majestic

Have you ever tried Malazan Book of the Fallen?

The fleet splitting and the command limit came with 2.0 (I still played that ), but at that point you just split your corvette ball into smaller corvette balls. In the end you designed one missile corvette with the best torpedo launcher you had, maxed out evasion and slapped whatever utilities you wanted on. You'd target the nearest enemy fleet and the corvettes would rush up, launch their single torpedo on the way and you'd - in a slo-mo crawl - would watch the enemy fleet disappear. Most of the time 90% of your corvettes were still there. The enemy fleet was not. Worked against everything a single player game could throw at you because even if the AI brought point defense the sheer number of torpedoes was overwhelming. Paradox apparently "fixed" the issue by nerf-batting torpedo and missile hitpoints in 2.1.1. End game crises and FE/AE fleets have much more shields and armor than hull points, so that's the reason to go disruptor spam now that torpedoes no longer work. From what I could see the idea behind having battleships in 2.1.1 is to have a corvette ball engange the enemy and use a fleet of battleships and titans to engage the enemy fleet once the corvettes tanked the initial alpha strike. It's a nice idea would the game work the way it should, but as you noticed it's barely possible to keep your large ships out of the furball. I'm not even sure the entire system is fixable in a meaningful way. It's like the ridiculous situation in Master of Orion 3 where point defense missiles where the best offensive and defensive weapon you could slap on your ships. They'd launch automatically, intercept enemy missiles and fighters and then go overwhelm enemy point defense screens with their sheer numbers, and the setup is so cheap you can spam the ships right from the start...

I only tried the battle on normal difficulty so far but you can do a couple of things that really help out: Heh. Hard or insane? If you picked a Wizard and had an unlucky dice roll for hit points the guys could one-shot you while you're in the middle of casting magic missile... on any difficulty. That's how my first ever BG character - a necromancer - fared. Game over after Larloch's Minor Drain failed to kill Shank.

I played the tutorial three times with different characters to see what I would like and sometimes my characters with higher persuasion failed easier skill checks while those with lower charisma and less persuasion succeeded. Then it dawned on me. Roll D20, add skill modifier(s) and compare against DC.

Read a bit about the changes in 2.1. It is what it is. Powering through end game fleets shields and armor is not impossible, just really costly. Pre 2.1 single player Stellaris had the advantage of simply being able to use what was your main fleet anyway. Now you need to switch - or not bother with anything but disruptor corvettes and arc/lightning emitter battleships even through the normal game. It probably won't make much of a difference.

Let's be fair, they're not tricking themselves that much. The game looks like The Banner Saga, sounds like The Banner Saga and it certainly plays like The Banner Saga. The combat is more fun and gaining experience isn't as annoying. Of course it tells a different story in a different way and branches about much more than TBS. That seperates it obviously, but you still could move any assets between the two games without anyone batting an eyelash. edit: I enjoyed Ash from Gods, don't misunderstand me, but they're like non-identical twins. Seperate yet very similar.

I'm just so puzzled by this sentence. I mean, it comes across as forced, rather than a game recommendation. Anyways, added to my wishlist, so thanks for the heads up. When the game first came up (it also had a Kickstarter) there was this minor internet drama about how Ash of Gods looks just like The Banner Saga. Understandably so, considering the artstyle and the setup of the turn based combat looks like taken directly from a Stoic side project. People even believed they might be backing a Banner Saga addon. The rest is #justsonicthings, really.

“Two souls, alas, are housed within my breast, And each will wrestle for the mastery there.” -- Faust On the one hand I love this - it's a great trailer and given Lucas' inspirations for Star Wars it's a perfect fit. As a Star Wars fan I'm loving it. On the other hand the character's artstyle rubs me the wrong way. It's just off. The contrast is made worse by everything else being spot on - animation, scenes, cinematography, editing. So this is both totally awesome and weird to a point where it confuses me. Strange feeling.

Wasn't that the originator of the Crazy/Hot scale in pop culture? Maybe, I really don't know. It looks like typical sitcom material so it makes sense to come from or being popularized by one, but I don't know that many sitcoms.

That kinda reminds me of an HIMYM episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8HO717nZD-4

No, that's not a meme, it's an RPG launcher. Specifically an RPG-7 by the looks of it.

Literally!

I have no idea how saving was before so I can't really answer that. There are one-off save game stones in between, but they only let you save once before going inactive - or use them up to get experience. It could be that they added these in later and that the only reusable stones were actually in Skara Brae Below before the complaints. So just like the old games where saving was only possible in the guild. Meh.

Were you talking about the original Bard's Tale? Because that game has no skill points at all, you just get random stat increases as level up - par for the course for RPGs of the time.

In the first Bard's Tale an arch mage is a caster who mastered all four spellcasting classes. When you go to the review board your casters can change classes. You should do that whenever you hit character level 13 with your current spellcasting class and learned level 7 (the highest level) spells because there is no going back. Then you go the review board, learn everything and go to change class and have your magician and your conjurer turn into a sorceror. You'll be reset to level 1 but keep your current spell and hitpoints as well as all the spells you've learned up until then. Also please note that changing classes resets your experience to zero so if you're close to getting level 14 you might want to get that level up before switching classes. That also means you shouldn't worry about spell points too much. Your casters are going to level up much more than everyone else. By the time you're done with the next dungeon they'll be fielding 200+ points each.

Man, Season 2 of the ReBoot reboot is coming out next week. I can't wait to see the, uhm... what's her face and what's his face and the other two and V'ger again. And the mom character. And the evil Sourceror who totally isn't jock-nerd's supposedly dead father who was in no way betrayed by whatever character Nicholas Lea played (because he's the kind of guy you cast for trustworthy characters, right Krycek?). Wait was it the jock-nerd's father who died or the nerdy nerd's father? Damn. I'm hoping this will be as bad as the first season. Becaue if it isn't then there's no reason to watch at all.

Oh, yeah. Backing the game was worth it for the remastered trilogy alone, so it's not all bad.

Now might be a good time to train a monk or a hunter instead of one of the warriors.

My biggest gripe since it is the one thing they can probably not patch is the saving system. While out questing you're essentially running across one time saving pillars in the world you can either rub for saving the game once or getting experience. It adds a certain element of dread to the game of course, but the systme is ridiculous considering one can't skip cutscenes and might lose an hour worth of progress to a technical issue.

Seems like it'll be two weeks or maybe three, here's inXile's current Bard's Tale IV patching roadmap:

You're not really supposed to recover from the covenant but it is possible under the right conditions. It's fun to see but it can end with an instant game over after the time runs out. As far as the computers go, yeah, they're supposed to define the ship's role. It works better with some than others. Now I don't really know what sort of fleet compositions the current patch favors but in the past the game essentially came down to spamming evasion capped torpedo corvettes at your enemies. If that's still the case then you can only pick from one type of computer anyway.

The actual game isn't bad. It's just that the program actively conspires against you playing it. The loading times that make Pillars pale in comparison, framerate drops, invisible icons in the inventory, skill points that appear placed but aren't, quest and item text that's barely readable due to terrible UI scaling, graphics and resolution settings that simply don't work, oh and the language setting that automatically resets every time you turn the game on. Yep. Those are bad. REALLY bad.

I think I'll be putting playing Bard's Tale 4 off until Friday when inXile's first promised patch with much needed improvements hits.

Played BT4 for a bit. It's a very inXile launch. Best bring some patience, this is going to be the usual patching rodeo.

That very much depends on the member state. Gambling laws are notoriously complex and each member state has their own. If lootboxes were to be classified as gambling (or a game of chance*) they would fall under each member state's regulation - in some states publishers might be able to get a gambling license and continue to sell lootboxes, to mature audience only though, in others not so much. *Outcome determined by luck, not skill. The distinction is also done on a member state level and adds another layer of complexity with very fluid lines. Black Jack is usually a game of chance, but Texas Hold 'Em often isn't (even tough there's arguably a layer of strategy for Black Jack).