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PaperclipPerfector  16hr ago (text post)   637 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for July 31, 2026

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Video Game Thread

What are you playing? Are you having fun or just killing time?

This week I was able to sink quite a few hours into Deus Ex. I'm going to use spoiler tags because there's always someone who has not yet played the game but might want to do so.

I let Lebedev live. I used the LAM trick to kill Anna Navarre when she came for Lebedev, and now I've got an angry mech (Gunther) on my ass.

During the 'Paul's apartment' sequence I managed to electric prod stun one of the Men in Black mechs, to keep him from exploding along with his loot. Picked up the auto-shotgun and applied a couple of recoil mods to it. I let Paul do most of the killing because he seemed invulnerable, while I, being stealth based and playing on Hard difficulty, can only survive a couple of hits to the chest/head.

I surrendered to the arrest squad and let Daedalus get me out of my cell and onwards to the Armory. Most of my grenades were not kept. I think I had 7 LAMs when I was arrested and only recovered 1 or 2 in the Armory. Oh well. My weapons with their mods were intact. I'm still carrying the GEP gun from the start of Liberty Island, because it's so useful against bots (and cameras, in some situations).

Despite having played almost exclusively non-lethal up to this point, I ended up wiping out most of the MJ12 guards and doctors, because, hey, they know what they're doing is wrong. I let the Mechanic who sells you stuff live though, he seemed alright. While it would have been fun to receive the killphrase for Gunther in Paris from doctor Jaime, I elected to tell him to join me in Hong Kong for roleplaying purposes; gotta keep my bros with me. He was relieved.

Manderley got a rocket straight to the face. Walton Simmons, in the hologram, was unmoved by my lethal prejudice.

I'm now in Hong Kong and have picked up the Dragon's Tooth almost immediately, because I found my way to Maggie Chow's apartment, and then went collecting evidence from the police station, and returned to Maggie's place to find her gone and MJ12 guards swarming out of hidden doors. Turns out Miss Chow is a nasty piece of work. I'll hopefully get to chop her into pieces with the Dragon's Tooth at some point.

Something that's always pissed me off to no end in the Deus Ex games is the energy management running on consumable power cells. I suffer from a bad case of videogame hoarding disorder, and I've beaten most of them without ever using any of the damn things, at significant cost to my sanity.

Its 20XX, just stick your dick in a convenient power socket, you're a fucking cyborg Denton/Adam.

The newer games do, from memory, let you automatically recharge a few pips with time, but that's lame. I'd rather not play a game set in a parallel timeline where the Note 7 debacle put an end to the development of battery technology.

I've been playing Rimworld again, courtesy of creating a mod for it. Miraculously, the 450 strong modpack of last year somehow worked, even after I threw in another 50 for taste. My runs usually die of boredom, TPS death (a 9800x3d and a 5080 only go so far in this game), or modpack instability/conflict. And I never play without dev mode enabled, because some modders have interesting takes on balance.

For example, I installed a mod that adds a bunch of cool guns and armor. It also, for no real reason, adds a spacer-tech faction that's intent on making a Banana Republic a reality in 5500 - you have one in game year to raise a massive crop of GMO fruit for them, or they'll clap your ass. I forgot about it, and was raided by 2 pawns with armor that could stand up to the scrutiny of God himself, and guns that could give him a migraine. My poor colonists lasted all of 30 seconds, and then I reloaded and deleted the enemy from existence because there is no God but me in these parts. Not quite VOID level, but goddamn. One year?? You're lucky to have a fabrication bench by then.

Something that's always pissed me off to no end in the Deus Ex games is the energy management running on consumable power cells. I suffer from a bad case of videogame hoarding disorder, and I've beaten most of them without ever using any of the damn things, at significant cost to my sanity.

Its 20XX, just stick your dick in a convenient power socket, you're a fucking cyborg Denton/Adam.

The newer games do, from memory, let you automatically recharge a few pips with time, but that's lame. I'd rather not play a game set in a parallel timeline where the Note 7 debacle put an end to the development of battery technology.

Wha? Did you miss all those orange repair-bots that recharge your energy?

I think time based auto-regen of hp or any other resource is pretty silly. I think the console-gamers-first cover-shooters were what started the trend.

It's been somewhere in the ballpark of 15 years since I played the OG Deus Ex. Even then, the recharge bots were rare. Power outlets are... not rare.

Battery packs or capacitors are not like HP, and it does not break immersion to allow them to be recharged at a reasonable pace in-game.

at a reasonable pace

I feel like this is the only catch ... but how much of a catch?

Wiki says your 100 units of bioelectric energy will power Speed Enhancement for 150 seconds, which increases your running speed by a max of 80%. 80% of athletic-human running power is going to be something like 250 watts, and 150 seconds of that is about 10 Wh, which means your recharge time at a decent 1kW power outlet is only going to take you under 40 seconds.

Yeah, other assumptions might bump me up by a factor of 2 here, but that still seems fine. Even if we assume that standard electrical power can only be converted into "bioelectric energy" slowly, 10 Wh is small for a phone battery; just keep a supercapacitor or something in your pocket, charge that quickly, and use that to recharge your bioelectric energy slowly.

I think the only thing that makes the mechanic work is if we assume that making "bioelectric energy" is less like recharging a battery and more like synthesizing a fuel, something that requires slow and/or bulky equipment.

I'd rather not play a game set in a parallel timeline where the Note 7 debacle put an end to the development of battery technology.

Some fun quotes regarding futuristic energy storage:

GURPS Ultra-Tech:

Equipment, robots, and vehicles often use standardized power supplies, known as power cells. All power cells are assumed to be compact and relatively inexpensive. They may be advanced electrical batteries, micro fuel cells, superconductor loops, or even more exotic power supplies.

GURPS High-Tech: Electricity and Electronics:

Supercapacitors (TL8; prototype 1954, working model 1978) are intermediate between capacitors and rechargeable batteries. They can be rated for size like [ordinary alkaline] batteries, but have the power output of batteries 10 times larger for a duration of 1 minute. They cost 20 times a comparably sized battery. The power cells in GURPS Ultra-Tech might be advanced supercapacitors.

A flywheel stores energy in dense material spinning extremely fast. A set of coils acts as a motor when power is fed in, speeding it up, or as a generator when power is taken out, slowing it down. Peak output lasts up to 2 minutes. The power cells in GURPS Ultra-Tech might be advanced flywheels.

Flywheels come in weights comparable to larger batteries, though volume is greater.

  • Medium. Stores 2/3 the energy of an M battery, but peak output is 60 times as high (equal to household power). ×100 cost.

  • Large. Stores as much energy as an L battery, but peak output is 100 times as high (equal to industrial power). ×500 cost.

  • Very Large. Stores as much energy as a VL battery, but peak output is 100 times as high. ×1250 cost.

  • Steel (TL7). Only available in L and VL. ×4.5 weight, ×1/3 cost.

  • Titanium (TL7). Only available in L and VL. ×4/3 energy, ×3 weight, ×2/3 cost.

  • Carbon Fiber Composite (TL8). Available in all sizes with statistics given above.

The second one was written by William H Stoddard, a sure sign of quality.

I regret that I never got to play much GURPS.

You don't need to play it in order to enjoy the books.

Steve Jackson himself has stated in interviews that one-third of GURPS book buyers actually play that system, one-third use GURPS books with other systems, and one-third just buy GURPS books to read them without playing any TTRPGs at all. I am in the third category.

I've been playing TTRPGs regularly for almost 30 years. GURPS is definitely my most extreme ratio of time spent reading to time spent playing. It was just all so elegant. But most of my friends like less crunchy, or more setting-specific stuff.

aaaah, GURPS, my truest roleplaying love. My transition to young adulthood was marked by switching from Battletech mech design to GURPS Vehicles 2nd ed and GURPS Robots, the former of which I wore out the spine on in short order. Truly, a more elegant game for a more civilized time.

Allegedly, GURPS Vehicles Third Edition will be published sometime soon—albeit independently by Pulver and with the serial numbers filed off, since Steve Jackson Games can't spare the money to edit it even though it's already largely complete.

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