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Flinty wrote: Just finished the story mode on Space Marine 2. Quite engaging action, and the cut scenes were nicely done. YouTube had spoiled the big arrival scene, but it was still gratifying to get there.
On to the operations
I haven't played either space marine 2 or helldivers 2 and while i think Space Marine 2 is a good introduction to wh40k (from watching other people stream it). It does feature primaris (not massively thrilled) and uh i dunno how to feel about it. The only real spoiler was leandros. Most of the game felt fairly unsurprising somehow. Which is sorta different from space marine 1. I will say the tyranid ai seemed cool though and the enemies looked fun to fight but the story was more lacking than in the previous game imo. I do find it hilarious they send 3 random ultramarines to take out a Hive Tyrant though. I mean didn't Marneus Calgar get totally destroyed by a hive tyrant of some kind when fighting hive fleet behemoth. I heard that scene has gotten meme'd on into oblivion.
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Went through another game of Hearts of Iron 4 as japan and there was at first some success but going into it without CAS was a problem. I may try again with tanks and supply trucks this time just to try it out. Turns out you can change up tanks quite a lot and give them a lot of upgrades and they're both good in breakthrough and soft attack. Do i realize this will cost a lot of oil to do? Yes. However it costs lots of oil to have a significant air army and navy as well and i would prefer having something with better breakthrough and speed so i don't have to slowly take china through a million artillery shells and CAS. I think i'll still use CAS though but we'll see. Probably a mistake and will leave me in horrible oil issues and will have a lack of focus but we'll see how it goes. Ofc this also means i'll probably have to cut down on other units but with a smaller airforce it also means i don't have to keep buying aluminum since japan has to import most of it. Of course oil is the same way but you can mitigate that somewhat. My only issue is that there will likely be supply issues into low supply areas which aircraft doesn't always care about. However aircraft eats up fuel too.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2025/04/14 22:34:49
they did start off by dropping a 20 storey building on the thing. 100,000 tons impacting at velocity tends to rather ruin your day. I’m just disappointed the final kill does t involve using a thunder hammer to nail the thing to the ground with the massive girder thats jammed through the Tyrant
My biggest problem with the story was how much of it they tried to tell me in the middle of my middle aged brain trying to respond to the blue and red action quick time markers. I don’t multitask at the best of times
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2025/04/15 08:03:24
Please excuse any spelling errors. I use a tablet frequently and software keyboards are a pain!
Well turns out tanks and planes was somewhat of a bad idea in my last Hearts of Iron 4 game. I didn't lose any land this time but china as it turns out has absurdly awful and not flat terrain. There are a lot of mountains, hills, some rivers and some urban terrain with some desert terrain as well among others. In other words it's a nightmare to navigate with tanks who seem to take negative modifiers for everything.
The negative modifiers are a reason why i'm thinking of focusing on specialists like mountaineers, paratroops or marines. Each could be a solid choice but i think there's a limit of how many you can make total. Marines are great for going through amphibious battles and rivers, mountaineers can go through china's many mountains and paratroopers can drops behind enemy lines and either secure bridges or even grab docks. Each is a solid choice and i plan to use them in my next try of a Japan run in China in HoI4.
Not sure what i'm doing wrong as i had supremacy in most fights for a time but when i clicked on the individual battles that i'd eventually lose the enemy always had an intel supremacy even if that was the only positive they had. I think i heard intel allows the enemy to choose superior tactics in fights. That said which is the correct way to get intel? Is it radar, through covert agencies, through recon planes or through recon option per army being higher than the enemy's. It's really frustrating not knowing the exact problem the game wants me to solve.
Also somehow they had a gajillion chinese soldiers even without much artillery. Dunno how they manage to give them all proper gear but even when mine were fully geared up it didn't matter much.
So the real question is i will go back to infantry but should i go for cavalry, truck based infantry armies or soldiers on foot. It's rather frustrating. I may even run amphibious tanks since it's the only type of tank that does well for amphibious invasions, going through rivers and also likely forts. Also as i said earlier which specialist troops specialization should i pick. There's just so many and they all can have uses. As good as paratroopers are they can't easily take tanks however for obvious reasons and while they can be dropped in many places (like to secure a bridge). I've never used them in an actual normal combat before.
Anyway the choices are going down but there are simultaneously more options than i originally thought. I think this run might go better. Going to focus on infantry heavy with artillery and planes. China never has much of a navy so naval or airforce invasions are fairly easy too. The problem with naval invasions are since naval engagements are so one sided you don't get a lot of navy experience and therefore can't give marines many upgrades too easily.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2025/04/16 00:57:09
flamingkillamajig wrote: Well turns out tanks and planes was somewhat of a bad idea in my last Hearts of Iron 4 game. I didn't lose any land this time but china as it turns out has absurdly awful and not flat terrain. There are a lot of mountains, hills, some rivers and some urban terrain with some desert terrain as well among others. In other words it's a nightmare to navigate with tanks who seem to take negative modifiers for everything.
The negative modifiers are a reason why i'm thinking of focusing on specialists like mountaineers, paratroops or marines. Each could be a solid choice but i think there's a limit of how many you can make total. Marines are great for going through amphibious battles and rivers, mountaineers can go through china's many mountains and paratroopers can drops behind enemy lines and either secure bridges or even grab docks. Each is a solid choice and i plan to use them in my next try of a Japan run in China in HoI4.
Not sure what i'm doing wrong as i had supremacy in most fights for a time but when i clicked on the individual battles that i'd eventually lose the enemy always had an intel supremacy even if that was the only positive they had. I think i heard intel allows the enemy to choose superior tactics in fights. That said which is the correct way to get intel? Is it radar, through covert agencies, through recon planes or through recon option per army being higher than the enemy's. It's really frustrating not knowing the exact problem the game wants me to solve.
Also somehow they had a gajillion chinese soldiers even without much artillery. Dunno how they manage to give them all proper gear but even when mine were fully geared up it didn't matter much.
So the real question is i will go back to infantry but should i go for cavalry, truck based infantry armies or soldiers on foot. It's rather frustrating. I may even run amphibious tanks since it's the only type of tank that does well for amphibious invasions, going through rivers and also likely forts. Also as i said earlier which specialist troops specialization should i pick. There's just so many and they all can have uses. As good as paratroopers are they can't easily take tanks however for obvious reasons and while they can be dropped in many places (like to secure a bridge). I've never used them in an actual normal combat before.
Anyway the choices are going down but there are simultaneously more options than i originally thought. I think this run might go better. Going to focus on infantry heavy with artillery and planes. China never has much of a navy so naval or airforce invasions are fairly easy too. The problem with naval invasions are since naval engagements are so one sided you don't get a lot of navy experience and therefore can't give marines many upgrades too easily.
If you have the expansion which introduced spy agencies, then you build up intel by having your agents build an intel network in the enemy country.
Bleeding China's manpower is almost impossible, however bleeding its equipment is somewhat more doable. If you can find a location where you can make repeat encirclements then that could be a way to go. Lure them in, encircle fast to cut them off, wipe out the encircled divisions and then retreat back to reset the trap.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2025/04/19 18:54:33
The Laws of Thermodynamics:
1) You cannot win. 2) You cannot break even. 3) You cannot stop playing the game.
Colonel Flagg wrote:You think you're real smart. But you're not smart; you're dumb. Very dumb. But you've met your match in me.
Thanks for the help. Yes i do have the covert options dlc but i don't use it as much as japan with the lack of civilian factories.
I was doing a couple campaigns or so since the last one i mentioned. I did find motorized rocket artillery is fun and tends to win fights. The big issue is it still takes me until at least somewhere in 1944 to take china by which time in the campaign the entire axis side usually fully capitulates and i'm sorta on my own hoping the soviets and allies fight each other. The last time i did take advantage of the allies and soviets fighting to fight against the allies but for some stupid reason the soviets declared war on me when i was busy helping them fight the allies and then they mostly 2vs1'd to which i just got frustrated and gave up.
I was thinking afterwards that manpower destroying was a bad idea vs china but i was thinking bombing the enemy factories would've been a good choice to keep their factories not producing weapons or equipment or having civilian factories at all for trade or to build things. Of course a friend on dakka said that way a bad idea since it destroys infrastructure in china (making it harder to traverse with armies) and that i shouldn't even destroy enemy trucks with logistics strikes which is interesting. I've never really done logistics strikes before for what it's worth. He also said that while Close air support was good as an option for helping armies that CAS planes are bad or at least in china where range of planes makes missions more or less effective and said i should instead take tactical bombers for double duty instead of strategic planes or CAS for their own separate tasks.
I'm actually trying to settle on other options now for another run of japan but instead i'll just plant some troops at the border. I'll use mostly militia but with entrenchment except at the direct nationalist chinese border and then i'll use maybe one experienced army to do the Strike South doctrine and attack dutch east indies and others. At least it should solve my resource issues without having to sacrifice civilian factories through trading with the usa. I imagine i'll still end up having to buy oil from the usa as well as other resources but it will force me to use navy a bit more and that may cause steel and oil shortage issues anyway. *sigh* Well here's to trying at least. I do like some of the difficulty in japan playthroughs but it's like slamming my head against a wall when they have resource issues and have to fight so many things at the same time.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2025/04/20 00:37:25
Finished Ragnarok last night. Superb for what it is. I have minor quibbles but nothing but nitpicking. It wouldn't have been my GotY in the face of Elden Ring, but I'm glad to have finally finished it.
Started playing the original FF7 on the Nintendo Switch. I am finding the story and setting pretty interesting. But its kind of odd that there's no Defend option in the battles. And for a while I was stuck on that robot scorpion boss way at the beginning. Learning that robots are weak to lightning helps a bit.
Maybe later on I'll try FF6 because I heard Kefka was a really cool villain. And then maybe FF 8 and FF 9.
I did try playing FF12 years earlier, but despised the gameplay on that one.
I'd say Suikoden series is my main jam when it comes to JRPGs, and I've been loving the Spiritual Sucessor Euiyden Chronicle.
kyrtuck wrote: Started playing the original FF7 on the Nintendo Switch. I am finding the story and setting pretty interesting. But its kind of odd that there's no Defend option in the battles. And for a while I was stuck on that robot scorpion boss way at the beginning. Learning that robots are weak to lightning helps a bit.
Maybe later on I'll try FF6 because I heard Kefka was a really cool villain. And then maybe FF 8 and FF 9.
I did try playing FF12 years earlier, but despised the gameplay on that one.
I'd say Suikoden series is my main jam when it comes to JRPGs, and I've been loving the Spiritual Sucessor Euiyden Chronicle.
IIRC you can defend by pressing one of left or right on the battle options, hidden from the four normal selections.
So last time i played Hearts of Iron 4 i did the Strike South Doctrine and attacked the resource rich islands along with leaving defense forces in china's border.
It went well for a while even when ww2 was going on in europe and the british invited the dutch (and dutch east indies) to fight in allies which made things harder for a bit. Eventually i handled them all however but when i invaded singapore (i think that was the one) and went through siam to get them back it just went wrong. Too many enemies including china, india, and some british colony.
I should've probably tried naval invading china instead (maybe would've kept the enemy factions separated from each other).
That said i wonder if i should've just said eff it and invaded australia instead or even india rather than going through the multiple front war near siam. Also i should never call siam as an ally into the war and maybe just have them for docking rights for my ships.
Due to frustration and being in a multi-front war turned into italy fracturing into civil war and being the achilles heel in every campaign i play as japan which they always lose said civil war and usually take germany with them who has to fight soviet union and the commonwealth allies and newly freed enemies all by itself. It's so frustrating. The worst part is in this campaign germany wasn't even at war with the soviet union until italy capitulated and commonwealth allies were surrounding it. Keep this in mind. Germany actually declared war on the soviet union when it was in an extremely disadvantageous position. I swear playing as axis and east asian co prosperity sphere you have to hope the other faction doesn't make an insanely stupid mistake and brings down the wrath of everybody onto you. The game really is a race against time. The allies and soviets need to hold on long enough for the usa or soviets to join in and the axis/co-prosperity sphere need to do what they can as fast as they can and be careful about what enemies they make and when.
On one hand i think i'm getting better at japan playthroughs. Strike South doctrine is far more interesting and gives you a lot more factories and resources that you won't need to use in stupid ways.
So lesson learned. Don't call siam into the war since it leaves you in a bad situation. Also Vichy france owning indochina is probably the better choice for docking rights for your navy but hard to say. Also you can get some good resources grabbing british malaya and others while never dealing with a huge front with loads of enemy factions. Another big thing is siam when called into war it takes a lot of land you'd otherwise get factories and resources for. Basically siam called into war isn't worth it.
Gonna take a break from Hearts of Iron 4 for now though sadly and not so sadly. The game is frustrating and is ruining my sleep schedule. With family visiting this weekend and work before that i absolutely can not play any time soon.
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In other news i've been play Tempest Rising and it's been good in the mean time.
Everything went well in my Tempest Dynasty campaign playthrough until i finished my latest mission and the game went to error screen. Hours of gaming and it went to error screen. Gonna maybe see if it keeps doing error screen and if my save is either corrupted and i need to replay the mission or if i should upgrade my computer (it is a very bad computer).
Just started on the remaster of Oblivion. Just made it as far as Weynon Priory after a short stop in the market district to sell some loot. In short, it's lovely. I loved Oblivion back in the day, probably still preferred it overall to Skyrim - and they've given it just the right amount of tweaking and polishing. It still feels like the same game, but it's all just a bit more accessible and graphically it's lovely. Still the same bizarre persuasion mini-game though...
Crispy78 wrote: Just started on the remaster of Oblivion. Just made it as far as Weynon Priory after a short stop in the market district to sell some loot. In short, it's lovely. I loved Oblivion back in the day, probably still preferred it overall to Skyrim - and they've given it just the right amount of tweaking and polishing. It still feels like the same game, but it's all just a bit more accessible and graphically it's lovely. Still the same bizarre persuasion mini-game though...
I'm not saying oblivion isn't a fun game but it's a game people liked over 10 years ago. In fact skyrim was probably 10 years ago. Man gaming must be in a sad state if a remastered game that old with no mods is more popular than anything bethesda has made outside of a remaster in 10 years or so. Just saying a lot of twitch streamers i watch are all playing the remaster which came out of nowhere with nearly no ads.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2025/04/25 01:08:16
Been playing the alpha test for the upcoming Marathon extraction shooter from Bungie. It seems to be getting a divided reaction but i've been enjoying it for what it is. It's like a good foundation or framework for a game but needs more content. But they did limit the amount of stuff available to try out, at launch it should feel more complete.
Currently getting killed by other folks in the new "Forest" map in Insurgency: Sandstorm. Starting to figure it out, but its rough against a tough team.
"Sometimes the only victory possible is to keep your opponent from winning." - The Emperor, from The Outcast Dead.
"Tell your gods we are coming for them, and that their realms will burn as ours did." -Thostos Bladestorm
Also been playing the Oblivion remaster this weekend. Haven't played in at least 15 years, and I'm surprised at how much I'm remembering as I play.
"Through the darkness of future past, the magician longs to see.
One chants out between two worlds: Fire, walk with me." - Twin Peaks
"You listen to me. While I will admit to a certain cynicism, the fact is that I am a naysayer and hatchetman in the fight against violence. I pride myself in taking a punch and I'll gladly take another because I choose to live my life in the company of Gandhi and King. My concerns are global. I reject absolutely revenge, aggression, and retaliation. The foundation of such a method... is love. I love you Sheriff Truman." - Twin Peaks
I've been having a lot of fun with Throne of Bones on PC. Essentially, it's a roguelike deckbuilder, similar to Hearthstone's dungeon mode. The twist is that you're a necromancer, with all sorts of expendable and hideous minions at your command.
Seems well structured, though poison feels a little too easy to exploit right now. But it's characterful, plays quickly, and is well executed.
Klawz-Ramming is a subset of citrus fruit?
Gwar- "And everyone wants a bigger Spleen!"
Mercurial wrote:
I admire your aplomb and instate you as Baron of the Seas and Lord Marshall of Privateers.
Orkeosaurus wrote:Star Trek also said we'd have X-Wings by now. We all see how that prediction turned out.
Orkeosaurus, on homophobia, the nature of homosexuality, and the greatness of George Takei.
English doesn't borrow from other languages. It follows them down dark alleyways and mugs them for loose grammar.
Jumped on the Clair Obscur bandwagon last night and... yeah, if nothing else that opening is something special. I haven't dug too much into the game proper, but it definitely stands out as something special in its opening hour or so.
Also back on Space Marine 2. The prestige system is surprisingly fun despite mostly being an excuse to grind out more missions. The new Trygon level is really solid too, with a great pace and sense of narrative urgency throughout that keeps everyone moving.
As a newcomer to SM2, our first run at the Trygon was very much an extended "um, where are you? Where am I? where are we meant to go? Why can't I see anything, and why is that nothing now eating my face"
Still good fun, but somewhat unfocussed for the first part of the mission.
Please excuse any spelling errors. I use a tablet frequently and software keyboards are a pain!
I kind of enjoy that unfocused opening, but mostly because a lot of the others are so linear. I feel like it separates and reconnects the team in fun ways.
Well, I just got 1 of each. Seems crazy to get anything else.
There's 6 choices though. You only get 4
Now you tell me!
After looking at them though I think I still would have gone with the default 4. Red Mage seems interesting though.
As a kid I usually played the default 4, just swapping between Thief and Monk. As I've gotten to know the game better I've definitely found Red Mage to be a staple. It's surprising how viable everything really is in the game, though it does depend a bit on which version you're playing as they mess with a lot of the quirkier stuff about it pretty often.
Retro's The Spectrum. A wonderful recreation of the original rubber-key computer from the early 80s.
It includes 48 games from the early days of the Sinclair Spectrum's life and a few from the modern homebrew era. Sadly the majority are somewhat useless if one doesn't have the original instructions to go with them, so a bit of hunting around on World of Spectrum is in order. But worth it...
Well, I just got 1 of each. Seems crazy to get anything else.
There's 6 choices though. You only get 4
Now you tell me!
After looking at them though I think I still would have gone with the default 4. Red Mage seems interesting though.
As a kid I usually played the default 4, just swapping between Thief and Monk. As I've gotten to know the game better I've definitely found Red Mage to be a staple. It's surprising how viable everything really is in the game, though it does depend a bit on which version you're playing as they mess with a lot of the quirkier stuff about it pretty often.
Just finished it. Spent like over 50% of the game wandering around aimlessly. Good god, this game does not tell you where to go. All that involuntary grinding was probably a good thing though. The game is super easy until the final boss who was suddenly very difficult.
Cadre Coronal Afterglow w1;d0;l0 
