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Mafia Without the F?

Started by ThryllSeekyr, 08 April, 2016, 10:09:05 AM

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ThryllSeekyr

Is of course.... Maia!

Supposedly, a planet in the Tau-Ceti system or star or both.

I have had this early access game at least over year or two now according to memory only. Talking about this game again, because it had more work done within it, but still has the same problem that prevent me from getting far before the game crashes to my desktop.

To recap, it's a space colony management game set on the world called Maia, & this time you can choose the four people you allowed to start with from a simple looking roster after launching.....


Although it's hard to read small print on bottom three applicants & I don't think really matters what is says they are good at because at this stage of the game they nearly always end up expiring from Hypothermia, Starvation, or Hypoxia. Before they can enjoy the comforts of their new habitat....


This takes a while because they cannot be controlled directly. Yet, you can read their emails to get some idea what they need. Usually, it's bad poetry (I should know!), but mostly is a request for access to the Work-Shop table. Even after I put one in. Maybe they want another one, who knows??? Because, early on in this game (Like a lot of other games of this ilk!) it's important to build small & to fore-fill the most important of survival needs fast. Yet, with in reason, because it says a person can survive without water for 3 days or up to week & as long as that is happening, may be a little shorter without food. Yet, the need for food is also a luxury that has become habit. So, it's hard to tell, wether we really need to be fed unless we're been starving for a while.

Some of them have very quirky habits like Mongolian Throat Singing. Which seems to be more of a fluff thing right now, but I appreciate any type of humour in games like this. Some of the backgrounds shown, might give you some idea how best qualified they are for selection. Yet, like I wrote earlier, their quality never come to fruit in time before the game has told me I have failed any way or the game just crash's.

What I did like with this game now is that option to choose your colonists. You build as much as you like without worrying about resource management for building supplies. You still need to build the right things to maintain the supply of water & rations & protecting colonists from the ravages of a world not really fit for them. You can also build as many of these small repair robots as you like. Just don't do try to fill a room with a lot of them all at once. They might get grid locked. Like the excavation robots that (Which can be duplicated in the 3D printer!) also move any relevant material or corpses they find back to the storage room. They can now be controlled when ever you click on one & click on the target icon that appears to the right of meagre interface & I'm suddenly seeing it's point of view....



This is done very charming way as the resolution is more pixelised to show you they see things differently. The smaller robots are different to control & a little harder to as well. When ever a colonists pass's through the airlock chamber, they are automatically outfitted in their pressurised suit & helmet they arrived in. You can only try doing the first person thing with them while they have their suits on outside. Sometimes a glitch may have them walking around the base interior still in their suit. Yet, this is a rare thing & while their still wearing their helmet. You can access their helmet camera this way. That's all you can do with them of course. Otherwise, it would be a very cheap way of getting much needed control of your workers, the people who build the specific rooms & furnish them after the little robot has excavated them. When in control of the robot, you can try & manually get them to dig rock that I have tagged for removal in order to carve out rooms. Which is where this game appears a lot like Dungeon Keeper. The little robot 's design may even be nod to the appearance of Worker-Imp's from that game....



Although, the rooms don't automatically attract creature/worker types. Your just stuck with the four colonists you start with, or what remains of the original four I had chosen from the beginning. I can also request another planet drop or fall of another three or four colonists who arrive in a little space-capsule in random location near the entrance to the base.....


Because of modern aspect of this game. It mostly resembles Evil Genius without the funnelled story aspect (Yet!!!) & stereotyped characters & bright cartoonish work of Siku.


Yes, this game is kind of shadowy, with billowing gases rising over the planet, & natural heat vents randomly on it's surface & from the air-processing machines I have bothered to place inside.  Obscuring my sight, especially during bad weather events. Sometimes, everything is lit up so much. I only see shadows over a desert landscape that might have almost become tundra for the reflected light in my face....


The need for light is important here, & while it may take forever for the lamps to be manufactured in the 3D-Printer-Module, & then a greater need for the Everlasting-Glowstick that can only be placed on the ground, anywhere on the ground to make for fast lighting up of a gloomy area. Unlike Glowsticks I'm familar with, they can't be thrown or broken open to spill their glowey residue on doors, walls or trees to mark them out in the dark....


(I have now been given a very good idea why my games of this have suffered. After seeing official Wiki for these well known camping implements!)   

About those little robots that repair everything. It just lightens the load on the hapless, ignorant humans who take forever to walk anywhere in their special suits outs-side. Once those little things get going, touring the station's interior in search of smoking machinery that means they need their attention. I think this only how it appears on the surface. I think they really are just responding to a broken stuff automatically anywhere in the game. Even outside! Because its very odd to find a smoking wind-mill even when there is!


(I was suprised to find that picture, because, I thought they're design less flammable )

Again, those robots remind me of the little DRD's that respond to the summons of Pilot the insectoid (Pilot!) in symbiotic partnership with Moya/Leviathan from Farscape....


I had more to say about this one, but very tired right now. I just cooked a loaf of Damper (Australian Bush Bread!) where both the preparation & cooking while inserting other peoples pictures into my essay here have made this evening a little more stressful for me. I think I'll spend the rest of the night picking at my loaf while in front of telly.