It took losing a game of Bloodbowl but human error to trigger its symptoms, but I think I might have Node rage.

Human travel in Sword of the Stars depends on map set pathways that no other race is even aware of, much less victim to, but these have been particularly unkind to me in this game.

I started to feel the prickles of Node rage about turn 25 when I first realised I was in fact Schroedinger Solforce*, I rushed fusion understanding that the next door would open, and it did to one world after another of single nodes, then I got 2. My heart lightened, I had found my beachhead, but both of the 2 lead to one world after 1 hop….. *RAGE SIMMERS*

It wasn’t until I met the Liir that full Node rage kicked in, I patiently applied my resources to technology knowing that any lost ground would be crippling. Sword of the Stars employs a chart, you know your own position in scales such as technology (points researched), planets owned, income and industry. Slowly I slid into 5th in them all. Unable to reach any worth while planets, unable to effectively invade, unable to defend my boarders, I am left whether to carry on with a whimper or to fold.

I realise a game isn’t fun just because you are winning, or just because you might eventually win, but there comes a time when even ‘Deep Blue’ will lie down his own king because its game over, and I am no Deep Blue.

So, do I just sweat it out, or rather enjoy what I can do in this game. It’s quite an alien feeling, wanted to plod towards eventual defeat because it feels like the right thing to do, I joined this game with these 4 people and they no more chose my fate than I did.

*Mankind in a box, dead or not, no-one knows

Taxederm and sons (all deceased) are Undead investment bankers, in looking to improve the synergistism, leadership/teamwork and out of the box thinking of their staff by undertaking team building exercises. Blood bowl was chosen at random out of a live humans stomach, most were disappointed it wasn’t “Producivity simulations” (gathering human infants to be devoured by the ghouls and leaving their skeletons to develop scale models for small scale simulations of market dynamics), but reactions soon changed when ‘C.E.O John Dowling’ (deceased) suggested that this could be used to forward their other interest, a strong portfolio in funeral and medical services.

So it was decided, and they carried their Corporate moniker onto the pitch. The amateur team set were against equally fresh Amazon Gridiron Maidens.

The heat had no effect on the Undead but 2 of the Amazon players were out with heat exhaustion but regardless the GI Maidens looked to run rings around the bankers. Only a daring gambit by the ghoul lawyer ‘Briar Smith Attorney at law’ stood between the Amazons an an early touchdown, he served papers long enough for the “cease and desist order” to be enacted and flatten a number of players, during both my Taxederm’s and Gridiron’s turns. The fourth turn saw injury but mostly the ball got ignored deep in Taxederms defensive zone for the first half replaced with a brawl which resulted in no-one getting hurt badly.

The second half saw 2 deaths, one from an Amazon tripping over while running too fast, another when faced between simply knocking out an aggressor ‘C.O.O Aaron Scott’ decided to lie on his back too… despite it not being needed (face palm here) to promote an equal opportunities agenda. They both laid down dead on the pitch on the for some time, then Aaron Scott got back up again, the Gridiron player didn’t for more obvious reasons.

But, due to quick thinking by the ghoul ‘Prosecutor Marcus Phillips’ realise a loop hole and quickly sought action against the Gridiron end zone, this was halted when his motion was blocked by a foot to the face but a collection of his peers supported his action and he ended the dead lock with a touchdown and filed for negligence against the Amazon defence.

By the last 2 turns only 5 Amazons were standing and the 10 investment bankers and associates were delivering a seminar on coffin suggestions and medical supplies, no transactions were completed.

Result: Taxederm 1 – 0 Grid Iron Maidens
Casualties: 1 injured zombie (no effect), 2 dead Amazons, 2 injured Amazons(effects unclear)

I am helpful. In this match I have been[guiding/shouting/harassing](delete as appropriate) the whole match, when my enemy leaves his safety on, i tell him,when an enemy stands still while I pelt him with missiles I help. Even this write-up is barefaced help, nothing told here will surprise my opponents when seen in the field. Sometimes I am too helpful.

Too helpful

The trip to my planet would take 5 turns, while I knew the Sorbicol’s Liir invasion fleet could turn back (a skill humans lack) them being just below half way was as good of a time as any to deploy my colonisers on the planet me enemy just left ‘the gate’(so named in an earlier session because of it being a critical choke point in my node pathways). I don’t know if it was that, or if it was the prompt I gave Sorbicol to “check his scanners” but Sorbicol turned back, the planet he was initially charging at had an asteroid monitor friendly to me and it seemed cheap of me to allow Sorbs lack of strategic paranoia to cause him harm when the game was clearly making the monitors existence known to him since he had bumped into the then neutral monitor in the early scouting period of the game.

So just less than half way on his 5 turn trek to the monitor he turned back to the gate, leaving my warfleet at the monitor and returning to my defenceless new founded colony. Of course, as a human I am the caffeine fueled rocket jockey of the galaxy and the trip that would take Sorb 5 turns takes me just one turn, we will battle yet.

Cook using the right implements

You start SotS with 3 guns. Red laser, gauss rifle and missile.

Weapon	cons	pros
Red Laser	Weak, can be reflected	Can shoot missiles, can target turrets effectively
Missile	Weakest DPS, can be shot down, requires medium slot or larger	Perfectly accurate, massive range, research upgrades augment performance on older ships
Gauss Cannon	Weak, bounces off armour, short-range	Er? nope

Okay, I might be over stating it, gauss cannons do have double the theoretical DPS (damage per second) of the red laser, but their accuracy range and the small size of destroyers early on is such that they are the lame duck of the group, indeed if I have red lasers and my opponent has gauss I would be able to easily able to determine the range of engagement beyond their favour even if I was a slower race. This leaves missiles and red lasers, early on they are yin and yang one is your first brawling weapon capable of 5 DPS (laser) the other only 1.3(missile) damage per second.

I mention this because as my cruiser Fleet arrives at ‘the gate’ with only red lasers and un-augmented missiles and my opponent (since he allowed me to show a battle I may as well mention) has UV Lasers that have 10 damage per second. I packed a missile heavy fleet hoping to be evasive tactically.

Cruisers are big ol’ boys but I know I’m in for a rough ride with such pathetic firepower, but I have one thing in my favour a cruiser Strikeforce Command ship, yes I should have spent that research on a big gun like mass drivers or something but I was not expecting AI to lock me into a research earlier on, and it seemed a waste to not finish what it had started.

With my Strikeforce CnC I have 36 command points, 6 are taken up by the command cruiser itself leaving enough for 5 more cruisers or 15 destroyers to be fielded simultaneously, I’m planning on winning this fight with raw missile firepower and kill them without them even getting to lay a fist on me, a human hammer-head, armour cruiser is brimming with medium slots what could go wrong?

If he had pressed on to the monitor planet my monitor would have helped and my secret weapon Icarus was scheduled to intercept him and all would have been different.

The Barbeque

Okay boys and girls, who can point out the specific moment when my entire plan turned to a joke?

• Moving in close with missiles
• Relying on visibility for missiles and him denying it with asteroids
• Fighting a Point defence heavy enemy with missiles
• Fighting over node markers that blind me but he cant even see?
• Letting my (thank god with a spare) command ship get killed

Yes, I won that game simply because I can to the BBQ with more meat, yes Sorb “sneaking” a command ship into my reinforcement fleet’s face was fortuitous but really, the battle cost me dearly. Losses 5 cruisers to 8 destroyers (a bad turnout for me).

The second round was much less costly for me, losing no ships and killing 7 I had learned some of my lessons and losing some of his mainline ships, command and point defence cost him dearly, sadly due to HDD issues I didn’t manage to record that but by the third and final round I had deleted a few things and had space. It should be noted that during this second round he actually did more damage than I did, it’s just the cruisers were thicker steaks and you shouldnt eat the meat if its red in the middle.

The Barbeque 2 – Coals are hot, do not touch

Notice at 40 and 1:12 seconds all of my missiles commit seppuku when their target falls into the shadow of the asteroid. At 2:06, 2:38, 3:11 I targeted a reinforcement because all of the close combatants were asteroid shadowed, I need to stop fighting near asteroids.

Losing 4 destroyers to the 12 is as clear indication as any of the raw power of command and control. Him being down to 11 warships and a tanker but lacking any sort of CnC meant he was limited to 6 destroyers at a time, I still had my remaining Cruiser CnC ship and was able to field triple the meat he could. Still, AGAIN Sorbicol punched above his weight in terms of damage and I only marginally out damaged him in even that third round, UV lasers really are badass.

Just as his last ship died “Icarus” arrived, the bad timing was frustrating but at least it’s still going to be a surprise.

Kamikaze scout fleet

I pushed an out of date fleet and some tankers past Sorb’s colony to get a better look at the galaxy, its going well.

My God space is fierce! My little corner of the galaxy has seen me only fighting on one front but it seems clear that a good number of other players are up in each others grill. I meet a few players for the first time which opens up the potential future for politics, I spot a very suitable ally (hazard rating reasons) and some space bees.

The Space Bees aka the swarm are bad news, they move from planet to planet hoovering up resources and fighting you, but they are not really my problem so far away, but its a reminder that even if no other player is paying me any mind I might still need to shore up my back line defences.

The galaxy can wait

Trapped in my little box by Sorbicol he is probably going to treat me with the care a cornered rat deserves and try to squash me, but finally I have Icarus, the gate is under my control and I can afford to push my entire economy into this endeavour, can he say the same? Because you don’t corner a rat and expect to get off lightly.

I’m sorry Tale of Tales, its not my fault.

I am apologising because a while ago the humble bundle gave me Trauma on the top of a bundle and my fiancée was drawn in by its strangeness and photography as a replacement for graphics, mixing the real and the unreal. She had no experience with adventure games, but this game handled more like Google maps street view than anything Lucas Arts ever put out. The feeling we both came away from this was that it was ultimately a horror game, just one with no monster closets. She asked me what we had like this, I had to think.

The Path, it was the perfect mix of casual game play and dark themes. Tale of tales, I didn’t know what would happen, we had this problem before but I figured we had managed to move on, we didn’t talk about it any more.

Coin hunger

I should have seen it coming, Tale of Tales, you didn’t deserve to be subjected to her hunger. When I first got my DS phat I put New Super Mario Bros.  in and passed it to my fiancée  (then girlfriend) but something was wrong, we discovered her coin hunger, she couldn’t finish the first few levels, she *had* to get all of the coins. For a hardened Mario player this is certainly plausible but the frustration posed to a novice by those coins she couldn’t quite wall jump to reach was too much, she ended up despising the game for teasing her with coins which she couldn’t have. Coins she NEEDED.

But that wasn’t going to happen again, so Tale of Tales, you need to know my shock when your art caused it, but also that I am sorry.

Just one more

It started innocently enough flowers were scattered around, “Do they matter” she asked me, “No, it’s just to draw you off the path” I assured her, things grew muddled when I looked at the paths manual which suggested path finding aids for flower collection. I started pointing them out to her, “Go from left to right and you can hoover these all up” I suggested. We found a few wolves, even went to Grandmas safely once but then the sisters dwindled and many flowers remained, but we conceded that the game was nearly over and as the game’s epilogue chapter rolled into place I remembered the ‘Prologue Demo’ I didn’t realise what was happening, I am ashamed.

The game the path has 144 flowers to find but they were sparse, each girl having only about 24 in her world and the other attractions competed for you mind-share but the demo was an abomination. We didn’t know but with one girl, 144 flowers and nothing else to do but talk to a crow the demo was a far inferior experience and fed the hunger. The path taken map that flashed up every hundred metres walked no longer served as a nudge in the direction of a missed area but an indication of which square yard of land had not been scoured of flowers, she had reached 100 flowers finding nothing else to do before my internet archaeology taught us that the demo had “no point”, my fiancée was not concerned, she had found one. Or rather coin hunger had found her, for every flower she found each subsequent flower was harder to find so like any addict she was spiralling.

We might go back to The Path one day to experience a few of the memories we missed, but the prologue demo is long since deleted, we don’t talk about it any more.

What I think  is the main distinction of the write up was to expose my thoughts process for playing this space strategy game made by Kerberos (which was recently sequeled) to the other players of the game to help them understand what is potentially an incredibly complicated game better. Essentially, I’m probably going to lose because of the write up telling everyone my intentions in a game where knowledge is power, but on the bright side I get to smack talk and tease about my super weapon on a public platform.

I am currently up to turn 75 of possibly infinite and the game is getting more complicated and more things are happening every turn, I will be posting screenshots and YouTube videoes of my exploits.

Like this

And this, in HD no less

Hopefully Playing teacher will lead to a fulfilling experience for us all.

Articles here will break down broadly into 3 categories

• Plays - Whether written by myself, outsourced, or ideally by collaboration a set of hopefully new and ideally interesting experiences can be presented which might suggest how you too can push out-of-bounds with your games, or maybe just laugh at us trying.
• Praise - This isn’t a reviews site, hell it’s not even a game criticism site. I’m only going to mention a game here if I genuinely have a passion for it, and as an exercise in focus, only if it offers opportunities to step up to the plate and alter the meal*.
• Phase - Okay, I’m straining the word for some alliteration but I’m referring to ’2. a stage in a process of change or development’**. These articles will be very much how to guides in turning game X into game Y, maybe I’ll Offer up save files or mod links but the intention is to allow a degree of freedom to tune those changes to your tastes.