Management Megathread: all beavers at maximum happiness

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Management Megathread: all beavers at maximum happiness

Azhais: Feb 5, 2007; Switchblade Switcharoo

While I will immediately disable that the moment it lands, I do like the implication that random Mecha just show up to build Dyson spheres often enough that they've got a standard warning for it

# ? Sep 16, 2022 19:16

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# ? Jun 1, 2024 21:22

xzzy: Mar 5, 2009

Or that some ancient parasitic AI still talks to itself over radio.

# ? Sep 16, 2022 19:35

Volmarias: Dec 31, 2002; EMAIL... THE INTERNET... SEARCH ENGINES...

explosivo posted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JiTAVevNa8M

This looks so unbelievably sick holy poo poo

I hope that they end up getting proper localization when they're ready to launch because :asoiaf:

# ? Sep 16, 2022 19:56

explosivo: May 23, 2004; Fueled by Satan

It doesn't seem like the early game has changed much but I am really getting into Sky Haven again. The "game" of assigning planes on demand to available spots as they pop up is fun to do while the other half of the airport handles all the scheduled flights and money flows in. Honing in on a schedule for fuel/cargo deliveries feels good but the UI for contracts and schedules could still use work.

# ? Sep 16, 2022 21:46

Wafflecopper: Nov 27, 2004; I am a mouth, and I must scream

Volmarias posted:

I hope that they end up getting proper localization

Why do you want to ruin DSP

# ? Sep 16, 2022 23:12

limp_cheese: Sep 10, 2007; Nothing to see here. Move along.

skeleton warrior posted:

It's not. It's very bad as a management sim, and not great as an overall game.

Okay, so, in *theory* the game has two major elements you're managing.

Element #1 is your saloon itself. But there's no actual effect from your actions here. All items you purchase either have a direct effect on your spending, or add to a 'reputation' rating. They have no other effect, and their placement, their arrangement, their quantity, none of that has any effect whatsoever on anything. Want a saloon with a maze of twisty passages leading to tables shoved into tiny rooms? Want a saloon with all open flooring and the stove right next to the beds the prostitutes use? Want a saloon that is decorated entirely with spittoons, like seventy of them lined up against the walls? They all have the exact same gameplay bonuses and effects as long as the total numbers are the same. So, you can be fun and silly and creative, but there's no mechanics there to think through, nothing to manage which is kind of what this thread is about. You build the furniture that is clearly labeled as affecting your expenses and income, and you wait on the rest until your income is stable enough to afford it, because apparently people will show up and drink and gamble in total darkness just fine.

Element #2 are your skills and relationships. The mechanic for this is essentially intertwined: to do things with other people, you roll percentiles against a relevant skill and either succeed or fail. Events likewise pop up and give you things you can do, all of which are clearly labelled skill checks. If you succeed at a skill roll, you get 4 points better at that skill; if you fail, you get 1 point better and take some stress. So early on, there's some serious work here: you don't have a lot of skills or good skills, failing at a lot of stuff can cause your stress to spiral and you have to spend time dealing with that, and if you don't find a way to effectively deal with townfolk that don't like you, your bar will fail because you won't get clients. But this snowballs in either direction really, really quickly. Either you fail a lot of rolls very early and everything gets out of control and your character despondently commits suicide, or you succeed in a lot of rolls very early and suddenly you have strong, reliable skills letting you take the actions you want. And once you're reliably good at stuff, it just snowballs until you're good at everything and there are no challenges, every time someone news comes into town you either shmooze them into your biggest fanboy or shoot them dead and throw their body to the pigs knowing the law will never care, or both, who cares, you can't fail!

Overall, it needs a lot of work to be interesting as a game. The writing and art are fine enough, and the soundtrack is outstanding, and it might be worth a play at $10, but not at the $20 base price it's listed at.

This makes a lot of good points but I want to add a few more. There are very few furniture and buildings options, like laughably so. The most you can mess with your saloon is adding on a second floor or add walls. You cannot expand the saloon and there is no 3rd floor. Then again, you don't need a 3rd floor. Its super easy on normal to buy the best of everything out the gate and then never need to change things. Setting up any tables with chairs other than the premade ones also fucks with the AI and I wouldn't suggest it. Then again there's only like 4 tables and 2 of those are presets.

You are also limited by the staff you can hire. The game doesn't care if you can fit more than 2 prostitutes in your saloon. You can have max of 2 and that's it. Same with the piano player. Doesn't matter if you want one piano on the 1st floor and one on the 2nd, only one of them will be played since you only get 1 piano player.

There also isn't anything to spend your money on. The profit margins on most things are insane. poo poo like you'll pay $5 for 200 units of something you'll sell for $0.50 a piece. Everything can also be set up to auto buy so once you buy it you never have to worry about restocking again. If everyone hates you that might be different but you have to work to get people to hate you. Even if you decide to go full landlord and buy every business its not going to cost as much as you think and you'll have even more money you can't spend. My first game I quit after having $40k in the bank and realizing I couldn't spend that money even if I wanted to.

The social aspect is not at all balanced. To get people to hate you you have to try, even on the rear end in a top hat difficulty. Even then it doesn't take much to get someone kicked out. I robbed a few people and had close to 1000 suspicion and people seemed to be more nervous around me, but after framing a couple of people it was down low enough it didn't matter and they were immediately kicked out. I'm walking around with 800 suspicion yet framing someone for 140 gets then kicked out in a couple of hours. Befriending people is even easier as succeeding nets you positive influence with their family too. Sure you might fail a bunch of checks but things like befriending and blackmail figure out your final percentage by adding whatever skill you are using plus 1/3 of another particular skill. So if you have 100 Seduction, 33 will be added to every seduction attempt. That's why one of the most broken skills is whatever befriend uses since you'll probably be doing befriend a lot.

I finally turned off my last game after I realized I could just have it running in the background and not touching the game unless a skill check was needed. Even then it was almost always 100% since I had maxed out almost every skill. I don't know if there is another event after the whiskey preacher because I would always be too bored to continue.

As much as I feel there might be a good game here it is way too early to tell and there's very little to hold your attention once you get past the early game.

Edit: Stress was a much bigger factor than I expected from the demo but even that is easily rendered moot. Buying a dog, cat, or pig and having a bed basically negates all stress. Having a spouse you are compatible with will also decrease stress by a huge amount. Its only a problem early when your skills are low and are failing a bunch of times. There was also an update recently that made stress even less of a thing by lowering how much it increases and removing the stress add from a non-profitable day.

limp_cheese fucked around with this message at 23:34 on Sep 16, 2022

# ? Sep 16, 2022 23:30

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

Wafflecopper posted:

Why do you want to devastate DSP

# ? Sep 16, 2022 23:31

Volmarias: Dec 31, 2002; EMAIL... THE INTERNET... SEARCH ENGINES...

Wafflecopper posted:

Why do you make the DSP go hydrogen

# ? Sep 16, 2022 23:42

Hihohe: Oct 4, 2008; Fuck you and the sun you live under

Keeping an eye out for this RAILGRADE game

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOql6VT1QNU

# ? Sep 17, 2022 01:04

Alkydere: Jun 7, 2010; Capitol: A building or complex of buildings in which any legislature meets.
Capital: A city designated as a legislative seat by the government or some other authority, often the city in which the government is located; otherwise the most important city within a country or a subdivision of it.

Volmarias posted:

I hope that they end up getting proper localization when they're ready to launch because

It better be optional. If anything, I feel the slightly-off translation feels better as everyone is a digitized mind and language has shifted over the millenia.

That being said, even if they're not fully conversationalist, I believe the devs proved they are fluent enough to crack jokes when in the first post-release update video they wrote "Before you know it 8:00 becomes 9:00. Ah, what a lovely 25 hours that was."

Hihohe posted:

Keeping an eye out for this RAILGRADE game

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOql6VT1QNU

Ooooh, futuristic Sweet Transit.

# ? Sep 17, 2022 01:42

Synthbuttrange: May 6, 2007

Saloon Manager Game got a patch increased the number of croupiers and prostitutes you can hire to 10 (each?). :v go hog wild! I'm hopeful it can be improved but also yikes that the game's gone down to Mixed already.

# ? Sep 17, 2022 07:22

Anime Store Adventure: May 6, 2009

I hate to be negative without a list of sourced reasons why, but Deadwater just never passed the smell test.

It lacked any real art design or cohesive theme. Every single piece of media looks and feels the same and has that �rough around the edges� look of one motivated programmer and no artists. The dialogue bits are neat but the game parts looks so lifeless and Game-y. Everything I saw and that got hyped seemed pretty much like it was surface level and not actually a promising innovative or even deep mechanic.

Maybe I�m missing it but it seemed very forward about �We Have Prostitutes And People Have Sex!� As a marketing gimmick, and I�m guessing the game doesn�t handle it well. I�m no prude but I�m kinda skeeved by it�s presentation because it seems like it wants to play it up with the dialogue in the advertising and that.

All together I would love a Wild West business sim but it feels like they did everything to check each potential box without any real inspiration.

# ? Sep 17, 2022 07:57

Synthbuttrange: May 6, 2007

No thats fair. It's got a ridiculous amount of things to do but they're all very shallow. Skill gain isnt balanced so you rapidly max out attributes in play. There's a little action economy (you only get X number of character moves per day to do interaction tasks) but you can expand those then it just becomes repetitive to use them all up. :v

Saloon management is basically finished once you put down all your furniture and hire all staff. There's no reason to touch it again, there's no more new furniture that's unlocked for better stats or progress. Furniture placement isnt a factor in anything. I could put a hundred lights down to raise my refinement since each light just adds a flat stat bonus to the place, nevermind that the lamps are covering the entire floor

Music's great tho.

The prologue's which limits you to 4 weeks play which is plenty time to get a feel of the game and can carry through if you decide to buy the full game: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1802420/Deadwater_Saloon_Prologue/

Synthbuttrange fucked around with this message at 08:08 on Sep 17, 2022

# ? Sep 17, 2022 08:03

Gadzuko: Feb 14, 2005

Hihohe posted:

Keeping an eye out for this RAILGRADE game

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOql6VT1QNU

Thank you for linking this, I saw a preview of it before and forgot to wishlist it. Couldn't remember the name. It looks pretty fun!

# ? Sep 17, 2022 16:56

explosivo: May 23, 2004; Fueled by Satan

A major complaint I have with Sky Haven right now is that you can't stop or slow down the progression of time and if you're not prepared for larger planes that require upgraded runways you're pretty much hosed. Transport Fever 2 lets you drag a slider to slow or stop time from progressing while still letting you play which is really nice for playing catchup or preparing for an infrastructure overhaul. I hit a point in my sky haven playthrough where I was getting less on demand flights I could handle without upgrading but I couldn't afford to upgrade everything so I could only take out a massive loan and rebuild everything, at which point I was losing so much money on loan repayments and the massive uptick in fuel required that I was immediately in the hole and in a death spiral. I would love to be able to stop time from moving forward and build up money on my own time before prepping for the next era.

Edit: I think this is exacerbated by the fact that you can't simply upgrade roads/taxiways/runways to the higher tier, everything has to be rebuilt and naturally tarmac/concrete runways are much much larger than the standard dirt runway. At a certain point you really do kinda need to trash everything and rebuild which means all of your flights get unscheduled and it's just kind of a huge pain in the rear end to upgrade your stuff.

explosivo fucked around with this message at 17:26 on Sep 17, 2022

# ? Sep 17, 2022 17:15

floppyspud: Jul 21, 2022

HerpicleOmnicron5 posted:

holy poo poo they made a good planetary annihilation

What's wrong with PA? I've only ever really hosed around in AI skirmishes but it's pretty fun.
Well until a cold war starts when everyone has nukes and mothing happen unless someone gets the doomsday laser, then I usually just restart.

# ? Sep 18, 2022 03:22

OwlFancier: Aug 22, 2013

Does anyone have a good resource for train track layouts? I'm specifically doing W&R but the concepts are generally game agnostic.

I still have a lot of trouble thinking about how to do junctions efficiently and I remember seeing these really clever looking interleaved designs that seem to accomplish it with far fewer rails than I generally use, or in smaller footprints, but it's hard thing to google.

# ? Sep 18, 2022 11:28

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

There's kind of 2 primals you need to sort through: the Factorio School or OpenTTD school. Other games will have tutorials but these are kind of the oldest and most tread.

You'll conceptually want junctions from the OpenTTD school of junction design for Workers and Resources i.e. 3d is allowed, shared signal blocks should be avoided by flyovers or flyunders if you want to overachieve. You can start here https://wiki.openttd.org/Category/en/Manual/Train%20Junctions

I'd be real careful about minimizing size in Workers and Resources. You need to in some places. But the tightest conformation of any given junction is also by definition very hard to change for detours or future fuel expansion etc. because every block is blocked from new connections.

# ? Sep 18, 2022 13:07

OwlFancier: Aug 22, 2013

It's the "need to" part that I am interested in and also just... not having horrible spaghetti poo poo everywhere that jams up because it's impossible to block properly because everything runs over everything else. Will give it a skeg, cheers.

E: oh my god I just saw a train go through a junction and then reverse back into it to build a section of track that it couldn't reach otherwise

OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 14:55 on Sep 18, 2022

# ? Sep 18, 2022 14:33

Volmarias: Dec 31, 2002; EMAIL... THE INTERNET... SEARCH ENGINES...

The only caveat with the junction guides is that they can be immediately placed, while W&R requires construction vehicles. That said,

OwlFancier posted:

E: oh my god I just saw a train go through a junction and then reverse back into it to build a section of track that it couldn't reach otherwise

I'm feeling an extremely popular uprising right now. If this is what I think it is, where you can in fact make double tracked spurs without doing a bunch of nonsense or prep work to get your trains in and out of trouble, I am extremely hyped.

# ? Sep 18, 2022 20:36

Mayveena: Dec 27, 2006; People keep vandalizing my ID photo; I've lodged a complaint with HR

Tomorrow will be a big day for two popular management games. The Empires of the Skies DLC for Anno 1800 goes live at 8:00 AM PDT and Satisfactory�s update 6 moves to Early Access tomorrow. Not sure of the time but the stream starts at 5:00 AM PDT.

# ? Sep 19, 2022 16:13

explosivo: May 23, 2004; Fueled by Satan

Mayveena posted:

Tomorrow will be a big day for two popular management games. The Empires of the Skies DLC for Anno 1800 goes live at 8:00 AM PDT and Satisfactory�s update 6 moves to Early Access tomorrow. Not sure of the time but the stream starts at 5:00 AM PDT.

Not seeing a lot of note for Update 6, at least nothing like NEW DRONES, TRAINS, etc.. but I do see they're adding more equipment slots for head, body, back, and legs so you'll only have to switch the back slot between the jetpack, hoverpack, and parachute which is nice. Being able to have like the robo legs equipped all the time will be great.

# ? Sep 19, 2022 16:20

Disappointing Pie: Feb 7, 2006; Words cannot describe what a disaster the pie was.

Someone else can speak more to satisfactory im sure but there was a kind of weird rush after update 5.

They�d been doing these pretty major updates every 4-6 months. Then they didn�t say much after update 5 and then they were like oh hey we�re pretty much wrapping up development and pumping out this last release or so.

I dunno it was just kinda weird and while I didn�t expect the game to get worked on forever it just seems like they hit a point on the graph where the game quit selling X number of copies so they decided to wrap up development a little prematurely.

# ? Sep 19, 2022 20:44

John Lee: Mar 2, 2013; A time traveling adventure everyone can enjoy

I just went and rechecked the Update 6 info, and the stuff I looked at, at least, just says they're going to be releasing smaller updates more often, nothing about ending development. It'd be real weird for them to be wrapping up, considering the different kinds of unused upgrade items still in the world and all.

# ? Sep 19, 2022 20:50

Tenebrais: Sep 2, 2011

They are going for more frequent, smaller updates, but it's definitely with a view to gearing up for full release. They've reached the point where everything they want to do for the release is fully planned (if not necessarily published as a roadmap) and that's what they're heading in for.

In particular the plot is going to be part of the 1.0 release, and that's what all those WIP collectables are going to be for. I assume they've been developing that behind the scenes this whole time.

# ? Sep 19, 2022 21:08

Mayveena: Dec 27, 2006; People keep vandalizing my ID photo; I've lodged a complaint with HR

Astroneer just updated. https://blog.astroneer.space/p/update-1-26/

This bug was an absolute pain in the rear end so hopefully they are right regarding the bug fix
AS-17671 | Terrain | Collision | Some items will no longer phase through cave layers when dropped after leaving relevance of affected terrain

Finding your tractors underground was just stupid. Didn't happen to me on PC but certainly on Xbox. Update is live for all platforms except Switch.

# ? Sep 19, 2022 23:07

VelociBacon: Dec 8, 2009

Disappointing Pie posted:

Someone else can speak more to satisfactory im sure but there was a kind of weird rush after update 5.

They�d been doing these pretty major updates every 4-6 months. Then they didn�t say much after update 5 and then they were like oh hey we�re pretty much wrapping up development and pumping out this last release or so.

I dunno it was just kinda weird and while I didn�t expect the game to get worked on forever it just seems like they hit a point on the graph where the game quit selling X number of copies so they decided to wrap up development a little prematurely.

IMO this is kinda why I don't like seeing early access stuff. I know I'm the kind of person that will play through something end to end and then uninstall it and move on to the next game. I'll never return to it when it's "done" as I don't see the value in that.

I know there was some discussion around The Wandering Village a couple pages ago. I'll put my steam review up here in case anyone is on the fence about it.

quote:

TLDR: A unique game that blends some of the interesting decisions of similar colony/survival games with some unexpected and interesting themes. Worth the price of admission at this time but will be curious how the developers manage to provide a lengthier experience having more or less shown their cards at this stage in a ~10 hour experience.

I think this game has some great ideas and I was quite entertained until the end. It's in early access but it hardly trips over itself at all and, importantly for me, it's very easy to just open and play without needing to go find youtube tutorials or anything. Gameplay wise I thought it was a fun mix of frost punk and other colony management/survival games like rimworld. There are some interesting ethical situations that feel akin to some aspects of the child labour frost punk narratives: unfortunately I never felt like I was forced to make any truly hard decisions or compromises as the game seems to pull it's punches and provide alternative mechanics which allow the player to just avoid these entirely.

Having said that, there are some decently interesting decisions that you have to make and the process of balancing 3-4 different systems triggered that colony sim enjoyment part of my brain. I'm not sure how much they could add to lengthen the game experience and have it be different enough to be interesting so I'm curious how feature-full it is at present vs their vision of the end product. Overall I'd say it's worth a buy and playthrough if you enjoy games in this space.

Players with a deep background of playing colony sim games who are curious about innovation in the genre will have an enjoyable experience but are unlikely to replay this. Those who are new to these games may find more mystery in the systems and could potentially get a lot more from the game as it does a very good job of initiating those new to it's peers.

Did anyone else find that there was really no need at any time to make any decision that would hurt the Onbo? I never needed more rock than was available without hurting the horns, I never needed more food than was easy to make without taking it's blood, etc. I used the gallbladder thing for fuel for my decontaminators but I don't think that even hurts it or I wouldn't have done so. I never felt like I needed to compromise in any way and leave the Onbo hungry or sick or tired. I never had the Onbo not 'accept' a command, I suppose as a result. This is in the normal game difficulty.

# ? Sep 20, 2022 00:22

Trivia: Feb 8, 2006; I'm an obtuse man,
so I'll try to be oblique.

Yeah the game needs a balance pass. I never really needed to hurt it either. Managed to build the statue quite easily, before maxing out the tech tree.

# ? Sep 20, 2022 00:41

Captain Postal: Sep 16, 2007

Dumpmaster General posted:

if I'm a big Planet Zoo fan and love games like that and dinosaurs, is it worth grabbing Jurassic World Evolution 2 on sale? I think I hosed with 1 for a bit and thought it was alright but I never got around to 2. Is it just fun times building a dinosaur zoo (and opening the cage to the T-Rex when things get boring)?

I would have thought Prehistoric Kingdom would be far better. I'm holding off though as I wasn't a fan of planet zoo - too much 3d modelling and not enough tycoon for me. It sounds like you'd love prehistoric kingdom

# ? Sep 20, 2022 00:41

ultrachrist: Sep 27, 2008

I�ve been waiting for Satisfactory to exit EA before I touched it, glad to hear it�s near v1. I wonder if they�ll do a console release too.

# ? Sep 20, 2022 00:47

skooma512: Feb 8, 2012; You couldn't grok my race car, but you dug the roadside blur.

Only two maps left in Two Point Campus before I get 36/36 stars and beat it. They must have done something right because I don't think I've beaten a management game's campaign since Evil Genius 1.

The music gets stuck in my head all the time :sax:

It is starting to feel a bit rote. I have to be careful with cash in the first couple years, but once I can get student headcounts up the dorm rent starts adding up and I can pull away with the lead. The layout system is definitely nice, and allows me to maintain a higher level view instead of fiddling with chairs for 5 minutes per room. Start a new map and plop down the essentials.

# ? Sep 20, 2022 00:50

limp_cheese: Sep 10, 2007; Nothing to see here. Move along.

I decided to try Deadwater Saloon but without buying anything that can be researched and found its still too easy. Maybe if I didn't buy coffee, cigars, and opium it might be different but I doubt it since I was still making more money than I knew how to spend with just gambling and whores. This game needs a lot of work.

# ? Sep 20, 2022 02:41

Alkydere: Jun 7, 2010; Capitol: A building or complex of buildings in which any legislature meets.
Capital: A city designated as a legislative seat by the government or some other authority, often the city in which the government is located; otherwise the most important city within a country or a subdivision of it.

skooma512 posted:

Only two maps left in Two Point Campus before I get 36/36 stars and beat it. They must have done something right because I don't think I've beaten a management game's campaign since Evil Genius 1.

The music gets stuck in my head all the time

It is starting to feel a bit rote. I have to be careful with cash in the first couple years, but once I can get student headcounts up the dorm rent starts adding up and I can pull away with the lead. The layout system is definitely nice, and allows me to maintain a higher level view instead of fiddling with chairs for 5 minutes per room. Start a new map and plop down the essentials.

I love how every piece of music matches a band you can have play in the Student Union.

# ? Sep 20, 2022 08:33

lagidnam: Nov 8, 2010

Early access for Slime Rancher 2 is coming to Steam and PC Game pass today:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1657630/Slime_Rancher_2/

First one was a nice little husbandry/island exploration game. I hope they kept the chill atmosphere.

# ? Sep 22, 2022 13:43

Synthbuttrange: May 6, 2007

Gonna ranch those slimes

# ? Sep 22, 2022 14:44

explosivo: May 23, 2004; Fueled by Satan

Can't wait. Wish it wasn't launching into early access but it's on gamepass so you better believe I'll be ranching those slimes.

# ? Sep 22, 2022 15:39

Tenebrais: Sep 2, 2011

Early Access worked out fine for Slime Rancher 1 so I'm happy to trust them with it. Can't wait to get my hands on this!

# ? Sep 22, 2022 15:59

explosivo: May 23, 2004; Fueled by Satan

Tenebrais posted:

Early Access worked out fine for Slime Rancher 1 so I'm happy to trust them with it. Can't wait to get my hands on this!

I know I just selfishly want the finished game now :shobon:

# ? Sep 22, 2022 16:01

Rynoto: Apr 27, 2009; It doesn't help that I'm fat as fuck, so my face shouldn't be shown off in the first place.

Even if it's just more slime rancher 1 I'd still buy it because the first game was awesome.

# ? Sep 22, 2022 16:01

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# ? Jun 1, 2024 21:22

ultrachrist: Sep 27, 2008

I loved the first one too. Great mix of light management and exploration. I even beat the timed mode to get all achievements. I�ll wait for this to finish EA before starting it. Curious to hear thread impressions of course.

# ? Sep 22, 2022 16:11

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