Space Sims/Strategy Games Catch-All

Hey friends, welcome to another week of spacey gaming y'all! This week, I take a look at the recent-to-Steam top-down spacey MMO, Star Sonata 2!

Moving on from pre-recorded content, here's this week's streaming schedule (please remember, all times are Pacific). Please recall we've now moved to a 6 AM Pacific start time:

  • Monday - 6:00 AM-9:00 AM, Star Fleet II: Krellan Commander stream.
  • Tuesday - 6:00 AM-9:00 AM, Tesla Force stream. 4:00 PM-6:00 PM, a rambling, no-topic live podcast recording.
  • Wednesday - 6:00 AM-9:00 AM, Mass Effect 3 stream.
  • Thursday - 6:00 AM-9:00 AM, Something ate my Alien stream. 4:00 PM-6:00 PM, Dying Light co-op LAN Party!
  • Friday - 6:00 AM-9:00 AM, Freespace Fridays continues as we finish our campaign in Descent: Freespace using the FSPort and then move onto Silent Threat Reborn! I know I keep saying this but seriously last week I had a PC problem that's now been fixed, so HOPEFULLY we'll be able to do a stream this week. 4:00 PM - 6:00 PM, Discord movie night, this time showing the Tom Cruise sci-fi extravaganza, Oblivion!
  • Saturday - 6:00 AM-9:00 AM, Evil Democracy: 1932 stream.
  • Sunday - 6:00 AM-9:00 AM, Far Cry 2 stream.

You can watch any of these streams live on Twitch, and you can see all of our planned upcoming streams and events on our calendar, as always!

In this week's op-ed, I talk about how much I love the grind, and yet how much it's kicking my butt!

That's it for this upcoming week, my amazing friends. Hope to see y'all on a stream or something!

If you liked Bomber Crew, have a look at Space Crew.

Hopefully...

I hope it has HOTAS support.

Tanglebones wrote:

I'd be lying if I didn't say that looks like the X-Wing v TIE Fighter reboot we've been waiting for.

Time will tell of course. But that's a lot of selling.

Oh I cannot wait...to see how EA f*cks this up and sets back my dream of a new X-Wing/TIE Fighter game another decade.

I have a terrible feeling this is just the same godawful starfighter gameplay from the EA!Battlefront games at its core with some extra ships, maps, and progression.

I impulse purchased this at a good discount despite having no idea what kind of gameplay it has.
https://www.greenmangaming.com/games...
I am cautiously hopeful as Warhammer games have about a 20% success rate.
I am leaning that it will be like Xcom or Gears Tactics. The setting looks really cool and I have heard a lot of buzz about Necromunda.

edit: regarding SW squadrons, that looks awful

fangblackbone wrote:

I impulse purchased this at a good discount despite having no idea what kind of gameplay it has.
https://www.greenmangaming.com/games...
I am cautiously hopeful as Warhammer games have about a 20% success rate.
I am leaning that it will be like Xcom or Gears Tactics. The setting looks really cool and I have heard a lot of buzz about Necromunda.

edit: regarding SW squadrons, that looks awful :(

That game has been in development now for at least 5 years with pretty much zero update on its progress.

Necromunda was the best game GW ever made (with the possible exceptions of Space Hulk and Blood Bowl) and an XCOM style open ‘world’ would be an amazing game. But I thought this had sunk without trace a while back

I guess the buzz is that they released a trailer last week? (summer release date?)
As I mentioned, and the majority of the video comments state, there is no gameplay yet

Tanglebones wrote:

I have a bad feeling about this.

No I honestly have feeling that this will be a POS. Time will tell and I hope it's good. But making it a 5v5 game really smacks of some sort of Battle Royale hybrid.

And what the hell was that beam the TIE Bombers were shooting?

Yeah. EA finds a way to screw everything up always. My fear is that when it goes pear shaped people will take the wrong lesson from it and I'll never get my sequel/remake of X-Wing/TIE Fighter.

I just felt a great disturbance in the Force...

Veloxi, you still playing Shadow Empires? How did that go for you?

Robear wrote:

Veloxi, you still playing Shadow Empires? How did that go for you?

It was going well but I'm gonna restart for the new patches. I'll be playing on beginner for the foreseeable future.

So will we all lol.

Tanglebones wrote:

God this was terrible. It told us NOTHING.

5v5 and VR, that's about it for now.

Really worrying that it'll be another BF1 and worthless for single player.

It's EA, so my expectations are in the toilet.

Nevin73 wrote:
Tanglebones wrote:

I have a bad feeling about this.

No I honestly have feeling that this will be a POS. Time will tell and I hope it's good. But making it a 5v5 game really smacks of some sort of Battle Royale hybrid.

And what the hell was that beam the TIE Bombers were shooting?

Those are first order bombers. It's a 5v5(10 people) game, so not sure how you got a battle royale...and really the reactions to a cinematic trailer are...well you've all made your minds up already.

Of note this is being made my Motive and they handled the superb single player campaign of Battlefront 2. This will also have a story campaign and so far they're the only ones listed so this will be their take on multiplayer, whatever that may mean. But I would expect the gameplay to feel like battlefront 2 but maybe a bit tighter.

And Hera's in it.

This is made by some of the same creative team that wound up completing Mass Effect Andromeda. That really isn’t saying anything, however.

There's some implication there that you'll be managing power distribution, which is a throwback to the XWing and TIE Fighter games and pretty surprising. But I don't know how much we can actually glean from a cinematic trailer like that anyway.

I did quite like where Battlefront 2 ended up, so I'm cautiously optimistic.

I sense tons of cosmetic microtransactions. We'll be seeing things like neon yellow TIE fighters with lightning bolt patterns and pink x-wings with little smiley faces, etc.

From the article: https://www.starwars.com/news/star-w...

"As players move up the ranks, they’ll earn components to modify and enhance their starfighters such as weapons, hulls, engines and shields; gain cosmetic items to customize their cockpit, ship exteriors, flight suits and helmets; and receive bonuses, all unlocked via gameplay, in a clear path for progression."

The Wedge Antilles cameo was a nice touch, but 5 on 5 means this is probably Star Dota or League of Rebels or whatever you want to call it. Or the other one, the space MOBA -- Fractured Space.

Pros: energy management from XvT, released before Star Citizen
Cons: EA, EA, cosmetic microtransactions, and EA

Man, y'all really love to hate something based on basically no info outside of the company that is making it. Was Battlefront 2 really that bad for everyone aside from the microtransactions? I personally didn't mind it and I actually spent most of my time in Starfighter Assault. If they expand on that mode and possibly make it into some sort of BR (or maybe even something similar to Warzone's Plunder in Call of Duty) then I'd definitely be into that.

I'd not be expecting a new X-Wing/Tie Fighter just because those games are almost 30 years old (Hell, even Freespace is over 20) and gaming has definitely moved on since then. It'd be great if that's what this turned out to be, but I'm not holding my breath.

CptDomano wrote:

Man, y'all really love to hate something based on basically no info outside of the company that is making it. Was Battlefront 2 really that bad for everyone aside from the microtransactions? I personally didn't mind it and I actually spent most of my time in Starfighter Assault. If they expand on that mode and possibly make it into some sort of BR (or maybe even something similar to Warzone's Plunder in Call of Duty) then I'd definitely be into that.

I'd not be expecting a new X-Wing/Tie Fighter just because those games are almost 30 years old (Hell, even Freespace is over 20) and gaming has definitely moved on since then. It'd be great if that's what this turned out to be, but I'm not holding my breath.

I loved EA’s first Battlefront game. Spent nearly 300 hours in it. The Walker assault mode was fantastic. The space combat mode sucked though.

The Battlefront 2 beta put me off buying it because it was so clear that money wins - it was a horrific implementation of pay to win mechanics and it shone through every mode available at that time. It was that bad (really, it was)

Since the internet nerd rage has calmed down the consensus I can find from the more moderate voices is that it’s now a good game with some really good modes in it. The Titan mode was nearly enough to make me want to buy it, but I was busy playing other stuff (so many games, so little time)

Squadrons has me more than interested. I’d want it to be more single player than multi-player though, but that’s just nostalgia for the most part. I’ll be watching it with interest for sure. It’s not going to make me want to pre-order it though.

Hrdina wrote:

If you liked Bomber Crew, have a look at Space Crew.

Bomber Crew was really fun, sort of a beer-and-pretzels flight sim. I got it on a steep sale and ended up thoroughly surprised at how addictive it was. Per Steam, I've got 67 hours in it, and I've plumbed it pretty thoroughly at this point, so it doesn't have the legs of, say, FTL or Civilization. But it's good stuff nonetheless.

edit: I got it for ten bucks, and I generally consider anything over $1/hour to be a win.