Bay 12 Games Forum

Based on their ASCII tile, and the fact that Dwarfs use crossbows, I always expected them to be crossbow slits.  Which is like an arrow slit, but shaped like a cross to accommodate the weapon.

One of the interesting things about them, is that they have always been open at the top.  That is, if there is 7/7 water or magma flowing through the fortification, swimmers or magma creatures will be able to swim over and past.

So I guess it stands to reason that dwarfs can jump through?

Three questions on these guard tower designs:

1 - how bad is the reduction of visibility created by the overhang?  I expect this means archers can't target nearby enemies, because they would be occluded?  Maybe the overhang should be a few levels below the fireing platform, to reduce it's impact?

2 - can archers fire through floor grates?  If so, it might be nice to let them stand on an overhanging platform and just fire through the floor

3 - I'm pretty sure archers can fire through double fortifications.  Would having that be enough to prevent pathing by jumping? 

I think the main quest is has gotten longer (I have not been to the end of it since pre-steam) and there are lots of additional areas now, some of which have side quests.  Patch notes have more details, I think.

No actual "win" condition, and so far as I know the main quest is still not complete even though it is longer.  It may never be?  Might just be one of those things that grows as long as development continues.

Without cheating, I my furthest game was with a True Man Praetorian.  The ability to take blows and penetrate armor was hugely valuable into the mid game.

For game-time spent, True Men tend to start stronger and level up faster due to their increased power.

If you have more patience to grind stats and level up, I think those advantages would evaporate.  True Men don't have higher stat caps, just higher starting stats.  Mutants can have everything True Men can, plus they can have mutations.  Long term, it is a Mutant's game.

The "rebuke robots" thing is pretty neat when it works, though I was never able to make extensive use of it.

It's funny.  I liked the story, music, and art in both.

The game play in Transistor was far more nuanced and had lots more tactical choices and combinations that would have justified further playthroughs.

But I never played it a second time.  I started a newgame+, and stopped fairly shortly after the intro.

Bastion though, I probably played the whole thing about 2.5 times trying different combinations of weapons, none of which were really anything more complicated than "click on the monster to make loot pop out".  Never did finish the alphabet book, though.

So yeah, I feel like by all quantifiable measures, Transistor was the better game and I'm glad I played it once and I totally loved it.

But qualitatively, Bastion was just more fun and more replayable somehow.

Any games in which you are a trader travelling around, buying resources on the cheap and selling them expensive-like on other places?

I've already tried Elite, Freelancer, Oolite and Mount & Blade (including Warband and many, many mods)

some EV-likes for you:

Endless Sky does a great job of this.  Open Source, and free.

Naev has a little bit of this, there is an economic mod written for an older version that you can get to play a little more with independent-trade rather than mission-based-trade.

Starsector does a not-so-great job, but it is working on expanding its "industry" features so it should be on your watch-list if you like that sort of thing.

Unending Galaxy (not really EV-Like) has trade and empire building.  Most similar to the X series by Egosoft, except 2D and top-down and more.  You can be a merchant, or be a captain of industry, or be a pirate, or be an emperor.  Probably the best of them all feature-wise, but also the clunkiest interface.

Even the fanboi argument of "oh, Bactrians aren't the best at everything, they're just the most flexible" is laughable, because they're basically "jack of all trades, and master of most"...

This is exactly my grievance.  The real shame is that it seems as if lots of effort went into balancing outfits.  For example, Wanderer outfits are a nice balance of features (heat, power, weight) but you can get better pure performance out of dedicated outfits.

Even outfits are not perfect, the new Hai thrusters seem a little underwhelming and mostly seem to fit a niche in that they occupy odd-mass-numbers in between the superior Deep thrusters.  Hai powerplants are efficient, but generally worse than others, or so they seem at my casual analysis.

The new Kor stuff appears to be generally "better" than most things, in terms of dedicated power output, cooling, and those awesome "core" devices.  But there are cases where I'd rather have Wanderer outfits, or Hai.  So that is balanced, right?  There are various reasons to prefer one over another in different circumstances.  That is sort of what game balance MEANS.

But the Bac... you cant even begin to make arguments for other ships as you can with the outfits above.  It is just better.  If it is going to be the jack-of-all-trades, then fucking MAKE SURE that there is a better troop ship (there isnt).  MAKE SURE there is a better cargo carrier (there isnt for flagship boarding/raiding, but there is for crew-to-cargo ratio).  MAKE SURE another heavy hull out-guns it (only carrier/cruiser have more weapon capacity).  And do it with human tech, which should be vaguely balanced against its self.

If some alien ship -- or even the Kestrel -- was quantifiable the best, I wouldn't have such a problem with it.  But the Bac is a common hull that anyone can buy and is just plain better.  And there is no desire to fix it.

I saw the developer state that it was balanced in terms of price, that a legion of smaller ships was better economically.  I feel like that is kind of bullshit; by the time you are buying fleets that size, price is less of an issue than managing your ship inventory.  I don't want more than 10-20 ships in a fleet, the notion that 100 light warships should replace 10 heavy ones for the same cost is just silly.

Nice, thanks!