You're so vain, you probably think this FRIDAY's about you

[undercovergeek]

Lol yeah - it's my holiday - I'll be doing this all day, do not disturb

[nelmsm]

Keeping up with all my PBEM games and diving into EU IV when time allows

[Gusington]

You are my hero for 2017.

[Nefaro]

Keeping up with all my PBEM games and diving into EU IV when time allows

You're a professional juggler now, Nelms?   :))


EU4, alone, will suck up a lot of time once you get rolling.

[AchillesLastStand]

I know, not the usual MetalDog fare, but, it's the song that was stuck in my head when I woke up.  Figured it was an omen or something.

My usual Civ MP partner has me on a Warlock kick.  I've probably got 20 hours in on it in the last two weeks.  I'm whooping the dog out of him, but, it's not as obvious in Warlock as it is in Civ.  Going to continue that this weekend.  I also have a Medieval 2 campaign as Spain that I am trying to wrap up.  It's a short one to control 15 Regions and eliminate the Portugese and Moors.  Already got the Portugese, I lack two regions for the Moors.

Those lips..............

[Kushan]

Picked up the EU4 Rights of Man DLC this week. Did a short lived test game the other day as Brandenburg to learn the new mechanics. After a couple of false starts, I finally have a good game going as England. I managed to avoid the Hundred Years war restarting by giving up Maine to France via an event. Then declared war on Scotland, who brought the French in, before France could go after me. Avoided the War of the Roses for the now when King Henry VI actually produced an heir. Got a better look at the new tech system then I did with my Brandenburg test game. The Renaissance starts in Italy but the Flanders are gets a boost to the Renaissance spreading. Once it spread to Calais it didn't take long for it to spread to Kent and thus to the rest of England and my Normandy provinces so I was able to adopt it a little after France and Burgundy. Was never got close to getting it with Brandenburg. I would have eventually but it was going to take awhile to spread up from Italy through Austria and Bohemia or east from Flanders. Falling a little behind on tech but with the worst king possible at the start that's no surprise.

Things were going ok until late last night/early this morning when I decided to invade Burgundy. In my defense I was a little buzzed and tired from drinking scotch. Took out the Flanders armyt right at the start, then marched into siege Artois and Picardie. Was waiting for the main Burgundian army to appear I watched my numerical superiority disappear when France decided to give a large portion of their army to Burgundy as mercenaries. Tried to knock the French out before Burgundy showed up, so I regathered my army and marched on the French in Normandie. Thats when the main Burgundy army showed up, along with the rest of their vassals, and Brittany's army. Ended up being 60,000 vs my 30-35,000. After that massacre I decided to call it quits for the night. Unfortunately I forgot to save the game. ::)

Rest of the weekend is going to be a mix of CMANO, Elite, EU4. Cities Skyline and Planet Coaster are maybes.

[JasonPratt]

As the weekend ends, I'm going back to test my first new Mech build (a Clan Kit Fox that I've already partially bungled and will now need to earn cash to 'kit' out properly  #:-) ) in Mechwarrior Online.

But I have also started testing feasibility for running a forum game of Fire in the Lake (strategic Vietnam War boardgame) using Tabletop Simulator and posting reports from there to a forum thread; and that post can be found here. We still have two open spaces (at least) for players! -- the two experienced players already signed up (AzTank and B_C) will be going first in the test run, then anyone else who signs up by then. I'm also, naturally, exercising my proclivity for long posts by providing a running tutorial on the game as we go.

[JasonPratt]

As prophesied, the final game of my extended week-and-two-weekend vacations was Mechwarrior Online. Ran enough missions to get my little Kit Fox outfitted the way I originally intended, with a Clan Ultra Autocannon 2, plenty of ammo (two and a half cases), and four Clan Extended Range Medium Lasers. I also swapped out almost all the Omnipods to get rid of (most of) the jump jets I didn't want for this build. Hilariously, in order to keep my ballistic torso I also had to keep exactly one jump jet which is completely incapable of doing anything but take up weight! (That remaining jumpjet Omnipod also gives me a bonus to missile cooldown time which I don't need on this build, but I got all the other omnis switched out for laser buffs.)

Unfortunately, I couldn't beef the engine up more than the starting 100 (with an XL for weight reduction at the expense of a few extra torso slots). So I'm as slow as a Kit Fox can be, but it's a light mech so I'm still relatively quick; and light mechs are all about the inconvenient tradeoffs. Come to think of it, I'm already starting to miss those jump jets I rarely used!

Anyway, now I've got a long-range harasser build: I can sit back and throw a lot of little explosions quickly downrange, and if the enemy gets a little closer he'll also be dealing with a constant barrage of lasers in his face. I can't feasibly hunt-to-kill anything yet, but I can support other players which is what light mechs are supposed to do. My alpha strike is strong enough to blow apart most other light mechs, and I'll be out-pumping a better constant damage-per-second on them, too. I won't run out of ammo quickly even in this role, and when I do I still have a respectable no-ammo laserboat (for this weight class).

Next up: seeing if I can design a Locust (the physically smallest mech available in the game so far) to be a longer-range missile harasser (and seeing if that's even a useful build).