Wot are you playing (video games)

[Benkyo]

So I bought Highfleet, and I’m finding it very interesting.

You do have to get good at, or at least enjoy, the fight sequences, of which there are going to be many. This means WASD (+QE) movement of a zippy or slow craft fighting against gravity with mouse aiming against three enemies at a time. F for flares, space for missiles, C for counter-missiles, B for fire suppression… it’s a lot, and each fight is really high stakes. They are good though!

The strategic layer, and the ship design layer seem really interesting. You need fast strike groups to take lightly-defended cities before they sound an alarm. So far, so good. But there are mobile strike groups and tactical groups moving around the map too, and avoiding them seems really hard. You can intercept radio messages, and I have got the hang of doing so, and decrypting them too. But there just seems to come a point where one of them will find me, like after a cargo ship gets off a distress call, and then everything in the vicinity will. Your flagship is slower and larger than everything else, but not particularly resilient. Maybe I need to work on taking out strike groups without suffering horrific losses… which means back to ship design?

I do think this might be just the thing I was looking for though, despite the real-time combat. Not easy to cheese like all the attempts at Battlemech, with a real scrounging pirating survival feel and a genuine challenge.

[Lordof1]

The reviews put me off in the end so so let me know how you get on with a bit longer at it.

[Benkyo]

The negative reviews I read all sound like they are by… I don’t want to say “casual” gamers, but the kind of people who don’t have the time to delve into a game like this. The kind of people who aren’t into roguelikes, who want things to be clear and explained clearly, and who don’t want to have to start from the beginning again when you inevitably die. Normal people, that’s what I want to say.

I, on the other hand, love roguelikes, and play them almost exclusively (along with digital board games).

I will say there is an easy mode I haven’t tried, which allows restoring saves, and even in normal difficulty there are three checkpoints in the campaign that you can revert to. So it doesn’t force you to restart, though you probably should more often than not.

[malkav11]

The playthrough I watched definitely was emphasizing locating and picking off strike groups on his terms, usually by lobbing several strategic layer missiles into them before picking off one or two battered survivors directly.

[RogerBW]

Heh.

I think this is more or less on topic, if a bit outdated.

Some of you may have played the Artemis Starship Bridge Simulator. You can get copies to use on a LAN, or several conventions have had setups. Basic idea is a Star Trek-style bridge, multiple people each with their own PC and job to do: so helm manages flying the ship around, you’ve got weapons and shields, etc., and the captain has no actual controls but the best access to information.

So I was playing helm, and I noticed a thing: you have beam weapons (short range, hit instantly) and torpedoes (long range, move slowly). The enemy ships were basically just trying to close range. But… the torpedoes go at a fixed speed across space. So if I flew in a constant retreat, the enemy torpedoes had to go “uphill” to chase me and would run out of range before hitting, while ours were going “downhill” and hitting them much sooner; and if I flew backwards, that put our strongest guns and best shields facing the enemy, who helpfully gathered into one place trailing us.

In Star Fleet Battles, which has similar torpedo rules, it’s called a Kaufman Retrograde.

This was so overwhelmingly effective that the guy running the simulation asked me to stop doing it. I think that counts as winning.

[Marx]

Hey, if Kirk did it, then it’s at least Canonical.

(And he did… full reverse until a Romulan torpedo lost coherency)

I think the modern canon has torpedoes actually traveling at warp (unlike phasers, which are limited to the speed of light). So reversing at Impulse might slow down the time it takes the torpedo to impact, but it shouldn’t be significant (and if you go to warp, shields drop, which means you’re probably going to regret that decision… plus you can’t warp in reverse).

Still! Neat! Good on you for winning Star Trek!

[RogerBW]

In the game you might have a ship moving around at speed, say, 5, while a torpedo went at speed 8. So they were shooting at me with an effective torpedo speed of 3 while I was shooting at them with 13. (It wasn’t trying to be 100% accurate to Star Trek, because that would have involved licencing fees…)

[COMaestro]

And if it’s a plasma torpedo, in SFB, I believe you can shoot it with phasers to reduce the damage it deals, or weaken it faster that it dissipates.

[RossM]

Changing the Conditions of the Test | Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan

@RogerBW was just too good.

[Benkyo]

Highfleet does somewhat better, in that all the artillery does inherit the velocity of your ship. Missiles and rockets are also a thing, but you just can’t go fast enough to make much of a difference to them. Generally speaking, in a fast craft you want to fly towards them and juke. In mid-size crafts flares, and in large ones you rely on a hail of bullets to take them out.

So yeah, artillery and missiles in air and gravity > lasers and torpedoes in space.

(I love the ridiculous ship I just designed: manipulating Z-axis to get 360 firing arcs on all my cannons, ammo loaders discretely dispersed to avoid catastrophic blowouts when hit by armour-piercing rounds, tons of armour, huge engines to keep the lumbering beast in the air, chunky landing gear at just the right angles to take the strain, and enough power and crew to get it all working. The one thing I skimped on was, uh, escape pods. Win or die!)

[Marx]

I just finished Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild for the first time.

Heck of a thing, that’s for sure. Open world games are so… hmmm. So something. The first Divine Beast I tackled (Val Ruta) was a nightmare. By the time I got to Ganon, it was almost trivial. In fact, it was so close to trivial that I was somewhat convinced that I did it wrong (“This can’t be the actual ending, right?”).

I probably explored… 75% of the map? Got about 50-60% of the gear/upgrades.

Overall, I had a really good time with the game, although a few choices drove me nuts (I’m sorry, but the speed at which Hylian weapons break is just insane, and the cooking mechanic is slow, clumsy, and frustrating). Oh, and rain stopping you from climbing… that got old super fast.

But then there are all the little touches I absolutely loved. Bird nests on top of hills. Ancient cherry trees heavy with blossoms by serene ponds just… in the middle of nowhere. Ancient temples, deep gorges, and the first time you beat up a Guardian… they put a lot of love into that game.

Will I play it again?.. I don’t think so. I got the “best” ending (and, honestly, it was lackluster), but I am looking forward to the sequel. Very Horizon Zero Dawn IMO… sure, I know that I didn’t come anywhere near finding everything… or even possibly most things… but I did the thing, and now we wait for the sequel (in HZD’s case: we wait to have the money to buy the sequel).

If you own a Switch and you don’t own BotW yet: I am confident in saying yes, absolutely buy it. It’s not perfect, and it can be frustrating, but it is legitimately great if you like open world exploration games. But if you own a Switch, you almost certainly already do own it.

[Benkyo]

There are different endings?

[Marx]

Two. There is the “I didn’t free all 4 Divine Beasts and complete all my memories” ending, and the slightly longer “I did free all 4 Divine Beasts and completed all the memories” ending.

[Benkyo]

Oh OK. I did the latter.

[GeeBizzle]

The only side quest I whole heartedly advise digging into is eventide island (if you haven’t already). It is a perfect little minitature version of everything great and frustrating about botw and I loved it.

[Benkyo]

I know there’s hardly any point in harping on about a game no-one else has played, but I just want to share my ship designs and you can’t stop me.

The lightning mk2. Stripped off absolutely everything but the essentials. Ridiculous speed, so when manoeuvring in combat everyone is constantly on the verge of blacking out. You get laboured breathing sound effects, the screen goes black, you lose all the audio and visual feedback on incoming missiles and volleys. But nothing can hit you if you fly just right, and remember what was happening before the blackout. You also burn through all the fuel in no time, so have to win quickly, and crumple if anything does hit you.

The gladiator mk2. This is just a better version of the stock combat frigate, and much more representative of what you should be dogfighting with. Can’t always catch convoys and garrisons with their pants down though, and letting them broadcast your location can result in the big guns (and wave after wave of cruise missiles) coming your way, which is where my final solution comes in.

This guy is just silly. Melts everything, but needs a fleet of tankers to keep it in the air and supplied with fuel. Just like the lightning mk2, has to win fights quickly, but has no trouble doing so! I am proud of the ammo distribution - it may seem counterintuitive to have it all spread out and relatively exposed, but I understand that’s something real armoured vehicles do too. Armour piercing rounds causing ammo packed centrally to explode in a chain reaction is the one thing you just can’t afford to happen.

And none of these guys have any radar, elint, IR… that all needs support craft too. I’m using stock craft for that though, like this guy:

Unfortunately I keep letting cruise missiles through my screens, and they always seem to end up hitting these guys. Boom.

[Lordof1]

I’ve just started playing Nobody Saves the World, frictionless and very fun action RPG. I may get bored soon, but it’s quick and simple and successfully pokes my dopamine centre with frequent rewards. Plus you get to play as an egg.

Also Two Point Hospital, basically an unofficial remake of the old classic Theme Hospital, full of the same humour (”Our skilled doctors, many of whom have been to medical school, or watched ER”, “52% of our patients say they feel better after treatment”. Again, not challenging but just what I’ve been needing to decompress recently. I’ll tackle something meatier soon, I think. Maybe another run at Surviving Mars…?

[Lordof1]

You are tempting me further… looking like you’re having a great time with this. I may wait for a Steam sale but I’m tempted.

[Benkyo]

You just missed one. -30% is the best discount so far.

[yashima]

All the while I am still trying to beat Hades with the remaining weapons sword I am getting close, spear meh and I’ll never get him with a bow unless I get some kind of spec that doesn’t need me to use my weapon at all.

Maybe I should be building space-ships instead.