Strategy & Wargames - middlebrow autodidact "history buffs" who yearn to pull levers

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > C-SPAM > Strategy & Wargames - middlebrow autodidact "history buffs" who yearn to pull levers

BrotherJayne: Nov 28, 2019

Frosted Flake posted:

If you were to pick up a submarine study sim, is Silent Hunter III w GWX, Silent Hunter 4 w either Operation Monsun Dark Waters or Knights of Sea Depths II, Silent Hunter 5 with Wolves of Steel or UBOAT the better bet?

I need something that takes a lot of mental bandwidth to blow off steam, so as long as there�s documentation they can be as rivet counting as possible, I just have no idea which ones have good interfaces and as few bugs as possible.

Wolves of Steel is the most taxing, the manual navigation stuff is awesome. Keeping track of speed and course over time to manually plot your location is awesome fun

# ¿ Aug 9, 2022 14:04

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# ¿ May 10, 2024 01:05

BrotherJayne: Nov 28, 2019

gradenko_2000 posted:

I haven't touched Silent Hunter modding since at least 2013, but SH4 is the most straightforward because it just installs straight from Steam and it Just Works right off the bat with Windows 10, but SH5 is just a qualitatively worse experience unless there's some huge mod out there

Wolves of Steel being said huge mod.

Although I highly suggest modding some of the campaign objectives, being expected to sink 300k tons of poo poo in each AO is ridiculous

# ¿ Aug 9, 2022 14:35

BrotherJayne: Nov 28, 2019

EA for terra Invicta is tomorrow

And the Old World Blues mod for HoI4 is a pretty fun map painter. Trying to keep the smaller dumber BoS factions alive is interesting

# ¿ Sep 26, 2022 06:31

BrotherJayne: Nov 28, 2019

Their DLC model loving sucks, by fragmenting effort and features into buckets and then mixing them together poorly.

# ¿ Sep 26, 2022 07:08

BrotherJayne: Nov 28, 2019

Cuttlefush posted:

Highfleet isn't really a strategy game or a traditional wargame but it's better than anything I've seen for getting a sense of electronic warfare, intelligence, reconaissance, slinging tactical cruise missiles at radar phantoms and dodging the expected counterattack, and so on. It plays like someone read a bunch of carrier fleet/submarine/missile slinging wargames and tried to capture that vibe. and also blasting the poo poo out of things with artillery in 2d. Neat game.

Wish you got loot from air and missile strikes tho

# ¿ Sep 26, 2022 09:47

BrotherJayne: Nov 28, 2019

Bellingcat Org: -2 money, 0 stars
(That's it. Eats a little money)

# ¿ Oct 19, 2022 13:57

BrotherJayne: Nov 28, 2019

That Roman game was lie 80% of the way there. Sad

# ¿ Oct 19, 2022 15:57

BrotherJayne: Nov 28, 2019

Orange Devil posted:

Play me in DC: Ardennes Wacht am Rhein campaign.

poo poo is so good, we're on day 4 in the one I'm playing

# ¿ Oct 22, 2022 20:17

BrotherJayne: Nov 28, 2019

Mans posted:

HoI4 took years to feel properly solid so i'm not surprised if Vicky will only be a proper complete experience by the end of 2023.

It's not so much that the game is bad, it's just barebones.

Vicky2 is an awful experience and anyone thinking it's superior are crazy. Absolutely awful influence system, awful war mechanics (try to mobilize as russia lol), awful colonization mechanics, barely any diplomatic options.

Game as mediocre, but it was the only game we had.

Hoi4 doesn't feel solid to this very day.

# ¿ Oct 27, 2022 20:40

BrotherJayne: Nov 28, 2019

John Charity Spring posted:

victoria 3 by far, there's no contest

lol what

# ¿ Oct 30, 2022 06:41

BrotherJayne: Nov 28, 2019

Anyone here play Rome Total War II, specifically with mods?

A. the DeI mod is loving amazing and

B. if you move the modded .pack files to the data folder and run them there, the game loads about 3x faster than using the steam workshop folder structure and files, dunno why.

Currently running a Mark Antony campaign, got Parthia to truce out just in time for Octavian, Lepidus, and Pompey to all declare war on eachother and me.

this is fine.gif

# ¿ Nov 3, 2022 17:10

BrotherJayne: Nov 28, 2019

gradenko_2000 posted:

At the end of turn 10, we had 1,024 victory points. At the end of turn 13, we now have 1,280 points.

How's the Ai hold up?

# ¿ Jan 6, 2023 12:33

BrotherJayne: Nov 28, 2019

uh?

# ¿ Mar 30, 2023 23:00

BrotherJayne: Nov 28, 2019

Slim Jim Pickens posted:

HoI4's not really about politics or logistics, it's just a slightly groggified WWII game. I think it has a decent scope and breadth of mechanics so that it's not all tactical dice rolling or all abstracted production. Naval and air stuff is notably underbaked but oh well, what games get that right?

TNO is a visual novel where war is another minigame, alongside the weird bespoke stuff every country gets. Get out of it if you don't like the writing. It used to be funnier and looser, but imo the mod team is bloating up with overactive mediocre writers. I enjoyed the couple times I played it.

I like the mods with new maps best because it gets stale running over Europe, or god forbid the USA, for the umpteenth time. They also just go wild for whatever reason. The Game of Thrones and LOTR mod are fun and short romps. The New Vegas mod was also pretty neat, though it got kinda bloated with Mexico. And funnily enough the MLP mod is high quality too

old world blues is pretty fun

# ¿ Apr 21, 2023 20:03

BrotherJayne: Nov 28, 2019

KomradeX posted:

Google has been maki g search worse for some reason everybyear for at least 10 years

seems like it's accelerating as it dives into the shitter, as well

# ¿ May 20, 2023 04:38

BrotherJayne: Nov 28, 2019

Minenfeld! posted:

TWCenter is one of the worst places on the internet.

Does it still run like rear end?

# ¿ Jun 2, 2023 04:56

BrotherJayne: Nov 28, 2019

Tankbuster posted:

I only played with the long war mod. Did plenty of terrorism

Lol was thinking the same poo poo.

Blew up hella monuments and comes relays, etc, and definitely had some collateral damage.

# ¿ Jul 22, 2023 09:10

BrotherJayne: Nov 28, 2019

Frosted Flake posted:

Pact members couldn't make the turbines required for the T-64 and T-80, their automotive industries just weren't there

T-80 had the turbine, T-64 had the opposed piston engine

# ¿ Nov 14, 2023 16:37

BrotherJayne: Nov 28, 2019

ModernMajorGeneral posted:

Last Train Home is out to good reviews and looks like a fun game but it sounds like a brain boiling experience historically.

I'm trying to decide if the game play makes up for thr brain worms

# ¿ Nov 29, 2023 08:30

BrotherJayne: Nov 28, 2019

atelier morgan posted:

mine is ring of red, the extremely plodding mech game in a cold war era japan that was split between north and south. units consist of a mech and a company of infantry for escort

Is that the one where the mechs shooting is a charge up mini game?

And one of the sides is distasteful prussian?

# ¿ Dec 8, 2023 11:41

BrotherJayne: Nov 28, 2019

Typo posted:

for me it devolves into like a 3+ small brawls in larger battles which is annoying. Realistically in ancient battles armies normally kept some semblance of a cohesive formation until one side routes

I mean, "which left flank will break the fastest?" was also a common archetype

Haven't played fog yet tho

# ¿ Feb 6, 2024 11:04

BrotherJayne: Nov 28, 2019

Tekopo posted:

it's focus is more on maneuver warfare than anything else. No real supply tracking.

Scuse?

# ¿ Mar 26, 2024 07:31

BrotherJayne: Nov 28, 2019

Tankbuster posted:

the weirdest thing is that there are actual advantages in total war to keep marching units in columns or blocks if you want to deploy them quickly. Something that reduces the speed of battle shows just how effective that is because a fully stretched out neat line of units will take a long time to turn 90 degrees while you can quickly put them into battlecubes, redeploy the cubes and then reform the line at right angles.

Its just completely useless because the battles themselves are way too fast. Something that deliberately slows down the pace of battle like DeI for rome 2 or one of the realism overhauls for the gunpowder games shows that effect in action. Columns for quick march and lines for maximizing firepower.

Yeah, EiC for napoleon had lines vs columns, poo poo was dope as gently caress

# ¿ Mar 26, 2024 08:44

BrotherJayne: Nov 28, 2019

KomradeX posted:

Valkyria Chronicles 4 is also really good even if its stempunk fantasy invasion of Russia that is also Nazi Germany

I wish that the score for the missions wasn't 80% the turn count.

It turned every map into a puzzle instead of a scrap, imho.

And having a shared action pool sucked.

# ¿ Mar 28, 2024 15:01

BrotherJayne: Nov 28, 2019

Zeppelin Insanity posted:

What do you say, thread? Do we confront NATO head-on now, while we're certain of superior numbers and artillery support, or risk a major deviation from the plan and rush to Bamberg via the southern route?

Punch 'em in the dick! T-80 tidal wave, and smash them with rockets and shells!

# ¿ Apr 8, 2024 05:31

BrotherJayne: Nov 28, 2019

Mister Bates posted:

all this talk about Sparta is making me want to play Divide et Impera again

The mod retains the silly uber-elite badass Spartan hoplites from vanilla Rome 2, but because population is now divided by class and only full citizens can become hoplites, the Spartans can only field 1-2 units of them at game start and any significant casualties to those units will effectively wipe out their male citizen population. the rest of the Spartan ranks have to be filled out with helot troops, which are trash, and mercenaries, which are expensive.

It makes Athens the militarily superior power in Greece despite lacking any units of equivalent quality, simply by virtue of you having enough non-slaves in your territory to raise an actual army, so the 150 Spartan elites get crushed by like 5000 good-enough Athenians. You can also actually tank some losses and come back, while at game start Sparta is cooked if they lose even one decisive battle, because their citizen population is too low to replenish the casualties.

It also gives a Rome player a mechanical incentive to Romanize new territory, because without full citizens to recruit as legionaries you�re stuck with whatever local auxiliary troops are available there

DEI is so loving good

# ¿ Apr 10, 2024 19:33

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# ¿ May 10, 2024 01:05

BrotherJayne: Nov 28, 2019

DJJIB-DJDCT posted:

If you're going to use India, Victoria only became Empress of India in the 1870's, so how much are we laying this on her shoulders? Company rule didn't end until the Mutiny in any case.

Oh christ

I can forgive sucking off Austria-Hungary

But queeny viccy? Bro

# ¿ Apr 18, 2024 08:42

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