Calming the shakes

[Father Tim]

The "vehicles are just popcorn" paradigm dates from the earliest days of tabletop BattleTech (CityTech, technically), with the one-inch-hex maps and stand-up cardboard counters.

Back then, vehicles were severely handicapped by being Internal Combustion Engine-only -- meaning that any sort of energy weapon armament was ridiculously inefficent -- and a 2d6 hit location table that meant any damage had a 1-in-6 chance of, at minimum, a mission-kill.  Also an additional 1-in-6 chance of significant movement or firepower impairment.

I expect the computer games have turned down the 'instant kaboom' likelihood a fair bit.

[Spaceman Spiff]

Just discovered MandaloreGaming on YouTube, who does computer game reviews, and he reviewed Aurora 4X a couple years ago--y'all familiar with it? Haven't finished it yet, but already wanted to share it, as it's a pretty funny review, and I thought all of you would enjoy it, too. 

[xenoscepter]

It's a Spiffing Brit!

[Noriad]

Showcase: Beyond Protocol.

If you are looking for a complex strategy game, there used to be a great game called Beyond Protocol.  It was a persistent universe MMORTS which allowed you to build a huge planet and space empire, featuring very complex design.  You could design planetary buildings, units, naval ships, space ships and space stations.  You could customize these extensively: weapons, radar, armour, engine etc.  You could build colonies much like you build bases in Starcraft, with many different buildings.  You could mine 100+ different minerals and use them for designing armour, weapons etc.  But you could also go to space and build space stations and custom-designed combat ships from small fighters to massive battleships.  And move to different planets and even different star systems to build more colonies.  You could have massive PvP battles with hundreds of units attacking each other in space and on planets. 

short videos showing a large battle in space:
https://www. youtube. com/watch?v=gPGyOxKf010
https://www. youtube. com/watch?v=if6kWjoOeSk

It would have been the perfect niche game except the devs royally messed up game balance.  The learning curve for newbies was too steep, and when the game came out, a handful of aggressive veterans from beta destroyed all the newbies, chasing most of them out of the game.  Technically, the game worked great and it looked great.  But it was a commercial failure and after a few years the servers were shut down. 

The source code was put on Sourceforge and one of the players, SirParadox, revived the game under the name After Protocol, making it available for free for whomever wants to play.  It is mostly peaceful nowadays since there are not that many active players.

Download the game client on www. afterprotocol. com
more info and screenshots on https://www. beyondprotocol. org/
Tutorial series: https://www. youtube. com/watch?v=Mjjs1tnbjn8&list=PLm10QcO_qhG1tt5UKj6jon9JrAKGtHTSC&index=2

More game videos:
https://www. youtube. com/watch?v=OGZwfCq1hE4
https://www. youtube. com/watch?v=fp-3NxicLCg

[Tikigod]

35 years into another campaign and forced to bench the whole thing (Again) because apparently something to do with a NPR has created what is essentially a infinite micro-step turn cycle.

Currently sat at 35 5-second increments, each taking around 20-30 seconds to tick over, and no end in sight.... maybe if I left the game ticking it all over for a hour it would eventually break out of the NPR trap, but not sure it's worth it..... the need for C# and the hope many of these commonly recurring campaign halters will be circumvented raises another few levels.

[Father Tim]

Set the increment for 5 seconds, turn on autoturns, and go to bed.  When you come back 8-12 hours later, if the problem has not resolved itself, it's time to check inside the database for fleets stuck on endless loops, two unarmed ships constantly running away from & back towards each other, or ships trying to fire at 0% chane to hit due to ECM, or experience penalties, or jump blindness, or whatever.

[Garfunkel]

Yeah what Father Tim said. If you can, leave your PC running while you're at work or at sleep (or both!). I've never had a game collapse due to the 5-sec hell - I've always got through them eventually. Rather, I've always run into other bugs that wipe out the campaign - but I also stopped having NPRs at game creation to minimize the risk of that.

[Bremen]

If you ask Steve for the designer password you can fix most infinite loops by loading up the NPR under spacemaster and deleting the offender. Just be warned that messing around with the NPRs excessively can cause new game ending problems.

[GodEmperor]

Im legit more hyped for C# Aurora than i had ever been for any game...
Cant frakking wait \m/

[Tikigod]

Im legit more hyped for C# Aurora than i had ever been for any game...
Cant frakking wait \m/

Indeed, for the last few weeks Aurora is pretty much the sole thing I have been playing beside some side excursions with RogueTech.

C# Aurora is probably the most anticipated thing on my radar this year, really hope Steve doesn't run into any major problems that make Steve think the March soft deadline impractical, as given the bugs and issues run into with VB Aurora some of which can bring campaigns to a halt then anythink beside constant game breaking bugs in C# would be perfectly liveable.

[GodEmperor]

Well i dont get hyped for games in general.
I dont know the release dates, i dont care about new things that are about to come out, i just play them after they come out.
I was always like that.

But for C# Aurora im watching the calendar like a frakking hawk.

[Garfunkel]

I'm going to write out the campaign medals for my first C# game, their names and qualifications since those are all published by Steve.

[Froggiest1982]

Im legit more hyped for C# Aurora than i had ever been for any game...
Cant frakking wait \m/

Indeed, for the last few weeks Aurora is pretty much the sole thing I have been playing beside some side excursions with RogueTech.

C# Aurora is probably the most anticipated thing on my radar this year, really hope Steve doesn't run into any major problems that make Steve think the March soft deadline impractical, as given the bugs and issues run into with VB Aurora some of which can bring campaigns to a halt then anythink beside constant game breaking bugs in C# would be perfectly liveable.

Please rest assured that is most likely impossible as all is in testing now are the diplomacy features. So far none of Steve's previous campaigns have been interrupted by major bugs meaning a quite stable release just full of bugs, many of which being exterminated every playthrough. Hopefully, with a community now more rich and active, we should spot many of them easier and faster than he was doing 5 years ago for instance so even the post-development should go faster than previously; therefore provided with time Steve will fix more bugs and probably just focused adding features/balancing to the game.

[DEEPenergy]

This is my #1 hyped unreleased game. I can't wait to play it. It scratches such a specific gaming itch...

[roug]

I am not going to play Aurora non-C# version. 

So i use time on a little fun game called Space Haven thats in alpha stage (supportet it on kickstarter) its Rimworld in space type of game.