What are you playing now?

[Nonek]

When one comes to the conlusion of the Legacy of Kain, their strong right hand once more by their side and all the illusions shattered, it is fitting that it all ends with this simple cynical monologue:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gG6fVY4DHK0

[Keyrock]

Now that I have a fighter in X3: Albion Prelude, I need to properly outfit it for battle.  The Paranid Perseus heavy fighter I bought came fully shielded and with 4 High Energy Plasma Throwers.  

 

HEPTs are somewhat antiquated weapons by the time of Albion Prelude, but they have their uses.  They do impressive amounts of damage (once upon a time they were capital ship weapons) and have excellent range, but they use a lot of energy and the blasts travel at a fairly slow speed, making them poor weapons against light fighters, and nearly useless against scouts.  HEPTs are fine against other heavy fighters and great against an opponent larger than myself that's easy to hit, like a corvette.  

 

I need to mount something in the single rear facing turret, mostly for missile defense purposes.  The first obvious choice would be an Impulse Ray Emmiter.  IREs are the lightest and cheapest weapons in the game and they have a high rate of fire and are highly accurate, making them good candidates for missile defense (you don't need to do much damage to a missile, but you do need to actually hit it).  There are a couple of problems with IREs, though.  First there is the issue of availability, they are notoriously hard to get.  These weapons are supposedly sold at every single Argon equipment dock, as well as some of the other races' equipment docks, but they are practically never in stock.  You have to find one of the factories where they manufacture them, and even then you may need to supply the materials to the station and wait for them to build one.  It's pretty ridiculous.  Second is the issue of range.  IREs have pretty pathetic range.  That's not a problem for most missiles, but there are a few with really hefty blast radii, meaning there's a decent chance you'll get caught in the blast by the time your IRE can detonate it.  Third, IREs have such pathetic damage output that they're useless for anything beyond missile defense or fighting scouts.

 

I'll probably go with a Particle Accelerator Cannon for the rear turret.  PACs are good all around weapons.  They have pretty good range, a fairly high rate of fire, reasonable power drain, and the blasts are fairly speedy, making them accurate enough to deal with missiles.  On top of that, PACs pack enough punch to be effective against any vessel up to and including heavy fighters.  If you link enough of them together they can even do good damage to corvettes, though my HEPTs will be doing the bulk of the damage against ships that large/tough.  I'll probably also mount PACs in my 4 remaining forward facing slots (the Perseus has 8 fixed forward mounted slots and 1 rear mounted turret) so that I have something to deal with scouts and light fighters, as well as the HEPTs I already have for dealing with heavy fighters and corvettes.

 

If I really wanted to min-max this ship, I'd get rid of the 4 HEPTs and replace them with Phased Repeater Guns.  PRGs have great range, insane rate of fire, and fast moving blasts that are highly accurate.  They don't do nearly as much damage per blast as HEPTs, but they more than make up for it with the crazy rate of fire.  Another downside is that PRGs do chew up power very quickly, but I guess that's the price you gotta pay for massive firepower.  PRGs are quite expensive, though, and I don't really want to pour that kind of money into a ship that's only a stopgap as a player ship and will later just be one of many fighters in one of my wings. 

Edited August 19, 2015 by Keyrock

[Tale]

Catch-a-ride!

[GhostofAnakin]

Funnily enough, bugs/performance problems weren't on my list of things I disliked about DA:I.  The only one that seems to persist is more an atmosphere-ruining one, where party banter isn't anywhere near what they advertised it would be.  The majority of the time I'm stomping around a map and no one in the party is saying a word.

 

They also never bothered to improve the walking animations for the female characters.  It's still Planet of the Apes whenever one of the females does any sort of striding in cutscenes.

[Orogun01]

Catch-a-ride!

Why do I think of STDs when I hear that?

[BruceVC]

I have just finished GTAV, I spent about 90 hours completing it 

 

Its a superlative game, Rockstar are geniuses at creating exciting and living worlds. They design characters that are believable and really make you laugh. And of course as I mentioned before the parody talk show radio stations like Blaine County Radio offer  some of the funniest dialogue  I have ever heard in my life 

 

I took my time playing this game and really explored large parts of the game world, thats one of  the fun components with this  type of game ..random exploring and creating mayhem and havoc with  unsuspecting people 

 

Its gets a worthy 78/100 

[Malcador]

Mount and Blade, probably will restart as my game has devolved into some 40k-esque stalemate where I am a Queen of a nation at war with everyone, all my lords despise me as I beat the crap out of them when in service to the Vaegir. So it's mainly running around trying to put out fires or engaging in drawn out sieges where I chip away at the boulder. Did have a fun siege where I alone went to the walls and made the troops look at me and my archers shot all of them in the back.

[Tale]

I'm missing the old Planetside. Pre-BFR at least.

 

Planetside 2 is fun, but there's no real base sieges. I miss sitting at the bottom of the base, waiting for the back door to open. Now there's just chaos. There's no doors, the bases are all accessed from a million directions, two or three entrances, a bunch of windows, stairs to the roof, and we end up just fighting over that single room and then going back to spreading out through the entire base.

 

The game needs a good fighting in hallways base, at least.

[Starwars]

Shadowrun Hong Kong baby!

 

And after that, a replay of Pillars with the expansion.

[Amentep]

 

I've been playing DAI, but I'm getting the itch to restart the game with a different character.

I started with a sword and board warrior and put about 12 hours into it and wasn't really enjoying it, however I've since switched to a mage and am at level 14 after 20 hours in and having a bit more fun with the game.  I just completed the new Descent DLC which was alright, good for gear, but I find it odd how you're able to do the dlc after level 10, or after skyhold, however all the gear you find within the dlc is geared towards level 18-20 characters.  Sure, they're all pretty purples, but you can use them.  That was an odd choice, however I'm back to the main story for now and finally am picking my specialization.  

 

I decided to hold off on the Witcher for now as they patch it up and expansions come out; and just trying to complete one long RPG on the console at a time lol

 

 

Yeah Sword and board isn't terribly flashy.  But really this is more that I'm a terrible restarter of characters.  I still haven't got to either DLC yet.

[Oerwinde]

So I tried hooking my kid up with an xbox live account today. Turns out you can't create a new gamertag with an existing child profile. Contacted tech support about it and they confirmed, the only options with a child are to remain offline, create a new online child account, or promote her account to an adult account and create a gamertag from that. She says its ok that she starts over, but she can't access any of her save games, including tons of stuff she did in minecraft, and loses all her achievements and gamerscore while using her new profile. That seems kind of messed up.

[melkathi]

xbox live accounts are terribly set up and very much unfriendly towards users if you need to do anything with them.

[Chilloutman]

pay the price for trusting Microsoft .. seriously who name company after his ****

[Mamoulian War]

Part 4 - Day 5:

After two days break, I continued again. From the start it looked pretty peaceful session, but that changed after two years or so. Netherlands decided to attack France, and I have decided to join the fight. At the start it looked pretty fine, we were pushing French and Polish coalition and Netherlands got few of their provinces, I attacked Poland, and was solving rebellions in my new provinces.

Then Turkey attacked me, and after few struggles, I got two of their provinces and crushed a lot of their soldiers. Turkey decided to offer me Moldavia in exchange for peace, so I gladly accepted. While the war was still waging, I decided to take advantage of it and declared war to Lorraine-Baden alliance. I have put big armies there, and in few months, I have annexed Baden.

At this point, the war, looked pretty in favour of me, but somehow French amassed very big army and attacked my Helvetia. Unfortunately my armies were pretty decimated, so as soon as France offered me white peace, I had to accept, else I would lose this war

In the coming month, lot of my provinces started to rebel from war exhaustion, so I decided rather to end the war against Lorraine as well, even though I would be able to destroy them, even with the tiny army which I had left. If I did otherwise, I would lose few German provinces from rebellion

The war in the end was success for me, but failure for Netherlands. I was able to get two new provinces, and finally get ahead of Spain in Victory Points. Unfortunately, France has risen in this war to power, so now, I really have to think about leaving behind Netherlands-Hanover-Brandenburg coalition and try to befriend French-Scottish-Portugal alliance I really do not leave behind my allies, because they helped me a lot in last few wars, but in the next war, we might get overwhelmed by the new formed French alliance

Decisions, decisions... 140 years to the end of the scenario.
 

[Oerwinde]

Beat Dragon Age Inquisition. The epilogue was interesting. On one hand it sucks they didn't go into what happened to your companions, but makes sense so they don't have to retcon what happens to them if they want to reuse them. Going to do a 2nd playthrough at some point with a female elven mage. Seems like that would make for some interesting developments.

Edited August 21, 2015 by Oerwinde

[BruceVC]

Beat Dragon Age Inquisition. The epilogue was interesting. Going to do a 2nd playthrough at some point with a female elven mage. Seems like that would make for some interesting developments.

I'm about to start my first play through...I'm very excited 

[Oerwinde]

 

Beat Dragon Age Inquisition. The epilogue was interesting. Going to do a 2nd playthrough at some point with a female elven mage. Seems like that would make for some interesting developments.

I'm about to start my first play through...I'm very excited 

 

 

A hint, when Leliana asks you if she should kill the spy, saying yes makes her a murderqueen later in the game.

[Keyrock]

I started playing Shadowrun: Hong Kong.  More indepth stuff about that in the S:HR thread.

 

I also decided to keep going with my X3: Albion Prelude galactic conquest rather than to put it on the backburner while I concentrate fully on S:HR.  I'm in no hurry to finish S:HR, I want to savor it.  Anyway, I started the main plot missions.  The first part is just to fly around the war front sectors and help out in battle and get a couple kills; easy peasy in my well equipped Perseus.  Next up was a mission to spy on a deal going down.  They gave me an Advanced Argon Discoverer scout for the mission.  I was kind of tempted to tell Commander Homeslice that I have a better (not to mention less conspicuous) scout for the job already, but hey, I'm not turning down a free ship, even if it is just a mediocre scout, and it's capable enough to complete the mission.  I'll probably just sell the Discoverer later or park it at one of my stations and forget about it.

 

The end game here is to get the Split Acinonyx Prototype.  It is a ship I've never actually flown before, but the stats are impressive as hell.  It's a heavy corvette that's the fastest ship in its class and has massive firepower backed up by a generous laser capacitor and downright ridiculous laser recharge (several times greater than any other heavy corvette and greater even than any frigate), meaning that I would be able to sustain said massive firepower for extended periods of time, allowing me to single-handedly destroy anything in the game, destroyers, carriers, and stations included.  About the only downside to the ship is that it only has average shielding for a ship in its class (less than the Hyperion, the other special heavy corvette).  The only way to get the ship is to complete the Shady Business plot and to be able to start the Shady Business plot you need to complete the main plot, ergo why I'm doing the main plot, and have max reputation with the Split, ergo why I've spent the majority of my time so far working with the Split and why 3 out of my 4 current stations were bought from the Split and operate in Split space.

 

Reaching that end game is going to take at least a couple hundred hours more than what I've already put into the game (over 50 hours), but it will be so worth it.  Rolling into a sector in the Acinonyx Prototype, flanked by a pair of Split Tiger frigates (pocket destroyers) and a pair of Split Panther frigates (pocket carriers) and knowing that I can go exterminatus style and wipe the sector clean if I please will be the best.  My enemies shall tremble at the mere mention of my name.  MUAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Edited August 21, 2015 by Keyrock

[BruceVC]

 

 

Beat Dragon Age Inquisition. The epilogue was interesting. Going to do a 2nd playthrough at some point with a female elven mage. Seems like that would make for some interesting developments.

I'm about to start my first play through...I'm very excited 

 

 

A hint, when Leliana asks you if she should kill the spy, saying yes makes her a murderqueen later in the game.

 

Okay and is this a good thing or a bad thing?

[marelooke]

 

 

 

Beat Dragon Age Inquisition. The epilogue was interesting. Going to do a 2nd playthrough at some point with a female elven mage. Seems like that would make for some interesting developments.

I'm about to start my first play through...I'm very excited 

 

 

A hint, when Leliana asks you if she should kill the spy, saying yes makes her a murderqueen later in the game.

 

Okay and is this a good thing or a bad thing?

 

 

Depends, do you want to see the world burn?

[Amentep]

Beat Dragon Age Inquisition. The epilogue was interesting. On one hand it sucks they didn't go into what happened to your companions, but makes sense so they don't have to retcon what happens to them if they want to reuse them. Going to do a 2nd playthrough at some point with a female elven mage. Seems like that would make for some interesting developments.

 

If you do, I think romancing Solas is worth considering, because of his ties to the story and you get some alternate dialogues through the romance vs the friendship IIRC.

 

I dropped my human mage playthrough and dwarven fighter and started a female elven mage.  Might try to romance Sera just to see how much that pisses off Solas though...

Edited August 21, 2015 by Amentep

[BruceVC]

 

 

 

 

Beat Dragon Age Inquisition. The epilogue was interesting. Going to do a 2nd playthrough at some point with a female elven mage. Seems like that would make for some interesting developments.

I'm about to start my first play through...I'm very excited 

 

 

A hint, when Leliana asks you if she should kill the spy, saying yes makes her a murderqueen later in the game.

o

Okay and is this a good thing or a bad thing?

 

 

Depends, do you want to see the world burn?

 

Oh no...I always play the hero 

[Oerwinde]

 

Beat Dragon Age Inquisition. The epilogue was interesting. On one hand it sucks they didn't go into what happened to your companions, but makes sense so they don't have to retcon what happens to them if they want to reuse them. Going to do a 2nd playthrough at some point with a female elven mage. Seems like that would make for some interesting developments.

 

If you do, I think romancing Solas is worth considering, because of his ties to the story and you get some alternate dialogues through the romance vs the friendship IIRC.

 

I dropped my human mage playthrough and dwarven fighter and started a female elven mage.  Might try to romance Sera just to see how much that pisses off Solas though...

 

That was the plan. With the Mythal stuff and the elves, I wanted to play a character that was all about delving into the elven past. Might be mostly headcanon stuff, but still.

Edited August 21, 2015 by Oerwinde

[Enoch]

Finished The Banner Saga. 

 

In a game that is so good at hitting deep emotional notes with sparse art/animation/text (and that map!), the thing that bothered me most was when I lost civilians to starvation.  Soldiers die in battle? Heroes fall in plot events? Well, it's a tough world; stuff happens.  But civilians starving because we ran out of supplies, well, that felt like pure avoidable error by leadership. 

 

(That said, the game is replete with "haha, screw you for picking option C despite every indication that it was a reasonable choice" moments, a few of which can easily lead to starvation issues.  I get that that was part of the point-- immerse the player in the role of a refugee caravan leader forced to make decisions with imperfect information-- but it still got me rather angry at the game (rather than the in-world causes) from time to time.)

 

 

This is probably crazy of me, but I'm actually thinking of giving Dragon Age 2 a go next.  (I nope'd out of the demo back when it was new.)  After the earnest empathy, wonky slow-paced fighting, and slow-scrolling art canvasses of the Banner Saga, some twitchy, cheesy, fanservicey Biowarism might actually feel good.  I'm thinking of a thoroughly unlikeable melee rogue Hawke.  I've been moderately spoiled on some broad plot points, so I figure that, if a large part of what the Hero does is going to fail spectacularly regardless of her actions, I might as well make a character who deserves to see her life's work fall apart.  Female, because I'm a reflexive contrarian with regard to "canon."  (I've also got a "dead chaste Warden, drunken loser Alistair" DAO save to import around here somewhere.)

 

...

 

(Yeah, I should probably just apply a cold compress and find a good book to read for the next few days before The White March hits.)

[redneckdevil]

Playing Shadowrun Hong Kong as a troll charismatic **** razor blades adept....I'm really enjoying it a lot so far. It's so refreshing with all the role playing options, I'm gonna go ahead and say it's now my new favorite series as far as fun and addicting.

Well smokes done, time to go back to my addiction