Results 1,321 to 1,350 of 1478
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2023-03-26, 11:09 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: What Are you Playing 7: Deadly Sims
Sub-tanks do carry over between stages, though they aren't saved on the passwords, which might be the problem you're running in to. (I think the collections' save systems tend to just remember passwords for you for the older games.)
Interesting; I liked Inquisition, but (like pretty much any Bioware game) certainly not primarily for its gameplay, so that's not a great sign.
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2023-03-26, 01:48 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Sep 2016
Re: What Are you Playing 7: Deadly Sims
Meanwhile Inquisition is one of the biggest gaming disappointments of all time to me so that comparison is not one I wanted to make in any respect.
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2023-03-26, 01:51 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Nov 2019
Re: What Are you Playing 7: Deadly Sims
I wonder if some subconscious fear of being disappointed is the reason I still haven't played Inquisition, despite putting a ridiculous amount of hours into the first two games. I keep thinking I should try it, but so far I haven't even bought it.
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2023-03-26, 02:45 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: What Are you Playing 7: Deadly Sims
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2023-03-26, 03:07 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Oct 2009
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Re: What Are you Playing 7: Deadly Sims
Inquisition has great main story quests, plus Dorian and Cassandra are cute. Shame they're never into my PCs, but I get it for Dorian.
Everything else isn't great. I hate the sandboxes, they mostly add a lot of extra travel time to quests, and the fact that the story is mostly progressed by you bumming around the map grinding out Power is not great.
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2023-03-26, 03:14 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: What Are you Playing 7: Deadly Sims
I just wish Inquisition had made up its mind on being a tactics game or an action game, and done one of those things well. Instead it was like playing a kinda meh tactics game fused to an action game's camera, but also its not really an action game. Pick a lane people!
Blood-red were his spurs i' the golden noon; wine-red was his velvet coat,
When they shot him down on the highway,
Down like a dog on the highway,And he lay in his blood on the highway, with the bunch of lace at his throat.
Alfred Noyes, The Highwayman, 1906.
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2023-03-26, 04:08 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Nov 2008
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Re: What Are you Playing 7: Deadly Sims
To be fair, that criticism is pretty applicable to all three Dragon Age games (and every other game that uses the "real time with pause" combat system in general), not just Inquisition. Though it certainly does Inquisiton no favors that you can't say "well, at least the combat is really good" when it fails in other ways that its predecessors didn't.
That's still probably the #1 thing they could do to make me more interested in Dreadwolf, when (and if, considering how long it's taking...) that finally surfaces: tell us that gameplay-wise, it's either going full-blown turn-based, or full-blown action-RPG, not continuing that same combat formula.
Edit: Beat Mega Man X2! Yeah, definitely liked that better than X1. Stages just felt way more satisfying overall - I particularly liked how I found basically none of the permanent power-ups on my first time through any stage, and had to go back and look for them, since they were legitimately well-hidden. The idea of having the X-Hunters as optional bonus bosses throughout the game, and defeating them all letting you skip the endgame boss fight with Zero, was cool too, though I didn't understand what I was looking for with them until too late to get them all on this run. I'd say the one deficiency it has is definitely the boss designs - not only the main 8 robots, but there's nothing too memorable about most of the X-Hunters either, and that final form for Sigma was pretty uninspired too. Other than that, quite enjoyed it.
Also, the legs armor upgrade letting you air dash was so very satisfying. If only they let you do it out of a dash-jump.Last edited by Zevox; 2023-03-26 at 04:34 PM.
Toph Pony avatar by Dirtytabs. Thanks!
"When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty, I read them openly. When I became a man, I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up." -C.S. Lewis
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2023-03-26, 05:33 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: What Are you Playing 7: Deadly Sims
I feel like Inquisition is a better experience when you do less of the open-world stuff and just focus on main story quests and companion quests as much as possible. Though I do generally prefer DAO and DA2. Honestly, I might pick DA2 overall; it certainly has its flaws, but it has my favorite cast in the series, and character interaction is one of the big things to get from Bioware games for me. Admittedly, DAI starts off a bit at a disadvantage for me on the cast since it's very lopsided toward men (among the playables, 6M/3F) and I started playing Dragon Age in the first place over trying a different western RPG first because you can play as a woman and date other women in it. (I didn't even know I was a woman at the time, but it's a bit telling in hindsight.) But, at least one of the men is Varric, who is great fun to have around.
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2023-03-26, 05:38 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: What Are you Playing 7: Deadly Sims
Tried WH40k Dawn of War 2, didn't really grab me. seems to incentivize being fast paced and aggressive with taking and holding the victory locations.
tried to finish FO4, but it just became too annoying to do so, so I just uninstalled it.
meanwhile I'm continuing my Macedon game in Civ 6, and I've gotten pretty practiced at knowing when to raze or capture a city. I've taken over the continent I've started on, having wiped out the two other empires on it. But the other three are on the other continent and one them is half way to diplomatic victory, so I gotta build up a navy to take them out, but my military is having trouble just taking over the last city state of my continent, hm.
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2023-03-26, 06:12 PM (ISO 8601)
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- May 2007
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Re: What Are you Playing 7: Deadly Sims
Eh, kind of I guess. I'm not wild about RTWP systems as a rule, but something like Pillars of Eternity or whatever is definitely a tactical game. The camera is set up as that, the interface works like that, you move the dudes around and tell them to use abilities and really it's just an RTS with like five overcomplicated units and a crappy interface. Even what I remember of Origins was pretty definitively a tactical RPG from top to bottom. Not one I liked a ton, but it knew what it was. Inquisition just felt muddled, like it wanted to look like an action game, and sort of use the controller layout of an action game, and when not in combat control like an action game, but not actually be an action game. Or really a very good tactical game either. Combat was just sort of this disjointed mess that happened for a while, but there wasn't any element or core I could grab onto and go "yes, this is the solid backbone of the title."
Blood-red were his spurs i' the golden noon; wine-red was his velvet coat,
When they shot him down on the highway,
Down like a dog on the highway,And he lay in his blood on the highway, with the bunch of lace at his throat.
Alfred Noyes, The Highwayman, 1906.
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2023-03-26, 06:47 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Oct 2009
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- In my library
Re: What Are you Playing 7: Deadly Sims
A big issue with Inquisition is that you pretty much can't do that. Origins and 2 are set up so you can pretty much do just the main quests and always have at least one you're a decent level for, Inquisition has mandatory Power and Level grinding even if you do every companion quest.
Like, a lot of Inquisition's issues stem from it trying to be bigger than the previous games, and as a result losing focus. I'll completely agree that DA2 made the right decision to focus in on low level stuff and relationships, while Origins is the one I'll always have massive nostalgia for 2 is probably the better game.
Also yeah, RTWP combat may be the worst of two worlds, but the version in the first two Dragon Age games is much better than the one in Inquisition. And I should really give another go at beating Tyranny.
Anyway, P4G.
SpoilerBeat Heaven in one day as [Insert Name] going on a roaring ramage of revenge after Nanako's kidnapping just felt right. Then I went on to max Naoto's romance link (telling her that her voice is fine, because it is and if I really wanted that costume I could mod it in). Now it's just about maxing a few more links and hoping that I remember how to get on the True Ending.
I wonder if Adachi wants a talk...
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2023-03-26, 07:28 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: What Are you Playing 7: Deadly Sims
You can't entirely, which is a shame, but I still think it's a decent guideline when someone is playing it; going closer to that I think is more enjoyable than wandering around for more sidequests than necessary. Which is a particular problem as a sequel, given that in DAO and particularly DA2 doing all sidequests you were presented with is a perfectly manageable thing to do.
Come to think of it, I never did play with the DLC, since all I had when it came out was a 360 and the last DLC never came out for the older systems. I wonder if the way the DLC additions interact with the Power mechanic makes it better or worse?
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2023-03-26, 07:31 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: What Are you Playing 7: Deadly Sims
For Inquisition: the design style felt quite reminiscent to SW:TOR (or just general MMOs) to me for some reason, with the distinct zones having vague level ranges and the immense amount of just walking around doing quests that sometimes actually came down to "gather X" and several minutiae to bait completionists. And even there, you can progress well while only doing main quests these days, which should just be common sense to anyone designing a single-player game these day.
Last edited by Taevyr; 2023-03-26 at 07:32 PM.
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2023-03-27, 01:10 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: What Are you Playing 7: Deadly Sims
Plague Doctor by Crimmy
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2023-03-27, 11:10 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Sep 2007
Re: What Are you Playing 7: Deadly Sims
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2023-03-27, 11:20 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Sep 2016
Re: What Are you Playing 7: Deadly Sims
As "the Monk guy"...meh. D3 Monk was implemented in a really unsatisfying way as being the "designated support class" for much of the game's history. Even when it had competent pushing builds (with Patterns of Justice) it became a pretty boring one-button build akin to Wrath of the Wastes Barbarian. Fun for a bit but not for the long haul.
I can't imagine they'd do much different for D4.
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2023-03-27, 03:46 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: What Are you Playing 7: Deadly Sims
I've been playing some off-brand Soulslikes, and I have thoughts about them.
The ones I've played enough to talk about yet are Remnant: From the Ashes and The Surge.
Remnant: From the Ashes from Gunfire Games (Darksiders 3) is somewhat unique in that it's a soulslike third person shooter. It has all the usual souls things; slow and deliberate movement, dodge rolls with iframes, stamina bar, variety of enemies where even the most basic are a threat, weapon upgrades, bosses that give you their souls to craft into weapons, and so on; but it's also predominantly based on shooting stuff with guns.
This gives it a very different feel to most shooter games, it's slow and methodical but not tacticool due to not having a cover mechanic, cover doesn't matter because 3/4 of the enemies want to run up and chew your face off. The method is more prioritising targets based on proximity and threat and choosing and working on something approximating a build.
It's not quite a match made in heaven mechanically though, because the mediator of ability to attack is ammo and reloads rather than stamina the stamina management side of the game tends to be relevant outside of combat as you jog between groups of enemies.
In combat though it's satisfying, guns feel chunky and enemies react nicely to being shot, staggering and flinching so you can keep them back instead of just powering through at you (unless they're the size of a small car, at least).
It's also not quite the same as other soulslike games structurally. The maps are randomly drawn from a wider group, so you won't see all the maps or bosses on any given playthrough, that also means you wont necessarily get the weapon or accessories you want and have to adapt a little to what you do get. Fortunately though even the starting weapons are highly practical so you won't suffer from not getting the right layouts.
What you often will suffer from though is that the game is really designed for co-op play. On the default normal difficulty this only really rears its head in boss fights, bosses with adds are common and because even the most basic enemies are a significant threat if not managed that leads to having to divide your attention a lot if you're a solo player. I played fully through on Normal and a little on Hard and by that point it was definitely getting to the limits of solo play. Turning up to one of the top two difficulties and a solo player just doesn't have the ammo to get anywhere because elite mobs eat so much of it.
Because the world isn't a fixed consistent design but drawn from a map pool it doesn't build up much of a sense of place, the first major zone is a ruined city, for instance, but there's no lived-in details of what used to be happening before it was ruined. It's just city flavoured wallpaper over a shooter corridor. It doesn't do much in the way of direct narrative delivery either, if you don't find and read various computer terminals that are almost all in the hub zone (because the rest of the world might not exist) you could go through the entire game not knowing anything about how the world got into the state it is. (Evil trees, apparently.)
Overall I think you'd have to really be into the idea of Dark Souls with Guns to take the jump on it unless you've got a co-op partner to go through it with. If you're not then you'll get frustrated at the add spam in bosses.
The Surge from Deck 13 (Lords of the Fallen) is much more of a straight soulslike albeit industrial scifi rather than fantasy. Melee combat, stamina management, drop all your souls (scrap) on death, the usual. It has the same tweaks to the formula that LotF did, a multiplier to XP that grows the longer you stay away from a medbay, when you do drop your scrap it only stays on the ground for a limited time so you have to get back to it quickly but you regenerate slowly whilst you're standing near it. It's own big contribution is that you can individually target enemies' limbs and when they're at low health do a Doom style glory kill to chop that limb off, guaranteeing you a copy of the armour the enemy was wearing there (or upgrade materials for it).
Its other interesting feature is that every boss has a special way to kill it which gives you a better version of its boss weapon, which is a nice extra thing to think about whilst you fight (for instance the first boss once you fill its stagger bar by beating up its knees starts shooting missiles at you, you're supposed to hide under it so it hits itself and falls down but if you dodge it and keep whacking it it eventually falls over, kill it without letting it hit itself and you get an upgraded weapon)
Sadly, the combat really isn't very well balanced aside from that interesting trick, blocking has prohibitive stamina cost and you can't move whilst you block so it's not worth doing basically ever, which means that you need mobility to avoid incoming damage and speed to strike whilst the enemy is recovering. Heavy armour and poising through enemy attacks need not apply here. Also it starts off pretty difficult but once you get to a particular point a lot of the enemies have super low damage gas grenades and easily avoided flamethrowers and you can just clown on them for loads of XP.
On the upside though, the level design feels satisfying because of the way it all loops in on itself to provide shortcuts back to the medbay (of which there is only one per zone) and there's a lot of considered environmental detail.
Like Remnant though it doesn't put a lot of time into conveying its story, taking too many cues from Dark Souls in narrative delivery whilst having a story that's focused on immediate and recent events rather than letting the world itself take centre stage. That means that although you can sort of put together what has happened nobody really seems to be reacting sensibly to it, especially later on when the enemies are mostly humans aware of what's going on (rather than being puppeted by their implants) they all just wordlessly try and kill the protagonist for no identifiable reason (because everyone who could potentially have told them to do it is dead and someone other than the guy who got hired like three days ago should probably be looking into that.)
It's not bad per se, if you really like intricate levels made of looping shortcuts it has something to offer especially when you get over the early punishment hump, but if you want to play a Dark Souls game where you can cosplay as a forklift truck then probably play The Surge 2 instead which is widely considered to be a good deal better.
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2023-03-27, 06:31 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: What Are you Playing 7: Deadly Sims
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2023-03-27, 06:36 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: What Are you Playing 7: Deadly Sims
I have been playing RE4 Remake.
Capcom just keeps delivering. The game looks absolutely gorgeous. Combat is fast paced and lethal- the parrying mechanic makes Leon look like a trained assassin (which he basically is at this point of the game.)
There is a lot of exploring to do this time around, which encourages multiple playthroughs. One boss in particular gave me a harder time than usual, but with the right weapons, it can be overcome. Ashley is a very endearing character, as is Leon. I wish they kept some if the campiness of the original, but this works just as well.
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2023-03-27, 06:55 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: What Are you Playing 7: Deadly Sims
Remnant got so popular but looked so much like it needed iteration that I decided to just catch the sequel
Anyway, WoT Console at the upper tier of the cold war type is overrun by tiny missile-equipped go karts that it reminds me of the infamous "Weasels ripped my flesh" magazine coverAsk me about our low price vacation plans in the Elemental Plane of Puppies and PieSpoiler
Evoker avatar by kpenguin. Evoker Pony by Dirtytabs. Grey Mouser, disciple of cupcakes by me. Any and all commiepuppies by BRC
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2023-03-27, 07:04 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: What Are you Playing 7: Deadly Sims
Pretty much all of Relic's RTSs are really aggressive in skirmish mode. Their economy is pretty much always some variant of map control = resources, so you really cannot play passively. That doesn't mean you can't play defensively, but if you don't get out there and take ground, the enemy will out produce you and attrite you down inevitably.
But with DoW II if you are in for singleplayer, the campaigns are really good. Think less Ye Olde RTS Campaign and more XCOM or any other tactical RPG, but in real time. It works extremely well too, I played through both Dawn of War and Chaos Rising a few years back, and absolutely loved them.Blood-red were his spurs i' the golden noon; wine-red was his velvet coat,
When they shot him down on the highway,
Down like a dog on the highway,And he lay in his blood on the highway, with the bunch of lace at his throat.
Alfred Noyes, The Highwayman, 1906.
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2023-03-27, 09:32 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: What Are you Playing 7: Deadly Sims
It didn't start out well but Monk eventually became fantastic, and is the only melee class I would return to consistently. It definitely has multiple pushing builds now.
I'd say the odds of it getting added later are pretty good since there's only one Dex class currently. For the other Str class it'll either be Paladin or Crusader.
I love Remnant! Easily my favorite soulslike, and the madcap sci-fi planehopping alternate history story got really gripping after a while. I'm really looking forward to the sequel this year.
But eff that final boss, seriously
Between Dead Space Remake and RE4Make this is a banner year for action horrorPlague Doctor by Crimmy
Ext. Sig (Handbooks/Creations)
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2023-03-27, 09:36 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: What Are you Playing 7: Deadly Sims
"Light cruisers" and "heavy cruisers" wouldn't even have existed without the various naval treaties.
Basically, around 1910 most navies wanted basically four types of major ship - Dreadnought/Superdreadnought Battleship, Battlecruiser, Destroyer, Submarine.
Submarines hunt capital ships and merchant shipping.
Destroyers keep submarines and other destroyers away from valuable ships, while carrying torpedoes to opprotunistically take down wounded heavy ships.
Dreadnought/Superdreadnought battleships (as these were soon the only type of battleship in existence, these are generally simply called "battleships") form the main battle line and constitute the primary striking power of the fleet.
Battlecruiser is the odd duck because of the treaties. The intent was basically to be "dreadnought cruisers", completely replacing the protected cruiser and armored cruiser the same way that dreadnought battleships had replaced the older pre-dreadnoughts. Their intended role was to sweep far ahead of the battle line to scout out the enemy battle line and secure an advantage by eliminating the enemy battlecruisers and depriving the other fleet of scouts. Then, once the main battle line had engaged the other battle line, the battlecruisers would come in from another angle to provide additional threat on the enemy battle line. These requirements led to the basic pattern of the class - relatively light armor that's mostly suitable for glancing hits or from secondary armaments, very high speed (for the era), and battleship-class main guns.
This didn't happen for four main reasons. The first is the outbreak of war in 1914, which happened when only a portion of the battlecruisers were online. Too rare to be used in their intended role (which was given to the older cruiser types), they were instead pressed into the main battle line in the one great fleet action of the war, where they didn't do that well. It simply wasn't the fight they were meant for, and there were additional problems on the British side that were exacerbated by the weaknesses of the ships. The second is that military funding dried up dramatically after the war, and very expensive new warships were not a spending priority. The third was technological - the British Admiral-class (of which only one ship - Hood - was completed because the designers wanted to take Jutland into consideration) was able to achieve battlecruiser speed and armament with battleship-scale armor. This meant that it just might be possible to fill the battleship and battlecruiser roles with one type of "fast battleship". Then the treaties came in. Intended to force a dramatic reduction in global naval tonnage, they forced most signatory nations to devote their precious allotment of capital ships on the battle line, and the next generation of battlecruiser was either scrapped or converted into the less-restricted "aircraft carrier" novelty. That didn't make the need for fleet scouts to go away, so the old Armored Cruisers became Heavy Cruisers and the Protected Cruisers became Light Cruisers (as part of a design refinement, of course - it wasn't just slapping a new designation on existing hulls).
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2023-03-28, 09:19 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: What Are you Playing 7: Deadly Sims
To an extent yes. Certainly pretty much everybody foresaw the merging of the battlecruiser and battleship into the fast battleship - there are debates in the German admiralty about when precisely the battlecruisers would catch up, IIRC it was thought that this would be either the class following the erzatz-Yorcks, or the one after that.
But I don't think the battlecruiser/fast battleship was likely to replace cruisers wholesale. For an overseas empire such as Britain or France, the cost of replacing the colonial station ships with battlecruisers would be enormous. For the main battlefleet yes, with traditional cruiser scouting forces replaced by battlecruiser formations ala Germany's First Scouting Group, but outside of the battlefleet I can't see it being feasible even at pre-war rates of construction.Blood-red were his spurs i' the golden noon; wine-red was his velvet coat,
When they shot him down on the highway,
Down like a dog on the highway,And he lay in his blood on the highway, with the bunch of lace at his throat.
Alfred Noyes, The Highwayman, 1906.
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2023-03-28, 01:05 PM (ISO 8601)
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- San Antonio, Texas
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Re: What Are you Playing 7: Deadly Sims
The Cranky Gamer
*It isn't realism, it's verisimilitude; the appearance of truth within the framework of the game.
*Picard management tip: Debate honestly. The goal is to arrive at the truth, not at your preconception.
*Mutant Dawn for Savage Worlds!
*The One Deck Engine: Gaming on a budget
Written by Me on DriveThru RPG
There are almost 400,000 threads on this site. If you need me to address a thread as a moderator, include a link.
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2023-03-28, 02:47 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: What Are you Playing 7: Deadly Sims
I quite liked the tactics system in DAO (even if it certainly wasn't flawless). It was easy to use and while it didn't handle every situation well, I don't mind taking over on occasion (otherwise I'm just watching my computer fight itself. )
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2023-03-28, 02:52 PM (ISO 8601)
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- San Antonio, Texas
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Re: What Are you Playing 7: Deadly Sims
The Cranky Gamer
*It isn't realism, it's verisimilitude; the appearance of truth within the framework of the game.
*Picard management tip: Debate honestly. The goal is to arrive at the truth, not at your preconception.
*Mutant Dawn for Savage Worlds!
*The One Deck Engine: Gaming on a budget
Written by Me on DriveThru RPG
There are almost 400,000 threads on this site. If you need me to address a thread as a moderator, include a link.
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2023-03-28, 03:57 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Jun 2013
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- Bristol, UK
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2023-03-28, 04:02 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Nov 2019
Re: What Are you Playing 7: Deadly Sims
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2023-03-28, 04:07 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: What Are you Playing 7: Deadly Sims
DAO can be a pain to control your party, especially on console. Personally, this is why I prefer Mass Effect, the squadmates are there to help out but you never actually need them. Dragon Age meanwhile is stuck in the Holy Trinity mindset that it inherited from MMOs and can't seem to break free - so you need to rely on your party, but the AI makes that annoying at best.
Last edited by Psyren; 2023-03-28 at 04:08 PM.
Plague Doctor by Crimmy
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