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Videogames

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Videogames

Owned by Nathan Wailes
Last updated: May 04, 2025
151 min read

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Tasks

@Nathan Wailes: Write an article you can post to gamasutra proposing that gaming sites get revenue by being paid as consultants while the developers are making the game.
@Nathan Wailes: Write an article about how game reviews need to evolve. I think a Netflix-style recommendation system with Amazon-style reviews would probably be better. I think Steam already kind of does that. But I'm not sure how well it handles new releases.

Games I want to play through next

  • Background:

    • If you have limited gaming time, I think it’s maybe more fun to stick with a single game at a time so you maintain the muscle-memory of how to play. I also think it may be most-fun to just do one scenario per day.

    • I’m not sure how I want to handle games or series that have huge amounts of content. A common problem I have with games is knowing when I’ve basically seen everything and should move on.

  • List:

    1. Sims

      1. Land

        1. Tank

          1. iM1A2 (1997) - https://www.myabandonware.com/game/im1a2-abrams-dl4

          2. Steel Beasts Pro PE

      2. Naval

        1. Surface

          1. Destroyer Command (2002)

            1. https://www.myabandonware.com/game/destroyer-command-e7j

          2. Task Force 1942

        2. Submarine

          1. Aces of the Deep

      3. Air

        1. A-10 Tank Killer (1989, Amiga)

        2. Falcon 1 / MC / 3.0 / 4.0 / BMS

        3. ATC

          1. Air Command 3.0

    2. Tactical:

      1. Scourge of War (active)

      2. Jane’s Fleet Command (active)

      3. Radio Commander

      4. Radio General

      5. Full Spectrum Warrior

      6. Graviteam Tactics

      7. Combat Mission

      8. Ultimate General series (Gettysburg → Civil War → ?)

      9. Close Combat series

      10. Armored Brigade series

      11. Battle Group Commander

      12. Naval

        1. Red Storm Rising (1988)

      13. RTSes:

        1. Regiments - single-player only, apparently the most accessible of the three, units are represented as platoons vs single units

        2. WARNO - more complex than Regiments, has multiplayer, the spiritual successor to Wargame (it’s by the same devs)

        3. Steel Division 2 - less accessible than WARNO

        4. Wargame: Red Dragon - the least accessible(?)

    3. Operational:

      1. Unity of Command

      2. Command Ops 2

      3. John Tiller’s Panzer Campaigns

      4. Patriot (1993)

      5. WEGO World War II

      6. Gary Grigsby’s War in the East

    4. Strategic:

      1. Strategic Command: Civil War

      2. Crusader Kings Complete

      3. Victoria: Revolutions

      4. Total War series

        1. Shogun: Total War

        2. Medieval: Total War

      5. Grand Tactician: The Civil War

      6. AGEOD games

        1. Civil War 2

        2. Birth of America 2

    5. Other:

      1. Darklands

    6. Super-categories:

      1. Rally-The-Troops.com games

      2. John Tiller games

My thoughts on misc videogame-related topics

Why are so many videogames about war / shooting / fighting?

  • Most sorts of diversion in men, children, and other animals, are in imitation of fighting. - Jonathan Swift

  • I think it's an instinct in people and animals to enjoy games that are really just practice for fighting.

What I like and dislike about videogames (in general)

What I like

  • ...

What I dislike

  • Not being able to easily take the actions I want to take in the game.

    • I find this to be a big problem in games where I'm controlling lots of units, where I feel like I should be able to just "tell" the units what to do, but instead I need to navigate annoying menus.

      • Ex: OFP / Arma, Total War, Combat Mission

      • I suspect that this problem will go away once voice recognition / interpretation becomes really, really good.

    • This can also be a problem when trying to play an FPS with a controller rather than with a keyboard and mouse.

    • I found this to be a problem in Rocket League, where I couldn't do things that would be easy in real life (like "pass to that guy over there").

  • An unpleasant learning curve / progression (I guess another way of putting it is "the game is too hard").

    • Examples:

      • TIS-100 puzzles that feel too hard.

  • Boring gameplay (aka "the game is too easy"?)

  • A lack of feeling of reward when I achieve something.

    • I like the end-mission screens in Hotline Miami.

    • IIRC Knights doesn't have much special that happens when you solve a puzzle.

  • Bad and/or repetitive music

    • I suspect getting sick of a game's music may actually make me not want to play the game anymore, even if I don't consciously realize it's the music making me feel that way.  I'll just be considering what to play, think about the game in question, have a gross feeling in my stomach, and decide to play something else.  I suspect that gross feeling in my stomach may sometimes be caused solely by the game's bad, repetitive music.

Visualizing abstract depictions of military units

  • ABCT Visualization - This is a great visualization of what an Armored Brigade Combat Team actually looks like, both if you had it in a field but also when it’s moving through real terrain via roads.

  • TODO:

    • CMx1 squads

    • different NATO counters

    • different NATO force-size indicators

    • Civil War units (regiments, etc.)

Platforms

DOSBox

  • To launch a game, drag the game's EXE onto a DOSBox shortcut.

  • To create custom DOSBox settings for a game:

    1. Copy a shortcut to DOSBox into the game's folder.

    2. Create an empty dosbox.conf text file in the folder.

    3. add -conf "full-path\to\dosbox.conf" to the DOSBox shortcut.

    4. To launch the game, drag the game's EXE file onto the modified DOSBox shortcut.

  • Custom settings I used for ATAC:



    • [cpu] cycles = fixed 10000 # use this to get the framerate of the game higher [sdl] fullscreen=true # Sets the game to switch into fullscreen mode immediately. fullresolution=desktop # I don't understand what this does. #fulldouble=true output=overlay windowresolution=1440x1080 # Sets the resolution when the game is running in windowed mode [render] aspect=true scaler=none



  • Issues I'm having:

    • I can't get ATAC to have crisp graphics in fullscreen mode, even though it looks right in windowed mode at the same resolution.

PC

  • One thing to keep in mind with PCs is upgradability: after a few years you may want to buy a new graphics card, more RAM, etc.  If you buy a laptop or a PC that's custom-built to be small, you may not be able to do any upgrades.

Desktops

Monitors

General info
What resolution to aim for
Screen tearing

  • Example

    • 2013.11.02 - YouTube - ViolentRumble - Battlefield 4 PC Gameplay Screen Tearing

      • In the comments:

        • @quadead freesync is just a variation of vsync, it does not have the same quality as gsync. freesync monitors can only prevent screen tearing in a limited fps range. gsync can prevent screen tearing at any frame rate

          so yea, he has an amd card, the best he can hope for is freesync, it wont solve the problem. the only 100% solution is an nvidia card + gsync

          @nogston a 244hz monitor does not prevent screen tearing unless it is gsync, because the problem is not the hz of the monitor, the problem is caused by the frame rates being out of sync with the monitor, which can happen at any hz of monitor

          vsync attempts to solve the problem by limiting the number of frames produced in an effort to minimize gpu stress. it doesnt always work, plus it limits your frame rates

          freesync attempts to solve the problem by locking your monitor at a lower than normal hz range while expecting you to vsync within that range, its a pretend solution that doesnt actually work any better than vsync does by itself since it only works within a limited range

          gsync (patent by nvidia) is exclusive in that its the only tech that allows your monitor to actually dynamically change hz to match current framerate output to always be in sync, thus gsync can fully prevent screen tearing at any frame rates

Comparison articles
Specific monitors
Monitor tests

Graphics cards

GeForce

Keyboards

Why use a mechanical keyboard?

  • My opinion

    • Things I don't like about mechanical keyboards

      • I don't like how high the keys are.

        • I like to rest my wrists on the keyboard or the desk to keep my arms from getting tired, and with mechanical keyboards that feels uncomfortable, like it's going to give me carpal tunnel syndrome.

      • I don't like how spaced out the keys are.

        • Your fingers need to travel further to type.

      • I don't like the gaps between the tops of the keys.

        • It makes it impossible to just run your fingers across the tops of the keys the way you can with a chiclet keyboard.

      • I don't like it when they make noise.

        • I find it distracting.

  • 2018.12.26 - Reddit - r/unpopularopinion - Mechanical keyboards are overrated

    • jmaman - For 99.9% of people they’re exactly the same as digital switch keyboards. The only time it matters is is if you’re playing a game which requires synchronization of movement and are at an elite enough level where milliseconds matter. A good example of this is high level CS:GO. Pros need the mechanical switches so their strafing is perfectly synced with their shooting for accuracy.

      • I don't know enough to say if he's correct or not, but it at least sounds plausible that professional twitch gamers could benefit from their keys having hair triggers.

Misc links

  • 2016.12.21 - YouTube - Leutin09 - 60FPS+ ARMA 3 Zeus PC - Build Overview

    • He got the parts for free, it would cost over $3000 (as of 2016.12) if he were to actually pay for it.

    • 2:49 - He says Arma 3 performance is most often hindered by the CPU rather than the GPU, and that Arma 3 is single-threaded, so you want to prioritize choosing a powerful single-threaded CPU.

Laptops

MacOS

  • A timeline of different macOS releases.

  • How I'm getting MacOS 8.1 running on Windows so I can play old MacOS games like Hellcats Over the Pacific:

  • Dealing with sound issues in older games in Basilisk:

    • Information about the problem: 

      • https://www.emaculation.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5038

        • An explanation of the issue: Some games under Mac OS 8.x and up don't sound at all, because they use the Sound Driver in System 7.x or lower. In Mac OS 8.x and newer there's the Sound Manager, which is not 100% compatible with the old Sound Driver and the result is no sound in most older games.

          I read that this applies to Mac OS 8.x and up (I've seen several times topics like "no sound in game xxx under OS 8.x"), and that they only sound under system 7.x or lower depending on the game. If you try to play Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade without Drigo's patch under OS 8.x you won't hear any music (you'll hear the sounds, though). Games such as Vette!, Larry 1 (original version), 4D Boxing and Bill Elliot don't sound at all, though they are enabled on the game configuration.

        • A dev responds: There are no separate sound driver files in System 7.x or 8.x. Maybe different QuickTime versions make a difference? Else you may need to try downgrading your system to 7.5.5 or 7.6.1. Of the two, 7.6.1 is the more stable one, especially on PCI PowerMacs.

      • https://www.emaculation.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5641

        • I'm trying to get the game Chex Quest to work in BasiliskII. It works very well except in one area: sound.

          Its not working very well and in some cases, not at all. I saw two pieces of software in the README. They are Quicktime 2.0 and Sound Manager 3.1 (though they suggest getting 3.2 as soon as its available).

          I've been looking, and I dont see either of these softwares. Does anyone have them or links to them?

        • A dev responds: 

          QuickTime 2.1 is part of System 7.5.3, so any system 7.5.3 or later will have QuickTime 2.1 or later. (See in Extensions folder)

          Sound Manager is not always present as a separate extension. In 7.5.3 and later Sound Manager 3.2 is incorporated in System. Sound Manager 3.2.1 is incorporated in System in MacOS 8 (or 7.6?) and later. Sound Manager 3.2.1 may be installed in pre-OS 8 systems as a separate extension with QuickTime 2.5 if a previous separate extension Sound Manager happens to be present.

          Sound Manager 3.3 is installed with QuickTime 3, but isn't that version of Sound Manager PPC native?

      • https://www.emaculation.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5282&start=175

        • A dev: A "Sound" extension does not exist. Maybe adespoton refers to the "Sound Manager" extension. It was available in early System 7.5 versions and was removed in System 7.5.3. A later "Sound Manager" extension was again installed with QuickTime installations.

          Someone else replies: Yup; I believe that's the one needed for 7.1 sound in BII. From viewtopic.php?t=7890 installing Quicktime 2.5 in System 7.1 appears to install the correct extension. The installer is available from Macintosh Garden's quicktime-2 page.

    • Stuff I tried:

      • I installed Quicktime 2.5 on macOS 8.1.  It didn't seem to have any effect (sound still wasn't working in Hellcats).

PlayStation

Xbox

Nintendo

Troubleshooting

How to find good games

Individuals who are good at finding underappreciated gems

Reviewers

YouTubers

Lists of YouTuber reviewers

Let's Players showing initial impressions

Games

Advanced Tactics Gold

How to learn

Tutorial

Tutorial 1

  1. You win via Victory Points, which are assigned to cities.

  2. Troops are made by production centers and supplied by headquarter units.

  3. A town in your territory will have a black background if it has not been assigned to a HQ yet.

  4. Assign the town to your HQ by selecting the town, then select the button with a factory and “HQ” on it (fourth from the left on the line of buttons), then select your HQ unit.

  5. Next we need to produce troops by selecting the town and clicking the ‘production’ button. Set the production of this town to 20% supply and 80% ‘Rifle’ (infantry).

  6. End your turn.

  7. Creating HQs and “formations” cost PPs. PPs are political points, an abstract social cost of maintaining the military.

  8. Create a new “formation” and assign it to the existing HQ.

  9. The colored stripe on the left of a unit icon indicates which HQ it is assigned to.

  10. Transfer the newly-created riflemen to the new formation.

  11. Select the formation to see information about it.

    1. AP are action points.

    2. RDN is readiness.

    3. EXP is experience.

    4. MOR is morale.

    5. ENT is entrenchment.

    6. The green dot on their icon means they have enough supply.

    7. HQP is headquarters power. (Communication ability with the HQ?)

    8. STF is staffing level. - How well the HQ is staffed for the units it is commanding.

    9. All these factors have an effect on the combat result. Once you get to know them, they can help predict how your unit will perform in a fight.

  12. End the turn, order the infantry to move to the village, transfer the new infantry to the formation, then end the turn again.

  13. Select the village. In the hex data screen on the right, notice that the recon number for this hex is 27. In general, the more units we have near a hex, the better our recon will be.

  14. Select the formation and click the ‘Land attack’ order, select the infantry formation, confirm, and commence the attack.

Age of Fable

  • http://www.ageoffable.net/

  • I like the pictures that accompany the text.

  • At first I found it boring, but I gradually got more and more involved in the universe that it was discussing; it was kind of like being hypnotized into forgetting about my life and instead being sucked into a dream.

  • It seems like in order to get sucked into the dream you need to have it be different enough that you won't be reminded of things that you're encountering in your real life, but similar enough that people can understand the images you're trying to convey.

AI War

General thoughts

  • First impression from reading the developer's prose in the tutorials is that this guy sounds competent.

General advice

  • Turn the music off.

Summary of the tutorials

  • The AI do not play like humans.

    • (I'm not sure what that's supposed to mean.)

Basic Tutorial 1: Exploring the galaxy

  • Like most RTSes, there is no in-game unit that represents you.

  • Press P to pause.

  • Hold the tutorial (and in-game chat) with the Alt key.

  • Home Command Stations are the most important unit. If you lose all of yours, you lose the game. (Analogous to the King in chess).

  • You can click on units or click-and-drag to select units.

  • Zooming:

    • The easiest way is with your wheel mouse.

    • You can also use Page Up and Page Down

    • You can also use preset zoom levels with QWER.

  • Panning:

    • Move your mouse to the edge of the screen...

    • ...or use the arrow keys.

  • Right-click to issue a Move command.

  • Use Tab to switch between the view of a single planet and a view of the galaxy map.

  • You can see your selected ships in the bottom-right of your screen.

  • To issue a wormhole command, Ctrl+Right-click on the wormhole in the planet view, or right-click the desired destination planet in the galaxy map view.

  • The galaxy map has a sidebar on the left with P0-P9 buttons. Those are used to assign priorities to different planets, as "essentially a way to take notes" to remind yourself which planets are important.

  • Shortcut: Press Alt+<0-9> and then left-click on the planet to assign a priority.

Basic Tutorial 2: Building your economy

Basic Tutorial 3: Military operations

Basic Tutorial 4: Hacking

Intermediate tutorial: Campaign simulation

---

Online: Fast facts: A crash course on AI War

Online: AI War wiki (Important!)

Armored Brigade

How to learn the game

  • I tried a single mission and still found it a bit overwhelming.

  • I recommend learning this game the same way I got comfortable with Combat Mission: play randomly-generated missions on the smallest-possible maps with the smallest-possible number of units. This will let you get familiar with all of the different unit types, the game UI, the controls, the tactics. When you feel comfortable with those, then “graduate” to the hand-made single missions, and then “graduate” from those to full campaigns.

Avernum: Escape From The Pit

  • General thoughts on the game

    • On its default setting, Avernum had a very pleasant difficulty; it was mostly "easy" in the sense that I didn't really ever die, but it was difficult enough that I needed to be paying attention or I would die. And there would be parts that would get more difficult. That in-the-zone / constant-progress-on-easy-problems feeling reminded me a lot of other games I had made significant progress through (or even finished) without stopping: Max Payne, Diablo 2

  • Advice for playing

    • Combat

      • When you fight someone out on the world map, the enemies will often drop an item or two that you can sell for money, and you need to make sure to send one of your people over to pick it up before you finish the battle or you won't automatically pick it up.

      • Just as the documentation says, the basic strategy for fights in this game is to use your casters to do the real damage (like artillery), and to use your melee people to keep the enemy away from your casters.

    • Item management

      • Pick up everything that can be sold for money! You don't get a lot of money otherwise.

      • Use Ctrl+Click when looking at items on the ground to send them straight to your junk bag! I was most of the way through the game before I figured this out.

      • I eventually settled on a strategy where I would give all of the Wisdom Crystals (which give free experience points) to my melee people to boost their HP / dodge chance, and I would spend most/all of my money on buying training for my casters at the trainers you see in the various towns. This is because there's no real way (as far as I know) to get your casters up to Level 3 (the highest level) with their various spells without getting them trained, whereas the training you can buy for your melee people is exactly the same as the boosts they get for gaining another level.

      • I recommend keeping all of the unique / rare items you get, especially if they have some kind of resistance bonus. I never needed to do it, but I could see how you could end up in a situation where you might want to equip certain items when facing a particular opponent just to boost your resistance to their most-damaging style of attack (eg melee damage, fire, poison, lightning / magical (this one was a real pain for me), mind effects).

    • Traits

      • I think it's a good idea to get the 'Negotiator' trait among all of your characters ASAP (it gives you extra money from selling loot). I also got the 'Quick Learner' traits ASAP and I think it was a good idea.

      • There are definitely skills / traits which seem useless. For example, I never really needed Cave Lore, and I only put a few points into Luck and still don't understand what exactly it does, but I don't seem to have hurt from it.

      • Usually the best way I found to pick traits / stats was to pay attention to what my pain-points were, and to just allocate stats to relieve those pain points. The game is really good that way; it lets you do that, instead of throwing you into some completely-unpredictable challenge.

Avernum 2: Crystal Souls

  • General thoughts on the game

    • I really like how the menu music plays full volume once and then fades to a much lower volume. I don't think I've ever seen that before.

  • Criticisms

    • Honestly, after having beaten Escape from the Pit, I feel like "Why the hell am I going back to Avernum? I escaped!" Even though your characters in the game haven't returned to Avernum (they're stuck there like your characters in the first game), I felt as a person like I'd returned.

  • Advice for playing

    • If you have Windows' "Zoom" setting set to > 100%, it'll make the game screen too big.

    • If you click the sunburst icon on a potion in your inventory it will immediately use it. I'd been wondering why that was happening while playing the first game.

    • Press the space bar to skip a character's turn.

Banished

  • Thoughts on the game

    • This feels *exactly* like Stronghold's economic (non-castle-building, non-warfare) game.

    • I don't like how the game doesn't let me bring the viewpoint totally horizontal.

  • Questions

    • How do I know if I've allocated an efficient number of workers to a particular job? (e.g. fields, cutting down trees, etc.)

  • Advice for playing

    • Just keep an eye on your food reserves and your resource reserves.

Battles of Napoleon

Reviews

  • Best Napoleonic game?

    • “Moderate complexity and yet rich in options and highly realistic outcomes. Even the AI is great. Probably the best overall wargame ever made. I've played everything Napoleonic for 40 years, have studied the period my entire adult life, and it has never been surpassed.”

    • “At the time it came out, it was acclaimed as an all-time classic and it certainly still is. I've never found anything better at the grand tactical level. I especially like how I have to assign commanders objectives and it will then penalize me for moving units away from those objectives. Simple, elegant way of handling Corps-sized unit groups so you don't have divisions wandering all over the map, irrespective of the their command structure. I hate games where the units are free to just do whatever, regardless of what higher formation they belong to.”

    • Advice for learning the game: “Invest a little time with the manual first, then play the small intro scenario (Raevsky redoubt at Borodino iirc), then maybe the excellent Auerstadt scenario (so you can see how historically accurate the system is).”

Braid

  • Braid really does a brilliant job of ramping up the difficulty. It doesn't get too difficult too quickly, but it also doesn't stay easy for long stretches of time, which can bore you.

  • Another nice thing is that it mostly avoids the problem that many games have where if you leave them for a while you forget so much of how it works that you can't really pick up where you left off.

  • Tip from Braid: If you attempt the task in the most-obvious way, you're unable to solve the puzzle. This prevents players from brute-forcing the puzzle (trying random things) and forces the player to grasp the interesting fact.

    • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zK8ItePe3Y

      • He also uses sequences, pairings, and reprisals.

      • You'll encounter a simpler version of a puzzle immediately before a more-complicated version of it.

      • By using familiar layouts, you can see how the consequences have changed.

      • He subverts the rules you're used to.

      • He throws out traps for people who aren't thinking hard enough.

      • He's ruthlessly curatorial, eliminating puzzles that lack a sense of surprise, or that overlap with each other, or fail to say anything interesting.

      • He will leave something in the game, even if it isn't fun, if it is interesting or it would make the game feel incomplete to not have it.

      • A puzzle is never just a puzzle; it's a communication of an idea from the designer to the player. Solving the puzzle is the player's way of saying "I understand".

      • Mechanic --> Rule --> Consequence --> Puzzle

      • The "harder" puzzles are only about understanding the consequences in different set-ups, layouts.

      • The levels are small enough that you can consider all of the moving parts at once.

      • There are no or few red herrings, and few arbitrary steps to finish.

      • Once you've found the solution, it's relatively effortless to execute it.

      • "The more that a puzzle is about something real and something specific, and the less it's about some arbitrary challenge, the more meaningful that epiphany is."

Brigade Combat Team

Reviews

  • Metacritic - BCT Commander Reviews

  • BCT Commander Review

    • This release is actually a sort of "gold pack" consisting of an upgraded version of the original BCT, two expansion packs, and a scenario editor. (…) The current edition comes with 57 scenarios…

    • Even for those with extensive experience with military simulations, just starting a scenario can be a lot of work.

    • Rather than an algorithmic AI, the game employs one of several predetermined strategic approaches to each scenario in planning its strategy. (…) This kind of opposition means that you'll eventually see the AI reveal all its cards, at which point there's not much left to do but try to optimize your responses.

    • The scenarios themselves are a bit disappointing, in that many of them take place on US Army training grounds with opponents like the "Krasnovian Army," rather than historical or hypothetical scenarios with more interest for wargamers.

    • the learning curve for BCT Commander is extremely steep.

    • The interface makes good use of the mouse for context-sensitive menus, but it tends to rely on these a bit too much. (…) BCT Commander makes too much use of the standard Windows menu and shortcut system.

    • BCT Commander's manual is even better than Shrapnel's standard. It's the type of manual than can be read as a narrative rather than as a set of legal pronouncements, and it's especially helpful in providing answers to questions like "Why doesn't this work?"

    • Although units on the map can be represented by military symbols, the scale is small enough that they don't have "centers of gravity" or similar devices that make these kinds of military planning games seem artificial at a larger scale. Each tank symbol represents one to three vehicles, and tanks still fight it out with direct fire and get blown up by minefields that you can see.

    • BCT Commander is in many ways an outstanding product that delivers exactly what it claims to--it's a rigorous, realistic simulation of what it's like to command a brigade of combined-arms troops in modern warfare.

  • PC Gamer (US) March 2002

    • image-20250412-052940.png

    • It doesn’t say much, and doesn’t give any criticisms.

  • https://web.archive.org/web/20030219034118/http://www.pcgameworld.com/review.php/id/275/

    • This is not your typical wargame, with carefully balanced scenarios that insure both sides are at the same challenge rating.

    • Scenarios are typically brigade or regimental in composition, with a map measuring 50 km by 50 km.

    • Unfortunately a lot of what you do is BCT Commander is initially a confusing mess that could have been handled better. (…) Take moving a unit. You first double-click on the unit you wish to move (so far, so good) but then in order to plan the route you have to either go to the tool bar that runs across the map, or a drop down menu, and enter into the path mode. Why couldn’t this be accomplished with something simple like clicking on the unit, then shift/left-clicking on the various waypoints?

    • As mentioned previously the game plays out in real time, and unlike most RTS games, real time means real time. One second of gameplay equals one second of reality (time can also be accelerated). Time is an important factor in BCT Commander, because everything reacts according to the rules of the real world. Units may not start moving right away just because you click on them, they may take some time to begin moving. Troops don’t instantly dismount/mount an APC. Firing rates aren’t a steady laser-like stream. Artillery salvoes can take minutes between each salvo.

    • BCT Commander is a tough game.

    • The AI does a decent job, although unfortunately the AI consists of canned battle plans, as opposed to a totally free thinking AI.

    • replaying the same scenario never feels like you’re trying to find a solution to a puzzle

    • one thing that cannot [be overlooked] is the horrible, horrible interface (…) the pop up windows, like the mini-map and the report logs. For whatever bizarre reason you can’t simply close them from the windows themselves, you can only close them from the drop down menus. Now really, how hard would it be to include a little “x” in the upper right corner so they could quickly be closed?

    • You’ll also have to tone your Windows color down to 16 bit before playing or the maps won’t show up, which makes no sense.

  • https://web.archive.org/web/20030219035012/http://www.armchairempire.com/Reviews/PC%20Games/BTC-Commander.htm

    • Rule of thumb for anything that Shrapnel publishes: Read the manual.

    • Scenarios are scattered all over the globe (and through recent history) from Korea to the on-going conflict in Afghanistan

    • there’s absolutely no fog of war.

    • It’s a complex game, but it’s a satisfying experience once you get your hands dirty.

Brigador

General thoughts

  • What I like

    • This is a beautiful game. The art and effects are all very well done.

    • One fun thing about this game is trying to lead your targets at a distance, and then seeing your stray shots blowing up buildings. The gun sounds and effects are very satisfying.

  • Criticisms / suggestions

    • I really don't understand why they have the ammo / shield pick-ups left by downed enemies expire after a certain amount of time. It forces you to take otherwise-unnecessary risks. [Later: I think they do it on purpose to discourage you from playing the realistic way, which is to pick off enemy units one-by-one from a distance]

    • IMO the infantry are way too easy to stomp. They don't move out of the way / run away. And they're way too hard to hit with 20mm rounds. [Later: My guess is that it might eat up a lot of CPU to have the infantry be smarter, and also it might end up frustrating for the player.]

    • The game should show whether you have line-of-sight to where your mouse cursor is, the same way it works in Combat Mission.

      • One of the most-frustrating things about this game is just trying to hit the enemies.

    • I found the gameplay to get a bit stale after I'd played a dozen or so missions and understood the basic strategy for winning. I think the game might have benefited from a more Hotline-Miami-2 approach, with fewer missions that are more deliberate about creating changes in gameplay.

    • IMO the campaign progresses too slowly and there's too much repetition between levels.  As opposed to something like Braid where it's a very focused experience and each level is very different from the others.

    • I used the dev console to unlock every mission and played the last one in the campaign, and slowed the game down to 50%, and it reminded me a lot of how when I played through Donkey Kong Country on the Miyoo Mini I was save-scumming, and it made me feel like just how in DKC the game used uninteresting tactics to prolong the game (like stuff appearing on the screen with you having very little time to react like in the minecart levels, and then you need to play through the entire level to get back to that point, and if you run low on lives you need to redo old missions), similarly in Brigador it feels like the fast pace of the game is an uninteresting tactic to make the game harder by giving you less time to react, and also to hide the stupidity of the AI and have them beat you by swarming you rather than from good tactics like you might see from a human opponent in a game of Combat Mission.

Advice for playing

  • If you're picking up the game after a while, replay one of the earlier missions with a tank that you haven't used before on that mission.

  • Weapons and ammo

    • When you shoot at stuff, you need to actually put your cursor ON the target rather than just have the line from your tank to the cursor going THROUGH the target, because the latter method will result in shots missing.

    • It's good to use big powerful single rounds to make the first hit against a stationary enemy, and then follow up with a 20mm cannon barrage to finish them off once they start moving around (and they're harder to hit).

    • When you're near a floating ammo icon (after destroying an enemy vehicle), you need to press 'R' to actually pick up the ammo. It isn't picked up automatically.

    • Be aware that different weapons are differently-effective against armor vs. shields.

    • Don't spend ammo destroying structures until you've cleared the level of all enemies.

  • Vehicle-specific advice

    • Sleepwalker

      • Advance backwards, b/c you run faster forwards and it's important to run away.

      • Use your laser to drain shields and then hit them with the anti-armor black poison thing and run away and wait for them to die.

      • Try to avoid getting close to a powerful enemy vehicle if there are several of them. Keep them at a distance and draw them in a few at a time and finish them off.

      • Stealth is more useful for running away than for attacking.

  • Enemy units

    • Units with eye icons are scouts. If they see you they'll set off an alarm that'll alert all nearby enemy units to your presence.

    • If you blow up a pipeline or building, enemies will investigate it (rather than your weapon sounds).

    • Enemy units can get slowed down by narrow passages, so if that’s the shortest path to you, you can take them out more-easily. This kind of position is more common along the sides of the map.

    • Enemy units can turn corners slowly rather than side-strafing, so if you catch them just as they’re coming around a corner you can have an advantage. You can also grab anything they drop more easily (shields and ammo).

  • Tactics

    • In "Joy Ride" I started without ammo and basically had to get one unit to destroy his friendly units with his horribly-delayed ammo.

    • Recon-by-fire (sort of): Enemy units seem to be drawn to the sound of your gun(?) as well as the sound of the impact. Shoot into the edge of the map when you start to draw units towards you, then shoot at locations close to suspected enemy locations to try to draw out individual (or small groups of) enemies towards you. Have your impacts start further away from the enemy positions and gradually walk your fire forwards to pull as few enemies as possible.

    • Hide around corners and ambush units as they turn the corner.

  • Buildings

    • Destroying all Comm Towers will increase radio call time and shrink enemy reinforcement radius.

    • Crashing into the comms towers damages you a little (maybe 15% of shields) but may be worth it to save ammo.

Braid

  • I put off playing this game for a long time because the elaborate art style made me think it was going to be an artsy experience with not-great gameplay, but I actually had an amazing time playing it, it's probably up there with Hotline Miami as one of the most-engrossing and most-novel videogame experiences I've had in years.

  • Varied sound effects for common sounds (pressing escape)

  • Beautiful art

  • Beautiful music

  • It can be frustrating to not know how to solve a puzzle. The puzzles kind of quickly get to that point.

  • The story seems kind of superfluous.  After I finished the game I looked up explanations of the story and found out it was all supposed to be about a scientist who helped create the atomic bomb. The fact that that didn't come through to me at all seems to me to suggest that the story wasn't as effective as it could've been.

  • It's pretty clear the main achievement here is in the puzzle mechanics, like how the main achievement with Cuphead is in the art.

  • I don't know if it's my imagination but I think the game gives me slight motion sickness.

  • I suspect the suddenness with which the player stops moving is part of what gives me motion sickness.

  • Also the enemies and environment (basically everything other than your character) seem to get blurry when you move.

  • The thing in the first world where the picture creates a new platform that makes some of the puzzles possible made me distrust a lot of the puzzles for a while, because I kept asking myself, "Is there some other element that I don't yet have access to which is necessary to solve this puzzle?"

  • Braid is a great example of a game that answers the question, "We have so much more computing power than 30 years ago, what can we do with this extra power other than just making the graphics more detailed?"

  • The last puzzle in the second world ("A Tingling") that I struggled with made me infuriated because it relied on this characteristic of the platform that it makes what you do invariant to time as well, while you previously in the same level were on a similar platform that had no such effect.

  • Also, the first puzzle piece of that section is invariant, but it's not to do with that puzzle, but rather the following puzzle, which relies on you rewinding back to the start of the level.

  • Just generally, if you see a tingling-green piece for a first puzzle, that means that solving the second puzzle requires rewinding to a point before you got the first puzzle's piece.

  • Being able to skip around with the puzzles was a huge help for me to avoid getting frustrated.

  • Jonathan Blow on Braid: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSwgEYAJUko&t=2m10s

    • "When you zoom in with your attention on every little part, and then you add all the parts together, that's just a lot of effort."

Butcher

What's good about it

  • The graphics, tone, level design, and sound are all competent.

  • The controls feels responsive.

  • I find myself getting better every time I play, so even if I have to replay the earlier part of a level many times I find myself getting faster and faster at getting through it, which is kind of satisfying.

Why I stop playing (when I stop playing)

  • It's annoying/boring when you die and get sent back to the beginning of the level and have to re-fight enemies you've already fought before.  I've heard this same complaint about Dark Souls.  The nice thing about Hotline Miami is that each level is broken into fairly short "floors" (of the building), so dying generally doesn't cost you more than 10-30 seconds of lost time.  On the other hand, you do die a lot more in Hotline Miami.

  • I'll stop after I finish a level because I'll dread having to basically memorize another totally-new level in order to beat it.

  • The atmosphere of the game is depressing; in Hotline Miami you have those energetic songs and colorful levels keeping you feeling upbeat / excited, but here the graphics are dark and brown with fire and blood and the music is dark.  It's the same problem I had with Limbo.

Advice for playing

  • Controls:

    • Mouselook

    • WASD movement (W jumps, S has you drop through traversable platforms)

    • Space to activate switches

    • Q/E/1/2/3/4/Mouse-scroll to switch between weapons

  • Like in Heat Signature, when enemies see you they have a brief moment before they start shooting.  I think an exclamation point shows above their head.  Unlike Heat Signature, you can't pause and aim right at them, so you need to react quickly.

  • Like in GoldenEye, if you hit an enemy they will get stunned which seems to make them not shoot back at you.  That makes the shotgun much more useful in this game than it is in many other games because it's very good at stunning enemies at medium range even if your aim isn't perfect.

  • Like in Hotline Miami, sniping people from afar and popping out from behind cover to take a quick shot seem to be good strategies.

  • One secret I saw opened when I flipped a switch and then I could suddenly walk through another nearby wall.  So maybe many secrets work like that.

  • There's sometimes a definite advantage to moving around a lot, as enemies' aim seems to be delayed enough that if you're moving fast and perpendicular to the direction to the enemy then they'll generally miss you. I need to figure out when this strategy is preferable to bunkering down. It may be a matter of how many enemies there are that would be able to shoot at you, how much cover you have available, etc.

  • Not just running around but also jumping. Jumping can be very effective in having enemies miss you.

  • For the last level of the Jungle area, I found that a combination of moving when enemies were still spawning, taking cover when there were a lot of enemies worked well. Also just spamming the flamethrower helped when there were a lot of enemies. Also keeping up top seemed to be a good idea as my flames could go further.

  • When facing the big rocket-shooting demons, I like to clear out the human enemies first because their weapons are harder to dodge, and then I'll just use the flamethrower or grenade launcher on the big demon. You can sometimes just jump over the rocket as it's coming towards you and that'll be enough to keep it from hitting you.

Close Combat

Close Combat 1

Thoughts

Differences from Combat Mission

  • The rate of fire that the infantry uses for the ‘fire’ command seems to be lower than that in CMx1 and more similar to CMx2, in that it seems the infantry won’t burn through their ammo quite as quickly. I wonder if it is less suppressive as well.

  • The rate of movement for both the “Move” and “Move Fast” command seems (much?) lower than in Combat Mission (both CMx1 and CMx2).

    • My charitable interpretation is that they’re assuming there is generally going to be more disturbance to the ground / terrain that would slow down movement, even though the actual graphics may show a seemingly-empty building or clear field. This is similar to the OFP mod that made AI weapons less accurate to better-simulate how long battles take to play out when there’s lots of cover available.

  • On-map mortars don’t seem to need to be able to see their target or be within a certain distance of some other “leader” unit, and they have a lot more ammo than in Combat Mission (230 rounds per team on the scenario I played).

  • In a campaign, your individual men can gain experience and be awarded medals, which is neat.

Misc thoughts

  • I’ve been playing individual missions on “Easy” and sometimes getting slaughtered, and yet the mission will still end by telling me the enemy gave up and retreated and I won, which makes me think that maybe the difficulty level is only relevant when playing in Campaign mode, as it allows you to progress to the next mission without needing to actually inflict casualties and take ground.

 

Bootcamp (Tutorials)

Summary of advice:

  • 4 - Infantry tactics

    1. Do “recon by fire”: Fire into places where you suspect the enemy might be to try to push them out or have them return fire.

    2. Provide covering fire: Fire on known/suspected enemy positions with part of your force while a smaller group moves up.

    3. Use smoke to block enemy fields of view.

    4. Order your infantry to hide to reduce casualties if they’re overmatched.

      1. The idea is presumably that you will order them to unhide once you have other forces in a position to support them.

    5. Use mortars to destroy obstacles like fences or small wooden buildings.

  • 5 - Armor tactics

    • Click on units and then look at the bottom “Soldier Monitor” window to view their anti-tank capability at different ranges.

    • Use smoke to screen tank movements.

    • Have your infantry advance in front of your tanks to avoid having your tanks ambushed.

    • Fire on suspected enemy positions with your infantry when advancing your armor to reduce the chance of the armor being ambushed.

Mission AARs

Off the Beach - 1

  • The trees performed well as concealment but the wheat field less so: I had some guys shot when I ordered them to move forward through the wheat field, so I guess they’re visible if they’re moving through the field but not if they’re hiding.

  • My .50 cal team had a guy shot pretty quickly in the wooden house, so wooden houses seem to maybe provide less cover than in Combat Mission(?).

Close Combat: Gateway to Caen

  • Mortars don't need line of sight to provide accurate fire.

  • The normal 'move' command is very slow, and even the 'fast move' command feels slow.

Assault St. Mauvieu

  • After looking at the mission instructions a day after having played, I see I didn't play the mission correctly; I was supposed to select at most one tank and two mortars, but I had two tanks and the rest of my support was mortars (so, like 5-6 mortars).

  • The positions of the units in the picture are the default positions for the mission, not the positions I settled on.

  • My plan was to take advantage of the fact that I could assume that the enemy would start on their side of the map to position my units as far forward as I could, and then at the beginning of the mission I have them fast-move forward to capture the flags nearest to me (F1, F2, F3, F4, F5) and basically just try to grab as much territory as possible and set up a defensive position on the top half of the map around flag F2 that the enemy would have a hard time attacking.

  • That's basically what happened. The enemy lost a lot of infantry trying to attack flag F2, and even seemed to pull away all of their meant for the southern half of the map to attack in the northern half. My platoon in the south didn't encounter any combat, with only the Churchill tank I had on my southern flank taking out enemy SdKfzs in the northern flank at the very end of the battle when it had reached positions T7 and later T8.

  • I suspect this would have been a very different experience against a human opponent.

Combat Mission

Command & Conquer Series

Command & Conquer

My thoughts on the game

  • Nice:

    • Great atmospheric music and rock tracks, it seems like it might be an inspiration for StarCraft’s soundtrack and maybe even parts of Diablo 1’s soundtrack.

    • You can queue units you’re buying. IIRC Warcraft 1 (and 2?) doesn’t have this.

    • They have little CGI sequences/movies between missions. It reminds me of what Blizzard ended up doing with Warcraft 2 and StarCraft. I don’t think Warcraft 1 had those.

  • Not good:

    • Too much unit-level micromanagement required.

      • The biggest annoyance is the stupid unit-level UI.

      • Units will follow movement orders to the point that they’ll ignore enemy units. StarCraft 1 fixes this by distinguishing between a “Move” (ignore enemy units) order and an “Attack” order.

    • You can only build one building at a time.

    • Building doesn’t require a worker unit and the building is functional as soon as it’s on the map; it builds in your menu screen and then you just drop it on the map fully-built. Which means it’s impossible for the enemy to get intel on what you’re building, unlike StarCraft / Warcraft 2.

      • It seems that most(?) buildings need to be within a certain distance of your HQ, which I imagine is to prevent griefing by having an enemy player drop a turret in the middle of your base or something.

    • It seems way too easy to capture enemy buildings. You can produce engineers for around the cost of a building and they just run in and take it.

    • You can repair damaged buildings without needing to have a worker unit at it. The effect of this is that it’s possible for a player with a strong economy (strong resource production) to build buildings far forward and then be able to just teleport-funnel all their money into keeping the buildings repairing. So it kind of gets around the simulation of supply lines that StarCraft does a bit better by requiring actual units to repair and defend those repairing units. In StarCraft you’ll have a constant stream of units streaming across the map like a kind of supply line.

    • Tiberium minerals being damaging to troops and needing transports to get across safely seems like a pointless / annoying mechanic.

  • Different:

    • …

  • Interesting:

    • …

One minute guide

  • Drag-select or LMB to select units.

  • Left-click to give move/attack order. This is a weird one. It’s not like StarCraft where you need to hit a hotkey to begin to issue a particular order. And it’s not like it’s LMB to select and then RMB to issue an order.

  • If you alt-tab out of the game you can run into a bug where you can’t scroll the edge of the screen. To fix it, just hit Alt-Enter to enter Windowed mode and then Alt-Enter again to go back to full-screen mode.

Command Ops

  • Command Ops seems to be basically a realistic Panzer General.  It's the same scale (operational-level), but no hexes(?).  It's apparently used by the Australian and US military to train people.

  • I've known about it for years but haven't yet been able to get over the initial learning hurdle.

Airborne Assault

Red Devils Over Arnhem

Highway to the Reich

Conquest of the Aegean

Command Ops 1

Reviews

Tutorials / Guides / Manuals

Video

  • YouTube - Panther Games - Command Ops: Game Concept

    • Summary:

      • The motivation for this game was to have as realistic a simulation as possible of commanding a corps (50-300k soldiers), division (7-22k), or brigade (3-5k).

      •  The core gameplay they're aiming for is to have players: 1) assess the situation, 2) develop a plan, 3) issue orders, and 4) react to developments.

      • They wanted to realistically model orders delay, which would in turn require the commander to think and plan ahead.

      • The game uses 1-minute time intervals and 100m movement grids.

        • This is unlike hex-based wargames, where turns represent hours or days and the hexes represent several kilometers.

      • Units can occupy multiple grids and can move in increments as small as 1 meter.

      • The game uses "Pausable Continuous Time" (PCT).

        • It's not "real-time" because the game runs faster than real-time, even at the slowest speed.

  • YouTube - Panther Games - Command Ops Tutorial

    • This seven-part video series is recommended by TortugaPower in his video series on Return to St. Vith (in which he's using Command Ops 2).

Command Ops 2

  • If you want to play through the DLCs in chronological order, do it like this:

    • Foothill of the Gods (October 1940 - May 1941, German invasion of Greece)

    • The Cauldron (1941, Mediterranean / North Africa)

    • Highway to the Reich (September 1944, Operation Market Garden)

    • Westwall (October 1944, Siegfried Line)

    • Battle of the Bulge:

      • Knock on All Doors (KOAD) (mid-December 1944, opening of the Battle of the Bulge) - These scenarios are huge, you control entire Armies.

      • Ride of the Valkyries (late December 1944, last German attack of the Battle of the Bulge)

      • Bastogne (mid-to-late December 1944, Battle of the Bulge)

Reviews of the game

  • CO2 is a brilliant game concept but the implementation is tedious and boring, for one simple reason: You cannot rename a unit. You are constantly dealing with names like "D Coy. 83th Recon Bn," "AG Pl 48 Arm Inf Bn," and "2 Pl H Coy 3/32 Armored Rgt." All units have cumbersome names like that. They are historic, but oh sooooo tedious. A simple option to rename any unit---to give it a friendly name just for gameplay purposes---would make all the difference in the world. Names like "Buffalo," "Tuxedo," "Joe's Bunch," or anything the user chooses would make all the difference. I love the game but gave up playing it, because of the tedium of horrid names. And, historically, a commander will not pronounce all that ladeeda (such as 275 Arm Fd Arty Bn) while giving orders. No, he will say, "Tell Johnson to have his guns support Owens on that left flank." Can you imagine Patton saying, "Tell the 275th Armored Forward Artillery Batallion to support 2 Pl H Coy 3/32 Armored Rgt on the left flank." I don't think so. Great generals love efficiency and not longwinded pronunciation of tedious and impractical formal names. (Source)

Quickstart

  • Camera controls

    • Hold right-click and drag to drag the map around.

    • Zoom in and out with the mouse wheel.

  • UI

    • The grid lines are every 1km.

    • As units fire, you will see yellow, red, and grey fire lines emanating from the unit firing toward the target. The yellow lines are for anti-personnel, the red for anti-armor, and the grey lines for indirect fire. Thicker lines indicate heavy fire.

  • Unit types

    • Use Annex D in the manual (“Unit Types and Symbols”) to understand what your units are.

    • Order engineers to secure bridges so they don’t get blown.

Key features

  • It models fatigue and the need to rest/sleep.

  • It models orders delay.

  • It models supply down to individual bullets.

Tutorials / Guides / Manuals

Written

  • Bie - Quickstart Guide

  • Bie - Basic Guide

    • This is a more in-depth guide than his Quickstart Guide.

    • Steam version

  • Steam - Command Ops 2 : The Absolute Basics

    • CO2 is an RTS but it’s realistic: you only see what your subordinates think they see.

    • You don’t need to micromanage your units.

    • Click the Cntl (“Controls”) button on the bottom and keep that window open as you’ll use it a lot.

    • The Tool button lets you see Quickest/Shortest/Covered movement paths for motorized/nonmotorized units.

    • Stacking orders (basically giving waypoints with different probe/attack/defend orders) is an important way to deal with order delay.

    • You’ll want to fine-tune your orders (“1TE” / “Edit Task”).

    • Using the Order of Battle window is the fastest way to set orders for all of your units.

    • Misc advice:

      • Set orders in groups of threes. Adjust after that.

      • Give orders to the HQ's, except in the case of recon units.

      • Don't be afraid to micromanage if necessary, but usually the CO on the ground can do it better.

      • Fire Support is your friend. Bombarding a target, or ordering AT guns to fire on it, will make an attack much more successful.

      • Be wary of night time intel. You could end up sending an armored platoon after some bicycles.

      • Don't get too aggressive. Your units can get flanked in a hurry.

      • Don't attack at night unless absolutely necessary.

      • There's no such thing as too much 155mm bombardment.

  • Official Game Manual

  • Return to St Vith Tutorial AAR

    • This was recommended by DeReam as being "probably the best tutorial AAR I've ever seen in all my years of gaming".

Video

Online communities

Misc

Counter-Strike

Why it's fun

  • It has a nice mix of motor-skill (aiming) and strategy (where to go, what to buy, how to move).

  • Each "mini-session" (round) of the game starts automatically after you finish a previous mini-session. This is in contrast to games like Starcraft, Chess.com blitz games, etc. where you need to explicitly press a button to start a new game. I think that throwing the player back into a new round automatically plays a large part in helping people to avoid quitting after a loss (although rage-quitting is still an issue if you lose enough times in a row).

How to play well

  • Ambush people

    • Try to wait at an unusual angle. If there's a place where peope "typically" camp, try to camp before or after that spot to catch your opponent off-guard.

    • Try to keep cover to your front and get an angle to the side.

Creeper World 3: Arc Eternal

  • This seems to clearly be based on Starcraft 1, especially bunker missions vs. Zerg.

  • It has a very gentle difficulty curve.

Crusader Kings

Crusader Kings 2

Links

General thoughts

  • This game is beautiful.

  • I like the wind sound effect when zooming in on the map.

  • Turn the music volume down.

Others' thoughts on the game

  • How to learn to play:

    • There's really only two things you have to do: Hold on to a stretch of land and have a relative that inherits that land. That's all there is to it. There's a lot of more things that you can do, that can happen to you, etc. but even if you get utterly crushed and subjegated you still have lots of options to manouvre politically. It's worth playing it just to see what happens, really. (source)

  • How the game could be improved:

    • The -100 to 100+ relationship scale is actually one of the features I like least about the game. It reduces relationships to a rather sterile number, which can then be easily manipulated once you know how various effects work. In my opinion, a better and more immersive system would be to have a scale that runs say Hate-emnity-hostile-dislike-indifferent-like-friendly-friend. The underlying system could remain the same, but it would make decisions more difficult and "lifelike" if you don't know exactly where someone sits, even if you have a guide. As it stands, I know that donating money to someone will take them from -21 to -1. Still not enough to have all vassals have a lositive opinion of me. So I don't take the decision and pursue other strategies. A less arbitrary system would introduce some ambiguity into the system, thereby increasing immersion and difficulty. You could even blur the borders of these relationships with personality modifiers. (source)

    • I really wish this game had a proper journal for recording your legacy. I know they have a family tree and added a chronicle some time ago, but both are rather vague and cumbersome. It's still tricky to remember who did what and when, and I feel like that could easily be solved by giving us a simple interface to write our own entries. This is something I've wanted from Paradox for awhile. That, and the ability to name things like wars or mark particular battles. (source)

Summary of the tutorial

  1. When your character dies, you need an heir to take over.

  2. The game is historical and thus not balanced. So check the difficulty of whatever faction you decide to start as.

  3. For your first game play the special learning scenario.

  4. The world is divided into counties.

  5. CK2 is real-time.

  6. Click the date in the top-right to pause / resume the game.

  7. Click the portrait in the top left to get info on your family

  8. Click the crest in the top-left to get info on your country.

  9. You can pick an "Ambition" for your character which is a short-term goal that'll give you a prestige / piety bonus when you achieve it.

  10. The main currencies are wealth, prestige, and piety.

  11. The prestige and piety of all your characters will be added to your final score at the end of the game.

  12. Every character in the game has an opinion of every other character, which will dictate the behavior of the AI.

  13. Character portraits can have little symbols on them. A star means that's the character you're currently playing as. A crown signifies your heir. A drop of blood means they're of your dynasty.

  14. The bottom right of the UI has a bunch of different map mode buttons.

Summary of the learning scenario

  1. Something about de facto and de jure titles.

  2. To choose an ambition, open your character window and click the small button on the right side under the crest section.

  3. To get married, click the character's picture and then the two-gold-rings button. Then right-click on whoever you want to marry.

  4. Unless a character is a ruler, it is usually their liege who responds to your proposals.

  5. In the tooltip for the target's acceptance of a proposal, if the number of green plus signs exceeds the number of red minus signs, the proposal will be accepted.

  6. Each county contains at least one Holding (castle, city, or temple).

  7. The Holdings held by you personally are collectively called your Demesne.

  8. There is a limit to how many Holdings you can control directly.

  9. The Demesne Limit is why you need Vassals.

  10. Vassals will give you a part of their troop Levies and Taxes.

  11. There is a limit to how many vassals you can have, so you'll want to aim to have more powerful vassals.

  12. Vassals can have vassals.

  13. Vassals of the lowest rank (below Count, with a copper portrait frame) are not counted toward the limit.

  14. Your vassals' opinion of you controls how much tax and levies they will give you. If they dislike you enough, they can join rebellious factions, which can lead to civil wars. Bishops (priestly vassals) who like the Pope more than you will send their taxes to him instead.

  15. Opinions are represented by a number ranging from -100 to 100, and you can hover over the number to find out the reasons for the number.

  16. To improve your vassals' opinions of you, you can give them land, an honorary title, or a gift. To do this, open your character view, click "Vassals", then right click on the one you want to interact with.

  17. To deal with revolts you may want to raise your levies. Go to the military view (top left of UI). By holding down Ctrl you'll avoid raising levies in counties with enemy troops.

  18. To move armies around, click their shield icon to select them and then right-click on the province you want them to go to. You can also drag-select.

  19. It's a good idea to gather your troops together before attacking.

  20. When you have all the armies in the same province, click-and-drag to select all of them and click the "Merge Troops" button in the Army window.

  21. You can assign and change the leaders of your army by clicking the name bar above each flank. Leaders can help win battles at the risk of getting injured or killed.

  22. When attacking across a strait or river, you'll get a penalty. Click on a province and hover over the river icon (if any) to see what border the straits and rivers are on.

  23. As I quit they were about to explain fleet operations with an attack on an island off the coast of West Africa.

Crypt of the Necrodancer

  • Look for dirt walls that have one or more blue specks in them. Those have diamonds in them. It seems like there's one per level, and that it's always in the first layer of the walls.

Divinity Original Sin 2

  • I tried starting this game twice over the course of ~2 years and gave up both times at the character creation screen, and finally was able to get past it on my third attempt by just going with The Red Prince.

  • The actual game feels extremely polished. The tutorial was very helpful, there’s helpful plot summary notes.

  • It’s not clear to me how important the different conversation options are; it feels like most of them don’t matter at all (have no lasting effects).

DCS

Decisive Action

Doom and Doom II

General thoughts

General advice

  • Turn off the music.

  • If mouselook seems to not work when you start a level, just click once and see if that makes mouselook start to work.  In my experience this only happens with the first level I load when I start the game.

  • Doom and Doom II are broken into "episodes", each with ~10 levels.  Once you beat an episode, to start the next episode you need to select "New Game" from the main menu and then choose the next episode.  Very confusing IMO.

  • Use this fix to disable mousemove: https://steamcommunity.com/app/2280/discussions/0/558755530198510315/

Things I noticed

  • Doom has lots of switches that result in parts of the level moving: platforms raising, walls lowering, etc.  And it always(?) involves some part of the level that you were already exposed to revealing some hidden feature.  And the change is usually(?) in the room you are in so it's easy to see what changed.

Things I like

  • The sound effects are all great (your guns, the enemies, the doors, etc.)

    • The Jaws-like enemy sound that the invisible monsters make is especially scary.

  • The level design is great.

  • The textures are great.

  • The use of darkness is great.

Things I don't like

  • It can be frustrating when you've killed all the enemies that you can find but you don't know where to go next to get to the next area.  I've had this happen to me numerous times while playing Doom.  In GoldenEye I think the biggest examples of this are maybe Control and Aztec.

  • I can't tell what level corresponds to what savegame, so when I came back to the game I didn't know which savegame was the latest one.

Why I stop playing (when I stop playing)

  • Alt-tabbing out of the game makes the screen shrink to a tiny size and there seems to be no way to make it fullscreen again, so you need to save the game, quit, start the game again, load the game you saved.  It's a pain in the ass.

  • The textures, guns, and enemies can get a bit stale from one level to the next.  GoldenEye is great because between every level it's mixing up the guns, level textures, level design, enemy models, music.  GoldenEye does return to some levels (e.g. Surface and Bunker) but it does so after a bit of a break, so it's not as annoying as if it was the same level twice in a row.

Doom

Advice

  • ...

Things I like

Things I don't like

  • The mouse sensitivity isn't high enough even on the highest setting.

Similarities with GoldenEye

  • I remember reading or seeing in a video that the GoldenEye developers were playing a lot of Doom when they were making GoldenEye.  I noticed independently (maybe even before I heard that they were playing Doom) that GoldenEye has a lot of similarities with Doom in its gameplay.

  • Side-strafing in Doom works just like in GoldenEye: you move fastest if you press the "forward" button and the "step sideways" button at the same time.

  • The combat works the same way in both games: you side-step out of cover, take some shots before the enemies can react, and then side-strafe back into cover. (At least, this is how Doom's combat works with the insta-hit enemy soldiers.)

  • Doom has "par times" which GoldenEye also has (called the "Target" time).  IMO GoldenEye made a great choice by tying beating the target time to unlocking cheats.  I was a little disappointed when the devs announced that there's also a way to unlock the cheats using a series of seemingly-random controller button presses.

  • You don't need to worry too much about where you aim; in Doom aiming up and down is handled for you by the game. In GoldenEye the game automatically pulls your aim towards enemies if you're aiming reasonably close to them.

Differences from GoldenEye

  • GoldenEye's music is much, much better.

Doom II

Advice

  • ...

Differences from Doom

  • It seems like it may have more enemies(?).  Which would make sense for a sequel.  That's what Hotline Miami did as well.

Don't Starve

  • Initial thought from playing it: it's like Minecraft's survival mode, except harder / more elaborate.

  • Criticisms

    • I didn't find the game very fun. I may just need to put more time into it.

Dungeon Warfare

  • It hit that sweet spot of difficulty that Avernum also hit, where if you're paying attention it's not hard, but you do actually have to concentrate on what you're doing to win.

  • The menu's animation style and "Victory" voice seem very similar to that of Broforce.

  • One interesting thing is that it really hammers home the idea of a "kill zone" as Lt. Colonel Jeffrey Spaulding described it: you want to 1. funnel people into a small area, 2. slow them down, and 3. concentrate your fire on that area. It made me wonder if there might be a way to make a game that's halfway between Dungeon Warfare and Combat Mission, where your "traps" are things like barbed wire, mines, machine guns, etc.

  • It also hammers home the idea of "avenues of approach".

  • The game runs totally smooth on my laptop, even when you have it on 4x speed.

  • In the TD games I used to play there was no way to stop or redirect the enemy forces (IIRC).

  • Being able to pause but still move around the map / sell / buy traps makes the game far less frustrating (just like with Heat Signature) and less like a test of your APM and more like a puzzle game.

  • re: Gold Rush (the level):

    • This was one of the hardest levels I've faced. The way I ended up winning was by using a demon/spike-trap/box combo right outside the enemy's entrance on the left, then doing the same on the right for the 3rd wave, then selling everything on the right before the 4th wave when the top units would start coming, and using a demon/firetrap/bolt-trap/box trap up top. I also put a spike trap on the top-left door's tile to get any units that slipped by. At the very end things got hairy and I needed to sell everything on the left and move my defense back right next to the door to take out heavy units that slipped by my first line of defense (I probably should've added a bolt trap there to take out the heavy units). But I was able to beat it with no enemy units reaching the portals.

Advice

  • Turn off the music.  It's not horrible but it is repetitive, and I got sick it to the point where I think it was making me not want to play the game.

  • One great way to take out dwarf bombers is to have 2 rows of level-3 dart traps with a level-3 slime trap right at the enemies' spawn points.

  • The best way I've found to take out enemy units that can't run through your units is with a combination of level-3 demon traps to stop the enemies (at least 2 in a row so if the first group of demons is killed the second group can serve as back-up) in combination with level-3 spike traps and level-3 bolt traps to destroy the enemy units that will bunch up behind their front line (the ones engaging your demons).  It's especially good if you can create a twisting avenue of approach using some boxes so that the bolts can hit 2 or 3 squares of enemies (as opposed to having the bolt traps perpendicular to a single square of the enemy's avenue of approach).

  • Harpoon traps seem to be great value if you have a bunch of places along the enemy's avenue of approach where they can be used.  It's well worth upgrading them.

  • The best way to take out thieves seems to be using slime traps in combination with dart traps.  Harpoon traps also work well.

  • Upgrade your traps.

  • The best kill-zone I've discovered is to use 1-2 demon traps to stop the advancing troops, and have spike traps and bolt traps, with everything fully-upgraded. Look for a part of the path that has only 1 square's width of to the path, or use boxes to create such an area. And if you put the trap as close as possible to the enemy spawn, your early spike traps will hit *way* more enemy troops, although I suspect having demons stop the advancing troops could get you that benefit anywhere along the path.

    • (Later:) I've also found that if you set up a kill-zone (i.e. use demons to stop advancing enemies) next to some kind of instant-death tile like water, using a push-trap can be even more effective than the spike / bolt combination.

  • I didn't understand the point of the trap upgrades as the bonuses seemed so small, but now I realize that the *real* goal is to get to the higher levels of the traps. So Level 5, 10, and 15 are especially valuable because those are the points at which you can upgrade to the next-highest level of the trap.

  • If you have *too much* firepower in a given square you risk wasting resources if multiple traps kill the same unit where only one trap would've worked fine, or if the traps do more damage than would be necessary to kill the enemy unit.

  • For a long time I didn't understand why you would use darts instead of the bolt trap, since the bolt trap does more damage. Now I understand: the dart trap is much better for doing damage to fast units like the Thief. The first time I played Hondon of Chaos I had a *lot* of thieves that were able to run right past my demons.

  • For dealing with the Thief enemy type, just focus on having a long line of traps that can do moderate damage, and the thieves will die from the damage. They'll just run right past a line of your demons. The dart trap and a long line of spike traps worked very well, and the demons did help to slow down the thieves and do a little damage.

    • A good thief / fast-unit killer I just discovered is the grinder (floor trap).  Put 3 level-3 grinders in a row at the rear of your defenses and they'll be able to take out any fast units that run past your demons.

  • If you lose a level, see if there are any traps that you were using for only some of the avenues of approach, and try to think if there's a way you could have put those traps somewhere else where they could have been used against every avenue of approach.

Level-specific thoughts

The cellar

  • It was the Veteran enemy type that got me.  They don't take damage the first time they get hit.  A flame trap or dart trap near their spawn might be the best way to beat that.

Dwarf Fortress

Else Heart.Break()

General thoughts

  • First reaction: Wow this game is beautiful.

  • Later: Great sounds, great music, great animations.

Summary of the tutorial(s)

  • Click on the ground to move.

  • Click on items to use them.

  • Once you click on an item, possible actions show up in the top-left.

  • WASD to rotate / zoom the camera, or hold RMB and move the mouse.

  • Run by double-clicking.

Notes on my progress / reminders of what's happened

  • You're going from your parents house to a city called Dorisburg, staying at a hotel called Devotchka

  • There's something called "The Burrows"

  • The hotel assistant used some kind of portal device to change my room from a bathroom to a totally-differently-sized bedroom.

  • As of my last save, I'm still trying to find the guy who gave me the Soda job. Someone invited me to an afterparty but when I showed up to what I thought was the location, there was only one person there. Someone else invited me tomorrow to do something with her friends, I think she said to meet at the Yvanna at 18:00

Enter the Gungeon

  • This is the first game that has made me understand the appeal of shmups that have you dodging enemy fire.

  • The music is nowhere close to being as good as Hotline Miami's music.

Euro Truck Simulator 2

  • Praise

    • Before I played it I didn't quite understand the appeal, but having played it I understand.

    • It reminds me a lot of why I love Vietnam Medevac: there's a great pleasure in mastering the controls of a not-so-easy-to-control vehicle, especially one that you've seen a lot in real life but have never been able to control yourself.

      • In ETS2 I especially feel that pleasure when I park the truck.

  • Criticisms

    • I feel like many of the highway turns are too sharp for the posted speed limits. It feels too fast.

    • I wish I had the option to have the right-side blind-spot mirror on the HUD.

    • What's with the toll amounts? 36 euros for a toll?

    • The way the AI vehicles turn doesn't feel realistic.

    • The AI vehicles don't drift around in their lanes.

    • Once I got comfortable with parking and had done a dozen or so jobs, the game started to feel stale. This is what happened with Vietnam Medevac.

  •  Driving

    • Turn down the default mouse sensitivity.

    • If you're using keyboard and mouse to drive, it's much 'safer' to enable the on-screen right mirror rather than using your mouse-look to rotate your view over to the right to look out the mirror. I've had multiple accidental mis-steerings as a result of trying to use my mouse-look to look out the right mirror when changing lanes.

    • Keep your eye out for those speed limit sights (circle with red outline and white in the middle). They seem to generally indicate a change in the speed limit, which can get you a ticket easily.

    • Pay attention to the green arrows on the GPS map, they'll indicate when you need to change lanes.

  • Parking

    • It is much easier if you 1) lean out the window, 2) keep your eyes on the back of the trailer, and 3) move as slowly as possible, and 4) try to get your cab and trailer as straight as possible before you back in (because it's easier to visualize how it'll behave).

      • To lean out the window, just hold down the right mouse button ('look around' mode) and move the mouse all the way to the left.

    • I was parking once and the white space indicator wasn't turning green (to indicate that I had parked correctly), and it turned out I just needed to go back further. So be aware that the white indicator of where your cab should be may not be accurate (it may be too far forward).

F-117A Nighthawk Stealth Fighter 2.0

One-minute guide

  • Controls: image-20240621-131402.png image-20240621-131413.png image-20240621-131427.png

    • Flying

      • =/- for throttle

      • Joystick

      • 6-9

        • 6 - gear

        • 8 - bay open/closed

        • 9 - flaps

        • 0 - brakes

      • Shift+z - Accelerate time, Shift+x - normal time

      • Landing:

        1. Throttle at 70%, approach at 500'-1000', speed at ~300kts.

        2. Flaps out, throttle 50%, gear down, speed should go to ~230kts.

        3. Keep your eye on your airspeed and Stall Speed Indicator. Keep the airspeed >25kts above the stall speed and below 250kts.

    • Combat

      • Space bar - select weapon

      • Joystick Btn 2 - Fire weapon

      • 1-5 defenses

        • 1 flat

        • 2 chaff

        • 3 IR jammer

        • 4 ECM on/off

        • 5 drop decoy

    • HUD: F2-F10

    • Views:

      • External views: Shift+F1-F6

      • Cockpit views: Shift+m,./

      • Tracking Camera: bnm,./

    • Tactics

      • The "visibility" of your plane to enemy radars appears as a bar. Your EMV increases as you climb to a higher altitude, increase speed, open your bay doors, lower your gear, or use your jammers.

Falcon (series)

FlatOut

Praise

  • The game is surprisingly fun despite its age and simplicity.

  • It runs great on my laptop.

  • Flying out your windshield when you hit something is hilarious, as is seeing another driver fly through their windshield when they hit something.  It's clearly meant to be over-the-top.

  • The car deformations are awesome.

  • The sound of cars hitting each other is awesome.

  • The debris everywhere is great, it reminds me of Driver.

  • Having your car bumping around as it drives over debris and small bumps is awesome, that also reminds me of Driver.

  • The speed-boost feature is ridiculous but I do think it helps to keep the game fun.

Criticisms

  • The game is largely about memorizing each track.  I guess that's what real racing is like, too, though.

  • One difference from Forza that I noticed was that in Forza I can go on a track alone and gradually go faster and faster around the track to memorize it (starting out at 10 mph and increasing by 10 mph each loop), but in FlatOut AFAIK you just need to do the race over and over again, and having the other cars bumping into you makes it far harder to memorize how to take each turn.

  • The menus are pretty bad. You can't see all of the options at once, so I still get tripped up on which menu has the "Exit Game" option. Also the background color and graphics are just ugly.

  • The fact that you can't turn off the end-of-race replays is obnoxious, it means you have to do ~3 more button presses just to exit the race.

Things I noticed

  • There seems to be a lot of rubberbanding.

Advice

  • Turn off the music.

  • Turn down the volume of the actual cars to reduce your stress.

  • If you can get out in front at the beginning you are far more likely to win because the other cars will be bumping into each other and slowing each other down, and you will not have other cars bumping into you.

  • One good way to get out in front at the beginning is to just hold down the accelerator as much as possible (more than you normally would).

  • Another way to get an advantage is to look for some shortcut that the AI cars aren't taking.

  • Always spend as much of your money as possible on upgrades before every race, as it has a dramatic effect on how easy it is to win each race.

  • The best way I've found to learn a new track is to just keep restarting until I can end up in 1st place early on (like, before the mid-way point on the first lap).

  • On the high-grip racing surface I found I could benefit from just holding down the boost button (Left Ctrl) at the beginning of the race when there's a lot of jostling among the cars for position.  Obviously it depends on whether there are any tight turns early on but it's something to consider doing.

Full Spectrum Warrior

MOUT training summary

  • IMO the training is good but it throws a lot of information at you in a very short span of time, the game should have an in-game reference card like in Combat Mission.

MOUT 1 - Moving

  • Middle mouse or tab to switch teams

  • WASD to switch guys

  • F to set facing

  • Shift or scroll mouse wheel to zoom

  • Inverted triangles are enemies

  • Intel isn't flawless

  • E to open your GPS

  • O is your objective

  • LMB in GPS to view your obj list.

  • RMB to activate your move order cursor

  • LMB to confirm the order

  • Shield icons mean you have cover.

  • Never move a team to sit in the open

  • Corners will save your life

  • Spacebar to tell them to find cover, they'll find it

  • X to cancel a move order in progress

MOUT 2 - Shooting

  • Teams don't fire back automatically at units they're protected against. They fire automatically at enemy they're vulnerable against.

  • LMB to start to issue a fire sector then LMB again to confirm it.

  • If you see them lie down that's a red flag they're in danger of dying.

  • A shield over an enemy means they're protected against your fire.

  • X to cancel a fire sector order.

  • Use your GPS to look for flank approaches.

  • A down pointing white arrow icon means the enemy is engaged and won't shoot at new targets that appear.

MOUT 3 - Grenades

  • M67:

    • Don't deploy grenades too close to your fire team

    • Grenades bounce

    • 1 to bring up the grenade cursor

    • LMB to throw

  • M203:

    • 2 to bring up the aim cursor

    • LMB to fire

  • Smoke:

    • 3 to bring up the cursor

    • Deploy it between your pos and your next cover

    • Wait about 10s before moving

MOUT 4 - Bounding overwatch, suppression, cover

  • Bounding overwatch movement orders:

    • Movement cursor:

    • Press and hold the LMB when giving a move order

  • Suppressing fire:

    • Click and hold the LMB when giving a fire sector order

    • X icon means the unit is suppressed

    • Enemy won't switch targets unless a new target gets too close or ends its move order in the open.

  • Some objects offer cover for a limited time, like cars, wood boxes, wood tables, furniture
    The shield icon depletes as the cover degrades.

MOUT 5 - Capstone exercise

  • Press Q when you see the red light on the radio pack to radio in a sitrep (save your game).

  • Open GPS and press 2 or RMB to request a recon flight to paint enemy positions.

  • There may be unseen targets and targets can move.

  • Press 4 to bring up the indirect fire (mortar) cursor

Getting Over It

Advice for playing

  • The game is set up to punish you for panicking / making sudden movements.

    • For example, if you fall, your instinct is to flick the mouse to try to get the hammer to grab something, but that ends up normally just hitting the wall and launching you away from the wall and further down the mountain.

    • If you fall, you normally just want to quickly orient the hammer horizontally to grab the wall and then stop moving it so that it doesn’t push against the wall instead.

  • The game plays on your physical intuition to add to the tension: it sets up situations / slopes that would be impossible to scale in real life to make it feel scarier.

  • There’s a move pattern I noticed I call the “jump and freeze”, where you push or pull yourself to catapult yourself in a particular direction, and then you want to quickly reorient the hammer to be able to catch some feature and then stop moving, because any movement will cause the hammer to slip off.

  • Another pattern I noticed is where you need to use the hammer to adjust yourself into a very particular position (usually as close to a wall as you can get, but sometimes a certain distance from some object you intend to push / pull with your hammer), in order to execute the necessary next movement (normally a catch-and-freeze) to advance to the next position.

  • Another pattern I noticed is that when you’re pulling yourself to launch yourself, you want to watch the direction that your avatar (the guy in the pot) is moving before you really flick the mouse. You want to move the mouse slowly when your character is moving along some tangent line that you’re not interested in, and then “throw” / flick the mouse when your avatar is moving along a tangent line that goes in the direction you want to go in.

  • Another pattern is you or your hammer getting caught on objects, like objects above you.

  • Another pattern is having the hammer slide a bit on some surface you’re trying to grab at to freak you out in a situation where you’re actually OK if you just don’t move the mouse.

Setups / walkthrough

  • Blue slide area:

    • BBQ grill to red wall: position your hammer on top of the BBQ grill and then move slowly until your guy’s body is moving towards the red wall, then flick and use the hammer to grab at the wall: https://i.imgur.com/a1Wl7pv.jpeg

    • Ladder to BBQ grill: push against the ladder and then use the hammer to hook onto the BBQ: https://i.imgur.com/iBH6tyy.jpeg

    • Green rake to blue slide: try to position your hammer towards the right edge of the rake so it won’t catch on anything when you swing it around. Move slowly through the first half of the swing and then flick when your torso is moving on a tangent line upwards, and swing the hammer around to grab at the blue slide and then let go of the mouse: https://i.imgur.com/MUj8IwE.jpeg

    • Cardboard boxes to wooden stairs: set up on the corner of the cardboard boxes and push yourself against the raised edge. Be sure to let go of the mouse so your hammer doesn’t touch anything, as it will cause you to slide off. https://i.imgur.com/H3dxLeo.jpeg

  • Wooden stairs and camera:

    • Wooden stairs: you have to be careful to have your hammer or torso not hit the overhanging obstacle. Get your hammer into one of the nooks of the stairs and pull the mouse to pull you up along the stairs, not worrying about catching anything with your hammer. https://i.imgur.com/aKVGqbB.jpeg

    • Chair to camera: get into position on the edge of the chair then push downwards and swing the hammer around counter-clockwise to hook onto the camera and let go of the mouse. https://i.imgur.com/a6LrO6G.jpeg

    • Camera to white sofa: push off the camera, swing the hammer clockwise, and let go of the mouse to hook onto the sofa. https://i.imgur.com/borDSEw.jpeg

    • White sofa to brown chair: push down and swing the hammer clockwise and let go of the mouse to hook the chair. https://i.imgur.com/8aBR4AH.jpeg

      • You can do the same thing for the next jump.

  • Orange on the orange table and the following very-vertical obstacles:

    • Set up on the left edge of the orange table, push down, and then swing the hammer around and let go of the mouse to try to hook the ledge. https://i.imgur.com/J2KlAn7.jpeg

    • Rocks: for the next several rock obstacles, just push yourself as close to the wall as you can, then grab as high as you can and rotate yourself up. Move the hammer most slowly when you first start to rotate, but after that you don’t want to be too fast or too slow or you’ll slide off; maybe between 4-6 seconds. https://i.imgur.com/s4iLAe3.jpeg

      • It looks very scary and it’s scary to think about falling back to the bottom of the mountain but it’s actually not that difficult.

      • If you start to fall just get your hammer out to the right and let go of the mouse.

    • For the last rock it looks like a place where you might need to push yourself up but you can actually grab the rock. https://i.imgur.com/i2XLsWf.jpeg

  • Overhang after the church: set yourself up at the corner right before the last rock that’s underneath the overhang, push yourself straight up, then swing around to hook onto the ledge. https://i.imgur.com/Z3l6Jgw.jpeg

    • You want your hammer to be leaning just barely to the left when you have it straight down about to launch yourself upwards.

  • Anvil and cliff: perch on the edge of the anvil and push yourself towards the top of the cliff, then swing the hammer clockwise to try to catch the top of the cliff. https://i.imgur.com/rilN3ao.jpeg

    • You don’t need to jerk the mouse as fast as you can to push/launch yourself. A steady movement across the mousepad over the course of ~0.75 seconds (on the highest mouse sensitivity) is fine.

    • You want to have around 5% of the bottom of your pot be over the edge of the anvil.

    • You want to aim the bottom of your hammer just to the left of the bottom-left corner of your pot.

  • Cliff to floating rock: Angle yourself with the hammer at a ~80 degree angle to the cliff and then push yourself horizontally.

GoldenEye

Advice for playing

Multiplayer

  • No matter the scenario, it's crucial to know how to move as fast as possible by "side-strafing" (turning 45 degrees away from the direction you want to go in, pressing up on the joystick, and holding the appropriate yellow button to side-step "forwards").  If you don't do this you won't be able to run away from people who know how to do it.

  • In most games (that don't have explosives), the metagame is all about ensuring your continued access to body armor and denying your opponent the ability to get/replenish body armor.

  • When you've played for a long time, you will immediately know when you spawn in where the closest body armor is, and you'll see where your opponent is and know where you need to go to stay as far away from your opponent as possible (assuming they already have body armor and a gun).  And when your opponent spawns in, you will immediately know what their closest body armor is and the fastest route to that body armor (or to some intermediate position where you can block the person from getting the body armor).

  • Pursuers have an advantage on levels that have slowly-opening doors (like Temple and Facility).

1v1

  • Using guns

    • Body armor is the key to success.  Your top priority when you spawn should be to get body armor.

    • Once an experienced player has the upper hand (i.e. has killed the other player without losing much health and has full body armor with one of the better weapons on the level), it can be difficult for the other player to recover.

    • On some levels (like Facility), if Player 1 kills Player 2, Player 1 can then wait in the "middle" of the level (in Facility, it's where the lockers are) such that as soon as Player 2 respawns, Player 1 can reach Player 2 before Player 2 can get body armor and kill Player 2 again.

    • On some levels (like Temple), rather than camping in the "middle" of the level and focusing on trying to , Player 1 can camp between Player 2 and the body armor.

  • Using proximity mines

    • This is a lot of fun and is a totally different experience from using guns.

Grand Tactician: The Civil War

Learning how to play

  • There are two tutorials: a battle tutorial and a campaign tutorial.

Battle tutorial

  1. When a battle is loaded you start in “HQ view” which gives you info about the situation (similar to the Briefing screen in Combat Mission).

    1. In the Reports you can click the names of the units to navigate up and down the OOB.

    2. The Reports and objectives are updated in real time during the battle.

  2. During the battle open the Field Book (in-game manual) by clicking the '?' icon in the top-right to find answers to questions.

  3. Camera controls:

    1. move the mouse to the edge of the screen to move.

    2. mouse at the top-edge of the L/R will rotate the camera.

    3. scroll wheel to zoom

    4. you can change the hotkeys if you want to.

  4. The map

    1. Objectives appear on the map in a little shield icon with a number inside it indicating the victory points you earn for controlling it.

      1. Unlike Combat Mission and more like Command Ops, you may earn VPs depending on how long you control each objective for the duration of the battle.

    2. Entry/exit points are shown as little double-arrows on the map.

      1. These can be captured.

      2. To withdraw you need to press Left Alt before giving the movement order to the exit point.

  5. Battles can be Meeting Engagements, Attack, or Defend.

  6. <I stopped at step 27 of 98.>

Thoughts on the game

  • There’s no way to go backwards in the tutorials.

 

Graviteam Tactics

  • This was one of the two game series that I wanted to play badly enough that it motivated me to buy a gaming PC (the other was the CMx2 games).

How to learn to play

  1. Have videos of people playing the game on a second monitor while you work.

    1. Don’t worry about listening to the audio if that’s too distracting, your goal should be to just get used to how it looks when someone is playing (because the UI is a little unusual).

  2. Set a goal of playing the game for 30-60 minutes per day and just play single missions until you get familiar with the UI and the controls.

    1. Feel free to restart a mission halfway through if you realize you’ve made some crucial mistake earlier on.

  3. Buy the Croation Legion DLC campaign and play through it as the Croations. It’s only infantry, so it’s less complicated.

    • This campaign is rec’d by two different people in this thread.

      • “Croatian Legion as german is your choice. I learned with this operation.”

  4. Play the Chewy Gooey Pass DLC campaign for Tank Warfare: Tunisia 1943.

Tutorials

Journal of what I’m learning as I play

  • 2024.08.17

    • I’m about to start the Croation Legion campaign and I notice that the campaign selection screen has two options with different icons, and it’s not clear to me what the difference is. I Googled it and found an explanation here, basically it’s two versions of the same campaign, one using the older way of ordering troops around (on the campaign map?), I think ordering individual platoons, and the latter method using the newer “battle group” method, which seems designed to make it easier to give orders to large formations of units.

    • When deploying units before a battle starts, the blue squares are where the enemy will be able to deploy.

    • I think I understand what I need to do in my first battle: I have control of three companies and I need to defend the named points on the map, where each place has a points value next to its name.

    • I see an exclamation point next to some unit names, apparently that means that the unit could dig in if they were placed elsewhere but can’t on the ground they’re currently located on. (src)

    • Green dotted area shows where you can deploy the currently-selected unit. (src)

    • I spent some time moving units around before deciding I didn’t want to invest the time necessary to finish the entire battle today, so I quit, my understanding being that I’ll have to do the deployment again when I start the game again. I think the main takeaway I had was that, similar to Combat Mission, when you are doing the deployment you want to first group your units together clearly on the map, then assign areas of responsibility to companies, then to platoons, etc.

Criticisms of the game

  • 2016 - grogheads forums - ComradeP

    • Infantry combat isn't modeled in a sophisticated way (NW: I'm guessing the comparison is to CMx2), and the AI soldiers can behave in confusing ways.

    • The AI's movement planning doesn't seem to factor in the terrain as well as it should.

    • The AI units can't always see what they "should" be able to see.

      • NW: I saw this myself where T34s weren't spotting an ATG right in front of them that was shooting at them, despite it kicking up a ton of dust.

    • The AI's vehicle movement is wonky, where it won't go straight when you want it to.

    • You can use a gamey tactic to win: you increase the size of the battle map in the options menu, and then have some units drive into the rear to capture locations.  The game won't spawn in all the units it should for the larger battle-map size.

Frank Hunter Games: Campaigns of La Grande Armee, Campaigns on the Danube

Hearts of Iron

  • I haven't played the game, but from some initial research it seems like it's not as realistic as it sells itself as being.  It doesn't give the player the freedom to avoid crucial strategic mistakes.  So it's kind of an "on rails" experience rather than a simulation like CMANO or Command Ops 2.  I asked about this on Reddit here:

    • I haven't played the game yet but I'm curious how it handles the player's ability to avoid some of the massive blunders that Germany made during the war that would have surely gone a different way if they'd had better information.

      One example being Germany not knowing about the number and quality of the tanks that the Soviets had before they decided to invade. It seems like most HOI games should have the German player getting the Soviets to join the Axis.

      Another example being Germany declaring war on the United States in the hope that Japan would reciprocate by helping them out with the Soviets.

      Also, somewhat related: I'm curious how carefully the game models the German-Soviet relationship prior to Barbarossa. Like, the negotiations, the trade, the domestic reactions. Basically all the issues talked about here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German%E2%80%93Soviet_Axis_talks

    • Responses:

      • Short answer: it doesn't.

        This game is primarily an althistory power fantasy. Specific to your question, the AI is very inflexible in what it does politically and it generally follows what did happen in the IRL timeline despite the player doing otherwise.

      • Regarding Germany cooperating with Japan, the game puts them into two separate factions which have few direct interactions. There is the Tripartite Pact, where Germany, Italy, and Japan all guarantee one another, so any country which declares war on one is effectively declaring war on all. But aside from that, there's little cooperation and even a chance Japan will attack the Axis powers if they manage to defeat the Allies before 1941 and take SE Asia. Germany doesn't declare war directly on the USA; after Japan attacks the Philippines and the Dutch East Indies, the USA and the Allies are in a common war so they join the Allies and then join the separate war against Germany. They effectively fight separate wars against mostly the same opponents (aside from the Soviets) like they did in reality. They will almost never team up against the Soviets unless historical focuses are turned off and Japan goes monarchist rather than fascist.

  • So it seems like there's currently no realistic simulation of WW2 at the grand-strategic level...seems like an opportunity.

Heat Signature

  • The thing that makes it less interesting than Combat Mission is that:

    • In Heat Signature the counters for things are very clear, and they're often black-and-white, so that you clearly either can or cannot do a mission with the tools you have and the opposition you face. For example, a crashbeam is useless for killing armoured guards; it's not merely 'less useful', in the same way that an infantry squad is 'less useful' against a tank than an AT gun is against that tank.

    • In Heat Signature you can always use your counters against the appropriate enemies, whereas in Combat Mission you can end up in a situation where you *do* have a counter to a particular enemy unit, but your counter is not positioned where it needs to be to counter that unit. So Combat Mission requires a lot more planning. I suppose you could also say that Combat Mission is more random in that way as well: if the enemy shows up where you weren't expecting them and don't have an appropriate response ready, you can end up in a bad situation, and that can just be a matter of luck. Heat Signature feels more deterministic, which is nice but if there aren't that many unique states, it makes planning ahead trivial and uninteresting.

Hellcats Over the Pacific

Hind (1996)

Controls

(src)

image-20241127-072952.png

FLIGHT CONTROLS
Up Arrow - cyclic forward
Down Arrow - cyclic backward
Left Arrow - cyclic left
Right Arrow - cyclic right
Q or + = collective up
A or - = collective down
1 - 9 = collective presets
Z or Insert = tail rotor left
X or Delete = tail rotor right

COCKPIT CONTROLS
I = hud contrast adjust
L = instrument lights
N = select next waypoint
Shift N = select previous waypoint
V = night vision on/off
U = undercarriage down/up
D = cargo doors open/close
B = brakes
R = transmit reconnaissance data

WEAPONS CONTROLS
Enter = arm and select weapon
Ctrl Enter = unarm weapon
Spacebar = fire weapon
C = auto chaff on/off
F = auto flare on/off

COCKPIT VIEW CONTROLS
F2 or Home = pilot view
F3 or Pg Up = wso view
Alt Left Arrow = look left
Alt Right Arrow = look right
End = re-enter view
O = flir optics view
G = turret optics

EXTERNAL VIEW CONTROLS
F6 = external view
F7 = weapon view
F8 = weapon target view
F9 = target lock view
F10 = remote view
F11 = spectator view
F12 = watch next drone
Shift F12 - watch previous drone
Alt Arrow Keys - Rotate View
> = zoom in
< = zoom out

SILICON WSO
Backspace = rescan targets
S = silicon wso on/off
T = track target

WINGMAN COMMANDS
(Ctrl for wingman, shift for formation)
1 = go home
2 = follow me
3 = attack my target
4 = resume flight plan

VISUAL DETAIL
Alt F1 = lowest detail
Alt F2 = medium detail
Alt F3 = full detail

MISCELLANEOUS COMMANDS
Ctrl Q = end mission
P = pause/resume
Tab = select time compression
Ctrl Tab = cancel time compression
Ctrl J = joystick on/off
Alt J = recalibrate joystick
Shift F1 = on-screen manual

Tutorials

  • Hind Conversion

    • Mission:

      • Just fly through the waypoints and land. There’s a bunch of target-practice vehicles at waypoint 'X' if you want to try out your weapons.

    • Learnings

      • Press ‘Enter’ to switch weapons / switch to Nav mode.

      • Your weapons can be locked (you can be locked in ‘Nav’ mode) if you’re too close to your friendly base.

      • In the “Novice” flight-model mode you can just press full-down on the cyclic to go faster (the up arrow on the keyboard) and it’ll stop when you’re at 340kph, you don’t need to worry about “pressing” too hard on it.

      • The waypoints don’t go A-->B-->C-->D, they go A-->B-->C-->X-->D. That briefly confused me as I was cycling through them with the 'N' key.

      • You can use your 20mm(?) cannon to take out any of the armored vehicles except(?) the tanks. BMPs are tougher than BRDMs, which are tougher than SAMs / Jeeps. Your WSO will tell you when you’re in range.

      • If you’re in the pilot’s seat and want to hit something with the unguided rockets, just have your WSO target it ('T' key) and hold the space bar as you fly over the target and your gunner will open fire at the appropriate time (assuming you’re lined up properly).

      • Be careful about fuel, I ran out of fuel and blew up despite just hovering over the landing pad.

  • Navigation and Reconnaissance Exercise

    • Mission:

      • Just fly through the waypoints and land, but this time press 'R' at the designated “Recon” waypoints (X and Y).

    • Learnings:

      • Be careful about landing, you can blow up if you come down too quickly. The keyboard controls are not very responsive so you have to be careful, it’s easy to press the button and feel like nothing is happening and then all of a sudden you’re coming down very fast.

      • In Navigation Mode the waypoint your HUD is pointing to will automatically increment if you fly close enough to your current waypoint. I was pressing the ‘Next Waypoint’ button (N) unnecessarily.

      • At the top of your HUD there’s a caret (^) that points to the heading of your next waypoint, which makes it easier to turn from one waypoint to the next.

  • Weapons: AT-6

    • Mission:

      • Fly to the X waypoint and take out a certain number of targets.

    • Learnings:

      • It seems you need to maintain a lock on the target the entire time the missile is in flight.

      • From Googling it seems that Hinds aren’t meant to be kept in a hover and it can strain the engines. But I didn’t run into issues in-game (maybe because I’m using the Novice flight model).

  • Weapons: 57mm and 80mm rockets

    • Learnings:

      • I didn’t know I could release the ‘up’ arrow and maintain the same speed.

      • Press 'G' while in the WSO view (F3) to switch to the 20mm cannon(?) view, then hold Alt and press the arrow keys to look around.

      • You may want to slow down to 150-200kph while using the rockets to give yourself more time in the ‘sweet spot’ where the rockets will be accurate. If you come in at 300+kph you’ll only be able to take out a single target, but if you come in slower you can get 2-3 targets per run.

Advice

  • Take-off:

    • Press ‘6' to set a slight vertical speed, then ‘5’ when you’re at a radar altitude of 30m to stop gaining altitude.

    • Press ‘up’ to gain speed to 300 kph then let go and you’ll maintain that speed.

  • Advice from the manuals:

    • Turn off crashes at first.

    • “Most missions have been designed with a cruising speed of 300kph between waypoints and a cruise altitude of 30m.”

    • “When faced with an incoming missile or enemy anti-aircraft artillery, you are advised to turn sharply (jinking) and deploy chaff and flares. Flying low will decrease the likelihood of SAMs, particularly if you make use of the terrain masking i.e. keeping below the horizon. Unfortunately, flying low will expose you to small arms fire.”

    • “If you are fired upon, take out the air defences first. Do not waste weapons destroying tanks unless this is the purpose of your mission.”

    • “The turret machine gun has a very high rate of fire so use it in short bursts.”

    • You carry spare ammo that you need to land to reload. Wait until you see the confirmation message “Weapons reloaded”.

    • When escorting Hip helicopters the cruising speed is 240kph.

    • The WSO will only ever lock onto enemy targets.

    • You can’t change the scale of the minimap in your cockpit.

    • Cockpit is fairly simple / self-explanatory: image-20241127-063627.png

    • Threat warning indicator: image-20241127-063458.png

      • 1 - Early warning radar (EWR)

      • 2 - Aircraft radar

      • 3 - AAA unit radar

      • 4 - SAM launcher radar

      • 5 - Incoming radar-guided RF missile

      • 6 - Incoming heat-seeking IR missile

Human Resource Machine

IL-2 (series)

Invisible, Inc.

General thoughts

  • This game seems like a spin on Gunpoint. It seems very, very similar to Gunpoint's concept / theme.

  • The story is that you work for some kind of spy agency that just got attacked by "the corporations", most of the agents were killed, and now you need to raid "the corporations" for "supplies".

Summary of the tutorial

  1. Click on a person to select them.

  2. Right-click on a square to issue a move order.

  3. Hit 'Enter' to end the turn.

  4. P to peek

  5. Move next to an interactive object (including guards) to have options pop up on the object.

  6. Click on the options to activate them (including knocking out guards).

  7. KO'd guards will wake up several turns later and begin looking for you.

  8. Standing on a KO'd unit will delay when they wake up.

  9. Peeking out an open door will reveal more information than peeking out a closed door. You can open a door from the diagonal squares to it.

  10. PWR is basically like your MP

  11. Hit the space bar to activate 'Incognita', who I guess lets you hack stuff(?).

  12. Distracting a guard will cause them to investigate the lure on their turn.

  13. Opening a door that is within sight of a guard will arouse the guard's suspicion and cause him to walk through the door.

  14. You can select an 'Ambush' action in the bottom-left corner to ambush guards that you've lured towards you.

  15. You can peek around corners without exposing yourself by clicking the 'Peek' icon in the bottom-left corner of the screen.

  16. Cover objects create blind spots one tile behind them that you can hide in.

    1. Note that some of these blind spots look ridiculous (it looks like the guard should easily be able to see you). Just use the beige striped color on the floor to know if it's a working blindspot or not.

  17. You can 'Observe' guards (click on them) and you'll know what their patrol pattern is.

  18. You cannot hack a terminal from the diagonal squares.

  19. Every turn the security level goes up by one. New security measures are added every 5 increments (every 5 turns).

  20. Tab to switch between operatives.

  21. Stun guns take 2 turns to recharge.

  22. Hacking doesn't take any AP(?).

  23. Peeking takes 1 AP.

  24. Additional guards (starting at alert level 4) show up at those red double-doors.

  25. You don't exit the level from the same place where you entered it. You're looking for a four-square elevator. The levels are sort of linear in that they're expecting you to move through the entire level to get to the exit.

  26. It looks like PWR may carry over from level to level.

Jane’s Fleet Command

One-minute guide

  • Controls:

    • F1 opens the keyboard shortcuts.

    • Right-click a unit to open its available orders.

    • 'm' when you have a unit selected to toggle a line showing its order destination

  • Tactics:

    • Do scouting:

      1. Get E-2 Hawkeyes in the air to do long-range radar detection of aircraft.

      2. Use the F-15/F-14 to identify unknown tracks (air and ground).

        1. Shift+9 to order them to max altitude (keep their distance from missiles).

        2. Ctrl+N/E/S/W to scram north/east/south/west (to get away from missiles).

    • Use weapons:

      • F-14 - Anti-air. Can carry the very-long-range Phoenix anti-air missile.

      • F-15 - Anti-air. Good for loitering: long-range, has more fuel.

      • F-16 - Multirole. Anti-air and anti-ground. Best used for anti-ground if the F-15/F-14 are available for anti-air.

      • EA-6B - Jam / take out enemy SAMs. Press C to jam.

      • SLCM - Use to take out enemy ground structures (airports, etc.).

  • Learning advice:

    • Go through the single missions one-at-a-time, starting at the top (least-complex). Read/follow each mission’s hints in the manual to learn the game mechanics.

    • Read the ‘Alert States’ page of the manual: https://i.imgur.com/hMgE519.png

  • Misc advice:

    • If you have your jet aircraft move at a slow speed (Shift+1), they’ll use less fuel and can stay in the air longer.

  • Common acronyms (check the manual for the full list):

    • AAM - Air-to-Air Missile

    • AAW - Anti-Air Warfare

    • AGM - Air-to-Ground Missile

    • ASM - Air-to-Surface Missile (I thought it stood for anti-ship missile)

    • ASW - Anti-Submarine Warfare

    • SLCM - Sea-Launched Cruise Missile

John Tiller games / Wargame Design Studio (WDS) games

Panzer Campaigns series

Panzer School (Mobile)

General thoughts / review

  • I'm really enjoying this.

  • I think the key is getting into it is to treat it like a puzzle game and try to figure out how to get a Major Victory on each scenario.  It's fun to try totally different approaches until you learn what works and what doesn't.

  • I feel like playing this could make it easier for me to get comfortable with Command Ops 2.

  • I think once I play through Panzer School I’ll play Smolensk '41 on mobile (since I have it) and then switch to playing the desktop games.

General advice
Scenario-specific advice/lessons
Getting Started

  • To get an Axis Major Victory you just need to get a tank company to overrun ("Assault") the stationary Soviet artillery in their rear and destroy the guns.

  • It seems like you're far more likely to suffer tank losses if you stack more than one tank company in the same 1km hex, so I ended up just keeping them at one per hex.

  • I ended up just keeping my motorized infantry companies in villages in the rear where they wouldn't get attacked by the Soviet artillery.

  • I used my mechanized infantry to Assault.

  • My approach was: I'd have my scout company move around to reveal the enemy positions, then I'd have three tank companies on different hexes surrounding the weak point I wanted to focus on and just fire into it (not Assault it).  I had one other tank company that couldn't get into a position around that enemy infantry company so I had it targeting another nearby enemy infantry company and firing at it.  The infantry companies couldn't hurt my tanks.  Then when an infantry company became Disrupted I could move my mechanized infantry company onto one of the hexes with a tank company without having it get fired on by the enemy, and on the next turn I could have the combined mechanized infantry and tank force Assault the enemy position.

  • The best score I've been able to achieve is 119: 50 for the objective, 34 for enemy infantry losses, 46 for 36 destroyed artillery guns, minus 5 points for friendly infantry losses and 6 for friendly vehicle losses.

1 - Combined Arms

  • Advice in the briefing:

    • When assaulting with a tank company against infantry in covered terrain like towns or woods, stack the tanks with an infantry regiment to avoid a penalty.

    • The best counter to dug-in anti-tank guns is to assault them out of their prepared position.

  • To get a Major Victory you need to aim to capture the enemy artillery in their rear (you get 1 point per gun for that, I think there are ~36 guns), hold the two objectives (10 points + 20 points), try to destroy as much of the AT guns at the first objective as you can (another ~24 points), and not lose infantry / vehicles to enemy artillery/AT guns by making sure they’re either in covered terrain or out of sight/range.

  • The highest score I’ve been able to get is 98 points: I inflicted 252 Russian casualties for 25 points, I inflicted 60 gun losses for 70 points, held the two objectives for 30 points (so 125 points in my favor), while taking 129 casualties (-18 points) and losing 4 vehicles (-9 points).

  • The winning approach for me was to:

    • Screenshot_20250319_021136.jpg

    • send one tank company around the north side of the first objective to the second objective immediately to try to get them pushed out of there, both because I need to capture that objective but also because I can cross the river at a bridge at that hex, and I need to cross that river to get at the enemy artillery.

      • You need to keep it 2 hexes away from the first objective to avoid it getting shot at, but you can keep it in travel mode.

    • send the other two tank companies around north of the first objective to the town hexes on the eastern edge of the first objective, that way they’ll hopefully take fewer losses since they’ll be in covered terrain (the hexes west/north of the first objective are clear terrain, the southern hex is woods).

    • I’m not sure the best thing to do with the infantry at the beginning. My goal is to get them stacked with the tank companies next to the objectives without having them take losses getting into those positions. I sent my infantry regiments into the woods at first to try to keep them 1) from getting targeted by artillery, as the truck-infantry seem very vulnerable to artillery, and 2) from getting hit hard by the entrenched positions. I figured I’d take a turn just shooting into the enemy positions with my tanks before attempting to assault. I do think I’ve noticed that moving within 1 hex of enemy positions while in transport mode is a much worse idea with infantry than with tanks; you want to switch modes while 2 hexes away.

    • With my artillery, I just move it close enough to hit the positions I want to hit but also try to keep it more than 5 hexes (5km) away from enemy positions so they don’t get spotted and targeted by the enemy artillery, as I’d lost a lot of vehicles that way. It doesn’t seem to play a crucial role in this scenario since the enemy positions are dug-in. I imagine it would be more useful in a scenario where there’s enemy in the open. I did make sure to use it against the enemy AT guns/infantry once they were assaulted out of the first objective.

    • I don’t know how to best use my HQ unit, so I just use it to hold the first objective after it’s cleared out while my tanks/infantry pursue the kicked-out AT guns to try to destroy them.

    • After I clear out the second objective (1 turn) I have my units fire on the HQ unit across the bridge (1 turn? or maybe part of the previous turn), then switch into transport mode, cross the bridge and get next to the enemy artillery (1 turn), and then assault it together (1 turn). It’s such a lengthy process turn-wise that it’s important to get started on it ASAP.

2 - Air Support

  • This is a much easier scenario to get a Major Victory on than the previous one, I got a Major Victory my first attempt.

  • Basically just move up the tank company / infantry regiment that’s in the VP location to support the one that’s further forward (put it in the village for the cover bonus), have your HQ occupy the VP location, make sure to use your available artillery and air support, and have your forward tank/infantry attack the attacking forces.

3 - Anti-Tank Defenses

  • I got a major victory on my first attempt but on later attempts there seemed to be variability in how many casualties I took.

  • My basic strategy was to retreat to the village with the 88s and then when the ATGs get released move them up to the village as well.

  • I can dig in at the village but it doesn’t seem to make much of a difference.

  • The enemy tanks can hit you at 2km (2 hexes).

4 - Engineer Ops - Mines

  • I haven’t gotten a Major Victory on this yet, I need to figure out how to cause more casualties while taking fewer myself.

  • It seems to make more sense focus on the topmost enemy position because it’s surrounded by woods that you can set up in.

5 - Engineer Ops - Bridges

  • You don’t want to build a bridge right next to an existing enemy position that moves onto a hex also next to that unit because the ZOC will prevent you from moving from the first hex to the second hex.

6 - Recon Spotting
7 - Tank Battle - Early vs. Early
8 - Tank Battle - Early vs. Late
9 - Tank Battle - Late vs. Late
10 - Infantry Assault - No Support
11 - Infantry Assault - With Support
12 - Urban Fighting
Capsture Exercise
Campaign Scenario 1 - Breakthrough
Campaign Scenario 2 - River Crossing
Campaign Scenario 3 - Tank Battles
Full Campaign Scenario

KNIGHTS

Advice

  • At the beginning of the puzzle you may have a lot of degrees of freedom(?), so you can kind of just wiggle the pieces towards where they need to be, get all but one or two of them in-place, and then that's really when the puzzle starts.

Limbo

  • It's such a depressing environment.

M1 Tank Platoon (series)

Magic Duels

  • What I like about the game (not including thoughts on the card game, just the interface / set-up)

    • I think they've done a brilliant job of easing people into the game.

    • I love that there are very short, very quick challenges that are used to introduce each new gameplay mechanic.

    • I love that they highlight (with a red outline) the cards that you can choose from in any particular part of the game (e.g. choosing a card to play, choosing a target for a particular spell, etc.)

    • I love that they give hints (which you can turn off) about what card you should play next (they do it with an arrow pointing downwards at the card they think you should consider playing).

    • I love that there are only five missions per 'story', so you get a real feeling of accomplishment when you finish one of them.

Metal Gear Solid

VR Missions

I watched this longplay: PSX Longplay [288] Metal Gear Solid: VR Missions

  • They use the same levels multiple times with small variations: A sneaking mission, a sneaking mission time-attack where the guard positions and patrol routes are sometimes (often?) different, a sneaking mission with a SOCOM pistol where you also need to *kill* all the guards, and that last one with also a time-attack element.

  • The number of guards, guard positions, and patrol routes are sometimes (often?) different in the different appearances of a particular level.

  • The levels are generally small, the levels are quick to start, and you start right next to the action, so there's no lost time in getting right into it.

  • One possible 'imperfection' in the levels is that the technique being tested is often not necessary to beat the level, and in fact is often not the fastest way to beat the level.

  • Another possible 'imperfection' is that the level designs are fixed; there's no variation to ensure that the player can handle new situations rather than simply memorizing the guard/camera/spotlight patterns for a particular level. I'm seeing this a lot in this longplay.

  • The time attack levels provide two similar-but-different challenges: the first challenge is just being able to pass the level within the hard time limit, and the second challenge is figuring out how to beat the top-3 times.

Weapon mode

SOCOM

  • For the first level you don't need to aim, you just need to move in one direction and shoot. It has multiple targets, I guess just to reinforce the fact that each target takes 3 hits to destroy, the same number of shots it takes to kill the guards.

  • The second level also has you just move forward, but has the targets to the left and right, so you need to actually aim left and right.

  • The third level introduces moving ("patrolling") targets. The shape of the level is funny (a smiley face), and it actually does seem to work with the constraints that the level has, but it seems to be only a way of keeping it visually interesting rather than as an integral part of what's being taught.

  • The fourth level introduces pillars that can block your line of sight.

  • The fifth level shows targets that periodically "disappear", I don't understand what that is supposed to represent. I think it's purely gamey, it's not meant to test a skill that will carry over to your interactions against guards.

  • There are only five levels for SOCOM training, vs. 15 for the sneaking training.

C4

  • The first level is the simplest possible thing you can imagine: a short line with a single wall that you need to blow up.

  • The second level introduces the idea of blowing up multiple targets with a single C4. It has 4 sets of 2 cube targets.

  • The third level seems to introduce the idea of chain reactions of explosions.

  • The fourth level encourages you to use chain reactions to blow up floating explosive targets.

  • The fifth level seems to continue with trying to get you to use chain reactions. It seems to have an extraneous part of the level that I can't see the use of. I suppose it allows people to see a part of the level that they wouldn't otherwise be able to see.

FAMAS

  • The first level just has three targets.

  • The second level has explosive targets; I don't see how this helps teach the use of the FAMAS.

  • The third level just has a bunch of normal targets arranged in lines. I guess the idea is to introduce the idea that the FAMAS is great at rapidly taking down lots of grouped enemies?

  • The fourth level seems to continue this theme but with explosive targets, it's a question-mark-shaped level where you can run-and-gun and take down targets that line up with each other.

  • The fifth level is in the shape of an exclamation mark and doesn't seem to introduce any new idea. It changes the camera angle to a lower perspective, which would seem to limit the use of this as a trainer for the normal game (which doesn't use such a low camera angle).

Grenade

  • The first level has five explosive targets, three of which are at the same level as you and two are below you. So it seems to be introducing how to use the grenade as well as the fact that you can use grenades against enemies on lower levels from you in a way that you can't use your guns.

  • The second level seems to just show three explosive targets that are slightly elevated from your position and separated from you by small moats, with only small "shelves" that the grenades can land on, so I guess the idea here is to force you to throw your grenades either more accurately or in such a way that they are stopped by the cube targets so that the grenades don't fall off the shelves.

  • The third level seems to introduce the idea of timing, greater accuracy, and the arc of your throw: there are two targets that move, one of which is behind a wall (so you need to take into consideration the arc of your throw), one target that's in mid-air (so you need to cook the grenade first), and one target that's far away with a small shelf (similar to the second level) but at an angle where you can't toss the grenade at it perpendicular to its side, so you need to throw more accurately.

  • The fourth level just seems to be more practice with moving targets. I don't see anything new here.

  • The fifth level seems to be just more practice with cooking grenades.

Claymore

  • The first level introduces the idea of crawling to avoid setting off claymores and instead pick them up, and how to use a claymore to destroy a target.

  • The second level just has two targets; I don't see anything new being introduced here.

  • The third level just seems to be more practice against more targets; the level is in the shape of an 8, which is the number of targets.

  • The fourth level also seems to be just more practice against more targets. You seem to be confined to a smaller space, so I guess they're making sure you won't blow yourself up.

  • The fifth level also just seems to be more practice against more targets (16).

Advanced Mode

  • These seem to be just like the SOCOM sneaking missions except with all of the different guns: your goal is to take out all enemies on the level.

Special

  • This mode has a bunch of different things:

    • 1 minute 'take out as many as you can' mode, with different levels for targets and for human opponents.

    • "Kill 12 opponents" levels where you seem to be gradually given less and less ammunition.

    • "Mystery" levels. These actually seem to do a good job of training you to deal with the kinds of small in-game puzzles MGS will throw at you, like when you battle Psycho Mantis.

    • "Puzzle" levels - Very gamey.

    • "Variety" levels - Random challenges that don't fit into the themes of the other level groupings, like "can you drag this guard this far without killing him from choking him too much?", "Can you weave through this tight-knit group of guards?", "Can you hit these targets that are weaving between guards without hitting any of the guards?" Also has silly missions like "Take out the UFOs" and "take out the giant guards".

    • "VR Mission" - A 10-levels-in-15-minutes infiltration mission challenge. This looks legitimately difficult.

    • "Ninja" - 3 samey missions, this seems to just be a short-and-sweet little addition to spice things up.

    • "NG Selection" - I don't understand why this is distinguished from the "Variety" mode.

Microsoft Flight Simulator

Mig Alley

Monstrum

  • General thoughts on the game

    • This honestly plays better than Alien Isolation.

      • It doesn't have a boring story mode: you're thrown straight into the scary bit, with just a few minutes of being left alone before the monster comes for you.

      • It isn't limited by the Alien's man-in-a-rubber-suit monster design.

    • When I was first playing it was so terrifying (because I had no idea what was going to happen / how the monster behaved) that I couldn't play; I would just hunker down in a room for five minutes and quit the game. It became much less scary when I finally understood how the monster behaves and how I can evade it.

    • I love the changing level design as you move up and down the different levels of the ship. The changing scenery has a real impact on how you hide yourself.

  • Advice for playing

    • Your goal

      • Your objective is to escape from the cargo ship that you're stuck on.

      • There are at least three ways to escape: using a life raft, using the helicopter, and using the submarine.

      • To escape each way, you need to find three items (different items for each method) and bring them to the escape location.

    • The monsters

      • It appears that there are three monster types: a big / strong fire-eyed monster, a floating purple monster, and a skinny black insect/Alien-ish monster.

      • It appears that on each run you're only facing one of the three monster types.

      • You are warned when the monster is nearby, you just need to learn what the warnings are.

        • The big fire-faced monster makes a lot of noise as he's running around, and the noise doesn't seem to be limited in a realistic way. For example, I would estimate you can hear him from maybe 50+ meters away in any direction, even if he's several levels above or below you.

        • I think I observed that when the purple monster is nearby, the lights tend to flicker.

      • My impression is that the monsters do not hear your footsteps when you're walking or even running.

      • My impression is that the computer cheats and has the monster patrol around where you are, even if the monster has no reason to believe you're around there (i.e. the monster hasn't seen you and you haven't made any noise as you've moved into that position).

    • How to proceed

      • Advance cautiously, looking out for sounds / sights that indicate the monster is nearby.

      • Turn off the music at first; the music makes it harder to hear the monsters, and also makes the game way scarier.

      • If you set off an alarm, you may be best off running ~50m away before you hide.

        • I set off an alarm near the bridge and then tried hiding nearby rather than moving, and the purple monster showed up about a minute later. As far as I can tell I didn't get any kind of audiovisual cue that he was getting closer (flickering lights). That may just be because it was the bridge. IDK.

Mount and Blade: Warband

Praise

  • This is a brilliant game. I'm surprised the idea still hasn't been ripped off by a triple-A studio.

Criticisms

  • General

    • It crashed when I alt-tabbed right after a fight had ended.

  • Campaign

    • You should be able to turn off the enemy previews, where it tells you exactly what units another army has.

    • I wish there was more variety in the dialogue. That should be easy to add.

    • The AI on the world map sometimes behave stupidly, like repeatedly approaching and then running away from a much-larger band of enemies.

  • Battle

    • You should be able to choose how aggressive archers should be in targeting enemy units that are close to friendly units.

    • The battles should be slower.

      • Later: You can somewhat control this, but not as much as I'd like.

    • Units should move slower during combat.

    • Fatigue during combat should be simulated.

    • The problem is that the group combat doesn't seem very tactically interesting. It's just a free-for-all. I can't see how a tactical decision could make much of an impact from what the free-for-all outcome would be.

      • The rock-paper-scissors of spearmen-archers-cavalry just doesn't seem to be very strong here. Archers aren't effective enough against infantry, and cavalry don't go specifically after archers.

    • The K:D ratios are ridiculous at times. 45 enemies killed with only 3 friendlies killed?

      • Later: That's because I had the difficulty set so that my friendly troops only took a fraction of the real damage.

    • I feel like arrows aren't significant enough.

      • I did a 200v200 test on the oasis map with 200 Vaegir infantry vs. 200 Swadian archers, where I had the archers stand back and fire at the infantry as they approach (they could hit the infantry once they got about halfway through the map), and 79 infantry were killed by the time they finally were able to attack the first archer.

      • Arrows don't seem to disable units at all. They just reduce health points.

    • You should be able to direct your cavalry to go specifically after the enemy's archers.

    • The game should simulate confusion when you have different kinds of soldiers (different uniforms). I'm considering only using Swadian soldiers because it'll make it easier for me to tell who's on my side.

    • Everyone immediately knows when the last person has been killed.

    • The enemy never routes, which is when most of the casualties should happen. There should be entire "battles" which are just the enemy running away and you slaughtering them.

    • Enemies never surrender during the fight.

Recommended settings

  • Turn the music off.

    • The music gets really old. They really should invest in some variety in the music.

  • Hide banners on friendly troops.

  • Hide casualty-reporting.

  • Hide shot difficulty.

  • Change number of corpses to 150.

  • Change blood stains from "near player" to "on".

Tactics

  • Maybe only use only footmen and archers, with maybe a 4:1 ratio.

    • Horsemen are probably helpful when going up against horsemen.

    • Later: Use the custom battle simulator to get a feel for what unit mixes are the best.

  • Your main job should be to get on a horse and 1) draw away a significant chunk (5-10) of the enemy force, and 2) hit the enemy force with arrows. (Not having troops on horseback will make it easier for you to hit the enemy main body with arrows before your troops get there).

N++

  • This game seems to have a really great progression of levels that teach various abilities and gradually increase the difficulty.

One Finger Death Punch

  • The game does a great job of teaching you how to play.

  • The ongoing spoken tutorial is extremely helpful.

  • The graphics are really amateurish.

  • The fake asian accent used for the tutorial is hilarious.

Operation Flashpoint / Arma

Orcs Must Die

  • Having to spam click to kill orcs is annoying.

  • The simplicity of identifying the best way to place traps is disappointing compared to Dungeon Warfare.

  • The 3D in-the-fight perspective is great.

  • There's no gradual increase in price for traps so you're incentivized to pile in on one or two traps.

  • It's a good idea to get as close to the orcs as possible when firing your crossbow, and use your alt-fire to stun them and get more hits in.

  • I do like how every level gives you a new trap to play with.

  • The crossbow is pretty OP. I think it would be better if your weapons were used to take care of loose ends rather than as a main method of defense.

Panzer Command

  • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panzer_Command

    • It has three games in the series: Operation Winter Storm (2006), Kharkov (2008), and Ostfront (2013)

  • IMO a very important thing to keep in mind is that the first game in the series came out the year (2006) before the first game in the CMx2 series (2007), so it was graphically ahead of Combat Mission when it came out, whereas nowadays I look at it and it seems to look basically the same as the CMx2 engine.

Reviews

Panzer Command: Kharkov

  • Panzer Command: Kharkov vs. Combat Mission: Barbarossa to Berlin

    • Pros of Panzer Command:

      • [it] has a unique command system, is growing, is completely moddable

      • New and interesting platoon command system

      • Heads Up Display (HUD) that allows you to select units from list

      • Events list that brings you to unit when clicked

      • Formations

      • Flexible camera system

      • Limited command delays

      • Mini map for good situational awareness

      • The PC:K maps have a much higher fidelity to reality.  The CM:BB terrain comes in 20m tiles and looks blocky.  Not much of an issue in fields, but in smaller tree stands is noticeable.  It is also an issue when placing roads, fences, hedges, etc.

      • Human representation is much, much better in PC:K.  This is especially true in infantry support weapons which feature realistic animations.

      • I don't see a lot of difference in buildings.  It seems PC:K buildings are a little more detailed.

      • CM:BB roads also only run at certain angles.  PC:K had smooth turns and various angles.

      • CM:BB roads are more visible, but less integrated into the surrounding terrain.

    • Cons:

      • It still feels and operates like a table top game. Phases, opportunity fire, dice rolls, a lot of subjective factors.

      • PC:K’s units are a subset of the units CM:BB provides. No allied armies, more limited timeframe, few infantry type options, etc.

      • No covered arcs. In fact some of the designers/developers are dead set against them.

      • Order system that is still not completely matured.

      • No waypoints, chaining movement types, or color coding of movement lines for quick reference.

      • No/Limited TacAI to handle events in the middle of the action phase

      • No fatigue model

      • Use of buildings by infantry

      • A significant feel that this is basically a board game with computers; phases, opportunity fire, reaction, dice rolls, factors, etc.

      • CM:BB has quite a bit of variability in weather, including wind, rain, snow, mud, night, etc. on the same map. PC:K has only what the map was built with and some ability to change visibility.

      PC:K has a haze that makes it difficult to see more than 500 or so meters.  It seems to be there on all maps.  Also some buildings disappear at certain angles.

Panzer Command: Ostfront

  • https://www.digitallydownloaded.net/2011/05/review-panzer-command-ostfront-pc.html

    • this game plays out at a glacial pace

    • The game plays out in a simultaneous turn based fashion

    • because the game does model itself on realism, reversing the course of history can take some work. It’s not impossible, but there are scenarios that are stacked right up against one side or the other.

    • explosions are small and unspectacular

    • the AI isn’t the brightest in the world

    • there’s a mass of content in the game, with dozens of scenarios and some extensive campaign options

  • Reddit - It was a decent enough though somewhat dated Combat Mission clone back when it released, but it feels incredibly outdated today. Just get Graviteam Tacics instead.

  • Reddit - this one is panzer command ostfront a game that combines the two games panzer command operation winter storm and kharkov into one adding new graphics better battlegrounds lots of maps and stuff and yeah is very like cm but has its own charm.

Panzer Elite

Thoughts on the game

  • The graphics obviously aren’t amazing.

  • I really like the concept. It feels like an OFP-style game but focused on tank combat.

Major controls / learning advice

  • The game defaults to “Beginner” mode which gives you infinite ammo, lets you see your friends on the map, etc.

  • Shift+F2 to switch to an external view

  • F12 to open the map view, then Esc to exit that view

  • F5-F8 to switch to the different stations

  • Shift+L to switch to line formation, Shift+C to switch to column formation.

  • Hold RMB to rotate the camera / commander’s sight.

  • Backspace to come to a complete halt after slowing down with Arrow Down.

Papers, Please

  • I got stuck when I had to deal with the guy who didn't have a passport, I didn't realize I needed to click on the counter rather than on him.

  • What's the point of interrogating someone rather than just immediately denying their admission?

  • I got stuck *again* when I needed to use the search scanner to search for weapons. There seems to be no explanation of how to use it. And because the game is so time-sensitive, it's infuriating when I'm losing time because the game hasn't explained what I need to click.

  • It's kind of annoying how much of the game is about how quickly you can click on the stupid little actions like changing pages, etc.

  • You get new warnings every day, so it's worth taking some risks about letting people through.

  • The theme is pretty neat (novel), while playing it I was definitely thinking people could make more games like this to show people what happens when people are made cogs in a machine.

  • There are a ridiculous number of ways for an application to be invalid, and the rate of invalid applications is ridiculously high.

  • The game is set up for you to fail, so don't feel bad when you do.

Patriot (1993)

How to install it

Video instructions

I made a video explanation here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Li3nlqWDMNE

Text instructions

  1. Download the .7z archive of the floppy disk images here: https://archive.org/details/002890-Patriot

  2. Use 7zip to extract the img files into some directory.

  3. Run dosbox-x (install it if you don’t have it already).

  4. Type c: to mount your real C: drive so that you can install to it.

  5. Go to Drive → A → ‘Mount multiple disk/CD images’ and select the eUse the tip here to mount the img files: https://retrocomputing.stackexchange.com/a/26290/31340

  6. Type a: to navigate to your floppy drive.

  7. run install.exe to install the game to c:\patriot\

  8. When it asks you to please insert disk 2, go to Drive --> A --> Swap Disk in dosbox-x. Ditto for disk 3.

  9. When the game finishes installing, move the files from C:\Patriot to wherever you want the game to actually live (in my case, C:\dosbox\PATRIOT\).

  10. Copy the files from the 1.10 patch .zip to the directory, overwriting whatever it wants to overwrite.

  11. You can then run the game from either Dosbox or Dosbox-x by navigating to the game directory and running patriot (which runs the patriot.exe executable).

My thoughts

Interesting things the game does / what makes this game special:

  • Basically it was a first step towards the Command Ops 2 approach to simulating warfare, but it’s higher-up in scale than Command Ops 2. So I don’t think there’s actually any game currently on the market that uses its approach at its scale.

  • Major innovations:

    • The game doesn’t use hexes, it uses continuous space.

    • The game runs in continuous time rather than in turns.

      • Orders can be given every 15 minutes, so it’s the same approach that Combat Mission takes towards time and giving orders. Command Ops 2 allows giving orders at any time and the game can be paused at any time, but it takes time for the orders to be processed.

    • You can issue a waypoint to a larger formation (like a division) and it will ask you if you want to adjust the subordinate units accordingly.

      • So it’s a step towards what Command Ops 2 and Graviteam Tactics really tried to make work well, which was being able to issue high-level orders and have subordinates figure out the details.

  • You have a simultaneous zoomed-in and zoomed-out view of equal sizes. Later strategy games would just have a minimap showing the zoomed-out view.

  • The team did a ton of research to get the units on the map be as close as possible to what and where they were in real-life. So it’s not like they just made something up that seemed plausible. They say they think they got it at least 95% accurate.

Possible mistakes / Alternative things they could have done:

  • It seems the scenarios begin with your forces already positioned and with orders assigned, similar to how in the original Rainbow 6 you could use a prepared plan rather than creating your own. I can see how that might make it easier for new players to see the game in action, but it also risks making the experience less interesting, so it might help to have some kind of warning dialog recommending that the user place units and issue orders themselves.

  • The end screen of a scenario doesn’t seem to show friendly vs. enemy casualties (unlike Combat Mission), so it may be hard to get a sense of the magnitude of your success.

    • It’s not clear to me the extent to which any choices you make would affect something like friendly casualties.

Let’s Plays / Reviews

  • SmartWargames - Patriot (1993) - Content Review & Gameplay

    • 3:20 - The game is slow to load with the normal CPU cycle setting, you can speed up your CPU cycles but that could make the real-time parts go too quickly.

    • 5:30 - He points out the orders are already set up when you start the scenario.

    • 5:50 - You can zoom into a particular division and see its constituent brigades, and even zoom into the brigade and see the battalions, and the zoomed-out screen will switch to show the next-level-up.

    • 6:35 - It’s not clear how to zoom back out.

    • 6:44 - Spacebar to pause.

    • Comments:

      • Bought it back in the day, was disappointed. Basically just watching formations move, with little interaction required to win

  • Get Off My Lawn - Random DOS Game Show #406: Patriot (1993)

    • He runs a scenario, doesn’t really do anything, basically just hits start, and his side wins.

Summary of / excerpts from the included PDFs

Installation, Quick Start, and Training Manual Addendum

  • Table of contents:

    • Installation

    • Quick Start

      • Moving between units

      • Formations

      • The importance of POSTURE-ing

      • Getting information from subordinate levels

      • Map viewing modes

      • Map update modes

      • Changing where the units go…

      • Let the game begin!

    • Training Manual Corrections and Additions

    • System Requirements

Training Manual

  • Table of contents:

    • Introduction

      • PATRIOT is different. As a computer gamer you have no doubt heard this before, and discovered that what was different was the cosmetic aspects of a "New game," while the model was still based on look up tables, hexagonal terrain blocks, and sequential turns. Occasionally a "new game" really does live up to the promise of delivering something new. We believe the game you have before you is one of these milestones.

        Veteran wargamers and aficionados are served notice: you would do well to discard any preconceptions based on other game systems. The development of microcomputers has obviated the need for many of the abstractions found in board games and carried over into most computer games. It is no longer necessary to break up terrain into an artificial grid or hex system. Instead, a state of the art polygon based computer mapping system defines the terrain based upon the actual size and shape of different terrain types and regions. Computer technology also allows us to model individual weapons, vehicles, and troops instead of abstracting such considerations in to a unit combat effectiveness value. Large scale combat can thus be modeled based on interactions at discreet hardware levels. Some elements of combat, such as modeling each individual soldier or the psychology of men in combat, remain beyond the current levels of technology and understanding. But PATRIOT makes a concerted effort to model and simulate where most games rely upon abstractions.

        Since PATRIOT is both a new model and a new paradigm for land warfare, we hope that the user will begin to think like a Commander instead of a game player. The difference being that a Commander seeks to defeat the enemy, while the game player seeks to beat the game system. With time and experience some game players will figure out the system, but in so doing we hope they gain insight into the complexity of modern land warfare and the limitations imposed on the Commander. We also hope that you will enjoy PATRIOT, both as a game and as a learning experience.

    • Game Controls

      • Command and Control

      • Mouse Control

      • Start Up Options

      • Clock Functions

      • Staff Assistant Functions

      • Menu Functions

      • On Screen Functions

      • Current Unit Window

      • Posture

      • Priority Window

      • Formation Buttons

      • Personnel and Equipment Window

      • Menu → FILES

      • Menu → EDIT

      • Menu → Map

      • Menu → Air/Marines

      • Menu → Preferences

      • ORG Chart (Interactive Window Function)

      • MAP mode

      • Window Buttons

    • Scenario Editor

    • Database Editor

    • Military Organization Guide

Field manual

  • Table of contents:

    • Designer’s Introduction

      • PATRIOT is unlike any wargame, computer or manual, that you have ever played. Most computer wargames evolved from manual board wargames, and early versions showed that heritage clearly and to great disadvantage. Conventions which were necessary in manual two-player games, such as a constant ground scale grid, the manual movement of individual units through that grid to a destination grid cell, were repeated, even though they were not necessary once the computer provided both an opponent and a referee.

        With PATRIOT we set out to begin essentially from scratch, and designed a wargame for computer as if there had never been manual board wargames. From the very start we rejected the traditional abstractions of boardgames and concentrated on the mechanisms by which a commander influences the actions of his subordinate units. A commander does not individually move units through hex grid, and the space which units occupy is not rigidly determined by an arbitrary grid scale. Instead, a commander interacts with units in the following areas:

        Role. The commander decides whether each subordinate unit will operate forward of the FEBA (Forward Edge of the Battle Area) as a covering force, on the FEBA as a line unit, or behind the FEBA as a reserve unit.

        Boundaries. A commander sets the boundary lines between his subordinate units, and the subordinate units then operate within the section of front allocated to them.

        Objectives. A commander sets objectives for his subordinate units, which then operate toward those objectives.

        Mission Posture. The commander decides whether units will act offensively or defensively, and in either case what degree of aggressiveness or caution they will display.

        Priority of Support. The relative importance of a subordinate unit's mission will dictate where that unit stands in the priority list for logistics, artillery, air support, and command attention, all of which are represented by priority of support.

        If a player can control these variables in a unit, then the player has much the same sort of control as an actual commander exercises, at least in a technical sense. The very important personal aspects of leadership are not covered by the game, just as they are ignored by most wargames, computer or otherwise. To do so would require a dramatically different approach, more along the lines of a roleplaying game than a technical operational simulation, and while that may prove to be a very entertaining exercise in its own right, it is beyond the scope and goal of this game.

        What this game is, we believe, is an innovative and instructive look at the means by which commanders control units and fight battles.

        • After reading this, it is remarkable to me that so many wargames are still using hexes and turns 30 years later.

      • A large amount of material is now available on the Iraqi order of battle, but no two sources agree completely on the location and identification of specific divisions. I believe that what we show in the game is the best synthesis of the existing sources. One example in particular, that of the Iraqi 48th Infantry Division, comes to mind. Most sources (including official US Army sources) place this division with the Iraqi VII Corps along the Saudi Border near the Wadi al Battan. The 24th Infantry Division (Mechanized), however, insists that it encountered the division in strength near Jalibah Air Base and defeated it. The tendency of the Iraqis to switch brigades around, the small sector allocated to the 48th Division in the VII Corps area, and the weak resistance put up by the division at Jalibah led us to conclude that the division was split up, with part of it forward, probably with the divisional artillery, and the balance further back guarding the air field.

        Most brigade IDs are unavailable for the Iraqis, but where available we have listed them. Where they are unknown we have retained the Army's convention of lettering them A, B, and C. US and UK unit identifications were fairly easy to find (although US aviation units are harder to track down than most). What was more difficult to establish were variations in equipment, departures from published TO&Es, and task force organization. However, I believe that we have been about 95% successful in tracking that information down.

    • A (Very) Brief History of Warfare

    • Maneuver Warfare

    • The Principles of War

    • Glossary and Indices

Point of Attack 2

Poker Night at the Inventory

  • Advice for playing

    • Your opponent's behavior and the frequency of the blind increases seem to have been tuned for each game to end after ~20-30 minutes.

    • The AI will call and even go all-in with garbage cards (like 9-4 offsuit), so don't be afraid to bet / raise.

    • Play somewhat conservatively while there are several players at the table and gradually expand the cards you'll play as people get blown out.

    • Try to win one or two hands while there are several people at the table to get to ~$15,000 - $20,000.

    • After losing once or twice and learning how the AI behaves, I've not lost again.

    • I lost one all-in going heads-up that totally reversed our position, so I would say if you're in an advantageous position don't get too impatient.

    • If the AI starts betting somewhat aggressively (e.g. $4,000 pre-flop or on the flop), and continues betting aggressively, they do have somewhat good cards about half the time.

Quake

  • Oh wow...Turok is clearly based heavily on this. The movement speed, the jumping "Huh!" sound, the head bobbing when you run.

  • This game has a weird palette, everything is different shades of brown.

  • What made this game revolutionary at the time was that it was using 3D graphics, whereas everything else up to that point had been sprites (e.g. Doom, Duke Nukem).

  • Another thing that makes this game revolutionary is the ability to use mouselook.  Apparently (from looking at the Wikipedia entry on Free Look) it wasn't so much the singleplayer as the multiplayer for Quake where the superiority of mouselook became clear.

  • This game is way better if you turn on mouselook, which isn't on by default for some reason.  Just type "+mlook" in the console (`).

  • It's interesting to alternate playing this and playing DUSK. The enemies attack way more quickly in Quake than in DUSK, and the level design forces you closer to the enemies, whereas in DUSK you're often in outdoor areas where you can take out enemies one at a time from afar.  The enemies in this game are also much more visually intimidating than the enemies in DUSK, which are more colorful and cartoonish.

Radio Commander

  • I like the map and the UI better in this game than in Radio General.

  • I've found the voice recognition to be so bad it's basically useless.  IMO it's not just chrome, it's an important part of the immersion.  It's similar to how in OFP it's faster to give orders by the menu even if voice recognition was working, but it takes away from the immersion.

Radio General

  • I don't like the angled view of the map; I prefer the way Radio Commander does it.

  • The voice recognition seems way better in this game than in Radio Commander.

Rainbow Six

Advice for playing

  • You need to treat this game as first-and-foremost a puzzle game that's trying to get closer to realism rather than as a true sim / realistic game. If you go into the experience expecting total realism you're going to get frustrated at all of the unrealistic parts of it.

  • Remap the controls!

  • This isn't explained by the game AT ALL and the training doesn't help AT ALL, but it seems like the way the game is meant to be played is that you're supposed to use the heartbeat sensor to determine the best time to call the go-codes for your team to advance.

  • You NEED to use the heartbeat sensor. The enemies react unrealistically quickly and with unrealistic accuracy, so if you don't use the heartbeat sensor you're going to get extremely frustrated.

  • My experience has been that you should always choose the level-3 armor unless you know for a fact that your guy isn't going to be in any danger (e.g. a sniper).

  • It seems that on hostage missions you need to kill everyone quickly enough or they'll kill the hostages, so there's basically a countdown timer for the mission, but you aren't shown it.

Things I like about the game

  • I love the atmosphere of the game.

  • I love the cramped, realistic proportions for the interiors of buildings.

  • I love the context-dependent music (it changes depending on what's happening in the game).

Things I dislike about the game

  • The exact implications of each type of gun, camo, body-armor-level, etc. are not explained.

  • Unrealistic AI.

  • Lack of control over your persona (inability to lean, for example).

  • Lack of ability to communicate with your teammates as you would in r/l (Ex: "Gimme your flashbangs.").

Receiver

  • I wish there was a lean option.

  • The bullets seem to be generally near the turrets, and not really hidden. They glow.

  • The game runs abysmally slow when you get close to enemies, even when the graphics are set to "fastest".

Scourge of War

SEAL Team

General thoughts

  • I think SEAL Team is interesting primarily to see if it models anything about infantry combat differently or better than newer similar games like Arma.

    • Weight affecting a soldier’s speed of movement is something that I don’t think Arma models.

    • Soldiers gaining experience by going on missions and thereby becoming more effective is something I don’t think Arma normally models but I think custom missions may be able to somewhat model it.

  • Nice playlist on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLHG92vHDxyD1qG9jL42myNUlRL4MIC7LH

How to play

  • Manual: http://www.abandonia.com/files/extras/27589_Manual.pdf

    • The actual manual is from pages 10 to 57 (as opposed to installation / troubleshooting / historical reference material), so 47 pages total, and there’s not a lot of text on each page, so it’s really not that much.

    • My highlights from the manual:

      • By rotating your men for each mission, you can build up each man’s skills, making each available SEAL a valuable asset on any mission. If you don’t rotate your men, you end up with a small group of highly trained SEALs, but risk getting stuck with a greenhorn should one of your best men be killed or wounded in action.

      • The weight a SEAL carries affects the speed at which he can travel in the field.

      • TODO: Keep going through this. I stopped at “Aborting your mission”.

  • How your missions are scored:

    • “The team is scored on its overall performance based on:

      • objectives achieved,

      • team survival rate,

      • weapon hit ratio,

      • structures destroyed,

      • enemies searched and/or captured, and

      • enemies otherwise neutralized.

    • Bonuses are awarded when more than one objective is achieved.

    • Patience pays off as well; your team scores higher when you take your time.

    • Aborted missions are scored at 0, so save often and restore your campaign after aborting.

    • Points are lost when SEALs are killed in action, and when civilians, Snatch or Rescue objective personnel are killed.”

  • HOW TO Play - Seal Team (PC DOS)

    • Menus / pre-mission:

      • In the main menu you can press F10 to enter the Options menu.

      • In the intel briefing screen you'll get a broad overview of the war.

      • You can change the mission by clicking the calendar.

      • The Patrol Order shows you the mission summary.

      • The Mission Briefing will go through the finer details of your mission.

      • On the Marching Order screen you can select your team and loadout. Keep your objectives in mind when doing so.

      • The hushpuppy is a suppressed pistol useful for snatching prisoners.

      • Satchel charges are mandatory in demolition missions.

      • It's recommended to bring a grenade launcher and at least one LMG, such as the M63 Stoner.

    • Insertion:

      • If the area seems too hot, you can press 'R' to reinsert your team and throw the enemy off.

    • Controlling your soldier:

      • You can change your weapons by pressing N. You can change your grenades by pressing Alt+N.

      • Grenades are thrown with the T key.

      • The rate of fire of your firearm is changed with the R key.

      • You can press P to split your team.

      • The F keys (F1 etc.) can be used to change your camera view.

      • You can search the bodies of the enemy soldiers with the S key, documents and weapons will be confiscated.

      • The game features booby traps, if you see one you can press X to alert the rest of your team about it.

      • Try to lay low in firefights. Your stance is controlled with the keys 1, 2, and 3.

      • Use the arrow keys to move.

      • Use the mouse to control your orientation/direction/facing.

      • Use the Q key to dive to the ground.

      • You can search and cuff surrendered enemy with the S key.

      • Tools can be used and changed using the left and right bracket keys: [ and ].

      • Demolition charges are placed by selecting the weapon "Satchel charge" and then pressing fire. You will have 60 seconds to get away from the blast. [He places the satchel charges outside a hooch and the explosion blows up every hooch in the village, even those far from the satchel charges.]

    • Controlling your squad

      • You start in a column formation but you can change to line, wedge, or diamond.

      • The "Search" order orders your men to search nearby bodies and surrendered enemy soldiers.

    • Tactical advice:

      • It's best to tell your team to cease fire right away.

      • It is usually best to use a silent approach to the objective area.

      • It's best to lay low and hold your fire.

      • Assess the situation and try to ambush the enemy.

      • One tactic to consider is to move in a circle around the objective to see it from all sides before heading in.

      • You can capture prisoners by getting close to the enemy and waiting for them to surrender.

    • Map view / fire support:

      • Press M to open the map.

      • Press Z and X to zoom in and out of the map.

      • You have fire support assets.

      • You can call in a Bronco aircraft closer to your position with the 'Loiter' button. They will automatically engage enemy infantry.

      • Be careful with fire support as friendly fire can happen.

      • In an emergency, press Y from the map view to request an emergency extraction.

    • Extraction:

      • You can use helicopters and river boats to extract.

      • The helicopter will provide cover fire as you embark (I guess shooting without necessarily seeing an enemy soldier?).

Search & Rescue (series)

Shelter 2

  • After the pups joined me and I hunted a bit, it's not clear to me what I should be doing; just hunt more? What's the goal I'm working towards? What additional gameplay, if any, is there?

  • It's an attractive game.

  • The controls don't seem as responsive as they should(?) be when hunting rabbits and other fast-moving creatures. This is the same issue I noticed with superflight: both games have the player mimicking animal movement, but the controls don't allow for as much of a brain-movement connection as is possible and would be realistic.

Shenzhen I/O

Solitaire mini-game

  • Once you get good, you can win almost every hand dealt to you.

  • I suspect that there are unwinnable initial positions, and I also suspect that these are dealt to the player (so the game isn't protecting you against unwinnable positions), but I don't have proof.

  • Your goal should first be to get rid of all the top-left cards (dragons?), because that will make getting the top-right cards sorted away very easy.

  • To decide which dragon to go after first, look for the one that has the fewest dragons on top of its cards.

    • If a dragon set has two or fewer other dragon-type cards on top of its cards, that is often a good dragon-set to go for first.

  • Normally when you lose it's because your playable area gets filled with dragons that you can't move anywhere. So you generally want to try to minimize the number of dragons that you move to some free space.

  • Open spaces are very valuable. You want to aim to increase the number of open spaces when you can.

  • If every dragon-set has three other dragons in front of it, or if the number of open spaces you see is not enough to get rid of one of the sets of dragons, you may be better off trying to clear off / stack up a bunch of numbered cards first to try to get more open spaces.

  • Look for stacks that are all numbers. Those are candidates for being combined, which can free up a space (which greatly increases your chance of winning).

  • Having a '9' on top of a dragon is basically the same as having another dragon on top of it, because moving that 9 is going to require a free space, just as with the dragon. The 9 can't be put on top of anything.

  • If you're feeling stuck because you have 2-3 free spaces but that's not enough to move enough cards around to get rid of the dragons, and you're combining the numbered cards to try to free up spaces, AND you see a stack where a single dragon is covering up 3+ numbered cards, it can be a good idea to use one of your free spaces to get rid of that dragon on top of the stack so that you can use those numbered cards to keep combining numbered cards. I had an amazing game where I won that way.

  • Whenever you get rid of a dragon, re-do your count of how many dragons are blocking the other dragon-sets to see which dragon to go after next.

Silent Hunter

Soldier of Fortune 2

Thoughts

  • This is a pretty good game.  I can see how it would be frustrating if you were trying to play it like Call of Duty.  It's definitely more fun once you learn how the AI behaves, because then you get killed less.

  • I can't lie, the realistic gore is what made me want to play the game, but it actually doesn't seem over-the-top, it seems generally pretty realistic.

Advice

  • The way to do well in this game is to crouch-walk through the levels, 'slicing the pie' of each room / area to take on the enemy one at a time.

  • The pistol and the M4 are always perfectly accurate, so (unfortunately) there doesn't seem to be much of a reason to ever use something else, like the shotgun or M60.  They should've required you to press some key to hold your breath to get better accuracy for the pistol and M4 and have a wide spread otherwise, that would make the shotgun actually useful for CQB.

  • The AI are less accurate when they're further away and so you should prefer to engage them when they're further away.

  • If you're playing carefully, one of your biggest remaining dangers is grenades, and your best defense against them is keeping distance from the enemy (I'd estimate you want to be at least 40-60 feet away from them if possible, and further away is better).  so what you want to do is get to the point where the enemy is shooting at you and then fall back to a position where you're far enough away that they won't be able to throw a grenade at food.

  • The enemy seems to be much better at hitting you when you're standing up so you want to stay crouched pretty much the entire time, only standing briefly to look / shoot over objects that are preventing you from seeing further.

  • When you're using the M4, use single-shot.

  • Rebind your keys!  Off the top of my head, these are the changes I made:

    • 1 - My main weapon (M4)

      • I did this so I could quickly switch back to it from my binoculars on the jungle mission.

    • Shift - Hold to run

    • Ctrl - Hold to crouch

    • G - select grenade

    • B - select binocs

    • Tab - Zoom binocs / scope

    • F - Use door / pick lock / disarm trap

    • Space - Jump

    • Right-click - Secondary fire / zoom scope

    • R - reload (I don't remember if this was the default or not)

  • The linear design of the levels gives you an advantage when fighting the AI, because you can always(?) safely retreat while facing forwards towards new threats; you never(?) need to worry about enemies behind you.  You can use this to your advantage by using your gun to get the attention of enemy AI that are in a good defensive position and thereby drawing them towards you, and then falling back to a position where you can eliminate them more easily.

  • You can usually hear the enemy soldiers' footsteps when they're pretty close to you, and that can be a good time to use grenades if you can be sure that they won't have time to get to you before you can pull out your gun after throwing the grenade.

  • If you use your binoculars to zoom in on an enemy, that seems to actually make them more likely to spot you–even if you're difficult to spot–so don't zoom in too much on enemy soldiers with binoculars.

  • You'll pick up health and body armor if you're even the slightest bit below maximum health/armor, and so on the harder difficulty setting you may want to wait to pick them up if you're already close to full health/armor.  But you should remember where they are so you can go back to them later in the mission if you get shot.

  • This game on its hardest difficulty is actually more forgiving than Operation Flashpoint.

  • Penetration doesn't seem to be modeled; a tent will protect you from an M60.

Spelunky

  • The main cause of death I'm seeing is combinations: an enemy will not only do damage to you but also result in you being thrown in the opposite direction, which often ends up with you falling off a ledge, or being pushed into a trap or another enemy.

Splinter Cell

Splinter Cell

  • This is actually pretty cool to play.

  • The game is clearly based on Metal Gear Solid.

  • I think it's hilarious that he has these three glowing green dots on his face when he's trying to hide in the shadows.

  • The game seems to use the light and sound ideas from Thief.

  • The first mission feels extremely linear.

  • One downside of the game is that succeeding is heavily dependent on save-scumming. It's not like a roguelike where you're learning a set of skills that you apply on-the-fly.

  • Ridiculous game logic: two guys are in a large room on their computers, just maybe 30 feet from each other, and you can knock each one out without alerting the other.

  • As of the third mission the game feels extremely basic / linear; it's just a series of extremely-simple challenges where you just need to know which of your tools you need to use next. It's nothing like OFP, where a ton of how to proceed is left for you to decide.

  • The game is at times a frustrating quiz of figuring out exactly how the level designer wants you to proceed, rather than using a set of skills you've been developing to win. It's more trial-and-error than victory-through-skill. For example, the opening to the CIA mission has a very short timer for you to get through the AC shaft, but you're not told where the AC shaft is, what it looks like, etc. I just had to restart over and over until I eventually figured it out. And there's often issues where I can't easily do what I want to do, like step up onto a ledge I should clearly be able to step onto, or failing to grab a ledge that the level designer clearly wants me to grab.

  • It might be a cool difficulty option to FORCE you to get door keycodes from people instead of from datasticks, and to have it not be clear which person has the keycode, so you need to interrogate everyone.

  • I think Splinter Cell may actually have more minutes of gameplay than Metal Gear Solid. I think MGS tries to keep it short and sweet with the gameplay and then mixes it up with cinematics, while Splinter Cell provides more gameplay with a less-interesting story and cinematics.

Star Wars: Dark Forces

  • The sounds are great

  • I like how drastically shooting lights up the area around you, I don't remember seeing as dramatic an effect as that before.

  • Like in GoldenEye, there are some missions where you need to retrace your steps and face new enemies along the way (like mission 2).

  • I find the firefights are similar to the firefights in GoldenEye

  • The aim assist seems similar to GoldenEye

  • There's a nice delay between when an enemy sees you and when he'll fire.

  • The third level, the sewers, is AMAZING. It's not afraid to put you in absolute darkness, so that the only way to see is by shooting your blaster. The enemy design is great (the swamp monster), and I love how the sewage system pulls you along.

  • The music is not great, nowhere near GoldenEye-level.

Advice for playing

  • Enemies don't shoot at you if you're far enough away, so staying far back and picking them off with your default pistol works pretty well.

  • Your pistol is more accurate than the stormtrooper blaster, so it's better to use your pistol for anything other than close-range fighting.

  • The stormtrooper blaster is best for in-close fighting because of its rapid rate of fire and inaccuracy.

  • Strafing really seems to help to avoid getting hit. Face your target and strafe to the side while shooting.

Startopia

  • Use WASD to move around and hold Left Ctrl to enable mouse-look. Keeping your left hand in that position (WASD + Ctrl) makes it way, way easier to move and look around. I actually find it easier to move / look around than in Shogun: Total War and Combat Mission.

  • Turn off the music, it's annoyingly bad.

  • Reverse the mouse wheel zoom direction (change it in the controls from +3 to -3) and also consider reducing the sensitivity (making it -2 or -1 instead).

  • They misspelled 'deceased' as 'deseased' in the message that pops up when one of your soldiers dies.

  • The game feels claustrophobic because of the walls, the ceilings, the relatively small playable area, and the fact that the floor curves up into your field of view.

  • The clapping when you complete a mission and the "YOU'RE A WINNER!" text feels infantilizing.

  • While playing the first mission I did get a hint of that satisfying feeling you get from watching some process / machine you've made (e.g. watching customers in Theme Park / Rollercoaster Tycoon or watching your factory in Factorio).

  • Second mission:

    • The second level is surprisingly challenging for a second level.

    • The aliens are bored but I don't know how to fix that. None of the buildings I've been shown so far or given access to seem to be able to fix that.

    • I built the sick bay but I don't see the grey aliens using it, and other aliens are dying.

    • The second mission is where it started to get interesting. You're basically racing around trying to make sure the various issues you have are being taken care of. It's like a lower-stress version of a game of Starcraft.

  • It's annoying that they use the same conversation over and over again with the traders and your advisor.

  • It's cool that you can lock your camera to one of the aliens on the ship.

  • Mission 3 seemed relatively easier than the second mission. There doesn't seem to be any time pressure to achieve the goal.

  • I didn't really feel any tension / excitement this mission, probably because of the lack of a time limit.

  • I failed the third mission on my first attempt but it wasn't clear to me what I could've done to prevent criminals from doing bad things.

  • I think one thing I could've done was to hire every criminal that gets rehabilitated, or at least a bunch of them. I didn't hire *any*.

  • Failed the second attempt as well.

  • Succeeded on the third attempt. It was just a matter of paying attention to *why* I was failing and how to prevent it. What I learned was that the way the mission works is that visitors arrive with red

  • Mission five was boringly easy.

  • With mission seven things started to get really complicated. Now I see that the previous missions were not intended to stand alone, they were essentially a continuation of the tutorials, introducing the various systems within the game, and that the idea is to eventually combine all of those different systems in a single game.

Steamworld Heist

  • I really don't like the way you need to "open" the loot you find on each ship like it was a lootbox.

  • I don't see what's so interesting about this game. It looks like the only thing it has going for it is the mechanic of bouncing bullets off walls. Graphically it looks professionally-made, but gameplay-wise I don't understand the appeal.

Steel Beasts (series)

Strategic Command: American Civil War

My thoughts

  • It would be interesting to have a more sandbox-y version of this game where the state of everything at the beginning could vary more. Although I guess the basic tactical lessons of the war that you’d get from doing that are already summed up in books, like the advantage of defending from trenches, the importance of trying to get around to the flank or rear of the enemy, etc. But I think it might still be interesting.

  • One thing that’s striking me immediately is that you have to make decisions that in reality would’ve been delegated to subordinates.

  • The way the game gets around the no-stacking-allowed issue is by having larger units be separate units that you can build. So rather than building three brigades and stacking them into a division, you just build a division unit. And instead of combining multiple depleted divisions into a single division, I think the idea is that you replenish each division separately.

Summary of the manual

Understanding the Game Interface

  • The UI:

  • Flags:

  • The white % is mobilization, less than 100% cannot play an active role in the war.

  • Right-click a flag to open the production table

  • Hover mouse over a flag for more info

  • Top row buttons:

  • War Maps

    • Border states are like countries, you have to declare war on it to attack it.

    • The mobilization % shows how close they are to joining in the fighting with a given side (Union or Confederate).

  • Purchase tab:

  • Ctrl+P, can be done at any time during your turn

  • The number to the right of the unit type is the number that can be purchased.

  • The right hand number under PD is the production delay (number of months for it to be ready).

  • Land units that were destroyed at supply 5 or higher should be bought first, they're cheaper and faster to build.

  • Some units are "named units", meaning you can pick the particular leader that will be in charge. It only affects their stats for HQ units.

  • The bottom right shows any available upgrades.

  • Q: What's the bracketed number after the cost?

  • Q: What are the bracketed numbers after the defense values?

  • Q: How do I know or figure out what I need to buy?

  • New Units tab:

    • This lets you place purchased units that are ready to be used.

    • Thought: It's weird that you can choose where to deploy new units rather than have that determined at the time you purchase the unit.

  • Diplomacy tab:

    • "Every Major that has entered the war has a number of chits, and these can be invested for a cost in MPPs. Each invested chit then has a small % chance per turn of swinging the targeted country towards your side. The more chits you invest, the greater the % chance."

    • "Countries" in this manual also refers to border states and Indian tribes.

    • The flag icon right of their name shows which Major they would be subordinate to if they joined the war.

    • The % chance of success shown is *per turn*, given all the chits you've invested.

    • You can also declare war here.

  • Research tab:

    • There are two types: Manual and Automatic. Manual means you need to apply them manually to units. Automatic means all units get it automatically when the research is complete.

    • You can reclaim 50% of a chit's cost in MPPs but this should only be done in emergencies.

  • Unit display:

    • First # is strength, second # is research upgrade levels

    • The white dots above the strength # are experience points.

  • Information panel:

    • Actual damage results may vary by 1 damage point in either direction from the displayed prediction.

    • The symbols on the middle prediction panel are factors affecting the result, like attacking across a river.

    • The abbreviations (ID, IA) are just the type of unit doing the attacking / defending, the manual has the list.

  • Information panel buttons:

    • The quickest way of upgrading or reinforcing large numbers of units is to select either the Upgrade or Reinforce buttons on the right hand side and then clicking on the units.

  • Zoom:

    • Being fully zoomed out makes it easier to spot units in other parts of the map that you may wish to move.

  • Reinforcing units:

    • Units can't both reinforce and move/attack.

    • Naval units can only be repaired in port, max 5 points per turn.

  • Forced march / Naval cruise:

    • Click on any applicable unit and it will highlight the relevant option.

  • Zone of Control highlights:

    • Green indicates ZOC

    • Orange indicates how far you could move if the ZOC was removed.

  • Elite HQs have an orange border around their counter, they boost prepared attacks by 10%.

  • Select Sleep mode to have a unit stop flashing (like if you don't intend to do anything with it for a while).

  • You can do a one-turn sleep by pressing spacebar instead of LMB.

  • Fog of war: You can be certain on land that any unshrouded hexes don't contain the enemy.

  • Partisans: press P to show all likely partisan trigger points, place a unit in or next to the hex to prevent partisans there. Red circle with a line through it means partisans will just reduce the amount of resources there, not add units to the map.

1861 Blue and Gray Tutorial

Turn 1

  • When you start in 1861 neither side has much of an army and both sides will be focusing on research and recruitment.

  • The decision to order the Union Army to occupy the state of Missouri and seize the St. Louis Arsenal is one of the more important choices you will make in the game.

  • G to toggle map grid, H to toggle the display of units

  • The % next to the country name in the land hex display is the country's mobilization level.

  • Text colors in the info panel are gray for weakened units.

  • Q: Why will Missouri and Kentucky secede if they're just anything more than 0% in favor of the Confederacy? That seems like an arbitrary threshold.

  • Q: Why won't I be able to move the troops I leave in the Indian Territory garrisons if I choose to not move them immediately?

  • Q: Why will the Indian tribes start drifting to whichever side they favor in July 1861?

  • When deploying new units, if you see a city name, the unit can only be deployed there.

  • Right-click when placing a new unit to cancel and go back to the New Units screen.

  • Right-click a flag in the top-left sidebar to see the units due to arrive later.

  • To move a unit, LMB on it to select it, LMB to issue a move order, RMB to confirm the order.

  • Your unit will only retain its full spotting distance the first time it moves in a given turn.

  • The flag in the bottom-left of a counter indicates it has action points remaining.

  • Cavalry have a spotting range of 3 hexes, inf only have a spotting range of 1.

  • When you start you want to invade Missouri.

  • You also want to move your ships closer to the Confederates so you can blockade them.

  • Left-click a ship to enter Cruise Mode, it lets you move double its distance for a cost of one supply point. It's best not to use it a lot but it's useful to use once or twice on an outbound mission.

  • You can choose the movement path by holding Ctrl and left-clicking intermediate hexes.

  • Naval units represent more than one vessel, the name is for historical flavor.

  • It's a good idea to do research early in the game.

  • Ctrl+R to bring up the research dialog.

  • Four techs deserve the most attention: Infantry Equipment, Corps Organization, Production Technology, and Industrial Technology.

  • Ctrl+E to end your turn.

  • Pause/Break on your keyboard will pause the AI's turn.

Turn 2

  • The European Danger

    • Ctrl+M to open the War Maps dialog

    • It's generally a bad idea to declare war on neutral countries.

    • When a European power reaches 75% Mobilization it will recognize the independence of the Confederacy and is almost certain to enter the war. European armies and navies are very powerful so as the Union you should do everything possible to reduce their Mobilization %.

  • The Convoy Map

    • Gray lines are inactive convoy lines.

    • When you see something like "5 MPPs @ 100%", the percentage is the Seasonal Reduction Value. Basically bad weather can hinder convoys.

    • Convoys are activated and inactivated as countries' Mobilization percentages change.

    • If Mexico enters the war, the Union can send MPPs to Mexico.

  • Suspended convoys

    • If a port used as part of a convoy is captured or damaged to below strength 5, that will break the convoy.

    • Land convoys can be broken if enemy forces capture any of the hexes that the convoy passes through

  • The Advance Continues

    • You can set ships to Raider mode and move them to enemy convoy routes to have them raid. They will use one supply point for each turn they actively raid.

  • The Eastern Theater

    • The Eastern Theater is very likely to be a place where the war is won or lost.

    • Move your brigades and armored train to take Alexandria.

  • Research

    • Add two chits of Infantry Equipment and one in Corps Organization.

  • Diplomacy

    • Ctrl+D to open the Diplomacy dialog.

    • Each investment of MPP in a particular country gives you an investment chit for that country.

    • You can have up to five chits invested for any particular power.

    • Each chit invested gives you a 3% chance of a "hit" per turn. A "hit" moves that nation 7-10% towards your side.

    • You only get that 3% chance when you have more chits invested than your opponent, and you only get credit for the number of chits you have invested over them.

    • Three main categories of nations are available for diplomatic investment: European powers, border states, and Indians.

    • If border states come to your side you can deploy new units in their cities.

    • Border states will choose sides quickly, almost certainly before 1862.

    • When a border state is more than 0% pro-Confederate, it will immediately secede and join the Confederacy.

    • Indian territories will each bring one Cavalry Brigade into the war.

  • Purchasing Units

    • Beginning in the third or fourth turn, and continuing until at least the end of 1861, we strongly recommend that more than half of each turn’s income be devoted to new unit purchases each turn.

    • Ctrl+P to open the purchase screen.

    • Red means you don't have the tech to build a unit, gray means you don't have the MPPs to buy a unit, white means you can buy it.

    • Divisions should form the backbone of your army.

    • Division commander names don't have any gameplay effects, it's just for flavor.

  • Your Turn End

    • Move General Butler to Fort Monroe VA.

Turn 3

  • Crushing the Missouri State Guard

    • When you hover over an enemy unit with one of yours selected that can attack it, the Information Panel at the bottom of the screen will display an estimate of the losses if you do decide to attack

    • Units that attack before moving receive a Prepared Attack Bonus

    • If a unit’s Readiness is below 50%, the number representing its unit strength will look fainter.

    • Keep an eye out for enemy units with fainter strength numbers as they will be more vulnerable to attack.

    • Q: How can an enemy unit be reinforced if I have it surrounded?

    • Only Missouri will join the Union if it surrenders. All other nations will just become occupied territory.

  • West Virginia

    • West Virginia is very defensible once captured. The Appalachian Mountains make it hard for the Confederacy to send forces from the east.

    • If West Virginia joins the Union it improves the Union Fighting Spirit.

  • Focus on the Objective

    • The key to winning the war is to focus on what matters, and to avoid putting any effort into attacks that won’t contribute to victory.

    • Concentrate on one or two fronts that hold promise.

    • Your initial priority should be preparing your economy and the nation: Divisions, Corps, Monitors, Ironclads, etc.

    • Kentucky will likely join the Confederacy before 1862, at which time you'll see Confederates in Tennessee.

    • By the beginning of 1862 you should have assembled a new and powerful army ready to go on the offensive

General Tips

  • Battle for Victory

    • If you can surround the enemy and wait a turn you'll get much better odds.

    • It's generally better to focus your attacks on a few units rather than spreading your attacks.

  • Swapping units

    • If two units are adjacent and neither has moved, left click on one of them, hold Shift, hover over the other one, then left click on one of them to swap their positions.

  • Forced March

    • LMB twice on a unit to move 50% further. It needs the Forced March ability, supply of 5 or more, and not be adjacent to an enemy unit. It also causes severe morale penalties.

  • HQ Settings

    • RMB on an HQ, then Set Mode to choose how attaching/detaching is handled.

    • If in Auto-Assist or Manual Mode, LMB an HQ and then RMB another unit to Attach or Detach it.

  • Transports

    • Three types: Regular (only lands at ports), Amphibious, Amphibious (LR)

    • It's safer to land your units first and march to the target.

    • Units lose 1 supply point per turn in an Amphibious Transport.

    • Marines can embark on an Amphibious Transport from any coastal hex.

  • Reinforcements

    • Q: Is it realistic to have units reinforced while still in the field?

    • RMB on a unit and select Reinforce.

    • To reinforce large numbers of units at once, select the Reinforce tool (second from the right on the bottom toolbar).

    • Reinforced units can't move or attack that turn.

  • Elite Reinforcements

    • White dots above the unit's strength represent experience.

    • Flag icons on the unit info panel also represent experience.

    • RMB a unit and select Elite Reinforcements, limit to 1 Strength point per turn.

    • Requirements: not adjacent to an enemy unit, supply 6 or more, strength at least 10.

    • Q: Is it realistic to be able to reinforce units with elite troops, seemingly out of nowhere?

  • Rail movement

    • Requirement: your unit is on a rail line linked to a resource with a strength of at least 5.

    • RMB and select 'Rail Move', then select Yes to see possible destination hexes.

  • Upgrading Units

    • On the research window the left side is Manual Research and the right side is Automatic.

    • Manual means that once it's unlocked the units need to be manually upgraded.

    • Automatic means when it's unlocked the upgrade is applied automatically.

    • Prioritize upgrading your better units (Corps and Ironclads).

  • Beware of Partisans

    • Press P to see areas you need to keep garrisoned.

    • Partisan icons with a red diagonal line will just reduce the resource output of the area without generating a Partisan unit.

  • Next Steps

    • Refer to the strategy guide for more advice.

Game Essentials

  • Key Areas of Gameplay

    • There are five key areas of gameplay to consider each turn: 1. Reading reports, 2. issuing orders, 3. politics and diplomacy, 4. research, and 5. military production

  • Hotkeys

    • A bunch of hotkeys already described earlier

    • L - display the last turn's summaries

    • R - show reinforceable units

    • S - show the supply your forces receive

    • U - show upgradeable units and resources

    • Pg Up / Pg Dn - Select the next unit that has not yet moved

    • Ctrl+Z - Undo moves by land units

  • Major and Minor Powers

    • Minor powers just earn income for major powers. Minor powers can be reinforced (new units can be placed in them) but their Major pays for them.

  • Indicator Sprites

    • Units that can do stuff have a flashing sprite on their lower section.

    • Units that can't do anything are darkened.

  • Orders

    • Pressing Ctrl and LMB to specify a movement path is helpful to avoid naval minefields.

    • Transports - Use these to move troops between friendly ports

    • Amphibious Transports - Enemy naval units and fortress defenses will fire on amphibious transports that halt in an adjacent hex.

    • Landing casualties - The lower the supply value and worse the weather, the higher landing casualties are likely to be.

  • Unit Modes

    • RMB on some units to change modes.

    • Artillery can be set to Silent to not provide counter-battery fire, to keep their location secret.

  • Zones of Control

    • Units are assigned a category to determine ZOC: Front Line Units, Support Units, No ZOC Units, Damaged Units, Naval Units.

  • Combat

    • There are two main categories of units: Land and Naval.

    • Units are subdivided into Target Types.

    • Experienced units are best used as spearheads or to launch counter-attacks.

    • HQs gain experience from the units under their command.

  • Raiding

    • RMB --> Select Convoy Mode --> Raider

  • Conquering Countries

    • Countries surrender when all their Capitals have been captured and enough of their land forces have been destroyed.

  • Fighting Spirit

    • Reduced when resources are captured, casualties are suffered, and key locations are taken.

    • The Major will surrender if FS falls to 0.

    • FS is increased by capturing resources, destroying enemy land units, sinking enemy ships.

  • HQs

    • HQs provide supply to their units.

    • Default HQs can command 5 units within 3 hexes.

  • Supply Rules

    • General Notes on Supply

      • Supply seems to work like in Unity of Command: it decreases by 1 per hex in clear terrain.

      • Units without supply can't be reinforced.

      • Naval units can only be fully supplied in port.

    • Viewing Supply

      • Press S once to view current supply levels.

      • Press S again to view a prediction of supply in the next turn.

    • Damage to Resources

      • Resources automatically repair by 1 strength point per turn.

      • If there are 2 or more enemy units adjacent to a resource, they'll reduce its strength points by 1 each turn.

      • An enemy unit adjacent to a port will prevent it from providing supply.

  • Partisans

    • They deploy at strength 8 and always have a minimum supply level of 3.

  • Maintaining Units' Combat Effectiveness

    • Good tips here

    • After reinforcing from serious casualties it's best to rest the unit for a few turns.

  • Decision Events - Nothing new

  • Politics and Diplomacy

    • Good tips but nothing really new

  • Weather - Weather effects are based on the unit's starting location.

    • Storms are much more dangerous in ACW than in the later-set Strategic Command games.

  • The Research Mechanism - Nothing really new

  • Manual Upgrades - What each upgrade does, but I don't know how to make use of that information yet.

  • Automatic Upgrades - These seem better than the Manual Upgrades.

  • Automatic Industrial Mobilization

  • Military Production - A few useful tips but nothing really new.

  • Further Gameplay Tips - These are great tips.

    • Keep cavalry close to the front line to exploit success.

    • Keep HQs, artillery, and balloons close to the front line.

Superflight

  • Stay on the "outside" of the map to stay safe. You can easily just "camp" in that position and rack up as high a score as you want.

  • You may want to increase your sensitivity to the max (both horizontal and vertical) once you get the hang of the game, as it makes it easier to escape from dangerous situations.

  • I wish the game had you turn faster when you're in a straight-down orientation.

  • Almost no UI, which adds to the immersiveness.

  • I can't see as much as I want to; I want to have ~360 degree vision so I can see if I can make a turn in a drastic direction, or see what's behind me. Birds have their eyes on the sides of their heads so that they get great peripheral vision.

  • I still don't feel like I have as *much* control and as *low-latency* control as a bird does. I get frustrated when I want to execute a maneuver and it feels like my brain is fast enough to give the commands but the small number of keys I have to use as input and the input lag combine to make it far more difficult for me to execute the maneuver.

  • It seems like the horizontal controls don't have much lag but the vertical controls are delayed by maybe 0.1 seconds.

  • A lot of the fancier maneuvers (e.g. going into really tight spaces) seem to depend on having a good knowledge of the map. For some hypothetical competitor it might make sense to have people using the same map for a while so that they can develop a knowledge of how things are laid out.

  • You don't generally gain enough extra points from aiming drastically downwards to make it worth it. It's only really useful in short bursts to get out of situations where there's no way to continue in a somewhat-horizontal direction.

  • I could see slow-motion being useful in a game like this, although it would take away from the feeling of skill that comes from mastering the controls.

  • Another problem I'm noticing is that I'm having trouble gauging the distance between my character and the surrounding environment. Maybe VR would help with that? (Stereoscopic vision would help give depth information).

Super Meat Boy

  • Thoughts:

    • I saw people raving about this game for years and didn’t understand why. I had the impression that it was loved because it was a Souls-like (brutally difficult). After playing it for a bit, I realize that it’s not loved (mainly) because of the difficulty but because of how well designed it is.

    • The core of the game is a movement model that’s more complicated than most platformers, while simultaneously being simple to control, as it’s just a combination of the joystick, a jump button, and a run button. But the game takes advantage of the graduated activation(?) of the buttons/joystick on a game controller so that each button isn’t all-or-nothing, which allows them to create combinations. So, for example, pressing the jump button lightly will have your character jump only a little, whereas holding it down will have the character jump very high. The satisfying feeling I get when I can control the character in such a graduated way to achieve a difficult maneuver reminds me of the satisfying feeling I get when I fly a helicopter in a flight sim: it requires total concentration.

    • There are then a couple of environmental objects that can affect your character, or that your character can interact with. For example, walls you can jump to, cling to, slide down, and jump from; fans on the ground that propel you upwards, etc.

    • The other brilliant aspect of the game aside from the interesting movement is that the levels are very short and built entirely around the movement model, where each level tests you on a separate ability or movement combination. So the short levels and fast respawn are like Hotline Miami, and the levels being puzzle-like and built around the mechanics reminds me of Braid. So basically the levels aren’t trying to be brutally difficult, but instead are gently forcing you to understand different ways of controlling the character, different ways the character moves in different situations (e.g. jumping from a wall, sliding down a wall, being propelled upwards by a fan).

    • [After playing the game a lot:] a big part of the game seems to be exploring/discovering “setups” for individual jumps similar to the lineups in Counter-Strike for throwing grenades. It seems like you’re often better off going for the time record (“A+”) immediately after beating the level because you still remember the setups / sequence of moves needed to beat the level, and that’s the bulk of the work involved; unlike, say, GoldenEye, which can require very different behavior when going for the time-record for a level.

TacOps

Task Force 1942

Summary of how to play

Which mission to play first

  • The tutorial recommends you select Historical Engagement → Kula Gulf → US Navy → Easy settings (default).

  • My guess is that the best way to learn the game is to try each of the different Historical Engagements as the US Navy on Easy, then switch to the Japanese Navy on Easy, then bump up the difficulty.

  • It’s not clear yet how to tell if you’ve successfully completed a scenario or not.

Controls

  • Keep two copies of the manual PDF open: one for the keyboard reference, one for the actual manual.

  • + and - to increase or decrease time acceleration, Alt+p to pause.

  • Left-click on a station to enter that station, right-click when in a station to exit that station.

  • The sound isn't working in an actual battle. Press Alt+s to turn it on.

  • Zooming: Z and X are the zoom buttons for stuff like the Binoculars, Gun Director, and Charts view. In the Charts view, when you press Z it’ll show a small window, you then click to confirm where you want to zoom in.

  • Gun Director view:

    • Press '3' to switch to the wide view, that will show the 'ID book' in the bottom right corner.

    • Z and X to zoom in and out.

    • When in the narrower view, hit the spacebar or click the small blue circle at the bottom-left of the screen to switch to controlling the gun director. Your cursor should disappear. Then use the arrow keys (and Ctrl+arrow) to control where it's looking. Point at a particular target and press the spacebar to “lock onto” that target and stop controlling the gun director.

    • Once you’re locked on a target, left-click to fire.

  • Charts view:

    • Left-click on friendly ships / task-groups to issue orders to them.

    • You move individual ships and task groups by assigning them headings rather than giving them waypoints (specific points to travel to).

    • You can also enter the flagship of a task group from the menu here.

Strategy

  • …

Thoughts on particular engagements

Kula Gulf

  • …

Teleglitch

  • Thoughts on the game:

    • This seems like a good game for people who beat Hotline Miami 1 and 2 a while ago (so it's been a while since they've played a top-down shooter) and would interested in something similar but different.

    • Some of the weapon sounds are brutal. I really can't think of more-brutal weapon sounds I've ever heard in a game. They seem to be a lot shorter in duration and have a lot more of a crack to them than in most other shooting games.

    • I honestly think it may have given me slight motion sickness from having the camera constantly rotating and zooming in and out. I get why they do it, but it's not very pleasant. I need to check if there's a way to disable that.

    • There's something very stark about the game. Maybe because of the lack of music(?).

  • Advice for playing:

    • Settings advice

      • Turn off the rotation and zoom.

    • Definitely start by playing the arena missions.

      • It'll make the campaign a lot less frustrating, because in the campaign you can sink a lot of time in as a new player to get to the third level or so, and then die, which is very annoying.

    • General tactics

      • Teleglitch isn't meant to be played like Hotline Miami, where you take out one guard at a time.

        • The ammo is given out in such a way that you're incentivized to run forward and avoid fighting the melee enemies for a while, wait until you get a crowd of them following you, and then use RDX_500 on them. That's the most-efficient way to get rid of them.

        • This should also solve the issue of levels taking a long time to beat. You can literally just rush through them in a minute or so.

        • I figured this out while playing the arena missions.

      • When facing large crowds it's very important to not get backed into a corner. You need to have a circular route of hallways that you can run around to buy yourself time.

      • If you want to use an explosive against a crowd, look for a big open square room, and then run against the back near corner, and as they come in work across the back wall to the far corner from the entrance, then up the opposite wall, so you get them all in the room, and then drop the explosive.

      • To survive you should move forward cautiously (with your gun out), and once an enemy starts chasing you, run backwards and decide what weapon is the most efficient one to kill them with.

    • Enemy info and enemy-specific tactics

      • You need to kill enemies that have guns ASAP. They'll drain your health quickly.

    • Weapon info & weapon tactics

      • Heavy rifle

        • hits instantly

        • slow reload

      • Revolver

        • Weak

        • Best for taking out weaker enemies without using ammo you need for tougher enemies.

      • Weapons aren't nearly as accurate as in Hotline Miami. There's a much bigger emphasis on explosives.

      • Ammo is very limited, so you need to be a lot more careful with your ammo than in Hotline Miami.

      • You want to conserve pistol ammo for use against single weak enemies so you don't end up needing to waste more-damaging ammo against them.

      • The AGL-1 is good against those green-and-white tougher enemies that look like they have multiple arms. It'll take them out in one direct hit, whereas with a pistol it'll take ~6-8 shots.

      • You may need to throw nailbombs, as I think I took a lot of damage from dropping one, even though I got a fair distance away.

      • When using a spray gun (e.g. double-barreled nailgun or shotgun), try to get a crowd of people chasing you and then get them to funnel into a doorway or around a corner, then open up on them.

    •  Campaign:

      • It seems like a good idea to fully explore each level rather than just quit the level as soon as you get to the teleporter, because you can find more weapons by exploring.

    • Arena

      • The bad thing about the arena is that it doesn't seem to really teach you ammo conservation. I feel like you get a lower amount of ammo in the campaign for each enemy you face than you do in the arena.

Thief 2

  • I remember when I first got my PC back in late 2000 and Thief 2 came with my graphics card (IIRC), and I didn't enjoy the game at the time because the fantasy elements seemed ridiculous to me, and the graphics weren’t as good as something like Counter-Strike. I was more interested in games attempting to get closer to reality, like Rainbow Six and Operation Flashpoint.

  • What made me finally understand what Thief 2 was all about was playing Heat Signature.

TIS-100

Total War

Turok: Dinosaur Hunter

  • Note: my comments are based on my playing the PC version.

  • If you extend the draw distance you can see further than the AI.

    • This is probably just a result of the AI's vision distance being harder to change after-the-fact than the draw distance.

  • The draw distance is very short.

    • It's weird because GoldenEye seems to have a much farther draw distance despite being from the same era.  The closest I can think of is the Jungle level, which has a ton of geometry (trees) that partially distract from the short draw distance.

  • You move really, really fast.

  • You can run as fast backwards as the raptors can run forwards, which makes them much less scary.

  • The level design is pretty uninspired, at least on the first level.

  • The platforming seems superfluous, at least on the first level.

  • It plays like an easier Serious Sam.

  • I had to turn off the head bobbing / leaning to avoid motion sickness.

  • Nice variation in the death animations. I wonder if GoldenEye got the idea from Turok?

  • Nice that shooting dead enemies makes them react.

  • This game is significantly easier with keyboard and mouse.

  • I don't understand how combat with humans is supposed to work; when they shoot, it's immediate, so you can't duck behind a corner when you see they're starting to shoot. It seems like it may have actually been part of the original game to have the humans' view distance shorter than the draw distance, so that the player can shoot humans before the humans know the player is there.

  • For some bizarre reason the draw distance at the edge of your screen is significantly further than the draw distance in front of you.

  • You don't pick up ammo from enemies AND enemies respawn, so you really have an incentive to try to run past as many enemies as you can.

Twilight Struggle

  • Criticisms

    • I wish there was an explanation of what the different gameplay mechanics are supposed to be abstractions for.

      • I don't understand what the DEFCON status is supposed to be an abstraction for.

      • I don't understand what the Military operations requirement is supposed to be an abstraction for, and why it needs to be at least the DEFCON level.

      • I don't understand what the random choice of scoring locations (based on drawn cards) is supposed to be an abstraction for.

  • Advice for playing:

    • A lot of the time you just can't do a coup anywhere.

    • It looks like "Realignment rolls" are used when the other guy has gotten a single influence point in a country.

Ultimate General: Gettysburg

  • Thoughts

    • The thing about this game is that I can never tell how I did. It'll tell me "Major Defeat" but it's not clear if that's the intended outcome or not. It'd be nice if it had a Zachtronics-like feature where it'd show you how you fared compared to other people who tried the same mission.

      • Later: I think the game is designed with the philosophy that with perfect play it should be possible to finish every mission with a Major Victory, but I could be wrong about that (it would seem to be a hard thing for them to verify, given the different AI opponent behavior-types).

    • One great thing about this game is that you can really hop in and have a battle in ~15-30 minutes. It's a lot faster to play than Combat Mission.

    • I really wish it would tell you where the reinforcements are going to be coming from. It makes it a lot harder to plan when you don't know that, and it seems realistic to know that.

  • Questions

    • What's the purpose of skirmishers?

      • It may be helpful as a smaller infantry force to protect flanks / artillery from cavalry attacks.

    • How are infantry not able to destroy artillery at close range? I feel like if I tell an infantry brigade to charge relatively-undefended artillery, they should be able to take out the enemy pretty quickly.

    • Does a unit need to be within the influence of its own general to get the morale bonus? (If you have multiple generals on the battlefield.)

      • Answer: I think so.

    • What are sharpshooters good for? It looks like they've got a much longer range.

    • How can I tell when a battle is going to end? Especially when it says "Battle Delayed"?

  • Advice for playing

    • Use reverse-slope defenses to hide yourself from enemy artillery.

    • The "Fight Battle" screen gives some clues as to the differences between the Union and Confederate forces:

      • Union

        • Strengths: The Union deploys efficient artillery, better-drilled infantry and better equipment in their battles in order to tackle the enemy with orderly and intense fire.

        • Weaknesses: However, most Union generals are uninspiring comparing to the Confederate army leaders. This causes poor performance in close combat and average morale.

      • Confederate

        • Strengths: Confederate soldiers are universally high spirited and courageous. They are able to sustain heavy fire without breaking and are hard, experienced troops.

        • Weaknesses: Confederate equipment is though less advanced compared to Union and they lack professional military training, leading to a disadvantage in prolonged engagements at range.

      • From that, it seems like your basic strategy with Confederate troops should be to try to close the distance with Union troops ASAP, whereas with Union forces you should try to keep the Confederates at a distance and pound them with your artillery.

    • Keep your general close to your fighting force, and keep your fighting forces relatively close together. This is just like in Combat Mission.

    • If you start off with some kind of advantage, you really need to have your forces run to take advantage of it, because reinforcements arrive very quickly (like, within a few minutes).

    • Just as in Combat Mission, you want your forces running if it's something somewhat urgent.

    • As the Confederates, focus on keeping your units in cities and in the forests (i.e. in cover).

    • The video for UG: Civil War says skirmishers are good for scouting and harrassing.

      • Apparently UG: CW is  differently-balanced, so skirmishers may not be as userful in that role in UG: G, but it still makes sense that they could be used for those purposes.

    • I fought a huge battle for Cemetary Hill and had the Union on the verge of total collapse when the scenario ended, and the two options I was given after the battle basically were the same battle I had just fought. So I guess just go all-out. IDK. I never had my infantry charge, so maybe that would have done it.

Undertale

  • Monster has a yellow name when you can spare it. But you may have to do it when their name isn't yellow.

  • The writing is more clever than usual.

  • The gameplay reminds me of that weird frog game (not the one where you go underwater).

Unity of Command

Unreal Tournament

Urban Dead

Vampire: The Masquerade

  • I encountered a bug at the very beginning, where I couldn't open a door to go upstairs: https://steamcommunity.com/app/2600/discussions/0/613956964593429056/

    • The fix ended up being to wait a second or two in front of the door.

  • The voice actors are pretty good.

  • Very impressive world-building. All the different vampires, the rules, etc. It all seems very well-thought-out.

  • The textures are nice.

  • The feeding minigame isn't nearly as focused-on as I thought it would be. There's literally a woman who hangs out at the Alyssium that you can feed on every time you visit there.

  • The world feels small :/

  • Something is up with the mouse acceleration in the game.

  • When going into the house to get the Astrolite for Mercurio, I thought, "Oh cool, this is like Hitman..." But it turns out you're powerful enough to take on all of them at once, so you don't really need to strategize to beat them. And there doesn't seem to be a non-confrontational way to get the Astrolite back.

  • The game reminds me of GTA. It would be cool to see a true open-world game like this.

  • The intro tutorial is great at easing you into the world, but the quests once you jump into the game don't really continue that good idea of slowly easing you into the world. You're just doing quests for some guy you don't know all of a sudden.

  • The world with all the different kinds of vampires is great.

  • The gameplay is pretty boring, it's a mix of a point-and-click adventure game with some boring fighting game.

Victoria (series)

Victoria: Revolutions (Victoria 1)

Resources

Thoughts as I ease into learning the game

  • 2024.05.10 - Day 1-ish

    • I started the full campaign as Siam.

    • My game ended when I was invaded by the French in ~1880.

    • I had Fog of War off and all the options set to as easy as possible.

    • The game feels kind of like Civilization in terms of having a tech tree that feels kind of fake, and random events. But it feels way more simulation-y than Civilization, which is interesting. It’s interesting to just run the game on as easy a mode as possible and explore what I can do, setting a goal for myself like “Let’s see how high I can get my prestige” or “Let’s see how high I can get my literacy”.

    • I didn’t really feel like I had to do much putting out of fires or adapting to changing circumstances. I just let the clock run while trying to tech up and build up my literacy.

    • It’s very annoying that I can’t see a detailed log of what’s going on with my budget. I’ll often see my budget go negative on a particular day and not know why.

  • 2024.05.11 - Day 2

    • I tried again as Siam.

    • I learned to control my budget by increasing tariffs to the max and lowering everything else except spending on Education and Crime Fighting.

    • I learned to move my armies around to different provinces.

    • I learned that if I want to build a new army I need to spend the “Manpower” resource, which I build up via my “Defense Spending” slider.

    • I ended up turning on Fog of War for a bit more immersion.

    • I learned that the “Improve Relations” command (right-click on a province owned by another power, click “Send Diplomat”, then “Improve Relations”) basically just trades money for an improvement in relations. Which I guess can be helpful if you don’t want that power to invade your country (like how I was afraid of France as Siam).

  • 2024.05.12 - Day 3

    • I used ChatGPT to figure out how to scale the game resolution to match my monitor without stretching the screen sideways: I had to go into the Nvidia Control Panel and set the scaling to be handled by the GPU. The game looks way better now.

    • I read the section of the Victoria wiki on factory production, POPs, and railroads, and the section of the Victoria: Revolutions manual on RGOs.

    • I don’t understand why the POPs at the bottom of the left sidebar are different when I’m in a province view vs. looking at an RGO within that province. My best guess is that Aristocrats, Clergy, and Soldier POPs affect every province in the state they reside in.

    • I read the manual on the Buy/Sell UI and understand now that “Sell > X” is meant to be read as “Sell any inventory we have over X” and “Buy < X” is meant to be read as “Buy on the world market if we have an inventory of less than X”. So the order is based on your inventory, not on the world price. https://i.imgur.com/C6sEhAc.png

    • I understand the “State” sidebar view a bit better: https://i.imgur.com/YHBmUIe.png

      • The “1/5” number next to each province is the number of POPs working at the RGO vs. the POP-capacity of the RGO.

      • The different POP pictures on the right side of each province row are the different types of POPs in each province, but not the number of each. You’ll see at most one of each type in that view.

    • I built a Steel factory as recommended in the wiki but I didn’t see my daily profit going up as I converted Laborers into Craftsmen and Clerks.

  • 2024.05.16 - Day 4

    • Today I tried adding music. I went to Spotify and found a playlist of 18th century British military march songs, and put that on. I ended up preferring having Chopin on. I should make my own playlist where I alternate styles within the 18th century to keep it from getting boring.

Victoria 2

Vietnam '65

Questions

  • Do bases need to have infantry in them to defend them? Or does the base include infantry automatically as part of its defense?

    • Answer: I think the bases don't automatically defend themselves, but I also I don't think the enemy goes straight for your bases the way they do in Starcraft.

General advice

  • A turn seems to generally represent a day.

  • The Basic Training tutorial only takes like 5 minutes to read through, and then it gives you the option to keep playing.

  • Play through the full 45-turn basic training scenario. It seems like it's purposely made to be easier to ease you into the game.

  • Use Page Down to cycle through the units that can still take some action.

  • You can immediately build any unit, which is really helpful if you suddenly need another Huey to do resupply.

  • Infantry don't lose supply while in a transport.

  • General strategy

    • You want to build your firebase around halfway across the map.

    • You want to build forward bases between two villages.

    • You want use ARVN to go out from forward bases to get recon from two nearby villages. Maybe one ARVN per forward base (since recon opportunities don't refresh that often).

    • You want to use M113s as cheaper transports from forward bases to nearby villages.

    • You want to use Hueys to do resupply missions from the firebase to the forward bases.

    • You want to use the Chinook to do artillery resupply missions from the HQ.

Controls

  • Spacebar ends the turn for the selected unit.

Questions I have

  • How do I heal wounded infantry? A: Return them to the HQ.

Summary of the tutorials

  • Basic Training

    • You always start on the east edge of the map, the NVA come from the west edge, and VC spawn from "the Ho Chi Min Trail" (invisible points along the map).

    • You can sometimes get intel from villages about the location of VC units by having infantry / ARVN move into the village when you see a lit campfire on the village's icon. Even if you don't get intel, having infantry visit boosts your (Hearts and Minds?) score.

    • You can have your helicopters drop infantry right next to enemy units.

    • Units successful in combat get 'promoted' (become better in combat). So it's presumably better to have new infantry fight VC units and then use your more-experienced units to fight the NVA (if possible).

    • Map view:

      • The blue crate icon on a unit means the unit is low on supply.

    • Green Berets are good scouts. They can train ARVN units at forward bases.

    • NVA bases cost you 250 political support per turn. Such bases are usually built near NVA-controlled villages.

  • US bases

    • Main Base / HQ

      • Only one that can heal infantry and supply arty.

    • Firebase

      • Created with an engineering unit (looks like a M113 on the map).

      • You only get one.

      • Resupplies units (except arty)

      • Arty position.

    • Forward base (FoB)

      • The only place to train ARVN (you need to have a Green Beret unit in the base to do this)

      • Arty position

      • Limited supply benefits

        • Inf. resupply 1 per turn

        • Non-inf don't resupply, but also don't consume supplies.

        • Can be resupplied by helicopter.

  • US units

    • Inf - Your main fighters

    • Green berets - Scouts. Less powerful than regular infantry in a fight, but can train ARVN, can stay out in the field longer, and give combat bonuses to friendly fighters up against units the Green Berets spotted.

    • ARVN - Trained in FoBs. Less effective in combat than infantry but better at gathering intelligence from villages.

    • Engineer (M113 icon) - Can build bases, clear jungle, and build roads.

    • Mechanized - Can be repaired / refueled in the field by engineers.

    • Armor - Used primarily for fighting the NVA. Also can do indirect fire(??).

    • Huey - Used for transportation, supply, and as a medevac.

    • Chinook - Same as the Huey but can go further without needing resupply.

    • Cobra - Can do indirect(??) fire.

  • Victory

    • You gain rank by winning matches. The higher your rank, the faster airstrikes become available. So the game gets easier over time...?

Advice for playing

Vietnam Medevac

VTOL VR

Quickstart / Tutorial summary

  • Key: R = Right side of the cockpit, L = Left, M = Middle

  • Getting started (Startup)

    • R - BRAKE LOCK - ON

    • R - MAIN BATTERY - ON

    • R - APU - ON

    • R - ENGINE 1 AND 2 - ON

    • R - APU - OFF

    • M - HUD POWER - ON

    • M MFD ON

  • BASIC FLIGHT

    • tap the trigger to lock in a grab of the throttle and stick

    • Taxiing

      • Left trigger is the wheel brakes

      • Left thumbstick changes the angle of the engines

    • Take-off

      • Turn on the wheel lock

      • L Flaps to position 1

      • L Make sure all flight assists are on

      • Grab throttle and hold the brakes

      • Taxi onto runway

      • Increase throttle to full

      • Pull up at 156kts

      • L raise gear

      • L set flaps to 0

    • Landing

      • Slow to 292kts

      • Lower gear

      • Set flaps to position 1.

      • Slow to 156kts by the time you're at the runway

  • BASIC WEAPONS

    • Set right MFD to EQUIP

    • Set middle MFD to TGP (targeting pod)

    • Set Left MFD to NAV

    • TGP PWR ON

    • TGP SOI ON (sensor of interest)

    • Thumbstick on right joystick aims the TGP

    • M MASTER ARM ON

    • R joystick B button switches weapons

    • Setting rockets to fire in bursts:

    • EQUIP MFD in CONFIG mode

    • Click the button for the weapon

  • Misc

    • Left stick Y is chaff

    • Right stick B is push to talk mic

Wolfenstein 3D

  • You can buy it on Steam.

    • According to one Steam review, a better version exists online on some website: "I still DO NOT recommend to buy the game. Why? Because there's a free online version in the official wolfenstein site where you can play the first three episodes directly through your browser... And if you look deeper in a search engine you can find another site with all 6 episodes AND the spear of destiny expansion. It looks even more polished and plays smooth as silk"

      • I like having Steam back up my savegames, it's worth the $5.

Brutal Wolfenstein

  • I like the ridiculous levels of blood.

  • I like the varied death animations.

  • This reminds me of GoldenEye.

  • I like the theme. I like it more than Doom's theme.

  • I like the gun sounds.

  • Guards will open fire almost immediately, so if you don't know if someone is around a corner, your best bet is to expose just a piece of yourself and hope to get any guards to make a sound or take a wild shot at you.

  • I love that bodies / blood / bullet-holes / casings stay in-place (like Hotline Miami) rather than fading out (like GoldenEye).

  • It's not ideal that you can hear footsteps through thick stone walls.

  • They really make a huge leap forward in level design from Wolfenstein to Doom.

  • Regarding the other episodes:

    • "The demo offer only the levels from the first episode of Wolfenstein 3D,but the final version will include all the maps from Wolfenstein 3D and Spear of Destiny"

    • 2018.05.04 - ZioMcCall: "Today Wolfenstein 3D is 26 years old and i didn't even started to make the second episode...seeing that i have various people loved and supported my project, for them i'll try to restart working the next Monday."

World War II Online (WW2OL)

  • I vividly remember when this game first came out.

Flaws with WW2OL

  • The Battlfield-style gameplay (quick respawn, mostly urban combat) incentivizes people to rush about and make the maximal use of their time. Running with Rifles has the same problem. This is in contrast to a game like Counter-Strike where you have one life per round, so you're incentivized to be careful with it. I think forcing the player to do long slogs to the front is also maybe not ideal, so maybe there's some middle-ground where you can have the player do something mildly interesting while they wait a few minutes to play again, the way CS has you watch the rest of the round while you're waiting to play again. Maybe you can be stuck watching your squad-mates just like in CS.

  • Fast movement speed and lack of a tiredness system leads to more-chaotic or non-existent front lines.

  • Lack of AI combatants leads to empty-feeling battlefields.

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