Another slight break from Eve Economics

Sorry if you've been getting your EVE Econ fix from here, I've been on a couple day break while my new corp gets their Indy Station up and running. In the meantime, I've been playing a lot of Starcraft 3. Not the main game, which I'm hilariously bad at and I find to be not at all relaxing and, in fact, very nerve wracking and stressful. Nope, instead I've been playing Squadron Tower Defense. It's the highest rated mod in the Arcade and is very, very fun. Games are relatively quick (about 20 minutes, give or take) and interesting. There is a great dynamic between military and econ (guns and butter?) that I enjoy as well. Essentially, you have a primary resource called Crystals that allows you to build either towers for defense or workers for harvesting the secondary resource, Gas. Gas is what you use to send "extra" troops in the enemy waves while also giving you a recurring, per wave, boost to your crystal production. So there's a feedback that occurs and you have to make tradeoffs. Short term tower security versus long term economic strength.

Letting creeps by your towers has two levels of impact. If you leak a little bit but your teammates clean it up, you lose out on a little bit of income and your teammates (it's typically a 4v4 game in the "classic" mode) and one of your teammates gets about 20% of the lost income if they clean up your mess. If they don't, then the creeps move to the middle, attack your Security Station (which is ultimately the thing you're trying to protect) and when your Security Station kills creeps your opponent gets the income.

Currently in game there are 8 races with plans for 2 more. There's a number of game modes, including a chaos mode in which your race is randomized after each wave which presents its own set of challenges. Each race has 6 different units, most of which have an upgrade or multiple upgrades and each race has a unique racial ability that synergizes with their units.

It's a very well thought out, very well supported game that can provide for nice distractions in roughly 20 minute blocks.

At present, there's only the generic Starcraft art being used so you have to have some detachment from reality when you place your "mudman" from the elemental race and are created with a walker that would be more appropriate in Mechwarrior then representing an elemental warrior. But since it may be asked to attack Space Cows, I suppose we can let it slide.

All in all, a very fun game that I'd encourage other SC3 fans to check out.

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-Abraham Lincoln