What video games have you been playing? ΚΔ (24)? More like ΚΔ,Ζ,ΤΞΕ!

L1 and R1 rotate your heli iirc.

Thanks! Stumbled on that in a reddit thread last night. Function is disabled for the toy helo, though. -_- Still managed to beat it.
 
Wait for the late super sale where only vanilla is at deep discount to try and sell the other 50 - 200 bucks of DLC and just ignore the DLC seems to be the way. Play indie games while waiting?

Edit: works a lot better when you get notifications about things being on sale. Which I had been too dumb to figure out. Thanks Synobun!

Wait, what'd I do? :lol:

Paradox has really started milking their DLCs in the past couple years. It used to be that they were sold for $15-20 full price and would regularly be in hugely discounted bundles (I got the vast majority of EU4 and its DLCs for $20, for example). Now I'm looking at the Stellaris, HoI4, and CK3 DLCs and they're releasing at $25-35 each, and really only ever go 50% off individually and rarely in bundles. It's eye-watering.
 
Most of the time, but the helo tutorial is limited -- "Hit this to rise, hit this this to sink, hit this to drop bombs", but I've yet to find out how to rotate the thing. Seems it's worse on the PC version of the DE -- in searching for answers to this I've found there's no key bindings for rotating helos in the PC version. I'm on the PS4 version, though, so there should be something out there. Right now I'm stuck on Demolition Man, which is kinda nostalgic: it took me many, many tries to learn helo controls on the PC 20 years ago enough to beat it. :lol:
PC gamer master race, never forget. ;)
Two guys at work play Magic the Gathering. Afaict, WOTC faced the dilemma long ago: how do you sell new content without disrupting balance? Quandary they resolved by saying bleep balance, strategy is in figuring out who can piece the most absolutely busted deck together from the 100k mechanical complexities we made.
The game's unplayable outside of pauper format, and they screwed up the Gatherer interface nearly ten years ago now, sadly, so they can just ignore all input.
Voidwalkin said:
Strategy games cannot use this approach. They're almost exclusively SP, and limitations of AI mean players near invariably handled introduction of increasing levels of complexity better. IDK what the solution is. From a player perspective, I often turn all DLC off and often get a better game from it.
The games from before… 2010? that came playable off the box in more or less complete versions were better.
 
Wait, what'd I do? :lol:

Paradox has really started milking their DLCs in the past couple years. It used to be that they were sold for $15-20 full price and would regularly be in hugely discounted bundles (I got the vast majority of EU4 and its DLCs for $20, for example). Now I'm looking at the Stellaris, HoI4, and CK3 DLCs and they're releasing at $25-35 each, and really only ever go 50% off individually and rarely in bundles. It's eye-watering.
You had the tip about getting sale notifications, which I had not considered!

At this point, immortal empires has so much obnoxious content implemented in the campaign to play without it enabled for the player that I'm just reconciling myself to not playing it until the entire thing goes on sale, which, considering they still ask 20-30 bucks for shogun 2 at a decade old, may never happen.

Ah well, have to admit I've enjoyed mortal empires more, anyways. The AI was better.
 
Nice coincidence. I've been playing lots of Shogun 2 lately after burning through all the campaigns in the Rome: Total War remaster.

It's actually on sale right now for $9. Can't say much about the DLCs; I only have Fall of the Samurai but I've never played it. I haven't noticed anything lacking by not having the rest. Although I might pick them up. Seems I can get all I'm missing for $15. :think:
 
Nice coincidence. I've been playing lots of Shogun 2 lately after burning through all the campaigns in the Rome: Total War remaster.

It's actually on sale right now for $9. Can't say much about the DLCs; I only have Fall of the Samurai but I've never played it. I haven't noticed anything lacking by not having the rest. Although I might pick them up. Seems I can get all I'm missing for $15. :think:
Rome had a very good modding community.

Very likely more content there than in all Shogun. I played Shogun, thought it was eh. Archers on top of a hill had no range advantage. I guess physically you can't shoot much further, because the arrow loses momentum, but I don't think it made any account of the guys at the bottom of the hill forced to shoot upward would have to take an inefficient angle, and it bugged me.
 
Nice coincidence. I've been playing lots of Shogun 2 lately after burning through all the campaigns in the Rome: Total War remaster.

It's actually on sale right now for $9. Can't say much about the DLCs; I only have Fall of the Samurai but I've never played it. I haven't noticed anything lacking by not having the rest. Although I might pick them up. Seems I can get all I'm missing for $15. :think:
I had a phase when I followed Shogun 2. People that want to mow down samurai with guns and cannon like Fall of the Samurai, it has more complexity, but I think Shogun 2 remains probably their best balanced game(due to relative lack of faction variety). The AI is at its most vicious. I actually like the realm divide mechanic, it adds some difficulty right before the game becomes over enough to quit playing. The DLC with just clans additions seemed to have been well received.

Also, not sure if they ever fixed it, but it used to be the case that if you upgraded to Fall of the Samurai, it broke the naval battle AI to the point where all it would do is sail into a corner of the battlemap and stay there. Let's hope they fixed it. I could go back to Steam and look, but I dun wanna. :p
 
I haven't noticed any terrible AI bugs—in the base campaign, at least. Although I will say that the AI is trigger-happy with its agents, to an infuriating degree.

Case in point, from yesterday:

Spoiler :
iFD8PzO.png


It's that every turn, every game, constantly without end. Even at low percentages, it means I'm losing generals and agents faster than I can replace them. Especially generals. Drives me nuts.
 
I haven't noticed any terrible AI bugs—in the base campaign, at least. Although I will say that the AI is trigger-happy with its agents, to an infuriating degree.

Case in point, from yesterday:

Spoiler :
iFD8PzO.png


It's that every turn, every game, constantly without end. Even at low percentages, it means I'm losing generals and agents faster than I can replace them. Especially generals. Drives me nuts.
In RTW and MTW2, if you moved your army directly onto a tile occupied by an assassin(always a parallel tile), it would reveal the assassin. I would then surround them with 9 units, moving a 10th onto the tile they occupied, which would slay them.

I'm unsure if this was fixed in Shogun. I would also use this method to dispatch the 6 princesses that would attempt to unsuccessfully bribe my cities at the end of every turn. Melissa the Gorgon begone!
 
I haven't noticed any terrible AI bugs—in the base campaign, at least. Although I will say that the AI is trigger-happy with its agents, to an infuriating degree.

Case in point, from yesterday:
Yeah, they don't mess around. If you're going to win a lot of field battles, you can try and make the lead army a general-less herd of ashigaru. If they win three battles or so without a general, one of the peasants will have risen up to become a new one, but it's a pain. At least if they have those out after your ninjas they aren't buffing income...but then you need the monks out to get rid of them and you can only have what, 5?
 
The Long Dark

After watching numerous videos by YouTuber Zaknafein showcasing various aspects of the game, I felt inspired to start up a new survival game. So since its been so long, I was treated to all the new various options that you can enable or disable for survival games, none of which were available the last time I started a survival game. I decided to leave them all ON (default), so that meant Cougar, scurvy, trader all turned on. I've never played with the Cougar or trader before, so I'm excited to see how they work in the game. Scurvy, I had played with before, since it was automatically inserted to my challenge saves when the game updated, along with all the new food items, (which was actually pretty cool).

I picked Interloper for the hell of it and spawned in Hushed River Valley, which actually was my preferred spawn, because its in the corner, and allows you to go for a unique, but essential item, the moosehide satchel (increased carry capacity) then go directly to loot-rich Milton (Mountain Town) the second easiest, if not easiest map in the game, with the most concentrated amount of loot and shelter by far of any map. Zaknafein claims Hushed River Valley (HRV) is the best spawn location in the game on Interloper. However, there's a catch for that... you have to know the map by heart... which I don't and for this runthrough, I was determined not to cheat by using an online pre-made map.

So I spawned at night, in a location I did not recognize, and bad weather set in pretty quickly, so I was wandering around in the dark trying to find shelter and I basically... didn't. I finally wandered into stairsteps lake, which was at least somewhat familiar, and I was able to find my way to the exit to Milton, but that was a bummer because I couldn't find the mysterious signal fire, meaning the whole point of starting in HRV was wasted. By then I was so cold and weak and starving that I died sleeping in the cave/transition zone to Milton. I didn't want to cheat death (continue with harsh penalties), so I started over with a Stalker game in Forsaken Airfield (FA).

I started in FA up in the hills, made my way down to the downed Medi-copter, got the distress pistol :yeah: and then went around the wolf infested central plain, to the airport, and fixed the transmitter and grabbed the walking-talkie. By then I was barely alive and suffering from hypothermia. I slept it off in the Hangar's crew quarters, which was an adventure in-and-of-itself.

With my life bar literally at zero, staggering around near death, with the death music playing, blurry vision, the whole nine yards... I swear the game had pity on me because my life bar didn't even have a sliver of red left, and I actually had to light a match and crouch just to crawl to a bed because in my death throes (you partially lose control of your characters movement when you are near death and start stumbling around uncontrollably) I had staggered completely out of the bedroom in the dark and had to crawl back in to just barely make it into the bed. I slept 8 hours, apparently healed (when you have hypothermia, you can't warm up, even when indoors, unless you get in bed and under the covers) but then woke up thirsty and near death again because of that, so I had to drink a bunch of sodas and water (luckily I'd collected plenty of toilet water from the various airport toilets by then :yuck:) and eat some candy bars, then I went back to sleep for another 8 hours and woke up with half of my life bar replenished and the hypothermia healed.

So now that I've got the unique item from FA, I'm tempted to just leave the (new) Far Territory section and head for the (old) Lower Great Bear section where the more familiar maps are. I actually know my way around FA pretty well, as its a pretty easy map to learn, since its so wide open in the middle with such great visibility, but I don't want to deal with the glimmer fog until I am better equipped. So now that I have the walkie-talkie (which is the main reason for coming here), I think my plan is to try and loot the Hangar and then set out for Broken Railroad.
 
The Long Dark: Tales From the Far Territory

Stalker, Day 160-something. After getting bored with Lower Great Bear, I too am in Forsaken Airfield. I came in fully-loaded, so I decided to skirt the plains and the airfield and the wolves, and head straight for the cabin on the island. I'd forgotten how big this map is and how far points of interest are from each other. It's like visiting Los Angeles. Or so I've heard. It took me nearly two days to get from the train station to the cabin. The mountain lion is here. For some reason, it appears on your map even if you haven't seen it yet, and even if you haven't been to the area it's occupying yet. I haven't spotted any of the telltale signs of its presence, so having the icon appear on my map felt like a little bit of a spoiler, but okay. I feel like they've done a lot to make this game safer for scaredy-cat players, almost at the end of its development, even as they've also introduced a yet-harder Difficulty setting (which I haven't even tried yet - I'm still playing Stalker :p ).

I found there's a workbench in the little shed behind the cabin. Was that there the entire time, or did they add it recently? I used to slog over to the big hangar and wait for the lights to go on, any time I needed to craft anything in Forsaken Airfield. Mostly, I just didn't ever craft anything while I was there. When I heard that you could relocate workbenches now, my very first thought was, "Get that danged workbench out of the danged cellar of the danged hangar and move it to the danged cabin!" But now there's a workbench out behind the cabin. If it was there the whole time, I never noticed it until last night.

---

The Long Dark

After watching numerous videos by YouTuber Zaknafein showcasing various aspects of the game, I felt inspired to start up a new survival game.
I like his videos too. He does those hours-long "Let's Play" vids, which I never watch, but his shorter, more focused vids are very helpful.

I picked Interloper for the hell of it and spawned in Hushed River Valley,
I thought about starting a new game at Interloper instead of picking up my Stalker game from last Summer, but I still don't have the danged Skilled Survivor badge (all skills to level-5) and you can't get that Achievement at Interloper, since there are no firearms. Also, I love Hushed River Valley. I'm not nearly as good at it as Zak is, though. And of course, the recent Wildlife Refresh has moved the spawn locations and movement patterns of all the predators (although one of the benefits of Interloper over Stalker is fewer predators, as they're re-classified as Resources instead of Threats).

So now that I've got the unique item from FA, I'm tempted to just leave the (new) Far Territory section and head for the (old) Lower Great Bear section where the more familiar maps are. I actually know my way around FA pretty well, as its a pretty easy map to learn, since its so wide open in the middle with such great visibility, but I don't want to deal with the glimmer fog until I am better equipped. So now that I have the walkie-talkie (which is the main reason for coming here), I think my plan is to try and loot the Hangar and then set out for Broken Railroad.
Grabbing the walkie-talkie and then heading back to Lower Great Bear to do that storyline is probably the smart move, if you're not well-equipped. Zone of Contamination is rough, and it's tied to the second chapter of the story, not the first. Although, after you've completed the first chapter once, you can jump right to the second chapter in any subsequent Survival game. I assume the same is true for the third chapter, but I haven't tried it yet. Still, once I've had my fill of Forsaken Airfield I might head back to Lower Great Bear and do the story, just for something to do. I still want to get Skilled Survivor and Will to Live (survive 500 days), and "hibernating" just to pass time doesn't feel like you're actually playing the game to me. So I need some activities to keep me busy and push me to visit maps I don't love, like Bleak Inlet and Zone of Contamination. Although, one aspect of the Wildlife Refresh that could be nice is that Bleak Inlet doesn't automatically have Timber Wolves anymore. A Bleak Inlet free of Timberwolves is going to be a lot less bleak. Hopefully I'll be able to catch the Trader on the radio soon - I'm assuming there's a radio at the airfield - so that'll give me more things to do.
 
When I heard that you could relocate workbenches now, my very first thought was, "Get that danged workbench out of the danged cellar of the danged hangar and move it to the danged cabin!" But now there's a workbench out behind the cabin. If it was there the whole time, I never noticed it until last night.
OMG lmao :lol: This was EXACTLY, my thought when I found out that you could relocate workbenches (last night)... I immediately thought of the stupid workbench in the Forsaken Airfield hangar basement, that you can't use unless there is an aurora/glimmer fog, or you want to burn through gallons of precious lantern fuel. There are so many better, more intuitive locations in the hangar for a workbench, the hangar itself, which has excellent lighting during the day, any of the numerous utility rooms all around the perimeter of the hangar with plentiful supplies of wood and metal for crafting right in the room, right outside the hangar, which is relatively safe from wolves, and the nearby open hangar, which is sheltered from the wind/weather. It really is so ridiculous and counterintuitive that there isn't a workbench in some other location at an airport hangar...:shake:.

The idea that you can now essentially carry the stuff to make a workbench with you wherever you go is a really exciting concept. There are so many locations (like Gray Mother's, Paradise Farmhouse and the Hunting Lodge) that would be absolutely perfect bases, if only you could add/relocate a workbench. I guess some might argue that making it so no base is perfect forces you to move around, and thus expose yourself to more challenges, but one of the things that I like about these recent changes/enhancement to customization, (safehouse customization, toggling cougar / cabin fever (plus the anti-cabin fever badge) / scurvy, etc.) is that they allow you to play the game how you want... If you get to a point where you want to just settle into a location and have a daily routine, you can do that, without the game mechanics forcing you to needlessly and senselessly put yourself at risk.

I've been asking for years for them to add exactly the type of predator that the cougar represents, but that's what I wanted. I think its a nice balance that they let folks disable it if they want. If you don't want to customize your base and you want to stick with the predetermined workbench location(s) you can do that. One thing I am still wondering, is if you can craft a workbench outdoors or if you are limited to crafting them indoors. It might be nice to be able to put a workbench on Gray Mother's porch... or in a cave:think:
I like his videos too. He does those hours-long "Let's Play" vids, which I never watch, but his shorter, more focused vids are very helpful.
His German(?) accent is very pleasant, and his tips are very informative.
I thought about starting a new game at Interloper instead of picking up my Stalker game from last Summer, but I still don't have the danged Skilled Survivor badge (all skills to level-5) and you can't get that Achievement at Interloper, since there are no firearms.
I can't get over not having firearms available, so I don't know if I will ever fully convert to Interloper.
Also, I love Hushed River Valley. I'm not nearly as good at it as Zak is, though. And of course, the recent Wildlife Refresh has moved the spawn locations and movement patterns of all the predators (although one of the benefits of Interloper over Stalker is fewer predators, as they're re-classified as Resources instead of Threats).
HRV having no man-made structures makes it a non-starter for me, in terms of a long term base. I definitely think that the moose satchel alone makes it worth a visit, but if I already have a moose satchel, I'm not going there. I really like the exercise of "going home" every night and sleeping in a bed, which is another reason I find cabin fever so counterintuitive and annoying. My personal goal is to complete the Tales, so I can use the "no-cabin-fever" badge. That alone makes completing the Tales missions worth it to me. Cabin fever has killed me stupidly on more than one occasion... and sleeping in a snow-tent in back of Trapper's Cabin, instead of in the warm bed by the stove inside, just because of cabin fever, gets old after a while.
Grabbing the walkie-talkie and then heading back to Lower Great Bear to do that storyline is probably the smart move, if you're not well-equipped.
That's my plan. I just need to fully heal up and finish looting the hangar for food and water so I can start the unbelievably long trek back to Lower Great Bear. I just want to make sure that I have enough food, but the catch, is that I don't want to end up eating all my food foraging, thus trapping myself in Forsaken Airfield hunting for food (which is what happened to me in my last long run, where I ultimately died because of cabin fever :ack:). I think maybe I need to just go for it, and hope that I can collect/forage enough food on the way back to Broken Railroad. Once I get there, I will have plenty of foraging available to make it back to Milton and of course, once I get to Milton, I will be home free to start amassing resources to try and complete the Tales (especially since I plan to move the workbench from Paradise farm over to Gray Mother's, so I don't have to take day trips over to the trailer for crafting anymore ;)).
Zone of Contamination is rough, and it's tied to the second chapter of the story, not the first. Although, after you've completed the first chapter once, you can jump right to the second chapter in any subsequent Survival game. I assume the same is true for the third chapter, but I haven't tried it yet.
The part of the story mode where you are dealing with poison gas is nerve-wracking, so I'm not looking forward to the ZoC... not to mention that the wolves there are supposedly both plentiful and poisonous, thus useless for food, making them even more of a hinderance than normal.
Still, once I've had my fill of Forsaken Airfield I might head back to Lower Great Bear and do the story, just for something to do. I still want to get Skilled Survivor and Will to Live (survive 500 days), and "hibernating" just to pass time doesn't feel like you're actually playing the game to me.
Agreed. Cabin fever was introduced to prevent "hibernating", but I don't need it for that, because I like leaving the house everyday to hunt, forage, explore, map, etc. I'm always disappointed when I wake up to a howling blizzard outside because I have to stay indoors. But it would be nice to be able to use that time for crafting as well as reading and cooking custom dishes. So I'm looking forward to being able to construct workbenches.
So I need some activities to keep me busy and push me to visit maps I don't love, like Bleak Inlet and Zone of Contamination. Although, one aspect of the Wildlife Refresh that could be nice is that Bleak Inlet doesn't automatically have Timber Wolves anymore. A Bleak Inlet free of Timberwolves is going to be a lot less bleak.
I don't think they are moving the T-Wolves to different zones entirely,
Hopefully I'll be able to catch the Trader on the radio soon - I'm assuming there's a radio at the airfield - so that'll give me more things to do.
The radio at the airfield that you can use to contact the trader is the one that is in the aircraft control tower. I think I read somewhere that the trader appears after 30 days on Stalker, so you should hear from him if you're at a one of the special radios with the mic attached, during an aurora. The catch, IIRC, is that you have to complete all the Tales missions first. I don't know whether this applies for each individual Survival run, or if once you've completed it once, the trader becomes available immediately (after the requisite days) on all subsequent runs.
 
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I think I read somewhere that the trader appears after 30 days on Stalker, so you should hear from him if you're at a one of the special radios with the mic attached, during an aurora. The catch, IIRC, is that you have to complete all the Tales missions first.
If that's the case, it will be worth it to go to Sundered Pass before I head back to Lower Great Bear. I might do that anyway, since there's a lot of that map I've haven't seen yet.
 
Doom 2: Plutonia.

Allegedly the hardest official episode of Doom.

So, yes, things happen such as starting a scenario with a machine-gun guy standing right behind you and seeing you before you can see him.
BRING IT ON!!!
 
If that's the case, it will be worth it to go to Sundered Pass before I head back to Lower Great Bear. I might do that anyway, since there's a lot of that map I've haven't seen yet.
I thought you completed all the Tales... Are you still needing to finish Sutherland's Tale? Is that something they just added? I guess that would make sense, if its tied to the trader option (I think Sutherland is the trader). I wonder if the trader appears in your game after you complete the Tale, even though you haven't technically turned on the trader (since the option didn't exist when you started your survival run). Generally, TLD has been pretty good at retconning added content into existing savegames... I remember them adding all that new food/items into my previous Challenge game (The Hunted Part One). It was so cool, it made me almost forget about the challenge mode I was playing and I started just cooking all the new stuff :lol:
 
^That looks like a sizeable fleet.

My Vicky II Austria game had made it to 1910. Franz Joseph is still on the throne, and my goal is to keep it that way until his nephew Franz Ferdinand ascends to the throne, at which point perhaps we will see some liberalizing reforms. Happily, Austria's standard of living is high, despite mediocre literacy, and that has kept the people happy.

Spoiler 1899 Map :

1736044658715.png

Since then, Baden has also become Austrian.


Most of the interesting storylines have involved Prussia. There was Communist Prussia, the first sizeable Communist country in the world, emerging from the ashes of one of their wars with us. But then the Communist Prussians were overthrown by liberals, and several parts of Prussia left to join Germany, so soon after that Prussia was trying to retake West Prussia from Germany. A whole proper mess.

Most recently, Prussia declared war on Saxony, my sphere ally, in 1907. I was a bit surprised, but sure enough Prussia thought they could win, as they had the Gatling gun chemical weapons, and we had not. I don't think there is any more powerful difference-maker offensively in Vicky II, with only Gatling guns comparing defensively. We were rapidly pushed out of Silesia, and as far back as Vienna itself, before a full mobilization managed to stop the Prussians. But it took another year to decisively turn the tide, during which time Saxony surrendered Magdeburg to Prussia, and Prussian only really fell rapidly once we called on the Ottoman Empire, Scandinavia, and Hannover to help us end things more quickly.

We now have gas masks, as well as improved rifles and artillery, which we hopes deters Prussia in the future. But another German-Prussian war did just break out, with Germany hoping to retake Prussian Saxony, which they lost to Prussia at some point post-1899.

What hasn't happened yet is the Great War. Prussia and Germany both have a difficult time finding allies, and France and Russia have been unusually peaceful. No crisis has resulted in a war either, with the powers that be consistently preferring the status quo. And I'm happy with that - the most recent war with Prussia showed that even a moderate amount of war exhaustion can be risky for a monarchy, which applies to both ourselves and our Ottoman allies, and we have no desire to fight a prolonged conflict.

If that holds up till the end of the game, I believe it would be the first Great War-less Vicky game I've played. And sometimes there are two or even three of them!

Italy is also noteworthy; it is entirely in the Austrian sphere (with Anarcho-Liberal Sardinia-Piedmont being a recent addition, and a good source of imported hyphens), and we've been on the spot about crushing any rebellions that aim to unify the peninsula. So long as Italy is in our sphere, we know they won't turn their back on us and side with France in a crisis!
 
Played The Last of Us. Didn't like it.

Combat felt sluggish. It tried to be ultra-realistic but realistically, humanity would annihilate that infection without difficulty. The advantage of ranged weapons and mobility, applied consistently, is just way too much for anything limited to melee to overcome. Joel is a terrible soldier too. He's slow, has a pitiful ability to control recoil.

I didn't relate to him whatsoever. I'm not a father and not even particularly paternal.

Hunters were cool lore wise. Fungal zombies were good. But sluggish gameplay and fatherhood and I'm not really gonna invest in your game.
 
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