? Please vote! Yes to launch Operation Advanced Diplomacy and win the game immediately. No to OAD, keep that stack of colonizers away from me! Show off the remaining techs and buildings, you slacker! As a reminder, due to workload reasons my Ascendancy-thread cannot start until this one is finished. Next Update: Relaxing in Space Libluini fucked around with this message at 23:28 on Feb 19, 2024 |
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Feb 19, 2024 23:21
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I'm voting for advanced diplomacy in order to free you from this game immediately. There's other PR games, you said, let's hope they are better and stop the self harm.
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Feb 20, 2024 05:15
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Yes, Libera Te Tutemet Ex Inferis with advanced diplomacy.
NHO fucked around with this message at 13:57 on Feb 20, 2024 |
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Feb 20, 2024 08:35
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Advanced diplomacy! Let's free you from this cruel torment. I would like an overview over the techs and buildings you haven't gotten yet, if that's possible.
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Feb 20, 2024 09:53
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As tempting as it is to posit that you have more you wish to say and should play until you say it, I see which way the wind is blowing. Advanced Diplomacy.
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Feb 20, 2024 11:04
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Advanced Diplomacy since it feels like there's nothing really gamechanging in the later techs, just bigger numbers. Be free.
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Feb 20, 2024 13:07
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Torrannor posted:Advanced diplomacy! Let's free you from this cruel torment. Don't worry, even with the vote going the way it's going, I'll do at least one "last" update to see how far I can get without getting massive battle slow-down face-offs, and then after that I'll do an extra update after the victory to show the final techs and ship parts, if necessary. We already did the story mission, so apart from winning there's not much left to do anyway. This is in essence, a purely German game: Battles and combat are tacked on as an after-thought, and the main focus is on quietly building up your colonies. And after you did this a couple times, welp you're done
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Feb 20, 2024 19:28
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So what other PR games are there? As far as I can tell, there’s three adventure games and that’s it?
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Feb 20, 2024 19:32
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Advanced diplomacy to end the game! The combat somehow seems even more ridiculous at this point than the MOO3 LP, and i imagine last-ditch permawar has been designed in to the enemy AI. If there are any buildings that cause significant changes to strategy or gameplay maybe show that off, but it seems like we got past that with the Molkex stuff.
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Feb 20, 2024 21:52
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