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.

Rails and Colossus

I finally looked up the java program that was  that was recommended to me at Hammercon 3 by our fiendish enabler friend K.S.


Rails is a java implementation of a bunch of 18xx games and I'm interested to try it out.  It either has or will
have play-by-email according to the developer page.  I am not sure it would be as much fun playing this kind of game offline without being able to curse and cajole the other players but it would be interesting to try.  Otherwise network play is the ticket here, much like Colossus/Titan having a computer do the calculation and item handling should speed up a long game into a reasonable evening length one.  Just managing the paper money will shave an hour off the game probably.  This client supports the most popular variant 1830 but also the Southern Ontario 1856 version we like so much.  Nothing like playing 1856 in Hamilton and then walking outside to see those old tracks snaking through the city.


As for Colossus, well that is a really good implementation and I have had fun playing it in the past.  Good interface and good network support.  I don't think I ever lost connection or had any problems with playing online.  Also it is a great way to learn Titan if you haven't played.  

Titan the Monster Slugathon - that should be enough to melt the hardest of hearts.

Words from an evil hippy

I was advised to post this:

gimme some permissions to that site or post this for me: 

i find this game interesting as its really empire building with lots of crap to do and how you want to play it

http://www.imperiumnova.com:8080/Imperium/

wanna run all political and try and become emperor - you can 

wanna run like we did in our early days of eve online, or at least my early days anyway,  moving goods around for profit - you can do that to but watch out where there are monopolies on trade or you can have people get feud scores against you and come fight you 

wanna be all covert ops and steal info, money or even assassinate someone - you can do that as well 

wanna mine for geological deposits - you can do that

wanna be an explorer and find new planets - yep you can do that as well 

wanna team up and kill the poohbahs - send me a message -  oh wait - different game - you can't do that here 

The  level of involvement is based on what you feel like really and as long as you haven't pissed someone off by attacking them first or your covert operations against them haven't been discovered you are golden to do just do your thing 

downsides: 

you don't really get to choose where you end up - the game discourages being able to set up with your friends as you will end up getting thrown into a random self contained galaxy with other players- this prevents asshats from running a whole galaxy themselves- however an alliance feature can still make asshats do this but these asshats wouldn't know each other in rl 

there doesn't seem to be a lot of players in this game (my galaxy only has 16 currently) so opportunities to do things are there but any really old house or a subscriber is going to have an advantage 

subscriber has an advantage due to being able to work in more than just two spheres of influence (im currently runnin psionic and geological) but being able to make more money n other spheres gives you more options to accumulate wealth etc 

old houses will have advantage of time really - their covert ops guys have been around longer meaning they aren't rookies like yours will be so they get bonuses to do missions - same goes for their military - the only way to really hurt an old house is to do it politically from what i can tell and it helps if you have an alliance backing your politics to get senators elected and cause some chaos

Advanced Civilization

I was pretty jazzed when I found this link recently and I am eager to do a bit more research into it.  Some fine and noble souls have build an Advanced Civilization site.  The game takes about 8-12 hours to play in meat space so I'd expect the computer game taking a similar amount of time.  Playing over the computer would have advantages, not least being that it appears games save their state so you can play it over a couple sessions.   After a quick eyeballing it looks to be pretty good, there is even an option to pause your game if people are going to be on vacation or whatnot - a big plus with you sketchy lot.  Requires you create an account to play the game, but that's pretty normal and I don't see how you could do it otherwise.  There is an indexed help system you can check out first, and looks like a PDF of the game rules from the box.

Playing Advanced Civilization at Hammercon 2013

I love me some Civilization so this might be a real find.  I'd be very interested in doing a 8 player game of this over a couple nights.

Conqueror!

There is a pretty nice little web based game called Conqueror! that might be fun to play.  Its real time medieval European war game with elements of Risk and Diplomacy/Machiavelli. Games take between 1-4 hours depending on number of players and this game will support a pile of players and AI opponents.  The turns are submitted and executed in a semi simultaneous manner so there isn't a long wait for all your opponents to move before you can go.  It's very well done and the rules are in that sweet spot between easy and complex so that it is interesting but you don't need to devote a month to running simulations in order to compete.  You can set the play time and player limits, set up open or locked games, advertise for players in the lobby and do all those other fine management things.  You can even log in with a guest account if you are one of them hippies who doesn't like to have any long term commitments.

Preview of the Conqueror! UI I snapped from the help system.

I played this as a shockwave flash game a couple years ago, but they have redone the interface in HTML 5 now so it should run on anything.  I would be down with playing this some evening for sure.

M.U.L.E

M.U.L.E (see wikipedia) really is a special game, probably the first original 'boardgame' that I played on a computer.  I say original because there was always checkers and cards and chess and things that had been translated over.  I mean remember Archon?  That game was awesome, but it wasn't a whole-cloth new strategy game.  M.U.L.E was a good game and was a hell of a lot of fun on the Commodore 64.

Human for the win.

And it's still a good game, although someone please tell me why it isn't available on the Playstation or Wii marketplace?  What is up with consoles not having this game when there are 10 versions of eMonolopy out?
There was recently a M.U.L.E game on the iPad and I bought it, but I didn't like the interface.  It felt weird and the art was a bit off in my opinion.  I do like art and the the interface for Planet M.U.L.E on the PC.  It plays much like the original except for the joystick, which is a shame because the joystick was a good bit.  Planet M.U.L.E is free but you need to make an account which some people are weird about.    Its a 4 player game and pretty short as strategy computer games go - maybe an hour or so.  I say go get it and we can play a game.  There is even a spectator and tournament feature if you are feeling like you can bring it.

Irregulars Assemble!

I got really sick of flinging around emails and trying to remember who was interested in what and then getting it wrong so I figured that a central place to meet up would be best.  We did this a bit on my old private web server for all my hoodlum friends many years ago and we did it again on Facebook, and one time I had a Left 4 Dead server running with a web page on it.  Oh the memories.

Anyway this is the lowest common denominator.  No registration required, no fancy instructions.  If you use the subscription features you can get updates of posts here.  It will also probably post to G+ if anyone monitors that.  I'm not going to try to add too many gizmos and doo-dads on here but I will add some if its useful.  A calendar might be nice - maybe some polls or whatnot.  Mostly I wanted a place to post information to the group about games we like, games we might want to like, games we don't like and most important of all - games we are playing with each other.   Maybe you are interested in posting pictures of a recent game you played.  Maybe someone wants to write a series of posts about the time they played Civilization II or a dissertation on why everyone should give the ET videogame another chance.  Someone might like to post a game review or make comments on one someone else has written.  We can put up pages for the longform games we are currently playing so we can slag each other about it.

If you want author rights to this blog let me know, otherwise some of us will publish posts about stuff and the rest of us will use the comments to make stupid remarks.  If you want me to add a link to your crappy blog or crappy website or crappy facebook page then let me know.