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

[PPQ_Purple]

I tried 40K rogue trader the other day. My advice is avoid. The game is stupidly fun, the voice acting is good, the art is great, the story is interesting. Really it would be an easy must play 9/10 recommendation. But it's also bugged to all hell to the point that it's literally unplayable. It's so bad that the good parts of the game, which are actually great, only serve to set you up for frustration and pain when the inevitable bug pileup hits.

So my advice is avoid until further notice. Maybe in a year or two if they fix the bugs. And definitively don't pay full price for it even than.

 

[Sommerswerd]

Milton is not on the map. In any case seeing the map makes reading about the game so much better and easier.

Sorry BJ, "Milton" is just the actual name of the town in the region where you play the first Episode of the Story mode. In the Survivor mode of the game, the region where the town is located, is instead called "Mountain Town" and it is totally abandoned rather than having a few NPC's (like Gray Mother) who you can meet and interact with.

 

[Sommerswerd]

The new Dev Diary says they're working on the final episode of Wintermute, hoping to release it late 2024.

I hope they change their minds and keep releasing new episodes. I'll keep buying them.

Also, while a Custom game lets you choose up to 5 Feats, I only selected 2, in keeping with the mostly-Interloper mindset. Efficient Machine & Cold Fusion. I know that's boring, but sometimes the obvious choice is the right choice.

Same for me. I just went with two feats, and chose Efficient Machine and Cold Fusion as well. I think that those are the clear best options, which is why I'm not all that concerned with earning the other feats.

Perhaps you remember my nickname for Milton...

Spoiler :

Lol I actually thought of exactly that when I got killed last night. The wolves were all over me as soon as I would leave Gray Mother's house, or try to cross the street to get back. In 1 day I must have had at least 6 wolf encounters just trying to loot a few nearby homes.

 

[Kyriakos]

Hm...
Just discovered that I was playing Against the Storm without upgrading anything - through exp points.
At Viceroy.
Now I upgraded 20 stuff...
So that's why the game was so unforgiving

 

[Quintillus]

By the way, are the blue dots, east of the northern part of the eastern wall, a resource? (maybe it's just a scattering of single water tiles)

I can't really tell from that small of a map view. Usually iron is more clustered, so probably water? The "m" key will bring up a larger map with hover-ability to see how much of a resource there is, and that should provide a definitive answer.

The actual late game is what you do after launching the rocket - massively scale up everything to push your SPM (science per minute) rate through the roof.

I've read about people doing that, but to me that's like playing a Civ game after the victory conditions have been met. I've usually explored all that I really feel like exploring by that point, and am ready for a change of pace, be that a new start and map, or a different game. Sure, I could build a whole new, scalable area to try to automate rockets at a decent speed (as in, rockets per minute, not hours per rocket), and I could go harness that uranium and set up nuclear power, and I could build artillery all around my walls... but I've already got the rocket and most of the technology by then, to me that would be like playing through the Modern Era of Civ when I'd already conquered the world in the Industrial Era. Yeah, I could build some Manufacturing Plants to boost my industry and Laser Artillery because they're cool, but I'm rarely so inclined.

I now have a rocket silo, and am about 40% of the way to launching a rocket. Debating whether it's worth setting up a new area to increase copper wire, red circuit, and speed module production, to increase rocket control unit production. Somewhat inclined to just go Assembly Machine 3 + Speed Module 2s on the existing area and call it a day. Figured out how to squeeze in another Speed Module Plant and converted the old Lamp Factory to a Red Circuit Factory, and that has helped, but the tradeoffs of having an organic, relatively small base (albeit not nearly as compact as Kyriakos's) are showing.

I'm somewhat more inclined to do the opposite in a way... turn on Expensive Mode or make all the science recipes take more ingredients. Stretch out the early to mid game, and make them more challenging. Or revisit my November map that had a much tougher initial setup and try to make something of it. Or play Krastorio, or perhaps Industrial Revolution.

 

[PhroX]

I think there's more to Factorio post-rocket than Civ. There are some really interesting challenges scaling up production and coming up with efficient designs, particularly for heavily beaconed setups. And you can set a clear goal in the form of a SPM target to give you something to aim for.

That said, I only did it once before moving onto mods. And if you do go that route too, I'd suggest Krastorio 2 as a good first overhaul mod - of the big ones, it feels the most "vanilla but more", whereas the others tend to have aspects in which they diverge from vanilla much more: B&A has a big focus on managing byproducts and complex recipies, seablock is B&A with everthing coming from water, SE throws massive logistical issues at you and makes good circuit/logic use essential, IR3 has much more obselescene of machines/components and makes producing buildings rather than research the bulk of the complexity, pY does everything etc.

 

[Quintillus]

I'd agree that there's more Factorio post-rocket than Civ, especially if one hasn't done like my friend and I did once and research every non-repeatable tech and build out almost everything prior to the rocket. We still played around with artillery a while after the rocket. And I haven't really dove into beacons much at all, that's certainly something I could explore.

But we are in 2023, which means I have more options than I did in 2005 as well. Mods that can be downloaded over faster-than-dialup connections. A CivFanatics account I can post to whenever I'm at home (and if I set it up on my mobile, even when I wasn't at home). Way too many games in my Steam backlog (Factorio does well to command fairly regular re-visits). More on my wishlist that are now on the Steam Winter Sale. Lately, I tend to play a game intensively for a while, and then move on, and this Factorio playthrough is up around the 25 hour mark, about when I tend to move on for a while. I've had longer Civ3 games, but there was less competition - both among games, and among non-game hobbies. Winter sports season is about to start up here whenever the weather decides to cool off consistently enough, and I'm eagerly anticipating that.

Krastorio 2 seems to be the consensus pick. All I need to do is update the version I downloaded in 2022. I did try Bob's a couple years ago, but its sheer variety of ore was a bit more than the "Vanilla but more" that I was looking for. So, yeah, probably Krastorio. Though the "producing buildings rather than research the bulk of complexity" of IR3 does sound interesting.

pY = pyanodon? That sounds like the professional chemical engineer's Factorio from what I've read.

 

[Kyriakos]

The usual mayhem:

I like that you have churches, when the conspicuous center of your settlement is a pagan sculpture where your fire shaman sacrifices stuff. It's telling that you can't (afaik) sacrifice people*; the game simply isn't grimdark.

(Against the Storm)

*turns out you can, but only if you get a special structure in an event/curse and choose to use it instead of burning it down.

 

[Quintillus]

^Sounds like good old fashioned pagan-Christian syncreticism. Better to have those formerly pagan Vikings be giving at least lip service to the Church while still practicing some of their flawed older practices than to have them be full-fledged pagans.

The rocket has been launched. Some may have suggested launching a satellite to improve our knowledge of the local planet, but I am homeward bound. So instead, we stuffed the rocket full of fish as food for the journey back to Earth. It's a lonely planet up here, and enough of the local wildlife has perished due to the efforts to build a new rocket.

Prior to departing, I was a good citizen of the planet and turned off the factory, aside from the small amount of power needed to launch the rocket. Trains were stopped. Production slowed, then stopped. Pollution started to recede, and biter and spitter attacks ceased. The walls and turrets are still there, and the factory can be restarted again within a few minutes should something go wrong on the flight back to Earth and a return be necessary. But gradually, the planet will return to its natural state.

 

[Kyriakos]

You are supposed to be a multiracial expedition, with each race having special roles - the lizard people are typically the shamans, as well as best at anything having to do with preparing meat.
The game has an interesting style: it is certainly on the cute side, but the buildings are well-skinned and help with the atmosphere, a type of "waterpunk"/steampunk.
There's no complexity in the supply chains, unfortunately. You can often prepare some of the same stuff in different buildings, as well as use different basic ingredients for them, but that feels (to me) more like a gimmick, not really something you will care about after your first couple of games (one forms a strategy).
You don't control soldiers - or anyway there is no direct combat; the "enemy" is to be researched/dispelled with prayer/bargained with, burned as an immobile effigy etc.
It's half-3d (the camera has very pronounced y-axis restrictions, but you can rotate as much as you want as well as move horizontally), which is unintuitive (at least for me). But you get used to it. A serious problem, however, is that the y-axis (and the also hideously limited zoom-out) restriction makes it difficult to observe the entirety of your settlement; unless it is all centered around the starting hearth, you will have to move about.
I am not sure why the zoom-out is like that - maybe there's some option to change it? But in that case, one'd expect the default option to prevent it, not the other way around.

 

[EgonSpengler]

The Long Dark: Tales from the Far Territory

Trailer outside Milton. Day 20. -10F/-23C in the mornings, 3F/-16C in the afternoons.

After a quick trip into Hushed River Valley to grab the moosehide satchel, I retreated to the trailer to make myself some pants, boots, mittens, a hat, and a coat out of animal skins. I also found a leather aviator's jacket by the wreckage of the small plane, on the mountain behind the big house. Had a cold-snap about a week ago where it went down to -19F/-28C one day, but for the most part, I can move around comfortably all day. For now. This Hunter's Revolver is aptly named. You really can hunt with it. I dropped a buck with one shot. Carcass Harvesting, Fire Starting and Cooking are up to level 2. I might hang around a few more days and read these books I've collected. After that..?

I've only got 5 arrows and 14 rounds for the revolver, so I may head down to Broken Railroad and make some arrows. Making arrows develops your Archery skill, so it's not hard to get your Archery to Level 3 before you even start using the bow to hunt. I might also need to make more clothing, since it's going to get colder. With the Custom weather settings at Interloper levels, the temperature is going to keep dropping for another month. Broken Railroad is a good place to hunt in a relatively-contained area, and there's a forge and a couple of indoor workbenches. I might also make some improvised crampons, since I won't be going to Ash Canyon any time soon. I think I have found a pair of crampons randomly once, but only once. Ash Canyon is the only place you're guaranteed to find them, afaik. Then I'll head to the airfield to get Signal Void started.

The code for my Custom Settings: 8tnM-bj8P-Kxsj-maGO-9+IB. As mentioned, it's basically Interloper but with Stalker Base Resource Availability (which means hatchets & hunting knives, and I think that's what controls the bunker spawns) and guns enabled.

 

[Takhisis]

"waterpunk"

What would this be?

 

[Kyriakos]

Rain tech/magic.

 

[Ajidica]

I got Melvor Idle when it was free on Epic games. Basically it is Runescape turned into an idle game. Enjoyment comes from the dopamine hits of seeing bars fill up and numbers get bigger. As a idle game I have it running in the background, checking every 30 minutes or so. I haven't played any other idle games, but I guess it is fun enough. Plus it is pulling on the nostalgia of playing Runescape in middle school, so there is that.
Would I have paid money for it? Probably not tbh.

 

[red_elk]

The Long Dark: Tales from the Far Territory

Trailer outside Milton. Day 20. -10F/-23C in the mornings, 3F/-16C in the afternoons.

The trailer near the church? I guess you went there because of indoor workbench, otherwise the area is not very hospitable

I played the DLC for a while, on Stalker. Explored Coastal Highway, Mystery Lake and Mountain Town, spent few weeks in each location. After ~75 days, got decent clothes (wolf coat, insulated boots, aviator's cap, etc.), maxed cooking skill, 150-200 matches, revolver with ~50 shells and Barb's rifle which I haven't used. Settled in Camp Office. On Stalker it seems almost relaxing now, though I understand this is only because these locations are familiar to me and not too difficult.

New stuff is pretty cool, but there are too many bugs right now, from harmless and funny ones (I was cooking potato in Quonset garage, went outside and after I returned, potato was floating in the air couple of meters away from the pot), to potentially game breaking, like crash when entering trailer in the middle of coastal highway. Honestly I would prefer if they fixed existing bugs instead of adding poisoned wolves and stuff like that. Haven't started the Signal Void yet.

I also found a leather aviator's jacket by the wreckage of the small plane, on the mountain behind the big house.

By the way, that's the Will McKenzie's plane, the place where the Wintermute campaign is started. I found insulated flask there, though it doesn't seem particularly useful, at least on Stalker.

 

[Synobun]

I got Melvor Idle when it was free on Epic games. Basically it is Runescape turned into an idle game. Enjoyment comes from the dopamine hits of seeing bars fill up and numbers get bigger. As a idle game I have it running in the background, checking every 30 minutes or so. I haven't played any other idle games, but I guess it is fun enough. Plus it is pulling on the nostalgia of playing Runescape in middle school, so there is that.
Would I have paid money for it? Probably not tbh.

Yeah, idle games are difficult to grok a monetary value for. For the good ones, you'll reach 800+ hours in having them open, but how much of that is actual gameplay? To some extent, the mere fact that you're willing to keep it open that long indicates it's worth something, but how much?

I don't think I've ever paid full price for an idle game, with that in mind. Not unless it's <$6.

Melvor is fairly unique in the genre, with most others of the type being more copycats than inspirations. There's one called SS13 Idle, which is basically Melvor but for science fiction. Increlution has the bars but has a more closed gameplay loop, as you're fighting against a time limit and you die/prestige a lot in order to make the timers more forgiving so you can get a little further the next time. Trimps is ugly and slow, but decent—if you can get past the time investment needed for progress and the fact that it looks like a shoddily put-together spreadsheet.

 

[Kyriakos]

All these new games seem to go for the achievements/unlocking stuff. At least it's not a mobile game where you pay to unlock such ^^
Can't say I am a fan of the mechanism, since it makes every future game easier, which adds to it already being easier due to yourself becoming familiar with the setting and dynamics.

Also, mandatory ironman mode erodes the ability to be casual about the game, so I'm also not a fan.

But my biggest issue with Against the Storm is the lack of a decent zooming-out option.

 

[EgonSpengler]

The trailer near the church? I guess you went there because of indoor workbench, otherwise the area is not very hospitable

It's not a bad place to hang out for a bit. Plenty of wood, two rabbit spawns, a bear spawn, a potential moose spawn (although not in my current game, unfortunately). But yeah, it's mostly useful for the workbench and for being on the way to Hushed River Valley.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Steam's games of the year vote is underway. I check and found out I haven't played any of them.

 

[Farm Boy]

Steam's games of the year vote is underway. I check and found out I haven't played any of them.

I've been trying to play Baldur's Gate III, which I expect will be up there. The quality is berserk, but it's basically a DnD campaign, and I don't like the DM. I don't think I'm going to make it very far before binning it.