What games are you playing and why?

Controller works fine imo. I *love* the Streetfighter games... If you want any tips or just want to play friend me on steam and actually grab my attention in the little free time I have and I would *love* to play online with/against you. Maybe some teamspeak so we can chat while doing it.

This goes for everyone playing, I am not good, so I can learn a lot as well from others.

Of course, there was that issue about not being able to connect with a friend who had it... hope that won't be repeated.. Also I am going on holiday soon... hmmmm... But the game is awesome!

 

Well after a couple of bad experiences playing the new and 'improved' Endless Space (see that thread for details), I started a game of SotS again for the first time in what feels like forever. I'm definitely still rusty but I'm starting to remember why I liked the game in the first place.

Meanwhile, I discovered this new turn-based 4X space game in alpha (steam Early Access) called "Horizon". I've only played through the tutorial so I can't tell you much. AS far as it being an alpha, I haven't seen any actual bugs, but it clearly needs something more than what is there, and some polish, tweaks to the UI, and so on. I'm HOPING it will turn out to be a good game, and I do plan on exploring it some more along the way. I only bought it after my frustration with ES's Disharmony DLC.

 

Yeah. ES looks good, but Disharmony sounds like a description of player to game relations. (Basically everything I read sounds like this is an EA level alpha DLC of some garbage. It may get fixed at some point, but I will wait to play it until it has a few months more.)

I have not been playing anything recently. I had better get back to playing games, or I will need yet another few years to catch up to my current backlog of games.

SotS is one of my priority games on my backlog. I have had it for a long time now and have never actually played it. I expect that will change before I delve into ES.

 

You may want to look at the wiki, but I strongly recommend that you stay away from any spoilers sections: http://sots.rorschach.net/

You also probably should pay close attention to the special rules governing each of the different races that you can choose from (they each have special rules associated with them, and if you wind up with the Zuul and haven't a clue as to what to do, don't blame me lol. In fact, let me just say from the get-go, do not play the Zuul until you know almost everything about them and are experienced with the game.

/edit
You specifically will want to look at this:
http://sots.rorschach.net/FTL_Drive_Technology

 

Thanks for the offer, but I don't really do MP.

I picked up the first DLC expansion for Sword of the Stars: The Pit, called Mind Games or something. First try was okay but WHY is the awesome lady alien Ranger class not available on Easy? That really annoys me.

 

I picked it up also. I hate those mindwolves though -- you can't always attack them even if you know they are right in front of you and can target the square (though grenades work well enough -- too bad you only get one grenade as a psionicist). Those damn things forced me to use up all my healing capability in no time. Then there was this spider thing that gave me a level 5 poison on level 1 -- no joke.

Am I supposed to get special abilities as a psionics guy? I didn't see any , I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do to get them or use them.

 

Nothing happens when I press P. So I looked at my key assignments, and apparently , P is assigned to two different things == both Psionics and Screenshot.

 

Disharmony looked like it had a lot of potential but I totally could not figure out what any of the changed mechanics actually did--seriously there's like... no documentation at all??? what is up with that--and ended up with the AI glitching so I couldn't stop them from invading my system so I'll... come back after a few patches and when the wiki's been updated a bit more.

I think the best 4x game I've played recently was Fall From Heaven, which is a mod. (A really good mod for civ 4 which is already one of the best 4x games available so.) Most of what I've tried has been irritatingly meh.

(Oh and Dominions 3, but that wasn't something I recently played, and I'm not actually sane when it comes to picking easily playable games. Although really SotS seemed about the same in terms of "oh god what do I do" and i probably should try that again. (Is SotS 2 patched enough to be playable yet?))

Ughhhh why do people do this >.< I hadn't even gotten into the game at all because it wouldn't let me pick the gender of my class :| (...it's a nitpick but I have enough options its enough to put me off from playing a lot of games entirely. Amusingly enough including Dungeons of Dredmor at first xP)

I guess I'll have to make my own roguelikes. About princesses.

 

Yeah, like Nabday said. I tweeted the devs about it and they told me that the Ranger and Psion are more powerful classes and as such are only available on normal. I'm not entirely sure how that works, but okay.

I do really think they need to overhaul the UI, though. It is *shocking*.

 

It still seems a bit odd in a single player game really.

The UI is definitely another big reason I've been put off from actually playing. (That and lately I can't. play roguelikes without like trying to analyze their FOV/Line of sight algorithms and it's kind of distracting!!)

 

Well after fixing that duplicate key assignment, I was able to explore some of the psi powers. They are cool, but the psi points and cooldowns do limit their use so they don't feel as op as they looked at first glance. Now that I know how to use it, On a run where I didn't encounter a single Mind Wolf, I did make it level 7 with the PSion. It's cool being able to attempt to remove traps from a distance. I also read that the lack of a visible cooldown timer is a bug.

It's my understanding that there may be some kind of puzzle with the encoded messages that you need to solve before you can unlock those skills on easy. At least that's the speculation.

 

Dominions 3 is cool, but I apparently suck at it lol.

The thing about SotS is that there is a lot there that is intended to surprise you, and that you are supposed to figure out a bit. Some of it is really easy to figure out and you can PROBABLY deal with very easily once you get only a little bit more technology (such as how to deal with the Swarm), while others are incredibly difficult to deal with and you sometimes have to just take it like a whimpering dog. The randomized tech lists mean that occasionally you just are not going to get the cool things that you want, which means that you have to adapt. And sometimes you can still get that tech you want, but it will just take a lot longer (the tech tree has a great deal of hidden sophistication to it). Furthermore there are messages that you receive that have hidden meanings. For example, in one game, someone was using my racial 'addiction' skill against me, and the message I received was not very direct (but I figured it out). In other words, you aren't supposed to know everything, and like a rogue-like, you need to figure those things out.

Here's some other things you may want to check out:
http://cdn4.steampowered.com/Manuals/42890/SOTS_CC_Manual_Final.pdf?t=1319042458
http://sots.rorschach.net/Beginner's_Guide,

Oh, and it also helps to know all of the special controls, for tactical combat. For example, the most important keys (for me) are Control-Pageup and Control-Pagedown to speed up and slow down combat. You don't really have to micromanage combats all that often (other than selecting important targets), but if you need to. The manual I linked has those quick keys at the end of it.

My problem with SotS 2 is less about the bugs, and more about the arcane UI and changes that just make things feel backwards, so I gave up on it a long time ago.

 

Claustrophobia: The Downward Struggle hit Alpha 1.1.1 this week and it is THE best version of the game to date. The difficulty is much more balanced, the skills seem pretty interesting (albeit hidden and easy to forget about), and the stat system is simple yet functional. Still a few issues here and there, plus some annoying moments (opened a room once on Floor 1 and walked into a Level 10 enemy), but otherwise good.

It's also got Dredmor's sense of humour, though not as blatantly.

 

Sacred 2: Gold
I've had a copy of Sacred 2 for *years*, I managed to get my grubbies on a very cheap Collector's Edition, but it was a large install and didn't perform brilliantly for me... not to mention patching it was pretty much the worst thing you could try to do because the patching system made absolutely no sense and never bloody worked anyway. So I never got the expansion pack, either. And then GamersGate recently started to put it on sale again, and yesterday I caved and got it with some blue coins.

It's better than I remember it, and it does kinda work as a self-aware slightly-satirical game. I don't really like aspects of the visual design (mostly how none of the playable female characters are capable of wearing anything that can be described as "protective", yet it doesn't take itself too seriously so you can kind of let it slip a little. The camera is winding me up a bit, though, it feels like I can't see a bloody thing.

Will I finish it? Probably not. It's a hack'n'slash game, I'll get bored of it long before the end, I reckon, but it's not terrible. Or even bad. It's just "alright".

 

I'm playing lots of SotS, but expect that to change later this week when the new Civ expansion "Brave New World" comes out. Anyway, here's a screenshot of a very early stage of me playing as the humans (only turn 12, but have already colonized two additional planets, plus have explored a large chunk of the surrounding area. This is typical for humans, who do expand and explore much more quickly than any of the other races early in the game. It's probably the primary advantage of playing as a human. All those purple lines show the paths of my ships as they scout unexplored systems looking for choice worlds to colonize.

 

BTW, as I said would happen, I've been playing Civilization 5 with the Brave New World expansion a whole lot, It was released at midnight last night. Some people have had problems running it, but thankfully, I'm not one of them. So far I think it's pretty cool. I don't 'get' all of it yet, I think that a cultural victory might be a lot harder to get now, but I'm going for it just to get a handle on it (with the Iroquois -- it was a randomized choice). It now has nothing directly to do with social policies, but with influence from tourism, and ideologies, that come from great works of art, writing, and/or music. I saw this linked on Steam and it explains it, and all of the other changes far better than I can: http://well-of-souls.com/civ/civ5_bravenewworld.html

 

Yeah, well, it's not out for everyone...

/grump