Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Eve Online fans cheer Microsoft Excel features at annual Fanfest

arstechnica.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 202 posts

Re: Eve Online fans cheer Microsoft Excel features at annual Fanfest

#141

Post by Sohcahtoa82 »

blamazon wrote: post #70
martincmartin wrote: post #52

What are some other games where spreadsheets help? I'll start: - Kerbal Space Program. Figuring out the sizes of different stages, how many solid boosters to add, etc. - Factorio. Ratios of different factories, mostly for creating science packs. - Cookie Clicker. Figuring out what to buy to get the best marginal cookies per dollar.

Satisfactory is like 3D Factorio.

I really wanted to enjoy Satisfactory, but I found that a first-person perspective just plain sucks for factory building. I haven't played it in a long time though, so maybe they've made some improvements?

I ended up enjoying Dyson Sphere Program so much more. It's the "Factorio but with a third dimension" that I really wanted.

Re: Eve Online fans cheer Microsoft Excel features at annual Fanfest

#142

Post by HPsquared »

Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #136
sitzkrieg wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

honestly as someone who played it for about 6 years at the peak fun time to play it, its a lot more fun to read about than actually play

I love the idea of the game. I love the mechanics of it, such as permanent loss of your ship. It means there's always a demand for crafting. I also really like the hands-off approach the devs/admins/etc take to what happens in game. But...the gameplay is just boring as hell. This video sums it up: https://youtu.be/4c6jafaiPh8?t=65

It's a stressful game, some enjoy the stress. Now that I'm employed, not so much.

Re: Eve Online fans cheer Microsoft Excel features at annual Fanfest

#143

Post by slowmovintarget »

antihero wrote: post #139
sitzkrieg wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

honestly as someone who played it for about 6 years at the peak fun time to play it, its a lot more fun to read about than actually play

Honestly for me it was the emergent meta gaming that made it for me. Sitting on a gate at 4AM with someone (tolon) playing guitar over TeamSpeak and getting drunk af and despite having sixth form the next day. Sneaking into another halls at uni to cover a BoB guy’s door with bees I’d cut out and printed (we became friends over this!)

The most fun I ever had in the game was alliance roams. 15 to 20 of us on voice chat, coordinating engagements.

Also fun:

- Running training exercises for new players. We'd train them how to fly in formation, how to align ships, how to scan. The final training exercise for the corp was a "Snipe Hunt" where I was the snipe. They had to catch me, but if they managed, they were allowed to blow up my ship.

- Hauling for a mining gang. Fifteen people in mining barges and me in a large transport moving rocks back to our Player-Owned Station. Posting nonsense and memes in chat, while having the craziest discussions. Every once in a while, we'd get jumped by raiders and call in the cavalry.

At least three of the corps I was part of got flipped and shredded from the inside. Players worked to earn trust, become officers in the corp, gain security clearances, only to steal everything. They had fun, I guess.

But the time investment became way too heavy to keep playing once I became a father.

Re: Eve Online fans cheer Microsoft Excel features at annual Fanfest

#144

Post by gabereiser »

LanceH wrote: post #125
gabereiser wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, there's no comparison. AI doesn't come close to the breath of Eve. It's cool. It's a good game especially for a solo-dev (very impressive!) but Eve Online has so many avenues to gameplay.

The terror of someone else showing up in a system you thought was empty while you're carrying something super valuable.

Eye on local, yes, especially in WH space... man oh man, anxiety through the roof.

Re: Eve Online fans cheer Microsoft Excel features at annual Fanfest

#145

Post by wmeredith »

martincmartin wrote: post #52

What are some other games where spreadsheets help? I'll start: - Kerbal Space Program. Figuring out the sizes of different stages, how many solid boosters to add, etc. - Factorio. Ratios of different factories, mostly for creating science packs. - Cookie Clicker. Figuring out what to buy to get the best marginal cookies per dollar.

Every time I try to get back into Destiny 2 (I have thousands of hours in that game), I remember that I basically have what amounts to old actuarial tables I'd need to go update and I just bail after about 30 minutes.

Re: Eve Online fans cheer Microsoft Excel features at annual Fanfest

#146

Post by perlgeek »

martincmartin wrote: post #52

What are some other games where spreadsheets help? I'll start: - Kerbal Space Program. Figuring out the sizes of different stages, how many solid boosters to add, etc. - Factorio. Ratios of different factories, mostly for creating science packs. - Cookie Clicker. Figuring out what to buy to get the best marginal cookies per dollar.

Let me throw https://www.fallenlondon.com/ into the ring.

It has lots of options to acquire various items and qualities, and depending on our situation, spreadsheets can help a lot figuring out which one is most efficient.

It even has the "bone market", an exchange where you can build skeletons from various bone types, and sell it to NPC vendors, some of which have non-linear payout curves. There's an optimizer for that written in Python: https://github.com/Saklad5/Bone-Market-Solver

It's an awesome combination of great writing, bizarre, whimsical stories and a potential (but not a hard requirement) to optimize by spreadsheet and other methods :-)

Re: Eve Online fans cheer Microsoft Excel features at annual Fanfest

#147

Post by nobrains »

This combines 2 of my favorite things: games and spreadsheets. However, it isn't generating any excitement in me. Just some feeling of dread and gloominess. I guess, its because in my mind I don't want games (pleasure) and spreadsheets (work) to mix.

Re: Eve Online fans cheer Microsoft Excel features at annual Fanfest

#149

Post by alexashka »

pawelmurias wrote: post #98
alexashka wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Dropping everything in life for that one perfect game will always be a temptation Is it? How bad does your life have to be, that you'd settle for a game instead? I tried Eve a couple of years ago. I spent more time puzzling out why anyone plays it, rather than actually playing it. You have to do boring tasks, to get money, to do what? Oh, to get to do more boring tasks, to get more money. Ok, but to do what? Oh, to…

People love agency and sense of progress through gathering virtual points.

That doesn't explain why anyone would choose Eve over Tetris, or you know, gathering 'virtual points' in real life pursuits.

Re: Eve Online fans cheer Microsoft Excel features at annual Fanfest

#150

Post by argomo »

Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #140
bentcorner wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Factorio I just let things buffer on belts and eyeballed things as I went along. The hard part was designing things such that I could arbitrarily scale out builders/belts as needs changed. Satisfactory requires you to be slightly more intentional with ratios but (at least when I played) I came up with some balancing belt designs that let me get away with not needing to be super accurate with matching input/outputs…

> In Factorio I just let things buffer on belts and eyeballed things as I went along. Same. I'm surprised how many people talk about spreadsheets with Factorio. I cover a resource patch with miners, then keep building smelters until I end up with an idle one at the end of the line. When I discovered a new item I'd need to produce, I'd just built a small line of assemblers and see what my output looked like, and go ba…

Same. My first play thru I just allotted a large space into which to extend assembly lines if needed, then I brought their outputs back to a central spine from which I could siphon them off for input into subsequent assembly lines. I think this really helped me "feel" the concept of backpressure.
Post reply on HN