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Shooting Blanks posted:I just noticed that Tropico 6 was on humble bundle right now for cheap. Was thinking about getting it, but if it's worse than 4 then maybe I'll look elsewhere. i wouldn't call it bad though, just not the best in the series. if you can get it for cheap and you're curious, it may be worth trying at least
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Oct 15, 2020 14:20
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Unreal_One posted:It has serious issues with scaling up once you're north of 100 bots. Yeah explain please.
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Oct 15, 2020 14:48
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kanonvandekempen posted:How is autonauts? It's good, though there are some aspects of programming the bots that I find tedious. It would be better if I could just choose from a list of potential actions instead of having to do what amounts to recording a macro. I'm also not really a fan of needing robots to recharge the robots, and robots to recharge the robots that recharge the robots. It's a fragile system that is prone to breaking down if your dedicated chargers coincidentally are out of energy at the same time, causing you to have to manually intervene to get everything back up and running, which in a game about automation isn't a good mechanic IMO. I recommend the perpetual motion mod if you find it as annoying as I do. And finally I preferred the higher memory of the pre-alpha robots, so I could at the very least, as an example, have my diggers/choppers/miners make their own tools instead of needing a robot manning each crafting bench. Later game robots can be more complex but the game seems to encourage having more robots doing simpler tasks which can feel tedious after several dozen robots are in play. It's a neat game though and it scratches that "program robots to do stuff for you" itch nicely, but I can't imagine playing it as much as I've played other automation games.
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Oct 15, 2020 15:59
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Assuming it hasn't changed too much since I last played, the main scaling problem is that you still have to program all your bots individually, and you can only supply new commands by recording doing them yourself. There's some shortcuts - you can use items to copy one bot's code onto another and you can change the targets of existing commands, but it's still the case that if you need to grow a new field of pumpkins (and the need for basic supplies increases as tech does) you have to copy out the code for each bot in the pumpkin supply chain and manually reassign all their target zones and objects, plus make sure they're included in your recharging regime.
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Oct 15, 2020 16:05
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Yeah I liked Autonauts for the first few research tiers but was quickly overwhelmed the further in I got and had more robots to manage. It was downright frustrating once I had to start spreading the base out more to get more resources because there was just so much running back and forth to manage everything.
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Oct 15, 2020 16:10
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Also, granting that I eventually had AFAICR several hundred bots and didn't exactly optimize for workforce size, it does chug quite a bit towards endgame.
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Oct 15, 2020 16:16
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The scaling issues is programming gets very tedious, yeah. You've been able to copy/paste copies of programs with the floppies since the itch.io days, at least, but there are too many little irritations, like not being able to just write the code for the bots in a console. Using the billboards helps a bit, but it just stops being fun too fast for me to recommend it. For a game that almost could be used to teach programming, it lacks enough functionality that it could only teach bad habits. The charger issues isn't that bad, once I had multiple chargers assigned to each area I never had a shutdown cascade.
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Oct 15, 2020 16:16
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I play with the mod that eliminates the need to charge any bot more than once, way less tedious of a game. I wish they'd just change the game and get rid of the charging altogether, it's a consistent complaint. Once you get to 150 bots you can build the bot database and just copy from there, way easier than the floppy. You can also find any bot that way, so not so much need for teams.
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Oct 15, 2020 16:20
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"They Are Billions" is 20% off at Humble Bundle; would you describe it as a management game?
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Oct 15, 2020 18:22
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Personally, I would. It's a mix of RTS/Tower Defense/Management. There's resource production and management, a tech tree, upgrading, etc. I thought it was a lot of fun and the higher difficulties are brutal.
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Oct 15, 2020 18:28
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Arsenic Lupin posted:"They Are Billions" is 20% off at Humble Bundle; would you describe it as a management game? Absolutely not, it's a RTS focused on turtling with a surprisingly awful main campaign. I like it, but only in freeplay/survival mode.
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Oct 15, 2020 18:29
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Arsenic Lupin posted:"They Are Billions" is 20% off at Humble Bundle; would you describe it as a management game? Eh not really, more of an RTS. I enjoyed it because I'm an RTS turtler and that's all that game is but it's a pretty standard RTS as far as resource gathering and base building is concerned.
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Oct 15, 2020 18:30
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It's also very annoying even from an rts turtling perspective because if even a single enemy gets through it's game over
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Oct 15, 2020 18:32
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Azhais posted:It's also very annoying even from an rts turtling perspective because if even a single enemy gets through it's game over It's all about compartmentalization. Turtles within turtles.
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Oct 15, 2020 18:39
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Azhais posted:It's also very annoying even from an rts turtling perspective because if even a single enemy gets through it's game over The most important thing in TAB is to have many layers of defense; Towers with snipers stationed in them are particulary good since they have incredible range and oneshots regular zombies, which means that they can handle leaks particulary well. A good mix of automatic towers (ballistas etc) on the first line of defense, a couple of units to back them up that you can relocate depending on how well you are defending and towers everywhere to pick up stragglers is necessary to deal with zombie waves.
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Oct 15, 2020 20:24
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StrixNebulosa posted:This is honestly why I'm still playing Tropico 3 even though I've beaten it at this point. The missions get harder but not really because once you get tobacco/sugar up for the cigar/rum factories you win, but drat if I don't feel good about giving my tiny island social security and same-sex marriages and enough food and money to keep everyone happy. 1.  If you click on the cows you can read their thoughts just like the people. And the office as menu interface was brilliant.
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Oct 15, 2020 21:04
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FreelanceSocialist posted:It's all about compartmentalization. Turtles within turtles. Wouldn't it be turtles all the way down?
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Oct 15, 2020 21:09
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Arsenic Lupin posted:"They Are Billions" is 20% off at Humble Bundle; would you describe it as a management game? The single player game basically doesn't exist; it was bolted on, poorly, at the end. The survival / freeplay game is decent but you should probably grab it on sale. There's limited replay once you hit a certain point.
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Oct 15, 2020 21:16
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Mars Horizon has a free demo out. Conceptually it's similar to KSP, but the emphasis is on being a turn based management sim rather than a spacecraft designer / realtime-ish spaceflight simulator. You pick one of five real-world space agencies, each with customizable strengths, weaknesses, and diplomatic relations with the others, and start at the dawn of the space age. The goal is to achieve various milestone missions in a race with the other agencies, with faster completions getting better rewards like bonus funding, science, international prestige, etc. To do this, you research a mission profile and the payload necessary to undertake it, then figure out what rocket parts you'll need to make it work and research those. This part of the game is much simpler than Kerbal, as every rocket (at least in the demo) consists of only 3 parts: payload, upper stage, and lower stage. Step one of building a rocket is choosing a base payload along with one of its customization options, making tradeoffs between reliability, cost, and performance. Once the payload is complete, usually you'll find out it was built with some kind of quirk, such as using experimental alloys which reduce build time for the upper and lower stages but increase cost. The upper and lower stages are fairly straightforward - you pick an upper stage which can support the weight of the payload, and a lower stage which can support the weight of both. The game doesn't track delta v, instead between your lower and upper stage your rocket just needs to be rated to reach orbit around the target body. Stage parts start with a certain reliability rating, which goes up with each launch, whether successful or not. Since there are many factors influencing reliability, many of which you can't control, often it makes sense to use an older, reliable design for critical missions, while you prove up new designs on less important ones. At least some of the rocket parts are based on real world designs, and what you have on offer varies with the agency you pick - the USSR gets Sputnik as its first satellite, while the US gets Explorer, for example. Once the rocket is built, you set a target launch date for the mission. The timing of this is influenced by available launch windows, giving your ground teams extra time to train and QC the rocket, and whether or not you're worried about someone else beating you there first. When launch day comes, the mission consists of a launch phase and one or more payload phases. In the launch phase, the game combines your rocket's reliability, whether you're launching in a suboptimal window, and even the weather that day, to give you an estimation of success. You can choose to scrub and launch later if you don't like the odds. Assuming you launch, the game rolls a dice taking into account the previous factors, with 4 possible outcomes: a normal launch, a successful launch but with some kind of setback that will impact the payload phase, an extremely successful launch with a positive impact on the payload, or catastrophic failure which I assume means it either fails to launch or blows up. Assuming you made it to space, then you enter the payload phase, where you undertake a turn based resource generation / exchanging minigame, with a certain amount of different resources needed for baseline success, and a higher amount for bonus rewards. Each action you undertake rolls a dice in a fashion similar to the launch phase, but here if you fail you can spend extra Power (one of the resources) to guarantee success. Actions are influenced by the payload's reliability and any customization options you took to improve performance. Some payloads have multiple phases, e.g. the first probes to the Moon have phase 1 as navigating into a good approach trajectory, with phase 2 being data collection and transmission back to Earth. Besides all this, you also build and expand your ground facilities, to improve ground-based research, enable the construction of bigger and better rockets, recruit and train astronauts, and more. Building is on a grid and different buildings provide adjacency bonuses / maluses. Once you've succeeded at a milestone mission, you can repeat the same mission profile as Request missions which aren't competitive, or as Joint missions with the other agencies, influencing your diplomatic status. Random events occur as well, some of them based on historical events, to shake things up every now and then. There are apparently additional gameplay features that come around later as the game progresses past the demo. The demo covers the time period up to either January 1966 or the first successful human in space, whichever comes first. Its a few hours worth of gameplay, what's there is very polished with no jank that I noticed. I'm looking forward to a full release, which right now is just listed as 2020.
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Oct 15, 2020 22:05
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I found the minigame to get tedious pretty quickly. Other than that, it's a great modern reimagining of Buzz Aldrin's Race Into Space, a game I adored when I was in college. There was another recent remake of BARIS called "Buzz Aldrin's Space Program Manager" which likely ticks a lot of the same boxes and has mostly positive reviews on Steam. I never played it though.
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Oct 15, 2020 22:39
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bgreman posted:I found the minigame to get tedious pretty quickly. Other than that, it's a great modern reimagining of Buzz Aldrin's Race Into Space, a game I adored when I was in college. I greatly enjoyed Buzz Aldrin's Space Program Manager, and its a go to when I'm traveling since it can run on anything. I am the type to make spreadsheets to plan out my people skills and what my rocket/program order will be though. Xenoborg fucked around with this message at 05:27 on Oct 16, 2020 |
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Oct 16, 2020 02:58
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I had fun with Per Aspera and Mars Horizon. Looking forward for their releases. Fun and simple enough for an impatient dumbass like me.
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Oct 16, 2020 04:26
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The campaign is indeed terrible but the sandbox is fun.
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Oct 16, 2020 07:20
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The Mars Horizon demo was pretty fun. Other than a few now early access type gripes (balance, copy pasted nations) my only real complaint is the launch cadence from only have 1-2 mission slots. Especially when it can take 12 turns plus to build a payload, then a rocket, and only then can you start mission training and finding a launch window. Also if your mission fails good luck getting back out there for another 15 turns as you start from scratch. I’d love to see either those steps to be able to be in parallel, go faster after the first time, or two have 2-3x the mission slots that give 1/2-1/3 the rewards.
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Oct 17, 2020 14:17
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Thanks to all the Tropico talk I reinstalled Trop 4 last night and I blinked and it was 3am. God, what a good game. I had to force it to bypass the Kalypso launcher to work and installed a mod that allows WASD movement, the only other thing that game needs is a slightly better UI and it'd be perfect. Still though, for as old as that game is now it really holds up against the newer ones favorably.
explosivo fucked around with this message at 14:48 on Oct 19, 2020 |
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Oct 18, 2020 14:28
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explosivo posted:Thanks to all the Tropico talk I reinstalled Trop 4 last night and I blinked and it was 3am. God, what a good game. I had to force it to bypass the Kalypso launcher to work and installed a mod that allows WASD movement, the only other thing that game needs is a slightly better UI and it'd be perfect. Still though, for as old as that game is now it really holds up against the newer ones favorably. Completely agree. I've been burnt out on management type games for ages but playing 4 last week took me right back in. I love that it's as complicated as you want it to be if that makes sense. You can have a humble island farm / mining town for ages if you want without being forced to expand too much. I tried 6 for a while also and it just didn't get it's hooks into me like 4 did.
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Oct 18, 2020 18:50
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Arsenic Lupin posted:"They Are Billions" is 20% off at Humble Bundle; would you describe it as a management game? People have pointed out it’s more an RTS/tower defense, but it definitely did touch a part of my brain that management games do since base building and planning is far more involved than your typical RTS. I liked seeing my bustling steampunk village come to life. I even played through the campaign, which was fine albeit very slow at the beginning. Anyone have suggestions for a game like They Are Billions that is more of a management game? I like the concern of a true outside threat.
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Oct 18, 2020 19:46
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In Caesar II you had to defend your cities against barbarians. There's probably a more modern take on that.
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Oct 19, 2020 02:14
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I didn't have a pc from like 2008-2011 and Tropico 3 for the Xbox 360 was basically sufficient to meet all my strategy/management/simulation needs. It really laid the path for a great game in Trop4 it really is a giant improvement in so many respects
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Oct 19, 2020 07:16
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PerniciousKnid posted:In Caesar II you had to defend your cities against barbarians. There's probably a more modern take on that. Pandemic except you’re the president of Madagascar.
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Oct 19, 2020 08:01
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explosivo posted:Thanks to all the Tropico talk I reinstalled Trop 4 last night and I blinked and it was 3am. God, what a good game. I had to force it to bypass the Kalypso launcher to work and installed a mod that allows WASD movement, the only other thing that game needs is a slightly better UI and it'd be perfect. Still though, for as old as that game is now it really holds up against the newer ones favorably. Could you please link the mod?
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Oct 19, 2020 11:30
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Beefeater1980 posted:Pandemic except you’re the prime minister of New Zealand.
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Oct 19, 2020 14:27
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metasynthetic posted:Could you please link the mod? Here's a link to the steam guide I used
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Oct 19, 2020 14:47
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I've been revisiting Two Point Hospital these past few days and enjoying myself. It definitely has its flaws and trying to 3-star some of the hospitals is sometimes just a frustrating matter of walking away from the computer for a little bit while the game plays itself. But the humor is silly and endearing and while the game gives you almost no useful feedback at all, room and item placement for MAXIMUM EFFICIENCY can be very engaging. While not a super serious suggestion in the management genre, the game is definitely relaxing and enjoyable given how stressed out I've been lately. Love the radio announcers, especially Nigel, everything he says is gold. The game is 70% off ($10.50) right now and most of its DLCs are discounted too. The DLCs just add new maps to play in with unique diseases, but does update the music and radio announcers across all the maps.
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Oct 19, 2020 15:20
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Playing Surviving Mars again. Someone got to retirement age in my colony... why is it not an option to send people away? I only have a couple domes. This is not a resort. Why am I stuck with whoever get on the ground?
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Oct 19, 2020 17:28
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Build a tiny dome off by itself somewhere and send that person to go live in the tiny dome. Shut off the life support.
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Oct 19, 2020 17:35
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skooma512 posted:Playing Surviving Mars again. Ah, I see you are playing as the united states
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Oct 19, 2020 17:36
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Yeah a retirement dome is definitely the way to go. I think by the end of my game I had one of the massive domes dedicated to just retirees because I had so drat many in my colony.
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Oct 19, 2020 17:47
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explosivo posted:Yeah a retirement dome is definitely the way to go. I think by the end of my game I had one of the massive domes dedicated to just retirees because I had so drat many in my colony. It's also worth noting that in some of my games, the retirement domes end up mysteriously having water and/or oxygen issues at irregular intervals. On a completely unrelated note, Soylent Green and Project Phoenix make these events happen significantly more frequently.
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Oct 19, 2020 18:45
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| # ? Apr 28, 2024 05:13 |
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Topical: 78% off Tropico 4 https://www.humblebundle.com/store/tropico-4-collectors-bundle-dlc
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Oct 19, 2020 20:47
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