Space Sims/Strategy Games Catch-All

So I've picked up star Traders: Frontiers on the strength of recommendations I thought were in this thread but appear to elsewhere or may be further back than I thought. It'll probably be one of the epic free games before long now.

Here you go. I think the recent convos have been in the Space Sims group, but this gives some background. Note that a huge amount of content and some mechanics have been added since last February.

Is there an easy / straight forward guide you'd recommend for it? A little more complex than I was expecting!

So, follow the initial story thread; that will lead you into various situations at the start, give you a chunk of cash and plenty of time to mess around before things really get going. I hesitate to go further into it as there's a great deal of fun in learning and using the mechanics. More exciting that way. (The initial story has you ferry a judge to the home planet of a faction, and the Duke there (or Prince or whatever) will take you one if you agree to do his tasks, so go with that and it'll start simple and ramp up gently. Take full advantage of, for example, trading opportunities and chances to meet people as you do the simple tasks. Even try some spying and salvaging and wilderness exploration. Take your time and enjoy the game, you will eventually restart anyway, most likely. So don't sweat mistakes. It's a forgiving system.)

For a guide, let's see... Here's the official Wiki. It's both a guide and a reference, and it's maintained by the devs as well as players.

Dipping my toe back into Galactic Civilizations III recently and I'm getting stymied by lack of documentation. Or rather, lack of relevant documentation.

I'm playing the various expansions (Retribution being the latest, I think) and my version is 4 something.

The game manuals don't accurately reflect what I'm seeing and I'm struggling with finding out simple things. For example:

- Influence. I can see how influence can be increased using various colony improvements and starbases, but nowhere how it translates to hexes covered.

- Morale. All my colonies start with crippling morale but I don't see anyway of starting a colony with either less population or more morale. I did find how to change tax rate globally - though that seems to come and go - but only by trial and error.

Looking for a couple of good starting guides and some good reference material I can dive into when I want more of the nitty-gritty details.

Did Squadrons even come out this year? I think I saw more mentions of Rebel Galaxy than Squadrons in the GOTY thread.

I was probably the only 3030 Deathwar.

Mixolyde wrote:

Did Squadrons even come out this year? I think I saw more mentions of Rebel Galaxy than Squadrons in the GOTY thread.

I was probably the only 3030 Deathwar.

Pretty sure both of them released in Sept. Maybe Squadrons was early Oct, but they were definitely within a month of each other. Well the RGO console release anyway.

I bought RGO day 1 Switch. Just got Squadrons last week on $16 sale. Might fire it up in the next few days but it wasn't going to have time to make this year's list.

Mixolyde wrote:

Did Squadrons even come out this year? I think I saw more mentions of Rebel Galaxy than Squadrons in the GOTY thread.

That's because Rebel Galaxy Outlaw is a far better game than Squadrons.

Veloxi wrote:
Mixolyde wrote:

Did Squadrons even come out this year? I think I saw more mentions of Rebel Galaxy than Squadrons in the GOTY thread.

That's because Rebel Galaxy Outlaw is a far better game than Squadrons.

I was talking about the original RG, which got more mentions than Squadrons. Looking forward to an RGO sale on Xbox. I am playing Privateer again.

Oh I'd also say that RG is better than Squadrons.

star traders: frontiers

Garrcia wrote:

star traders: frontiers

Yes?

Garrcia wrote:

star traders: frontiers

I await with bated breath for more!

Search is not edit?

I mean, do they really need to say anything else?

Garrcia wrote:

star traders: frontiers

Is that you choosing your tag?

I finally own Freespace 2, thanks to a big GOG sale. Looking forward to that after finishing a few other things.

Still the best space fighter game, ever.

Mixolyde wrote:

I finally own Freespace 2, thanks to a big GOG sale. Looking forward to that after finishing a few other things.

FINALLY. Get the Knossos launcher, download the mediavps and such and enjoy the lovely new visuals.

https://fsnebula.org/knossos/

Yeah some days I just want to sit down and finally do the FS2 campaign. I had it all installed a few years ago but only got through a few missions.

Stele wrote:

Yeah some days I just want to sit down and finally do the FS2 campaign. I had it all installed a few years ago but only got through a few missions.

Oh you must yes. Still the best story campaign in all of space gaming, with the best dogfighting along with it. So memorable.

Now now, it's going to be hard to top the TIE Fighter story, especially the first 7 battles before the expansion.

As much as I love the TIE Fighter story, don't get me wrong, IMO Freespace 2 is the pinnacle of space-game storytelling. Nothing in my opinion has come close since its release. The only close contenders are the aforementioned TIE Fighter and Star Crusader.

What are some interesting games involving the construction and design of ships? I'm basically inspired by the crappy Starship Corporation to want to play a similar game done better. Im hoping for something focused on the building part.

Cosmoteer is pretty much about building spaceships within a physics simulation. You have to lay out your ship so crew can move around carrying fuel and ammunition.

Defect has you building a spaceship to battle your previous spaceship; when you win, that spaceship mutinies and you have to do it again.

Captain Forever is a light version of a similar concept- building ships from blocks. More action-oriented.

StarMade is a voxel spaceship building game, similar to Space Engineers.

The Space Empires 4x games have ship design of the "place components into the hull slots" type.

If you're crazy in just the right direction, Aurora 4x lets you build spaceships in the "if you want to build a spaceship from scratch you must first create the universe" way.

I would add Space Haven which lets you design your ship with and then use it in an FTL survival-type game.

Great suggestions so far. I typically hate sh*t building but games like BossConstructor, Reassembly and Galactic Civilizations 3 have efficient and well-designed ship building. Oh also Space Scavenger and Avorion.

Thanks so much for reminding me of Cosmoteer! I must have tried it a while back, since there was an old dir on my system, but it looks quite tasty now.

Veloxi wrote:

Great suggestions so far. I typically hate sh*t building but games like BossConstructor, Reassembly and Galactic Civilizations 3 have efficient and well-designed ship building. Oh also Space Scavenger and Avorion.

Oh man, one extra vote for Reassembly. Loved that game.

Yeah I think reassembly is the only one of those I played but it was a lot of fun a few years ago.