Space Sims/Strategy Games Catch-All

Friends, I just had what was essentially my biggest and toughest invasion zone ever in Star Fleet II, against 64 units in total. It took an hour in real-time and cost me dozens of troops, but in the end, it was an amazing fight, so much so I wrote up a little AAR about it that I hope you'll enjoy.

https://steamcommunity.com/games/147...

So I saw something about a PC-gaming focus group on PC can get a $250 gift card, so I signed up. Why not?

Today they emailed me more information, including asking this:

“Record a brief (30 - 60 seconds) video, where you introduce yourself, tell us where you are from, your age, and answer the following: What do you most like about Stellaris? Why? How would you feel if you couldn’t play it?”

Yeah, I didn’t realize this would focus on Stellaris. I emailed them back and said no thank you.

I mean:

“What do you most like about Stellaris?” Nothing. Not a god damned thing.

“How would you feel if you couldn’t play it?” Fantastic. I’d sleep like a baby.

I’d rather lose money than waste time playing Stellaris.

Tell us how you *really* feel, though...

You should ask them which version of Stellaris they want you to think about when answering.

Math wrote:

You should ask them which version of Stellaris they want you to think about when answering.

HAhhahahaha nice.

Hey friends, the dev who made the amazing Starships Unlimited is now giving it (and all his games) away for free!

https://apezone.com/posts/201114/

I just found out that while I've been playing X4: Foundations, completely mismanaging crew morale in Star Traders: Frontiers, and then playing X4: Foundations, two awesome labor-of-love space games got big updates.

Evochron Legacy is now Evochron Legacy SE with an extensive changelog.

And Starsector just hit version 0.95a, which adds "strong narrative RPG elements" that the devs wrote a whole blog post about a little while ago.

Crew morale is easy, just turn them loose in the Spice Bar every time it drops.

I was watching some let's plays of Starsector this morning that have me intrigued. Any opinions on it?

Robear wrote:

Crew morale is easy, just turn them loose in the Spice Bar every time it drops. :-)

I think I spent a little too much time around backwater ports that didn't have enough spice for my entire crew. At any rate, I got into a death-spiral of mutiny after mutiny. I figure I'll just start over -- I hadn't put too much time into that playthrough.

PWAlessi wrote:

I was watching some let's plays of Starsector this morning that have me intrigued. Any opinions on it?

As of the previous major release, I really liked it.

Gameplay is a lot like Escape Velocity plus RPG-lite and resource management layers.

The setting is post-apocalyptic space opera -- you're in a sector of space that a major power had just recently expanded into and started terraforming planets for settlement, when suddenly the jump gates stopped working. The sector has been isolated for a couple of hundred years at the start of the game. There's a core region of populated systems where you can hire crew, buy supplies and ships, and get missions, surrounded by lots of space to explore and find salvage and danger in.

When I last played, establishing colonies on planets and building industries was the latest big addition and there were only a couple of plot missions. Now there's more plot to go with the sandbox.

Got into starsector a little while back. It's basically space mount and blade for me. Which is great. Played for a good while and had a decent sized colonies. Good fun even if it peters out at the end.

Recent got into x4. Lost a week to that. Uninstalled it in anger four times. Reinstalled cause I kept thinking about it. I love the x series but they can always be better games.

Hey folks, how is Chaos Galaxy?

I didn't click with it but I know people who love it. *shrug*

Out of nowhere, a new, semi-official, free expansion for X3 has dropped: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/483330/view/3048351062952387069

Free if you already own X3:AP, and various X-series games are discounted for a while on steam too.

Oh man... would be nice to slaughter some Boron.

Was just trying it, but after playing x4 it was hard to go back to x3. x4 still has lots of issues but a lot of the stuff they added I really miss when it's gone. It just feels better.

master0 wrote:

Was just trying it, but after playing x4 it was hard to go back to x3. x4 still has lots of issues but a lot of the stuff they added I really miss when it's gone. It just feels better.

X: Rebirth was such a departure from what I loved about the series that I've not yet bought X4. Is it back to the X3 roots?

Math wrote:
master0 wrote:

Was just trying it, but after playing x4 it was hard to go back to x3. x4 still has lots of issues but a lot of the stuff they added I really miss when it's gone. It just feels better.

X: Rebirth was such a departure from what I loved about the series that I've not yet bought X4. Is it back to the X3 roots?

I can't compare it to rebirth since I never played it but X4 feels very X3. Large universe, that seems like its doing its own thing. Trade, fight, explore. Buy ships and make factories all the things I loved from x3. The changes I liked were that the universe seemed more alive. Ship flying around a lot. Fights going on and people asking for help. Better UI and controls although not by a large margin.

Also liked how long distance travel works. They added sort of space high ways. Limit SETA as something more optional. Instead having a travel mode that feels better. One thing that grew on me was being able to leave your ship and walk/float around. Thought it was silly at first but definitely made my ship feel more real. Mining ships are added. The new station building is nicer, and can actually make semi decent looking stations. Actual docking pads.

That said there's still a lot of issues with it. The AI is better and more real, but still can be dumb as rocks. Especially if you are in sector. So much is clunky and unintuitive like all x series games. The in game notes/guide is not good. Ship load outs are rather boring, as the gear is so similar. Combat can be bit unbalanced for certain weapons or ship classes. Turrets are borderline useless. Making destroyer class ships meh. Mission repetition, etc. The new signal scanning system is meh.

Still lost a good couple weeks to it. So thumbs up and probable still the most accessible for none space sim players. Comparatively..

Made me confident enough to try elite dangerous. Which I bounced hard off of. But that is its own thing.

Evochron Legacy's VR mode now supports VR controllers y'all, and it's MOSTLY FANTASTIC. It still needs a bit of tweaking, but you can switch from one hand being throttle and the other to stick, and vice versa, or off so you can use the cursor, pretty easily. Did a few missions and had a BLAST. Once I figure out how to tweak it a bit more it's gonna be likely the best VR space cockpit sim you can get.

About 5 hours into X3: Farnham's Legacy and am enjoying myself. These first hours have been far less of a sandbox and actually a pretty linear set of missions within a 6-system closed area. The quests are good about doling out the rewards you need to get started: a TS class transport, a homebase station, a basic resource factory, etc.

One oddity is that there has been absolutely no combat so far. It's not necessarily a bad thing though, since combat has always taken a back-seat to empire-building in X3 anyway.

Thanks master0 for your thoughts on X4! Sounds a bit like they took some innovations from Rebirth (very busy ship traffic, the highway system) and put them into a more X3-like experience. Cool.

Confession: Finally got around to Everspace. I *love* the controls.

garion333 wrote:

Confession: Finally got around to Everspace. I *love* the controls.

Mouse and keyboard right?

Stele wrote:
garion333 wrote:

Confession: Finally got around to Everspace. I *love* the controls.

Mouse and keyboard right?

Controller, actually

Ew.

Stele wrote:

Ew.

Hey let people like what they like, even if the game was designed from the ground up for mouse and keyboard flight.

garion333 wrote:

Confession: Finally got around to Everspace. I *love* the controls.

It’s a great game! Exceptionally excited for those mechanics to be applied to a semi-open world RPG. I backed the sequel’s Kickstarter and have the early access version but won’t play until 1.0.

Vector wrote:
garion333 wrote:

Confession: Finally got around to Everspace. I *love* the controls.

It’s a great game! Exceptionally excited for those mechanics to be applied to a semi-open world RPG. I backed the sequel’s Kickstarter and have the early access version but won’t play until 1.0.

I've dabbled a bit with it and so far it's f*ckING FANTASTIC.

Veloxi wrote:
Vector wrote:
garion333 wrote:

Confession: Finally got around to Everspace. I *love* the controls.

It’s a great game! Exceptionally excited for those mechanics to be applied to a semi-open world RPG. I backed the sequel’s Kickstarter and have the early access version but won’t play until 1.0.

I've dabbled a bit with it and so far it's f*ckING FANTASTIC.

I'm keeping myself pure other than reading the kickstarter backer updates. It really is aiming for my dream space game.

Veloxi wrote:

Evochron Legacy's VR mode now supports VR controllers y'all, and it's MOSTLY FANTASTIC. It still needs a bit of tweaking, but you can switch from one hand being throttle and the other to stick, and vice versa, or off so you can use the cursor, pretty easily. Did a few missions and had a BLAST. Once I figure out how to tweak it a bit more it's gonna be likely the best VR space cockpit sim you can get.

If I remember right, you're running it on an Quest 2? I tried it with the same headset and found the scale was way off and the VR controls weren't doing anything I wanted them to. I didn't know you could switch the type, and I saw something in their forums about a VR setup file that I planned to go take a look at. I assume you've gone down the same road - any chance you'd share what tweaks you've made to give a jump start?

I've actually not tweaked anything. On the Quest 2 the grip buttons cycle through joystick, throttle and off, for cursor mode. Cursor mode is activated with the secondary/B button on either controller. Works great.

I did tell him the top bar was a bit high on the Quest 2 so hopefully something will be done about it.