I liked to post in the Friday fun threads what video games I've been playing recently. Sometimes I recommend the games, and sometimes I ask for recommendations.
I've always enjoyed talking about video games. But themotte has made me picky over the years. Its not just talk that I want. It is thinking, understanding, and discussion of video games that interest me. Video games are mostly a mental activity for me, and so diving into a mental discussion about them often enhances my enjoyment.
I didn't post in the Friday fun thread about what I've been playing, so I'll post now. And I'd like to know what others are playing.
The post I would have written:
This week I've been hooked on factorio (again). I've done many playthroughs of this game. A few vanilla playthroughs (some multiplayer and some not). A krastorio 1 mod playthrough. A few different attempts at the bob's, angels, and seablock mods (never could get into them, too much work, and not enough reward). A krastorio II and space exploration playthrough.
This week though I have been playing with just the space exploration mod. There has been some hints in blogposts that factorio might have an expansion, and that the expansion might be related to the space exploration mod. I thought I'd try and wait for that expansion. But my patience has failed me.
Playing space exploration without the krastorio II mod has been surprisingly way more different than I would have expected. The major difference in my mind is that krastorio II makes the starting world gameplay last too long, and gives too many advantages. I never thought this would be a real problem, but I've never managed to truly beat a space exploration game before. And I realized part of the problem is that krastorio II ties you to the homeworld too strongly. While space exploration on its own forces you off planet just for the sake of some quality of life improvements. For example, you have to go to space in order to get the logistics network chests. The tech is not unlockable based on ground items alone. I don't remember if krastorio II mod combination forced me to go to space, but I do remember that the belt inserters made so many logists aspects so much simpler that the need for drone based logistics didn't seem as pressing. There were also special ground based fabricator buildings for Krastorio II that were larger and much faster (matching the space based ones). But with just the space exploration mod I'm realizing there is an intentional difference. Either you can choose land based production to get productivity bonuses. (and usually the first steps in refinement for special resources). Or you can choose space based production for speed bonuses.
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Notes -
I've been looking forward to Terra Invicta (https://store.steampowered.com/app/1176470/Terra_Invicta/) for a long time, and it was released into Early Access this monday. TI is made by Pavonis Interactive, who started out modding the modern XCOM games (turn-based small unit sci-fi tactics) with their mod series The Long War, which generally added both complexity and balance in surprisingly grounded, realistic ways. Now they made their own long-format, complex, hard-sci-fi 4X, and it's pretty much as good as expected. You control one of seven factions that try to control the nations of the Earth in order to control what happens in space in order to control how humanity deals with the arrival of alien visitors. [They] now face the challenge of control. Control is not a simple thing, it requires vigilance, discipline and sometimes…intervention.
Strategy games have struggled with complexity and realism since forever, an unavoidable problem when the subject matter is in itself not that well-understood and you need to heavily abstract it to make it playable in the first place, and moderate it to keep it enjoyable for a large enough customer base. Pavonis did a good job however, and I find the result very impressive. It has its faults of course, which could not be otherwise, but there is great ambition in this project, and it seems accomplished, and that is rare.
The seven factions mentioned above have their own little culture war going on, there's even a political compass for it (https://hoodedhorse.com/wiki/Terra_Invicta/Factions#Faction_Ideology_Diagram).
However, one area in which the game falls flat for me is the writing regarding the factions. Terra Invicta is no Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, in that a bunch of very talented modders and self-made game developers unfortunately failed to acquire an excellent writer and instead made do with a handful of adequate ones. There is a lot of text in the game, but none of it really sticks out as very memorable. What's worse, the writers clearly had a hard time getting into the mindset of some of the factions. See the link above for the official description of the factions, see below for my judgement on how well-written they are.
The Resistance: Professional, humanitarian, practically XCOM. Lead by an intelligence officer.
Humanity First: Completely one-sidedly over-the-top violent at all times. Led by an anti-communist war criminal.
The Servants: Not just religious, but usually drugged out of their minds. Led by a self-help charlatan.
The Protectorate: Professional, humanitarian. Led by Commissioner Pravin Lal.
The Academy: Professional, humanitarian. Led by a scientist.
The Initiative: Cartoonish capitalist strawmen. Led by a younger Donald Trump equivalent.
Project Exodus: Professional, likes cool starships. Led by Elon Musk in a kefije.
I think you can see where I'm going with this, RE: the Culture War in sci-fi.
To reiterate on the comparison with Alpha Centauri: In AC, all characters made valid philosophical or practical observations or asked genuinely hard questions. In Terra Invicta, that kind of depth does not exist, and whatever comes close is very unequally distributed among the factions. And I wouldn't dwell on it if that just weren't what the game is about, but as mentioned above TI contains a lot of text. Some of it may be purely technical, but whenever it's narrative or ideological I get a feeling that there's too much quantity for the quality.
Overall I'm happy though. This is one of those rare games that aims high and mostly gets there.
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