The Miscellaneous PC & vidya Games Thread

[grumbler]

More than a decade after I gave up trying to make it work, A Tale of Two Wastelands finally came out with a version that works.  TTW basically combines FO3 and FONV in a stable package that uses FONV as the executable.

Normally, this would be a "so what" given that both games are so old, but I'd always wanted to play the DLC-sized FO3 mod "Mothership Zeta Crew," which supposed that the player take control of the alien ship in Mothership Zeta and use it to try to establish more order on Earth.  Alas, it was too much for the FO3 engine and constantly crashed, so I gave up on it.

With TTW, I can play it.  It's a bit surreal to go back to the DC Wasteland after all this time, but it's a fun nostalgia trip as well.  I will say that Id forgotten how few FO3 NPCs existed that were actually interesting.

[Jacob]

So I got GalCiv 4 and played it a bit.

It's pretty decent, I think. That said I haven't played any space 4X games for a while so I don't know how it compares to the benchmarks.

The leader mechanic is neat, but I feel like it's missing the final 10% to make it awesome. I do like the random element in what techs are available to research at any given time. That makes crawling up the tech tree more enaging.

[Syt]

Thanks, Jake, I'll keep an eye on it.

[Syt]

Also, just saw that GOG has (FINALLY!) added People's General to their catalog. Currently on sale, for EUR 4.29 over here.

https://www.gog.com/game/peoples_general

[Syt]

Oh, also MicroProse's Crusade in Europe ... that's for the folks who like their wargames VERY old school.

https://www.gog.com/en/game/crusade_in_europe

[celedhring]

Also, just saw that GOG has (FINALLY!) added People's General to their catalog. Currently on sale, for EUR 4.29 over here.

https://www.gog.com/game/peoples_general

I played that back then. USA is allied with Russia in the game - it's just wrong 

[Syt]

I know, it got its alt history a bit crossed. The 90s were such an optimistic time in that regard.

[FunkMonk]

I played the shit out of People's General back in the day. Blitzing Volgograd as the PLA was rad.

[Syt]

Continuing my glacial progress in Elden Ring. Inching slowly through the first "proper" dungeon. Took me a while to get from the "entry boss" to the next bonfire grace to rest at. The dungeon then opens up, offering various avenues of progress. Really like the level design of this part; if you looked from the outside it would probably be tiny, but because of its verticality and multiple paths you can take it seems larger.

Some paths are of course more obvious than others. FromSoft sometimes create paths where you think you're going out of bounds/abuse the level geometry towards a dead end or deadly drop, but then you find an item you wouldn't get to any other way and realize that path was put there for you to find.

Exploring the place leads to a lot of "Oh no" or "NOPE" moments with the denizens of the neighborhood, though. And I kinda regret my choice of weapon that I invested my scarce upgrades in. "I'll play a dodging, fast attack character this time!" *ends up hiding behind a shield a lot*

[Darth Wagtaros]

Oh, also MicroProse's Crusade in Europe ... that's for the folks who like their wargames VERY old school.

https://www.gog.com/en/game/crusade_in_europe

Played that on my Atari computer.  Loved it.  I may have to buy it.

[Syt]

Prompted by People's General's release on GOG, I checked the Matrix forums if someone's been whipping up a Ukraine scenario for TOAW4. There's one in the works (incomplete), but I had a look at what's currently out there. Most old repositories that covered the series up to TOAW3 seem gone, but there's still stuff out there. And most TOAW3 scenarios should work fine if you load them up in the editor and save them.

But it also made me realize my frustration with the scenario making scene. TOAW is an engine that's designed for covering (theoretically) conflict from around WW1 till the modern day. Maps can be from 2.5km per hex to 50km per hex. Likewise, units can run from battalions and companies to divisions. Turns can be from 6 hours to 2 weeks (IIRC - definitely 1 week per turn). Because of the wide range of the engine, I think scenarios work best if they're either high level, with a lot of abstraction, or smaller, more limited scenarios. (Of course, abstraction is made harder by the game setting up units with actual number of tanks, infantry squads, etc. from a huge list of equipment spanning 100+ years.)

Anyways, what do most designers aim towards? Sprawling maps covering most of Europe, with hundreds of units per side rivaling War in the East for sheer stuff on the maps. And of course it's done in 1 day turns max, often half day or 6 hours (saw one with 25km hexes doing 6 hour turns ...). At that point, I might as well fire up the NATO vs WP John Tiller full campaign that stretches from Denmark to Austria in 1 km hexes. Only in those games I can choose to play much smaller scenarios, too.

I wished there was a Strategic Command style game for modern conflict, either NATO/WP, or otherwise modern conflicts.

Modern tactical games are more easily available, besides John Tiller.

The excellent Armored Brigade covers 60s-90s, and the DLCs add a nice amount of equipment. I especially like that the game uses real life maps, and you can just select a chunk on which to play your battles. Wish more games would do something like this. There's a decent amount of mods, adding maps, equipment, and scenarios. The biggest transposes the game into WW2 with pretty good results (available on Steam Workshop).

winSPMBT is the current version of old Steel Panthers II (man, did I play the original game A LOT), it's available free, though has some limitations over the licensed version, and it still gets (annual?) updates over at Shrapnel Games. Unlike All American: The 82nd Airborne in Normandy, which is still up for pre-order ... since 2000 or so? Besides winSPMBT and winSPWW2, the site seems pretty dead.

There's Flashpoint Campaigns, of course. The Wargame series and its spiritual cousins (though I don't care for their fast paced RTS antics). The Combat Missions (Black Sea, Cold War) - though there needs to be either a significant price drop, or they need to move to a new engine. For air/naval combat, there's Command: Modern Operations. Graviteam Tactics' Mius Front has a few scenarios about the 80s Bush War in Southern Africa and recently released a Iran/Iraq DLC.

There's a smattering of general Cold War political games (Twilight Struggle, Precipice, Ostalgie, Jey's Empire, ...). Even nuclear war games - DEFCON, First Strike, ICBM.

But strategic or operational level "what if" wargames? Few and far between.

[Tamas]

In general I agree with your comment on TOAW scenario designers. Monster scenarios have their place but I wish more people made use of what the engine excels at, instead of (often cleverly) pushing it to and over its edge.

But, there are a few manageable WW3 scenarios in there. I am not sure, I don't think we included the TWW (based on the Third World War boardgame series) scenarios in TOAW4 but if not I have grabbed them from the TOAW4 forum. The various scenarios work well under TOAW4 and while definitely not small, they are manageable. My only issue is I find the Warsaw Pact forces way too strong. Although that is offset by events which can see those countries exit the war.

[Syt]

Yeah, I have those. I was more looking for "WW3 in an evening" kind of stuff, but I think outside Conflict: Europe that doesn't exist. For some reason TOAW4's performance is also not great. Not to mention having to edit the INI file to make it reasonably playable on a 4k monitor (or switching resolution to 1080p for the game ).

Not TOAW4 (because it runs in a standard window), but Slitherine games often struggle handling my 4k setup with 150% scaling. They like to start the game in desktop resolution, and THEN scale it up 150%, meaning they stretch the game out of the screen. Had it with Armored Brigade and Field of Glory II, and I'm sure others will behave similar. Running in a window or switching to lower resolution solves it, but it's mighty inconvenient.

[Berkut]

TOAW IV sucks though. The engine is shit. They fucked it up so badly, that you might as well play skip-bo to resolve battles, the combat resolution engine is so far divorced from any connection to actual concerns commanders might have....

<grumble grumble rant rant>

[Tamas]