What Video Games Have You Been Playing VII: The Real Ending is Locked Behind a Paywall

[Lemon Merchant]

I'm trying to play Cities: Skylines but I'm probably doing everything wrong.

If I can do it, make a mess, and still come out OK, then so can you. It's a really fun game, just don't over expand too quickly.

You'll be the beloved Mayor in no time.

 

[Quintillus]

Factorio's my current game. Hadn't really played it since April and the latest patch really improves the UI. And I didn't finish it or explore everything last time, so there's new stuff. And even in the areas that aren't new, it's a really interesting, thought-provoking game. It also really has the "just one more task" element to it that tends to keep me playing. Like the other day, it was "I just want to finish expanding my copper production" and while I was doing that I ran out of coal at my power plants and it was hard to resist "I just need to fix my coal supply" and go to bed at a reasonable time.

Prior to that, Rome II Total War with the new Power and Politics patch. Which is also a really good patch, it makes the politics aspect of the game mean something and be interesting. I've already fought two secession wars, and don't really want to have another soon. Hopefully my Republic will regain health better than the historic one after Marius and Sulla.

That's not a bad idea.

I've been playing EU4, which is truly a game where you can exploit weaknesses.

I played a bit of that this month. The AI exploited my weaknesses; I had insufficient patience while playing a small country after having played France the previous time.

Are there any city builders/simulators where you can screw things up so horribly that riots get started? From what I've read, most of those types of games don't really allow rioting to happen so as to put the focus more on building the city. That's fun and all, but I think it'd be more fun to try to build your city up while trying to balance the needs of the residents to maintain order as well.

Sim City 3000 will have riots, with the frequency varying by crime level in the area, and they'll pop up on their own.

I'm not sure that SC4 did. We had a succession session here in SC4 a few years ago, and at one point things got pretty bad because a well-hidden water pipe got cut, and most of the city lost water. But I can't recall riots happening, just lots of people moving out and tax revenue majorly decreasing.

I need to get into Skylines. Bought it a few years ago, but haven't really played it, just a couple hours to get the hang of the mechanics.

 

[Lemon Merchant]

I need to get into Skylines. Bought it a few years ago, but haven't really played it, just a couple hours to get the hang of the mechanics.

You need a little DLC to really enjoy it, but wait for Steam sales. I recommend "After Dark" and "Mass Transit". Both really improve the game.

 

[EgonSpengler]

I started a new game of They Are Billions last night, at 32%. I got a pretty good map - I think - and I'm trying a new approach, clearing the map with a massive blob of 40 Rangers instead of the smaller group of Soldiers I'd been using. Well, actually, it's two blobs of 20; with 40 all grouped together, you end up with the ones in back not shooting very much. My concern is that Rangers don't have great firepower for the mid-game hordes, before I've got Titans and the guys with the rockets, but maybe you can make up for it with sheer numbers (and, by then, they'll all be Veterans). I'm also going to try going completely nuts with Executors, just to see how that works out when the final wave arrives (provided I make it to the final wave, of course).

 

[Commodore]

I'm waiting for They Are Billions to get out of Early Access before I consider purchasing it. Especially at $24.99. I won't pay more than $15 for an Early Access title.

 

[EgonSpengler]

I'm waiting for They Are Billions to get out of Early Access before I consider purchasing it. Especially at $24.99. I won't pay more than $15 for an Early Access title.

I don't blame you. I got it on sale myself. That said, the basic "survival mode" game is pretty polished. They're working on a campaign of some sort, but I've no idea what or when that will be.

 

[FriendlyFire]

Should have changed my name in Fallout 4 to TWOSHOT
two shot sniper rifle, a two shot lazer rifle and two shot combat rifle.

Havent had much luck with my armour drops, mostly still steel armour with bonus stats.
Running a basic rifleman build.
Once you hit level 30 caps stop being a problem, time to break out the power armour

 

[EgonSpengler]

Should have changed my name in Fallout 4 to TWOSHOT
two shot sniper rifle, a two shot lazer rifle and two shot combat rifle.

Havent had much luck with my armour drops, mostly still steel armour with bonus stats.
Running a basic rifleman build.
Once you hit level 30 caps stop being a problem, time to break out the power armour

Which mods are you using?

 

[warpus]

Are you posting very long descriptions over in the KSP thread? I legit love reading them

I've been posting random screencaps from that mission, but it's a pretty elaborate mission. When I was first planning it, I posted a thread on reddit to get some feedback and advice about my plans, and people told me to post a thread when I put everything in place and did the mission. Well that was a couple months ago now and I'm not even done yet. When I'm done I'm probably going to be posting a detailed thread there, and will link to it here. There's just so much that this mission involves though, it might make sense as a set of posts rather than just one.

The screenshots thread seems dead, but I posted an update there recently

 

[Chukchi Husky]

I think the only thing you can do "wrong" in that game is lay down infrastructure too soon, before you have the income to pay the maintenance costs. Don't try to build roads, water systems and electrical plants that your population will "grow into later", because all of that stuff has maintenance costs that can bankrupt you. Build what you need, when you need it. It may be a very long time before you have any public transport at all, for example.

If I can do it, make a mess, and still come out OK, then so can you. It's a really fun game, just don't over expand too quickly.

You'll be the beloved Mayor in no time.

I've completely messed up the city that I'm building. I thought I was expanding slowly, building things only when I needed them. I expand slowly, thinking that I have enough power, then my city suddenly runs out of power, leaving all the residential areas without power, then my water pumps have no power so there's no water, then I end up losing money and I can't fix anything, so I just gave up. I think this game is far too hard for me. I never had this problem with the earlier SimCity games.

 

[warpus]

The beginning of Cities Skylines can be annoying, but after you reach a certain point it becomes far too easy to make money. You just gotta at first really minimize what you build and keep an eye out on electricity and water so that what you just described doesn't happen.

 

[Chukchi Husky]

I thought I had plenty of power, I was building wind turbines whenever I could. The power suddenly goes all at once, leaving half the city without power.

 

[EgonSpengler]

I thought I had plenty of power, I was building wind turbines whenever I could. The power suddenly goes all at once, leaving half the city without power.

That's because the power generated by wind turbines varies with the wind conditions. Wind turbines are also pretty expensive, iirc. I always start with a coal plant. They're cheap and they give me more than enough power for a while.

 

[Chukchi Husky]

I didn't have enough money for a coal power plant.

 

[warpus]

Yeah, upgrade to a different power source later, start with coal. You can also set how much funding the power plant gets, so that you're not spending a lot of money to generate so much power when you only have 50 people living in your town or whatever.

edit: I don't remember how I started my game then, if you don't have enough money for coal at the beginning. Did you not have enough $ for it because you spent it on other stuff?

 

[Chukchi Husky]

I did what the instructions in the game said and built roads and zones first.

 

[civvver]

Maybe this is stupidly naive but I really think AI in strategy games would be much improved if they stopped teaching it how to win and instead taught it how to lose.

I want an unstoppable foe that makes subtle, frequent mistakes that I can exploit. If they are subtle, you don't catch them all. And if they are frequent, then that doesn't matter. If you caught every mistake you'd be bored but this would be a good balance.

So in the Civ example, the computer should just be given big advantages in unit production and technology. But it will pick tech trees that are non-optimal and build units that are vulnerable to your own (because it just knows what you have and adjusts accordingly).

I thought that's what the AI in civ did now?


I started a playthrough of mass effect 2, due to this thread actually reminding me how much I like it. Unfortunately it seems like all the dlc is messed up now that you can't log into cerberus network. I may have to break down and buy it off origin now. I had only a couple dlcs like dragon armor and a weapon pack for the old disc version.

But the game itself is kind of lagging. I picked an adept since I never played them much. I have only finished playthroughs on soldier, though I went pretty far with a vanguard and infiltrator. I put it on hardcore and it's quite boring. Pretty much every fight is hunker down and take pot shots at enemies with warp and singularity. Rushing in I die and the sub machine gun isn't accurate enough at distance if enemies won't come out of cover. I run out of ammo really fast with it, thus you have to just sit behind stuff and bend warps around cover to kill guys. Like I just did okeer dossier last night, miranda and jacob got wasted by all the missile touting blue suns guys so I was on that ramps part before okeer just me vs like a dozen blue suns, but they never actually come to get you. They just sit across catwalks behind cover launching rockets all day. Super dull.

I also find having played the game already I'm not that interested in the dialogue. I have next to no motivation to talk to anyone on the normandy between missions. It just slows stuff down. It's sad cus I wanted to get everyone loyal so no one would die during the final mission but it probably won't happen.

I might reroll and try a vanguard speed run, something more fun.

Regarding crew, I guess you can kind of take anything. I did adept with warp ammo. I maxed singularity first, next going for the passive to get my renegade score up. I like to combo with miranda cus she can blow up singularity with warp and our weapons are all bad vs armor but with two warps on the team armor drops fast, and she has overload for shields. She's very balanced.

Jacob I just bring along for squad fire ammo but his lift is really strong and works well with our warps as well. I might try to sub grunt for him, I think he has fire ammo too, but Jacob works really, really well at keeping those pesky guys who run up at you like krogan at bay. Just lift em, blast em with some warp ammo and a warp attack and they always die. His lift has saved my butt more than a few times when pinned down with a krogan charging.

I feel like even though garrus and zaeed have better weapons they don't actually kill more enemies in the game. I guess AI just isn't that accurate? And garrus's skills kinda suck. Maybe group concussion shot is ok later.

 

[EgonSpengler]

I did what the instructions in the game said and built roads and zones first.

My initial build is usually a four-lane road extending straight out from the highway entrance, as the "spine" of my city from the highway entrance. I use one-lane, one-way roads, as short as I possibly can, to connect the four-lane to the highway initially (I think actual highway offramps unlock later). My starting road network usually consists of one small road off each side of the "spine." To one side, usually the side towards the river or bay, will be my initial residential neighborhood. On the other side of the spine I'll put a coal plant, and that will also be where I'll zone for industrial. The central spine itself is where I'll zone for commercial.

With no buildings in the industrial area yet, there's nothing to carry the power, so I have to build power lines to get from the coal plant over to the residential neighborhood. I zone areas starting from where the power lines enter the neighborhood, so the power grid grows outward from there.

On a lot of the maps, the highway entrance is really far from the river. Sometimes I go ahead and build a water pump on the coast and then swallow the costs of those long pipes. Other times I'll build a water tower right in my residential neighborhood and demolish it later (don't build a water tower in your industrial area, it'll get contaminated and make everybody sick).

Remember that roads have maintenance costs, even if they're not being used. So don't "plan out" your city by laying down roads until your income is rolling.

 

[Chukchi Husky]

I went ahead and built a coal power plant in my city. I had enough money to build one. I thought I would get complains from the people in the city about the pollution caused by the coal power plant and immediately I get a message from someone worried about smog. I placed the power plant in the centre of my industrial area of the city, probably the farthest point from the two residential areas I have in my city.

There is one problem with the power plant, when I clicked on it I read that there's only a limited amount of coal.

I think I may have made a mistake in laying out one of my residential areas. I decided to try and make it more like an English city without any grids.

 

[EgonSpengler]

I went ahead and built a coal power plant in my city.

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