Maniacal Monday – Hailing Frequencies Open for 10/30/17

Hey friends, welcome to Monday! Sorry I didn’t write one of these on Friday, as usual, the day totally got away from me, so there’s a lot to talk about. First up, the look of the site. I’ve been playing with a ton of things to get the site a better Page Speed score, and the theme is a big one. I’ve not fully settled on one yet, but this one seems to work for now. There’s also a lot of working going on under the hood, like making JavaScript and CSS asynchronous, enabling compression on the host side and more, so I hope that in the end, not only does the site’s scores improve, but ultimately it makes for a better, faster experience for y’all. Therefore, please pardon the dust around here while I work on this. ;)

So last week I ended the week with a couple of odd videos. First up, we tried to play Lux Alliance last Thursday. We really did. The game really doesn’t make it easy to play in multiplayer though. We tried direct IP addresses, opening ports on our routers, Evolve and so on and NOTHING. We then tried Warhammer 40,000: Space Wolf which is just PVP in multiplayer and honestly not much fun, so we ended up doing some good ol’ Star Realms. This is always a fun, fast time, so we ended up having a good time, we just had some speed bumps along the way.

Speaking of speed bumps, my latest sojourn into the world of Space Rangers HD certainly qualifies. I died a LOT trying to kill this one pirate, to the point where I just gave up and moved onto other missions. I’m so thrilled the game lets you do that, honestly, or else I might’ve just ended it then and there. I’m really enjoying running missions though. A bunch more and I might be able to upgrade to a bigger, badder ship.

This week, we return to a game-of-the-week format with Battlevoid: Sector Siege, the second in the Battlevoid series. This one is a bit different in that, rather being a lone fleet jumping from sector to sector, you’re an admiral tasked with taking over sectors of surrounding alien forces. In this first video, things start off well, but you know it won’t last. This is a brutal, mean game, and I mean that in the best possible way. ;)

Beyond this stuff, I had a great weekend of gaming. Since I just bought the DLC for it, I played some Graviteam Tactics: Mius-Front. By “played” I mean I had the tutorials guide me through concepts such as ambushing, recon and the like. It looks to be a fascinating game once I learn how to play it. It really reminds me of the best parts of the Close Combat games with a whole now coat of polish. I can’t wait to play more. I also spent more time in LOGistICAL, which was really satisfying. I passed 100 towns solved, and solved a few tricky ones that consumed resources really quickly. Thankfully the game’s new multi-truck select feature made this much easier to deal with. Finally, I spent time with the game for this week’s podcast, Daath Origins, which is a really interesting thing.

Alright, enough gibber gabber, there’s news and such. Since there’s a lot of it, I’ll hit the highlights and make a separate list for patches, as I’ve done before:

• CCP is apparently shutting down its VR ambitions, which leaves us wondering what’s going to happen to…
• EVE Valkyrie, which just posted a lengthy post about how things are going in their sky. So yeah, no idea right now.
• Pulsar: Lost Colony has a new faction and a lot more!
• Space Epic Untitled – Season 1 just dropped on Steam yesterday, and it sure looks like somethin’.
• Rogue System will be getting a patch in the second half of November, according to this update.
• Nimbatus is launching their Kickstarter later this week, on Thursday the 2nd, so keep an eye out for that.
• ARM Planetary Prospectors is delaying their launch to change their focus of the game.
• Heat Signature has had death turned off for the few days surrounding Halloween!
• Interstellar Rift is also doing some stuff for Halloween!
• Navalia has a lot of new stuff in its latest patch, so much so I’m mentioning it separately from the others. ;)
• XO looks like it’s coming along nicely, based on its latest dev diary.
• And now, patches:
  • Interplanetary: Enhanced Edition
  • Galactic Crew
  • Interstellar Transport Company
  • Station 21
  • Freelancer Discovery
  • Stars in Shadow
  • Celestial Command
  • Interstellar Rift
  • Stable Orbit
  • Stardrift Nomads

The only really new deal today — apart from all the sales going on — is No Man’s Sky on sale for $23.99, a new historic low.

That’s it for today y’all! Thanks for reading!