Octopus Overlords

SPG2 so far feels like just a different spin of DarkStar One. There are a lot of options here and there, but trading between stations are kinda painful as most ships have pitiful cargo holds, and ship selection is REALLY limited (different factions of their own ships, and many stations don't even sell ships, just repair them) and most stations only have 1-2 ships for sale. I recently ran across a ship with 5 but they are super-expensive ones.

Capturing ships is painful without the ships with a lot of marines, but finding the ships with marine holds are difficult. I recently captured a corvette with 32 marines, which is MORE than my FRIGATE (one class larger) at 30. But finding a station with a better ship for sale is proving to be difficult. And I really wanted a DESTROYER which is about 2.5-3 Million. Just saved up the money, but not finding any for sale.

It's also a PITA to be unable to just strip off the weapons of a ship you captured, but rather, have to drag it back to a station, put it into "garage", transfer command to it, strip out the weapons, THEN transfer command back to your original ship THEN put the captured ship up for sale. It's TEDIUS.

When the weapon can cost more than the ship, it pays to watch the ship you stripped. Recently I captured a corvette with a plasma cannon that cost as much as the corvette itself (naked).

Prices are also a bit ridiculous, with the buy-back price at 1/4 of the sale price.

Making money via looting is even slower, with tiny cargo holds. I've taken to just dumping the cheap stuff out the airlock, and any contrabands.

And I've barely made level 26. With missions now looking for ships around L36-40, it'd be a while I can get up there.

EDIT Made L30, and finally upgraded to a destroyer. But this ship isn't THAT much better. 55 marines is not too bad, but now my capture targets are like 80-90 crew, which are impossible to capture with fewer crew.

Made L33, but my targets are now pretty darn ridiculously armed, like "battleship" with 100 crew. WTF?! I'm also using up all the replacement marines on the stations with each capture, which means I can't stay in one area, but have to move from station to station.

EDIT: Made L37, now I've finally got my hands on a battleship (skipping "cruiser-class"). Cost me... 14.5 mil plus some more for weapons. There's 85 crew on this.

EDIT: Made L42, and was able to nab a dreadnought (with a battleship, 1 class lower!) when I had to defend Masada station. So what's the difference? Same marines (85), double the cargo space, double the hull, slightly more weapons on the sides, 2 wings of small craft instead of 1. I'm keeping the battleship for now, as selling it only nets me about 2.5 mil. With 85 marines I can nab cruisers and battleships pretty easily.

...

Are you sitting down? .. you better sit

If you had interest in the UbiSoft title .. Might-&-Magic: Showdown (Early Access on Steam) .. the game has been canceled and the Steam page yanked, servers close on July 31

The game involved painting miniatures and sending them into PVP battles with the goodly folk found online ... painting = cool \ battles = dull

from: Steam Announcement

Hello Heroes,

We regret to announce that Might & Magic SHOWDOWN will be shutting down on July 31, 2017, ending our Early Access period and ceasing server support. As a result, the game will be inaccessible after this date.

We wish to convey our sincerest gratitude to you, our dedicated players, who have helped us navigate the management of an Early Access campaign – because of you, we have learned a great deal about how best to serve you and we hope to carry these learnings forward into future Ubisoft projects.

We also owe a very special debt of gratitude to our Might & Magic fans who accepted this new take on the universe. It has been our pleasure and honor to deal with one of gaming’s longest lived communities.

Effective immediately, Might & Magic SHOWDOWN will be removed from the Steam Store to prevent further purchase of the Early Access license. The game will remain in your Steam Library, but server support will end on July 31, 2017 and the game itself will become inoperable. In an effort to ensure that we abide by our players’ expectations of the Early Access model, we will be offering full refunds to players who feel they are owed them until July 31, 2017.

Thank you Heroes.
The Might & Magic SHOWDOWN team

5 minute review @ PCgamer

The problem in SPG2 is finding the stuff you'd really want to buy, it seems.

I've been travelling all around the sector, hopping from station to station, hoping to find better ships. The game teased about owning a super carrier. And I am looking for a ship with a TON of marines.

Right now I'm flying a dreadnought, with two battleships in storage (captured them) and I just found a 3rd battleship, which I can purchase if I sell the other two, that has 120 marines, which is even more than 85 I have right now. And Dreadnought has enough hull to make attempts to hurt it a joke. I went up against four battleships, a passel of cruisers, destroyers, and frigates, and they barely scratched me.

EDIT: Transfer stuff between ships are a PITA, as you can't say "transfer all my weapons" or something like that. You have to unmount each weapon individually (no unmount all) then transfer command to the other ship then remount all your weapons. Not to mention buying all the "enhancement modules" as well.

I wish this game had its own thread. I keep forgetting where it is haha.

Ive been trying to reinstall the game and give it another go but it keeps failing to install. Ill get her in one day!

I know what you pervs are thinking

EDIT: Something is wrong with steam..it keeps failing and when I restarted it it almost didn't start. Now the help page fails.

Has anyone tried to install a Steam game today?...Tuesday. I cant get it to install Starpoint Gemini 2. Their help page errors also. Lots Steam trouble. I was never worried about accessing my Steam games but now I am. It just sits there and then fails finally.

Updating and installing a little slow, but not failing for me right now.

BTW when i do get it installed is one of the 3 starting classes the best of them or are they all three pretty even?..I was starting as a gunner last go.

I was told that if you want direct action, do gunner. If you want to command fleets, do the commander, and if you want harder but fun play, do engineer, as you can do more stuff like sabotage, hack, and so on.

I'm playing gunner myself, and now that I've saved up to a big ship, it's fast progress from here.

I've accumulated enough $$$ that I'm just keeping ships I captured, and during one of the story missions I captured one of empire's dreadnoughts, with my battleship (110 marines). Hah! Take that! And it's a good one too, but only 100 marines. Have to keep hopping stations to find replacements. I think I'm playing on EASY and I'm now like level 59 (rear admiral) which puts me relatively close to the end as I just finished the Empire and I'm about to assault Starpoint against the Brotherhood. I have 2 mercs in battleships, and my ship has one squadron of small craft. I knew Empire had a carrier but I hadn't been able to capture one yet. I think I'll go collect some ships.

EDIT: The blueprint thing was kinda lame. Apparently, the more ships you kill, the more likely you'll get a random piece of "blueprint" drop, which gets you an exclusive weapon. But the exclusive weapon isn't necessarily better than the most expensive stuff you can buy. I got a special railgun called BULLSEYE (note: all caps name) and it's pretty darn powerful... 240 damage but it reloads in 0.6, vs. the most expensive purchasable light railgun (forgot name), which is 140 damage reloads in 0.3. So it's NEAR the top but not the top. Right now I have like 6-10 groups of blueprints not yet finished accumulating. I may have to go deliberate "troll" enemy stations to pull out more enemy ships to kill to do "blueprint hunting".

SPG2 info in a search and browse-able format

http://www.cshake.net/SPG2/index.php

Useful if you want to go after a specific ship or part.

...
... Razer could be valued at $5bn ahead of IPO - report

Accessories firm aiming to become publicly listed around October

Sources suggest Razer's initial public offering could value the company at up to $5bn.

Bloomberg reports that "people familiar with the matter" said the gaming peripherals manufacturer hopes its planned share sale will generate between $3bn and $5bn. The company is reportedly aiming to become publicly listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange around October.

Earlier this month, sources estimated the firm would be aiming at $600m - considerably lower than $5bn, if that is indeed Razer's true target. Even $3bn would be a remarkable achievement for a company that has not made a profit since 2014.

While half of Razer's revenue is generated in the Americas, China is nonetheless a crucial market for the company. Bloomberg reports the firm plans to "use Hong Kong as a beachhead" from which it can rapidly grow its presence in the Chinese games market, which was recently valued at $25bn.

How many of you invested in APPLE when its stock was around $2.00 in the '97 timeline .. prior to Steve Jobs return (Dec, '96) and the retraction of production by outside companies (apple clones) ... and prior to the iPhone

I thought about it, but was never an Apple fan (too many apple users trying to convert me) .. deep down, I couldn't picture Apple failing at the time, and the world being Apple-Free .. but they were close, hence the stock price. Wish I had parted with 2000 dollars then

Finished SPG2, at least the main story line, where I ended up with the Tsar carrier, Level 69 (admiral) and destroyed both the Empire and the Nexus factions. I could run around the map looking for more missions, but I think that's it for me. Ships can't really hurt me now (I have 20000 hull points, plus shields, PLUS 3 squadrons of small craft, PLUS 2 mercenaries 1 DN / 1 BB) Unless there's like 6-10 of them in the BB or DN class.

...

I didn't see a thread for this .. so ..

There is a Multiplayer Mod for Just Cause 3 ... FREE

Anybody know of a good squad-based combat game like XCom2? Ideally exactly like XCom2.

Could always try Xcom2..I hear its good.

Or maybe Wasteland 2

Lately I've gotten back on my crack.................HOI2 based games. There's four or five variations out there. I've put in over 60 hours in the last week.

Go play Maize if you like funny single player adventure games.

The original Witcher vs. Pillars of Eternity.

What should I play next?

Watching a 30 minute let's play of the start of Pillars it looks really good. The Witcher I avoided for a long time because of the whole collecting bedpost notches aspect, plus the name. Years later that stuff has faded and what's left is a critically acclaimed series and I feel like I should play the original because I always like seeing where something started.

I'm already into chapter one of the Witcher, whereas I would need to learn the entirely new system in Pillars, which would require some research/reading. I will almost certainly enjoy Pillars more, given what I've seen of the two.

Whatever I play first, I will play the other eventually.

the collecting of bedpost notches is insignificant to the gameplay and can be skipped\ignored .. I don't even think you get anything game-wise for participating .. and graphically, the game just fades-out\fades-in and you are shown a new card (iirc) .. and you'll see the opportunity arise and can just choose a more appropriate reply. ... "oh, I think I hear my mother calling me" .. always worked for me I played thru the game 3 or 4 times

the witcher2 I played for 10 minutes (with a migraine) and never went back .. they changed combat and I didn't have the capacity to learn at the time

Yeah, there's no checklist or anything. Unless you're actively man-whoring, you won't even find most of the opportunities.

Right, but if you recall this was a focus of media and community discussion when it first came out, with Germany (?) Getting its own censored version etc.

As you'll note, I did say this aspect has faded away with time.

On another note, paying a voice actor to say "your mother sucks dwarf cock" is not money well spent imo, especially since it was just background noise and not part of the story in any way.

I get that the game was attempting a more adult tone, but it just felt randomly profane.

I really enjoyed it all. Added to the atmosphere. I could use a game a lot more harsh than anything the Witcher series gets close to. Im not a kid and have no kids to worry about seeing it. But thats life. I enjoyed collecting the cards and the tavern games and such. Then 2 got rid of cards and brawling and changed poker dice to worse versions. 3 really had none of that fun stuff from the 1st.

GreenGoo wrote: I get that the game was attempting a more adult tone, but it just felt randomly profane.

I remember that line. It felt... awkward. They were trying to make it feel mature, but they were trying too hard. They got better as they went. Communicating the level of depravity in The Witcher's world without it sounding silly must have been tough.

For the record these are just observations at this point. While the comment on the voice actor line is a criticism, it's not strong enough to be counted as a negative towards the game. It's just "this happened. weird".

Just reached the hellhound fight in chapter 1, so I guess I'm playing the Witcher. Pillars looks very good though.

Daehawk wrote:I really enjoyed it all. Added to the atmosphere. I could use a game a lot more harsh than anything the Witcher series gets close to.

As the resident purveyor of smut, allow me to help.

A Dance With Rogues, 2 parts, NWN mods. Though they are sadly no longer in sync. Easily the best NWN mods and choked full of perversion. Oddly, given the reputation of the game, you can skip most of it. But why would you? It's a rogue based mod, where you play a princess who escapes during a siege. She joins the local equivalent of the Thieves guild. Lots of traps and locks. As far as adult content, I'd say pretty much everything is in there. You can prostitute your character, you can have a relationship, many/most quests have a sexual solution. As I said though, they are all skipable, except the opening scene. I'd also say it has one of the greatest dungeon crawls I've ever played, though I'm not usually a fan of dungeon crawls. It's a fallen temple of perversion filled with traps and undead.

However, if you've played that, try the Lewdgames subreddit at Reddit for literally any level of adult content your heart could want. The games come in a huge variety of engines and graphic levels from text to fully animated 3d. Many are Patreon supported, but most have free public demos or versions.

I didn't add links, because I'm lazy, I never get the URL thingie right on the first try, and both suggestions are easily found via a web search.

Its ok Ill find it ...Thanks for the heads up. I haven't played NWN in years. Finished Witcher 3 a bit back and am in Pillars now.

dbt1949 wrote:Lately I've gotten back on my crack.................HOI2 based games. There's four or five variations out there. I've put in over 60 hours in the last week.

Which one are you playing? I have difficulty going backward in a series, which sucks as HoI4 is sadly lacking. If there's something I missed, I'd love to hear about it. Especially if it's still playable today.

I put 40-50 hours into HOI2 Armageddon and another 70 into Arsenal of Democracy (in about 2-3 weeks). I like Armageddon best but AoD has fixed the mid to late game slow down and so gets the nod.

Thanks!

Consider me intrigued... https://twitter.com/BrianFargo/status/8 ... 8537523200

@BrianFargo wrote:Not us but a little birdy might have slipped that a reboot is in the works.

@DagonsLair wrote:InXile making a Starflight remake ? I'm backing ! (Even if it's not a RPG)

Im in. Starflight is my all time favorite Sega Genesis rent and I own pt2 on PC in box.

Please, I would love to play Starlight again.

Starflight? I have 1 and 2 on floppies way back when. It was amazing how much they managed to squeeze onto 2 720K floppies.

We are talking aboout Starflight the adventure game, right?

Yup. If you're a true believer and don't need no fancy graphics, Starflight 1 & 2 are available on GOG.

If I made another monkey island...

Well not me, but Ron Gilbert

Max Peck wrote:Yup. If you're a true believer and don't need no fancy graphics, Starflight 1 & 2 are available on GOG.

Having replayed Starflight some 20 years ago (when it was only a decade old), I can tell you that there isn't enough of a game there for most people outside of the most diehard fans. It's just too early a game, with most of the gameplay being makework and/or time sinks.

For an ancient game in the same vein that holds up much better, see Star Control 2. Star Control 2 is still worth playing and fun for the most part. Starflight (at least the first) is just too old, with not enough meat. It's like trying to play Ultima II instead of IV.

xwraith wrote:If I made another monkey island...

Well not me, but Ron Gilbert

YES PLEASE

Yes if you want to play Starflight then play it on Genesis. Has good graphics and fun. Starflights mining model was better than StarControl 2 even.

JetFred wrote:

xwraith wrote:If I made another monkey island...

Well not me, but Ron Gilbert

YES PLEASE

Alas, the date on that post is Apr 14, 2013. Chances are Disney probably still won't budge in terms of selling the Monkey Island IP back to Ron Gilbert.