Not-So-Manic Monday – Daily Dispatch for 9/10/18

Opening/Random Thoughts

Happy Monday y’all, and welcome to another week! I hope you had as relaxing a weekend as I did. I tell you, the older I get, the less I want to do on weekends. I used to be all about going out, doing things, seeing people, yadda yadda. Now I realize that’s a young man’s game. The ideal weekend nowadays is one that is completely clear of places to be and people to see. I say that as I look at my calendar and see I don’t have a weekend like that for another month at least.

The most exciting thing I did over the weekend was pre-order my new video card: EVGA’s RTX 2080 Ti FTW. Seriously, that’s its name. I mean look at this thing:

This is the first piece of the new machine I plan to build, and I couldn’t be more excited. The rest of the build is here, and I’ll be ordering all of it once this card ships in a couple of months. I know it’s expensive and I know it seems silly to be an early adopter, but five years ago I bought an EVGA GTX 770 when it was first coming out, and it’s been a trooper for half a decade, so I’m hoping to get similar mileage out of this beast. I seriously can’t wait you guys.

Today’s Video(s)

Today’s first video is looking at our game of the week, the grand strategic RTS, Empyrean Frontier. This thing is a beast of a game, with FTL-style sector jumping that leads to Conquest: Frontier Wars-style RTS battles. Each sector has a myriad of things that could happen, from nothing to joining a pirate war to escaping an ambush to killing a planet-killing superweapon. It’s seriously all here, and it is SERIOUSLY challenging. I’ve lost so many battles with this game, and I pretty much think it’s my fault. The game gives you so many tools to win, from formations to a great UI and so on, but I have to admit, the game — even on easy — does a far better job playing the game than I do.

As we’re having the developer of Between the Stars on our podcast bright and early tomorrow morning (6 AM our time, yeek), I needed to spend some time with the prologue. This video captures part of my second run through the prologue, and it’s just as much fun as the first. With lots of combat, some funny writing, fun adventure elements, and fantastic graphics, this one is really gonna be something, I think.

Today’s News

• Reentry has a lovely new Cockpit Photo Mode. Seriously, it’s gooorgeous.
• BlockShip Wars: Roguelike got a massive environmental update that includes Linux support, and a trailer to go with it!
• Stellar Monarch has a new patch which introduced cosmetic-only ethnic groups, which is a neat addition, plus other fixes and such.
• Solar Warden has a nice big dev update showing off a completed fighter shipyard and more.
• Flat Universe is having another tournament on October 6, and you can sign up now.
• Stellar Tactics will have a major content update on 9/21, and released a trailer about it. Now if I could only get off that first planet and get to a spaceship…
• Go For Launch: Mercury has a progress update on how their changes to the Mercury capsule is going.
• MegaWars now has a massive video tutorial playlist for y’all to peruse.
• Galactic Dominion has a new patch which removes the pause menu transition, another which adds a big font mode, another which balances campaign chapter 3, and another which allows you to change star names. The developer has also created threads for updates, ideas, and feature requests.
• Star Traders: Frontiers got a massive new update that adds filters, rebalances things and much more.
• AI War 2 looks to have received a pretty big new patch, with AI updates and more.
• Avalon: The Journey Begins got a fairly hefty patch which fixes limit caps and more.
• Enter The Moon is a new game that apparently has a space combat mode. I’ll have to get it eventually.
• Space Flowers is going down in price to $4.99, which is totally worth it. They apparently also had a competition last week.
• Star Trek Online is revamping their PvE into something called Task Force Operations.
• EVE Online did an AMA about CCP’s acquidition by Pearl Abyss, and INN has a nice rundown.

Today’s Deals

• Fanatical has an amazing deal on the Endless Space 2 Collection, $16.79 for what is basically everything released for the game thus far.
• Steam’s Weeklong Deals has quite a bit to offer this week, too much to list here. Seriously.

What I’ve Been Playing

• Far Cry: Primal – Over the weekend, I was able to tame another wolf AND a jaguar! I WILL TAME ALL THE ANIMALS AND PET THEM. If I’m also able to secure the valley for the Wenja, that’ll be a nice bonus, but I’m in it for the animals. Such a fun game.
• Beyond Sol – Telling someone about this on Reddit the other day made me wanna revisit it, and my gosh did I forget what an amazing game this is. The living map, the city building, the combat, this really is an exceptional game.
• The Warlock of Firetop Mountain – I got this as a gift (thanks Digitist!) and played a little bit of it. It’s really fun so far, and I like the mix of tactical combat and choose-your-own-adventure choices.
• SuperPower 2 Steam Edition – I’ve been in a political game mood of late, and this one came highly recommended, so I picked it up. Really liking what I’m seeing so far, but I’m still going through the tutorials.
• Supreme Ruler Ultimate – I got this ages ago, but never really dove into it. From what I can see in the tutorial so far, I am REALLY going to like it.
• It Lurks Below – Getting a better handle on this one. Still not keen on crafting and the like, but this game goes to great ends to streamline such things.
• Sector Six – Still getting a handle on this one. They call the ships in here “spaceships” but you look to be flying over a planet, so I dunno. Combat is a bit weird, but I like the mission/map mechanic. I’ll keep chipping away at it.

Whew, big update today, but it’s a Monday, and a lot of stuff happened over the weekend. ;) Have a great day y’all, and I’ll see ya tomorrow.