What Are You Playing, Part 3: The Assassination of my Wallet by the Cowardly Sale

[PoeticallyPsyco]

Started playing a puzzle/adventure game by the name of Oneshot. So far so good. I like the main character, and the game is doing some fun stuff with, as Zero Punctuation would put it, "metanarrative style ****abouts", where you have to (for instance) check your Documents folder for the file with the code you need to proceed in-game.

My one worry is that, while googling where to find blue phosphor, one of the other threads was "But I don't want to be Chaotic Evil". I'm hoping that this either a) nothing to worry about, actually, or b) a Cave Story-style 'jump through these hoops on your second playthrough for the best ending'.

[Cazero]

Slay the Spire

restarting the fight a few times

Wut. How is that even an option.

[-Sentinel-]

Hi. New to this thread.

These past two months, I've been playing Enderal: The Shards of Order, a full conversion mod of Skyrim (that is, a game built upon the Skyrim framework but in a completely different fantasy setting). It's available for free on Steam, though you need Skyrim in order to run it. Beautiful game with a professional polish, great voice acting and top-notch original music. There's not as much content as Skyrim (e.g. territory to explore, side quests, etc.), but the story is much stronger, explores deeper themes, is at times creepy, and at other times leaves you reeling emotionally. If Skyrim is the game for those who want unfettered freedom, Enderal is the game for those who love a good story.

Highly recommend. Again, it's free.


Yesterday, I started playing Alien: Isolation. I enjoy it so far; it really captures the atmosphere of the original movie. It's my first survival horror game, so I guess this is a test for me. Wish me luck and courage! I would hate to have to put down a game just because it gets 2scary4me.

[Cespenar]

I've been poking around in Othercide as well, and been favorably impressed so far. To be fair, deeply metaphorical and highly abstract game about suffering and sacrifice with a soundtrack like the melody of a doom metal band on a bad day pretty much has my name written all over it. It's sort of an arthouse version of a Tanith Lee novel almost, except less messed up. It does a very good job of making its mechanics reinforce (and to a certain extent) create its them and tone as well, which is a thing a lot of games do badly at, or just completely fail to do. And completely eliminating healing might be the gutsiest move I've seen a strategy game take in just about ever.

I'm not sure it has enough unique content to really remain interesting over however many hours it takes to beat, but this is true of pretty much every vaguely XCOM-alike game I've met. The combat remains interesting for, let's say 50% of the total running length, and then it's just more of the same with bigger numbers.

Admittedly, Othercide has some good spins to the old "tactics" chassis, but I feel that they really tried to hide under the "roguelite" trappings and not create as much content because of it. I mean, trundling through similar-looking caves time after again in Spelunky or any other retro roguelite is one thing, but grinding on the same 5 nondescript maps with waves of spawning enemies in an otherwise good-looking game somehow hits harder, at least in my eyes.

Also, I really don't feel the same way about its depth or storytelling, but that's a whole another can of worms. I think there should be some actual "meat" to the writing in order to have some "in between the lines"; would be the gist of my argument, to be very brief. Still, it's better than nothing for sure. With a bit more coherence to their stand-alone throw-away lines, they could have at least created something similar to the feel of Darkest Dungeon.

On the positive side, the time units mechanic, the interrupts, the in-game reason of the roguelite-ness, all clicked reasonably well with me as well as the rest of the game.

[Man_Over_Game]

After beating BotW, I decided to pick up something that I knew I wouldn't be able to finish easily or comfortably.

So I picked up Terraria for the Switch.

I'm certainly not a veteran, but I have played through a lot of Hardmode before they included Plantera (which I couldn't get past), but my understanding is that they added a TON of new stuff to try out.

The controls are bit odd on the Switch, and moving stuff around chests is really annoying without using the touch screen, but so far I've been able to get back into the groove of things.

I'm impressed by the number of changes they made, from giving NPCs unique and decent weapons to defend themselves with, from making grappling hooks and other adventuring accessories as equipped items, to the shear number of biomes they've created.

It doesn't seem too terribly balanced, though. Murdering hordes of monsters during a Blood Moon barely got me any moneys, and the same applies for the Granite Elementals and Golems.

Yet, I can capture the various bunnies that spawn around my home with a net and sell them for the equivalent of about what 12 or so monsters are worth. I'd be fine with selling things as a primary means of making profit, but nothing seems to drop anything! I killed about 50 monsters during the last Blood Moon, and I got maybe 3 lenses and some vanity items from a unique spawn called The Bride, and that was about it.


I've gotten pretty lucky with falling stars and have about 7 or so mana in my reservoir, but the only magic item I've gotten is a Topaz Staff I made. It's a fairly trash item, but it's a reusable ranged weapon, and it seems to ignore the armor from units that spawn in the giant Granite Biome underneath my house.

If you know more suggestions on crafting magic items, plz let me know!

I've only found like 1 chest underground, so I'm not doing so hot so far, although my HP is through the roof (like 220 right now, I think, and I also made the new Heart Lantern). Underneath the Granite Biome, there seems to be a giant underground lake, so I'm starting to get real annoyed at trying to make any level of progress. Thankfully, I've found a large underground railroad track system one layer above all of my problems, so I might just use it to travel to one side of the map and drill straight down until I stop running into more water.

The one benefit of having a surplus of Granite Elementals and Granite Golems spawn under my house is that they seem to rarely drop these nightvision helmets that are awesome and sell for a pretty penny. Because of how lighting works in Terraria, they basically let me see items through walls, although it hasn't really helped me find anything other than pots and heart crystals. The helmets aren't worth grinding for when it comes to money, but it's certainly better than any helmet I could craft at the moment.

I'm trying to slowly tap out the edges of the underground lake, as I remember that chests that spawn underwater have a high chance of having waterbreathing gear. I didn't see any chests from what I could see (it's incredibly dangerous, due to the number of piranha and Granite monsters spawning while I'm adventuring near it), but hopefully I'll be able to get something that will help deal with all of the annoying water problems in my world so far.

One downside I've found to all of the changes (which I absolutely love, just to be clear) is that the increased number of biomes really impacts the number of generic cave biome area that was standard. That doesn't sound like a problem, but that means that Skeletons are rare.

And since Skeletons are the only way to get a Hook, and you need a Hook for your first Grappling Hook, and the Grappling Hook is probably the most important exploration tool at the beginning....

Well, it took an hour of searching for a decent cave system and spawning Skeletons, but I finally found enough Skeletons to create my Grappling Hook. Things are looking up!

[warty goblin]

Admittedly, Othercide has some good spins to the old "tactics" chassis, but I feel that they really tried to hide under the "roguelite" trappings and not create as much content because of it. I mean, trundling through similar-looking caves time after again in Spelunky or any other retro roguelite is one thing, but grinding on the same 5 nondescript maps with waves of spawning enemies in an otherwise good-looking game somehow hits harder, at least in my eyes.

The repetition factor is definitely high, but I'm not really sure how much of that is due to being a roguelite, and how much the usual grind of a tactics game. XCOM 2 never repeats a map, and I still find it to be an unfinishable slog. Same with Gears Tactics, I really love the tactical bits of that, and if they patched in a version where your dudes level up 3 times as fast and the dropped all the side missions, I'd jump for joy.

I find this less of a problem with games that use a genuine strategy layer ala Age of Wonders. Partly because they usually have an autoresolve so I don't have to fight every single action out in hideous detail, and partly because an actually important geography gives the battles some real meaning and context in a way choosing them from a menu just lacks.

Also, I really don't feel the same way about its depth or storytelling, but that's a whole another can of worms. I think there should be some actual "meat" to the writing in order to have some "in between the lines"; would be the gist of my argument, to be very brief. Still, it's better than nothing for sure. With a bit more coherence to their stand-alone throw-away lines, they could have at least created something similar to the feel of Darkest Dungeon.

That's a completely reasonable perspective to take. Personally I'm quite happy to take the whole thing as a giant self-indulgent festival of metaphor and symbolism basically for the sake of metaphor and symbolism. Most games are so entirely literal, I rather enjoy one swinging fir the fences of the non-literal. Particularly since it's not a sad platforming game.

On the positive side, the time units mechanic, the interrupts, the in-game reason of the roguelite-ness, all clicked reasonably well with me as well as the rest of the game.

This I completely agree with. I'm really liking the actual mechanics of the game. Its certainly a left turn from most tactics games' fixation on positioning and cover, which makes it feel very fresh. I've also been doodling around with Wasteland 3, which switched from 2's per-unit initiative system to a bog standard per-team initiative, and it makes combat much less interesting. Activate all the dudes, kill as many things as possible. Yawn.

[Brookshw]

I hadn't played any of the Total War: Warhammer games since shortly after the the second title was release (or, at least around the time Mortal Empires was released), and recently have decided to go back to that series. Since the last time I played there have been a ton of updates and DLC added. It's amazing to see all the changes that have happened, new lands, new factions, improved mechanics like the Empire's fealty/confederation or WAAAGH, it's like a whole new game and I can't wait for the third. That said, there are two observations I wanted to share.

Spoiler: On confederation

Show

The way the AI uses confederation to avoid a faction being wiped out can be annoying at times, specifically when your about ready to wipe someone annoying out and, surprise, they confederate with another faction and now you have another 10-20 (or more) cities to take out. I was playing a vamp counts ME campaign and had an interesting time with the dark elves (and infinite annoyance at Malekith's one round respawn). While wiping out Bretonia the DE wiped out the HE and started taking some of Bretonia's cities. Oh, no, those are mine! War ensues and I end up with half of Ulthuan. Eventually the Cult of Pleasure and Naggarond sue for peace and I accept so I can go deal with the World Walkers. As soon as that's done the DE declare war on my again and it's on, this time I'm going to wipe them out. I start with Naggarond and get them down to under 10 cities from their starting position of about 60 and am looking forward to being done with Malekith. Nope, time to confederate with CoP. So, now I have to burn through about 70 cities before I can be done with them. Fine, okay, we continue and CoP gets down to about 4 cities. Looks like the end, right? Nope, time to confederate with Hag Graef, on the other side of the map, the one where I have no real presence and a greenskin empire to burn through before I can get to them. I love/hate that they kept saving their legendary lords through confederation, super annoying but, honestly, not a bad tactic.

Spoiler: On allies dragging you into their wars

Show

I notice that if you have a military alliance with someone they seem to time when to ask you to join a war. Same vamp count game as before I had kept Von Carstien around and with a military alliance, and, 90% of the wars I entered was a result of getting dragged into it by them. Every time I wipe a faction or declare peace somewhere, here comes VC on the next turn to drag me into another war without any chance to re-up my forces. Every. Damned. Time. Really throws a wrench into your expansion plans, especially as the faction you just wiped was probably one your ally dragged you into war with in the first place, and where that ally may have declared peace and ran away leaving you to deal with it. It's almost like the AI intends to keep you constantly at war with someone but only if you're not in too many wars at once. Not sure if anyone else has ever found this to be the case.

[PoeticallyPsyco]

Wut. How is that even an option.

In Slay the Spire, going Save & Quit and then Continue takes you back to the start of the event, not the round you were on when you quit. However, all the random stuff (deck order, some potion/card effects, enemy attack patterns) will play out exactly the same, so you can't just use it to cheese the RNG*. What it's great for is undoing those stupid misplays, those "What was I thinking" moments. Like in my Heart fight, when I was on round 3, full health, and had it in lethal range... and then played a Prepared instead of a block and took one damage from Beat of Death. So after I finished kicking myself, I said "Well, guess we're taking it from the top" and started the fight again.


*you can still cheese it a bit if you've got a draw heavy deck, or if you can do things like choose between adding a card before or after shuffling. I try not to do that, and just use it as a "that stupid mistake is not affecting the rest of my run" button.

[DeTess]

Does it have enough content to make up for the 30 dollar price tag?

My single play-through took me 25 hours. It wasn't a 100% completion playthrough (there where 1 or two side-stories that I didn't do, as well as some other exploration), but I reckon I saw about 90% of what the game has to offer. Whether that's enough to justify the price-tag is something you'll have to decide for yourself.

[Cazero]

In Slay the Spire, going Save & Quit and then Continue takes you back to the start of the event, not the round you were on when you quit.

Yeah, I could guess that.
It just goes against the core concept of the game IMO. Hence my astonishment. Why make it an option at all. The age of saves restricted by memory is far in the past.

[GloatingSwine]

I notice that if you have a military alliance with someone they seem to time when to ask you to join a war. Same vamp count game as before I had kept Von Carstien around and with a military alliance, and, 90% of the wars I entered was a result of getting dragged into it by them. Every time I wipe a faction or declare peace somewhere, here comes VC on the next turn to drag me into another war without any chance to re-up my forces. Every. Damned. Time. Really throws a wrench into your expansion plans, especially as the faction you just wiped was probably one your ally dragged you into war with in the first place, and where that ally may have declared peace and ran away leaving you to deal with it. It's almost like the AI intends to keep you constantly at war with someone but only if you're not in too many wars at once. Not sure if anyone else has ever found this to be the case.

Military Allies in Total War are enemies fighting by nonconventional means.

Defensive alliances are OK, but stay away from that Military Alliance button. Especially with Tyrion, the AI heard "Madness of Anaerion" and stopped listening, he declares war on everyone and will never peace out.

And if you want to keep Von Carstein alive it's better to do it as a vassal than an ally. Then later on drop vassalage and confederate them.

[Cespenar]

The repetition factor is definitely high, but I'm not really sure how much of that is due to being a roguelite, and how much the usual grind of a tactics game. XCOM 2 never repeats a map, and I still find it to be an unfinishable slog. Same with Gears Tactics, I really love the tactical bits of that, and if they patched in a version where your dudes level up 3 times as fast and the dropped all the side missions, I'd jump for joy.

I find this less of a problem with games that use a genuine strategy layer ala Age of Wonders. Partly because they usually have an autoresolve so I don't have to fight every single action out in hideous detail, and partly because an actually important geography gives the battles some real meaning and context in a way choosing them from a menu just lacks.

Most tactics game do get grindy after a time, true, but with Othercide it was way closer to the start, in comparison to XCOM 2, which was close to the end, at least in my experience. A strategic layer would definitely help, though, yeah.

This I completely agree with. I'm really liking the actual mechanics of the game. Its certainly a left turn from most tactics games' fixation on positioning and cover, which makes it feel very fresh. I've also been doodling around with Wasteland 3, which switched from 2's per-unit initiative system to a bog standard per-team initiative, and it makes combat much less interesting. Activate all the dudes, kill as many things as possible. Yawn.

Oh yeah, I've been eyeing Wasteland 3 as well, but is this one just 99% "kill endless bandits" with a 1% of RPG thrown in like W2 too?

[warty goblin]

Most tactics game do get grindy after a time, true, but with Othercide it was way closer to the start, in comparison to XCOM 2, which was close to the end, at least in my experience. A strategic layer would definitely help, though, yeah.

I always break down about the time I go after the first Chosen in XCOM 2. XCOM 1 I made it all the way to literally the last battle before realizing I really did not want to wade through another scoot'n'shoot slog.

I think the trick with adding a strategy layer to a mostly tactics game is to make it just heavy enough to make controlling territory significant, and not an inch further. Otherwise the game shifts from being good at tactics to being good at producing tons of dudes and never having to fight at parity, let alive a disadvantage. This is why in a lot of ways the original Age of Wonders remains my favorite, the economy is so bare bones, you can't break the game with it.

Oh yeah, I've been eyeing Wasteland 3 as well, but is this one just 99% "kill endless bandits" with a 1% of RPG thrown in like W2 too?

I'm really not far enough into the game to say for sure, since it took me the traditional 7 restarts to come up with useful seeming characters and haven't really gotten going on the main quest yet. I like some of the changes like simplifying the ridiculously over-specified skill system, and Intelligence seems like somewhat less of a god stat, or at least other stats might be worth investing in. It also does a much better job of easing you into the game than W2. So overall I've liked what I've seen.

[Rodin]

I'm really not far enough into the game to say for sure, since it took me the traditional 7 restarts to come up with useful seeming characters and haven't really gotten going on the main quest yet. I like some of the changes like simplifying the ridiculously over-specified skill system, and Intelligence seems like somewhat less of a god stat, or at least other stats might be worth investing in. It also does a much better job of easing you into the game than W2. So overall I've liked what I've seen.

I'm 6 hours in and I still haven't left the starting city. I stuck with my initial 2 (leader/speechifier and thief/sniper) and quickly filled out the major skills in my party, so that 6 hours is a "real" 6 hours of progress into the game rather than spending hours in character creation.

So far I'm very impressed. Wasteland 2 had some great ideas bolted onto a ramshackle game system that didn't know what it was trying to be. Wasteland 3 has smoothed out all of those rough edges and I'm digging how useful all the skills are without being contrived. Merging the pointless ones together and rolling some of them into stats (like Perception) was a great idea.

When it comes to the bandit killing my early impressions are that things have improved. Again, I haven't left town yet so I don't know how bad the random encounter system outside is. That said, almost all of the fights I've had have been story relevant. There's been one pack of feral animals and one group of back alley thieves. Other than that? Every last fight has been directly tied to a quest, and I've talked my way out of a bunch of additional fights.

My early take is that Wasteland 3 is all of the good stuff from Wasteland 2 with all of the bad stuff taken out.

[Haruspex_Pariah]

Picked up the original Torchlight because I am bored and it actually runs on my laptop.

It's pretty fun, and the parts that I have problems with can be chalked up to its age.

Sometimes targeting with ranged auto-attacks just doesn't work (especially when stairs are involved) and pet pathfinding being a little unreliable.

There are also some features that really show their "inspiration" such as transmuting gems and Identify scrolls. Does any game even use the Identify item mechanic anymore? Yeah, Torchlight 1 is an old game by this point, but a quick search reveals that it came out a full decade after OG Diablo.

On the plus side it's fairly generous with stash space and the pet system is nice.

I appreciate the art style as well. Not every ARPG has to copy Diablo's general tone, after all. Which is not to say that Torchlight is cheerful (it seems to be perpetually night for some reason), but it certainly comes across as lighter.

[Aeson]

Does any game even use the Identify item mechanic anymore?

Divinity: Original Sin did, if I recall correctly, and was released in 2014.

[tonberrian]

Does any game even use the Identify item mechanic anymore?

Kingmaker does and that's 2018. Odds are pretty good that Baldur's Gate will use it too.

[Haruspex_Pariah]

But...why? I've thought about it, and I just can't see what the Identify mechanic contributes to the core appeal of the game. It's just an additional step between getting gear and using it.

Grim Dawn disposed of both Identify and Town Portal Scrolls, and I assumed it was the logical way forward.

[Zevox]

Just finished up Banjo-Tooie. If anything, it's probably an even better game than I remembered - I recalled preferring the original a bit, but now I think I'd say the reverse. They did a lot of cool things with the stage design in that game, with every world being interconnected in different ways, including a train you could fix up in the second world that would eventually link most of them together and be used to move some NPCs between worlds at times. A couple of the endgame stages, Grunty Industries and Hailfire Peaks, have a lot of fun elements - Grunty Industries in how elaborate the solutions to obtaining some jiggies are, Hailfire Peaks in the way you use attacks thrown at you by the stage's bosses while you're exploring to deal with certain obstacles long before you can actually fight those bosses. And Hailfire Peaks has the snowball transformation, probably the most creative transformation in the series' history, which heals itself and grows in size when rolling in the snow - so sometimes in that form you actually want to take damage, in order to shrink down enough to fit in certain places.

If I had any significant criticism, it would be the FPS segments, which feel awkward and forced, especially when it gets used in the final boss fight (which is otherwise great). Similarly, the mini-games where you collect or shoot colored objects for points do get kind of repetitive. A much lesser criticism would be that I miss Grunty's rhyming - it gives her a certain charm in the first game, so it's sad to see it go, even if it is kind of funny that it annoys her sisters.

I did manage to collect almost everything without looking at any guides, though very little from memory, unlike the first game. The few things I resorted to a guide to collect were mostly single empty honeycombs or cheato pages that I missed in random levels - though sadly even with that there's one thing I won't be getting: the game's final cheato page. Because my god, that final race with Canary Mary is just absurd. I can't even imagine how I beat that as a kid. Those races are done just by mashing the X button, but that one is very long and she is very fast, so you'd have to keep up a ridiculous pace of mashing for a very long time to win, and my hand cannot take that at this point. So I'll have to just settle for 99% completion on Tooie.

All in all, revisiting the Banjo games was a ton of fun. Banjo-Kazooie is just a 100% pure nostalgia trip for me that I'll always enjoy, and Banjo-Tooie was a very pleasant surprise since I remembered little enough that I got to play through as close to blind as I'll ever be able to again. Microsoft and Rare might never touch the franchise again, but at least I'll always have those two games.

[Triaxx]

Grim Dawn is a different vein of game than BG. Identifying items is part of DnD's method of interesting story telling. So you find mysterious items and have to work out their plot significance via magic. Or just put it on and risk wanting to do gracious bodiy harm to the GM for having every NPC hit on you for being such a hottie. Kingmaker is pathfinder which is a DnD derivative and so shares the quirk.

Grim Dawn is descended from a Diablo lineage, and is more action and stat oriented. So it wouldn't use identification. Though I rather like infinite Town Portals.... And getting to set things on fire as a Demolitionist.

[factotum]

Grim Dawn is descended from a Diablo lineage, and is more action and stat oriented. So it wouldn't use identification. Though I rather like infinite Town Portals.... And getting to set things on fire as a Demolitionist.

But...Diablo used identify as well? You couldn't use an unidentified item in Diablo 2 (can't remember if 3 is the same). Admittedly, once you rescued Deckard Cain he would identify everything you were carrying for free, so it really just became a "You can't use this until you go back to town unless you carry some identify scrolls with you".

[GloatingSwine]

But...Diablo used identify as well? You couldn't use an unidentified item in Diablo 2 (can't remember if 3 is the same). Admittedly, once you rescued Deckard Cain he would identify everything you were carrying for free, so it really just became a "You can't use this until you go back to town unless you carry some identify scrolls with you".

Diablo 3 only uses it for oranges and it doesn't require you to do anything but click on the item, which reveals the rolls on it.

Path of Exile uses it a lot as well, but Identify scrolls are the base currency in that game (and there are some times where you actually want items unidentified, sell one unidentified item for every equip slot at once and you get a better outcome than if they were identified)

[Cespenar]

I always break down about the time I go after the first Chosen in XCOM 2. XCOM 1 I made it all the way to literally the last battle before realizing I really did not want to wade through another scoot'n'shoot slog.

I think the trick with adding a strategy layer to a mostly tactics game is to make it just heavy enough to make controlling territory significant, and not an inch further. Otherwise the game shifts from being good at tactics to being good at producing tons of dudes and never having to fight at parity, let alive a disadvantage. This is why in a lot of ways the original Age of Wonders remains my favorite, the economy is so bare bones, you can't break the game with it.

Eh, depends a bit on where do you want the tactics-strategy balance to be at. AoW obviously wants it closer to tactics, but even a tactically powerful series like Total War lets you get huge advantages through the strategy layer. Which is a big plus, in my opinion. Even if TW's tactical battle mechanics are closer to perfect than any other game, it gets a bit tiring after the umpteenth one in a row. In most TWs nowadays, I try to get by by probably autoresolving like 80% of my battles.

When it comes to the bandit killing my early impressions are that things have improved. Again, I haven't left town yet so I don't know how bad the random encounter system outside is. That said, almost all of the fights I've had have been story relevant. There's been one pack of feral animals and one group of back alley thieves. Other than that? Every last fight has been directly tied to a quest, and I've talked my way out of a bunch of additional fights.

At least that's a good omen.

[Aotrs Commander]

Eh, depends a bit on where do you want the tactics-strategy balance to be at. AoW obviously wants it closer to tactics,

I've personally found the battles in AoW (admittedly only played III and a bit of Planetfall) to quickly get tedious, with very small (almost claustrophobic) maps, low unit count especially with no deployment (a fault it shares with Elemental:Fallen Enchantress Legendary Heroes) - really would it kill them to have a la Sword of the Stars 2 a default set-up grid preset at least (actually, why can't Total War have that too, come to that...)? (And you know its bad when you get negatively compared to SotS2...) I found quite often towards the end, I'd just doom-stack autoresolve, because I couldn't be arsed to fight a battle with everything scattered around. In sieges in particular, having to frack about moving before you're actually in position. (And I forget if it was in III as well as Planetfall, but then to turn around and say "right, nobody shot for two rounds, battle over," was particularly onerous, like it was actively preventing me from tactics and wanting me to rush.) About the only thing I can say was that the battle when it was just one army on one army could at least be fairly short.

(TW too, one does find one autoresolves a lot after a while, because you simply can't be bothered.)

X-Com never seemed to have that problem to me, I never felt like "oh, screw this mission, I want to autoresolve." Nor BATTLETECH. (Okay, I MIGHT have done it on some of the late-game very low skull missions which were just a curb-stomp...!)

(Never autoresolve with SotS 1/2, either, save for the battles where it is actually beneficial to do so *cough*VonNeuman, looking at you*cough*).

[Sermil]

(Never autoresolve with SotS 1/2, either, save for the battles where it is actually beneficial to do so *cough*VonNeuman, looking at you*cough*).

Really? I always found VonNeumans autoresolve was worse, especially if I only had satellites. I would usually lose a bunch if I autoresolved but could keep all but one up if I played out the battle.

[Narkis]

Really? I always found VonNeumans autoresolve was worse, especially if I only had satellites. I would usually lose a bunch if I autoresolved but could keep all but one up if I played out the battle.

How? Von Neumans paralyzed my ships before devouring them. Like Aotrs Commander, I could never beat them in manual combat without horrendous losses while they were barely a speed bump in autoresolve.

[Aotrs Commander]

How? Von Neumans paralyzed my ships before devouring them. Like Aotrs Commander, I could never beat them in manual combat without horrendous losses while they were barely a speed bump in autoresolve.

It's even noted in some of the guides it's better to autoresolve against them.

[Aeson]

How? Von Neumans paralyzed my ships before devouring them. Like Aotrs Commander, I could never beat them in manual combat without horrendous losses while they were barely a speed bump in autoresolve.

I tended to use a small squadron of destroyers (four or so, if I recall correctly) and just waited for the probes to come to me, manually targeting them as they approached to focus my ships' fire and kill each of the probes quickly. I recall liking high-accuracy weapons (lasers, sniper cannons) and the Strafe command section for ships used in this role.

Be aware that the number of VN motherships and probes that spawn is at least partly dependent on the number of ships/satellites you have defending the colony, so a VN attack on a world with a big fleet at it is generally worse than a VN attack on a world with fairly little present. Also be aware that if you go after the motherships then the VNs may at some point retaliate with something nasty - possibly really nasty, as in a Grand Menace-level threat, if you've killed enough motherships and the lower-end retaliation vessels - and that successful autoresolves have a tendency to kill motherships.

[Sermil]

How? Von Neumans paralyzed my ships before devouring them. Like Aotrs Commander, I could never beat them in manual combat without horrendous losses while they were barely a speed bump in autoresolve.

Lots of satellites with sniper cannons, and focus-fire.

One advantage seems to be that I can tell the satellites to focus fire on the little drones, not the mothership. It seems (?) like autoresolve has the satellites doing damage to the mothership instead of the drones. (Even though it should be out of range.) Usually a couple of small satellites aren't going to kill the mothership anyways, so better to make sure all the damage is going to the drones and try to minimize losses. Make sure they fire missiles at the drones, too; a few missiles will get through, and again, you want the damage on the drones not the mothership.

[MCerberus]

After playing some Troy I can say... I think I'm done playing these experiment games developers are starting to put out. No matter how promising the mechanics that don't make the cut make these things incredibly frustrating.

Xcop had really bad issues balancing encounters to be interesting without being impossible, and now Troy decided they wanted to see how far they could make heroes and chariots OP before the entire game breaks. Troy's especially bad because the combat is intended to be infantry heavy but the shield walls of ToB were better while Warhammer 2 just has all the fun mechanics.