Checking in

Just checking in, it's been a while since I posted again.

I have ideas that pop into my head for posting but they tend to flee before I get back to my keyboard.

It was the birthday this week and this fella arrived :

Awesome isn't it ? Love him.

There he is, poking his head out of the bag so he can watch Thor Ragnarok. If you haven't seen that film yet, go see it. It goes out of its way to not take itself seriously and I think it's accessible too for those who haven't seen all of the Marvel movies. Like I have. It's huge fun. Thor, that is, some of the Marvel movies have been a bit poor and lose their fun.

Yep. Monday was a great evening.

Should be a good weekend too.

It'll take a certain toll on my outsides but I've had a couple of good weeks there. Not great weeks because I have a few delicate areas on my legs that are remarkably easy to redamage but good consistent healing is happening.

I need to read more actually. I have Leviathan Wakes (Book 1 of the Expanse) by James S A Corey on the iPad/Kindle and Revenger by Alastair Reynolds in paperback. And that's just the newest books.

Games and game watching are still how I occupy most of my time. Monday was busy but Tuesday and Wednesday were game watching instead of playing. Tireds are catching up to me at the moment. The main game at the moment is Stellaris ... still :-).

I may have broken myself on Stellaris though by reverting to Corvette swarms. Maybe not though. The latest game has come to a conclusion though. My race of spiritualist warrior psychics were quite happily taking over the parts of the galaxy they wanted to. They were having trouble taking on the ancient Fallen Empires but that was going to come in time. I made a mistake with one of my traps, so that big engagement didn't go as it should have.

However ... on came the Unbidden. And the Contingency.

The game has what Iain M Banks called Outside Context Problems. In the late game, it can spice things up by bringing out an End Game Crisis. The Unbidden are invaders from another dimension and the Contingency is where rogue AIs attempt to wipe out all life in the galaxy. There is also the Prethoryn Scourge.

It turns the end game away from effectively a mopping up operation into an actual challenge. It's the first time I've taken the game far enough to run into a crisis. I'm usually far more interested in the early building phase although in this game, I was getting a lot of enjoyment from having the AI fall into traps that I'd set for them. Using the noggin to turn engagements the way of my people, things like that.

As someone once said : If it's a case of dying for your country, make the other guy die for his country, the one you're fighting. Or something like that.

Anyway, the Unbidden came and started obliterating everything. I think part of the problem is a balance mod I was using, which also made the Fallen Empires too strong. I have a different mod in mind this time which alters the ship types.

But I should really play some other games before diving back into Stellaris. I haven't been back in Elite for a while, I'm currently listening to a Zombie Defence strategy game called They Are Billions which sounds amazing and there are a few more that are coming soon which sound great.

Like the Surviving Mars. I'm expecting this to be something better than the game Planetbase, which I enjoyed chilling out to as the colony grew. And Astrobase Command, which looked promising enough to join in with the kickstarter. And I expect I will acquire the space crime game, Heat Signature, in the sales. Frostpunk is a post apocalyptic survive the deep freeze game.

And I'd like to record some more gameplay videos too.

Yep. Tired. But still enjoying. And it was a :

:-)