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[JWNoctis]

PC Building Simulator but for enterprise hardware - servers, switches, racks, power, etc.

I can build a PC in real life and have the funds to do so, so PC Building Simulator is basically an optimization exercise with hardware that I don't have to convince the spouse isn't a waste of cash.

I can sort of do similar with ancient enterprise hardware (a decommissioned >10 year old server with dual 8-core Xeons, some additional RAM, and replacement SAS drives are cheap-ish; under $200) but I'd love to mess with newer or more expensive stuff. An Epyc server with multiple terabytes of RAM. A fully loaded blade chassis with 32 cores in total. A JBOD filled with storage that's worth more than my car. Wiring a building with Cat6a. Hell, it could have an ethernet termination minigame if it was super ambitious.

Maybe also something with previous-era PC hardware, when things aren't yet plug-and-play i.e. DIP switches, jumpers, BIOS pages filled with more settings than one could count with merely fingers and toes, and arcane POST beeps when you inevitably did something wrong. Heck, it might even be possible to include an actual emulator of the hardwares depicted, if it went back enough.

Downright unfeasible, but one could dream.

[Reelya]

If you could emulate circuit boards from circa 1980 then you could have a game about creating 8 bit home computers / consoles, but you have to design a working mainboard / peripherals, in detail.

[LordBaal]

arcane POST beeps when you inevitably did something wrong.

Those were the Machine Spirt angrily barking back at one's idiocy.

[Mephisto]

If you could emulate circuit boards from circa 1980 then you could have a game about creating 8 bit home computers / consoles, but you have to design a working mainboard / peripherals, in detail.

I'm now in "suggest me a game" or "games that don't yet deserve a thread" territory. I'd like to take a moment to introduce you to what once was known as The Ultimate Nerd Game but is now called Logic World.

[Kagus]

It's not complete until we can build a machine capable of running a detailed simulation of building a machine capable of running a detailed simulation of building a machine.

[darkhog]

MMO Dwarf Fortress.

[Naturegirl1999]

Anyone think up concepts you REALLY wanted to play, but unfortunately don't exist?
Just to day, I thought of a game like this:
In most games, when you fail a mission, you get a "GAME OVER" screen and must start again. However, in a game like this, if you lost the plot would adapt accordingly. For example, this mission would be "The attack was successful but they're launching a counterattack, survive until reinforcements arrive and keep at least five troops alive". If you failed to defend the troops, the base would be destroyed and you'd have to flee and assemble a makeshift squad and base as a last resort.

I like this idea

A game I would like is an MMO where every player starts as a cell in a new planet with the fist start of life. Multicellularity/symbiosis would be players acting together as part of a larger whole. When multicellular organisms reproduce, cell slots are in a sort of waiting room for new players to join, when all cell slots are filled, the organism is born. If players would rather stay single cellular they could. Upon death, the player who controlled the cell that died would be placed in control of a freshly divided cell somewhere in the game world, whether it is multicellular or single cellular. Each time a cell divides, the player chooses which cell to be, each cell is slightly different due to mutations. When a player chooses a cell they are shown the genetic code of each cell, compared to the parent cell. which they choose from. Traits are unknown...more later

[JoshuaFH]

"Some dude is hacking! He's attached himself to my cell wall, injected his DNA, and now I'm a respawn point for the douchebag?! That guy does not have a life."

[Naturegirl1999]

"Some dude is hacking! He's attached himself to my cell wall, injected his DNA, and now I'm a respawn point for the douchebag?! That guy does not have a life."

yep, viruses are not alive, if viruses are in the game, which they wouldn’t be, they would be N{Cs. All players would be cells. Parasitism could still occur though

[pikachu17]

And griefers are cancer cells?

[Naturegirl1999]

Sure, if they are part of a multicellular organism and divide too often/harm the organism, that would be considered cancer

[JWNoctis]

Sounds more like some autoimmune disease to me - Griefers do not often hurt by mere multiplication when they shouldn't.


--

Sometimes I really wish there were more simulators geared towards the actual operational side of things, or at least went for maximum practical detail within their scope.

Civil flight sims did really well there, the point of maximum practical detail (at least for aircraft systems and flight model) had long been reached by the best developers of the genre, and there are whole slew of addons and stuff for anything from EFB, to flight planner, to virtual airlines, to whole volunteer-crewed air navigation service providers.

Military flight sims did just as well with developers like DCS and long living mods of older titles like F4+BMS, at least when I last checked sometime ago, which also had one of the few true dynamic campaigns in the whole gaming industry still.

Railway/railroad sims, on the other hand…There are plenty of really good-looking driving sims with good physics, really good training-grade signalling sims, and a recent crop of operational-level transport sims that were less forthcoming with details, but few crosses between these three existed. While I give that fully automated routing of trains outside tightly constrained conditions is an unsolved problem in real life, I’d myself take a good mix of any of these anytime…Or just a true-to-life simulator of an old signal box at a countryside station with Jalopy to Firewatch-grade graphics, atmosphere, and nostalgia.

Ground-level military sims had already been there with stuff like ARMA and Steel Beast series, but I knew too little about that genre to say anymore than that.

For space sims, there are…KSP, perhaps a bit simple system-wise but that’s what mods are for, Orbiter for that juicy close-to-real orbital mechanics and CoADE for that -and- something shooty and incredibly detailed but again lacking on the operational side the last time I checked, while for something softer there’s X series which /are/ good operational sims, and stuff like E:D for that connected experience.

…I think I have already defected my own point there, but there should still be more.

[Urist McScoopbeard]

SO I was just reading the Lancer RPG rulebook and it's made me pine for extremely customizable mechs. Drawing's always a great outlet, but I really wish there was a true mech BUILDING game. Combat is great and all (and shouldn't take a backseat by any means), but I'd really like a game where you can spend some time in the shop crafting every last detail of your mech, from energy systems to wiring layouts to leg and armor designs. Ugh.

EDIT: this isn't to say existing mech games are bad--no, quite the opposite, dev teams have done a pretty consistently amazing job of offfering unique gameplay and a variety of their style of mechs to you. But therein lies the rub, it really just THEIR style--it would be nice to see a really open, player-driven rogues gallery of different mechs.

[Iduno]

SO I was just reading the Lancer RPG rulebook and it's made me pine for extremely customizable mechs. Drawing's always a great outlet, but I really wish there was a true mech BUILDING game. Combat is great and all (and shouldn't take a backseat by any means), but I'd really like a game where you can spend some time in the shop crafting every last detail of your mech, from energy systems to wiring layouts to leg and armor designs. Ugh.

EDIT: this isn't to say existing mech games are bad--no, quite the opposite, dev teams have done a pretty consistently amazing job of offfering unique gameplay and a variety of their style of mechs to you. But therein lies the rub, it really just THEIR style--it would be nice to see a really open, player-driven rogues gallery of different mechs.

Agreed. If I want standard models with an interesting history and...combat, BattleTech already exists. I'd like to see mad engineers building/perfecting crazy robots to bring to the fight each week. And/or genetic monstrosities that they control somehow.

[darkhog]

Don't games like Crossout, Robocraft, Autocraft, etc. qualify as those though, since you can build mechs in them?