Upper Canada Regular

Well, I know I was running a bit into the grey conducting myself as a guiding member of Upper Canada Irregulars while technically living in Lower Canada but no longer!  I'm back in Ontario, and more specifically living smack dab along in the midst of Old Upper Canada in what was once Oxford-On-Rideau.  That's pretty much as Upper Canada as anyone could ask for.

What does this mean for the Irregulars?  Probably nothing.  I do have a garage now which could easily be turned into an impromptu game parlour, I have tons of room for tenting.  Even a swimming pool.

New Planets

One of the old classic 4X space games was VGA Planets and it had a pretty big following in the day - the day being back when Ataris roamed the earth and the next generation of Star Trek was but a glimmer in Gene's eye.

It's Still going on.  In fact there is a pretty interesting web site called Planets Nu which is a VGA Planets collector and which has a pretty good interface for HTML only.  I'm telling you it's a lot like Space Empires in many ways which is giving it highest praise indeed.  There seems to be a fairly active community and you can play some trial games for free.  If you like it you can upgrade to the full monty for something like 30$ a year which is peanuts really for a decent game.

If you want to join up use my link so we can both get a 20% bonus on premium days.  Premium days let you run extra games and stuff.  I'm not sure what I'd do with premium days but there you go - its free stuff.

Motorcycle patches

I have been wanting to come up with a decent motorcycle patch to wear for Upper Canada Irregulars.
I think it would be pretty sweet even if there are very few UCI folks with motorcycles.  Looking into it a bit it looks like you can order a custom back patch for about $150 so for about the price of a couple games I could get one made.  What to put on it however?  Obviously it should have "Upper Canada" across the top and "Irregulars" across the bottom in motorcycle patch style.  It needs a snazzy image in the middle.  I'm sure if I had something worked up it would inspire more members to get motorcycles and we could go driving all over the place and invite remarks on how cool it all is to be a rapidly mobile gamer in the modern world.

There is the Knife-fighting Lobster logo which graces this blog and is super cool.  I'm not sure it would work but if it was adapted into a coat of arms it could possibly be interesting.  There is also the good ol' Governor General's flag which was made famous by blowing in Bingo's face during the inaugural UCI photoshoot.  I suppose that could be adapted somehow.

Looking around on the internet I found this pretty cool image from a medal issued after the war of 1812.  That could be interesting, especially reusing the font and incorporating the beaver, the lion and the eagle there.  Maybe make them play Twilight Imperium or Puerto Rico or something.

Read more about it

Not being a graphic artist or any caliber I'd certainly welcome any submissions from the membership. Davie once did up a crazy logo for the group based on the UCI letters and some vague references from me about a RISK pieces, but it was pretty abstract and I'm not sure it would make a good patch. I should see if I can dig it up post it anyway.

TTFN

UCI Spring Update

If you are a member of the Facebook Upper Canada Irregular group you already know two things:

1. There is a UCI spring game in Hamilton first weekend of May.  Well pretty sure there is - I booked time for it anyway.

2. There is a Google+ Ashen Stars game getting underway for every second Thursday starting on April 16.

Also a third thing is that the Space Empires campaign Deos Esse Furiosum is still trucking along - slowly but still trucking.  We are on turn 23 now.  The SE3 Nova Imperium newb game is no longer a newb game being in turn 95 and indeed gotten very interesting.  I haven't done my turn in a little while but I do feel bad about that - see the next point.

Also Elite: Dangerous is now available on Steam.  I haven't played in a bit because I've been either busy or tired from being busy - but its the bee's knees.  Space bees.

I just thought it would be nice to throw out an update.  The social sites are nice and all but it takes a blog post to put a pin in things so they don't wash away under the constant sea of Kitten videos and 20 minute political movements.

Well back to work.

Starships

I'm kind of addicted to Elite: Dangerous at the moment.  It is a real rush to be flying Internet spaceships again and swearing when my ship gets destroyed or when I screw up and get scanned and fined by the police for carrying contraband.  Good times.

However what possessed me to write here was Sid Meiers Starships which I saw on Steam the other day as something that's coming out soon.  iPad, PC and Mac. Turn based strategy. 15$ price tag.  All these are excellent indicators that this game is something to take notice of.  They you look at the screen shot.

Looks like something I would want to try...  Image by 2K

  That is very nice.

The kicker here is that there is no multi-player.  Boooooooooooooosh.  So close but no love  Why does no one understand the need for a good turn based play by email (or web) multi-player space game?  Well back to the Space Empires boys and wait for the next heartbreak.

Mechwarrior Online

Evil Hippy posts:

Mechwarrior online - http://mwomercs.com/game

i was pretty dead set against this as its first person shooter and i don't generally play those games but i have to admit - its pretty fun

currently the entire game is player vs player - you can drop solo and pug it and your team isn't sucketh or join up with teammates and drop together and still hope your team isn't sucketh

matches are timed and are finished within 15 minutes but most don't run over about 8

the one thing missing from the game from early mechwarrior games is the lobby to meet and group and challenge people  - this is currently being handled by teamspeak servers though  - i expect the lobby will be one of the first things finished for community warfare

they give you 12 mechs as trial mechs to try out the different weight classes and get a feel for what you want to pilot

these mechs are stock loadouts and aren't optimal loadouts at all

the real fun comes by buying the mechs you like and customizing them to your playstyle 

 wanna light people up from afar with LRMS - grab a stalker or catapult and go to town

want a nice fast little brawler - grab a hunchback or centurion

want a big slow mech that will killed by light mechs dancing around it - grab an atlas or awesome- this is just my opinion of course

wanna be a dirty clanner - get the hell off of here and hang your head in shame (i say this as i look at buying clan mechs)

anyway - the game is free to play and you grind for cash to afford new mechs

each match pays a set amount based upon if your team wins and what you accomplished in game (spotting assissts for missiles, kill assists - component destruction, saviour kills, kills)

oddly enough kill assists pay more than the actual kill and you will get a lot more xp for spot assists than kill assists

limiting factors in game 

the main limiting factor in game is that new accounts are restricted to 4 mech bays for mechs - basically you can only have four mechs 

however they do occasionally have challenges to win free mech bays such as kill ten opponents using a specified assortment of mechs (ie steiner mechs) and they will include the trial mechs you possess - i'm currently up to 7 mech bays through challenges

there are items that are available only for real cash - certain mech colors - certain mechs but you can still play the game without any of them

you also gain xp by piloting your bought mechs - this xp is spent on pilot upgrades that include making your mech cooldown faster or torso twist easier - torso twisting is essential in this game to spread damage over the entire mech as opposed to just one location as a lucky headshot or cored out center will end your mech really quick  -its also tactical to spread the damage out to the arms if possible and lots of pilots will install no weapons on one arm and use that as a shield - your upper body can turn independently from your lower so you might be running in one direction but firing in another

there will be some new content that will be available soon (soon is relative as this content was supposed to be released years ago during beta tests) with the first of it supposed to be released before year end - this community warfare enhancement will make belonging to a merc corps, or a faction such as liao or those dirty clanners actually have some purpose as there will be specified goals that the team is trying to accomplish

make sure your system will actually handle the game before downloading though as the frame rate per second will make the game unplayable on older machines

if you do download the game - there are three little clickables that popup on the screen under where it says download after you click download

click on the premium time one - the middle one - this will give you a bonus for a day to basically give you 50% more cash and xp on all games after you log in to the forum

they also give a cadet bonus of extra cash and xp for first 25 games played - this will net you anywhere from 8-10 million which is more than enough to buy your first mech - with premium time enabled it will push that total up to 13-14 million if you complete all 25 matches in a day

the best thing about the game though - no fn "dungeon master" basically cheating because his play group defeated the entire attacking army that he thought would send his players into a retreat from their base and then hot dropping an atlas into the middle of a bunch of broken down mechs in need of repair - yes i'm still pissed off about that gaming session after 20+years - i should just let it go - but i won't

Offworld Trading Company

A few months ago I heard about Soren Johnson starting a new indie gaming company on the Game Designers Round Table Podcast.  Soren Johnson is one of the main designers of Civilization III and IV and he was speaking about today's new avenues for crowd financing and digital distribution, e.g. Kickstarter and Steam.  He said it seemed the right time to strike out with a small game company - Mowhawk Games.  I was very excited then when he spoke about his love for M.U.L.E and how his company was working with Stardock Games to publish a loosely M.U.L.E inspired economic RTS called  Mars something something.

Well they have an actual name for it now and it's called Offworld Trading Company.  I am really hoping this will be as good as it sounds.  It sounds kind of like a RTS version of an 18xx game with an electronic brain, network play and pretty Mars backgrounds.  Like M.U.L.E, the narrative I am hearing brings together my love for planetary colonization stories with my love for a good vicious economic trading game.

Oh I do hope it somehow also captures that feeling of boldly colonizing those brave new worlds.
8 players with AI support sounds pretty swell, and if it plays in a couple hours like some glorious mutant StarcraftStockTicker baby, well then I think it will be a go-to game in our little group.  You can buy in now for access to play the alpha, and eventually it will hit Steam Early Access for a wider audience and then come out for real.

So here hoping it's as good as it might be.