What Video Games Have You Been Playing? #23: Lost in Shalebridge Cradle

[Zardnaar]

So tried Thrawns Tevenge cruel AI.


Normally play on admiral. Cruel Admiral gives the AI something like 4 times tge resources and faster build times.

The AI Empire blobbed hard not helped by myself eating a couple of smaller factions.

I'm basically out numbered 10-1.

It's doable but the game chugs and crashes a lot. It's a WW1 style grind occasionally you break through and can blitz forward a bit but ve been repulsed more than once.

Got to a bit over 60% but it's crashing a lot more to the point of being unplayable.

 

[Sommerswerd]

That the computer doesn't make any sound/heat up at all for any of the other games I tried.

Ah, I see... yep FrostPunk does get the ol'compy's blood boiling a bit. Most of the most beautiful looking games tend to do that. FrostPunk is a beautiful one and fun too. I am currently trying to get through an endless mode on Survivor at extreme level with all challenges turned all the way up, though I keep losing befor I get to the first storm. I've been alternating between the "Rifts" map and the "Flats" map. It took me a long time to figure out that I can't do the schools/shelters for the kiddos. I need those little hands scraping up coal asap.

Now that's sorted, so I can figure out how to keep the people from starving. That's the current stumbling block that keeps getting me deposed.

 

[Kyriakos]

A little bit later, everything is walled and I even installed 6 turrets in the west part, from which all the attacks have come. Military tech is serviced (well, for just two factories), even in this tiny set-up. But if I had known it used coal too, I'd never have bothered with two round-abouts.
Now I will have to get some chemicals so as to install modules, in the hope the factories won't be as needy.

 

[Kyriakos]

And it always gets worse:

Momentary lack of iron plate supply in the industrial belt, due to feeding something like 40 gun turrets

I do like the game, though. As I said, it's a "what if a 400-500 IQ person crashed into a hostile planet and had to build his own spaceship to escape". Which is certainly very cool.
Version 2.0 is to be released next year, and I read it will let you actually type math expressions into control panels - so Factorio will just become the game for all math weirdos.

 

[Quintillus]

It's normal that some games make the fan spin up. I designed my desktop around minimizing noise - and there's a surprisingly big difference between the noisiest GPUs and the quietest ones, sometimes even within the same model - but even there it's possible to have them spin up if everything is stressed at once (CPU, GPU, and power supply). But often, the biggest factor is the game. Factorio is highly optimized. Many games are not so much. Not every game has a 3D graphics guru working on it to spot the performance bottlenecks, and I suspect that for some of the less optimized ones, they just buy their whole dev team high-end GPUs, which wind up masking the problems that cause lesser GPUs to struggle and make their fans spin at maximum speed. Lowering the settings helps in some cases, but every so often there's a new game where even the people running an RTX 3070 and Ryzen 9 are complaining about the performance (*cough* Cities Skylines 2 *cough*).

I remember having a sushi belt - neat term! - for labs many years ago. Eventually my science stopped, and it was because the labs' inserters could only reach one type of science pack; the one they needed was somewhere farther back on the belt. Props to you if you can get them working well, but I'll try to avoid them as best I can!

Pollution will always be a factor. You can't avoid generating some of it, though you can mitigate it to some extent. But there's a tendency for the base to expand over time. Occasionally my pollution might go down for an hour because of some bottleneck that I haven't noticed, but generally there's always a demand for more, and thus more pollution. More green science. More gray science. More science faster for new labs. More ammo for the turrets to fend off the biters that don't like the pollution from the existing factory. What's that Civ IV quote, "The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy?" In Factorio, it's, "The factory is expanding to meet the needs of the expanding factory."

I won't go into strategies for managing it, because figuring that out is part of the fun. And I'm glad you like the game. It's one of my favorites of the 2010s.

 

[Kyriakos]

That does look like a rather large settlement.

 

[Kyriakos]

The hacker game is more graphically polished than the rest, but most of the games on the list are complicated.
A good idea, to hack your own body so as to get rid of the lethal virus.

 

[Kyriakos]

They Are Billions survival mode (something like 500% difficulty) is no fun. One small error and all is lost.
Also, run Farthest Frontier, but the result was not good. I am disappointed; anyone know if I can check for card-set up issues? (I mean using the nvdia program or dling a latest driver, though I'd rather avoid the latter due to fear). Because the program lists its recommended system specs as at least what I have (4 GB Vram etc) but runs with serious noise.
Or how to check for clocking the system (and what not to do there). (@EvaDK or others)

 

[Synobun]

You're supposed to install new drivers. And computers are supposed to make noise when taxed. Most indie games are poorly optimized. Lower the graphics settings in game, but overall there is nothing you can do about your computer using its resources besides getting a better one or simply not running anything that taxes your computer. You can reduce fan noise by replacing them with special whisper fans or getting a water-cooled system. If your GPU is buzzing while gaming, it's because of power draw under load. Underclock your GPU if it bothers you to the point of concern, but you will suffer a hit to performance afterward.

 

[Kyriakos]

Now that's an armored train.

 

[Quintillus]

All right, I was inspired to give Frostpunk another go. Once I got past the whole depressing environment, this is a really well-balanced and challenging builder... in an extremely cold environment.

I'm playing the regular campaign on the regular difficulty, whichever one that is. Our promise to the settlers was that unlike if they'd join Sommerswerd's latest expedition, we couldn't put their kids to work. The wisdom of that choice has been called into question a few times. Like the time we were 20 minutes from running out of coal, or the time we did in the middle of the night, but our scouting expedition returned with more before everyone froze in their sleep. There was at least one close call on food as well. Thank goodness we haven't had any clothes wear out, although we aren't exactly warm as somehow it keeps getting colder, and not all of our tents have been upgraded to warmer forms of shelter. Where did all the heat go? To London?

Not that we can claim that life is great for all the children of the Frostland. Our intentions to provide education for them were not realized due to more pressing concerns, and once we finally had a bit of leeway, we focused on keeping the adults entertained. Catch a fight and then head down to the Winchester for a pint? Education can come later, preventing anarchy is more important.

And while some may say our rule has become dictatorial, we do have standards. A propaganda department? Wouldn't you need one too, if it were -70ºC/-94ºF? But on the whole, we're more Lord Protector Cromwell than Joseph Stalin. Some amount of disagreement is tolerated, but not so much as to instill panic. Which is a tough line to discern when it's so cold that a North Dakota winter would feel like summer.

 

[Sommerswerd]

I'm playing the regular campaign on the regular difficulty, whichever one that is.

That would be "A New Home"

 

[Senethro]

Child labour is one of the powerhouse laws of the early game. There are enough safe and fully heated work locations like Growhouses that its easy to generate a lot of economic surplus for very low risk.

 

[EgonSpengler]

The Long Dark: Tales from the Far Territory

Zone of Contamination, Day 248. Sheesh, this place was not designed for maximum comfort, was it? I haven't started "Buried Echoes" yet. I spent several (in-game) days just exploring over the weekend and finding a spot to use as my local hq. I'm a little concerned that I may have squandered too many of the canisters for the respirator. Oh, well. The Long Dark has a "if you [screw] up, you [screwed] up, deal with it" ethos, and doesn't allow save-scumming.

On the bright side, I've found that I have no ethical qualms with putting poisoned wolves out of their misery.

Also, I've decided that I don't care for the name, 'Zone of Contamination.' Clunky. I feel like they could've come up with something a little more poetic.

 

[Kyriakos]

So, is Rimworld as depraved as some make it to be? ^^

 

[Quintillus]

I've also been playing Factorio. In November I had a run that ended after five hours, when my car got stuck on a rock and I got eaten by biters. I tend to end my runs if I die, because it's sort of cheating otherwise, so I abandoned that one. Though I may revisit it as it's the toughest mid-game map I've ever rolled - not a single resource other than my starting ones that can be secured without fighting biters, and no oil nearby. No biters nearby to start, but that only makes it easy until those resource deposits run low.

The new map is fairly friendly. No biters nearby. I was able to wall off my immediate area, complete with an extra million copper, early, and have since walled in a large resource area. Nine million iron, three million copper, somewhere around five million stone, several million coal, and 1900% oil is all secure, and not a single biter has been harmed in the making of our fortress. Definitely the best resources-walled-in-before-pollution-upsets-the-biters map I've played.

Spoiler :

Building those walls and turrets was a priority, as in the November map, the biters spawned a new nest in a nearby area that I had previously scouted. All turrets have a healthy initial supply of ammo; routes to resupply them will be built as needed.

The sharp-eyed may have noticed that the resources does not include uranium. None has been located. But who needs nuclear power anyway? It wasn't even added until version 0.15. I've only actually finished Factorio once, and did use nuclear power in that game, but if it's not to be this time, it's not to be.

The base:

Spoiler :

Fun factories include an assembly machine machine, an iron box factory that stacks an amazing number of boxes inside of another box, and an electric mining drill factory and wall factory that both seem to defy physics.

I think next I'm going to set up some oil processing, and work on chemical (blue) science packs. Military (grey) science has not yet been set up, but I'm not sure I've ever done Chemical first, and we have turrets all around our very large factory, so now is the time.

 

[Kyriakos]

Oh no, this is a spaghetti rig :S
I've been playing some They Are Billions survival mode, and had to step down from around 500% difficulty to around 300% (ie switch from "nightmare"/max hordes of zombies to one level below it. Though in the end what made a difference was actually building the usual army of tens of soldiers I relied on in the campaign games, instead of just spamming wasps everywhere and expect that to carry the day.

 

[Somebody613]

Anyone plays Bloons 6?

 

[EgonSpengler]

The Long Dark. Zone of Contamination, Day 250.

Spoiler :

I finally found some wildlife you can eat and boy, is it a trek from the main buildings. I think there's like 2 deer, 1 bear, and maybe 3 rabbit spawns on the entire map. I have yet to see any ptarmigans at all. I set up an outpost behind the waterfall, just because it offered some shelter. It's not really in a useful location, though. Unless "Buried Echoes" brings me over there again later, that FOB won't see much use. I shot a bear and a deer way over there on the other side of the mountain, so I'll have to decide whether it's worth it to trek some of the meat back over to the buildings, which I think will mean having to deal with almost every wolf on the whole darned map. The wolves on that side of the map are poisoned, too. I thought those might be regular wolves, but nope.

On the bright side, I'd forgotten all about the new ability to hack out a fishing hole if there are no fishing huts (also the ice-fishing traps, and there is a lot scrap metal on this map). I happened to notice the icon in the radial menu last night. So there's an option for food that I was overlooking. Still, I think this map has rank among the most challenging. Starting a new game here would be a real [female dog].

 

[PhroX]

Haven't played for a year due to burnout, but the new league got me in the mood for Path of Exile again. Went with a TR ballista PF as its a reliable SSF starter, and up to T5 maps it's been very smooth so far. Not sure about the league mechanic: the ascendancies are great - having +30%MS and +50% all res during the campaign feels amazing and there's some really spicy stuff you can do with the charms - but the buffed mobs can get silly (I've had rares I literally cannot kill) and it's kinda hard to tell how much impact the extra reward stuff is having. It feels like I'm getting more stuff when I get a lot of the extra currency wisps but the other two are hard to see. I guess rarity/quantity are are the sort of modifiers that are best measured over time, but it would be nice to have some immediate tangible rewards for doing the mechanic.