What other games are we all playing?

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The Rogue Trader has somehow botched the romance with Lady Cassia - I know I should have stuck to girl trader and romance Heinrix. This seems like the last chapter. Rumour has it there are back to back boss fights ahead. So far I didn't have too many troubles on my "Don't hurt me daddy" settings. Rarely I get some issues with the initial placing.
Cassia has somehow picked up a talent that gives her extra turns when she gives extra turn, it's a bit of a turn inflation but can end fights in one round basically. If position is good can even end a boss in one round. Argenta has figured out how to scale exponentially and just needs 2 or so turns to rack up stacks. Melee characters are basically just blockers and CC. I use thunderhammers to send people flying. Archmilitant Heinrix doesn't scale as good as Argenta. Pascal is decent now too. Then we have 4 times the size Space Marine Ulfar with just the same HP as everyone else but can't get cover. Idira can deal real damage as Psyker, main character is one of the CC guys, dark elf is potent melee killer and high elf Yrliet is decent sniper.
I lost track of the gear progression after ch 3 took it all away. I mostly sort by date of acquisition and hope the more recent stuff might be better.

 

[Hank]

GHPC is starting to really get fun. There are some features I'd like to see in the game but from the pov of the gunner, its good imho. Continued development is planned.
I still play some SB2 and X4. When I play X4 and wander around on the bridge and in stations, I'm reminded how some other great games could be better if they just add some limited immersion features. X4 is visually amazing.
As far as fun, right now its GHPC. ... thought I'd leave this here for educational purposes

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4c1aKfiBa_o

... don't worry, I won't start posting old B&W WWII videos but this one caught my attention because I heard of the battle but never found much detail. The very end of the vid highlights the Firefly; one of my favorite.
Have a nice day

Edit: edit instead of bump
I did something I thought I wouldn't but I reinstalled ED. I still have my fleet. I'm in the Pleiades and want to go to Running Man. ... and I want to land on Mitterrand Hollow again but its the other way hehe.
GL HF

 

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All my saves went invalid in Hearts of Iron IV, so I became curious. Started a Turkey playthrough, then started Raj and ended up with Finland. Worlds were quite diverse and took different paths each time. Other than what I remembered, they used to go on rails.
Finland playthrough took the cake though: While I was busy frantically preparing for the winter war, the 2md soviet revolution hit. Then it spawned Karelia next to me. Then Ukraina declared war on USSR. The provisional russian govt seemed to spawn lots of breakaway states. Then, when Poland declared war on Eesti I thought I should maybe choose the Scandinavian alliance path for Suomi. I noticed that Lithuania was odd, why was the Japanese Shogunate holding this land? And how did the Shogunate get the whole of Russia as colony???!!!

The Northern alliance was founded. I parked 4 divisions in Denmark, ordered the Jägers to Oslo to defend. Then Germany declared war. The Jütland line couldn't be held, need to build divisions with AA in future - should be good for hard attack, too. I pulled back to Odense but some battle sound in my right ear alerted me of shenanigans. The Japanese had joined Axis and attacked the Mannerheim line. I collected reinforcements and decided to pull my expeditionary forces off Denmark and Norway when Russia invaded Petsamo. Karelia is a godsend - my limited number of divisions could barely hold a whole front, I have developed quite a lot of tech that got Finlands manpower to around 200K, though. Staffed with field hospitals they should be doing OK, but attrition is an issue. Lappland is low infrastructure and I left it like that as natural barrier for invaders.

Definitely one of the more interesting playthroughs.

 

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I've played now through the most of the open USA missions in Gates of Hell and explored most of the roster. I finished with a mission in Cologne that featured a Panther and a Pershing with the cathedral looming overhead and the rest was walls of ruins that stood erect like broken teeth. They captured the mood of a fight in a bombed city pretty well. Nice touch with the Panther-Pershing detail. My Pershing too serious crew casualties and had to retire and replenish. A flanking manouver was successful and the powerful gun made short work of the remaining resistance.

The whole DLC mixes the gameplay up - mostly with the limited LoS maps in bocage environment. I made several use cases of successful bazooka employment where I would have failed in previous times. American roster is quite good, heavy mech focus, powerful MG on every car. M3 howitzer was my biggest surprise, fav artillery. Fav "tank" some Sherman chassied open turreted gun carrier with 90 mm gun. Most Sherman tanks are just fodder for the cats. The open top is nicely agile despite its heavy gun, good traverse , decent hull and turret protection. Top attacks are deadly, so keep granadiers away.
Fav infantry arm is gotta be M1 Garand. You don't really need anything else. I can see why they made this standard rifle.
Best AA: quad cal 50. Bad range but it doesn't matter - everything in reach dies.
There is a mine crealing tank I havent used and the flame variants. Artillery has often the option to fire WP, so I use the stand off flame throwing instead.

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

One of the missions in Gates of Hell was a skirmish, kind of endless mission that doesn't end unless you take the objectives, though I believe there is some kind of wave budget involved. It's themed on Hürtgen forest and features large concrete tank barriers with few openings to create choke points. Here you have to employ Line of sight and some tactics to capture ponts that unlock new assets to use. The US tank roster in this mission isn't the most powerful - in the end I fielded the 76 Shermans in preference to the Jumbos. The 75 just can't pen frontally well enough and any prolonged exchange ends in the 75 getting decrewed. The final assault was conducted in combined arms and a pincer to get a PzIV SPATG from the side.
Several exchanges of the central elevation took place and this felt like a natural battle without too much spamming. Probably the best skirmish map of the DLC.

 

[Hank]

I'll try to only post my new ED experiences here since I haven't played it for over 3 years considering this is "other games" threads on an ED Forum.
I have everything I had back then so I have a great start on re-learning ED. I need to relearn a few things to be more effective at making dinero.

I don't have Odyssey even though the load screen says that word big and bold. I'm not sure I want to spend the money on Odyssey when there are other space games with RPG/FPS elements.
Does Odyssey address this problem ? :

(no butts in seats)

The ED galaxy map and interface is the best. I wish other games would mimic our galaxy and provide intuitive tools to navigate.
I like knowing I have others with me on such a big ship.
Have a nice day

 

[Kaocraft]

I'll try to only post my new ED experiences here since I haven't played it for over 3 years considering this is "other games" threads on an ED Forum.
I have everything I had back then so I have a great start on re-learning ED. I need to relearn a few things to be more effective at making dinero.

I don't have Odyssey even though the load screen says that word big and bold. I'm not sure I want to spend the money on Odyssey when there are other space games with RPG/FPS elements.
Does Odyssey address this problem ? :
View attachment 381364
(no butts in seats)

The ED galaxy map and interface is the best. I wish other games would mimic our galaxy and provide intuitive tools to navigate.
I like knowing I have others with me on such a big ship.
Have a nice day

Odyssey goes on sale for $10-15 from time to time and at that price I think you absolutely should get it. Depending on your personal play style you may find that it adds a lot more than $15 of value to the game, because the on-foot stuff can be very involving if you want to really dig into it. Even if most of it is not your cup of tea; it rounds out the overall experience of “guy with spaceship” in small ways which alters the relationship you have to your ship, your SRV, to stations, to planets, to the BGS in such a way that it indirectly makes owning and flying a spaceship more fun. It’s a strange thing to say but a lot of the satisfaction I get from odyssey is in all the activities I can choose not to do at any given moment.

 

[SteveWW57]

Hearts of Iron 3. Russian campaign. May 43 and the Germans have been held at the river lines. Most of the front is static, with the majority of the fighting in Ukraine where the T34s can roam. It is a grind.

Steve

 

[PiLhEaD]

Somewhat belatedly, I've (re)started playing Skyrim (Special Edition), and I'm enjoying it, even if it seems almost willfully overwhelming.

I'm not sure that I'll stay the course, but it's proving to be entertaining enough for now. I've not applied any graphics mods yet - there's loads of them around - as the graphics seem 'good enough' for me at the moment.

The voice acting is pretty solid and some parts funny. It'll be interesting to see how this one holds my attention compared to Starfield - which I do dip back into now and again, but after 150 hours had had enough of it - and my value for money.

 

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More on that Hearts of Iron 4 front. I got me the latest DLC and gave Sweden a shot. What a knitshow. Norge went civil war. And I don't even know why the commy Norge declared war on me when Germany declared. You know the border between Sweden and Norway? And maybe how little manpower there is in Scandinavia?
Yeah, no way to defend that. Maybe give up the middle and defend north (mines) and south?

Then Japan, but I went a path I had already explored before. I wasn't too keen on civil wars.

Then US. Democratic path seemed boring, so I started communist attempt. It ended in civil war, too. I thought I might end up in a "sanctioned" social democrat state with the potential to overthrow empires. Ah well.

Germany it is again. Playing as a "nice" fascist. Anschluss of course. But left the other countries intact. Poland has become a communist peasant republic (a common course, these peasants seem to stomp "sanational" Poland (whatever sanational means).
Czech republic has stayed democratic so far and allied into little entente with yugoslavia which I turned to the brown side, sorry. I had option to annex, but chose to puppet them and they resisted. It takes guts to say no to my 150 divisions, I respect that.
Romania and Hungary were eager to join my defensive alliance. I would invite more, but any other member just increases the chance of ultimate shenanigans.
Italy is NAPed. The King Edward Brits are unaligned and offered me to backstab Italy. I declined, I need my pasta fresh.

Japan is rampaging in Asia, I don't care. I supported the Spanish nationalists and won the war by moving my 3 divisions pixel by pixel.

Finland is unaligned(?) and got the Winter War. The Finns don't like me but accepted 6 of my trained mountaneers and a fighter squadron. I counterattacked immediately and drove them to Leningrad but got stalled by brutal Russian bombing campaigns. I withdrew to Viipuri, ordered the fighter squad to intercept, split my force in half, ordered prduction of AA guns and reequipped them with Flak battallion. I marched one group to south the other to a fort in east. I am confident to hold that line until the Reds turn white from all the bleeding out. The flak eats the early soviet tanks for brekkie.
The north seems to have solidified around Oulu for now. If that collapses Finland is lost - I just hope I tie more force than they send north, the supply up there is atrocious. That is my only hope. Well, Finlands only hope.

What happens next in the big game I don't know. I've built a decent power base and industry. The strategic bommers still have to roll out the factories, but it wouldn't be Germany if I didn't let Wernher play with rocket toys. Just where to point them at is in the stars. Stalin wasn't mad despite I sent the volunteers to Finland. Russia already lost 200K manpower and is down to 400K (I peaked in save) - they would need to change their recruiting. Their stability doesn't look good though. One push to Moscow and they're done, I guess.

 

[amigacooke]

. One push to Moscow and they're done, I guess.

That’s been said before

 

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That’s been said before

Ah, Napoleon. A brilliant mind.

 

[Garix]

Been listening to the "Dan Allen Gaming Podcast" over the last couple of days. Specifically the ones with the Baldurs Gate 3 Voice Actors. Doing so has managed to get me replaying it, and weirdly I think I'm actually starting to enjoy it more than I ever did.

Also the narrator, Amelia Tyler, is mad as a box of frogs and seriously awesome.

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

Been listening to the "Dan Allen Gaming Podcast" over the last couple of days. Specifically the ones with the Baldurs Gate 3 Voice Actors. Doing so has managed to get me replaying it, and weirdly I think I'm actually starting to enjoy it more than I ever did.

Also the narrator, Amelia Tyler, is mad as a box of frogs and seriously awesome.

I fell in love with the voice actor of Femshep. Jennifer Hale gave me so unique moments with Mass Effect and The Long Dark. These roles were so believable. A voice actor can have major influence on a game.

 

[Mole HD]

I fell in love with the voice actor of Femshep. Jennifer Hale gave me so unique moments with Mass Effect and The Long Dark. These roles were so believable. A voice actor can have major influence on a game.

Trisha Helfer as Edi in ME3 did it for me

But for performance acting, Troy Bayliss and Ashley Johnson...in fact the entire cast of The Last of Us (1&2) were so far above par it's ridiculous

 

[Garix]

Trisha Helfer as Edi in ME3 did it for me

But for performance acting, Troy Baliss and Ashley Johnson...in fact the entire cast of The Last of Us (1&2) were so far above par it's ridiculous

the words "as Edi in ME3" are completely unnecessary IMO

 

[Hank]

Troy Bayliss ? I was watching him a couple nights ago kickin' in WSB on his Ducati. (those single sided swingarms are cool) circa 2000-08/9 were the good years.
If I got the wrong Troy, so sorry. I was looking for some Ben Spies races but his only year in WSB was 2009 so I settled on some Bayliss/Corser/others hotly contested races. Sorry I digressed. woohoo

On another note EDH: Now that I got Mitterrand Hollow done, I'll move out to Pleiades then on to Running Man and Flame Nebula iirc. I nailed the landing on MH first try but I cheated and used my Sidewinder; watched New Africa rise and fall over and over. Very fun.
Been doing at least one battle a night with GHPC
GL HF

 

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Good news: Finland is saved. A white peace has been reached. It is btw a democratic country.

My Pascist (pacifist fascist) playthrough continues. Sweden had decided to form Northern Defense council, joined Comintern (what the...?) and declared war on Finland. Due to the supply in the North they didn't even take Kemi, instead Sweden has garrisoned its Eastern coast.
Soviet Union finally decided to declare war on Germany after gobbling up eastern Poland. I did not agree to that. The Nordic countries followed shortly.

The Panzerdivisionen have been sent to the Danish border. Königsberg was in a precarious situation since I had garrisoned only sparsely. Situation has eased with the arrival of the heroic mountaineer divisions, the savious of Finland.

Instead of pushing Denmark I decided to push north from Hungary through Eastern Poland. The Soviet Western lands are a big exclave. Half the way is done, being lazy I gave an automated order and failed to close good pockets.

On the Northern front I decided for a naval eradication campaign. I have the high ground with radar stations but we're far outmatched in fighters. The battle of Jylland will be a bloody air campaign. Strategic bombing has commenced in Sweden to underline that taking war to your neighbours is an invitation to domestic destruction. The Swedish submarine fleet was quite decimated - a solid cover of 400 bombers in naval missions keeps the Baltic Sea safe. Sweden also lost numerous light ships with their havies seriously damaged. Ost- and Hochseeflotte cooperated to secure the sea successfully.

Socialist France formed anti-fascist block with Belgium and Switzerland. Understandable, it is surrounded. But futile - you cannot deter nations insisting to have peace.

 

[amigacooke]

As one of my other KickStarters came to fruition yesterday, I've started a game on the release version of Universim.

Originally slated as a 'God' game, it feels like a city, civilisation simulator with some powers available to directly affect the gameplay. Astonishingly, it's been optimised well enough that I can still play it on my late 2013 iMac.

The game appears to run on rails, there is a research tree that directs the game towards the future through a set number of ages. I'm not convinced that there are various viable options, but as I play it as a software toy rather than a game, that's not a big problem (to me).

Only waiting for one remaining KS video game now, Little Devil Inside. Hmmm .........

 

[Mole HD]

Troy Bayliss ? I was watching him a couple nights ago kickin' in WSB on his Ducati. (those single sided swingarms are cool) circa 2000-08/9 were the good years.
If I got the wrong Troy, so sorry. I was looking for some Ben Spies races but his only year in WSB was 2009 so I settled on some Bayliss/Corser/others hotly contested races. Sorry I digressed. woohoo

On another note EDH: Now that I got Mitterrand Hollow done, I'll move out to Pleiades then on to Running Man and Flame Nebula iirc. I nailed the landing on MH first try but I cheated and used my Sidewinder; watched New Africa rise and fall over and over. Very fun.
Been doing at least one battle a night with GHPC
GL HF

I've got that Troy Bayliss's autograph from when he guested in the British superbikes for a couple of seasons (early 90's). My wife and I used to marshall at Thruxton many moons ago. Like many, he fell off in the wet at Church corner which was our regular marshalling gig, shared our sandwiches and coffee sheltering from the rain under the big tree