Games you are playing or enjoyed playing lately (except FL/CF)

Ive a pretty strange empire.
The first race that I had contact with early in the game declared war on me and actually was stronger but I won because I destroyed their shipyards. They couldnt produce more ships while I was able to bring in new fleets. That was my first vassal which I eventually included into my empire (now they are the backbone of my ground troops).
Since that I have defeated many other species and included them all into my empire. At some point I allowed them to have the same rights as my species.
They can vote and for a few centuries the president hasnt been a human anymore.
I even have robot planets and all species of the empire seem to have no problem with that.
At some point I even uplifted cockroaches from a radioactive world so now ive intelligent cockroaches which can colonize other radioactive worlds.

At some time a species from another universe invaded the territory of one of my biggest opponents. Many system fell under control of that invader and I used that to fight this invader back and take control of all the planets. There was a nice vacuum of power and after my victory all species of the galaxy were friendly to me for a period of time. I made many contracts which allowed me to use the natural resources of other species.
Eventhough I lost MANY ships it was worth it.

i wish auto-explore was one of the first 5 researches you can do

the tech research is pretty random... at least to a degree

Some research will say "this will unlock further research" For example, Building Robots leads to AI and AI leads to AI rights. I've noticed that certain kinds of government focus on different research at first. Materialists might research stuff that will improve mineral and power output in the start of the game then focus to military by mid game

It would be nice to know now how research options are presented

What I can tell is that there are MANY research options.
In many similar games you run out of options after some time but in stellaris the amount of options is really huge.

so nobody has really figured out a pattern or correlation between for research options?

most certainly related to the settings you make at the start
in the end also unlocked bit by bit (there will be tech you need to research before you get other tech)

and based on that the game will create research pools from which random tech will be made available for research.

Call of Duty Infinity Warfare.

3,5 million downvotes on the trailer and alot of trashtalk about the game.
In the end its actually pretty good... in singleplayer.
Multiplayer is a different story with the lack of anticheat and bad spawn points.... but im generally not interested to play such types of games in MP. I simply dont see myself jumping around like an idiot in an arena map anymore, together with cry babies and other types of heroes.

The singleplayer is rock solid good.
Very good graphics, fluid gameplay, interesting story, very cool characters and good actors (Claudia Black, David Harewood, Brian Bloom, Claudia Christian, Jamie Gray Hyder, Kit Harington, etc.).
The mix of ground combat and space flight is done very well.
The mission structure is also relative good. At some point I probably would have not blown up enemy ships but instead tried to capture them... but ok. I can overlook such minor details in a game where everything felt important enough to push forward.

The game is not only driven by its story but also the personal conflicts which are result of hard decisions. I really like that.
It has a bit the Mass Effect feeling where your comrads have an importance and the life on the ship gets into focus. I just wish there would have been more possiblities to talk to people on the ship in order to get a bit about the backstory of the game. Also the map where you can select which missions you want to take reminds me a bit on the Mass Effect galaxy map. Its kinda cool that you can do such decisions as captain of the ship.
The step away from the linear gameplay was a good one.

I just wish there would have been more primary and also optional missions. The optional missions were pretty fun but sometimes a bit short.
The primary missions were... well... better scripted... longer... but there were not many of them.
The overall length of the story campaign is comparable with other call of duty games. You can play throught the whole story in one day.
Its not much but its a cool ride.

The space combat is damn fast and very arcade style. Thats actually not bad. You dont need a simulation type game to have fun.
Also cool are the seamless switches between space combat, zero gravity combat (with jetpacks) and normal FPS.
If you ask me they can release the space combat part as standalone game

Infinity Warfare is a refreshing new approach with interesting ideas.
Using drones in combat, hacking bots even through walls, finding and upgrading weapons and your ship, pretty cool secondary weapon modes (take a rifle and make 2 pistols out of it, why not, bring it on!)

The only problem I encounted is a bug that seems to happen to some PC players where textures turn blurry at some point. I guess its just a matter of time until that is getting fixed.

Multiplayer is like I wrote a different story.
The PC playerbase is divides because steam players and not play together with windows store players (stupid decision).
There is no good anticheat (another stupid decision).
And there is a problem with player spawning -> players spawn always close to their team (even if that means they spawn in the middle of combat where they die within seconds).
If the developers would change that it actually wouldnt be that bad.

CoD is overrated. #Battlefield4Life

Picked up Homeword Deserts of Kharak the other day. Played lots of Homeworld 2 so i definitely felt at home

I consider it a big shame that a few BF fanboys downrate trailers and games just because it isnt BF

If the game wouldnt been called "Call of Duty" these guys would have wet their pants after watching the trailer and playing the campaign.
Its the same bullshit favoritism which poisoned the Quake3/UnrealTournament communities back then.
Thats just sick.

there are currently no alternatives

Quote from SWAT_OP-R8R

there are currently no alternatives

To Infinite War? Sure there is! I don't even like CoD and if i had to pick the "best one" out of them all, it probably be the original Call of Duty.

People tend to forget that before all the 12 year olds and middle aged men living in their parents basement brought Call of Duty into the mainstream (see CoD 4 Modern Warfare, Nazi Zombies) Call of Duty was actually enjoyable.

Fun Fact: Captain Price is vampire.
Modern Warfare:
WWII:

I meant the homeworld game.

But i still think that CoD is a good franchise.
I really enjoyed the modern warfare games back then, especially because Im meanwhile sick of replaying the world wars.
There have been so many games covering that thematic in the past 2 decades that I simply dont want to play another game which tells that in every war germans have to be involved.

Modern warfare was a fictional scenario that I could live with, despite its controverse thematic.
I mean... what else should they have done? Switzerland vs. Vatican state?
Thats unfair... switzerland already has troops down there.

Ive played the first 3 CoD games which were ok but really not overwhelming, Ive played the modern warfare games, Ive skipped Ghost and the Black Ops games because they didnt seem that much interesting in terms of story content.
Now Ive played Infinite Warfare and it was again a nice rush. Like I said... if it would be called Call of Duty then the haters out there would have hyped this game after the trailer release and after playing the campaign.

Ive also played nearly all Battlefield games (except for bad company).
Most arguements against CoD can be applied 1:1 on battlefield. Really, I can take a bad arguement about CoD and show where battlefield did the same crap in the past.

What I absolutely dont like is when people start a "my game is better than your game". This is disgusting, respectless and counter productive.
This bullshit is causing troubles for the developers, its employees, the players which enjoy the games and also this shit prevents that developers try something new.

Its a game and not a religion!

i stand by what i said. Captain Price is a vampire

thats why its called modern warfare and not grandpa warfare

Jon Snow - Mars is coming.

so who's gonna play Star Wars The Old Republic with me? I had a subscription about 2 or 3 months but had to make some financial sacrifices and that was one of them.

Hopefully the F2P won't inhibit me too much seeing as how i have at least one Level 65 character and i'm only halfway through the campaign (which is phenomenal by the way).

Problem is playing Knights of the Eternal Throne requires a subscription. Haven't even played the original "campaign" mode. It's totally worth the 60-day subscription card.