Bay 12 Games Forum

Aye, that was my impression as well. It really feels like a return to the olden ways, which were not particularly enjoyable - but with even less variables in play so it's nothing but sprawl = floor((size * sprawlFactor), 1) - unityMitigation, where unityMitigation < (size * sprawlFactor). The dev diary complained that the admin cap was a flat, uninteresting, narrowly-defined mechanic that didn't interact with other systems, but if my impression is correct this'll be even flatter and will only interact with Unity, though not in any interesting way...

Anyone have strong opinions for/against the Irish-produced space 4x Predestination? Got it in the current (for another day, anyway) itch.io charity bundle, and went through the tutorial - it looks like a last-gen (or possibly gen-before-last-gen) space 4x, but some of its ideas seem interesting, and I was wondering if anyone else had substantial opinions before I sink time into it...

[Edit: went ahead and answered my own question. It's ambitious, but derivative and abbreviated, and they didn't put enough work into the UI. It would have felt clunky if it had been released contemporaneously with MOOII - now it feels gritty and shabby.]

FWIW, I don't think the bundle size is changing at this point. I've had the page open in a periodically-reloaded tab for the last 2+ days dithering [I'm gonna get it, b/c I'm a wretched packrat AND this is a cause I believe in, but I'll dither for at least another day], and the count has held steady. It's 1019, and it was at least 1010 when I first opened it, even if I can't remember for sure if it was lower or 1019 then.

I'm suspicious what happened - at least in my case - was that I figured out the research paths I wanted, and didn't really blindly research, and there's a lot more "affects mission progression" labels than there used to be. I'm pretty sure a lot of things I've put off researching b/c of that didn't used to be labeled...

Yep, it's brainers for normal research "interrogation", and runts for capital-I Interrogation of VIPs.

My current game is about 2y in, and I'm mostly using high-end firearms.  I'm interrogating everything I can, though, and advancing much more slowly on theoretical sciences, which has slowed game progression a whole lot. Just saw my first Mercenaries, so that's probably going to have to change quickly, though - fortunately I can buy basic energy weapons. Armor is gonna be the real problem - right now I have nothing that can stand up to gauss or suchlike even a little. But it really feels like slow-walking is much more feasible than it used to be - though note well that I'm playing on John Silver since losing is less fun when you're playing a very-protracted and fairly repetitive game with an excess of RNG.

I think I'd point to The Cyberiad if I was citing a more broadly-appealing Lem work even if Solaris is his best-known work.

Although I'd also point out that from an anglophonic point of view Lem was exceptional in a way that most Polish authors won't be, in that anglophones benefited greatly from Michael Kandel's wonderful work translating Lem. Prose translation is, alas, an art, not a science, and w/o either dual fluency or a partner of Kandel's caliber, we could well be seeing masterful Polish storytelling reduced to edgelord nonsense by poor translation. Probably not, though - there's a lot of bad storytelling throughout all gaming.

Hyperlight Drifter and Rain World.

Don't get Hyperlight Drifter because it's in the bundle (Humble Heal: Covid-19 bundle) I cracked and bought a handful of comments back, and you can either go get that plus 30-ish other things for the same price HLD normally goes for if you pounce before it expires (5h left), or I can just give you my key since I already had HLD.

Dead Humble bundle that I was safe from was the Lego one (I've probably been safe for weeks). Live one that definitely did not - ha, how could it, the very idea is absurd! - ensnare me with its honeysuckle whispers and looming expiration clock was the Heal: Covid-19 bundle.