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I've been playing CoG for quite a few hours today. I think the game mechanics and systems are in a decent place but what could really stand improving is the UI. For example, I couldn't figure out how to get to settings from within the game - that should be pretty basic, right? But it would also be nice to see things like how long a delivery route might take, how much each shop restocks supply/demand per day, etc. I know not all of what I want necessarily makes sense or is more difficult than it may seem (e.g. time per delivery route would differ depending on driver stats) but right now, the game lacks a lot of information and/or is kind of clunky to get the information out of the game. I still like it but I think 2-3 QoL patches would put the game in a way better state.
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Aug 11, 2021 07:32
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explosivo posted:I played a lot of City of Gangsters today and I can safely say this game is a shitload of fun. There is an initial hump of having to do everything yourself that as most of us have found out is heavily dependent on your starting position but once you can get one driver and a truck you can start using that to make your life easier. Set up a driver doing a loop of picking up your main export and selling it, then returning home for more, then selling to the next place, and so on. The route creation tools are weird and missing some things like a duplicate function BUT it does handily shows which stops are already on the route you're editing so it's easy to hit every one of the potential sell points. If you're having trouble getting somewhat regular exports then extort everyone you can in your area and set up a driver to do a loop picking up all the cash and bringing it home. Wow, yep, great advice - once you've got your first goon running a loop of "pick up all supply/sell here/sell there/drop cash/pick up all supply/sell here/sell there/drop cash" loop with "skip if car is empty" on the sell steps, you can really focus on the other stuff while money starts to passively roll in. With my second goon, I bribed a cop, took a shotgun, then killed the leader and muscle from the neighboring Outfit and stole everything out of their safehouse. Now I'm running bags of barley over to a backroom malting operation. Game's great. toasterwarrior posted:Question: you're always restricted to expanding one corner at a time, I assume? It does feel rather slow. Nope, I've got two fronts expanding two separate neighborhoods, but I do remember getting the "can only do one at a time" message earlier... It may be a "capacity expands over time" thing? Squiggle fucked around with this message at 07:43 on Aug 11, 2021 |
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Aug 11, 2021 07:40
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yeah, once i got a truck driver and a bootlegger up to sell my moonshine passively the game opened up a fair bittoasterwarrior posted:Question: you're always restricted to expanding one corner at a time, I assume? It does feel rather slow. there's a way to get multiple expansions going at the same time. i'm not sure what the condition is, i think you have to start them all on the same turn, or at least have multiple fronts active at a time. you can have multiple fronts expanding at once, you just can't open a front while another front is expanding be careful when expanding not to let two fronts fight over the same corner, they'll just cancel each other it seems. its also worth reiterating that fronts only expand to adjacent corners and thats it totalnewbie posted:I've been playing CoG for quite a few hours today. I think the game mechanics and systems are in a decent place but what could really stand improving is the UI. agreed, there is some weird QOL stuff missing here -can't get to the settings from the game itself -no way i can find to hand off cash between people at the same corner -production buildings sometimes complain about having too much input, and will shut down if it is not cleared - something like 6x one cycle's input. this isn't conditional based on how much storage is available (BTW, getting lucky and starting in a barber shop is really great for a moonshine operation) -however, production buildings do not throw a warning if they do not have enough product to complete the cycle - they just tell you they failed and the cycle begins again -can't pick your traits ahead of time. needs some kind of point system to create even a simple custom gangster. started with a boss who was both friendly and irritable, which perfectly cancel each other out -no way to tell if someone is ready to buy hooch without checking in person
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Aug 11, 2021 07:59
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Thanks for the info re: front expansion, guys, I'll see how to get around the tooltip.
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Aug 11, 2021 08:02
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Mr. Fall Down Terror posted:-no way to tell if someone is ready to buy hooch without checking in person it seems like they refresh at a fixed rate every week, like i sold all i could to someone and had no moves/actions left so i waited, then checked and they could buy 4 right away it's interesting to see how the devs threaded the needle on QoL versus "this is what things were like before cell phones and venmo", a funny instance being yeah, having 2 cars at the same corner and not being able to make a transaction between them, where I feel like in those days if a couple of runners came across each other doing their business they'd probably stop for a second and chat/share notes/make sure everyone had what they needed
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Aug 11, 2021 08:07
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I think if you check the resource overlays it will only show people who will currently buy at least one bottle right now. But the amount they need accumulates each turn so it may literally be just 1-2 bottles they want to buy. I keep getting owned by the police, I guess I need to focus on getting relationships up with them and bribing them right from the very start. But also it seems like there's really no threat in just sitting there passing a million turns waiting for either supply or demand to go up, is there some kind of meta-clock ticking behind the scenes? deep dish peat moss fucked around with this message at 08:27 on Aug 11, 2021 |
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Aug 11, 2021 08:24
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the scoring ends with the end of prohibition in 1933, so that's how long you get to build your legacy and achievements, not sure about the game proper, I'm sure you can still play on but it's a pretty long timespan, especially once you get into really fiddly stuff between turns
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Aug 11, 2021 08:31
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I'm wondering if the AI cartels can manage because checking my victory conditions, I have 12 years to go but am already 4 out of 6 for the greater victory and am also leading the overall outfit value race. I'm also beginning to ramp up in cash gain; got an automated trade route buying all the crockware and depositing it in my three production buildings, and am currently wondering if I should use my free crew slot for a second driver for other raw materials or to start a speakeasy. Game's real good, even with the UI issues. It does suck that I have to basically manually check if buyers are actually going to purchase enough of my product to warrant spending an action point, but I'm still making a profit so I can afford to float on surplus somewhat.
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Aug 11, 2021 10:02
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CoG - enjoying it but how the gently caress do I repair my car? What look like they should be auto repair shops don't offer anyoptions (spanner symbol and seemingly appropriate names). Game is bitching at me to fix my wheels but wont tell me how!
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Aug 11, 2021 13:54
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Cast_No_Shadow posted:CoG - enjoying it but how the gently caress do I repair my car? What look like they should be auto repair shops don't offer anyoptions (spanner symbol and seemingly appropriate names). There'll be a conversation option that says "I hear you fix rides" or something along those lines at the repair shops.
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Aug 11, 2021 13:58
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I've been playing Kingdoms Reborn a bit over the last few days and have really been enjoying it. Nice music, very chill and relaxing-like a less janky Banished. I'd agree that the cards system is a neat idea but not that well implemented-the main challenge for me has been space. Compared to banished or Anno, you sure don't have much room and buildings have a pretty large footprint. So far my main frustration is that farms seem to have to be an uninterrupted rectangle and can't have a tile or two missing to work around uneven terrain.
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Aug 11, 2021 14:07
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Try junkyards instead of the shops with the wrench icon, for some reason I've had them not provide repairs either.
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Aug 11, 2021 14:15
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deep dish peat moss posted:I keep getting owned by the police, I guess I need to focus on getting relationships up with them and bribing them right from the very start. yes, bribing the police is crucial. don't forget to hit them up for the complimentary weapon Cast_No_Shadow posted:CoG - enjoying it but how the gently caress do I repair my car? What look like they should be auto repair shops don't offer anyoptions (spanner symbol and seemingly appropriate names). you think it would be the service shop with the spanner, but it is actually the junkyard with the pic of a busted car. iirc it costs about sixty bucks
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Aug 11, 2021 14:20
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Ok, question to the two other people playing Ragnorium - how do mine? I get that I need a skill for this (which is baffling in the first place), and equip it on a dude with a pickaxe. Skills are random drops, but I read on the steam forums that you can also apparently buy them? Where do I do that?
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Aug 11, 2021 14:32
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Mr. Fall Down Terror posted:yes, bribing the police is crucial. don't forget to hit them up for the complimentary weapon The cost varies depending on how banged up the car is, I've had repairs cost upwards $250. But it's weird because you can only get repairs once it gets past a certain amount of damage so I end up checking a lot because I'm never quite sure when I can get it repaired. Edit: VV 
explosivo fucked around with this message at 14:59 on Aug 11, 2021 |
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Aug 11, 2021 14:35
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When your car is messed up enough to repair, its health bar will change from green to reddish.
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Aug 11, 2021 14:57
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So fronts generate resources based on their type, or is it random? Seems like a waste to have a front that doesn't generate anything like your starting front does.
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Aug 11, 2021 15:31
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It's definitely based on the type of store it was in the first place - I'm still trying to figure out how to move all of this Furniture from the furniture factory front for my malt operation. The Hops out of my main office, too. Crates of Hops take up a fuckload of storage space. I assume I can use these in a better beer down the line, but I wish I could dump them at a train station or something. Since my deliveries are pretty automated, one of the things I have my "main" guy running around doing now is calling in favors to get introduced to as many of the shopowners within my territory as I can, getting that initial attitude bump so that I can eat the -20 relationship for later telling them "hey, good news, you get to pay us protection money now." This also means bribing the cops. Never don't bribe the cops. Squiggle fucked around with this message at 15:42 on Aug 11, 2021 |
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Aug 11, 2021 15:39
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Kaiser Schnitzel posted:I've been playing Kingdoms Reborn a bit over the last few days and have really been enjoying it. Nice music, very chill and relaxing-like a less janky Banished. I'd agree that the cards system is a neat idea but not that well implemented-the main challenge for me has been space. Compared to banished or Anno, you sure don't have much room and buildings have a pretty large footprint. Agreed with that frustration, especially since you can't fix it. I hope as the game matures that will no longer be an issue. Glad you folks are enjoying City of Gangsters!
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Aug 11, 2021 16:03
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Squiggle posted:The Hops out of my main office, too. Crates of Hops take up a fuckload of storage space. I assume I can use these in a better beer down the line, but I wish I could dump them at a train station or something.  Click the red trash can next to the hops in your storage and you can just delete them to clear up space. Hops seem to be used for "Backroom Beer" which I just unlocked the knowledge of and might make that my next operation since I am also up to my eyeballs in Hops I can't do anything with. Edit Also this has been helpful now that I have a couple automated routes going and a bootlegger automatically selling beer every week, you can hover over your current money at the top of the screen to see just where all of your money is. I'm sure everyone already knows this but I've been using it a lot more now that cash is actually flowing.  Edit 2: Thumbing through the steam discussions now that the "WTF WHERE'S THE PROSTITUTES" posts have been pushed back a page or two and this one caught my eye.  Kinda lovely. I didn't realize that it's not as efficient because there's basically nowhere that it tells you this. But this does explain why my truck routes don't generate cash quite as fast as I figured they would. explosivo fucked around with this message at 17:03 on Aug 11, 2021 |
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Aug 11, 2021 16:06
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I think I'm my own worst enemy in CoG. The tutorial has me set up with a neat beer loop and I have spent now 4 hours getting through the first year micromanaging exploration because I'm terrified on the opportunity cost of 5 movement cost and/or social cost of exploring new corners and a small obsession with diversifying production even though I haven't found a source of any other raw materials. I should be crossing a threshold by upgrading my beer production if I can find the 150 drat crocks to do so, see also my exploration micromanagement obsession.
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Aug 11, 2021 17:15
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zedprime posted:I think I'm my own worst enemy in CoG. The tutorial has me set up with a neat beer loop and I have spent now 4 hours getting through the first year micromanaging exploration because I'm terrified on the opportunity cost of 5 movement cost and/or social cost of exploring new corners and a small obsession with diversifying production even though I haven't found a source of any other raw materials. I should be crossing a threshold by upgrading my beer production if I can find the 150 drat crocks to do so, see also my exploration micromanagement obsession. Nothing wrong with this! It's hard to expand if you don't have employees or the cash to manage it all so I kinda did the same as you, perfecting the one beer loop I had at home until I had managers and drivers to do most of the heavy lifting. It's easier to start grabbing more corners or scout for new raw materials/sellers when you can mostly ignore what's going on at your home base and be sure you'll have money waiting for you when you get back.
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Aug 11, 2021 17:26
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Wow where did today go? Gangsters is fun. After a bunch of restarts I've realised your starting crap doesn't hugely matter, something useful is nice but follow the chain of "hey I know someone cool" and you'll get everything you need. Expansion early is pretty decent, I've actually found it easier to set up two fronts pretty quick, straight after my production building and get them expanding, respect can take time to build up and without respect people tell you to do one when it comes to protection money. First employee for me is the collect protection dollars person as managing a small production line isn't that big a deal and once you have a truck you can get on with missions and exploring at the same time. Second guy focuses on taking goods and selling them, now my main dude just has to buy a bazillion ingredients every month or So and drop them at home and then I'm looking to get a 2nd property that sells my goods for extra cash while working out a way to keep it all supplied without me. I did try a single dude doing sales then resupply then drop cash off but it takes a long time and if you run close to the wire and have a single failed production run it breaks.
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Aug 11, 2021 17:38
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you guys! https://store.steampowered.com/app/933200/Ant_Empire/ it might be slightly more strategy/tactical but there's a lot of overlap in this thread if you were excited to be a beaver... let me tell you about formic life
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Aug 11, 2021 17:58
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Also playing City of Gangsters, very fun. But I have a goon with the pocket pistol which seems to be just absolutely useless. It says 60% hit chance on mouseover, that's with his +10% bonus from leveling, yet I have not hit a single shot with it. I tried savescumming as well and it just will not hit - though there might be some background "next shot" roll after last combat or something to prevent scumming. Still feels like it's bugged. Also is it just a net positive to have your front be subverted? At maximum turf size I can just re-establish the front and now I'm no longer paying the upkeep costs from all the previous expansions. Is there some downside besides the 1 favor it costs?
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Aug 11, 2021 18:09
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Did anybody try that Patron game?
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Aug 11, 2021 18:15
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sloppy portmanteau posted:Also playing City of Gangsters, very fun. I haven't tested the front thing obviously but you're the perfect guinea pig. It's implied the ongoing cost at a fully expanded front is to stop respect decay at the satellites corners. Check your respect at the satellite corners, it may be going down now. Even if it does go down you might be able to support it with doing regular business there. If it doesn't go down and you aren't doing business sounds like you found an interesting edge case/bug/exploit/weird design decision.
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Aug 11, 2021 18:36
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I'm loving how in CoG all of the good hired muscle I find happens to be 40 year old women. Just imagining this army of 40 year old Austrian women who are strong and sharpeyed. Also this is the icon for a place that can repair vehicles grate deceiver posted:Ok, question to the two other people playing Ragnorium - how do mine? I get that I need a skill for this (which is baffling in the first place), and equip it on a dude with a pickaxe. Skills are random drops, but I read on the steam forums that you can also apparently buy them? Where do I do that? What are you trying to mine? I was able to mine some things with no skill or pickaxe (like the meat piles) but I wasn't able to get colonists to mine flint. My guess was because I had never done the "find some flint" objective on that save but I have no idea if that was right. deep dish peat moss fucked around with this message at 19:23 on Aug 11, 2021 |
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Aug 11, 2021 19:18
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deep dish peat moss posted:What are you trying to mine? I was able to mine some things with no skill or pickaxe (like the meat piles) but I wasn't able to get colonists to mine flint. My guess was because I had never done the "find some flint" objective on that save but I have no idea if that was right. Stone right now and probably iron soon. You get the flint from a mission (though you don't actually "get" it, after you finish mission it seems you still need to order to pick up the flint pieces), but I'm guessing you can still mine it from the big nodes.
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Aug 11, 2021 19:58
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deep dish peat moss posted:I'm loving how in CoG all of the good hired muscle I find happens to be 40 year old women. Just imagining this army of 40 year old Austrian women who are strong and sharpeyed. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_OIs49m56E
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Aug 11, 2021 20:13
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grate deceiver posted:Stone right now and probably iron soon. You get the flint from a mission (though you don't actually "get" it, after you finish mission it seems you still need to order to pick up the flint pieces), but I'm guessing you can still mine it from the big nodes. Gotcha, I actually just got this skill capsule myself as a random reward from an objective.  I would also love to know how/where to get skill capsules and expansion capsules. I did a research that said something about crafting them but I don't see anything craftable yet. This game definitely has a lot of problems and among them is that it's impossible to track down, like, a specific research and see what all of the prereqs are in-game  I'm still having a lot of fun with it though, it's weirdly enchanting. One of the biggest things I've found to make things easier is manually adjusting everyone's job priorities to turn most jobs off instead of having everyone active on all jobs like by default - this reaaaaally speeds up things like research and harvesting.But it can be extremely frustrating with maintenance requests early on - you're likely to need to provide Rope by day 2 or 3. To make Rope, you need a Workshop AND you need the Rope Decorations research completed. To make a Workshop, you need a room with walls/roof/floor/door and a crafting table (Crafting Table research), and that room needs two wooden cogwheels (Wooden Elements research) and a wooden crate (Wooden Containers research), and you'll also need either scrap or leather to turn into fabric, so you can turn the fabric into rope. Having played and failed a few colonies I know to prioritize/rush toward those researches (especially since containers requires commander level 5 so you need to be sort of on the ball - with proper job priorities and a full-time scientist you can finish it all during the fast-speed part of the first night). Researching all of that is also what lets you make lumberjack axes and pickaxes and stuff but the game doesn't tell you all of that when you're new! I'll probably write some kind of basic newbie guide once I understand the game well enough edit: For what it's worth, with a Crafting Table in a Workshop room, you can convert Scrap into metal, and you can find stone lying around on the ground to store which I think is the 'intended' way to get it early on. Also every time you order resupply cargo the cargo turns into at least 1 scrap when it lands.  I just love that my entire goon squad came to me from asking a bunch of people for some muscle and they went "Uhh, have you met my mom?"
deep dish peat moss fucked around with this message at 20:56 on Aug 11, 2021 |
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Aug 11, 2021 20:17
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In CoG uh don't do what I did and automatically keep assuming that "Upgrades Available" means that what you can build is actually an upgrade to what you have now. It looks like for whatever reason you can "upgrade" your backroom businesses to the un-upgraded version. Seems like a bug, maybe there's a reason why you'd want to but the UI doesn't exactly make it super clear that what you're doing will produce less items. Edit: I must go on a quest to find someone who can teach me of this "Secret Doors" explosivo fucked around with this message at 20:52 on Aug 11, 2021 |
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Aug 11, 2021 20:49
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grate deceiver posted:Ok, question to the two other people playing Ragnorium - how do mine? I get that I need a skill for this (which is baffling in the first place), and equip it on a dude with a pickaxe. Skills are random drops, but I read on the steam forums that you can also apparently buy them? Where do I do that? Mining is behind research. It's called "Skill Capsule Research" and unlocks "Mining Skill Capsule Research". Once you've done those two, it'll generate a mining skill that you can give to one of your workers. I'm not sure what you do if that worker dies. I haven't gone far enough in the game yet to be able to make skills on demand. Regarding objectives and rope. You get partial credit for sending them wood and skirts, so don't sweat it if you have to go a while without workshops.
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Aug 11, 2021 22:20
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Benagain posted:Did anybody try that Patron game? I did, I'm hovering at just under two hours and trying to decide if I want to keep it. It's a pretty decent Banished clone so far. What's supposed to recommend it is a lot of social decisions and governmental decisions, but I haven't really unlocked any yet after two hours. My main reservations are that a) the controls feel floaty as hell, moving a mouse around shouldn't accelerate so much and make me feel a bit drunk; and b) the maps don't seem to be random, there are about a dozen pre-built ones. Would have tried it more, but City of Gangsters has taken up all of my free time instead.
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Aug 11, 2021 23:01
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explosivo posted:
I wonder who is growing all these hops anyway. If all the legal industrial scale breweries have shut down then farmers should have shifted to growing something other than hops, something easier to sell.
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Aug 11, 2021 23:12
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Grevlek posted:you guys! Hello fellow ant enthusiast. That looks neat but maybe a little abstract. I'll give it a shot. If you haven't tried it, Empires of the Undergrowth is a lot of fun, though development has been glacial.
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Aug 11, 2021 23:20
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Okay, I see what someone was referring to earlier with the daily random raids in Ragnorium - even on Zen mode you start getting daily attacks with no heads-up other than seeing them on the radar. So far I've been able to spot them before they catch anyone alone, and I have 12 colonists so ganging up on them usually stunlocks even the Dark Humanzees until they die, but there's gotta be something to do about this. I'm working on Defense research now to build a guardpost and walls and stuff like that, I still have no ranged weapons. There are also a lot of things to find/kill way out in the middle of nowhere, including special bosses - the planet I'm on has Anubis guarding an egyptian monument/temple in the deep desert. There are also "Creature Homes" or something like that (not "Critter Homes" but something similarly named) - like I found a big wooden cross with LED lights on it and right clicking it let me order colonists to "Deactivate" it - I wonder if maybe that stops attacks? There's also research for some town-wide buildings like a bonfire that heats up the whole place, an alarm bell to group everyone up, and a Meeting Stone that makes NPCs come visit you and hang out that seems promising, I'm clearing space to build those things now. Another thing I learned: If you don't put things in crates they decay in 4-5 days so build a ton of crates early! Have at least one person dedicated to just hauling/sorting and nothing else, you'll need it most of the time. deep dish peat moss fucked around with this message at 23:26 on Aug 11, 2021 |
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Aug 11, 2021 23:22
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I'm working on getting a brewery going for bottled beer which uses homemade beer AND hops as a resource to make a new type that sells for more. Finally a use for these hops other than dumping them in the trash!
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Aug 11, 2021 23:32
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explosivo posted:I'm working on getting a brewery going for bottled beer which uses homemade beer AND hops as a resource to make a new type that sells for more. Finally a use for these hops other than dumping them in the trash! Nice, I just unlocked the skill (not immediately obvious: some skills are locked behind quests, possibly entirely? Not sure about later-game rando-skill-mentors.) and sold off the reward 12-pack, but I need to get another building on the books so I can start dry-hopping my toilet beer.
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Aug 11, 2021 23:34
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Facebook Aunt posted:I wonder who is growing all these hops anyway. If all the legal industrial scale breweries have shut down then farmers should have shifted to growing something other than hops, something easier to sell. See also the prohibition was a free market economist's dream experiment about government banning of things because after an initial shakeup, the fermenting step got cut out and was either retooled or replaced by a pre-processing product. So there was a legal domestic market for brewing ingredients like malt syrup, hops, and wine bricks that didn't exactly match industrial consumption but kept some of the leaner outfits in business. Which means no real reason for the producers to stop especially as they kept clean and clear from the illegal steps.
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Aug 11, 2021 23:37
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