Bay 12 Games Forum

It's fairly rare to have an unskewed gender balance on the doing pretty things front, unfortunately. Considering the clannad folks did standard VN porn beforehand, it leaning female is... unsurprising. They know their market, heh.

If you're looking for a more equitable balance on the pretty people, you might try something like shokugeki no soma, if you haven't already. It's refreshingly (if maybe not entirely) even in that area of design.

4 AM, huh. Been a while. Time to go to sleep.

After all. The SS Bad Touch was designed and tested. Worked perfectly. One shot an entire enemy fleet... from the neighboring solar system. That's the good stuff.

... star ruler 2. Built a station that lobs torpedoes interstellar distances, because why the hell not. As a side effect of getting it that far out and even remotely economical, the torpedoes are also fuckhuge and apparently comfortably capable of exploding size 500(ish) remnant flagships and their entire escort fleet with one hit. The station's only about double that size, which in general in SR2 is "win" but not "with one projectile". It's a good sensation. Might even manage to do something about my goddamn pirate problem, next time I load it up.

Speaking of mass summon spells, how do you guys make use of ivy men spam and corpse construct spam? It doesn't really ever seem to be worth it other than to create a massive choke point in fortresses. Is it really worth the item building to make these summons more efficient?

Corpse constructs, definitely, the things are honestly kinda' amazing. They're superlative and rather impressively gem efficient HP sponges if you stick a couple of the boosters on whoever's summoning 'em, if you have need for something that's basically just a bundle of health and sod else (and you'll almost certainly have plenty of situations where you will, so having a supply sitting around is nice if you can field 'em _{and if you have things that can summon them you have things that can lead them, probably}).

Depends a lot of what casters you have, though... folks like the bat doods, who have fairly easy access to A1D1 casters you probably don't have much better to do with makes a solid target. If you've got the items (and a storm spool and the zappy stick are pretty cheap), it's a pretty decent use of their time, and if left alone long enough or enough casters are invested it can give you something that can really jam up an enemy army or five while your actually combat effective stuff gets work done.

Ivy men... well. Let's comparison shop! _{and vastly bloat the size of this post in the process :V} They're less efficient HP/blocking wise -- they start with 3, but their boosters only total up to +4 with the artifact (and that only if the caster has two heads. Realistically it'll cap at +3, with the artifact), and one of those is the staff, which costs 40 nature gems. Meanwhile the constructs start at 1, but get +5 between the two easy items, another +2 from their expensive booster (staff of storms, still 10 gems less than the treelord stick, and +2 over the lightning rod) and +10 from the tome. So the likely base investment would be 4 (just the +1 crown, for 68 hp and 4 size 2 bodies per gem, 1 1/3rd squares blocked) vs 6 (150 HP, 6 size 3 bodies per gem, three squares blocked) per cast, with a kit cost of 5N vs 5E5A -- though it's obvious enough which of those two you're more likely to have the magic access for, heh.

Max output is incredibly telling, though, ha. Vinemen will realistically (very little has two heads, and none of them are worth using to make vinemen -- vine ogres, maybe, but not men. Conceptually you could be using a unit that has built in ivy lord but again if you've got them they probably have a hell of a lot better things to do than summon vinemen... even animists) top out at 6 per batch (102 total hp, 6 size 2 bodies, 2 squares), while the constructs top out at 18 (450 total hp, 18 size 3 bodies, 9 squares), with N50 (max path N6) vs 45A10D (max paths A5D2; and that only loses on 2 constructs (50 HP, 1 square) if you want to swap 30 of that A for 5E and bring the max paths down to A2D2E1). If what you're after is a lump of HP to get in the way, corpse constructs are ridiculously more efficient gem wise, even with just the base boosted loadout. Providing you have access.

Stat wise, the vine men have a bit of protection and 2 attacks (which with the size two makes them theoretically more effective at actually damaging larger targets, but functionally they're not going to be hitting much anyway so *shrugs*), and a bit of attack type resistance, but they lose out on basically everything else, save being not undead (which can indeed be an issue, as the constructs' MR is shite. Vinemen's only one better but they don't have banish to deal with, either)... though they are magic beings, which means it's probably even harder to get commanders for 'em.

... tl;dr: If you're comparing the two the vine men are a lot easier to get to*, but broadly speaking the corpse constructs are a hell of a lot more effective at what you're going to be using them for, more or less always and on every front. Or, saying it another way, you've probably got vine men but spending the gems on them is pretty iffy (among other considerations, you've probably got a lot of better things to be spending the N gems on), whereas you probably don't have constructs but if you do there's not terribly many better uses out there for one air gem and some rando A1D1 caster with a couple trinkets on it.

So yeah. Constructs are worth investing in boosters in, imo, and I definitely try to have a handful of spool/rod summoners set on monthly if I've got access. Vine men... not so much. They're still decent chaff, but unlike the constructs they're not really amazing chaff. Though you're a lot more likely to incidentally end up with their boosters and/or N1 casters, so if you don't actually have to go out of your way for it, it probably won't exactly hurt. Much.

*Just N, only N1 if you want to pump out 4 at a time, vs A1D1E1 if you want 6 constructs a go -- though you're still more gem efficient on HP and roughly on par with obstruction with just 3 constructs via spool and no E access.

_{and now I have wall of text'd over corpse constructs. folks, i may like corpse constructs i never really get to use them but bloody hell they're just great}

At some point, I seem to have become a 'dog person'. You know, one of those people that randomly has dog treats in their pockets and stuff.

That... I'm not entirely sure what that is (some kind of canine equivalent of a crazy cat lady? They definitely exist but I'm not aware of a specific word for the worse examples), but none of the folks that are called dog people that I've met randomly had dog treats in their pocket. Neither do cat people carry... catnip or somethin', I guess. That's actually just kinda' weird :V

Think the closest I've seen to it was from folks who actually had a job working with the animal in question. Vets, trainers, etc.

So steam is currently having a sale on... a lot of shoot 'em ups. Probably not getting anything, m'self, but there's a damn sight few decent things that've dropped to near or below 5 USD.

For me, most of my problem with arcanum was just general implementation. Combat, moving around, general layouts of the place... not so much the balance, but basically all the stuff involving the actual gameplay and design. Even a lot of the dialogue trees and whatnot were just not really engaging to follow, for all that, yeah, a lot of the world building and such was pretty nice. It wasn't exactly bad, especially when it came out, it just didn't feel all that good to play, t'me. Have tried probably five or six times (every year or three since it was released, more or less) to get in and give it a go, and I usually give out before I get very far out of the second town/first city, if that.

... though I honestly have a similar problem with Planescape (except even worse, because I usually can't even manage to make it two quests out of the starting tower-thing before finding playing to be miserable and going off to do something else), so maybe I'm just fairly picky about stuff for that style of game

Any case, I wouldn't really warn people off of it, just to not go in expecting too much, particularly on the non-aesthetic/writing parts (and to a fair degree, not those, either -- like said, probably one of the better implementations of steampunk on that front, but that's not saying too terribly much). Definitely only get it cheap (or very cheap >_>), if you're going to.

Well, it's delicious and smells amazing, is easy to cook, and can be minced/crumbled up and put in all sorts of other things to make them taste better. Also you can put things on it. Like syrup, or honey. That's pretty much the bucket list. If you're one of those poor souls whose taste buds cannot properly comprehend the glory that is bacon, you have my condolences. Yours is a unfortunate and lightless existence.

... so it's a fairly standard MUD? 'Cause that's what I'm getting out of that advertising blurb, heh.