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bladededge posted:Fun thought experiment. What sci-fi universes actually do have a believable sense of scale? The Forever War and Gunbuster. Maybe Revelation Space. Arguably Dune, though in Dune's case because of the way space travel works the planets are basically neighbors and physics don't matter, so not sure it counts. The Expanse, for sure. I would say Starcraft as of Brood War, it was a single system at the time. Not so much now.
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Apr 9, 2024 04:17
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wedgekree posted:I wanna know how in the last five years or so anyone in the Dominion is left /alive/. Prior to the events of Wings, Kerrigan and the Zerg were basically off the map strategically.
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Apr 9, 2024 04:38
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bladededge posted:Fun thought experiment. What sci-fi universes actually do have a believable sense of scale? Entire story of Firefly is set in one solar system (and technically also Earth, but it's basically a myth at this point).
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Apr 9, 2024 04:58
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A Deepness in the Sky has a phenomenal use of scale. There's no FTL, so while humanity has very slowly spread out through a good chunk of the galaxy, there's no government that spans more than one solar system. Trader's and Merchant fleets can take decades to travel between inhabited systems, and so need to have plans for things like "The government you negotiated with last time was overthrown years ago" or "The entire planet's industrial base has collapsed since last you were here, and this trade mission is now a humanitarian crisis."
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Apr 9, 2024 05:15
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I would argue that Stargate counts, because whenever they do things that don't involve gate travel, things get really tense because "oh poo poo, who has the faster ship?" or "oh poo poo, we're stranded in another galaxy now and have no power to dial back to the other galaxy". That and all the times that gate travel causes a calamity, like loving up stars and entire solar systems because the hacked together system doesn't have failsafes to prevent that from happening.
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Apr 9, 2024 08:07
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bladededge posted:Fun thought experiment. What sci-fi universes actually do have a believable sense of scale? The Forever War and Gunbuster. Maybe Revelation Space. Arguably Dune, though in Dune's case because of the way space travel works the planets are basically neighbors and physics don't matter, so not sure it counts. I want to say The Codominion Series. So, the Falkenberg stories and the Mote in God's Eye. Maaaybe BattleTech?
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Apr 9, 2024 20:05
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It's been forever since I read it, but "Return from the Stars" by Stanislaw Lem had astronauts returning from an exploratory mission after 127 years (accounting for time dilation) and finding that human civilization is now just as alien to them as the planet they returned from. Turns out governments and belief systems can change pretty quickly in advanced societies. The last section of Walter Miller's "Canticle for Leibowitz" kinda gets into the logistics of maintaining Catholic Canon in the fledgling interstellar colonies, especially with the understanding that most of those colonies would probably go centuries without contacting each other, much less trading.
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Apr 9, 2024 22:14
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Patrick Spens posted:A Deepness in the Sky has a phenomenal use of scale. There's no FTL, so while humanity has very slowly spread out through a good chunk of the galaxy, there's no government that spans more than one solar system. Trader's and Merchant fleets can take decades to travel between inhabited systems, and so need to have plans for things like "The government you negotiated with last time was overthrown years ago" or "The entire planet's industrial base has collapsed since last you were here, and this trade mission is now a humanitarian crisis." RimWorld made an attempt at this in the pre-game fluff from early access. It promptly went right out the window with the first expansion, the existence of which directly contradicts one of the core tenants of the setting--that you gotta go the slow way and as such no one can successfully rule over more than maybe a handful of very adjacent star systems in any meaningful way. Which is a shame because that was one of the most compelling things about the little bit of fluff you got. Why are you digging compacted machine parts out of the ground? Because odds are your Rimworld was terraformed 2000 years ago, a human colony ship settled here 1500 years ago, and 500 years ago they all died leaving little more than tribes and ruins behind. Now you just crashed here on your way to get to someplace else. Good luck! In general, I think the moment you introduce FTL unless you're internally doing math to keep things in scale (and lol man scifi writers are really bad at math) you're going to instantly blow up your sense of scale. And that's not even touching on things like an ecumenopolis. Many a YouTuber thinkpiece has been recorded on just how backbreakingly huge the logistics for a planet like Coruscant is. Earth today with 9 billion people on it is positively ROOMY compared to the depiction of city planets. For context... lets say a given ecum has a population density average similar to New York City. Lets say our ecum is also roughly the size of Earth, and more or less perfectly flat so we don't need to think in three dimensions and figure out the population density by volume of New York Cities. To make the math easier, I'll round up: 30,000 people per square mile times 197 million square miles. 5,910,000,000,000. 5.9 TRILLION PEOPLE on one Earth-sized Ecumenopolis with the population density of New York City. Coruscant is apparently 3 trillion? And is significantly taller built than my spherical frictionless Earth. Sci-fi writers are bad at math. Warmachine fucked around with this message at 22:45 on Apr 9, 2024 |
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Apr 9, 2024 22:43
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Also you need food and water for them, and at those densities and what health you can expect from the ocean, probably air as well. World cities make for cool settings but they need handwaves from the author or from the reader.
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Apr 9, 2024 23:12
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SIGSEGV posted:Also you need food and water for them, and at those densities and what health you can expect from the ocean, probably air as well. World cities make for cool settings but they need handwaves from the author or from the reader. Yeah, if you pave the planet your atmosphere isn't going to survive very long. Turns out making your planet into the equivalent of a barren rock gets you more or less a barren rock biosphere!
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Apr 9, 2024 23:14
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Warmachine posted:Yeah, if you pave the planet your atmosphere isn't going to survive very long. Occasionally an author in the 40K universe will develop an interesting take on an overly exploitative planet-scale production model. There was one book where a life-bearing world was essentially reduced to one planet-sized monoculture farm, with the implication that the planet would be unable to bear life within centuries and that this was considered an acceptable loss as it was quite profitable for the guy in charge. Then that universe's God of Decay decided a slowly dying planet is exactly his jam. Of course there are literally trillions of inhabited planets in that universe and some of them are literal medieval, pastoral landscapes tended by simple farmers and lorded over by knights in giant robots. And even then most planets in the galaxy are probably owned by cockney fungi who operate on a tried-and-true economy of teeth and beer.
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Apr 10, 2024 00:13
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40k writers attitude to both sense of scale and basic math is entirely different level. According to official numbers density of some of Imperial ship (I believe it was Cobra class destroyer) is so low they should float on water.
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Apr 10, 2024 00:23
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loving up density is pretty common, in Battletech a lot of large guns shoot objects that must be lighter than water, in Total Annihilation if you do the math many units are less dense that aerogel.
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Apr 10, 2024 00:30
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Warmachine posted:5,910,000,000,000. 5.9 TRILLION PEOPLE on one Earth-sized Ecumenopolis with the population density of New York City. Maybe everyone has a very roomy penthouse suite all to themselves... What if we worked backwards and asked: "Given 3 trillion people on a city-planet, how big is every individual's personal residence, on average?"
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Apr 10, 2024 00:49
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Szarrukin posted:40k writers attitude to both sense of scale and basic math is entirely different level. According to official numbers density of some of Imperial ship (I believe it was Cobra class destroyer) is so low they should float on water. To be fair this is true of many real-life ships as well
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Apr 10, 2024 00:55
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To an extent the Avatar movies and Mass Effect both deal with SOME of the distances correctly. Both have the characters put into stasis of some form to cross the immense distance. Mass Effect also gets points because their fluff mentions that the Citadel is deliberately placed approximately 2 gate jumps from ANY gate at max, meaning it is engineered to become the center of any civilization. In the original fluff, I think Starcraft also used a pretty good measure of distance. Something about the colony ships that the Criminals were thrown on taking months/years to reach the sector of space we're fighting over. That all went out the window when Earth turned up in Brood War. My history brain wants me to mention the parallels between the original colonies that led to the Confederacy, and the technique of "Transportation" that the british used to help kick start all their colonies in the 1600's and 1700's
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Apr 10, 2024 02:00
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OG Starcraft also had like twelve habitable worlds in the same system so let's not grant too many awards there. The Ground Controls had each world with a bevy of biomes and terrains, that was nice, also big restrictions on space travel forcing the plot to spend a lot of time in place. Mind you putting restrictions on space travel cuts both way, going all the way out there has to be worth it too, it's really a writer's choice thing and honestly viable interstellar travel is already a science fantasy thing by itself.
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Apr 10, 2024 02:04
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Warmachine posted:In general, I think the moment you introduce FTL unless you're internally doing math to keep things in scale (and lol man scifi writers are really bad at math) you're going to instantly blow up your sense of scale. And that's not even touching on things like an ecumenopolis. Many a YouTuber thinkpiece has been recorded on just how backbreakingly huge the logistics for a planet like Coruscant is. Earth today with 9 billion people on it is positively ROOMY compared to the depiction of city planets. Applied to Earth, that's the equivalent of the entirety of New York City having a grand total of four residents.
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Apr 10, 2024 02:16
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Szarrukin posted:40k writers attitude to both sense of scale and basic math is entirely different level. According to official numbers density of some of Imperial ship (I believe it was Cobra class destroyer) is so low they should float on water. There's also ships in the Rogue Trader sourcebooks having their crew sizes scale linearly with length leaving the largest one with a population density that would be comparable to Monaco if it were a 2d plane but due to it being about two kilometers tall and generously assuming each deck takes up 10 meters on average with the vaulted ceilings and all, it's more spread out than Kazakhstan.
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Apr 10, 2024 02:33
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Co-op Showcase 4: Matt Horner and Mira Han (Ft. MagusofStars) Video: Han and Horner  Spoiler alert: The Raiders formally join up with the Dominion once Valerian is in charge and the Dominion becomes the good guys.  Their unit list is mostly stuff we've seen before, but there are a few new things. 
 Strike Fighter Area of Effect: +1% per point, +30% max. Stronger Death Chance: +2% per point, +60% max. Significant Other Bonuses: +0.5% per point, +15% max. Double Salvage Chance: +2% per point. +60% max. Air Fleet Travel Distance: +2% per point, +60% max. Mag Mine Charges, Cooldown and Arming Time: -1% per point, -30% max. Prestiges Chaotic Power Couple
 Today, we're off to Korhal.  Mira's stuff has a lot of decorative spikes added on, while the Dominion Starport that drops in is a lot more barebones. The passive icon on the command card is for my salvage passive. When any unit dies, mine or my partner's, it drops a pickup worth 20% of what it costs for the owner.  Matt's air units steal Nova's gimmick of super high cost with a charge system.  Also another nobody is in charge of the mission here.  H&H are unique in that they have no ground-focused static defense. Missile Turrets are all they got.  Instead, they have to rely on the Mag Mines we saw in With Friend Like These.  Once they land they take 10 seconds to arm, during which time they can be destroyed by enemies.  Mira's only production structure are her Assault Galleons.  Her Galleons are capped at 5, and it's important to hit that cap quickly.  Because they also serve as Mira's air units in addition to being floating Barracks. They aren't overly strong, but five ships that cost 0 supply and can outrange static defense is always helpful.  Mag Mines work the same way as their debut mission.  They'll aim for a few seconds before firing down the line. Armed Mag Mines can't be targeted, so placing defensive mines next to a structure is important so an attack wave doesn't just walk right past them while they aim.  Another mission with rocks to break.  While Mira has infantry, her Engineering Bay doesn't hold stat upgrades. Instead, it acts more like a Tech Lab and has individual upgrades for all her units. Each unit has two upgrades, one of which improves an aspect of their kit while also giving them an on-death effect to synergize with the salvage refund. Early game you use a lot of Mira's mercs, then once you get enough resources to make Matt's units you can ram the mercs into the enemy to free up some supply. Reapers get LE9 Cluster Charges (Reduces KD8 Charge cooldown by 10 seconds. Throws multiple grenades at whatever dealt the killing blow) and Jet Pack Overdrive (Active ability that boosts movement speed by 50%, lets the Reaper fly, and lets their attack hit air for 10 seconds). Widow Mines get Executioner Missiles (Reduces Sentinel Missile cooldown by 20 seconds. Launches 5 missiles at random targets that deal 10 + 10 vs Shields damage on death) and Black Market Launchers (Range is increased by 50%. Burrow speed is increased.). Hellions get Aerosol Stim Emitters (Hellions and Hellbats transform 75% faster. Hellions give nearby units +25% move speed and +15% attack speed for 15 seconds on death) and Tar Bombs (Active ability that launches a bomb that deals 20 damage to target plus reducing movement speed by 75% and range by 3 for all nearby enemies. Autocasts). Finally, Hellbats get Wildfire Explosives (Movement speed increased by 50%. Inflicts Fear on nearby enemies on death, making them run around randomly) and Immolation Fluid (Attacks inflict a 50 damage over 5 seconds DoT).  Much like the Void Thrashers, Void Shards start spawning after a few minutes pass. When they do, they start a flat timer to failure. They're less dangerous than Thrashers, with their only attack being a telegraphed AOE that inflicts a short stun and small DoT.  Also there's an attack wave coming in.  A perfect time for Mira's ult, Space Station Reallocation!   No one does it like Mira!I kinda missed the initial drop (which deals 5000 damage to all non-Heroic units. Heroic units instead take 500), but the Station itself keeps the attack wave nearby while popping out fighters to get some free hits in.  Then it explodes, dealing 300 (+200 vs Structre) damage.  Meanwhile my Assault Galleons outrange the Void Shard and chipped it down with zero risk. Each set of Void Shards immediately spawn after the last set dies, unlike Void Thrashers, but it adds a few minutes to the clock in exchange.  The second top bar ability requires Strike Fighter Platforms to use, and are capped at 10. The supply cost counts as Matt's units for Significant Others.  The Galleons have their rally point locked on themselves, so any new units I make will automatically follow them rather than hit the ground and stop if I make an army while moving.  While maxing out on Precision Strike charges means burning 20 supply and 1000 gas, they hurt. 400 damage vs Structures a pop makes cracking defenses a breeze, and they can get a Napalm Payload from the Fusion Core that throws in a 100 damage over 10 seconds DoT on top. Now, I can target things in the fog of war. But how will I know where to aim?  The Theia Raven is how.  Matt's Raven comes with a built-in Sensor Tower, which also gets an extra buff that shows the exact unit you're looking at if they're close enough. No wondering which dot is a Pylon powering a line of Photon Cannons and which is a Gateway chugging away. They also trade out all the active abilities of other Ravens for Analyze Weakness, which marks three enemies and makes them take 3 extra damage from all sources. Considering Mira's core unit is the high speed, double hitting Reaper, this is an extremely potent boost.   Go, go, go!Once a Strike is targeted, the Strike Fighter will rush over to the target.  Then drop a bomb before pulling up. Strike Fighters are vulnerable while flying in, and only have a piddly 50 life to their names, but they're in range for so little time that it only matters if you send them across the entire map and an entire enemy base can take pot shots while they fly by. As long as you only target nearby enemies they're practically unkillable. Destroyed Fighters don't cost money to replace, but it increases the cooldown on that Platform to two minutes as it rebuilds.  Also hey look another attack wave.  Matt's Call in the Fleet is Griffin Airstrike's bigger, meaner brother.  It blasts the hell out of any enemy in range as you see the shadow of Matt's fleet pass by overhead.  Once a Fusion Core is made, a new upgrade opens up for the Galleons. It's pricey as hell at 1000 gas for the whole set, but well worth it.  Also you can use Mag Mines offensively by using your army to draw fire while they arm.  When the Drone Hanger finishes, it just falls from space and lands directly on the Galleon. This effectively turns the Galleons into mini-Carriers, letting them launch Drones for some extra firepower. As a bonus, the Hanger also gives the Galleons out-of-combat regen so you're less likely to lose your investment.    And there's the bonus.  The Pirate Ship is the same as the ship we saw in With Friends Like These. Now, normally a flying target would be a challenge for a bunch of Reapers.  However, mine can fly.  The Pirate Ship keeps the multi-target missile blasts and the AOE stun, but trades out the cloak and Yamato for a telegraphed rush.  The damage it deals is approximately gently caress and You, so you want to make sure to get away from it.   The Starport Tech Lab. Asteria Wraiths get Unregistered Cloaking System (perma-cloak) and Trigger Override (+10% attack speed per attack, max of +100%). Deimos Vikings get W.I.L.D. Missiles (active ability that launches 5 missiles that deal 25 (+15 vs Armored) at a target) and Shredder Rounds (attacks in Assault Mode pierce the target. Transform time reduced by 75%). Theia Ravens get Multi-Threaded Sensors (Analyze Weakness can now target 4 enemies). All Starport units get Tactical Jump.  Han and Horner continue the trend of extremely gas heavy Commanders, considering I need 1K for a full set of Drone Hangers, plus another 1K for 10 Strike Platforms, plus even more for all the Engineering Bay upgrades, then needing to actually call in Horner's air units. But hey, Strike Fighters can cover the field in napalm, so it isn't all bad.  Mira's side of the army is mostly Reapers, with a few Hellions and Hellbats on hand to pop their on-death effects. Widow Mines are a bit of an awkward unit. They're a proper skirmish unit, introduced in Heart of the Swarm, that has to burrow to attack and fires a missile with a 29s (9s with the E-Bay upgrade) cooldown. You can use them for extra base defense, but proper aggression means you don't really need base defense most of the time. They can be micro'd for aggressive pushes, but we all know how bad I am at micro by this point.     It was at this point I noticed I had enough gas for a Sovereign Battlecruiser.  You may notice that the Sovereign Battlecruiser has giant knives on the side. That's because Matt's units get a Mira-themed makeover after getting their upgrades. It looks far more conventional before this.  Matt's BCs lack the standard Yamato Cannon other BCs get, but in return their Fusion Core upgrade is Overcharged Reactor, letting them swap their normal attack between the usual laser battery and a Mini Yamato Cannon that deals high single target damage. It basically turns it into a classic SC1 Battlecruiser. As a bonus, the Mini Yamato deals 200 (+20) damage. That means it deals 260 a shot at +3, perfectly matching SC1's Yamato.    The second bonus.  This one is guarded by a full base.  The main downside to Precision Strike is that it does nothing to air units, making them far less worthwhile on defense-focused maps or missions with aerial objective targets. They're practically useless on Void Launch, a defense-focused mission with aerial objectives.  Also I completely forgot to make them, but Asteria Wraiths lose the anti-air missiles and just use the laser on everything, just like the automated Wraiths from With Friends Like These.    And now all that's left is the final set of Void Shards.    All in all, I'm not overly fond of Matt and Mira. They have some fun gimmicks, but they have so many things that demand a high investment that I always feel like I'm short on something by the end. Even for this mission here, going all in on upgrades and Strike Platforms meant my air army consisted of like one Raven, two Vikings, and two Battlecruisers.      
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Apr 10, 2024 03:16
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H/H are one of my favourite commanders, and are actually the first one I got to max prestige with. And for the prestiges: Chaotic Power Couple was never my cup of tea, but a friend of mine swears by it. It makes Hellbats a fantastic addition to your army, giving nearby units 30% movespeed and attackspeed for 15 seconds when they die. It makes mag mines actually usable offensively, since they activate stupid fast. The pricier Horner units does hurt, though, so you usually only end up with a raven or two and maybe a battlecruiser. Mostly it's just mass hellion + reaper with mag mines for heavy artillery. Wing Commanders is the easiest way to play H/H. Faster cooldowns on starport units and lower cost mean you can get a lot of them out pretty quickly. And since you have fewer galleons available, you have more resources to spend on them. You can easily get over a dozen BCs out before the end of a mission. The lack of galleon firepower makes the early game a bit rougher, but mag mines + a competent ally (hah) makes up for it. Galactic Gunrunners is actually the one I use the most, despite it being an absolute joke. There are multiple maps where it's mostly useless, any air composition makes it significantly worse, and you need a ton of space and resources - 3x3 space per platform, 200/200, 4 supply. In exchange, you get an absolutely ridiculous amount of global anti-ground firepower. Strike fighters one-shot every base defense (except the bunker, kind of? They can kill it but it doesn't usually kill the units inside with the napalm). Protoss enemies? Just throw strike fighters at them to find and kill their pylons. Losing one doesn't matter when you've got twenty more in reserve. When you're targeting them you can click on an enemy unit and they'll lock on to it and hit them almost every time. The drawbacks are severe, though. If you're running this then you're dedicating most or all of your time and resources to making platforms so you have little to no standing army. Again, a competent ally makes this prestige way better, but I'd avoid running it in pubs. Even with my regular co-op partner this prestige is still hit or miss. Fun fact: On release, strike fighters were unusably bad. They did way less damage and traveled extremely slowly. It could take upwards of fifteen seconds to get across the map. Still had 50 health, too, so they died to a stiff breeze. Even using them against attack waves didn't work because any anti-air could shoot them down before they fired. JackSplater fucked around with this message at 05:03 on Apr 10, 2024 |
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Apr 10, 2024 03:41
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Ok, so what's the deal with those two crazy kids? Also, when 40k actually gets scale right it's terrifying. Thousands of massive transport ships landing every minute to feed the trillions of people on a hive world, and if there's a minor disruption millions starve to death. They very rarely do get the scale right, though. habeasdorkus fucked around with this message at 04:16 on Apr 10, 2024 |
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Apr 10, 2024 04:13
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Asehujiko posted:My personal favourites of 40k math making no sense whatsoever are the Warhound Titan(a mech the size of a modest townhouse) being listed as 50.000 tons somewhere, which would put it in the same weight class as the largest WW2 battleships and one of the Imperium's armoured vehicles(I think it was the Land Raider?) being made out of advanced space alloys giving it the equivalent of 200mm of regular steel, a respectable amount for a tank from the 50's. 40k math has its own category of award since most of the time they manage to be wrong in both directions at the same time. Pretty sure they actually made fun of this in some recent fluff centered around standardizing the calendar. M41.999 has lasted several centuries at this point. habeasdorkus posted:Ok, so what's the deal with those two crazy kids? : It's complicated.Even when it gets the scale wrong it's hosed up in other ways. 1,000 psykers a day to feed Big E over 10,000 years. 365.25 * 10,000 * 1,000 is only 3.6 billion. Honestly, the blood for the Golden Throne is loving PENNIES.
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Apr 10, 2024 05:09
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habeasdorkus posted:Ok, so what's the deal with those two crazy kids? One of my favorite jokes from the Seinfeld 40K thread: Jerry begrudgingly fills in for Newman as a clerk at the Departmento Munitorum. The switch is discovered when too many guard regiments actually get the equipment they desperately requisitioned.
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Apr 10, 2024 05:40
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MagusofStars posted:The worst one of these that I'm familiar with is Trantor from Asimov's fiction series. The entire 200 million square kilometer world is developed with a population of 40 billion on the world. No doubt "40 billion residents" sounded like an unbelievably huge number back in the 1940's, but then when you actually work out the math of the entire planet being developed/occupied, that works out to a population density of something like one person every 200 square kilometers.
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Apr 10, 2024 05:52
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I love this odd couple character wise. They are extremely mobile, Mira can recover her boys very quickly, and the call downs are some of the best in this mode. Also your partner also gains from your recovered salvage and vice versa. This can make for some fun economy bending with some of the later commanders we will meet. Also Hellions are actually good here: these ones use anti Armored grenade launchers. You’ll use a few for that and for their slow and their on death Bloodlust. Hellbats still have the flamethrower, but at least these ones aren’t that bad. Having them die first so they can trigger their Fear is a valid tactic, assuming their DOT doesn’t cook the enemy first. The problem to me is they feel somewhat disjointed. There is no good bridge in between their niches, short of using a Raven or two. And you WILL be using Ravens, as they are excellent support units. At most it’s more ideal to concentrate more on Mira’s folks, including mass Reapers, with Horner’s ships as only a minority if you can afford the cost. One minor issue on this is their masteries aren’t top tier to me. Stronger Death Chance is mostly a chance, even a high probability one, when it would be just as fine if it was 3.33 - 100%. Also for the longest time it was bugged and didn’t even work. It took one of the last main patches last year to correct that. The Significant Others increase is even worse: this is multiplicative not additive, so at most you’ll only get 0.65% per supply instead of 0.8%. Very annoying. And the Double Salvage Chance can get you at most a mind staggering…40% of a unit’s cost. Well, 32% if you average in the probability. Not really worth it in my opinion. Chaotic Power Couple is my prestige of choice, doubling down on Mira’s forces. Cost increases aren’t too strenuous and you’ll probably won’t have much air anyway. The stronger stronger death effect is pretty worthwhile anyway. Wing Commanders is powerful, but at the cost of the early game since you only have the 2 Galleons for unit production. Still I can see the appeal of an elite Air Force. Battlecruisers are neat, but Wraiths are good for once, and even the Vikings are excellent anti air support. Galactic Gunrunners may be a meme strategy, but depending on the map it may be just all you need to destroy those objectives. They don’t even impede regular gameplay too much if you are required to do that. Also also the couple as an announcing duo is really fun to listen to if you have them on hand. SteveSteveSteve fucked around with this message at 07:35 on Apr 10, 2024 |
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Apr 10, 2024 07:12
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Han & Horner are just a delightfully chaotic couple. Mira's crazy energy and Matt's tired, dry sarcasm bounce off each other wonderfully.
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Apr 10, 2024 10:33
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titty_baby_ posted:The earth is 510 million sq km, with about 148 million sq km being land. The population density of earth currently is like 58 people/sq km, and the population density of this 40 billion people world would be 200 people/sq km. I don't think his scale is off for "crowded planet". I recall one point in the first Foundation book where a character takes an elevator a mile under the surface because Trantor is built both up and down. Our tallest habitable buildings top out at like 600m, or about 1/3rd a mile. It's more than just a "crowded" planet, it's a planet where the volume of the buildings are an order of magnitude greater than midtown Manhattan. Current predictions for the latter half of the 21st century has the global population peaking around 11b, and we're still gonna have vast swathes of empty land even in highly populated nations like India and China.
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Apr 10, 2024 13:47
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Rifts to Korhal is a particularly awkward map because it has an attack wave that spawns extra early, some enemy comps will hit before 3:00, which can be pretty brutal depending on your commanders and player competence. H&H have a bunch of fun ideas, but more than probably anyone else they're very situational as to how good they end up being - it can be pretty punishing if the prestige doesn't line up with the map, ally and any mutations you might snag. When they do work, though, it's a lot of fun. They do explosions really, really well.
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Apr 10, 2024 14:48
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I really wish actiblizzard had made these commanders available in regular skirmish and multiplayer. Forget tightly-balanced-for-esports multiplayer armies (like the esports crowd did!), I want to load up a comp stomp on opposing city-states and blast a dominion elite army with giant airstrike call-downs. You can only turtle up and mass battlecruisers so many thousands of times before it stops being novel stress relief.
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Apr 10, 2024 17:01
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bladededge posted:I really wish actiblizzard had made these commanders available in regular skirmish and multiplayer. Forget tightly-balanced-for-esports multiplayer armies (like the esports crowd did!), I want to load up a comp stomp on opposing city-states and blast a dominion elite army with giant airstrike call-downs. You can only turtle up and mass battlecruisers so many thousands of times before it stops being novel stress relief. There's mods that can do that, at least.
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Apr 10, 2024 17:16
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Tenebrais posted:There's mods that can do that, at least. I'm currently playing Wings of Mengsk (Wings of Liberty but you play as Mengsk co-op leader) and jesus christ, is it hard.
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Apr 10, 2024 17:34
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Szarrukin posted:I'm currently playing Wings of Mengsk (Wings of Liberty but you play as Mengsk co-op leader) and jesus christ, is it hard. I actually really like Mengsk's play style on co-op, but there's a few missions I'd be terrified of facing on Brutal with him. I love the conscript/laborer gimmick, but I imagine the Royal Guard units would be stretched thin a lot.
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Apr 10, 2024 23:19
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If there's such a mod for playing any of the campaigns as Stukov, I'd probably reinstall battle.net. Bar none my favorite co-op commander, even if a few missions in either campaign might be trouble.
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Apr 10, 2024 23:27
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Cythereal posted:If there's such a mod for playing any of the campaigns as Stukov, I'd probably reinstall battle.net. Bar none my favorite co-op commander, even if a few missions in either campaign might be trouble. There's an Arcade version of "Wings of Liberty - Zerg Edition" where you play as Stukov in the Zeratul Orb missions, but it's not his Co-op tech tree. Though the tree he *does* have there is still pretty fun.
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Apr 10, 2024 23:45
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When it comes to Han & Horner, I simply don't believe in Strike Platforms. Sure, they deal good damage, but they're brutally expensive and gas is in high demand. Something not really mentioned about the Mag Mine mastery is that each point increases your cap by 1, meaning that 30 points increases your maximum charges up 35, allowing you to effectively replace your Base Defenses with Mag Mines if you're playing offensively enough. I personally run Chaotic Power Couple, partially because I rely so heavily on Mag Mines for defense, but also because the Double On-Death Power is insanely strong. Hellbats in particular benefit massively, as they effectively stun units within 4 radius (WAY bigger than it sounds) for 6 seconds, and Hellion Stims can provide +50% MS and +30% AS for 15 seconds, with up to a 60% chance for +100% MS and +60% AS. The extra cost for Horner's units hurts, but I've found that when you've already got a super high-cost unit, cranking up its cost doesn't do THAT much in terms of availability.
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Apr 11, 2024 00:28
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Cythereal posted:If there's such a mod for playing any of the campaigns as Stukov, I'd probably reinstall battle.net. Bar none my favorite co-op commander, even if a few missions in either campaign might be trouble. Someone is currently working on just that going by the GiantGrantGames Custom Campaigns discord, although a recent development so nothing out yet it seems.
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Apr 11, 2024 08:00
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Grammarchist posted:I actually really like Mengsk's play style on co-op, but there's a few missions I'd be terrified of facing on Brutal with him. I love the conscript/laborer gimmick, but I imagine the Royal Guard units would be stretched thin a lot. IIRC the mod is based on NIGHTMARE difficulty mod, because otherwise it would be too easy. To give you an idea of the power levels of Mengsk Elite, levelled up aegis guard can 1v3 Ultras easily.
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Apr 11, 2024 08:43
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Xarn posted:IIRC the mod is based on NIGHTMARE difficulty mod, because otherwise it would be too easy. To give you an idea of the power levels of Mengsk Elite, levelled up aegis guard can 1v3 Ultras easily. And to give an idea on how hard Nightmare is, the enemy base in Liberation Day (the second mission in Wings) now has multiple Siege Tanks, and the base is laid out so they're walled off and you can't even get into their minimum range. BisbyWorl fucked around with this message at 14:17 on Apr 11, 2024 |
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Apr 11, 2024 10:50
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Fortunately, such mods don't force you to play on actual Nightmare difficulty; you can select a difficulty below Brutal (aka the difficulty that puts you in Nightmare difficulty). Even the actual Nightmare mod itself has a number of balance and Quality of Life changes that remain even on lower difficulties.
BlazetheInferno fucked around with this message at 14:31 on Apr 11, 2024 |
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Apr 11, 2024 14:28
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