Trick or Treat or Space Aliens

Could be a busy week this week.

It's trick or treat night tomorrow which means I either close all the doors and go dark to suggest there's nobody home or .... I don't pretend there's nobody home and actually head on out.

The plan is to actually head on out, I need new work trousers as mine are developing holes in the pockets and need new shoes as I think mine will literally fall apart in a few months.

(I tend to use things until they break)

As excuses to head out go, it's a good one. And then there's Thor Ragnarok to watch on Wednesday, which I'm expecting to be fairly brainless action fun.

It's a genuinely fun event, Halloween. But .... there is that problem of unsupervised children who have got big enough to cause problems. Trick or treat translates into demanding sweets with menaces and not complying can lead to eggs thrown at your door, other vandalism and damage and worse. Like having flammable things used or criminal damage to cars. And fireworks are widely (too widely?) available at this time of year too.

Yep. There are elements out there in Britain that aren't what you'd really call savoury or neighbourly.

The other thing I'd be doing if hiding is quite possibly to bury my head in Stellaris. It's a grand space strategy game where the end goal is to take over the galaxy. And it's a cracking example of the genre too. For many years, I'd check out newer space strategy games and keep going back to the now ancient Master of Orion 2. I think there's a few people at work who were born after Master of Orion 2 was released.

They seem to have upped their game as well with the latest release. It's definitely been a more intense game this time around with the AI races declaring war at the drop of a hat, mostly targeting their wrath at my race.

So what am I playing this time around ? There's a lot of variation in Stellaris now, from warlike to peaceloving, spiritual to materialistic and more. I like playing the hive mind races but there are also Machine empires in the game now, which are curious but I think need a little balancing. You can be the Borg now.

(click for bigger and readable text)

We are the Domanna Horde. Or cute cuddly space snails. But beware, these space snails are the devouring swarm. The plague to devour everything. They like trick or treat but they have it turned around. Small children knocking on the doors of these snails saying "Treat" will soon find that they are the treat.

It is rumoured that at the last diplomatic council involving the Domanna, the Horde ate all of the other delegates. But they didn't stop there. They then ate the chairs. They ate the tables. They ate the curtains. Even the paint on the walls was not safe.

Or the carpets.

The last communication from the Horde was "Next time use Axminster and you must introduce us to the dog in the paint advert.". They ate the loo roll as well.

The space snails are voracious and insatiable. Also cute and not so fluffy.

(And I'm having a lot of fun around the intenseness of the current campaign. It's being a challenge, which is what I want from a game like this).

What's the situation at the moment ? I may not play again until the weekend due to being busy ... and avoiding having the intensity of the campaign tire me out in the week but :

We're the green patch in the North, with some empires around that are getting uncomfortably bigger. The last wars were won against the Zelvans to the south east and the Sintomoroi to the south but we had to give ground to the Spuxulac to the south west. Their fleet was twice the power of mine, which is a little deceptive because the way I have my fleet set up, it can murder fleets about 50% bigger.

Part of the attraction is that the game allows for you to counter an enemy's fleet design, so in this case I'm using an antimissile set up in response to the enemy using mostly missile ships. And it works. The small bubble of an empire to the North is what's known as a Fallen Empire, a race with massively superior technology that is almost suicidal to attack. Unless you plan well and have a fleet to counter their strengths. The Forerunners shall also be devoured by the Horde.

Not tonight though, I throw everything I have into work during the day and like to just chill out in the evenings. And Stellaris with its grabbiness doesn't really allow time for chill out.

Hmm ... NaNoWriMo starts on Wednesday ! I want to do this at some point but I don't think this year is going to be the year. I must write down a few of the various ideas that pop into the head though before they evaporate.