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PaperclipPerfector
1d ago
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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'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.
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