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4401

General Discussion / Re: I just bought an N64

« on: May 07, 2014, 01:34:05 pm »

So this story has a happy ending. A friend of mine stopped by last night and got my N64 working. He lifted up the cartridge, blew into it NES style and put it back in. Problem solved. Apparently when the game isn't working the signal isn't sent at all to the TV. Who knew? Now if you'll excuse me, I'm gonna get lost in Ocarina of Time.

I told you this back in the first page!!!!

Why don't people ever listen!?!?

RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHG!!!!!!!!

4402

General Discussion / Re: I just bought an N64

« on: May 06, 2014, 08:46:24 pm »

Oh, I absolutely loved the job system in FFV, it was the only reason I played it to the end. Although I am not sure if the hundreds of ways it can be exploited are there intentionally or not. If you explore all areas before going to the end boss, he's a piece of cake, as in you might as well beat him in a single turn (ignoring phase changes and stuff). The GBA remake added completely ludicrous optional bosses just so that you had something challenging to do by (and after) endgame.
But I didn't feel like the story was parodic. The plot didn't feel very self-aware to me, nor were there any lampshade hanging to tell you to just relax and enjoy the "oh hey there's crystals let's go collect them" and lack of characters (interesting or otherwise!), I always felt like the story was an afterthought just to point the players towards the new gameplay. But I guess not playing the "sillier" first three games might taint my view on the subject.

FF VI story wasn't as great as people make it sound (if you take all the fluff away, it's not really groundbreaking; and the second half is reeeeaaaaally slooooooooow), BUT it mixed gameplay with the story very well, and the way it told the story was, and still is, pretty much non-standard. And also there's the opera. I'd definitely wish more games had that level of work on their plot.

I haven't played many FFs though, so I am mainly comparing with other RPGs. My personal favourite (aside from the silly greatness of Paper Mario and the Thousand-year Door) is Golden Sun, but that might be slightly tainted by nostalgia: it was the first RPG I finished (Pokemon doesn't count). Also its wonderfully designed interface spoilt me for every other RPG that I played afterwards.

4403

General Discussion / Re: I just bought an N64

« on: May 06, 2014, 07:38:51 pm »

I don't know what people see in FF V. The job system was cute and very exploitable (which kinda was what made it fun), but the story was downright atrocious, and the cutscenes took forever without actually advancing the plot; I remember a particularly offensive one with a flying/landing dragon, I couldn't believe the game was so happily wasting my time. There were a couple funny lines of dialogue here and there and Gilgamesh was cool in his own way, but man, the writing was overall terrible. I would have understood all this as a symptom of earlier videogame history, but FF IV has a perfectly serviceable story, so there's no real excuse!

I played the GBA remake, BTW.

4404

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Homage to the Best Card

« on: May 06, 2014, 07:18:27 pm »

This is like a Smugglers game!

...curse you Witherweaver, now I can't get the funny meme.

4405

General Discussion / Re: Random Stuff

« on: May 03, 2014, 03:59:01 pm »

It's definitely ugly, but lines 2, 3 and 4 are equivalent to each other, so they are demonstrating what you are asking.

If I really wanted to do it this way for some reason, I'd say "let's assume that 2 is a solution (line 2). Equivalently, we have (line 3). Which is equivalent to 2=2, which is always right. Hence, our assumption was right."

I guess you would rather see "x^2 - x - 4/x = ... = 0" ?

4406

Dominion General Discussion / Re: The Dominion Cards Lists 2014 Edition: $5 cards

« on: May 01, 2014, 06:35:53 am »

Either SCSN or Holger could start a thread (if it hasn't already been done) discussing what is going into their simulator, the kind of choices they make, how it chooses a strategy, etc. SCSN being a remarkably good player, his claim that the simulator could potentially win in 90% of possible kingdoms after a day (which means a week of coding and another of debugging in devspeak) of serious scripting is very interesting.

I would very much like to read the thinking process that would get the simulator there. Would you use hard coded strategies? Evaluation algorithms (the way chess programs are mostly coded) to pick and choose which cards work best in a kingdom? And then there's more specific problems, like understanding first player advantage or multiplayer games, which I guess are not your prime concern, but I would still like to read about it should you eventually get down to work them into the simulator.

Personally, I distrust statements like "BM gets 4 provinces in 16 turns on average" more (who cares about variance anyway), because then people try a strategy that gets the fourth province on turn 18 and conclude that it was worse that straight BM.

4407

General Discussion / Re: Random Stuff

« on: May 01, 2014, 06:23:41 am »

4408

General Discussion / Re: I just bought an N64

« on: April 30, 2014, 03:51:53 pm »

Might be because I am younger than all you old-timers, but personally I think that the GameCube was the apex of Nintendo's gaming consoles.

Not counting handhelds, of course, since the GBA was, and still is, the best thing EVAH.

4409

General Discussion / Re: I just bought an N64

« on: April 30, 2014, 06:30:06 am »

Try "cleaning" the cartridge. Usually blowing inside it does the job, from personal experience.

I feel like I am giving tips to get rid of hiccup.  And that this is going to RSP.

4410

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Dominion: Enterprise (Beta)

« on: April 29, 2014, 06:28:00 am »

Have you tried using some variation of "If this is the first action/attack card you have played this turn, ..., otherwise, ... " for conscript? This could be a way to limit how many curses it can deal (make it non-repeatable)

You could also try some variation of "Conscripts cannot be played if there isn't any action card in play"*, or some other limiting condition, to force you to build a deck around it for it to be successful.

Basically, go the conspirator way.

*This example is probably a bad idea, but it does make the curse-giving much harder to achieve.

I have briefly considered something like this. Originally, I was thinking about Conscripts doing something if it was in play when you played another Attack card. But oops, Conscripts doesn't stay in play (barring General). Maybe I can put something like that on other Attack card later. Your Conspirator version works, although it's a bit harder to track because, again, Conscripts don't stay in play. But it could work!

But I definitely want Conscripts to do some sort of Attack the first time it gets played, because always having to line up two is just too much to ask. The set has enough trashing, and a spy attack would take too many words. It could either give a Copper or discard down to 4. I'll keep this in mind.

I believe that tracking shouldn't be an issue. "If this is the first action you have played this turn, ..., otherwise..." is obvious, even if conscript leaves play. There's no way you are forgetting that you have played something just before it. But I agree that the "If this is the first attack you have played this turn, ..., otherwise..." is a bit harder to track. If you are playing some sort of engine, you might forget you've cursed the other players already (maybe the curses ran out, so they don't have curses on top of their discard pile to remind them of your attack). That could be solved by simply changing the card to say: "during your cleanup phase, return conscripts to the conscripts pile"

The version "conscripts cannot be played if there isn't any action card in play" has no tracking problem; might argue that this is not the way to solve the problem though (cheap cantrips/villages, or barracks, make conscripts just as bad again).

I am not sure if this might help the card, and definitely try the domain version first. Just trying to explain my idea a bit better.

4411

General Discussion / Re: Web Comics

« on: April 27, 2014, 06:30:39 am »

Most of my favourite webcomics have already been mentioned, I'll just repeat the best ones.

-Adventures of Dr McNinja is probably my overall favourite, it's just fantastic ("What would Batman do?"  ). Every time you think it has jumped the shark, it one-ups itself. One of the rare webcomics that manages to get me into can't-stop-laughing-please-it-hurts mode. Anyone else read this, aside from Titandrake?

-Order of the Stick, for the story and characters, even though it doesn't take itself seriously at first and I've never played D&D. It still manages to be funny after growing a thickened plot, which is quite impressive.

-Gunnerkrigg Court, it's just so intriguing (the art gets better, indeed). Alternates zanny humour, mysterious magic, and some light nightmare fuel.

-8-bit theater is crushingly funny if you are into nonsensical plots, callbacks, and dark humour.

Also, I wish Perry Bible Fellowship kept updating 

Haven't been mentioned yet:

-Derelict, a post apocalyptic story of a girl and her boat, simply trying to survive. A strange fog has turned people into Gargoyles, the plot evolves around the origin of that. It's cool!

-Next Town Over. The art is ****ing amazing, miles ahead of everything else I've seen. Setting: western. A zombified bounty hunter seeks to kill a necro-pyromancer, and it's not clear who you should root for. The archive is not very long yet, go read it RIGHT NAOH!

- The Abominable Charles Christopher. The only webcomic that isn't miles behind of Next Town Over in the art department. It's amazing how much emotion the author can work into animals without actually antropomorphizing (is that a word?) them. You'll cry because it's beautiful, you'll cry because it's sad. The story is an intriguing remix of the Epic of Gilgamesh. Need I say more?

-Powernap. Updates very infrequently though. A futuristic society where a drug obsoletes sleep... unless you are allergic to it. Onyric sequences mix with corporation intrigue. Nice art too!

-Dresden Codak. Updates like once every lunar eclipse. Interesting story about the Singularity, and other not-quite-yet-relevant-buy-maybe-shortly-in-the-future philosophical and ethical questions. The first chapter looks like it was made under the influence of some potent shrooms, it becomes sliiiiightly easier to follow afterwards. The art is nice, and the story very much not traditional.

-Chimneyspeak, a story about murder and prostitution and revenge and a midget in (Victorian?) London, very NSFW. I don't know if you can find it online anymore, though...

If you don't much care for story:

-Manly guys doing manly things, jokes about VG characters and comics and stuff. The author keeps a regular weekly schedule, yet can't always dedicate enough time to it. The good jokes are very funny, but sadly there's a lot of filler.

-Foxtrot, by Bill Amend. It's Foxtrot.

-Two guys and Guy. Self-deprecating humour about a hateful girl, a mad scientist with no social skills, and a good-for-nothing dude.

-Gone with the blastwave. Apocalyptic (very) dark humour. Short, updates close to never. Funny.

Probably forgetting stuff, and I am keeping some that I follow but aren't that good for myself, this post is long enough as is.

4412

General Discussion / Re: roguelike games

« on: April 25, 2014, 07:20:23 pm »

Dude, you've got the weapon pre-igniter FOR FREE, don't complain! You'll eventually get something ridiculous to make it work, don't worry (say, Flak II and glaive beam). Plus, you were going to run out of missiles anyway 


EDIT: Also, I think you could have made your ion bomb + healing bomb + antibio beam + teleport run work 

4413

General Discussion / Re: roguelike games

« on: April 25, 2014, 12:11:46 pm »

Ha! Not bad, although you still need to lower shields to use it. Get an ion weapon and you are set until sector 8!

4414

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Homage to the Best Card

« on: April 24, 2014, 06:51:26 pm »

Ha! I am a natural.

And today I learnt something, thanks to Titandrake and rrenaud.

4415

General Discussion / Re: roguelike games

« on: April 24, 2014, 03:11:18 pm »

Flak is I think my favourite of the new weapons. It is so good at demolishing shields, and inaccurate ship damage is still really strong.

It's so good. Flak 1 is alright, but I don't think I'd go out of my way to buy it.  But flak II is soooo much better that I would probably pick that one up in a shop. (If I had the money)

I just unlocked the Flak Artillery this morning. Class C of the star trek shaped ship. I'm looking forward to playing around with it when I get home tonight.

The slug ship?  I've barely tried the B layout because it is kinda rough... Haven't tried it enough to get to sector 8.  but sounds fun!  I just unlocked C layout of the rock cruiser.  It comes with a swarm missile! which is awesome...

I am pretty sure that he means the Federation cruiser, layout C.

My best score so far was my first run with the Stormwalker (Slug B)! Around 5500 points, normal difficulty, pre AE; all my other high scores are around the 4400 mark. The first few sectors are hardcore, though, but awesome. Not nearly half as difficult as, say, the Vortex (Engi B), though, now that one isn't for the faint-hearted.

EDIT: why are you "spoilering" slug ship? How to unlock the ships, especially the secret one, might constitute a spoiler, but the fact that there's at least one ship per species? Not so much.

4416

General Discussion / Re: A Song of Ice and Fire [spoilers version]

« on: April 24, 2014, 02:51:17 pm »

King you should probably spoiler tag that.

Yeah, I did. I forgot when I was writing it. Nobody saw that!!

I feel like people who want to avoid spoilers will just avoid this thread...

Yeah, but being careful is good.  Plus there is ambiguity between show spoilers and book spoilers.  And, well, we've all been using the tags

It is good to be careful, but anyone who is shocked when they see spoilers in this thread is either an idiot, or illiterate.

I think Awaclus signature is relevant here.

http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=9117.msg279810#msg279810

4417

General Discussion / Re: roguelike games

« on: April 24, 2014, 12:36:41 pm »

Did a run on hard with the Federation ship layout B (Osprey, I think it's called), which is a solid ship. I got to sector 8 without too much trouble once I got my shield to level 2, but I was slightly less well equiped than I am used to, in engines, crew and energy. The scrap rewards in the first four sectors or so were ridiculously low.

I never managed to get a second boarder (my fault, I didn't prioritize the hostile sectors), and one of my zoltans died in sector 8 from an unlucky laser-into-fire-into-bomb combo, plus an engi that I lost to an event beforehand, so I didn't really expect to beat hardmode flagship with only five crew and not enough missiles to spam pegasus (although I am sure normal Flagship would have been very doable, except maybe the last phase if unlucky).

I still tried to board the Flagship, since I didn't really have much choice, but I didn't have enough gear to support my subpar boarding party, and did a couple of mistakes. Got my healing bay hacked, which was an annoyance rather than a real danger. Lost half my hull while only killing one enemy crewmember in the first phase. Went to the second phase, not expecting much. I held myself reasonably well, but I didn't have enough crew to man my systems and defend against boarding droids, so eventually I fell.

4418

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Dominion: Enterprise (Beta)

« on: April 24, 2014, 08:44:36 am »

Have you tried using some variation of "If this is the first action/attack card you have played this turn, ..., otherwise, ... " for conscript? This could be a way to limit how many curses it can deal (make it non-repeatable)

You could also try some variation of "Conscripts cannot be played if there isn't any action card in play"*, or some other limiting condition, to force you to build a deck around it for it to be successful.

Basically, go the conspirator way.

*This example is probably a bad idea, but it does make the curse-giving much harder to achieve.

4419

General Discussion / Re: Random Stuff

« on: April 23, 2014, 05:59:50 pm »

ha!

4420

General Discussion / Re: roguelike games

« on: April 23, 2014, 04:36:56 pm »

I assume that the burst lasers are MkII (the version that shoots three lasers), you probably started with the Kestrel A.
You are a bit undergeared for the Flagship with that though, and the second phase would have made you sweat a lot (on the other hand phase three would have been nearly trivial).
Problem is, the flagship has from 20 to 45% evade (depends on phase, crew, etc.), so even a full barrage of that setup (and I am counting the combat drone) would barely dent the flagship's defensive or offensive capacity... and the flagship can cloak for long enough to let its crew repair most of the damage you can deal in the time it takes for it to cool down.

You want to destroy its offensive capacity ASAP, only damaging its defenses if strictly necessary to get there. With that setup, IMHO the best you can do is an artemis missile to the pilot (drops pilot to level 1 and forces pilot to repair, so evade goes down to 0 briefly), then your 2 bursts mkII to the flagships missile launcher deal 3 damage if your combat drone drops the shield one level. Your anti-ion augment (and a reasonable level of engines) means that only the missile launcher is any danger to you during the first phase, so you are safe until the guy in the missile launcher repairs it. Problem is, your fist missile has to hit the flagship, otherwise your burst mk II are not likely to do much, and even if you do hit with your missile, you are not impairing the flagship that much.

You need more firepower (or the teleport device). Useful endgame weapons to look for are the Pegasus or the Chain Vulcan. Failing that, good weapons are the Breach Missile (blocked by defense drones), Swarm Missile (not very precise), Ion Blast mkII (takes 3 energy yet it can't deal damage) or Burst Laser mkIII (4 energy, blocked by shields), and Flak Gun II sounds nice but I've never tried it. There's a lot of useful bombs, but you can't go wrong with the small bomb or breach bomb II. Beams are a "win more" kind of weapon (unless you have ion blast mkII). If you want to face the Flaship straight on, you better have a couple of these, or one of these and a couple of more average weapons that complement it.

It is good to keep in mind that the Flagship has much more firepower and shields than most things you have to face before sector 8, so you have to adapt your strategy (and setup) to that fact. That's why missiles/bombs and teleport are good: you can neutralize its weapons quickly, before having to take down its shields. Otherwise, you want to make sure that your volleys are overpowering its defenses. Artemis and Burst mkII are efficient weapons and perfectly serviceable all the way up to sector 8, but by themselves can't overpower the Flagship.

4421

General Discussion / Re: roguelike games

« on: April 22, 2014, 04:20:28 pm »

Ouph, that's a hell of a pounding indeed. What was your setup?

4422

General Discussion / Re: roguelike games

« on: April 22, 2014, 12:28:33 pm »

I agree with you, they have severely buffed the Rebel Fleet in Advanced Edition, to the point where you are bound to lose a lot even if you manage to jump "early", usually spelling the end of your run. It definitely pays to be careful when planning your journey now, leaving a sector early is a much better prospect than getting caught by the Rebel Fleet.

I recommend trying the teleport device, start with a ship layout that helps with that (two rockmen/mantis, and a bomb/missile, basically), save scrap for the second shield (50) and teleport device (90). It's tricky at first, but once you try, there's no going back

When you mention repair shops, you mean before the first phase of the battle with the Flagship, right? There's never time to repair in between phases (unless you are extremely lucky). Cloaking device (lvl1) cancels most of the dangers the Flagship can send at you after the first phase anyway.

But sounds like you are already taking most right choices, resource management-wise, so once you get used to the Flagship attack patterns, you should get a victory easily. Admittedly, it is very difficult to beat it without having encountered each phase at least once (or detailed spoilers).

4423

General Discussion / Re: roguelike games

« on: April 21, 2014, 03:53:57 pm »

What difficulty are you playing on, what ship layouts are you trying? Are you going straight for the exit in each sector, or do you delay it as much as possible?

In general, trying to get a boarding crew (ideally two mantis or two rockmen, but you can make do with less) as early as possible and the teleport device should carry you to the end sector with an excess of scrap to buy anything else you need. Prioritize shields, that way you can take your time with your boarding attempts. Actually, in most cases shields level 2 should be the first thing you buy; door system level 2 as soon as sector 2 is important if you are low on crew too. You should rarely buy weapons, most of the time you can make do with what you find on your way and your starting weapons (there are exceptions depending on the ship, and some weapons are too good to pass up; see vulcan and fire bomb, for example). Something similar applies to crewmembers, three of them are enough as long as boarding is not involved, and even then some smart venting (and use of the healing bay if things get bad) should take care of the situation; you definitely want as many crewmembers as possible by the end, but they are not your initial priority.

It's also a good idea to keep a buffer of unused scrap (50-100 scrap) in case you find a shop, and avoid shops if you don't have that much scrap (you'll be losing out on fuel and time otherwise). Some ways to increase scrap production (before boarding parties) are to cut on reactor upgrades and hull repairs. Also, most ships that surrender don't offer much scrap, so go for the kill anyway if you are confident that you can defeat them with minor extra damage to your own ship (unless they offer some resource that you are severely lacking, e.g. fuel below 8, since you can't be sure if you'll get any after destroying them).

It also pays to recognize events, but if you've done 20-30 runs, you should already know most of them. It's especially important to know which ones may make you lose a crewmember, that can really cripple your run, so avoid them.

4424

General Discussion / Re: Superbrothers: Swords and Sworcery

« on: April 21, 2014, 03:27:44 pm »

I was a bit disappointed. It has a nice story, even if a bit too postmodernist for me. On the other hand, as said in the credits, this is a "gamelike experience", not a real "game", knowledge that I would have appreciated having before starting it so as to not expect something else.

YMMV.

4425

General Discussion / Re: roguelike games

« on: April 19, 2014, 01:39:27 pm »

A manual of necromancy? As in, the one you start with? I don't understand.

EDIT: oh sorry, manual, not book. Hhhmmm...