Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Kagus]

I also liked how running contraband could actually be profitable for once... If you knew the right channels.

I remembered the one wormhole you end up taking during the story, and that there was a rebel/criminal/whatever base on the other side of that which sold delicious drugs for a cheap price... Well, the wormhole goes both ways, so you could load up there, pop right back through it into the heart of civilized, patrolled space and offload at the pirate base in the asteroid field for something like a 3-400% profit. Less than a 10 minute run, I think over $100k per circuit on the big freighters.

Trying to do stuff like that through the normal gate network would be both incredibly risky due to law enforcement crawling everywhere, and also take ages because of how the network is linked up. If you know the back doors and aren't averse to making a quick manual detour through an asteroid field, you can make the big bucks...

And as I learned later, that's nowhere even near the most profitable run based on time! There's another one in Rheinland space that makes a ludicrous profit, but you have to make a quick jaunt through controlled areas in order to make it work. I liked my run because I'd worked it out on my own, and also because it was completely behind the scenes. Not even random patrols would fly out that far.

[Niveras]

I remember a similar game to Freelancer, called Dark Star One. It had a similar premise, you're a single ship flying around a galaxy with a simplified economy. Though, in this case you command a single special unique evolving ship, rather than trading and flying different hulls.

But I don't remember enough details to say how it compares to Freelancer, or how it was received critically. I think the developer was German and, although it was translated (may even have had full voice acting), there were some weird Engrish phrases.

.

I remember a special post-endgame system in Freelancer than involved an enormous object (a sphere of matter larger than the system it was passing "through") barrelling through dust cloud. The actual system itself - stations and other points of interests, not sure about planets - trailed in its wake. Was quite a sight to consider as a young teen. I'm not sure such a thing could actually exist without being a star or causing all kinds of other considerations gravity-wise.

[Mephisto]

I have been reminiscing about an ancient WildTangent game from like '01-'03 - Dark Orbit. Distinct from (and I'm pretty sure completely unrelated to, except for the name) Dark Orbit Reloaded.

You found yourself stranded on a planet with hostile lifeforms so you commandeer a mining vessel and do some not-quite-twinstick arcadey-shooty action interspersed with filling up your cargo hold with resources and shuttling them back to base so you can buy ship upgrades.

Is anyone aware of games that would be at least marginally closer to this old-ass game? I might have to fire up Transcendence again just for a rough facsimile or see if I can find an old virus-laden installer and play in a VM.

[Frumple]

Damn, I remember that game. One of the best things I could get away with playing during computer class back in high school.

So far as twinstick+resource gubbling, a more contained thing could be Gerty. Not as wandering about or slow as dark orbit, but there's some rough similarities.

[Mephisto]

Gerty

Cool. I'll be sure to check that out tonight. And it's one of those rare games released in 2018 that has a demo, so bonus points.

[nautilu]

Which games are "losing is fun" like DF? I know Rimworld, Disco Elysium, most roguelikes are, but what other games have losing as a mechanic and not just an end game? All genres.

[A Thing]

Which games are "losing is fun" like DF? I know Rimworld, Disco Elysium, most roguelikes are, but what other games have losing as a mechanic and not just an end game? All genres.

Kenshi springs to mind. The game requires you to get beat up to become better. It's very hard to permanently die, but you can be set back with limb losses and/or being enslaved. There's a pretty big thread on it here if you want to ask more there.

[Iduno]

Which games are "losing is fun" like DF? I know Rimworld, Disco Elysium, most roguelikes are, but what other games have losing as a mechanic and not just an end game? All genres.

Dungeonmans is like what people expected from Rogue Legacy.

You play a roguelike that you could win the first time through (there is an achievement for it), but you won't. When you die, half of your stat upgrades go to all future characters, as well as some potions being identified (if you brought stuff back to the alchemy lab) and/or scrolls identified (for turning in skill books you don't want to use). You can take equipment you don't want to the blacksmith, who smashes it into raw materials, which you can use to buy hammers. The hammers allow you to apply one ego (flaming, get some health back on killing an enemy, slightly higher magic power, etc.) that you have unlocked by smashing equipment (you can only get egos that you've found and given to the blacksmith). If you find your corpse, you get the weapon your were carrying with a small bonus, and a small stat boost. Plus, it's got stupid humor, and special moves are somewhat animated. Money exists, but is only sometimes useful. It took me longer than I'd like to admit to get the joke when I saw

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Nurphe Bats, which fly around and replace all of the egos from one piece of equipment with a curse, and declare that it's perfectly balanced.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Me sass-talking a boss, and in the background you can see where my last character was killed. https://i.postimg.cc/4dJbDkTJ/King-Huh.png

[Kagus]

That's one of the things that annoys me about Noita... It's got the random sudden death angle of roguelites (and indeed, many of these deaths will likely be under comedically stupid circumstances!), and it's always permanent. Even attempting to savescum will generally bork more than it saves.

...but the general flow and build of the game greatly rewards slow, methodical, extremely careful and thorough play. A basic win can easily take 5-6 hours. An advanced win, if the stars even align in such a way to make it possible for that seed, can take at least three times as long!

And at any point during all of that, you could just die. There could be an enemy offscreen that finds a random wand and uses it on a rat, causing an explosion so large that the blast zone includes the screen you're on, and you die without ever having seen or known about the cause of your gibbing.

And when you die? That's just it. There's almost zero meta progression. Your next character won't be stronger or have better wands or access to new perks or anything like that, it's as if your painfully slow and steady previous run never even happened.

The only progression that carries over is a few special spell orbs that are guaranteed to contain specific spells when you find where they're hidden. It doesn't actually unlock them, since at this stage in development everything is already unlocked, but it is guaranteed to be that spell.

And once you've picked it up once, every subsequent run it will be replaced by a health-up, whether you win or not. No spell ever again, unless you reset your progress. That's currently the only thing that carries over from one run to another, and it's more of an adjustment than a direct upgrade.


... anyways, rant aside, there is of course that old puzzle platformer Life Goes On. Slightly different interpretation of what you're saying, but it definitely counts for having death as a mechanic for progress.

[nautilu]

Good suggestions. Sword of the Stars: the Pit and Streets of Rogue have after death progression. Kenshi for sure. I wish more games would build on past playthroughs, like ruins on the map. Or ranked your attempts, like the old pirates games.
Maybe Kerbal counts too since losing is fun. Any others?

[Reelya]

Well Shadow of Mordor was pretty famous for the after-death mechanic, the Nemesis System.

[Iduno]

Well Shadow of Mordor was pretty famous for the after-death mechanic, the Nemesis System.

Ah, yes. Eugenics through killing yourself. Good times. I think I got one that was immune to arrows, sneak attacks, and could only be damaged when knocked down.

I liked that game. You don't get up to the real crazy stuff heroes out of old legends did, but killing off hordes of enemies feels like what the D&D fighter should be, if people would quit complaining that doing useful things isn't realistic in a game about magic.

[Kagus]

Ah, yes. Eugenics through killing yourself. Good times. I think I got one that was immune to arrows, sneak attacks, and could only be damaged when knocked down.

It was possible for orcs to form who could only be damaged by either utilizing their weakness to a particular animal (which was difficult if the orc hung out in an area where that animal didn't exist and couldn't be lured there), or by the miniscule chip damage on your stun attack. Those were fun.

Ranged immune, sneak immune, melee immune, grab immune... Incredibly rare, but so much fun to mess with.


Of course, I believe they could also be killed by other orcs, so there was finally a reason to actually use that particular option. The Nemesis system is barrels of fun just as it is, but it's got the potential to be so much more than it was in either SoM or SoW...

[Micro102]

I've found that I enjoy building and maintaining large structures. I like viscera cleanup detail, I like playing an engineer on SS13, cleaning up the constant damage and preparing for disaster, and I like building huge themed buildings in minecraft. The problem with each, in order, is:

1) It's just cleaning and it's for no purpose other than cleaning

2) The round ends too early. I'm ready to build an entire space station if need be, but the need never arises and I never get my fix.

3) After I finish the themed building, it's pretty useless. It looks nice but doesn't have any real use that a 3 high wall of dirt and some torches couldn't afford.

So I can only imagine how many hundreds of hours I could put into a game that is extremely technical, and requires a ton of resources and some degree of actual engineering to build massive structures that are required to reach end/late game content.

I expect someone to answer with factorio so i'm just going to head that off and say that I already beat it and the mods making it even more complicated didn't do it for me.

[Il Palazzo]

^ there are these two games I've on my wishlist, that I might even play some day. They could tick some boxes for you.

One's called Stormworks. It's about building vehicles from blocks and parts (the creative building part), that you then use to rescue people at sea (the purposeful 'cleaning').
The other is Space Engineers, which looks to me like more physics-oriented Minecraft in space, with some reasons to build shit other than it looking cool.