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I’m not very good at real-time strategy games. I attribute this to my inability to multitask well, but that’s not to say I don’t enjoy playing them. The biggest problem I have with them is that most revolve around micromanagement, and since AI War, with its robust automation and smart unit management, I’ve become more of a macromanagement kind of guy. Why? Because it means I can focus on the strategy part. You know, the important part. Not the frantic juggling and tedious busy work part. Homeworld and Company of Heroes, allegedly two of the finest real-time strategy games evar, turned me off because I had to nanny certain units. I’m sorry but, engineers, you need to fix those tanks right in front of you. And repair frigates, those nearby damaged ships need looking at. Do your fucking jobs. The more granular my level of involvement the more distracted I am from the strategy, and for me, that’s a problem.

An exciting and wordy discussion has been wandering across several of Tap’s forum threads, notably here, and also in various comments on articles. Fully grokking a conversation being held by the Tap community requires a certain ability to master the art of tangential crossover.

ANYWAY, to quickly sum up: some of our debaters did not like Half Life 2, some did, but for variant reasons; everyone likes STALKER but some wanted different things from it; System Shock 2 is very scary but may not have aged well; and something to do with Neocron, plus some other stuff.

One of the many things that make me happy about Tap is that we have no assholes here (except me). Every now and then some no-name will wander by and leave an obnoxious comment, but they never seem to stay for long. Ours is a grown-up site where people treat each other politely, and when they disagree, they discuss and debate. And one of the things I fear is that continued growth may inevitably lead …