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[Chiefwaffles]

The Stargate series (namely SG-1) and XCOM combined.

You'd start off with a small number of teams with meager equipment, and would eventually secure funding from nations of the world for R&D and more men while sending out expeditions to find alien technology and allies. You could eventually learn how to use this technology, and later even replicate your own. Eventually you would be able to have limited manufacturing capabilities for both advanced alien-based human tech, and replications of alien tech as well.
Eventually you'd have to deal with the diplomacy side of things; both keeping hostile forces from invading you through the stargate and space, while negotiating protection and (mainly technology) trading treaties with friendly/neutral alien races, many of which can be much more advanced than you.
At some point, you will be able to capture alien ships and add them to your fleet, manning them and using them for their own expeditions and missions. Once your manufacturing capabilities and technology are both advanced enough, you can start constructing your own ships using any combination of salvaged alien tech, reversed engineered versions of their tech, human tech, and parts gained from friendly alien races.

Late-game, you can start establishing permanent off-world outposts, and maybe even start a minor interstellar empire.

[Dutrius]

So I could build Half-Life 1 levels with these in them?

As long as it's Half-Life: Source and not the original version you can.

[Rose]

Or Black Mesa levels.

Does that have multiplayer?

[TheBiggerFish]

You could knock up a Source map in Hammer like that pretty quickly. The engine supports it, anyway.

EDIT: With these https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Linked_portal_door
EDIT2: And a demonstration of the kinds of things you could do with them https://youtu.be/_xFbRecjKQA

What's Hammer?

A free map building tool for games like Dota 2, CS:GO, TF2, Half-life 1/2, etcetera. You can download it right now if you have Steam.

And Portal 1/2.

[flabort]

How does someone go about finding it on Steam?

[Rose]

You install the source SDK

[flabort]

Ah, found it. Thanks Japa.
For anyone else still stuck:
Library > Tools > Source SDK > Install.

[Dutrius]

Or Black Mesa levels.

Does that have multiplayer?

I believe it does.

[Graknorke]

So I could build Half-Life 1 levels with these in them?

As long as it's Half-Life: Source and not the original version you can.

I think that HL:S uses an older version of source that doesn't support them. The world portals were made specifically for testing Portal 2, so it has to be that engine branch that you're running.
Black Mesa does, I believe.

[Itnetlolor]

I wonder if there are any games (mainly strategy games and the like) that allow or actually encourage a "Play to Lose" strategy in order to win. Basically, using Bad Karma to buy Good Karma (Or taking a rough life to get all the crap that naturally comes with good fortune out of the way first, so upon having said fortune, you're hardened to it, instead of paranoid because of it; or something. :shrug: You know, take in all the bad first, so all that remains for the remainder of your life is nothing but good.). Forge yourself in the fires of Hell to be made into a blade worthy of Heaven's might; so to speak.

Basically, a game where the underdog knows they're at, and always, at a disadvantage, and utilize their consistently bad rankings and the like to screw over a system employed by nothing but winners and people who "Play to Win".

Concept is based on a tactic I actually used plenty of times that actually gave me enough of an upper-hand in plenty of cases (from card games to fantasy football (Last season of FF, I actually won 1st place, by "Playing to Lose". No kidding.)), throwing a spanner into the works of so many winning gameplans that because I screwed things up so badly by intentionally losing, I started to win on a more regular basis. I actually got banned from playing some games because this strategy worked so damn well. It's dissimilar to trolling, in the sense that it intentionally breaks a system, but it still does it within the confines of the ruleset, and is actually a strategy used to balance the odds a bit overall.

For example:
I'm not allowed to play "No Thanks" against my siblings anymore because I intentionally sabotaged my own hand a few times, and played for the big points (points are bad), and because I played so bad, and lucked out on a draw, I negated my bad luck, while also breaking everyone else's potential chains (so instead of 3-8 points being claimed, they instead got more like 16-24 points; while I only collected 26 or so. I did badly, but they did relatively worse. Playing normally the following round actually worked in my favor since they now doubted my intentions from then on, while I was their primary target, forgetting about the other more casual no-tactic players beating them.). Out of 6 players, I placed 3rd in the round I played that tactic, and the 1st place player, who was consistently placing that was in the bottom-3, as well as any other "Play to Win"ner, and anyone else with no real strategy just accepted their new high rank for the time being. The Winners were so pissed off at my "Play to Lose" strategy so much, I was banned from playing it ever again.

We need more games where "Playing to Lose" is encouraged. Losers can win too, Nice Guys can finish first once in awhile, (INSERT OTHER "SOCIAL TABOO" HERE); fuck Status Quo, this is actually pretty fun.

[Graknorke]

I have only ever played 2 games of Hearts where someone successfully shot the moon. And one of them was when I did it. It's really, really hard to do.

[Itnetlolor]

I've tried playing Hearts a few times, but never fully grasped how the game played. But that post did clear a few things up as to how it works a bit more. I might actually try it out again. Been ages since I last played it though.

[BurnedToast]

I wonder if there are any games (mainly strategy games and the like) that allow or actually encourage a "Play to Lose" strategy in order to win. Basically, using Bad Karma to buy Good Karma (Or taking a rough life to get all the crap that naturally comes with good fortune out of the way first, so upon having said fortune, you're hardened to it, instead of paranoid because of it; or something. :shrug: You know, take in all the bad first, so all that remains for the remainder of your life is nothing but good.). Forge yourself in the fires of Hell to be made into a blade worthy of Heaven's might; so to speak.

Pretty much every RPG ever where you have a point buy system for talents/traits/etc? Dump charisma to raise strength, Pick a ton of minor bad traits to buy good traits, etc.

Or games which let you delay level up bonuses, just hold on to the points while you level up to buy the top end traits once they unlock.

There's also games where you can specifically pick handicaps to get better rewards/exp/etc at the end... though I can't think of one offhand I'm sure they exist.

[JimboM12]

A simple idea I'm sure people may have mentioned before but as I was playing Sword of the Stars Complete Edition again (SolForce forever~) it came to me:

A space 4X based on Warhammer 40k.
Each race obeys it's own mechanics of course, and it's surprisingly CK2 inspired as well:

The Imperium is the easiest to learn, but surprisingly hard to master: You are the Segmentum Governor and its your holy duty to get this stretch of space under Imperium control no matter the cost. As this is basically a feudal system: each planet you colonize is AI managed by it's own Planetary Governor. You can direct them towards a goal based on the planet type: go Forge on a barren, metal rich world for production, Agri on regular terran planets for food, Hives on basically any type for population, etc. This also affects your internal standing with the various factions of the Imperium. Obviously building Forge worlds will make the Mechanicus go ga-ga, more-so if you make it one of their fiefdoms. This negates any benefits from the world besides the production of the planet type and you can no longer give orders to the planetary Governor; you can't tell the governor to get cracking on military goods, but you'll still get metals and some military supplies from Forge worlds, etc. It basically becomes random, but still somewhat helpful.
Military is also mostly AI controlled: appoint generals/admirals and order them around. Give your High Admiral a capital ship and give him orders to build up a fleet at the nearest world with a shipyard and watch him go. Give him a basic guideline as to what ships to pick up and watch him fill it up to the designated lines. How many ships he can effectively manage is up to his skills/traits/experience. Appointing a Governor's youngest to direct the High Fleet will result in epic failures. But it will make a certain Noble dynasty quite happy. Ground combat is basically HoI3 on steroids. Ensure your fleet is dropping enough supplies to keep the hordes of guardsman fed and give the general orders and watch him succeed (if he's good) or throw all your military resources into a meatgrinder to no effect (also if he's good but the enemy on the planet is better).
Assuming you're in good standing amongst the various factions, you may get unique offers to aid you on your most holy quest. Directing the Nobility to create grand temples to the Emprah will result in the Sisterhood taking an interest and you'll be asked if you want to donate some land on each planet to them. This will result in some of the potential construction space on a few planets to become unbuildable and instead Convents will pop up. Obviously getting a few psychotic sister platoons assigned to your guard regiments will be a giant boon. Until you suffer the heretic to live (cuz his father's the Governor of your primary Agri world and dislodging him now would cause mass instability as it supplies your major Hives (of course a particularly connected SG can get a few words to a few inquisitors and the problem will magically disappear)) and watch them pounce upon all you've built.

All of that's just for the Imperium. But that's all the rather deep stuff, your first Imperium play through you'll just build up a few planets, get a nice fleet and a few regiments going and watch it all burn as the Dark Eldar stop by for a visit.

Orks got it simpler, cuz they're Orks. Ork clans are very independent and getting them to listen to you means being da biggest and da baddest. Simply crash a rok on any planet and watch the population shoot up. Orkz don't need no supply lines; population per planet takes care of that. Of course now that you got some gitz don't make you the Warboss, you gotta bring that population under control. So once you got the ork population growing, they'll start spawning independent settlements which you gotta knock over to gain control of. Once you got that, it'll start supplying you with the only resource you need: boyz. From there its a simple plan to just load'em up on crude ships and getting them around the segmentum. You might get REALLY lucky and have a Space Hulk show up to ferry your orkz randomly around the map, and you can tick a small setting once you've filled it with boyz, to auto-invade nearby planets. These orks might be outta your control range, but they'll get started on making whatever planet they're on Orky. Then all you gotta do is move an army over there and show'em whoz boss. Once you have a certain total population and are within range of someone other than orks, you can declare WAAAAGGGHHHHHH! on a faction and watch all those independent ork clanz to show up and begin lining up to join the lootin'!

Obviously they're one of the easiest factions to play, but suffer from the clans breaking apart if you aren't in a state of constant warfare with ANYBODY. Literally, go piss off the strongest one of your Nobz, let him and his ork fort rebel, and then curbstomp it. Constantly. You gotta do this all the time if you aren't expanding or warring on the humies/elveseargitz/bluies/bugz.

Got more, but this is enough for now.

[NullForceOmega]

That sounds like a pretty solid foundation for a 40K 4x, it sounds like it would have some interesting depth to it as well.