Rant 808 / 老王卖瓜

Tried AI Wars: Fleet Command.

It's a pretty hardcore RTS game. Good for RTS fans who really love the genre, I guess.

As a sci-fi RTS game, it's simpler than the scale may imply. Even though it's usually about huge maps with over 20 planets, the smallest you can go is at the planetary level, as in you can place turrets and docks in the space close to a planet.

Since there's not much tactics involved (no need for micro here), it's just kinda like playing chess.

Attacking an enemy AI planet is easy. Build a giant fleet of unmanned spacecrafts, fly them through the right wormholes, and bang bang bang, they do the rest.

The catch is that each time you attack them, the collective AI enemy grows more wary of you. The more attention you attract, the stronger its attacks against you. If that's not bad enough, the AI fleet also vastly outnumbers yours even if you max out your limits.

Each type and upgraded level of spacecrafts has a limit that you cannot exceed. Capturing planets will increase this limit IIRC.

On the other hand, if you destroy the heavily guarded Data Centers near some of their planets, you could somewhat lower the threat level they categorize you in.

Hence the strategy.

Expand or keep a low profile?

And to make it even more complicated, you have to manage 4 resources: metal, crystal, energy and knowledge.

All 4 has an increase rate and can be accumulated just like the resources in Supreme Commander, except for energy which cannot be stored.

The first 3 has the same purposes as the resources in Warcraft 3 and other RTS games. Knowledge is research points which unlocks upgrades of your choosing, and only 3k of these points can be found on each planet for each player.

Upgrades cost at least 1k.

Unmanned crafts, starships, turrets and upgrades come in large varieties in this game, which does nothing to make it simpler.

That's why I said it's good for RTS fans. There really are plenty of strategies possible in the game, and not tactics that most RTS games are really about.

If you have to micro, that's tactics. Minimal micro is necessary in this game. It's mainly about what you attack, what you attack it with and how you exploit your resources, ie strategy.

Too hardcore for my taste.

















Yes! Finally found a jacket that's actually good. Cannot reveal much here. Trade secrets. But it's special!

Over the weeks I'd found several items that I thought were pretty interesting and new, like fingerless gloves with an attached pocket that covers the fingers and form mittens. Those weren't really new; it's just that I haven't seen them before.

Yea I'm not familiar with winter fashion enough, so I'm learning now.

After searching through the online stores of multiple countries, I've also finally found the right country from which their winter fashion sells better in Singapore.

It's not easy to search through their stuff because I don't know the language well. Fortunately I'm used searching through websites of unknown languages from my younger days when I searched for JAV without knowing there are English websites dedicated to this type of film.

Although I can figure out what category I've been clicking on, the fact that I can't read the descriptions prevents me from learning certain details about what I've been looking at.

Oh well.

I'll probably be able to reveal what jacket it is once there are confirmed orders for it, which will take some months because it can sometimes take several months just to get the sample from the factory. However I don't think I'll post a photo here because it will become too easy to find out who I am.

Nothing about the copyright or anything. We'll be making significant changes to the design to make sure nobody complains.

Because of the uniqueness of the jacket, it won't be cheap. A ballpark figure would be S$200. No certainty here, just a rough guess judging by the workmanship and material required for it versus that of what we usually sell.

And it's female. Definitely female.

Now I shall create the order document.









YES!!!! Killing Floor Bundle AND Atom Zombie Smasher on Daily Deals!

Woot!

Wait.

Must wait overnight.