Blog Your Current Game

[jmotivator]

So, when I hit a dry spell in new games I tend to fall back on old games I haven't played in a long time. Usually that game is Minecraft on whatever major modpack strikes my fancy.

Every so often, though, I fire up The Sims 4. I usually fire it up, see if there is anything new .. I know, I know... it's a sickness, really.

Anyway, I fired up a new game, spent a long time downloading houses for all the empty lots (it seems like a new feature .. to me anyway... that the game will move sims in to empty houses over time).

Also new is a pack taht allows me to build business plots instead of houses. That was nice.

Anyway, on to the funny story.

So I moved my Sim into a starter house and was going about the normal try-to-cook-breakfast-without-peeing-on-yourself plate spinning and noticed that in the various options on the phone was an option to advertise for a roommate. This seemed like a great option to bring in a Sim that could bring in extra income. I wasn't sure how it would work, but I assumed they would just merge finances the way creating households works.

So I get several roommates that show up with varying bad/undesirable traits and dismiss them before a woman shows up that I can't keep my sim from fawning over. She has all possitive roommate-y traits, so I accept her as a room mate.

Suddenly my household income goes from $5,137 to... $1.2 billion.

I... uh...

Moreover, I inspected the Sim and she has max skill in everything AND pretty much every Satisfaction reward (no need to sleep, eat, always clean.. etc.). THe only thing she didn't have was fame.

So suddenly my game changed from get my schlubb a better TV to a Sims re-enactment of A Star is Born.

I assume that the auto population routine pulls player-made sims out of the online library, and I just happened to get handed someone's ultimate project.

 

[jmotivator]

So, in case you need visuals, here is my schlub....



And here is the practically perfect in every way roommate...



So the game now is me having her paint, compose and perform her way to stardom while my guy hangs out at home trying not to set the house on fire.

But really, it wouldn't be such a big loss if we lost the double wide... or the schlub for that matter.

Edit: Also, I did an online library search for the Sim's name (Amy Clark), and the only Amy Clark is not her... so it looks like it was just an insanely good RNG creation.

 

[jmotivator]

I've never played The Sims 4 with a character that is this end-game complete. All my Sims usually die sad and alone in a kitchen fire.

I've dropped her out of college at the moment since she has nothing really to gain anymore. Now I have been experimenting with professions and pseudo professions to see which are the easiest, which are the best sources of income, and which are the easiest to manage. My first experiments were with things I could do without tying myself to a Sims job mechanic. Luckily I have a lot of options.

The best option, and the one I think is the most interesting, is painting. To put it in persective, if I took her to open mic spots she has all the skills to get a lot of tips as a comedian, pianist, folk singer... but the bar needs to be very busy to clear a descent day's wage (I think the most she ever made is $500 in a night.. which is a lot). With paintings, at skill 10, she can finish paintin in a few hours and sell it for $2500 on the low end, and as high as $4500. Granted, selling a painting for a Sim is kind of like selling a child, they can take a mood hit parting with the better paintings.

The most interesting part of the painting experiment is the addition of the "Paint From Reference" option, that lets you take a snapshot from the vantage point of the eisle and then they paint an impressionist image of that scene. I've had fun movingthe eisle around town to make paintings that I hang on the walls in my house.

The alternative to fame and fortune that I've had her dabble in is writing music, but it's not nearly as flexibe/interesting as painting is. And while selling songs can be almost as lucrative, it takes a lot longer to write a song, so the whole process is slower.

Anyway, it's like a whole new game.

Next step, since she's so rich, is to dip into the Business add-on and build my own art studio business. It would be nice to have a place she can work away from her dopey rommate... I don't want her anywhere near when he sets himself on fire making a grilled cheese sandwich.

 

[jmotivator]

Latest drama in the world of the Sims.... (pardon the formatting, I'm just giving a step by step here)

My main Sim.. well, the one I created, is named Lance Kadukin (named by RNG). While my super Sim is off making a name for herself, Lance has been busy screwing up.

This story that I'm about to tell is almost entirely not my own doing, it just happened naturally. I'll put an asterisk next any action that I initiated...

So Lance is a guy saddled with a sad disposition. He's a very hard Sim to keep motivated. When I leave him alone for a a bit I usually find him crying in bed... ugh...

Since Lance is starting out fresh, he had a lot of work to do. He took a job as a *lab tech to earn some money. I mostly did that so that I can go off and tend to my better sim while he's at work.

The lab work seemed fulfilling to Lance, but his fun meter was steadily dropping. I suggested that Lance *go to the local bar to meet people. While he was there he struck up some conversations with some women and ended up hitting it off with one of them.

The few hours he spent hanging out with her refreshed his fun meter, so all was well.

It was so effective that he *made a habbit of calling her up to visit when he was feeling down.

One thing lead to another, and while I was away, Lance and the Lady went and got lady pregnant.

Lance *tried for a while to get the relationship to the proposal stage, but he was unable to before the baby came.

Lance wasn't there when teh baby was born. He only knew about it when the lady called to ask if he wanted to see the baby.

Lance got out of his crying bed and *went to see the his new daughter and the mother of his child... and her husband, and her other children. Uhhhhh...

The husband ended up flirting with his wife, as men do, and this sent Lance off on a tear, yelling at everyone, making the woman angry, and Lance left.

Fast forward some playing time, mostly with my good Sim, and Lance has started a new relationship... with the woman's adult daughter (she had a different last name.. must have been one of the random families I downloaded)

He ended up *marrying her because, frankly, it was easier to keep Lance happy with his love interest in the house. Yes, it's super weird that Lance married his baby's half sister... but he lives in a double wide, what do you expect?

(Aside: By the way, some may be wondering why Lance didn't just start a relationship with super woman... well, once a Sim has some fame and notoriety they get pretty snooty about who they will date. It's a lot of work, and frankly she was out of Lance's league)

Some more time passes and Lance's wife gets a call from her mother asking her daughter to come visit. His wife's father had passed away the previous year, so the woman was living alone with Lance's toddler daughter. I felt bad for her, so I took control of Lance's wife and accepted the invitation. In theory, my thought was that the daughter would focus on taking care of her toddler half sister, giving her mom time to reset. She'd get some parenting skill in the process. Win-Win.

Soon after ariving, though, the mother flies into a rage about... who knows, I can't decipher Sims mood queues. Anyway, apparently it had to do with Lance's wife

(the game isn't deep enough for the fight to be over Lance without the jealousy being connected to witnessed affection.. and they hadn't seen each other in a long time.. not since the fight)

The mom ends up walking into the kitchen to get something from the fridge and Lance's wife follows her into the kitchen to keep arguing.

At that point the mother slammed the refrigerator door, the refrigeratoir broke, electrocuted her and she fell dead on the spot.

So it's been about average for my Sims stories, is what I'm sayin'

 

[PoS]

Planetside 2 now has the Ukrainian decal available for all factions at 1 cert.

Of course, the NC has been yapping that if youre for Ukraine, its best to play on their side since their faction colors are pretty much exactly like Ukraine's flag, but a few other players did point out that the Ukrainians dont kill their own, unlike the NC...

 

[PoS]

This helped a little. Still doesn't give you proper mouse steering though.

This was a huge help, thanks.

What I cant stand is when you dodge sideways, you have to manually reface your opponent. I usually end up getting hit because I throw my shield up, but it ends up facing the wrong way. It took me multiple tries to kill that damned knight with the long spear.

 

[jmotivator]

I've been growing the household of my Sims through buying bigger houses with my wads of cash, and essentially my female star taking on an entourage of roommates.

It's kind of an interesting experiment in plate spinning at households of 8 sims. You get to the point where you really NEED each Sim to do relatively what they are expected to do (go to work, school, do homework, etc.) without micromanaging. Once you are at that hair pulling stage is when you start to regret most of your decisions regarding roommates, skill sets, etc.

I'm still primarily the manager of Super Sim, trying and failing to get her career off the ground. But she met a friend and invited her to *move in becuase they had a lot of shared interests. The new room mate is also a painter, so the whole mansion is becoming a bit of an art studio.

The frustration in the various failures by other roommates and the inability to get past entry level fame lead me to start experimenting with Sims 4 Mods. I'm not really looking for game breaking mods, but just some quality-of-life improvements that may help me focus on other things.

My favorite mod so far is pretty cheaty, really, but not in ways that I care. The mod is called "Live-In-Services". YOu activate the mod is two steps. There is a feature that is new to me that allows you to assign a property three influence traits that influence some aspects of the environmental randomness. For instance, you can give it the "fast internet" trait that makes all internet based skills easier to learn. THis mod adds a trait "Line-In Service". Once that trait is added to the property, your sims get the ability to hire 2 maids, 2 Nannies and 2 gardeners that live in your residence like the Sims butler does, and perform basic maintenace tasks and cleaning and they don't apply to the household cap.

Frankly, I wish the mod added a chef, because I'd really like having someone to cook all the meals on a schedule. As it is, all Sims eventually drift off of any schedule other than School/Work to the point where they are all on different sleep cycles... except super woman who has the perk that keeps her up perpetually without tiring.

Anyway, now I have 7 sims puttering around my house doing basic chores so that I'd otherwise have to click through.

Oddly, maybe something deep in the mod, has left these maids/nannies/gardeners and butler "woohoo"ing each other at rather high rate.

It's what I imagine Downton Abbey is like... but I've never watched it.

No pregnancies yet.... no idea how that would work with an already maxed household. I've already had to create what amounts to a boarding school on another plot where I used to ship Lance's various children to. I'm sure they're doing fine...

 

[jmotivator]

Blizzard really wants my business back...

Hey Blizzard, this isn't it.

 

[bomberfox]

I streamed 6+ hours of project wingman in VR. If you thought Belka was insane, the federation as the main enemy was called literally went scorched earth with several cruise missiles pounding the landscape. It was more intense than the sudden nuclear explosion in ace combat zero where Belka detonated a nuke over their own country. Like going from lush landscape to bright hot burning land for miles.

 

[jmotivator]

So I'm a bit ADD when if comes to late game The Sims 4, it appears. I guess in the games I play I am so laser focused on just making my Sims minimally confident that I never get a chance to explore the various late game decisions.

With my super skills Sim roommate Amy, I have built, or really repurposed, a large gym into a very open-concept living space that now houses 4 adults and 5 staff members. I have built a basement with a recording studio and an art gallery (which really serves no functional purpose, I just keep the better paintings there until I figure out what to do with them).

The 4 adults and their careers:

1) Lance Kadukin - Between jobs, working on skills
2) Sofia Bjergsen-Kadukin - Comedian/Singer
3) Amy Clark- Whatever she wants to do
4) Josephine Monroe - Painter

So far the most accomplished painter in the house in Amy, but I've decided to give her a break from painting to pursue a new self paced career: Writing.

Writing was actually not a skill that Amy had when she moved in, but she's a very fast learner and maxed the skill out fairly quickly. When she hit level 10 I set her off on her literary career with he first book, an epic fantasy series called *"The Cat World!"... it was a best seller, of course. She's such a prodigious writer that she finished the next to books in the series *"The Cat World 2: Dragon Cats!" and "Cat World 3: MORE Dragon Cats!" in about a week... all best seller quality.

So far on Amy's list of successes: Three chart topping songs, numerous painting masterpieces, and now three best selling novels... but she's still only a B-List celebrity.

 

[jmotivator]

So I worked too hard on getting my Sim to 5 star stardom... it turns out all you really only need to reach 3 stars and pick the right perk.

There is a three star perk called "Giving Back" that lets you donate the tools of your trade to fan organizations for fame points. The fame points scale with the price of the item donated. My painter can buy a $2500 easel that gives her about 10% adcancement towrds the next star per donation, and she's a billionaire, so I bought the last two stars. As 3 stars, a quick small painting sells for about $2500 + fame, so even if you are poor you just buy easel, paint a painting, sell painting and easel and repeat.

Now she is a global super star that can boost the stardom of anyone else in the house.

I think that means I won The Sims 4.

I guess since that easy road requires you maintain a "Good Reputation" (the Good side of the perks contains the necessary perk), so I haven't really won until I create The Sims version of Charlie Sheen.

 

[PoS]

Still on Elden Ring, and its the most punishing game Ive ever played. One small mistake can kill your character no matter how many times you level up. Its so damn frustrating at times Id like to punch the monitor screen.

 

[WorldWatcher]

Still on Elden Ring, and its the most punishing game Ive ever played. One small mistake can kill your character no matter how many times you level up. Its so damn frustrating at times Id like to punch the monitor screen.

That's how I felt last year in my first attempts at Dark Souls.





WW

 

[Redress]

Been playing 3 games lately:

1: The Planet Crafter-awesome chill gaming. Collect resources, build stuff, explore, marvel as the sky slowly turns blue, then gets clouds, then rains, then lakes form. Really well done and relaxing.

2: Battletech-fired it up again, having fun with it once again.

3: Distant Worlds 2-They have patched most of the bugs, the game is much less laggy, in 40ish hours playtime I have crashed once. Gameplay still needs some balancing(spies are way overpowered) and it could really use some better explanations on how to do some things, but overall, it is Stellaris, but a whole lot better. The two man dev team are busting ass to make it better, and the community is really helpful.

 

[WorldWatcher]

XCOM 2: OG
First Playthough

So I’m pretty much mid-game and had a real good time last night. Doom Clock is Ticking real high so I have to do something to get it down a few pips so it’s time to take on my second Alien Facility. Sent in my best consisting of

• Phantom Ranger (Col)
• Blademaster Ranger (Col)
• Grenadier (Cpt)
• Sharpshooter (Col)
• Field Medic Specialist (Col)
• Tech Specialists (Col)

Skyranger drops the squad on the south side of a Butte and the facility was on the other side to the north. Leave most of the squad in place and take the Phantom Ranger up high and since that was clear brought up the Sniper. Moving the Phantom reveals a pod of aliens with an Elite Officer, Elite Trooper, and Elite Stun Lancer. I see them but they don’t see me. [insert evil laugh here]

So taking my time I bring up the rest of the squad and over a couple of turns arrange them behind cover in a skirmish line. West to East being Specialists, Grenadier, Sniper, and Rangers. Set the overwatch trap and when activated the officer and lancer go down, the lancer survives and takes half-cover. The Blademaster that didn’t even get to trip the overwatch make quick work with a single Stun Gun shot to the face. After some reloads and reposition the squad comes to the other side of the butte and the facility comes in site. Coming up to the butte edge and putting the last squaddie in place trips alien forces and its game on.

So the facility had a wing coming out toward the butte. The inside of the wing appears to be a loading dock with large window (south side facing the butte) and a very large (open) door on the East (left) side. On top are 2 armored heavy turrets. Inside the dock is another Elite Officer along with an Elite Shieldbearer, two Elite Stun Lancers come outside and take up position behind some crates in the outside area. My line-up across the edge of the butte (west to east, left to right) is the Field Medic, Teach Specialist, Grenadier, Phantom Ranger, Blademaster Ranger, and the Sniper over to the right who ended up with very good line of sight both to the outside area where the Lancers are but through the large doors into the loading bay.

My squad each have full cover, they are all locked-n-loaded, so now it’s time to figure things out. Some might think my biggest concert was the Heavy Turrets. But no single unit could kill one of my squad in a single turn. So that gave me some breathing room. The two specialists were lined up very well on the Turrets, so they moved down in the priority list. The one I was really worried about was the Shieldbearer in the back. If he activated his shield ability to give all the organics extra shielding, that could be bad. So right now the squad was facing a 6 v. 6 scenario with many 1-shot|1-kill options.

So the priority is the Shieldbearer and my Sniper has 100% chance to hit and decent right. BTW – the Snipers name is Robbin “Sherwood” Locksley. He activates Deadeye and even with the aim penality still has a 100% chance to hit but now with bonus damage. One set of Shieldbearer brains splattered across the wall. No 5 v. 5.

Continued...

 

[WorldWatcher]

Next up the turret. Both specialists have good shots but neither can take out their assigned turret in a single shot and I need the other squaddies for other things. So the Tech Specialist sends his Gremlin over for a Hack and I take the 100% chance to stun taking one turret out of the equation for a few turns. The Field Medic takes his shot and does great damage, but the second turrent is still standing (barely). Next round it dies, no question as either it gets hit was the plasma blast or the Tech Specialist send the Gremlin back over for a Jolt attack.

Now the focus moves down below. 3 v. 3. Blademaster creams the Stun Lancer under half cover from the height advantage. Now 2 v. 2. The second Stun Lancer is behind full cover and the Phantom Ranger has a – well – decent shot with a decent chance to hit but not guaranteed. That would leave the Grenadier with the Elite Officer behind full cover but with only a 34% chance to hit and explosives would not do enough damage. So the Phantom Ranger activates “Hail of Bullets” to guarantee the hit and takes out the second Lancer. Now 1 v. 1. The Grenadier comes down the side of the butte and moves to the side a little, a bold move that will leave him totally in the open but his hit chance goes up to 67%, good enough. Takes the shot, SCORES!!! Elite Officer dead.

The next round is turret cleanup for the Specialists and the Grenadier returns to high cover. Everyone reloads and just as the overwatch is set a Sectopod comes crashing out THROUGH the wall. 1 v. 6 and this giant robotic death machine didn’t stand a chance. It just so happened that the Grenadier fired first (with Halo Targeting, giving everyone else an aim boost) doing decent damage and shredding a couple of points of armor. Then it just moved down the line shoot and a hit, shoot and a hit, each in turn. It was GLORIOUS. 1 enemy, 6 squaddies, and 7 shots (the Teach Specialist has Guardian (a 50% chance to shoot again after each overwatch shot and it proc’d).

Time to set the C-4 explosives, deal with the expected reinforcement drop and then go home and have a beer. I was so pumped, especially about the Sectopod going down in one overwatch round.

WW

 

[jmotivator]

For those interested, Steam has the complete Warhammer 40k - Martyr collection on sale for $12.50

It's a very good Diablo-like set in the WH40K universe.

Steam says I have 474 hours logged playing the game, so clearly I think the $12.50 is worth it.

 

[PoS]

3: Distant Worlds 2-They have patched most of the bugs, the game is much less laggy, in 40ish hours playtime I have crashed once. Gameplay still needs some balancing(spies are way overpowered) and it could really use some better explanations on how to do some things, but overall, it is Stellaris, but a whole lot better. The two man dev team are busting ass to make it better, and the community is really helpful.

Keep me updated on this. I'll probably get it once most of the bugs are fixed.

In the meantime I'll just keep dying pathetically in Elden Ring (I was just leisurely riding my horse along the lake shore when a dragon comes up from above and behind with total surprise, and then OHKs me).

 

[Deuce]

After getting curbstomped several times in Stellaris by the max-difficulty end-game crisis setting (25x normal strength), suddenly I flipped it upside down and completely obliterated them. Got lucky with two highly-valuable relic worlds near my homeworld, combined with the Technocracy civic this made for extremely fast early-game research. Rocketed up the tech tree to Synthetic Ascension perks and turning one of the relic worlds into an ecumenoplis "city planet" with enormous industrial capacity. Not even to the mid-game year and I am the undisputed superpower in the galaxy. Every other empire is showing as "inferior" or "pathetic" in fleet power, economy, and technology.

Mid-game I had to put down a Fanatic Purifier empire that wanted to start down the crisis empire path. Those are best taken care of before they get the higher tier bonus of a whopping 50% damage on their ships as well as magicking up a pair of Star Eater super-juggernauts out of thin air. Star Eaters do what their name suggests and it's best not to let them start doing it at all. Suddenly my empire has doubled in size, and it turns out the stability problems created by trying to rule planets filled with genocidal maniacs who hate being conquered by hippie egalitarian xeno scum are largely solved by stuffing their brains into fancy new robot bodies. Can't despise xeno scum when you are the xeno scum!

End-game crisis was the Unbidden, my fleet was absurdly large when they appeared. Unbidden are annoying because they provide way less warning. The good news, they spawn in a single system and it was right next to an L-gate system, so I could fly through a convenient wormhole and dive my entire armada face-first into their vanguard. This turned out to not be an optimal assault, my weapons had a range advantage but this wormhole shoved me into close range. It also turns out ship design strategy needs a change at this difficulty setting. 25x crisis difficulty means they do 25x normal damage. Even though my ships are extremely-heavily shielded and the Unbidden energy weapons have a damage penalty to shields, defense is irrelevant when an already-powerful faction has a 2500% damage boost baked in. Battleships are being vaporized by single hits. I could probably have had a 40% larger fleet if I'd just gone with naked glass cannons. When the Unbidden portal was sealed, I'd suffered casualties around 80%. They spent less than a year in our dimension.

Next games, I'm going to finally settle DebatePolitics' fundamental question: Capitalism or Socialism? Empire 1 will be a Spiritualist Megacorp with large bonuses to trade value, preaching the prosperity gospel of our lord and savior Space Bezos. Empire 2 will be Fanatic Egalitarians to take Shared Burdens, aka Space Socialism. (edit: not actually communism, I suppose, as in Stellaris Shared Burdens is on the Egalitarian scale which is oppositional to Authoritarian)

 

[Deuce]

Update:

Space Amazon was going quite well, friendly neighbor to the south agreeing to trade, a friendly hive mind to the north. Then the hive mind sent science ships through my territory into some unclaimed space. They discovered the worst anomaly in the game: a shielded world with some kind of sentient lizard people caught in a sort of time loop. I swear these days the AI are always the one to find this planet and they always choose to break the shield. It's a trap for new players and I hate its existence. Opening the shield releases the little genocidal bastards as a brand new Fanatic Purifier empire, and they get a bunch of fleets for free to get them started. If that shield gets cracked too early in the game, you have absolutely no hope of challenging their fleets.

High Bezos Jeff wept as his stock value, aka empire population, plummeted to zero.

Too bad, really, as that was a super lucky start with a bunch of great planets close to the homeworld. Very convenient for a trader-based empire. I've adjusted attempt #2 to be a Void Dweller. Grand Bezos Jeff wants to be in space, he's gonna be in space.

 

[PoS]

OK, after dying about a gazillion times, I think I finally figured out how to (somewhat) survive in Elden Ring.

The best thing to do is run away. The game actually put in very powerful mini-bosses at the starting areas. These baddies can OHK you, so its best to run and find a good spot where you can farm the lesser monsters in the map to build up your levels.

I swear this game would have been way better with a difficulty setting. Also, dodging is better than bracing with a shield, so I ditched the shield.

 

[jmotivator]

I purchased the game "Nobel Fates" on a steam sale and have to toying around with it a little while now. A few first impressions:

1) It's the first fairly fully realized 3D Dwarf Fortress game. I guess technically Stonehearth is the true first, but the game was more lilmited, I feel, that Nobel Fates is.

2) The game's beginning is pretty interesting in that you can only start a settlement with 3 members but you will getr numerous randomly generated visitors who your settlers can talk with and try to convince to joing your group. The process is pretty straight forward and the start of the game becomes a series of job interviews when you try to size up in the visitors will fit in with your team.

3) Unlike Stonehearth, Nobel Fates has what appears to be a fairly complex item system that allows for a broad variuation in value and effectiveness of various items. THis should lead to a much more interesting late game compared to Stonehearth.

All that said, I have OCD and have habitually started and restarted my game to test and plan and redo the early game, so I can't really comment on the late game. Also it means I don't have any funny stories about horrible tragedies... yet.

Edit: Oh, one funny bit I have come across in the early game is how hard it is to find compatible folks to join my clan... It seems the biggest dividing line between various people is regarding the eating of human flesh and the wearing of human skin... but probably not like how you think. THese lil' guys get rather particular about whether human flesh is better cooked or raw.

 

[Redress]

Darkest Dungeon was on sale this weekend for like 5 $, so I grabbed it, and holy hell it is pretty cool.

 

[beefheart]

I finally got the newest Microsoft Flight Simulator, I've had every version. I put off buying it until I got a good video card 3070 Ti. I can't run it at the full extreme, but I'm getting good quality and frame rates. And, I found a bunch of good livery skins for the A320 Neo and added a A330 Neo with a ton of liveries. Even got my old airline back, both America West liveries and both of the American throwback AWA liveries.

 

[jmotivator]

I keep forgetting that the PC gaming world is no longer Steam and steam alone... in my constant search for new games I realized that the new Borderlands game, Tiny Tina's WOnderland, is out as an exclusive on Epic (not sure why it surprised me since BL3 was exclusive).

I picked it up and have been playing it. Definitely an interesting divergence from the normal borderland mechanic. The main game plays sort of like the original Fallout series (Or Final Fantasy, for that matter) where you do most of your traveling from point to point on a world map and then get droipped into mini-fights. The fights are so far small fights with 5-10 enemies with a loot chest at the end when you clear them all.

There is also a new character system with stats to fill the Table Top RPG theme, and some new-ish looking weapons and character classes .. though the charcater classes appear to have only one skill tree, so more classes but less variation per class.

Pretty fun, but probably not $60 worth of fun. Maybe I'm just burning out on the Borderlands schtick.