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I've been playing Cauldron of War https://store.steampowered.com/app/1265220/Cauldrons_of_War__Barbarossa/ It's similar to DC:B but without the hex and counter pushing. You order army sized units around to try to complete each operation while prioritizing limited resources (trucks, air support, and command points, etc). There's also events and decisions that can influence the direction of the campaign (and ethical ones like in DC:B). An interesting take on war game. You can find the free beta version on the official site.
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May 23, 2020 09:50
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Isn't Armoured Commander based on the Patton's Best boardgame? Which is kind of like B-17 Queen of the Skies, but for a tank.pedro0930 posted:I've been playing Cauldron of War It's launching on June 22 
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May 23, 2020 10:20
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I assume English is definitely not the dev's first language. It's not the worst I've played, but its simple style definitely needs a lot of touching up to be enjoyable. Very good idea though and it just needs a fair amount of work to polish up.
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May 23, 2020 11:50
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I thought you were talking about Shadow Empire till the end there.
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May 23, 2020 13:15
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In Shadow Empire do I still need to personally hand ship reinforcements and individual mortars to each squad in my continent spanning army or are things somewhat more... streamlined? Because that always put me off ATG.
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May 23, 2020 14:15
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Nope, and you didn't even have to do that in ATG? You just designed a unit and troops were automatically shipped there. You could even prioritise units to recieve reinforcements.
Saros fucked around with this message at 14:48 on May 23, 2020 |
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May 23, 2020 14:42
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Pretty sure you used to have to do that in ATG until a patch maybe 2 years ago?
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May 23, 2020 18:02
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Phi230 posted:SABOW continues to be the best tank sim. Wrong-o
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May 23, 2020 18:04
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The best tank sim is M1 Tank Platoon II TANK... RIGHT FLANK LOAD SABOT SABOT... UP ON THE WAY! I tried getting it to run in Windows 10 a couple years back but even with some fan patches and glide wrappers it wouldn't work properly 
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May 23, 2020 18:44
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I played the hell out of Novalogic's Armored Fist 2 even as a wee lad I got the impression it was more arcade than simulation, but, who cares, I got to drive in a loving tank
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May 23, 2020 18:48
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Ultimate Admiral: Dreadnought updated last week. They added a bunch of destroyer and cruisers hulls, and the flash fires that claimed so many British ships. I haven't seen one yet, but I hope it happens to the other guy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4sBfvExWlws
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May 23, 2020 19:43
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Needs more ship-breaks-in-half-and-disappears-in-reality-rending-magazine-explosion.
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May 23, 2020 22:37
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Hey, does anybody know if those anniversary coupons that Matrix/Slitherine sends you are good for new releases? I want to know if I should use mine now or wait 'til the 4th
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May 24, 2020 16:35
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Foo Diddley posted:Hey, does anybody know if those anniversary coupons that Matrix/Slitherine sends you are good for new releases? I want to know if I should use mine now or wait 'til the 4th The code good for everything you buy in their webshop in a single transaction, except the physical goods (those are sold at cost price). It is cumulative with regular sales. It has a limited timespan however. I am lucky mine comes in December, so I can combine it with their Christmas sale.
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May 24, 2020 17:59
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Lotti Fuehrscheim posted:The code good for everything you buy in their webshop in a single transaction, except the physical goods (those are sold at cost price). It is cumulative with regular sales. It has a limited timespan however. I am lucky mine comes in December, so I can combine it with their Christmas sale. Alright, cool, looks like I'm getting Shadow Empire a bit cheaper. Thanks
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May 24, 2020 18:09
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MrYenko posted:Needs more ship-breaks-in-half-and-disappears-in-reality-rending-magazine-explosion. Absolutely. So last night I played the Design a Dread mission and inflicted 3 flash fires on the 7" gun enemy cruisers. One was immediately fatal, one survived the first one but not the second. That spike of blue flame sure is pretty when it's happening to someone else.
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May 24, 2020 18:15
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Some random Aurora questions, about 20 years into a conventional start, haven't messed with jump points or other systems at all yet (nor do I know how to): 1. My racial wealth is consistently negative, but it's not clear what effect this has, if any. It seems like my biggest expense is from constructing installations. Do I need to worry about this? I've built more financial centers and now have them on Earth and Luna. 2. A civilian company started a mining operation on a moon that I was planning to eventually exploit. Is there a way I can get a cut of their minerals? Or more generally, any way to interact with civilian economic activity? I see that it is going on but I'm not sure what, if anything, I should be doing with or about them. 3. Other than through experience, is there any way to figure out how the stats of different components/installations/ships interact and what amounts of stuff you should be shooting for? For example, I built a freighter with 25,000 storage capacity and have been using it to ship installations around Sol. But there doesn't seem to be anything in the game that says "one infrastructure takes X storage space" or "this class can fit Y autominers." Or like, I want to design a defense monitor to protect my colony on Luna, which I guess means I need to design a power plant and weapon mounts. How am I supposed to know how large of a power plant I need to power a given set of weapons? And how am I supposed to know what the protection rating of the class will be once it rolls off the production line?
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May 25, 2020 17:54
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Bold Robot posted:Some random Aurora questions, about 20 years into a conventional start, haven't messed with jump points or other systems at all yet (nor do I know how to): 1. it puts a cumulative slowdown on almost all industrial activities, scaling with how negative you have gotten. You don't have to panic if you go negative, but its optimal to keep it positive. 2. You can put your own colony on the same body if you want. In the ?mining? tab, you can choose to purchase the civilan mines output of minerals; it counts as 10 mines per CMC. They also have mass drivers so make sure to point them at Earth. 3. Generally speaking, most industrial installations are one large cargo hold (25000 space), with the exception of major facilities (research labs, gftf, terraforming, ?) which are bigger and infrastructure which is smaller (1250 each). I forget the exact numbers for big facilities since they got fiddled with in C+. 3A. All beam weapons consume 1 point of power per 5seconds for each level of capacitor they are built with (with the exception of miniaturized lasers.) 3B. PPV is a general measure of the offensive value of a unit, for the most part better armed = more ppv. Any decent military deployment will usually exceed PPV demands.
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May 25, 2020 18:07
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Bold Robot posted:Some random Aurora questions, about 20 years into a conventional start, haven't messed with jump points or other systems at all yet (nor do I know how to): 1. Negative wealth is actually pretty bad cause it applies increasing penalties to various things, most importantly research rate. Build financial centers, build other industries so your population become workers so you can tax them, and research the racial wealth tech under the Construction category. 2. If you select the mining colony in the economy window, then go to the mining tab, there’s an option to buy the minerals or just tax the colony for wealth. 3. This is a pretty general question so I don’t have a better general answer than to check the wiki for info, and the wiki admittedly is sparse. It’s a hobby game and it’s documented like one. I can tell you the power plant one: Your cap recharge tech level tells you the power consumption of each beam weapon (except gauss cannons since they don’t draw power). So you need enough power plant for the number of non-gauss beam weapons times the cap recharge rate. The power production per ton of your plants depends on the power plant tech you have.
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May 25, 2020 18:10
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I have another complaint with UOCII, and I get the limitations of scripted scenarios, but when I played through this game I would capture bonus objectives 2 to 3 times only to have them show back under German control. I was just watching a documentary on Anzio, which made me think of UOCII and capturing Monte Cassino in 2 back to back scenarios to have it just show back up filled with Germans in the third. They should really do scenario planning a bit better.
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May 25, 2020 23:57
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pedro0930 posted:I've been playing Cauldron of War There was this very lightweight Barbarossa game, released as a standalone executable I think, that was just a single monochrome map of the east front and you as Germany would focus resources on different army groups, and at the end you'd be graded by how you fared in the post-war warcrimes trial. Anyone remember what I'm talking about?
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May 26, 2020 01:43
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PoontifexMacksimus posted:There was this very lightweight Barbarossa game, released as a standalone executable I think, that was just a single monochrome map of the east front and you as Germany would focus resources on different army groups, and at the end you'd be graded by how you fared in the post-war warcrimes trial. Anyone remember what I'm talking about? http://www.rodvik.com/rodgames/STAVKA-OKH.html
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May 26, 2020 01:56
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cool new Metroid game posted:The best tank sim is M1 Tank Platoon II I actually just got M1 Tank Platoon 2 running in Windows 10. All you need is DxWnd and the M1TP2 profile that comes with it, although as far as I can tell you have to run it in a window. The game really does take its title seriously though, it's not uncommon that it will pit your single platoon of Abrams against a full tank battalion. This weird notion that you're always massively outnumbered despite having by far the biggest military budget on the planet must be an American thing, idk. Also, having played the Cauldron of War beta, it's a pretty neat simple Barbarossa game that nevertheless does a good job of capturing the feel of the campaign. In a lot of ways it feels like a super duper streamlined version of Decisive Campaigns Barbarossa. It also doesn't shy away from acknowledging German war crimes, which Decisive Campaigns Barbarossa really seemed to gloss over.
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May 26, 2020 06:58
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Steel Beasts doesn't get enough credit IMO. As a tank sim the one thing it's lacking is some form of campaign and more official scenarios. It's definitely the most well-modeled and graphically decent one out there while remaining surprisingly accessible, and has been heavily updated recently. It's even a passable tactical wargame you can run from a 2D map if you don't want to do all the tank sim bits. And you don't actually need to pay the $125 for a USB dongle lmao. It's like $40 for a digital license for a year if you install the same weird DRM software they use for the dongle, which is still pretty lame tbh, but isn't the worst pricing scheme I've seen in the grog world.
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May 26, 2020 07:24
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They'd make a ridiculous amount of money if they went to steam and had a campaign. Then again, that's most sims. Strike Fighters 2 would be a license to print cash, especially if they threw in VR.
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May 26, 2020 07:35
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HerpicleOmnicron5 posted:Then again, that's most sims. Strike Fighters 2 would be a license to print cash, especially if they threw in VR. Don't forget that for the recent fundraising for a Windows 10 patch, TK's solution was to use the most obscure crowdfunding platform he could find instead of Kickstarter or GoFundMe or one that people have actually heard of. He also didn't advertise it at all outside of a post on the official forums nobody uses. Like I recall even loving CombatAce being "Uhhhh what? This is a thing?" and not discovering it until halfway into the campaign. The man seems determined to always make the worst possible business decision when it comes to his PC titles. It's like he hates money. It really does bug me that he seems so determined to run those games into the ground. There's really nothing else like it on the market anymore. With mods you can fly pretty much any post WW2 and it's accessible enough to play on an Xbox controller. Mr Luxury Yacht fucked around with this message at 15:00 on May 26, 2020 |
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May 26, 2020 14:35
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gazza posted:Also, having played the Cauldron of War beta, it's a pretty neat simple Barbarossa game that nevertheless does a good job of capturing the feel of the campaign. In a lot of ways it feels like a super duper streamlined version of Decisive Campaigns Barbarossa. It also doesn't shy away from acknowledging German war crimes, which Decisive Campaigns Barbarossa really seemed to gloss over. Can you or someone else explain how to play Cauldron of War? I got the beta, and used the tutorial and am now in-game, but it's really confusing. Even straight up assault moves and shelling seem to cause very little damage and 0% advancement of operation, and I often get "exposed flanks" tags on my units which I'm not sure what does but is clearly a malus and I don't know how to remove it.
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May 26, 2020 14:38
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Thanks for the tips earlier on Aurora. I'm starting to explore my first systems outside of Sol and have some more random questions: 1. I don't really understand how to keep track of whether ships need overhauls or not. I see the notifications about accidents that take X MSP with Y remaining, which then reference a maintenance clock. But is it good when the maintenance clock is high, or low? Is that the amount of time remaining or the amount of time into its service life? Similarly, in the Logistics Report tab in the Naval Organization screen, is high Deploy % or low good? What does TSO stand for? 2. What exactly does Colony Cost refer to? I get that lower is better but beyond that it isn't super clear. How high is too high? Like would it be crazy to colonize a world with 15? 50? What does it mean if a potential colony has N/A for the cost? 3. If I stabilize a jump point, will civilian ships be able to go through and start colonizing stuff on the other side? 4. What's up with Survey Sites? I found a few that are marked as Excellent or Good but have no idea what I should be doing with these.
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May 26, 2020 15:31
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Bold Robot posted:Thanks for the tips earlier on Aurora. I'm starting to explore my first systems outside of Sol and have some more random questions: 1. The maintenance clock is how many months the ship has been underway without an overhaul, and you want the number to be low. When you design a ship, you set its mission duration -- if you set this high, then the threshold for the maintenance clock is adjusted accordingly -- this way you can theoretically have ships deployed for years without their crew morale being hit, provided they have enough maintenance supplies on board to effect repairs for the duration, and provided the Annual Failure Rate (AFR) is relatively low % (which you lower via things like Engineering Spaces) I really wish there were an event that'd pop up informing you when a ship's maintenance clock is up (or even better an automated conditional order that you could set up that overhauls a ship once its clock reaches max), but alas. 2. Colony Cost, if I remember right, is basically inverse to the amount of population fit into one unit of Infrastructure. So Mars, with a colony cost of 2, can fit more people into a single unit of Infrastructure (therefore it's more efficient to colonize) compared to the Galilean moons, which iirc have a colony cost of 5.75. Therefore you need much more Infrastructure on planet to support a similar-sized population on Ganymede than on Mars. As for "how high is too high", I personally won't colonize stuff with a colony cost above 6... meaning the four big moons of Jupiter are do-able, but not much else. Not sure if it's like this in C# too, but in VB6 the colony cost would also indicate how many civilian "jobs" are necessary to just sustain the population (keeping out atmosphere, etc.). Back in the day I tried to colonize and terraform Venus using a ground population, and it turns out the terraformers just never worked because the colony couldn't find anyone to staff them -- everyone was too busy focused, full-time, on just surviving the harsh conditions of Venus. If it has N/A, it means you can't colonize it, at least not with a population. You can add automines etc. to it though and set up a robot colony. 3. Yes. Again this knowledge is based on VB, but in that version civilian shipping corporations had a maximum limit of jumps that they would go out from their home colony, I wanna say like 3? 4. Depends on what type of site it is iirc, but if it's an ore site, I think it means that you have potential to find (lots) more minerals than you did from orbit, if you use an appropriate ground force to do the prospecting.
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May 26, 2020 16:00
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Tias posted:Can you or someone else explain how to play Cauldron of War? I got the beta, and used the tutorial and am now in-game, but it's really confusing. Even straight up assault moves and shelling seem to cause very little damage and 0% advancement of operation, and I often get "exposed flanks" tags on my units which I'm not sure what does but is clearly a malus and I don't know how to remove it. Assault is just regular infantry attack that you can use if your general is not terrible. In general it should only be used when your panzer are not available for action due to the lack of supply or when most enemy armies are already crumbling. Shelling is mostly a safe move against enemy that's evenly matched against you and you don't want to risk having your army mauled on the attack and give the enemy initiative. Practically it's more useful for use as the Soviet where sometimes your position is comfortable enough you can spare the CP but not to the point you can gamble away a whole army. Malus can be removed by doing defensive withdrawals, which may not be available depending on the decision you make. You'll lose operation progress but gain organization and clear all malus. In general as Axis your panzer army will be doing most of the heavy lifting, especially when you are able to allocate two of them to the same operation. Operation progress is tricky. The fastest way to gain progress is to "progress" but it's only available if you are unopposed. You also get it from doing deep raid once you achieve a breakthrough. I'd say don't worry about it too much at this stage. pedro0930 fucked around with this message at 22:33 on May 26, 2020 |
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May 26, 2020 16:18
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HerpicleOmnicron5 posted:They'd make a ridiculous amount of money if they went to steam and had a campaign. A new jet game with the same mix of “lightweight realism” and campaign system as SF2 is something I desperately want.
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May 26, 2020 17:46
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Galaga Galaxian posted:A new jet game with the same mix of “lightweight realism” and campaign system as SF2 is something I desperately want.  I really wish there were a modern flightsim that hit the middle ground between arcade-level (War Thunder, etc.) and stuff like DCS where you pretty much have to learn how to actually fly the plane. Seems like kind of an obvious hole in the market, shame.Thanks, this is super helpful. Is there any particular reason to prioritize a colony in one of the systems adjacent to Sol, or would it be alright to wait until I (hopefully) find a really good planet within the first few jumps? My immediate neighbor systems seem kind of lovely.
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May 26, 2020 17:56
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Great stuff! I wish my good for nothing SS Volunteers wouldn't go off murdering civilians on drunken sprees, but thanks to your advice things are shaking out nicely 
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May 26, 2020 17:56
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gazza posted:I actually just got M1 Tank Platoon 2 running in Windows 10. All you need is DxWnd and the M1TP2 profile that comes with it, although as far as I can tell you have to run it in a window. The game really does take its title seriously though, it's not uncommon that it will pit your single platoon of Abrams against a full tank battalion. This weird notion that you're always massively outnumbered despite having by far the biggest military budget on the planet must be an American thing, idk. Bear in mind it's the successor to Tank Platoon 1 which was made during the literal Cold War, when the ~Soviet hordes~ actually did have more tanks. America rules the world is a bit more of a recent thing.
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May 26, 2020 18:03
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Bold Robot posted:
War Thunder Sim mode is honestly most of the way there, but is stymied by the developers insistence on a horrible loving grind, terrible balance decisions, and absolutely no attention paid to game modes since release. The flight model, cockpits, etc, are all there already. It really is a huge missed opportunity.
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May 26, 2020 18:12
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Mr Luxury Yacht posted:Don't forget that for the recent fundraising for a Windows 10 patch, TK's solution was to use the most obscure crowdfunding platform he could find instead of Kickstarter or GoFundMe or one that people have actually heard of. He also didn't advertise it at all outside of a post on the official forums nobody uses. Like I recall even loving CombatAce being "Uhhhh what? This is a thing?" and not discovering it until halfway into the campaign. What game are you even talking about here?
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May 26, 2020 18:13
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Pharnakes posted:What game are you even talking about here? Strike Fighters 2. Basically the last flight sim hovering around the level of simulation of the old Jane's games. The base game and expansions focus on NATO planes between 1956-1979 but when I say you can fly anything with the extensive mods I mean anything. There's even a flyable A-5 Vigilante that poops out nukes. The developer took a break from cranking out mediocre mobile games for the first time in eight years to announce he was going to make a Windows 10 update for his game (although SF2 works perfectly fine on Win10 in my experience). He tried to raise funds through crowdfunding to do so, promising new features if enough extra funds were raised (I think even VR was teased as a stretch goal). Unfortunately he didn't advertise this anywhere while using some sketchy site called "Fundrazr" and acted all surprised when they raised less than $5000 of their $25,000 goal. Mr Luxury Yacht fucked around with this message at 18:24 on May 26, 2020 |
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May 26, 2020 18:17
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Bold Robot posted:
I usually toss down a token colony on the first Colony Cost 2 planet I run across. Seems like I always get one in Alpha Centauri. Ideally you have a system near you that has 1 low colony cost world and a poo poo ton of moons/asteroids/whatever that you can set up automines on and mass driver all that TN goodness to the colony, which becomes a sortof second Earth. That's the situation I have going on in my Alpha Centauri in my current 1.9.5 game.
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May 26, 2020 18:52
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Drone posted:I usually toss down a token colony on the first Colony Cost 2 planet I run across. Seems like I always get one in Alpha Centauri. Is Alpha Centauri supposed to always spawn as your closest system? I've got 3 systems adjacent to Sol in my game, none of which is Alpha Centauri. I haven't gone out past those yet. How many automines do you usually throw down on an asteroid? The thing I'm struggling with the most so far is just what scale I should be operating at in terms of how many installations to put on a given body. In Sol I currently have about 50 autominers on Mercury and like 16 on one of the moons of Uranus that spawned good minerals, but I have no idea if those numbers are low or not.
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May 26, 2020 18:57
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Aurora has an option for real system names that pulls real stars with real names from real nearby systems. It will also ensure you'll never deal with a nebula or black hole because there aren't any of those in the close enough star file.
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May 26, 2020 19:07
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