Gratuitous Space Battles Catch-all

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Website:
http://www.positech.co.uk/gratuitous...

Trailer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=docKF...

PEW PEW LAZERGUNS!

EDIT: Game is now in beta. Which for this developer means you get early access to the entirely playable game with the risk of a few bugs. Anyone feel like jumping right in?

This looks pretty awesome. Apparently it's all about picking the right fleet and outfitting them with the right equipment, once the battle starts it's all automated.

Looks like Gal Civ. Gal Civ has this mechanic, and a whole lot of depth to the rest of the game too.

Well it's certainly honest with itself.

This game is actually being done by Qt3's cliffski. Here is his thread discussing the game

Going 2D seems to kind of miss the point of having battles in space. On the other hand, PEW PEW LASERS!

Looks great all around. Ive been waiting for a very long time to find more games that take into account little details like turret placement.

LOL @ the sounds, they sound like old DOS game midi.

docvego wrote:

This game is actually being done by Qt3's cliffski.

I wonder if he ever posts here at GWJ.

Updated the thread title given that this game is now purchasable. it sounds and looks like a blast to play. But I'm still going to hold off until I can hear some more about it.

They talked about this on the Idle Thumbs podcast, but basically what Sinatar said months ago. You outfit your ships and then they do the battle automatically. It sounded kind of like a puzzle game where you had to get the right defenses and weapons to win a particular battle.

Thats actually a plus for me. Superheavy micromanagement during combat is something that I hate in a space sim. Having a pause button slightly alleviates the problem but it breaks up the action.

If there were a demo I would be more inclined to give it a shot. $20 with no demo is kind of a leap.

Yeah me too. There WILL be a demo at the "actual" release date.

I grabbed this on a whim Thursday.

It's a hell of a lot of fun. A buddy of mine and I lost about 6 hours playing it last night. It's kind of like a tower defense game, and is a huge amount of fun. It's also extremely easy to mod.

You should definitely check it out.

I like the sound of this. I first saw it awhile back when I was trying to run a gaming blog and I was looking at what other blogs were doing. The blog of the developer of this game (Cliffski, as mentioned) is one of them I came across and he was just talking about the very early versions of the game. I'm kind of surprised that he has turned it out so quickly, but this isn't the first game he has done as a lone developer either, he has several others under his belt. I haven't played them, but I've heard they're all decent.

I will wait for the demo, though, because the idea of sitting back and watching the battles does sound boring, even though I know there is a lot more to it than that.

So this is basically championship manager, but with spaceships?

It's an interesting game, but it's a bit steep for $20.00.

I bought it and a pre-order for Sins Diplomacy with the Survey discount for a little over $20.00 and I still feel like it could have been cheaper.

Actually, this game would probably make the perfect iPhone game.

When I first read about this game I got mixed feeling because it's a lot like a crummy game I've been working on and off (mostly off) for a couple years.

Mine is 3d though, which is way cooler than 2d. It's also much harder to code and close enough to my work that it isn't always enjoyable to do, (that's why it's been mostly off) maybe GSB will motivate me to actually get something done with it.

I bought the game a few weeks ago to get into the beta. In terms of playtime and fun, I'd say I easily got my investment back already and I also see myself playing this on and on in the weeks to come. It took me a few matches to get used to the fact that you have no direct control over what's going during the battle - and there always will be moments where you think: you morons! -, but once you accept and adapt to that, the game keeps your glued to your PC. It's dangerous because due to its nature it can be played very casually. So, yeah: "How about a quick game of GSB before I turn off the PC for today?" Evil.

It's a slim design - there's no meta-game in which you're conquering the galaxy or something. GSB is really all about "GSB", and I'm fine with that.

I've played the same battles numerous times because it's just challenging to find better approaches and test new ship designs. Not to mention that the fact that the game can be easily modded. Yes, there already is a Star Wars mod. I could also see how the MP part keeps some Goodjers here busy. MP = you creating and uploading a challenge to a specific player or the whole community. The other players then download that challenge - all done within the game - and try to create fleet that can beat the one the other player created.

And yeah, I think it has the required amount of oooomph and pew pew.

IMAGE(http://img527.imageshack.us/img527/758/gsb.jpg)

How playable is the beta? Any crashes? Ive been thinking of getting this early.

I got the game on September 1st and am running it under Vista. It has not crashed a single time so far. I've noticed a few occasional bugs such as units forgetting a command once in a while --I usually tell my missile/torpedo-laden ships to ignore small fighters since they're too fast, but sometimes it seems they still fire at them-- and minor interface glitches --wrong ship types being displayed when doing a mouse-over in the tactical setup screen--, however, none of them is a dealbreaker to me.

Looks like the full version will be released soon. Found this article over at Rock Paper Shotgun. Gratuitous Space Modelling, Release

Tigerbill wrote:

Looks like the full version will be released soon. Found this article over at Rock Paper Shotgun. Gratuitous Space Modelling, Release

That's awesome. When I looked at some of the early screenshots I thought, "Wow. Star Trek ships. How very original."

With them releasing Mod Tools, I wonder how unbalanced you could make the game? Like build a really big ship with lots of slots for everything then make it cost next to nothing, or fighters with more than four slots and bump up their onboard power generation.

The final version is up and available now. Same for the official demo.

Spunior wrote:

The final version is up and available now. Same for the official demo.

Hopefully this means I can play again, its been broken for me for the past month or so. I keep getting a "3D Engine failed to start" error tried reinstalling several times, no luck through Impulse.

Been playing the heck outta this in Beta for the past few months, if you like big spaceship battles and space-splosion-porn, then this scratches the itch.

That and it's cool that an indie developer has been so open on his design/reiteration process (vis his blog) that I just wanted to support that model.

How open is the game to variation of strategy?

The strategy that really worked in the Demo was to pack as much oomph as possible in a small section of space. Then use the beefier ships near the centre where they'll draw all the fire and the rabble to the top of the screen where it will sort of swing around and mop up the field. I can expand on the strategy by making my cruisers retreat easily and give them repair modules while adding additional speed and short range fire power to my frigates.

I haven't found any other working strategy though. What did you folks come up with?

Anyone played the release version? Is it coming to STEAM?

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