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99% of Aurora's fun for me is theorycrafting spaceships and I will never apologize for it! the other 1% is genociding aliens
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Mar 26, 2024 07:00
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Xlorp posted:Looking at Endless Space 2 to supplement my Master of Orion habit. Having bought it, I'm not liking ES2 much at all. If feels less like riding bikes and more like hastily navigating a room full of traps while hating the AI competitor personae. Stellaris is potentially next on my list to try. But the DLC is pricy so I need to know the bare minimum to get to give the game a fair shake.
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Mar 26, 2024 07:32
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orangelex44 posted:Alpha Centauri's designer is, IMO, a case of rose-colored glasses; it adds very little to the overall experience and nothing of significant value to the game would be lost if it was cut. I gave a list of classic 4X games that also had fun unit designers (according to my opinion) to support the idea that there's probably something potentially fun about unit designers, and there's probably a reason to at least consider putting unit designers in future games. I didn't give the examples so that people could pick one or more of of them and say "well actually I think the unit designer in this one sucks...". That's not relevant to my point. All that matters to my point is: For a given person, out of all the 4X games someone's enjoyed, how many of those 4X games had a unit designer? If it's more than a few games and the person is in the "unit design just sucks" camp, then I think they have reason to reconsider. It's also entirely possible someone just hates every 4X game they've played with a designer. In that case it's totally understandable to be in the "unit design just sucks" camp. That's not where I am though, and I think most people who've been playing 4X games for a while are in a similar place. orangelex44 posted:Haven't played MOO, don't really remember SotS, so I won't comment on those. Planetfall, though, I think is a clear point in favor of the OP claim that "the only way they work is if they're the entire game".Planetfall is a tactical warfighting game masquerading as a 4x, and the unit modification system is a core component of how everything works on a mechanical level. Literally half the techs in the game are tied to the unit mod system, and battles with said modded units are about half the total time you spend within the game as well. And, notably, even at that level of impact the unit designer is more properly described as a unit modifier because you ultimately cannot change the core concept of a given unit, and for all the care given to the unit mods the "base" units were given even more care to ensure they started out as unique and powerful in their own right without needing the player's design to become useful. If tactical combat and research make the unit designer in Planetfall "the entire game" then I'm sure it's possible for someone to justify the same for every 4X game with a unit designer. Distinctions between sub-genres of 4X games or between unit modification systems and unit design system might matter to someone else, but they don't matter to me. Super Jay Mann posted:Civilization already fixed the problem of "unit designers" ages ago. They're called Promotions. In ideal balance, promotions should provide all of the tactical utility of a dedicated unit designer with none of the tedious micromanagement. It's funny you mention that, because I hate promotions in Civ games and I think they're bad game design. It's weird to me that you think picking promotions on an individual basis isn't tedious micromanagement compared to using a designer to create a template once. Personally I do not want systems that encourage me to grind for XP like a MMORPG in order to level up my units. Also 4X games could use fewer rather than more snowballing mechanics. But that's just my opinion.
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Mar 26, 2024 08:10
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The actually good parts of the alpha centauri unit customization are the equivalent of Planetfall's mods, anyway. You take a chasis and give it two 'quirks' which can drastically change the unit's use. The weapons/armor, for all the various tiers, amounts to "level 1 because i don't care, occasional affordable low level thing just so they can handle level 1s, the best poo poo i have access to"
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Mar 26, 2024 09:38
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Lowen posted:All that matters to my point is: For a given person, out of all the 4X games someone's enjoyed, how many of those 4X games had a unit designer? No, out of all the 4x games I've enjoyed that had a unit designer, it's generally been in spite of the unit designer rather than because of it. Sword of the Stars is about the closest it's gotten to being a worthwhile inclusion, since the technology system causes the things you have access to to vary significantly from game-to-game, and you have to simultaneously design for tactical effectiveness and strategic usability, but the actual process of designing ships was still a bit of a drag.
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Mar 26, 2024 09:45
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Xlorp posted:Stellaris is potentially next on my list to try. But the DLC is pricy so I need to know the bare minimum to get to give the game a fair shake. Stellaris DLC has a subscription that gives you all the DLC for a month, for the price of buying a single story pack. At this point in the game's lifecycle with the huge amount of DLC it's gotten, I think I'd go that route rather than trying to buy the 4-5 "essential" DLCs. Especially since you might end up not liking the game in the first place.
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Mar 26, 2024 11:27
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I liked the ship designer in MoO (original, not remake) because it was new back then and it allowed for funky stuff such as planetary virus bombers. Distant Worlds is another exception, in a weird niche where you can play the game as a pure ship/station designer and automate everything else.
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Mar 26, 2024 11:34
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I'm fine with distant worlds, aurora4x, and some others because ship designer isn't half-assed, it's the game.
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Mar 26, 2024 12:05
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FishMcCool posted:I liked the ship designer in MoO (original, not remake) because it was new back then and it allowed for funky stuff such as planetary virus bombers. I don't like the original MoO designer, because you only got six ships. MoO2 got Will Smith with it, having a gun that makes the enemy ship spin around.
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Mar 26, 2024 12:21
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my dad posted:I'm fine with distant worlds, aurora4x, and some others because ship designer isn't half-assed, it's the game. I like distant worlds' one because it's not got any real limitations you can just do what you please with it. In general though, yeah, it's cruft- honestly i'm shocked 4x games still try to have every city have its own management screen and building queues, and instead try to legislate against having a lot of cities instead of just having cities not really involve that much management so having 60 of them is no big deal. I think maybe it's because that would run away from the 'city builder' players of 4x games who really like the management stuff.
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Mar 26, 2024 13:08
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Veryslightlymad posted:On paper, ship designers are meant to be a fluid rock-paper-scissors type system, where you can tailor make your own fleet to counteract the very specific challenges that your glorious space armada is likely to face, and having to change your design plans to something new could be the thing that ultimately spells your doom. The one counterexample I have for this is Stars!. It basically had no AI, it was nearly always played PBEM (turn per day) against humans, and I always found the ship designer interesting and positive for the gameplay. The designer constrained what ships you could build severely enough that it made using it much less tedious than usual (it was a slot-style thing, not freely use all tonnage for whatever you want like MoO). If you knew exactly what you were facing, you could always counterdesign ships that were better than the generic option. To use new tech components, you had to design new ships, but also as you researched new techs all the old components got noticeably cheaper, including ones in designs that already exist. There was a strict limit on 16 different ship designs that could exist at any time, when you wanted to build your 17th you had to delete an existing design and all ships built to it. There were no refits and also many of those 16 slots will be taken by freighters or other economy-related stuff and not fighting ships. For the midgame, new tech components were unlocked consistently faster than you can/should update the ship designs in your fleet. It took many turns to build meaningful amount of warships. Much of that happened because the game was built for 16-bit windows with a strict limit on how much memory it could use. The net effect was that decisions about ship designs were very impactful, but also didn't require tedious tinkering. If you knew you were going to update your main ship design, you basically always knew exactly what you were going to put in it. The big question was always "should I do this now, or wait a few turns". Tuna-Fish fucked around with this message at 13:26 on Mar 26, 2024 |
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Mar 26, 2024 13:23
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FishMcCool posted:Distant Worlds is another exception, in a weird niche where you can play the game as a pure ship/station designer and automate everything else. Ok, fair. Distant Worlds letting you decide precisely which parts of the game to interact with was always its own kind of treat. But by and large.... Can't say ship design has ever felt super impactful in the way designers clearly feel like it ought to be. I think a fundamental problem (problem as in "design question" rather than "bad thing") of 4x games is ultimately which parts are simulation and which parts are gameplay.
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Mar 26, 2024 14:33
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SMAC had some interesting choices with the unit designer irt to abilities. Making new garrisons for anti air when that pops up, for example. Marines for naval invasions and moving directly from ocean cities to land and vice versa without boats. Mind worm defense formers once you've pissed off planet enough. If you're actually going for a conquest you're probably done before any of that is relevant, because the biggest and most important early game jump is getting the particle impactor (4 offense, 3rd level tech) on a speeder chassis titty_baby_ fucked around with this message at 14:54 on Mar 26, 2024 |
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Mar 26, 2024 14:50
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Xlorp posted:Having bought it, I'm not liking ES2 much at all. If feels less like riding bikes and more like hastily navigating a room full of traps while hating the AI competitor personae. ES2, much like ES1 has that strange thing were it is incredibly clinically cold but also weirdly grandiose when it comes to battles, they don't really feel like they fit. And after playing it some more I must say I dislike the quests as a concept, heroes as separate ships, the strategic and luxury resources which sit between important and negligible without getting into either, at least without cranking up the difficulty, but mostly I mind the new technologies from anomalies, both as an in game fiction thing, I just reshaped a system, I should figure out more and better Dust powered repair nanobots about when I rebuild an entire system to fit my preferences, and also from a gameplay standpoint. It adds a little early game flavor at the cost of ensuring an early game of raiding other empires to loot and probe their anomalies across the vast gulfs of two turns of non lane travel, and then once that is done systems are once again a sub puzzle to be optimized for purpose. Once again, I look at SotS in which the early game flavor of a new system was in getting dunked on by a monitor, big boss space suit fragment, swarm of bees or colony trap, there is no permanent benefit to it, you seize the system first, you get to use it first, the loser eats the opportunity cost. The flavor has wisely gone away, no matter who popped it, the system has become either a springboard or just strategic depth. SIGSEGV fucked around with this message at 15:25 on Mar 26, 2024 |
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Mar 26, 2024 15:16
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Beat Warhammer 40k Gladius on easy against imperial guard, orkz, and eldar.  My space marines might be generic but boy do they shoot good!Now to step it up, try a higher difficulty...or play as someone else... hmmm...
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Mar 26, 2024 15:43
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Sooo who's ponying up for Millenia? Please post your thoughts when you have a chance
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Mar 26, 2024 18:28
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Mayveena posted:Sooo who's ponying up for Millenia? Please post your thoughts when you have a chance Im curious too but no way Im buying that so early
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Mar 26, 2024 18:29
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Mayveena posted:Sooo who's ponying up for Millenia? Please post your thoughts when you have a chance I already bought it after loving the demo. I'll report back tonight, but probably in the Millennia thread.
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Mar 26, 2024 18:29
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I don't know if this is the thread for this but Terra Invictus is on game pass now. Any tips for starting out?
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Mar 26, 2024 18:44
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RBA Starblade posted:I don't know if this is the thread for this but Terra Invictus is on game pass now. Any tips for starting out? Theres a thread for it, you will probably get more help there https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=4005102
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Mar 26, 2024 18:47
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There's a TI thread for more detail, but: Your first priority is expanding and ranking up your council. You need to control nations to gain resources to get orgs to buff your councilors to control nations with. Your second priority is getting space mining setup, particularly on Mars. For this you'll need Boost. Your third priority is battling the alien menace - but not too enthusiastically or you'll get targeted.
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Mar 26, 2024 18:50
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Elias_Maluco posted:Theres a thread for it, you will probably get more help there Oh cool, thanks
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Mar 26, 2024 18:52
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RBA Starblade posted:I don't know if this is the thread for this but Terra Invictus is on game pass now. Any tips for starting out? sweet. been on the fence for this one.
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Mar 26, 2024 18:56
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RBA Starblade posted:I don't know if this is the thread for this but Terra Invictus is on game pass now. Any tips for starting out? no tips, just have fun discovering that iceberg and be prepared to lose games, like a lot of games
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Mar 26, 2024 19:25
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It's surprisingly hard to lose in TI as the alien heavily throttle themselves based on your progress. Yes, if you flail around for decades not doing anything useful earth will be hosed, but the AI is really bad at (or doesn't particularly care to) actually doing their win condition. There's an achievement for completely getting kicked out of earth and still win the game, for example.
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Mar 26, 2024 19:58
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No Man's Sky just added a ship designer, as it moves more into 4x space https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3svmrkl3_M
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Mar 27, 2024 16:13
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Mayveena posted:No Man's Sky just added a ship designer, as it moves more into 4x space 4x, lol, get outta here.
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Mar 27, 2024 17:42
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RandomBlue posted:4x, lol, get outta here. a ship designer makes it a 4x, can't argue with that. my fav 4x game rn is starfield
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Mar 27, 2024 17:47
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RandomBlue posted:4x, lol, get outta here. drat read! I didn't say it was a 4x. Ship/vehicle design is inherent to most 4x's yes? So they've added ship design, closer to a 4x. Not a 4x. And I never said it was. However we had just had this ship design discussion so I thought I'd post it. Apologies if I've offended 
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Mar 27, 2024 18:14
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sid meier told me one x stands for xipbuilding yeah
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Mar 27, 2024 18:18
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Insurrectionist posted:sid meier told me one x stands for xipbuilding yeah
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Mar 27, 2024 18:31
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Funny to see Stellaris and No Man's Sky mentioned on the same page. When you buy the former, it's an incomplete space 4x that you now have to start shopping for to get an actual experience, versus a fairly shallow but attractive space sim that just keeps getting stuff added to it for free.
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Mar 27, 2024 18:32
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doctorfrog posted:Funny to see Stellaris and No Man's Sky mentioned on the same page. When you buy the former, it's an incomplete space 4x that you now have to start shopping for to get an actual experience, versus a fairly shallow but attractive space sim that just keeps getting stuff added to it for free. How many DLC do you need on Stellaris for the good experience? I have it and I played some a long time ago but it did felt like an incomplete game so I soon got bored of it and havent touched it again since Ive been wanting to try it on its current version but not if I have to buy 20 DLCs to have the complete game, too expensive for me now
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Mar 27, 2024 18:39
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Elias_Maluco posted:How many DLC do you need on Stellaris for the good experience? I have it and I played some a long time ago but it did felt like an incomplete game so I soon got bored of it and havent touched it again since I hate the subscription model personally but since not everybody feels the same I'll mention that if you own the base game, you can pay $10/mo for all access DLC.
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Mar 27, 2024 18:41
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Insurrectionist posted:sid meier told me one x stands for xipbuilding yeah
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Mar 27, 2024 18:44
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NMS will be a 4X when i can glass planets. they didn't add that already did they?
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Mar 27, 2024 18:45
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uber_stoat posted:NMS will be a 4X when i can glass planets. they didn't add that already did they? What game has the best planet-glassing? I always get such a kick out of building to the biggest ordninance in 4x games. I remember being a kid and rushing straight to the nukes in Civ.
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Mar 27, 2024 18:49
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Kvlt! posted:What game has the best planet-glassing? I always get such a kick out of building to the biggest ordninance in 4x games. I remember being a kid and rushing straight to the nukes in Civ. Distant Worlds. Ask Grey Hunter.
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Mar 27, 2024 18:52
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Terra Invicta finally clicked into place for me over the weekend and dear god someone, please, send help. I have a career, a house, a family. I can’t be spending all this time theorycrafting how to overthrow the Chinese government or how to launch a payload to Jupiter before my rivals do.
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Mar 27, 2024 19:18
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Kvlt! posted:What game has the best planet-glassing? I always get such a kick out of building to the biggest ordninance in 4x games. I remember being a kid and rushing straight to the nukes in Civ. IIRC, MoO2 has both Death Star-style planet cracking (turned them into asteriod field) and an entire star system destroying-style.
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Mar 27, 2024 19:25
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