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[Sirus]

I have a question for people here, because afaik there's no "Ask about random games thread":

Has anyone got Avorion, and if so what's it like? I'm looking for a new space-y game.

So, Avorion.

When you start the game you are in a tiny cube with a couple of mining lasers. You mine some ore, and use it to build yourself a proper ship. Now when I say "build" I don't mean you just pick a hull out of a menu; you build it, block by block, making sure to include various systems like solar panels, batteries, engines, crew quarters, etc. You can make it look however you like. You get various turrets and place them where you wish. If you're struggling to make ships that are functional and/or look good, there are a variety of player-made ships you can download and add to the game.

Your goal is to make it to the center of the galaxy, and you're way out on the fringes. The galaxy is in a big grid of star systems, a good couple hundred systems per side (possibly more). As you near the center you will face more powerful foes, but you will also be able to mine more advanced ores which unlock new ship systems in addition to generally being better than the old ores. You will need bigger and more powerful ships to face these challenges, but fortunately you don't have to go it alone.

Very shortly into the game you unlock the ability to build extra ships which are controlled by the AI. They can follow basic commands like "follow me" on their own, but if you find and hire officers to run these extra ships you can give them advanced orders.
Want a section of unknown space scouted, with points of interest and approximate ore yields reported to you? An officer can do that.
Want a mining vessel or two to gather and refine ores before returning the product to you? Officers.
Want trade ships to run cargo between inhabited systems for profit? Officers.
Want combat-oriented ships to escort the above so they don't get picked off by pirates? Yes, you can do that too.

After a while you have your own little faction flying around. You can put them to work for a period of real-life time, gather them up when they're done, order them to other sections of space or have them follow you to uncharted territory. And during all of this you still have your own ship to fly around, upgrade, and get into trouble with.

It's not without flaws; the game starts struggling if you have too many officers flying around in too many areas, and even with AI assistance mining makes up a lot of time if you want bigger and more capable vessels. Also, when entering new sections of the galaxy closer to the core you can get slapped hard by upgraded foes. Fortunately it's nearly impossible to lose too much progress; your bank of refined ores is always safe, and if your ship is destroyed you just go back to your tiny metal cube until you get back to a shipyard. You can even pay credits to have your destroyed ships recovered and repaired.

Basically, there's a lot to do but very little plot or structure to make you do anything. If you're fine with games like Elite: Dangerous where you can just buzz around space for a few hours, making money and doing odd jobs, you're probably going to like Avorion. And, unlike Elite, you can do it in a space battleship rather than in a dinky fightercraft.

[Frumple]

This is how you do a starting mission. I'm not sure how the rest of it's going to play out, but the gameplay's solid in the first few minutes and this is a narrative I can get behind.

The way it seems to be playing out is that it will bloody destroy you. There's metaprogression, and while it seems like you can win the missions without it, it is extremely not easy without the boosts involved, and from what I'm seeing even with them. The tutorial mission is pretty comfortable, but the breaks immediately come off even in the very first mission after it. This game is trying to kill you, and it is entirely willing to throw a fifty strong mixed brigade of artillery, wunderwaffen wheel ram things, tanks, rocket barrages, plasma cannons, other mechs, turrets, all at you at the same time while you have to stay in a limited area and just be like, "Figure this out yourself, fresh meat".

It's actually kinda' refreshing because after getting my shit pushed in about five times and with effectively no bonuses (I had unlocked a weapon and that's about it), I almost did figure it out and get nearly to the end of the first proper level. Almost.

...

Anyway, advice for anyone interested in trying it, the translation's a little scuffed so I can't tell for sure, but it seems a lot like there's something of a time pressure in, at least, the first level. If you lollygag too much, game will flash a red message at you and drop the angry fist of god down in the form of dozens (and that is not "a dozen", that is dozens, as in several of them) of enemy reinforcements -- when you're probably taking a good little bit just to kill one or two. So don't stop to smell the roses, the faster you get through the less likely you're going to be jumped on by like literally an entire nazi armored division. The whole damn thing.

Well, at least on normal. It may be different on easy, I'unno. Haven't tried it yet. I'm deffo having fun, if nothing else, this is pretty solid mecha twinstick. Visuals are pretty good, there's buildings to blow up and stomp on, handling and aiming and whatnot is workhorse functional, there's a lot of pretty good design going on here, outside of maybe the difficulty cliff.

E: Also, when you murder enemy mechs, you get an upgrade choice: If you see minions, get minions, especially if it offers you a tank. Despite being a big stompy mech with big stompy mech guns, what you really need is the power of friendship to soak up bullets and shoot things for you. Both of those, real bad.

[Great Order]

I have a question for people here, because afaik there's no "Ask about random games thread":

Has anyone got Avorion, and if so what's it like? I'm looking for a new space-y game.

So, Avorion.

When you start the game you are in a tiny cube with a couple of mining lasers. You mine some ore, and use it to build yourself a proper ship. Now when I say "build" I don't mean you just pick a hull out of a menu; you build it, block by block, making sure to include various systems like solar panels, batteries, engines, crew quarters, etc. You can make it look however you like. You get various turrets and place them where you wish. If you're struggling to make ships that are functional and/or look good, there are a variety of player-made ships you can download and add to the game.

Your goal is to make it to the center of the galaxy, and you're way out on the fringes. The galaxy is in a big grid of star systems, a good couple hundred systems per side (possibly more). As you near the center you will face more powerful foes, but you will also be able to mine more advanced ores which unlock new ship systems in addition to generally being better than the old ores. You will need bigger and more powerful ships to face these challenges, but fortunately you don't have to go it alone.

Very shortly into the game you unlock the ability to build extra ships which are controlled by the AI. They can follow basic commands like "follow me" on their own, but if you find and hire officers to run these extra ships you can give them advanced orders.
Want a section of unknown space scouted, with points of interest and approximate ore yields reported to you? An officer can do that.
Want a mining vessel or two to gather and refine ores before returning the product to you? Officers.
Want trade ships to run cargo between inhabited systems for profit? Officers.
Want combat-oriented ships to escort the above so they don't get picked off by pirates? Yes, you can do that too.

After a while you have your own little faction flying around. You can put them to work for a period of real-life time, gather them up when they're done, order them to other sections of space or have them follow you to uncharted territory. And during all of this you still have your own ship to fly around, upgrade, and get into trouble with.

It's not without flaws; the game starts struggling if you have too many officers flying around in too many areas, and even with AI assistance mining makes up a lot of time if you want bigger and more capable vessels. Also, when entering new sections of the galaxy closer to the core you can get slapped hard by upgraded foes. Fortunately it's nearly impossible to lose too much progress; your bank of refined ores is always safe, and if your ship is destroyed you just go back to your tiny metal cube until you get back to a shipyard. You can even pay credits to have your destroyed ships recovered and repaired.

Basically, there's a lot to do but very little plot or structure to make you do anything. If you're fine with games like Elite: Dangerous where you can just buzz around space for a few hours, making money and doing odd jobs, you're probably going to like Avorion. And, unlike Elite, you can do it in a space battleship rather than in a dinky fightercraft.

Appreciate this, but I decided to bite the bullet and give it a go anyway.

After about 45 minutes I was just... Intensely bored. Decided to get a refund given that.

[Robsoie]

I've been busy with Gladius: Relics of War, going actually through a battle as space marines vs necron vs orks vs imperial guards and so far it had been really great.

I increased the game pace setting (that decide how much turns it takes to build things) when i created this skirmish and it has changed the dynamics as the many fights over the map have involved a lot more troops and it somehow feels more action and there's a sense of urgency in deploying your squads better.   
After playing on low difficulty level to learn since i got the game, i also upped it on this one and it seems it made a very noticable difference as i found the AI competent enough as it fields good armies and does not send isolated unit to a stupid death anymore like before (oh and it now fields more hero troops too instead of extremely rarely getting one).

After making an early breakthrough in the center of the map and nearly destroying early the necrons (destroyed one of their tomb base and was close to get the 2nd one annihilated), i was forced to retreat as i had moved a bit too much toward the south and as the center was starting to become a contested zone by the 2 other factions, each coming from a side was making the situation as me getting hammered everywhere. Basically it felt i had the big target on my back. 

Retreating a bit away allowed to push those factions into fighting each other, giving me time to redeploy elsewhere to strike specifically the ork faction really hard on its side. I really wanted to hit them because it was mostly the crazy amount of them that forced me to retreat as they weren't kidding.

But fighting them back and counter attacking from another side once they became busy with necrons (that made a surprising comeback) was the most fun i had with that game. 

Really excellent wargame, even without getting any DLC i don't feel i am missing anything or feeling "some feature that should be there" aren't in order to sell more DLC.

EDIT : took 183 turns but i won this one !
Very happy as it was a very fun battle with lots of back & forth until i finally got rid of the Orks then could destroy the Necrons and Imperial Guards that were fighting each other.

Spoiler: victory (click to show/hide)

[Iduno]

I've been playing Bloons 6 lately, a monkey-based tower defense game with a real high skill ceiling due to having a lot of options (each type has 3 ability trees, you can build up to level 5 of one path and up to level 2 of another, with increasing costs).

One of the achievements I was trying to get was to do a certain number of maps using only the restricted teams (which show up randomly, so not all maps have them at all times). You can use 3 towers only, and need to defeat the normal challenges, which usually a single type of tower can't handle.

I kept getting the set of towers: ninja (fast, can see camo), monkey buccaneers (can only build on water, semi-expensive, has a lot of options), and mortar (slow, large footprint, can do a lot of damage to whichever enemy it actually hits).

Monkey buccaneers can hit both camo and lead, which means they can also hit camo-lead bloons, which are some of the more annoying ones. Trying to clear this achievement means I've also gotten the "build military monkeys only" challenge mode (and also alternate rounds challenge mode) by building a 0-2-2 (maybe 0-3-2 for the round 40 MOAB) ship to handle that, and a 5-0-2 (fires fast, small planes that cover the screen, and can still hit camo). Upgrading the fast-shooter buccanneer to aircraft carrier increases the attack speed of all flying and water-based towers, which is the 2 I built. And because it's only 2 towers, I can afford to get to level 5 for that upgrade around round 55, more than in time for the round 60 MOAB and the round 58 camo-leads.

[Kagus]

Man, Bloons... I dunno, I still think it's kinda wild seeing the legacy of a Flash classic staying strong after all this time.

I kinda miss those days, y'know.

[Folly]

I miss Tower Defense games in general.
Ever since Dungeon Defenders and Orcs Must Die went bad, I've been waiting for a new Tower Defense game to replace them, but there just doesn't seem to be enough interest in the genre to justify anything more adventurous than rehashed Flash classics.

[Robsoie]

"X-Morph Defense" wasn't bad at all for a modern take on the tower defense genre, i liked it enough to complete its campaign.
The mix of the tower defense with some bullet hell type of top down shooter gameplay was working surprisingly well. And it was well helped by the spectacular destruction of the buildings of the cities that were used as maps that gave a distaster movie feeling.

[Egan_BW]

The creeper world games have been going strong.

[Cthulhu]

Been playing Wo Long.  Feels like a weird hybrid of Nioh and Sekiro, combat very heavily based around a push-pull stamina mechanic called Spirit, which increases when you do well and decreases when you do bad, and can be spent on special moves that limit the enemy's maximum/minimum spirit.  You get a finisher when an enemy's spirit crashes, and likewise you're stunned when yours crashes.  Magic is fun, more fluid and integrated with the combat than Souls magic usually is.  Based on the Chinese phases, so earth, water, fire, metal, wood, and they counteract each other in that order.  When a water effect hits a fire effect the fire effect disappears, including buffs and stuff.  Can be funny, I've gotten started on invasions using a metal build, which is mostly poison abilities.  Metal kills wood, and most of the good buff spells are wood, so you splash poison around and if the enemy steps in it then it eats all their buffs.

Nioh style pseudo-historical fantasy kind of thing, starts with the yellow turban rebellion and continues there, except Dark Forces are manipulating the chaos for their own Mysterious Agenda, and all that.

[Robsoie]

For those interested in BFME2+RotWK , the Age of the Ring mod released 8.0, a final massive version :
https://www.moddb.com/mods/the-horse-lords-a-total-modification-for-bfme/downloads/age-of-the-ring-version-80

[Iduno]

Man, Bloons... I dunno, I still think it's kinda wild seeing the legacy of a Flash classic staying strong after all this time.

I kinda miss those days, y'know.

Yeah, it's better than the old tower defense games, but you can still see where it came from.

[nenjin]

I blame SssethTzeentch. He did a video on it a while ago and I was like "WTF is this game that looks like a throwaway from the early 2000s?"

[Iduno]

I blame SssethTzeentch. He did a video on it a while ago and I was like "WTF is this game that looks like a throwaway from the early 2000s?"

Being free on Epic a bit over a month ago didn't hurt, either. I'm willing to pay $0 for a game most of the time.

[Chiefwaffles]

It's been seeing a very steady growth in popularity over the last few years if not more, yeah.