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Comment by Koshkin | Hacker News Reader

Even modern FPS are like that. In the recent installments of Far Cry, for example, I have found myself spending not a small portion of time collecting stuff, tweaking the possessions, building/fixing things. While still enjoying these otherwise excellent and fun games, I find older games, like the original Doom, Unreal, or early installments of FarCry, more enjoyable and fun - exactly because they feel less like "work."

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I really wish there were more tactical games where the battles and armies were predetermined rather than configurable - I absolutely love tweaking army composition and handling resource builds and tech trees and etc. -sometimes- but some days I really just want to be airdropped into a (preferably turn based) fight and left to think my way through winning with the resources I've been given.

(then if I really just want to shoot a virtual bad guy, I go back to replaying the old Wing Commander games since for whatever reason I can climb the learning curves of those more easily than FPSes)

Triangle Strategy is pretty good, if you can withstand a few hours of dialogue among the battles.

I think you mean a few hours of battle among the dialogue.

I like the Civilization series, with a modern era start, for this.

There’s often a couple different ways to victory and there’s already enough built out to put plans into action immediately.

You might enjoy Totally Accurate Battle Simulator, although it's pretty shallow in most areas, you can configure the position and composition of your army's units and then watch the battle play out in real-time.

That's awesome (and I've seen other variations on this theme that were also very cool like Elaborate Spaceship Battles) but what I'm talking about looking for is exactly the opposite.

MechCommander 1/2 and the current BattleTech are kinda close since at least I only do the strategy between missions.

Note that Brood War's requirement for Macro -and- Micro play is also fun - too many RTS games let me win via Macro and then rolling over the enemy with effectively unlimited forces - but I really like tactical battles where the point of the game is the tactical side, because sometimes that's what I really want to spend my gaming time focusing on.

You might like some of the games at matrixgames.com and slitherine.com because they specialize primarily in turn-based strategy/war games and have a ton of them. However, while some of them are 'pick a scenario and play', others are hugely complex with full production, logistics, research, etc.

The John Tiller's Campaign Series games and Strategic Command games are pretty playable, Harpoon Ultimate if you like naval, and Field Of Glory if you have interest in the ancient/medieval eras.

There are too many TRPGs to count them. Tanks of freedom is free by the way.

Also, a lot of TRPGS tend to be hellishly difficult.

If you want to play classic games I would suggest Myth: The Fallen Lords series. It's a story told battle by battle, and you are just given the units you are given.

Very iconic game, loved it growing up.

Escape From Tarkov is the ultimate anxiety simulator.

This comment completely misses the point of the article. I wonder if people even read it.

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