[Bort]

depricated, on 13 August 2014 - 02:33 PM, said:

...I need to play since the update apparently. Zoltan Shield Bypass is new, as is an alien race that doesn't need oxygen, and I have no idea what the Lanius cruiser is - though I guess the Lanius then would be the oxygen-less race?

That's awesome.

There were a few items added, like the Zoltan Shield Bypass and the Reconstructive Teleport augments, plus some great new weapons.

The Vulcan laser is fun. It's basically a laser gatling gun. It takes a while to get started, but every time it fires, the recharge time is reduced, until it is firing once a second It may take a minute to get going, but once it's up to speed, it's nearly impossible to lose a battle, even the flagship fight.

There are three new ship systems since the update - hacking, batteries (backup power), and mind control. Mind control and batteries are pretty straight forward, hacking allows you to temporarily disable an enemy ship's system. Also available is the clone bay, but I don't know if that is part of the normal edition, or the advanced edition.

Yes, the Lanius are the oxygen-less race. After the update, they have basically adopted the Abandoned Sector as their home turf, and they have a thing about eating metal. One of the possible encounters with the Lanius (and one of the few peaceful ones) is one that offers to exchange something with you for scrap, but speaks better 'English' (or whatever the language is they use) than the others, so you have an option to buy their translator for 40 scrap. Turns out, their translator is just one of their number who bothered to learn your language, so he comes to work on your ship.

I've not yet used them in boarding parties, but their natural racial abilities include sucking the oxygen out of a room, so they could be quite good for holding a point on an enemy ship. Sickbay for instance.

[depricated]

That sounds awesome and I'm already playing through scenarios in my head. Weapons Pre-Igniter and Automated Reloader with the Gatling Laser would be a scary combo.

I'd be curious to see if the Bio-Beam works against Lanius or if you could drop a couple Lanius into a ship and then biobeam it to death. Or drop in an assault drone and not worry about the hole in the ship.

[Bort]

You can drop in the boarding drone, then send some Lanius over and they would be fine. Well, providing they weren't shot for boarding a ship. Although I've not tested it, I think the bio beam will work against Lanius. Certainly I remember reading nothing about them being immune to it.

The weapons pre-igniter is handy, especially with the Vulcan. It will save you about 20 seconds for your first shot, before you are back to waiting for a recharge time of around 18 seconds. A little less with the automated reloader. It takes 5 shots to get up to speed.

I didn't get my hands on the pre-igniter, but one game I was very lucky and managed to get 2 Vulcans. It sounds like fun, but was pretty pointless. By the time they were ready to fire, my weapons bay had taken some damage, so one of them was permanently out of commission. The pre-igniter may have changed that.

I find one big weapon, like the Vulcan, Glaive Beam, or Burst Laser 3, coupled with an ion or a missile launcher, or lower spec lasers work very well together.

[depricated]

yea the preigniter is tits if you can pair it with some scary weaponry. Picture 2 Vulcans and a preigniter. Unleash on their weapon system first so they're repairing while you're recharging. My favorite setup was a ship I had with a glaive beam and a bunch of lasers preignited. I'd jump in, unleash the lasers, and then once the lasers were in the air I'd target the glaive beam and rape their hull in the split second the shields were down.

[Bort]

Nice, Dep. I was doing something similar with the stealth cruiser last night, although having a dual laser, and mini beam is hardly as impressive as using several laser bank, and a Glaive, lol.

[depricated]

Made Level 9 in Firefall, moved on to the next zone, currently researching level 11 plasma cannons so I'll hopefully have a decent weapon to look forward to.

[alapee]

I am in the next zone and and waiting on level 9

[RandomlyKnighted]

Finally finished Skyrim last week with the exception of the Dawnguard and Dragonborn DLCs. Only like on quest having the Dragonborn DLC completed and haven't even started Dawnguard.

I did start playing ESO this week. It's a bit of a change from Skyrim and introduces a few new concepts but so far I'm liking it. Though I feel like the crafting feature could use some improvement. It's way too easy to just join a guild, ask for materials, and deconstruct all the weapons you get to level up your specific crafting skill line. Each crafting skill line has only 9 levels I believe and I went from level 2 in woodworking to level 5 in about 15 mins thanks to a fellow guild member.

[alapee]

I have been Playing :
Fire Fall
Marvel Puzzle Quest
Toy Defense 3


I almost finished with Toy Defense 3, Then I can focus more on Fire Fall and MPQ, TD3 grabbed me pretty good and has some excellent replay ability.

[depricated]

Playing Firefall makes me want to play Planetside 2. I wonder if VREV is in Firefall, I should check. They're my Planetside 2 Outfit, cool guys.

If I play Firefall consistently for another week I may drop some cash on a new battleframe. I like it but I want to know I'll keep enjoying it before I spend money on it, ya know?

[alapee]

So Far the standard MMO RPG quest elements are there, the crafting system needs to be a little more simplified. Though I like that you can mine and "salvage" unused items.

[depricated]

The more I use it the more I like the crafting system.

I'm not pigeonholed into a specific crafting paradigm (i.e. Enchanting and Tailoring ala WoW), it's VERY clear exactly what each researched tech will provide (i.e. Plasma Cannons, Secondary Weapons ALL, Assault Abilities, etc). That said, I haven't figured out how to make 'special' items yet but I'm sure it's in there. I like that I can queue up my 6 hour research while I'm offline, too.

You want complex crafting, check out Vanguard hahaha

[alapee]

I was more looking at hiding things I don't have components for or not able to research.

[depricated]

Ah yea the crafting UI could definitely use some improvements, but for the most part I actually really like the flexibility of the UI.

In unrelated news, I figured out why I was constantly crashing before and couldn't keep stable with my 4 cards crossfired, even after RMAing them.

Turns out, according to Gigabyte, they're R9 290x cards packaged as R9 290s and using R9 290 BIOS. The Gigabyte tech explained that the cards each have 2 GPUs and CrossfireX supports up to 4 GPUs. Not 4 cards, 4 GPUs. So I was crashing it because I was trying to plug in 8 GPUs. Now I'm running 2 crossfired and it works beautifully. Unfortunately, I now have 2 high end video cards I can't really make much use of.

[Bort]

I played a little more on FTL over the weekend, but most of my gaming time was spent on XCOM: Enemy Within.

I didn't get very far into it though, as I started playing several marathon games, but the extended times and costs on research and construction were bloody awful. By the end of the second month, I'd be lucky to have my first satellite uplink built (excluding the free one you start with), or I'd have the uplink, but not the satellites. In a normal game, I'd have 3 new satellites up per month, so 5 up by the end of March, 8 by the end of April, and here I was in a marathon game with only 2 up at the end of April. It was depressing, for me as much as the rest of the world (who were quickly starting to panic). May saw the first member nations start to leave the XCOM project, but by that time I was ready to restart anyways.

Injury times were also increased, so I quickly needed to order more troops simply because almost everyone in the barracks were laid up with one injury or another. I had a slight disparity between troop types as well. I could field several teams simultaneously consisting entirely of snipers, yet I had only 1 support soldier in a barracks of over 25.

All in all, I think the marathon game will be fun, if you can get yourself a decent selection of soldiers, and are able to get off to a good start for satellites. I just haven't figured out how to do this yet.