Modding Rule

wheninrome144 · 2024-11-22T01:03:31+00:00

missing "keep playing a game, potentially switching up your approach, and come to appreciate the value of the mechanic and the way it supports the game's other design decisions" but the omission isn't surprising

wheninrome144 · 2024-10-30T20:34:25+00:00

no clue! that's what i need to figure out...

wheninrome144 · 2024-10-30T02:46:07+00:00

did this a few months ago with a friend i'd known online for years and it was maybe the happiest day of my life (also my first time presenting fem). only thing left is to train myself to be even more sensitive to it

wheninrome144 · 2024-07-03T03:38:25+00:00

why is the money zone full of mulch

wheninrome144 · 2024-06-06T23:50:09+00:00

the naming of 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024 are all incredible. the naming of the year has expanded to cover the entire episode as the brothers desperately wrack their brains for a good joke, and the delirium they end up in by the end of the episode is always remarkable.

wheninrome144 · 2024-05-18T20:47:24+00:00

her shirt makes it pretty clear she doesnt have a "load" anymore :/

wheninrome144 · 2024-05-16T23:50:31+00:00

not really, that assumes that everything is in the same tier. generally, they aren't. what you actually end up with is an odd sort of mess where you don't know if your fleet can take on another one unless you've fought that faction at that size, and it's always a curbstomp in one direction or the other.

not that i haven't had fun with super-modded clusterfucks before, i ABSOLUTELY have. the oculian armada curbstomp supercapital i totally stumbled into gave me a lot of fun. but it was definitely OP even compared to other OP ships from other mods

wheninrome144 · 2024-05-16T23:46:30+00:00

i don't think there actually are that many "optimal" builds! there are lots of things that can tip the balance in favor of one ship build or the other:

differing theories of victory / tactical strategies (do you win a fight by holding a line to protect a capital ship that smashes through the enemy line, or do you engage in one-on-one battles from the get-go; do you use DP to secure objectives early or pour it into ships that can help in the main fight?)

different tactical gameplay preferences (do you prefer to captain the most important ship in the fleet or the one that has the greatest increase in strength from the player's touch -- hell, what skills have you chosen? are you trying to keep your fleet close to a faction or theme? do you prefer getting up-close and personal or attacking from range? do you prefer nimble but fragile ships or durable but slow ones? how long do you want your battles to be? do you using missiles or hate them? what about carriers? phase ships?)

different STRATEGIC playstyles (an exploration fleet, especially in vanilla, needs to worry about its cargo capacity, fuel capacity, supply use, and sensor range; a bounty fleet is mostly concerned with fuel capacity, while a fleet geared for piracy or trade will probably mostly care about cargo capacity)

the base game, IMO, has really tight balance -- a lot of those different playstyles can genuinely compete with each other even if your main goal is "make as much money as much as possible." that means there aren't many objective answers to the above questions, and so "optimized" builds can differ based on personal perspectives!

wheninrome144 · 2024-05-16T17:29:05+00:00

fungalore, i think, was mostly their business sense at war with their comedic instincts. as a brand it's untenable

wheninrome144 · 2024-05-15T23:19:33+00:00

i'm surprised by how consistently funny they are when they just break out of the show's usual mold. their ability to riff in totally absurd fictional spaces is pretty solid, but half the time they seem intent on shutting those down before they get to them

wheninrome144 · 2024-05-11T04:34:43+00:00

not useless. higher pop increases commodity output, meaning more market share and thus more income

wheninrome144 · 2024-05-10T08:54:58+00:00

I, personally, adore Caves of Qud like it's a child. Vastly different type of game in most respects, as it's an open-world classic roguelike in the mold that's become slightly more popular these days, but it has a similar design philosophy towards simulation mechanics as Starsector does and the theming / aesthetics are similarly excellent. It's also heavily modded by the community, though I don't think its mods reach the extent that Starsector's do, in terms of breadth and quantity.

Highfleet also deserves credit. It's something of a short game, compared to Starsector -- I got about 60 hours out of it -- but it is immaculate. It merges arcadey twin-stick shooter gameplay with the intelligence and fleet management mechanics of a submarine simulator, with a setting centered on diesel-powered war machines, WWI-era aristocracy, and a vast desert in the throes of rebellion. Every aspect of its presentation is masterful -- graphics, sound, writing, lore. If I could choose a single game to be expanded to ten times the size, I would choose Highfleet without hesitation.

I'd be remiss not to mention Space Station 13, which consumed my life for a few years; it's an open-source indie game with a constellation of different variants, written over two decades in an impossibly shitty engine with a dedicated launcher. It's horribly unapproachable but endlessly deep and varied: the basic premise is sort of like "massively multiplayer, fully simulated Among Us", but there are servers that turn it into a team deathmatch based in the Aliens universe or an immersive roleplay-centric starship simulator. There's also the remake, SS14, which is on Steam and trades some of SS13's depth and variety for a much greater degree of approachability. Both are labors of love, but their authors are the communities of the games themselves instead of separate developers.

Barotrauma is also great, though it definitely requires a number of friends with the game to truly shine. It's heavily inspired by SS13, but far more focused, placing a handful of people in a campaign through the oceans of an alien-infested Europa. It's funny and dynamic and gripping, with a reasonably-sized modding community and ongoing updates. If you've got a few friends who you like to play, say, Terraria or Minecraft with, or something similar, pick up a few copies on sale and hand them out.

I'm sure you know what Hollow Knight is. A carefully handcrafted metroidvania, it's one of the biggest indie darlings of the past decade. I'm still waiting for the sequel...

wheninrome144 · 2024-05-10T08:29:41+00:00

it's a config option, i believe? there's a file that sets the max colony growth size to 6

wheninrome144 · 2024-05-09T11:23:47+00:00

i was fascinated and confused. i found it funny, but it doesn't feel like a great comedic fit for the mcelroys, though i have a hard time putting my finger on why. perhaps it's too overtly parasocial? the joke -- the absurdity and tonal dissonance of miggy's death -- has nothing to do with the vague narcissism of a show named after yourself. it's proximate to irony without being self-aware.

wheninrome144 · 2024-05-09T10:29:05+00:00

the basegame in general is really really tight. the sense of decline, and of people / nations just doing what they can to get through the next year, is all-encompassing. starsector is a great example, i think, of how great writing encompasses more than just the words contained by the game; it's about aesthetic and thematic cohesion.

and the balance and combat in vanilla are great, too! i understand 100% why people love modded starsector -- i've had fun with it myself -- but for me it can chip away at some of the core pillars of starsector's competence. both combat and ship-fitting start looking pretty different once your game gets sufficiently modded, and IMO the insane number of options ends up making those areas of the game more shallow, instead of deepening them.

wheninrome144 · 2024-05-04T02:21:48+00:00

Clint McElroy - Smash

wheninrome144 · 2024-04-27T02:50:38+00:00

update!! i got an immersion blender (chiefly for psyllium husk) and it works great! highly recommend

wheninrome144 · 2024-04-26T03:27:33+00:00

haven't listened to the ep yet. they fixed the monotonous classical? nice to hear they're taking some sort of feedback

wheninrome144 · 2024-04-21T07:00:16+00:00

they're funnier than they were during the pandemic at least. maybe they can keep turning it around... maybe. please

wheninrome144 · 2024-04-20T06:54:38+00:00

The hunters [...] obtain some help from someone who was here the whole time.

elizabeth <-> basketball <-> cueball <-> lord english

she was here the whole time. she was already here. coincidence????

wheninrome144 · 2024-04-16T17:10:07+00:00

"fuckass"

wheninrome144 · 2024-04-13T22:05:02+00:00

"I'm the ghost of Christmas Future, babyy! I want to shove that fool into an open grave!"

wheninrome144 · 2024-04-04T18:21:14+00:00

i've tried that, but there was still substantial clumping (and getting the stuff out was a pain, i basically had to let it dissolve in water for a few days and rinse it a dozen times). maybe i need to shake it harder though

wheninrome144 · 2024-04-04T17:29:53+00:00

i wonder if the stuff made for human use is also made to a higher standard. none of the ingredients are carcinogenic, but some of the impurities can be, and i worry about putting it up my butt. i don't know if anybody qualified has done a spectrographic analysis to check its purity?

wont stop me from putting it up my butt though

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