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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   865 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for November 7, 2025

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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Video game thread

I'm still playing BG3. Around 17 hours in. Progress is kinda slow, not because it's really difficult or boring but because there are so many items to inspect, notes and books to read, traps to spot and disarm, morals to ponder, battle decisions and build decisions to make. I'm enjoying it though. I killed one of the goblin leaders before heading downwards. I'm doing lots of stuff in the Underdark. Picked up a sword that can sing, and killed a bunch of minotaurs and duergar dwarves.

I'm playing Sins of a Solar Empire 2, still.

In my general opinion it is shaping up to be a masterpiece of the 4x/RTS genre.

3 different factions, each with two subfactions. Each faction has different specialties and the sub factions tend to be focused on either aggression or defensive strategy. So you have ample options for choosing your preferred playstyle for a given match.

Each Faction/Subfaction has an array of ship types and a decent selection of capital ships, and a dizzying number of techs to research to boost those ships' performance. And each faction has very different strengths and weaknesses when it comes to economy.

And the devs are set to release a new fourth faction, as well as the LONG-anticipated campaign mode, which will finally answer one of the core questions of the lore from the original game.

Finally, the true core combat mechanic being battles between "Fleets", and the fact that EVERY projectile a ship fires is actually simulated in 3D space, and some surprisingly complex damage calculation means there's some extra strategic depth in which ships you've chosen to compose your fleet(s) and which techs you've chosen to optimize their performance.

This means its not quite a "Rock-Paper-Shotgun-Laser-Nuke" situation where every attack has a direct counter and you just keep leveling your units until you win. It is possible for a giant deathball fleet to lose to a smaller force if the smaller force is optimized precisely enough to defend against the ship types its facing. And there's several mechanics to allow you to quickly augment your fleet's strength at opportune moments.

The upshot is that the outcome of battles can be relatively unpredictable, and you do NOT need a higher APM to micromanage your way to victory if you are successful at scouting out the opponent and predicting and countering their strategy. Although high APM helps. And in any situation with 3 or more players, the exact mix of factions and ships being thrown around can force a complete mid-match re-evaluation of said strategy. Finally crushing the guy who was pumping out dozens of cheap ships to harass you feels great until the third guy rolls up with a wall of heavy cruisers backed by support ships to start wrecking your infrastructure.

My one main fault with it is at present is the unwieldy and un-intuitive state of tech tree which makes it hard to learn for new players and kind of 'forces' a certain playstyle on you until you can get enough research to unlock the techs you actually want/need.

Yet the variable scale of the game means you can play a quick 30 minute-1 hour match where the later techs aren't even needed, or you can do a 6+ hour epic with hundreds of planets and multiple star systems that ends with planet-killer railguns, Hundreds of ships duking it out at once and beastly Titan warships that can delete whole fleets in short order.

Anyway, its a very fun game, and I'd host some sessions for Mottizens who would be interested. Its sadly not as popular as it truly deserves.

I adored Sins 1’s concept, but was let down by certain aspects. Stances, squadrons, the rather important “hero” capital ships…I’d have rather delegated those choices to an empire-wide doctrine or something. Same for parts of the economy. Felt like they hit a similar pitfall to a lot of RTS in that era and included stuff because SC2 had it.

How does Sins 2 approach that?

I'm glad others are playing! Sins 1 was a masterpiece, and my basic verdict on Sins 2 has been "it's more of the same and that's perfect". The only change I don't like in Sins 2 is the removal of the pirates mechanic - while they still exist, I just don't find the current form as fun as the way they worked in the first game. Otherwise it's the perfect sequel in my eyes.

I'm curious, do you have any good guides on the strategic considerations of fleet composition? It's unlikely to be necessary for me (as I only play AI matches and don't touch MP), but I'd be interested to learn more about the game. My fleets tend to be a random mishmash of ships without any real deep strategic consideration behind it, so I'm sure I have a lot to learn.

Man, I'm still struggling with optimal fleet composition for TEC myself.

You can delve into like full-on spreadsheet mania with it, but I genuinely think the number of possible combinations ultimately makes it impossible to really calculate once the game hits a certain size.

One reason I like TEC is that by midgame if your economy is running well, you can spit out whatever ships are needed to deal with the current threat very quickly, so you're replacing lost ships and optimizing your composition on the fly. "Oh shit that's a lot of strikecraft, better send some Flak Frigates in."

You want your fleet's pierce to be able to overwhelm their fleet's durability. Here's the basic rundown. You can sort of kind of ignore the "supply" number if you can tell at a glance that the ships they've sent in don't have the requisite pierce to focus down your ships' health given your ships' durability. That is, even if you were to start losing, you can likely retreat and not take too many losses since their effective DPS is low.

If they've got a lot of durable ships in their fleet, you gotta bring as much pierce as possible.

If there's any stats in the game worth memorizing, its the durability rating of each ship. I mentally have them sorted into buckets of "High, Medium, Low" durability so I don't have to do actual math in my head.

So I'll share my basic approach.

I like to have a wall of higher durability ships as the 'core' of my fleet. I tend to rely on Carriers in the early game, which is to say I have them sit back and send strikecraft in to do the dirty work, so I just want to have a physical shield to keep the enemies at bay.

Then I have to make some decisions, based on what it appears the enemies are fielding. If I'm dealing with strikecraft, the aforementioned flak frigates. If they've got high DPS capital ships, I will probably produce a TON of Corvettes since those help keep the Caps occupied and not killing my more valuable ships (note: doesn't work as well on human players). If they're fielding tough ships with a lot of support: Missiles. Lots of missiles.

Then pick your own caps based on whether you're being more aggressive or defensive. Or, if you like, if you're focusing on killing as much as you can as fast as you can, or if you need survivability (i.e. you're sending a fleet deep into enemy territory and it needs a lot of repair capabilities).

Then add in ship items for your capital ships based on what the enemy is likely to throw at them.

The one big 'insight' I've had that I THINK was fully intended by the Devs was that they have made the default supply cap pretty strict to prevent overuse of "Ball of doom" fleets that can just overwhelm anything, and require harder decisions about where to send your forces, knowing that you also can't hold a lot in reserve.

But in exchange, they've added numerous ways to augment fleet power that doesn't hit the supply cap. Like using influence points to call in NPC factions on your side, or the TEC Enclave's ridiculous(ly fun) garrison system.

So its actually kinda smart to divide up your forces between more than one fleet, and keep them mobile, so you don't have all your valuable supply caught in the wrong spot at the wrong time. And if you notice your opponent has a singular large fleet, you can both prepare to face it by setting up heavy defenses in bottleneck areas, or you can try to harass behind their lines and force them to keep said large fleet on the defensive. Calling in pirate raids on their planets basically demands they send a large force to counter it. Pirate raids are pretty damned expensive in influence, however, so timing is important.

So I think the Devs want players to try different tactics than "make the biggest fleet and dive at the enemy's homeworld."

I've been experimenting with setting up two fleets early on. "Hammer" fleet and "Anvil" fleet.

Anvil is made up of the high durability ships, and is intended to be the first one that encounters the enemy, and is able to stand there and slug it out for long enough for Hammer Fleet to arrive, which is the high DPS, high pierce fleet that can start whittling them down faster, HOPEFULLY while they're distracted with Anvil fleet.

If we get overwhelmed, I can order Hammer to retreat while Anvil covers for it. If we start winning, I can push Anvil forward to take more territory/cut off retreat while Hammer finishes the job.

It's been interesting to keep things managed this way. It feels like this more flexible approach is rewarded so I do think I've uncovered aspects of the game's design that the Devs intentionally added but didn't call attention to directly.

But its still great fun to build up a fleet as large as you can make it, built around what you expect the enemy to field, then smashing large fleets into each other and seeing what happens.

DEFINITELY learn how to get your ships to focus fire on high-value targets, though. They tend to do sub-optimal targeting on their own.

Thanks, this is good stuff. As it happens I also play TEC (Enclave, so far), so this is perfect for me. Right now my basic approach is to spread my fleet comp around - I have some corvettes, some light frigates, a few flak frigates, some LRM frigates, and so on, plus one of each cap. That has been working pretty well against the AI, though sometimes I do need to make use of the garrisons (offensive garrison is a hell of a thing) to win large engagements. I definitely do focus down priority targets - titans and capital ships mainly, but also starbases when I'm tackling a fortified enemy system. It helps a lot because I had noticed that ship targeting is pretty lackluster if you just let them do whatever they want.

This has my interest. I heard about SoaSE from a friend, I saw #2 come through last year, but $50 is pretty steep for a game you say "still" about.

Playing Sins of a Solar Empire is "still," playing #2 is just regular playing a game that is 15 months old. I eat food that is past its printed date by more than 15 months. I still play FTL, and that's 13 years old.

you can play a quick 30 minute-1 hour match where the later techs aren't even needed, or you can do a 6+ hour epic

This seems like a major flaw if I can't tell which one I'm getting into ahead of time. Although I suppose the answer is you sign up for a 6 hour epic, and sometimes it ends quick. A twelvefold difference in time is extreme.

If you do host, I'll try to play.

I mean, I played the first game in the series for over 10 years.

When I say that the Second has improved on the first in almost every conceivable way, I want to establish that it had a high bar to clear.

This seems like a major flaw if I can't tell which one I'm getting into ahead of time.

Generally you can tell from the game settings at the outset. The Size of the map is the primary determinant as to how quickly you'll come into contact with the opponent, and whether there's even enough resources to build an economy or if you just hop straight to fighting.

And you can set the game speed higher for ship movement, tech research, and resource accumulation to ensure things end quickly, or lower those speeds to stretch the game out and force a more strategic match.

The largest maps start to feel like playing Stellaris but with just the space battles and economics and less of the tiddly empire management.

And there is a contingent of players who seem to not really want to play competitively at all but instead just set up the largest fleet battles possible then just sit back and watch them play out.

As mentioned there's a steepish learning curve for the tech tree alone, knowing what to research and when is a critical factor and the game will NOT hold your hand to show you which path is ideal.

So it is a bit much to ask of someone who isn't familiar with it to start playing with you right off rip.

Soccer management game Football Manager 26 released this week after two years of anticipation.

No installment was released last year following complications from the transition to Unity; the two releases before that (2023 and 2024) were announced as half-developed games because of parent studio Sports Interactive's purported all-in focus on this year's release (well, last year's, as it was then). FM26 was to be the ultimate Football Manager: enhanced match graphics, a tile-based UI no longer evocative of a spreadsheet, improved "newgen" (game-generated future player) faces, and... women's football.

Then came the leaks and reluctant announcements from the studio as the clock ticked down to what should have been the release date of FM25. Despite years of insistence that neither the engine transfer nor the addition of women's football would cause any complications, the game was in trouble. International management, a poorly developed (and therefore rarely touched) aspect of previous games, had been entirely removed rather than improved. In-game manager-player interactions (known as "shouts") had been entirely removed rather than improved. Most controversially, player weights had been removed for obtuse reasons pertaining to "women's body types" being "very different from men's" with their weight fluctuating "a lot more, often weekly." This, of course, somehow resulted in all players having their weight measurements removed, including male players.

Cue this week's release... a calamitous, bug-filled, poorly-optimized catastrophe. Sure, the bedrock is there in Unity for a game that will eventually surpass its predecessors, and patches over the last 48 hours have taken Steam reviews from "Overwhelmingly Negative" to "Mostly Negative", but it's simply unclear what the SI team was working on for the last five years of claimed development on this game. User mods slapped together in a week's time have outdone in-game graphics and processing times; the two most recent patches included hundreds of fundamental basic features and fixes that... somehow no one thought to include in the base game upon release? The whole saga has been a fascinating public showcase of mismanagement, procrastination, incompetence, and a bizarre hierarchy of priorities.

That last component is most interesting to me as an observer: who is benefitting from all these video games devoting time and money toward the implementation of women's sports? EA Sports, 2K Sports, and now Sports Interactive chose to limit development elsewhere so they could include slapdash, poorly-planned women's leagues. Are their marketing departments manufacturing idealistic projections of future female fanbases? Have they all been Pied-Piper'd (or Don-Corleone'd) by Sweet Baby Inc.?

EU5 has been released. I'm getting too old for grand strategy games, especially when they run as slow as this one. I played as Muscovy and got to 1390 in two evenings. That's three extra hours of intense gameplay after nine hours of my regular job each day. I need a better CPU at the very least.

Playing Dispatch. It's by the Critical Role people, has nice animation, music, writing, etc. The bulk of the time playing is selecting dialogue options and watching your character make it sound snappier than you ever could pull off. There are real time events you can turn off, and otherwise two different games - resource management/hero leveling and a "hacking" puzzle game.

Unspoilerly Plot - It's a superhero setting. You are someone without powers but who has extensive experience around heroes and villains. You get a gig as a Superhero Dispatcher (think 911 dispatcher for subscribers to a corporate super-hero service.) You basically become the life coach for this universe's version of the Suicide Squad. Shenanigans ensue.

It's fun. My one complaint is that I wish there was an option to just do the Resource Management game without watching all the unskippable cut scenes. You can make different choices which makes replaying the game less tedious, but it's still tedious.

All the cutscene stuff looks good. You find the actual gameplay fun too?

The game play is fun. It is another medium for telling the story. The level of urgency, planning ahead, thinking about and picking the right options, is just right. It feels very smooth. That said, I haven't noticed that the performance in the game-play impacts the story. The reward for doing a good job in the gameplay is to be told at the end of the episode that you're in the top 20% of players or whatever. The plot goes on regardless.

Unspoilerly Plot - It's a superhero setting. You are someone without powers but who has extensive experience around heroes and villains.

Ever read Steelheart, or its sequels, by Sanderson? That's my canonical no-power-superhero story.

Featuring an all-star cast from every corner of entertainment
Aaron Paul (Breaking Bad, Westworld, Black Mirror)
Laura Bailey (The Legend of Vox Machina, The Last of Us II, Marvel's Spider-Man)
Erin Yvette (Hades II, The Wolf Among Us, Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon) \

MoistCr1TiKaL (Charles White)


Jacksepticeye (Sonic Prime, River City Girls 1 & 2, Bendy and the Ink Machine)
Travis Willingham (The Legend of Vox Machina, Critical Role, Lego Avengers)
Alanah Pearce (V/H/S Beyond, Cyberpunk 2077, Gears 5)
Lance Cantstopolis (Karate, Dancing, Actor)
Joel Haver (Filmmaker, Actor, YouTuber)
THOT SQUAD (Musician: Pound Cake, Hoes Depressed)
Yung Gravy (Musician: Betty (Get Money), oops!)
Matthew Mercer (Critical Role, Overwatch, Resident Evil 6)
and Jeffrey Wright (American Fiction, The Batman, Casino Royale)

I really did not expect to see that name here. Not exactly what I'd expect for a VA.

Yes, Steelheart was pretty enjoyable, though Dispatch plays the Superhero things much straighter.

I've become really addicted to my 3rd play through of Owlcat's Rogue Trader CRPG, staying up until 2am on work nights to play it. I'm doing this run as dogmatic priest and am very much enjoying the RP. I just wish the game had a more creative difficulty setting. I play on unfair and don't use an officer(gives lots of extra turns) and combat still only lasts 1-2 rounds. Meaning most builds are just about pumping for 1-2 turns of play knowing that any downsides from consumables/items/abilities will unlikely to affect the combat. The recent 1.5v update added some new talents for less common play styles and I love them.

I haven't gotten the new Arbites DLC but i hear its not very good, unlike the Void Shadows one which is excellent.

I haven't gotten the new Arbites DLC but i hear its not very good, unlike the Void Shadows one which is excellent.

I thought that Lex Imperialis was also excellent. The story is well done, has some very fun moments, and Solomorne is a great party member. YMMV though.

Curious, my understanding is it felt very much like side act, you just go do some optional quests but very little impact on the story. If you think it's worth it maybe I'll check it out on my next run. Can you convert Solomorne to not dogmatic?

I mean, I would say that is exactly how the first DLC works to be fair. You get to go on quests for Kibellah's story but they are self contained and don't have any implications for the main story. That is also how Lex Imperialis works, but the side quests are generally engaging (and they cooked up some interesting combat encounters, which is always nice). The only thing which ties back into the main story to any real extent is that you get to spend more time with the Administratum prefect from the base game (she even gets a portrait now!), and she will have some tasks for you. No idea if you can make Solomorne not dogmatic - I wasn't aware you could shift companion alignment at all, I thought it was set in stone.

As a huge BG3 fan and off and on Warhammer painter, I picked up Rogue Trader a few months back but haven't really gotten into it. I feel like a lot of these games take a couple of hours of being confused by systems before they really grab you, and I haven't pushed through that yet (to my great nerd shame, I also wandered away from my PC after 45 minutes of Clair Obscur). Seems like Rogue trader is worth the effort to learn, though? Should I play with the DLC enabled for my first play through, and do you have any other relevant tips?

I enjoy it but yes there is quite the learning curve to push past. I'm not even truly degenerate about builds yet and I try to stay away from reading build guides as it sucks the fun out of it for me. The story is good, its fairly responsive to your choices. The romances feel great, the core set of characters have good arcs and potential. You can push your followers towards Chaos/dogmatic/humanism in ways that make sense. Overall it's a very enjoyable game.

Void shadows is a must. It seamlessly integrates with the core story very well. Technically the core story left side missions with references/hints prior to its release which makes it feel like it fleshed those out and made them immersive. The classes it adds are unfortunately very OP and very fun. 1.5v was a balance patch that mostly just hit them.

The gameplay tips if you are starting out is to abuse office mechanics via Cassia, you get extra turns on your heavy hitters allowing to scale up the needed buffs to be monsters. Late game they generally start fights with the buffs so its less relevant, but at low levels the power fantasy hasn't taken off yet.

Appreciate the advice! Other than this I'll try to go in blind, and we'll see if I succumb to the lure of build guides at some point.

The DLC integrates well into the main game, so I would enable it (and did for my first playthrough this past year). I'm not great at character building so I don't have a ton of tips, but one thing I found is that RT is very much a game of stacking buffs. 3% damage here, an extra attack there, and when you add them up the character becomes a killing machine. And speaking of extra attacks, look out for things that say they do not count against the one attack per turn limit. They are generally very powerful options to take.

I know that feeling. I’m reminded of the mod for D:OS2 which rebalanced combat to make health more relevant. They had to move heaven and earth to let it serve as a valid resource instead of a last resort.

But then, RPGs have always suffered from that tension. Real humans have a nasty habit of dying horribly when they take one bolter round to the face. Not easy to reconcile with slower, attrition-based gameplay.

My brain feels modded every time I read your handle. I keep seeing "nutsack" whenever I scroll past you. Do people ever call you that in multiplayer?

Unfortunately, yes.

I picked this name back in the Xbox live days. My mother had seen my existing handle and asked “isn’t that kind of…gay?” Since I’d been playing (and honestly, reading about) the roguelike NetHack, I swapped out the H and damned myself to a career of scrotal comments. How ironic.

Oh man. That is great. We’d have loved you back when the lot of us played the original StarCraft on Battle.net. It was a paradise of vulgarity, immature teenagers and young adults.

Oh DOS2, I have fond memories but yeah very much same feeling. I always hated how you pretty much had to spec your party towards one armor type strip or bust. I remember using the hell out of mods to try and fix it, make combat more interesting to some success but it was just a lot. I haven't tried modding Rogue Trader yet.

RPGs have always suffered from that tension. Real humans have a nasty habit of dying horribly when they take one bolter round to the face.

Funny enough this still happens with high level parties in Rogue Trader, which is part of the combat problem(on unfair). If you aren't alpha striking the enemy they are alpha striking you. I'm not sure what a satisfying system looks like. Thinking back idk if I've run into an rpg system that does it well.

EDIT: on further thought, its the power fantasy that probably causes the combat problem.

Progress is kinda slow, not because it's really difficult or boring but because there are so many items to inspect, notes and books to read, traps to spot and disarm, morals to ponder, battle decisions and build decisions to make.

Take your time; savor the journey.

Will do!

I almost beat Ys Chronicles 1. Got to the final boss, decided it was bullshit I'm too damned old for, and watched the ending on youtube before I started cussing at it.

I think I just should have played the game on easy instead of normal. It has some awkward difficulty spikes that after a few tries I was able to overcome, and for 99% of the game normal felt about right. But the final boss was just too much bullshit. Constantly drops meteors on your head to dodge, they explode into more bullets turning the scenario into a bullet hell. Then whenever you hit him, he deletes the part of the boss arena you were standing on when you did it. After 10 or so hits, while dodging all around the screen, while trying to chase him down as he's bouncing all over, you tend to find yourself boxed in.

Watching the final boss fight on easy, it took few enough hits for that to not be an existential problem. But you can't switch the difficulty, so if I want to beat the game on easy, I have to start over.

I'm just too damned old for that. Alas.

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