faetal on 29/3/2013 at 01:03
(http://www.stardrivegame.com/) THIS looks like the very thing to potentially be a bew Imperium Galactica II, which excites me greatly since IGII is one of my favourite games of all time.
Anyone else heard much about this? I'm loathe to pre-order, but this really looks like my cup of tea.
catbarf on 29/3/2013 at 02:06
I'm hoping the rest of the game is more creative than the races. A race of Lovecraftian monsters called Ralyeh? Kilrathi ripoffs called Kulrathi? Is that their idea of subtlety?
june gloom on 29/3/2013 at 02:14
Works for Frictional!
faetal on 29/3/2013 at 07:30
Yeah, the 'alien race that look like bears hurr durr' stuff is a bit rubbish, but I'm hoping the gameplay may allow it to sink into the background.
I won't pre-purchase. Will see what reviews say.
Thelvyn on 29/3/2013 at 07:45
I have the beta and it's pretty good least I think so. those races are nods to moo2. Which most people seems to think was the best ever 4 X game.
faetal on 30/4/2013 at 09:25
Metacritic user reviews are starting to trickle in and seem
(http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/stardrive/user-reviews) pretty mixed.
My overall impression from reading these is to wait a while until it is more polished and inevitably comes down in price.
That said, the reviews have made me curious about two other games: Distant Worlds & Endless Space - does anyone have any advice on whether they are worth a go?
demagogue on 30/4/2013 at 22:08
Ok, a few months ago, I did my homework, got some of these games & played them, and watched lots of playthrus & read reviews & play-reports them of the others, and worked out the relative features of different ones. It turns out all of these space 4x games are using the same tropes in about the same way, so there's a lot of overlap and not all that much difference unless there are some mechanics that you love or that drive you crazy. Unfortunately, I can't find all my notes, so this is by memory and I might update it later after looking back. So...
- I'm sure you know the classics, Masters of Orion (Civilization in space; planets are nodes on a big grid), and now there's an open source FreeOrion worth looking at, and then Homeworld 1 & 2 are space RTS, but a lot of 4X space games are using that style now.
- Endless space, is a bit in the Masters of Orion camp, in being mega-scale. You start on a system that has lines going out to nearby systems. There are the usual factions; art style was nice. You build ships that fly down the lines as blips, so it's not like you're seeing the ships themselves and combat is through windows (as I recall), just blips and stats. It's indie, so we're talking small scale in ambition.
- Galactic Civilizations 2. This is maybe the most like Civilization in Space. There's an open field of fog-of-war'd space with planets you fly a ship icon to explore & colonize. Again you don't get close up to the planets or ships; they're all basically icons. You're spending a lot of time with research & diplomacy, and those kinds of windows for the game. It wasn't for me because it was a little too detached from its setting IMO. But if you like strategy gaming for its own sake, it's good for that.
- Sins of a Solar Empire. This is Homeworld brought to the 4X scene. The focus is a lot more at the ship's level, resource gathering, RTS fighting, but you're fighting over control of planets, so it's still technically a 4X type. But it shirks on the upper-level strategic side like GC2. People talk about the balancing of the three factions; I'll have to look up how that went again.
- Star Ruler. This is one I really like & play the most, but it's not for everybody. This is 4X-sandbox. You can make any kind of ship you want, at any size (from small scout to a death star planet), and ship-building is definitely one of the funnest feature. I like how you can zoom in & out from an RTS scale of individual ships & brigades fighting around stars, to a strategic scale in between stars, and work at both. You can make a galaxy any size you want, 10,000 systems big if you wanted. The "downside" is that there's no fiction or factions. It's just open sandbox; so no color or fiction with expanding your empire, you're just taking over more stars like the others, against other opponents just like you. I kind of like that, but some people really don't like that.
- Sword of the Stars 2. This is the one that got thrashed for bugs early on, but since then some patches have come out & it's apparently better now. I haven't played it yet, but as I recall, it follows many of the tropes, factions, taking over planets & expanding your empire, ship building, etc. As I recall, this is the one that's like Total War, turn based strategy and then real time "battles" Total War style.
There are some others I have notes for here, but I have to remember them. I recall one (maybe one of the above?) where the battles are basically automatic, but you play "cards" for different strategies. And then I recall one where they add planetary combat to the mix, so you can put arms on the planet they have to send land forces in to attack, and the land forces can attack things in orbit. I may go back and edit this if I need to to add them. ... I'm also trying to remember if I looked at Distant Worlds. Anyway give me some time.
faetal on 1/5/2013 at 08:54
Cool run down.
I'm glad you've done the research as I have the itch for a 4X game but not sure what to go with as time is limited.
DDL on 1/5/2013 at 11:28
Seconded re: cool run down!
Of those I've only played Sins, which is a lot less homeworldy than it could be: it would be like homeworld if you didn't particularly care about your dudes because you could mass produce them, and could order them to just "go shoot those fuckers over there, vaguely", and indeed mostly ignore them and just watch dots blipping other dots because fuck micromanagement. I really wish it was more homeworldy, really.
Mostly it's about building capital ships (which you can at least name, so UNS DOOMFUCKER etc, and whose "crews" level up and can thus be given skills and shit) and getting as many fighters as possible, because fighter swarms appear to be amazing under all circumstances. That and pulling a "russia vs napoleon"-style retreat whenever you're outmatched because the AI overextends itself horrendously. Oh, and diplomacy of course, but pffff: diplomacy.
It's very pretty, though.
Star ruler looks....complicated as fuck. When even the promo vids have you thinking "uh...I'm not sure I have time for that", you know you're probably in trouble.
demagogue on 1/5/2013 at 22:02
I agree with all you said about Sins. And it is pretty.
There's mod, Distant Stars, that makes it even prettier.
Quote Posted by DDL
Star ruler looks....complicated as fuck. When even the promo vids have you thinking "uh...I'm not sure I have time for that", you know you're probably in trouble.
The thing is a lot of the complicated parts can be automated, or done in a simple way, but it allows you to micromanage in a lot of detail if you want.
I mean you can appoint a governor on a planet, and they'll automate everything with production, and you only need to micromanage if you want to focus on something.
Then ship-building is just making new blueprints. There are plenty of pre-made blueprints so you don't have to make new ships if you're ok with the presets, and even if you do, you can throw together something functional easy enough. But if you want to spend a lot of time optimizing the perfect ship you can do that too.
Then fighting is RTS like Homeworld. You click on a lead capital ship or group icon on the left and you'll bring up the whole group, and direct the whole group to move or fight directly, (or individual or selected ships if you want). But even here, you can go into a right-click menu and automate the whole group to perform some task (mining, discovery, guarding a region, go look for opportunity strikes), and they'll keep doing it.
So you don't have to go into the crazy detail that's possible just to play it. A lot of it you can set up how you want to automate it, and then just break in to micromanage when you need to. It's grown on me anyway, so I'm giving a positive spin. It's true if you get too wrapped up in the details you can get a bit lost or swamped, too. (Like you could spend an hour fine tuning a ship blueprint once you get sucked into it)... You could also spam out LOTS of ships, and have massive massive battles with 100s-1000s ships swarming around, and if you're working on all these moving pieces, games can get long & swamping it's true. Games don't have to be too big though because the first thing you do is select the number of star systems for the galaxy, so you could pick a small one.
Anyway, I want to give a fair representation of it pro & con.
It also looks very nice. It has a cool tactical feel with the electronic grid around the stars, and you can zoom right up to the stars, planets, and ships and see them in all their glorious detail, then zoom out and take in the cloudy expanse of the whole galaxy.
By the way, I understand it was made by an indie team on Unity, and it gets props as one of the best realized and polished games coming out of that scene. It doesn't feel amateurish or small like you might think of a Unity game at all.
