I Just Failed Humanity

"Thanks for Playing."  That's the crushing message that greets you after you've just led the Terran Federation to it's doom in Halcyon 6:  Starbase Commander.  I just learned that the hard way after ten hours of attempting to curb the Chruul infestation.  I'm a little sad--firstly, because I knew the situation was getting downright futile but also because I haven't felt that sting of defeat from a game in quite awhile.  That failure makes me want to jump right back in though.  Well played, game.....well played.

When I first saw Halcyon 6:  Starbase Commander pop up on the Steam top sellers chart I was surprised and skeptical.  Whenever I see pixelated games I am always a little wary--it's been done and it's been done to death (*this is where my brain should have kicked in and made me remember how much I genuinely enjoyed Stardew Valley).  Rather than think about my skepticism I decided to watch the trailer and see if this wasn't just some weird fluke.  Nope.  Not fluk-ey.  The game actually looked like fun--a perfect storm with aspects of XCOM base management combined with Final Fantasy inspired combat.  Since it was on sale I decided to snatch it up and then regret it later.  The regret never came and I've been having fun commanding my pixelated crew to their unfortunate deaths.

But where did I go wrong?  One of the very important skills I seem to have missed was the ability to multi-task.  Not only do you need a fleet of powerful ships to combat the Chruul in the region but you need multiple crews that can carry out tasks and work on your starbase.  My tunnel vision and enjoyment of blasting Chruul ships into oblivion meant that I sunk all my time and resources into one fleet.  By the time I cobbled together a second fleet things were starting to get chaotic.  New structures called "spires" were spawning many Chruul ships that I just couldn't handle quickly enough.  I had to take them down AND continue to collect resources and expand my base.  It was just too much.  I managed to barely fend them off but the crisis became dire when I realized I didn't have enough crew members to crew tier 3 ships.  An uber-Chruul ship was heading toward my base and I had no options for quickly cobbling together a fleet of tier 3 ships.  Once the Chimera arrived it immediately blasted my base into pieces.  Game over.

I've learned a few things from my failure that might help some others avoid the same fate so here are a few handy tips.

Tip #1--Colonies are important.  Don't neglect them or they will get destroyed and then you will lose the resources.  I lost all but one colony that was generating crew members.  It's important in the early game to establish outposts on those colonies.

Tip #2--Train more officers ASAP.  It wasn't my first priority and by the time I had another batch they were too low-level to do much good.

Tip #3--Use your re-rolls.  Having a set of officers with a wide variety of combination options is vital to success.  I did not use my re-rolls and ended up with some weak combat options.

Tip #4--Gather those resources.  Don't let them waste away on planets.  Make a plan for having at least one ship that is dedicated to keeping you supplied.

Tip #5--Build the next tier of ship hangars quickly and have enough resources in reserve that you can immediately start cranking out more powerful ships.  This might be a little bit of wishful thinking and is really difficult, but I think it's possible.

I plan to start my new and improved game 2 soon.  We'll see if I really learned any lessons from my first round of failure.

It's a Death March.

Sadly, the time for teachers and students to return to their venerable educational institutions has come.  For me this means a serious shift away from my summer schedule composed of waking up late and spending many quality hours emerged in whatever game has my attention--with some cat-walking sprinkled in-between.  My recent scant gaming hours have been spent delving back into The Witcher 3 for the umpteenth time.  I have an unnerving ability to be able to play the games I really love over and over....and over.  This time around I decided that I would try to do some things a little differently than in my previous jaunts into Witcher-land.

One of the major choices I made for myself this go-round was to suck it up and play on the highest difficulty level--the somewhat aptly named "death march."  As the name suggests, there is much dying, but not as much as I thought--maybe that's just the 475 hours of gameplay talking.  The name is very intimidating, but it's not vastly different mechanics than at the other easier levels.  Enemies hit harder--quite a bit harder, even the low-level ones like drowners and wolves--which means that your block/dodge game needs to be on point.  They also travel in much larger packs--you might have seen a pack of three drowners in normal, but now there's five or seven.  Contract critters really pack a punch and it's vital to be prepared to use signs, oil up your blade, chug a decoction, and be ready to throw a bomb or gulp down a healing potion.  Overall, I'm enjoying the challenge of learning and adjusting to fights where I could just rely on taking a few pops from the baddie at a lower difficulty setting.

The Wolf Set of Witcher Gear.   I'm not sure that I'm digging it.

I also decided that Geralt's ensemble needed to be different than in my previous games.  Geralt has successfully worn the garb of the school of the cat, the griffin, and the bear, but I've never decked him out in wolf gear (or the new sets from Blood and Wine).  The aesthetics of this set are...interesting.  I'm not quite sure that I'm completely diggin' it.  (I've only acquired the enhanced set so haven't gotten to see how the set fully fleshes out at the mastercrafted level).  Why is the jacket so short?  Is Geralt supposed to be a matador?  I suppose that for functionality that a shorter jacket would allow for more movement--it just looks kind of odd.

The armor design in The Witcher 2 and The Witcher 3 has been some of my favorite.  I love the fact that the items look functional and that there are details that make them seem real.  You can see where something ties or where buckles are located.  This may sound dumb, but I can almost imagine how it would feel--how the leather in the Griffin set would be hard but also provide some protection or how the padded jacket in the Wolf set would be lighter and springy.  I don't have those kinds of thoughts about other games--I just daftly believe that it makes sense (those crotch plates in Mass Effect look really uncomfortable).

Despite my loathing of trying to explore every single smuggler's cache or spoils of war marker in Skellige, I am forcing myself to loot them all.  Pimping out Geralt's gear ain't cheap--there's a runewright to pay for fancy new enchantments and getting your fancy Witcher gear to the grandmaster level will leave poor Geralt grovelling for a few coins.  So it's time to sail and reduce the population of sirens in the waters of Skellige.  I've only managed to sink one boat so far--which is a serious win.

Geralt will prevail in his quest to throw together enough cash to pay for all those expensive upgrades!