Space Sims/Strategy Games Catch-All

Veloxi wrote:

Hey y'all, good news, the guy behind the sadly unfunded Kickstarter project, Torchships, is starting a plan B with pre-orders, demos and so on:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/...

Yay!

That game screams niche in a way other space "sims" don't. Glad to see he's moving forward with it.

Tamren wrote:

What is Kickstarters policy on failed attempts? Is there something that stops people from just trying again later?

Also fired up Master of Orion these past couple days. I'm terrible at it. The only way I can win is to play Psilons and crush everyone with my gigantic tech advantage.

Haha, I'm on vacation this weekend and I started up MoO2 for the first time in about a year. I played a custom Creative race on Hard.

With 3 of 8 races left, the 2nd place race framed me for espionage and the 1st place race attacked me. My fleet was sad and I had to dodge his, lest I lose all my ships every time he destroyed a colony. But I persevered, distracting him by attacking his own colonies, until I finally had 4 Doomstars and enough Titans to take out his huge but technologically inferior fleet. After that it was mop-up. I could have attacked the race that framed me, but by that time it would not have been much of a challenge so I killed the Antares instead.

If you're not a Creative race, you have to constantly be trading (or stealing) techs with other races.

I've moved onto MOO2 now. Some of the race combinations I've found are ludicrously powerful. I'm currently playing custom super-trilarians. Aquatic, Subterranean. Subterranean races live underground and can fit more people onto a planet. Aquatic races count wet planets as terran, and terran and ocean planets as Gaias. All of my worlds have stupidly huge populations. I think I have one that fits 40, and it isn't Orion. I have so many workers I can just use manpower to brute force through any problem.

Oh and I saw my first space dragon

Ahh Moo2, haven't honestly played it in ages, but I've only really played creative races. I do that in every 4X game I play though, but I honestly had no idea until a little while back what an advantage creative races had in the game. I should fire it up if I can tear myself away from Drox Operative any time soon.

In other news, I have a Q&A up with the developer of an indie game called OreSome, which he describes as the "test tube baby of Asteroids, Minecraft and Skyrim". It's a fun read:

http://www.spacegamejunkie.com/featu...

Enjoy!

Mmmm, brined pork chops.

Gah, thank you, I am my own worst editor. :/

Veloxi wrote:

Ahh Moo2, haven't honestly played it in ages, but I've only really played creative races. I do that in every 4X game I play though, but I honestly had no idea until a little while back what an advantage creative races had in the game. I should fire it up if I can tear myself away from Drox Operative any time soon.

In other news, I have a Q&A up with the developer of an indie game called OreSome, which he describes as the "test tube baby of Asteroids, Minecraft and Skyrim". It's a fun read:

http://www.spacegamejunkie.com/featu...

Enjoy! :)

OreSome. What a cool, cheesy name.

You know, I'd be interested in maybe giving Distant Worlds a try, but they want about $90 for the version you were reviewing, Veloxi.... the $40 base game, plus two expansions.

I'd have been in at $40, and I might have been able to convince myself at $50, but $90? They're out of their blooming minds.

Well, you could get the vanilla game. It's certainly worth $40. Or vanilla + the Shakturi expansion for $60 which makes really good game if you like space 4x games. I am not convinced that Legends is a "must have" for this game, at least not right away; it adds a lot of cool extras but does not change the fundamental game in the same way Shakturi did.

Or wait. Matrix does have sales every so often. Not Steam-level sales but still.

Yeah, it's an AMAZING game, but you're not the first person to sadly be put off by the price, nor the last. They DO have a sale around Christmas time, so if price is the main issue, I'd wait for that. I could TOTALLY recommend it for $90, but I totally also get the hesitation to buy a game sight unseen.

I went back and forth on DW for exactly the same reason. Their pricing is f*cking stupid.

I also caved and bought it, and am loving it.

Right there with ya Malor, a couple pages back actually.

I'll watch for the next sale. It's not like there's any lack of games in the pile anyway. If it goes 50% off, I'll probably jump in. Until then, I've got plenty of other things to play.

Last time it was 25% I believe. 50% might be a bit much given their prices. :/

Basically, Distant Worlds is fantastic if you like/love 4X games. It's also overpriced and will probably never be discounted to a reasonable amount; it's a shame, and I suspect their pricing model costs them more in the long run than they recover by holding firm to it. They have, in forum posts, defended their policies -- I can't imagine them backing down readily.

Pick it up if you love the genre and can spare the scratch, but don't hold off waiting for a massive sale.

Yeah, it really is a bright point in the 4X genre. It really ousted Imperium Galactica II as my all-time favorite 4X game, which ain't no small thang.

I've been concerned about the pricing of DW for some time. So I started a thread on their forums to see if they're open to rethinking their pricing. We'll see if we get any response.

I doubt it. I searched the forums the other day and found a "put DW on Steam" thread. It was mostly snooty people (reminds me of people who only like "indie" films) acting like Steam was trash, and if you don't like paying full price then you're not good enough to play DW.

Yeah, it's a shame. They make good games, but desperately need a business analyst to sit down, review their price point vs. sales numbers, and model how lowering their prices would accelerate their sales overall.

DMan, I just read your thread on the Matrix forums (and commented there); the guy who replied is clearly a prick. Took a glance through his other replies to other people, and he's just as much of a jerk to them.

Stele wrote:

I doubt it. I searched the forums the other day and found a "put DW on Steam" thread. It was mostly snooty people (reminds me of people who only like "indie" films) acting like Steam was trash, and if you don't like paying full price then you're not good enough to play DW. :lol:

I wonder how many indie devs are actually like this. The guy who runs Spiderweb Software is a self admitted "coward who likes money". His games are on steam and he seems to be doing pretty well.

Tamren wrote:
Stele wrote:

I doubt it. I searched the forums the other day and found a "put DW on Steam" thread. It was mostly snooty people (reminds me of people who only like "indie" films) acting like Steam was trash, and if you don't like paying full price then you're not good enough to play DW. :lol:

I wonder how many indie devs are actually like this. The guy who runs Spiderweb Software is a self admitted "coward who likes money". His games are on steam and he seems to be doing pretty well.

In fairness, the guy being a jerk on the Matrix forums is just a guy being a jerk, rather than a dev.

Tamren wrote:
Stele wrote:

I doubt it. I searched the forums the other day and found a "put DW on Steam" thread. It was mostly snooty people (reminds me of people who only like "indie" films) acting like Steam was trash, and if you don't like paying full price then you're not good enough to play DW. :lol:

I wonder how many indie devs are actually like this. The guy who runs Spiderweb Software is a self admitted "coward who likes money". His games are on steam and he seems to be doing pretty well.

Yes, but he just recently changed his ways. He realized that there were more options than there use to be. I'll find the blog post and edit this to link to it.

I think that it's important and instructive to attempt to win with all the species factions in MOO2 at Impossible. It's perfectly doable, but it requires different approaches with each species.

Playing Creative all the time in MOO2 feels comfortable and familiar, but if you always do that, you're missing the entire game around tech planning, tech espionage, and tech trading. It means that every game plays about the same way.

Playing a non-creative, even Fedual faction forces you to play the game differently - almost as if it were a different sort of game. The combats play significantly differently when you're the guy with massive, technologically inferior fleets.

TheHipGamer wrote:
Tamren wrote:
Stele wrote:

I doubt it. I searched the forums the other day and found a "put DW on Steam" thread. It was mostly snooty people (reminds me of people who only like "indie" films) acting like Steam was trash, and if you don't like paying full price then you're not good enough to play DW. :lol:

I wonder how many indie devs are actually like this. The guy who runs Spiderweb Software is a self admitted "coward who likes money". His games are on steam and he seems to be doing pretty well.

In fairness, the guy being a jerk on the Matrix forums is just a guy being a jerk, rather than a dev.

Yeah, what a schmuck.

D-Man777 wrote:

I've been concerned about the pricing of DW for some time. So I started a thread on their forums to see if they're open to rethinking their pricing. We'll see if we get any response.

Yeah, reading that thread REALLY made me want to go back and read more of that forum. Because I really enjoy reading aggressive pointless replies to thoughtful, considered posts.

BadKen wrote:
D-Man777 wrote:

I've been concerned about the pricing of DW for some time. So I started a thread on their forums to see if they're open to rethinking their pricing. We'll see if we get any response.

Yeah, reading that thread REALLY made me want to go back and read more of that forum. Because I really enjoy reading aggressive pointless replies to thoughtful, considered posts.

Yeah, sorry folks. Not sure where all the bile is coming from. Guess I'll stick to more civilized forums. No good deed, right? Also, sorry for this protracted string in the midst of the Space Games thread.

LarryC wrote:

I think that it's important and instructive to attempt to win with all the species factions in MOO2 at Impossible. It's perfectly doable, but it requires different approaches with each species.

Playing Creative all the time in MOO2 feels comfortable and familiar, but if you always do that, you're missing the entire game around tech planning, tech espionage, and tech trading. It means that every game plays about the same way.

Playing a non-creative, even Fedual faction forces you to play the game differently - almost as if it were a different sort of game. The combats play significantly differently when you're the guy with massive, technologically inferior fleets.

That seems different from my experience; my only real problem with MOO2 at the impossible difficult was that it almost always felt like the only way to win with any race other than Psilon was to rush to mirv nuclear missiles, wipe out one or two races, then get mirv merculite missiles and get another, then do whatever. I got bored playing the same way all the time.

If I actually tried to say use the Bulrathi to do assault ships and take advantage of racial characteristics I'd lose. Almost any time I was not creative and didn't go the missile path on impossible I'd lose. The only other option for early weapons seemed to be enveloping fusion beams, but you'd better have the +50 attack bonus if you want to go that way. Also, the missile path got you better side techs than the physics/beam weapon path. That said, I wasn't the most patient player and probably could have done better.

I prefer to play one step below impossible and then play with the more interesting racial picks; feudal, spying, defensive ships, charismatic, uncreative, maybe farming races, etc. The things I could never make work on impossible basically.

When my friend and I were heavily into Moo2 we managed to beat the AI on impossible with all the generic races. Of course we did start with the advanced start and had to restart a few times for some of the races to improve the starting conditions. I think the Altari were the hardest race for us for some reason, their benefits just aren't that good.

Ship design has always been my weakpoint in MOO and MOO2. Its a little better in MOO2 because you don't need to immediately scrap obsolete ships. But unless I have a huge tech advantage I always struggle to create effective designs.

Why would anyone ever want to make frigates and destroyers? In MOO fighters are cheap and disposable. Even if the enemy can kill them in a single hit, they only fire so many shots and the fighters can outnumber them thousands to one. When your engines get better fighters can also be very hard to hit. In MMO 2 however they just have no redeeming features. They don't seem to get any defensive bonus from being small. So you just have a tiny ship, with crap weapons, no room for gear, and zero survivability. Any bigger ship of equal tech will swat them like flies. And to add insult to injury, half the time they go critical when they die and damage all the other ships around them. The smallest effective ship design I've found is a missile cruiser with nothing but 2-shot missile racks. 2 shot because they never live long enough for 5 shots. Heck I generally lose half in the first turn anyway.

Zaque wrote:

When my friend and I were heavily into Moo2 we managed to beat the AI on impossible with all the generic races. Of course we did start with the advanced start and had to restart a few times for some of the races to improve the starting conditions. I think the Altari were the hardest race for us for some reason, their benefits just aren't that good.

I'll admit to rerolling starting conditions multiple times. I don't really see it as cheating because of how planets are generated. In MOO it was a lot harder to find yourself in a bad spot because almost every star had a planet. It might have been a radiated mess of a planet, but systems with no planets in them were very rare.

MOO2 has more variables and is much less forgiving. Not too long ago I generated a map and found my capital in the middle of 5 stars. Two of them had no planets at all. One was Orion and lost me a scout. Of the two systems I could actually colonize, neither had a planet better than a Barren which wasn't also poor or ultra poor. Needless to say I quit out and made a new map. Its not impossible to succeed on maps like that. But if you get a bad start and one particular enemy race gets a good start it can be impossible to catch up.

Tamren wrote:

Ship design has always been my weakpoint in MOO and MOO2. Its a little better in MOO2 because you don't need to immediately scrap obsolete ships. But unless I have a huge tech advantage I always struggle to create effective designs.

Why would anyone ever want to make frigates and destroyers? In MOO fighters are cheap and disposable. Even if the enemy can kill them in a single hit, they only fire so many shots and the fighters can outnumber them thousands to one. When your engines get better fighters can also be very hard to hit. In MMO 2 however they just have no redeeming features. They don't seem to get any defensive bonus from being small. So you just have a tiny ship, with crap weapons, no room for gear, and zero survivability. Any bigger ship of equal tech will swat them like flies. And to add insult to injury, half the time they go critical when they die and damage all the other ships around them. The smallest effective ship design I've found is a missile cruiser with nothing but 2-shot missile racks. 2 shot because they never live long enough for 5 shots. Heck I generally lose half in the first turn anyway.

Well the smaller ships do get a bonus to dodge against beam weapons, and I think missiles as well. I generally make the 2 shot mirv missile destroy pretty early in the game just because it is so much quicker to make. I also don't scrap my ships very much, and generally use the refit option, especially with my larger ships as the build time is so long. The smaller ships also will move faster on the tactical map, as well as having a bonus for initiative which comes in very handy when you switch over to beam weapons.

As far as the critical when dieing, just use that movement bonus to get them further away from each other. I also will tend to self-destruct in an effort to destroy incoming missiles, you just have to be careful not to hit your own missiles at the same time.

Outlandish:

They can all work on Impossible. I know because I have won with every faction on Impossible, and if I may say so, waiting for MIRV nukes to make your move is not nearly as reliable as playing to your strengths.

On Impossible, you have to take what you've got and basically turn it to 11, without making any mistakes. No half-assing it.

The most reliable way I know to win with Gnolam on Impossible is to make Outpost ships to contact everyone ASAP, and leverage your wealth to pay 10% Tribute as soon as contact is made. The point of this is so you can ask for their new planets as soon as they're founded. The low pop undeveloped worlds are usually cheap, so asking is reliable and safe, and gains you lots of planets for upfront Tribute investment. This also has the effect of delaying enemy AI development at the same time.

Once the Galaxy is 2/3s populated, you will usually win election.