What are you playing? Options

[monkeyemoness]

So my Knight caught up to where my Sorcerer was in Dark Souls 3 and if the trouble I had getting back into him is any indication, setting aside my Sorcerer for a while was a good idea. I think what "ruined" my Sorcerer was playing two (three?) classes that play differently together at once and mixing up the styles. I played her too aggressively, and when I got back to the Knight I played him as if he were my Pyromancer by rolling instead of, y'know, blocking and making use of the damn Vigor.

Other than that, I wonder if I'll ever get back into Oblivion

[Decrepit]

This morning I bought Mashinky off Steam. I doubt that this will be a long term staple for me. But I enjoy this sort of game and have been enamored with trains, especially steam era trains, for as long back as I can remember. Alas, after download completed I tried to play the tutorial, but due to feeling under the weather found I couldn't concentrate well enough to grasp some of the game's mechanics. Either that or I've grown more senile than even I realized. Time will tell.

[Decrepit]

Wheeeee......

Spent a good several hours in Mashinky pulling what little hair I have left out trying to get one of my two trains to go to the correct station track, then continue on to the next station. Boy was that a challenge! Finally got things working <crosses fingers> about ten minutes past the time I normally begin preparing supper. Scary thing is, I'm not sure what I did that last time that I hadn't tried before...over and over. At any rate, that train now picks up logs at one "station" and delivers 'em to another station, which turns them into planks. There's at least one further stage needed in the wood hauling process, but I've not had time to investigate it, or see where that delivery point is on the map.

Having a blast so far, but suspect this game will be something like Banished...a heck of a lot of fun until everything is mastered and further expansion little more than going through the motions. We shall see.

[Decrepit]

Still having a blast with Mashinky. A frustrating blast at times, but a blast none the less. I'm starting to get a feel for signal placement and train routing, though certain tricky (and not so tricky) routing situations are still beyond me. My newest fiasco involves warehouse management. I unknowingly let my Foundry warehouses fill with iron ore. There is no room left to store coal. Without coal the foundries can't make iron bars, needed by Toolworks facilities to produce one of the game's several currency values. For now all trains transporting iron ore to foundries are parked in Terminals until ore stockpiles shrink considerably...which is taking forever. I'll eventually resume ore deliveries, with small trains, say one or two ore cars per trip.

One thing I like a lot about Mashinky, a trait it shares with TES: Oblivion. With Oblivion, I love nothing more than watching my avatar slowly riding the roadways of Cyrodiil on patrol. Mashinky offers a camera view that places us in our trains so that we can "ride the rails." I find this very relaxing, possibly therapeutic, especially on my more interestingly constructed routes. Graphics in "realistic" mode, while not state of the art, are quite fine.

[Callidus Thorn]

I fired up Skyrim earlier, got a Dunmer character going through the tutorial. Two handed weapons and magic, but no idea when it comes to armour

Flicking through the wiki looking at the various armours isn't helping either. There are more heavy armours that I like the look of, but Glass armour looks so good! And there's that vampire lord armour too, now that I think of it.

Either way, I'm hoping this guy'll be able to see a good chunk of Skyrim, maybe get to the DLCs too

This post has been edited by Callidus Thorn: Jan 9 2018, 08:04 PM

[monkeyemoness]

Me: Okay, enough Dark Souls, time for a new game

Also Me: Hey, why don't you try playing your Sorcerer the "right" way this time??

So I'm trying to get back into either Oblivion or Skyrim. I left behind a save with Legacy of the Dragonborn I never really finished because of-flipping-course you need to complete certain lengthy questlines. (Pretty sure I've talked about it before, but one huge point against the mod is that it encourages and enforces a completionist playthrough.) I also have that Kaidan follower mod since it looked promising and it's actually updating. I just don't want Vilja again and it's too late for Inigo.

If I can't get into that, there's still that unfinished save file from the beginning of Oblivion. The incentive is that Integration: The Stranded Light mod that I also never finished that's equal parts great and ridiculous. Why do people feel the need to mod in tacky "paintings" into the game.

There's also ESO, which I've wanted to play through again with a new character to see all the old, "vanilla" content, but a major update that's most likely not dropping until February at the earliest means I need to hold off on making any new characters. (You get nice things as you level, you see)

[Kane]

Command and Conquer Renegade.

[Dark Reaper]

America's Army Proving Grounds on the PS4. Its officially lisance by the US Army and its free plus its a pretty fun shooter.

[mirocu]

I've played Doom 3 but not Doom 4.

I have always looked at Doom 3 taking the more realistic approach than Doom 4 that I saw as a mere fast-paced shooter to impress the kids with. But having learned more about the Doom Slayer's history, I now understand more about his rage and desire to kill demons and thus I understand Doom 4 much better now.

Having struck a deal with a Hell Priest to bring his dead son back by betraying his own kind, he later regretted his decision for when the time came for his son to return, he returned in a corrupted form known as the Icon of Sin that granted the demons even more power. Filled with rage and a desire for revenge, Doom Slayer (a.k.a the Betrayer) was granted powers by the Seraphim to make him faster and more powerful than before as well as an armor forged in Hell itself making him virtually unstoppable.

Thus the demons of Hell named him Doom Slayer who would stop at absolutely nothing to get revenge on the priest who decieved him and corrupted his son.

This post has been edited by mirocu: Jan 13 2018, 10:06 AM

[Dark Reaper]

I love Doom 3 but not the BFG Edition which turned it in to an action horror game by adding more ammo and taking away that survival horror aspect of the original one.

[Callidus Thorn]

Having been accosted yesterday by an Altmer Sorcerer carrying a claymore, I'm back in Cyrodiil again

[Decrepit]

I've become utterly addicted to Mashinky. It now consumes almost the entirety of my waking day, to the detriment of almost all else. Much as I play it, you'd think I'd by better at "signaling" by now. But no. Takes me forever to get the more complex intersections right, assuming I don't give up and settle for a more simple solution. I'll say this for myself, in all this time I've caused only one train collision due to faulty signaling.

I seem to be good at generating ample income in the form of "tokens" for various sorts, needed to buy everything in the game and fuel train engines. At the same time I am having the worst time trying to achieve proper coal / iron ore balance at my numerous Foundries. They invariably fill with one or the other over time. At that point they can no longer produce Iron Bars, needed for Silver Tokens. Spent much of the last several days trying to correct that at several Foundries, to little avail. What usually happens is that I manage to switch a foundry from being completely filled with one of the two raw resources to being completely filled with the other.

I'm baffled by the 2-8-4 Class 65 steam engine. Attaching ONE train car to it puts it at or over its recommended max pull weight limit. That can't be right. Maybe I just don't understand what max pull weight is. Certainly the engine does a decent job pulling trains of adequate length. I prefer the GS-2 steam engine at any rate, except that it consumes twice as much coal as does the Class 65 when up and running. (The GS-2 has by far the highest recommended max pull weight of any engine in the game thus far. The limit can be ignored, but doing so can slow a train down depending on excess weight. Had one Prussian T3 so weighted down it barely had the power to ascend a raised bridge. For a bit there I thought it wasn't going to make it to the top. Needless to say that engine got traded in for something more powerful.)

This post has been edited by Decrepit: Jan 17 2018, 01:23 PM

[SubRosa]

Gog.com has Railway Empire coming soon. You might want to try that out.

[Kane]

Probably going to try out Forged Battalion soon. Looks like it is going to be a good RTS game comparable to the classic C&C games. It's made by Petroglyph studios, which as I understand is comprised of a few of the old Westwood Studio developers.

[monkeyemoness]

I'm going to fess up, I went back to Dark Souls 3 to play that Sorcerer again. The reason I dont' want to play anymore is because I'm motivated more by my unhealthy completionist desires than actually having fun.

That said, she did spectacularly this time, and even got halfway through the Ringed City DLC before I decided enough was enough and triggered the ending cutscene and started a NG plus so I wouldn't be tempted to continue. She DID have trouble with bosses like Lothric and Lorian, but it was mostly because the game throws them at you before summons can tank them. I resorted to wearing Dusk's set and anything that boosted Magic damage and succeeded. Other than that, she made use of the more "subtle" spells like Hidden Body and Pesilent Mist (the latter being surprisingly effective), which is what i intended to do before I started playing her more aggressively.

Now that the game is behind me for good, my internet cooperated long enough for me to get the recent Maskar's Oblivion Overhaul and I'm playing my Reachman character again. With enthusiasm, even! :U

This post has been edited by monkeyemoness: Jan 18 2018, 11:28 PM

[Decrepit]

Gog.com has Railway Empire coming soon. You might want to try that out.

Thanks. I'm gonna check for videos of it at YouTube.

My entire Mashinky experience today centered on trying to set up a proper Iron Bar Foundry, fed by nearby coal mine and iron mines, completed bars shipped to a Toolworks to be turned into sliver token. (One of the game's currency values.) Always before I just sort of slapped this sort of thing together and hoped for the best, which rarely happens. This time I tried to get the ratios and delivery times down pat so I'd not end up being short of either coal or iron ore. It ain't easy. So many variables! The Iron Bar formula itself. Distance of Coal Mine and Iron Ore mine from foundry. How many of each resource a rail car holds. Train speed. Speed at which coal and iron ore are mined (iron ore being slower). Distance from Foundry to Tookworks. And so on.

I naively purchased four! GS-2 locos, two with four rail cars holding 20 coal per full load each, two with four 20 iron ore per full load rail cars each. Also bought three BR3's, each with four iron bar rail cars. Boy was that a waste! Turns out my Iron Mine can't fill even one of the two trains assigned it. The Coal Mine does fill one of its two trains, but to keep the coal / iron ore ratio more or less correct I have to reduce my Coal train's carry capacity. What I desperately need is a second Iron Mine nearby. There are none. The only non in use Iron Mines I've found are impractically far away. I mean we're talking F....A....R. It's temping, but boy would that being a track routing nightmare! Oh yeah...I've already cut down from three Iron Bar transport trains to two, and expect to reduce the number of cars per train before all is said and done.

I now have a better feel for what it takes to make a Foundry sustainable, and plan to start revisiting my many poorly functioning foundries and see if I can make 'em useful. (A number produce no income for me, as I allowed 'em to fill up with either Coal or Iron Ore, so that they no longer accept the other resource. Once that happens they obviously can not produce Iron Bars.) How I've managed to maintain a continuous small profit increase with all tokens is beyond me. Well, passenger trains are admittedly easy to make profit with. Just cart people from one city to another. Voila, success. (Passengers award Green Tokens, the lowest denomination.)

[Decrepit]

Spent the day attempting to bring better efficiency to several Foundries in Mashinky. I near hopeless task, but this I made a little headway at two Foundries. One of the two could have been completely fixed, except while giving the two trains assigned that Foundry new routing instructions I somehow left out a marker in their pathing chain. As I result they never showed up at the Coal Mine. The Foundry ended up with my max Iron Ore in storage but no Coal. That's worse than before I attempted my fix. The foundry I'm working on now has better chance of success as I've dedicated a special train to drain off its excess Ore. (For some reason most foundries tend to end up overloaded with Ore, though there are a couple of exceptions where the opposite is true.) I've not the game running in the background so I can keep an eye on the train and shut it down once equilibrium is attained.

In conjunction with the above I've done a good bit of track rerouting and replacing single track with double tracks on a number of industrial routes.

The game had an update several days ago. So far as I can tell it was bug fixes but no no features.

[monkeyemoness]

So I'm playing the original Dark Souls when I can't be on the PC since I relearned how to play these games with 3. Gotta say, I miss a lot of the newer features and I'm glad some features of this one were never carried over/got streamlined.

One thing I noticed is more common in this game than its sequels is narrow corridors and ledges, the latter of which you HAVE to traverse over several parts of the game Anor Londo being one of the worst Also ground physics can be a pain sometimes, like slipping down a slightly sloped surface or getting stuck on a brick on the floor. There's also the lag. Holy hell the lag. Blightown probably has the worst lag to add to the small, rickety walkways and camera-obstructing architecture.

If there is one good thing I can say about this game, I guess it has to be how non-linear the game is compared to its sequels, especially 3. Enemy difficulty will get in your way, but I do remember sequence breaking quite a bit and getting the Rite of Kindling earlier than intended, for example. Starting gifts also make more of an impact, since you can get a skeleton key and a ring that lets you talk to an npc for more sequence breaking.

Buuut, I might end up quitting. I've gotten to the point where quicktravel is unlocked, but I forgot that it's only to specific bonfires and that...that's honestly kind of a pain since the second half of the game is the most open and involves the most traveling, often to places you've been to for unlocked areas. I'm also not looking forward to the Demon Ruins/Lost Izalith and the Bed of Chaos boss fight.

In all honesty, I consider this to be the least fun installment.

[monkeyemoness]

If there is one good thing I can say about this game, I guess it has to be how non-linear the game is compared to its sequels, especially 3. Enemy difficulty will get in your way, but I do remember sequence breaking quite a bit and getting the Rite of Kindling earlier than intended, for example. Starting gifts also make more of an impact, since you can get a skeleton key and a ring that lets you talk to an npc for more sequence breaking.
In all honesty, I consider this to be the least fun installment.

WHOOPS this was supposed to be an edit lol

It also has Laurentius of the Great Swamp and I love him.

This post has been edited by monkeyemoness: Jan 24 2018, 02:43 AM

[Decrepit]

Had I rough Mashinky day recently, due to errors in signal placement and in one case incorrect orders (pathing markers). I eventually sorted it all out, but not before losing two trains that collided with each other.

I'm to the point where there are few industries and no towns not serviced by one or more train lines. Well, discounting industries in odd, out of the way locales too far away from any viable destination to make a connection worthwhile. (Even those can be doable, but it ain't easy and not always worth the effort.) What I'm doing now is looking for inefficiencies and correcting them to the extent I can. (Sometimes there's simply no ideal solution.) That's gonna keep me busy for some time to come. And there's always riding the rails in first-person engine cab / rail car view mode. I never tire of that. Never.

Early on I make what proved to be an grossly incorrect assumption. I thought Forests, with a Charcoal Burner add-on in place, would adequately substitute for Coal Mines as a supplier for coal for Foundries. Turns out a Forest's coal producing ability is minuscule compared to what a Mine can output. It can in no way proved enough coal to match the iron ore provided by an Iron Mine. Before learning this I had set up a few elaborate Foundry hubs with Forests as their sole coal supplier. Those Foundries hardly produce enough iron bars to justify their existence. In a case or two I've at least partly resolve this by bringing in mined coal from far away. In at least two cases I've not yet found a workable solution. Problem is, those Foundries are too far away from any coal mines not already dedicated to another Foundry. I'm not giving up on 'em yet, but admit properly fixing those is a long shot.