Space Sims/Strategy Games Catch-All

I saw this one today. It's called X Rebirth. It looks interesting so far, but nothing really known about it.

misplacedbravado wrote:
kyrieee wrote:

This one might be a bit obscure but I played the crap out of it when I was younger and really loved it:

Escape Velocity

I have fond memories of the first two in the series (and even sorta tried modding the second), but the demo for EV: Nova failed to hook me, and I don't remember why.

Yeah I didn't like Nova as much either, but I didn't find any good screens from the others

gewy wrote:

Anyone remember playing that old BBS game Trade Wars? That was so sweet at the time.

Anyway, space strategy should be my favorite genre, but I always just keep going back to MOO2. Seems like that game is near perfect for me and I doubt any will top it. Played a bunch of Galactic Civ 1+2 but it just didn't grab me.

But, I'm thinking I should try a new one and have been eying Sword of the Stars and Sins of a Solar Empire for a while. Anyone wanna tell me which is the better of the two?

They are different sorts of games, so it is hard to answer that. You know, the whole apples to oranges sort of thing.
SotS is a turn-based strategy game, similar to MOO. It has a lot going for it: semi-random research trees, tech effects what you can do in-game (i.e. better tech allows you to see and do more in the tactical battles), different factions play quite a bit differently (much moreso than in the MOOs); for example, each faction has different methods of FTL travel. On the downside, it is more complex than MOO, you need to play it a couple of times before the tech tree makes sense and you how certain tech impact not just your civ but also the gameplay, and the 3D strategic map can take a lot of getting used to.
Sins is an RTS, and so plays a lot differently than Sword. For me, it has the "twitchy" RTS feel to it (although not as bad as something like Company of Heroes, it is a little bit slower paced). The battles are gorgeous, it is a simple game to get into (relative to Sword anyway), and there are a lot of cool RTS tropes that were translated into a space game well (like units gaining experience, cool downs for building and ship abilities, things like that). On the downside (for me) is that it feels less like running an empire and more like herding cats (this is how all RTS games feel to me) and there really is little civ building.

I like them both a lot but they are different. If you like RTS, it is hard to see how you could go wrong with Sins. Plus there are still quite a few Goodjers that still play, so you can get an MP session if you want (did I mention that it has both coop and PvP online play?). If you prefer turn-based strategy, Sword is probably the best that has come out recently although I would be hard-pressed to recommend it over MOO2 (or even MOO, which I like even better than MOO2, klunky UI aside). If you can get it cheap (and I think I've seen it in the $6 range a bit recently), it's well worth that.

garion333 wrote:

Someone should smack me for not immediately saying: AI War

Here's our thread. I honestly think it's one of the best scifi RTS games I've ever played. Ever.

As the other half of the Official AI War cheerleading team, I was about to smack someone for not seeing it mentioned.

IMAGE(http://www.co-optimus.com/images/upload/image/2010/Ai-war-children.jpg)

Great thread idea!

AI War and GalCiv2 top my list, and I would recommend them to anyone. If anyone is looking at GalCiv2 my biggest suggestion is to make sure you get the Gold edition with all the expansions. The biggest thing this adds is race-specific tech trees. Sweet.

Is anyone still playing Gratuitious Space Battles? After my initial euphoria it lost a lot of steam with me... did the "campagin" mode freshen things up enough?

Michael wrote:

Is anyone still playing Gratuitious Space Battles? After my initial euphoria it lost a lot of steam with me... did the "campagin" mode freshen things up enough?

Campaign mode kinda stinks, unfortunately.

garion333 wrote:

Evochron Mercenary is actually the latest Evochron.

Gunner wrote:

Have a question about Evochron Mercenaries. Does it just encompass fighter sized craft for the player or can you control the full range? Any other general comments would be great too.

The timing of this thread is pretty nice - I just got back into Evochron, having purchased Legends, playing about 4 hours or so and never getting back to it. I seem to be getting more out of Mercenary (I didn't get it when it was released though - just picked it up about a month or so ago).

For the "feel" of the game, it's best to just download the demo and play - its not that big of a download and if you like it, you get to keep going with the pilot you started (or start over, your call). As for Gunner's question, its just the fighter/single seater type craft that you can fly - no capital ships. There is a feature that lets 2 players in multiplayer mode fly in one ship, one as a pilot just like normal and the other one as a dedicated gunner. I've not tried that so don't know what its like.

The Evochron universe itself is huge and multiplayer, with some small accommodations, is the same as single player. What I mean is if I fly to a station in single player, quit and join the multiplayer server, I'm at the same station as in single player. As an example of the players that play this game, I was in a dogfight with AI last night, won the battle but was damaged enough that all I could do was limp along towards the station, which was a ways away (probably would have been a 30-40 minute real time trip). A player heard my plea for help, came and dropped a repair facility for me so I could get repaired back up, and we proceeded to complete a few more missions together. It's a nice bunch of guys.

Multiplayer allows clan formation and station building, which assists in the claiming of territory, which results in lesser hostility in that system for clan members and better mission prices and trade prices.

Oh, and the Evochron game is developed by one guy, except for the music which someone else did for him. Documentation is pretty fragmented, but most of what's out there for Legends applies to Mercenary as well. It's clearly a labor of love and I would repeat - try the demo if you're interested.

http://www.starwraith.com/main/go.htm

BlackSabre wrote:

I saw this one today. It's called X Rebirth. It looks interesting so far, but nothing really known about it.

It is the next game in the X series, a sort of soft reboot after X3:Terran Conflict.

I wish the Total War guys would come out with a space sim. I think that could be really interesting.

Grubber788 wrote:

I have Flatspace for the iPod touch, but am not too impressed with it. Anyone have any thoughts on the PC version of the sequel available on Impulse?

A quick look around says Flatspace came out in 2003, and Flatspace 2 came out in 2006. And then the i version in 2009. There's one FAQ for the first game with some decent info. But I can't find anything about the 2nd one really. It does have a slightly higher gamerankings score but there's only 2 and 1 review respectively. And neither game has any reviews on metacritic.

Demo for 2 is 12MB and here.

Starpoint Gemini
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GamersGate
Out of Eight review

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You command a ship along the lines of Star Trek games. There's trading, combat and missions ... and some role playing aspects.

Grubber, I'm interested in your take on the Tarr Chronicles. It goes on sale all the time at GamersGate, but the reviews are just so negative.

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Black Prophecy
F2P MMO (currently in US beta)
Thread

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(Both linked to full size images)

garion333 wrote:

Grubber, I'm interested in your take on the Tarr Chronicles. It goes on sale all the time at GamersGate, but the reviews are just so negative.

Downloading now. I remember playing a little about six months ago and thinking it was OK. I'll be playing this weekend. Also trying to scrounge up a copy of Freelancer.

This is a bit of a stretch, but Weird Worlds is really fun game. It's a quasi-roguelike adventure game in space. It's got trading and fighting though, which is kinda they to all these games. The most interesting thing is that it's randomly generated each new game you fire up and the longest a game will last is a half hour or so.

Kieron Gillen's review at Eurogamer.

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I will also call out Distant Worlds for it's great use of AI. There's no other game of it's type with so much AI control of parts of the game possible. This means it can be played quite differently depending on what you take over, and what the AI controls. Very good game.

I also enjoy banging fleets together in GSB, still. Have not tried the campaign yet, I've been playing it back up since I lost my saved games in the system change.

Weird Worlds is lovely. Nice and fast games. Has a bit of a Star Control 2 vibe mixed with a casual roguelike.

Grubber788 wrote:

Star Fury
All that I know about this game is that I own it. I don't know why I bought it or why I should play it.

That describes my situation with Starshatter (re-released with "The Gathering Storm" subtitle and DX9 support in 2006). It used to be available from Matrix Games, but has since been discontinued according to their website.
The store page from which you cannot order it.

They also have a game series called Starships Unlimited, which I know nothing about. It looks like it features strategery.
At matrixgames.com

EDIT: Turns out I own Star Fury as well
Nobody mentioned Star Trek: Bridge Commander yet.

AUs_TBirD wrote:

]

That describes my situation with Starshatter (re-released with "The Gathering Storm" subtitle and DX9 support in 2006). It used to be available from Matrix Games, but has since been discontinued according to their website.
The store page from which you cannot order it.

Yeah it looks like it's gone. Starshatter.com leads to a nonexistent site as well, bought up by someone with a bunch of ad links on it.

I remember this one, and wanting to play it years ago with it's promises of dynamic campaign, which was one thing we always wanted in the X-Wing series but were never really successfully able to mod in.

With it not for sale anywhere, it almost looks abandoned... hm...

Nightmare wrote:

the "twitchy" RTS feel to it....less like running an empire and more like herding cats....really is little civ building.

OK, so no Sins of a Solar Empire for me then. Thanks for the advice Nightmare. Probably saved me a few bucks.

Yeah, Sins is definitely a traditional RTS with 4X elements added on. Very fun though even if you don't usually like RTSs.

During the Steam Christmas sale, I picked up AI War and X3:TC. More recently, SotS Complete and Space Rangers 2. The only one I've been able to get into so far is SR2.

These have been my first space sim/strategy purchases and I think I'd like these games if I could get into them. I always just seem to run smack into the learning curve and never get further than an hour or two before giving up. They probably just aren't my cup of tea, though I do really like the sandbox/do what you want aspect a lot of them have.

Subscribing to your newsletter. I love these games!

I have really fond memories of playing StarLancer. I've been looking for it on eBay since I couldn't find a digital distributor. It had flaws but time has polished them away.

I just picked up SoTS on sale, and you've inspired me to give AI War a try. I remember reading a description from the developer here a while ago, but I've now got that 'must escape to space' twitch I get every once in a while. Looks like there's a lot of thread to catch up on.

If I understand the issues correctly from what I've read, Starshatter suffered from a number of bugs and bad design decisions, and while the creators kept promising to fix it, they didn't. Eventually Matrix got tired of the customer complaints and ditched it.

ebarstad wrote:

During the Steam Christmas sale, I picked up AI War and X3:TC. More recently, SotS Complete and Space Rangers 2. The only one I've been able to get into so far is SR2.

These have been my first space sim/strategy purchases and I think I'd like these games if I could get into them. I always just seem to run smack into the learning curve and never get further than an hour or two before giving up. They probably just aren't my cup of tea, though I do really like the sandbox/do what you want aspect a lot of them have.

Pick up Master of Orion 2 (sold with the original as a pack) from Good old Games. If you don't like Moo2 this genre isn't for you.

garion333 wrote:

This is a bit of a stretch, but Weird Worlds is really fun game. It's a quasi-roguelike adventure game in space. It's got trading and fighting though, which is kinda they to all these games. The most interesting thing is that it's randomly generated each new game you fire up and the longest a game will last is a half hour or so.

Kieron Gillen's review at Eurogamer.

Cool! I remember playing a bit of the first game in the sorta-series; Strange Adventures in Infinite Space. That game is now available free:
http://www.digital-eel.com/sais/buy.htm

Budo wrote:
ebarstad wrote:

During the Steam Christmas sale, I picked up AI War and X3:TC. More recently, SotS Complete and Space Rangers 2. The only one I've been able to get into so far is SR2.

These have been my first space sim/strategy purchases and I think I'd like these games if I could get into them. I always just seem to run smack into the learning curve and never get further than an hour or two before giving up. They probably just aren't my cup of tea, though I do really like the sandbox/do what you want aspect a lot of them have.

Pick up Master of Orion 2 (sold with the original as a pack) from Good old Games. If you don't like Moo2 this genre isn't for you.

Listen to this man, he knows what he's talking about!

I keep remembering more weird and mind-blowing projects. Like Noctis, the 8-bit-ish exploration of a massive galaxy. No combat, no plot, just millions of stars and planets to explore.

As one of my favorite genres, I'd love to reminisce...:

Anybody play VGA planets back in the day? Multiplayer 4X at it's mid 1990s finest. I really loved that game. Had some fun times with it, especially with the rudimentary multi-player. Can't find any good pictures of it, but you could be basically any race from Star Trek/Wars/BSG you wanted. I think you can still play it now...

The Windows equivalent of that was Stars! that used a rudimentary Windows GUI that basically was equal to a spreadsheet.IMAGE(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/74/Stars_screenshot.png)

Another one of the first multiplayer Space Sim games was Netrek, which has many, many records. According to Wikipedia, it's the oldest Internet game still played presently (started in 1988)
IMAGE(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c2/Netrek-client-cow.png)

I still think Netrek would hold up if introduced now (the only problem would be the graphics).

Neptune's Pride
Real time 4x multiplayer focused
Thread

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I was really hoping GalCiv2 and SotS would be the new and updated space games that replaced MoO2 in my heart, but it was not to be. I could not get into either one. And Nightmare hates me for it.

GalCiv2 has that great ship designer. It is amazing. What I didn't like was the actual combat and conquest. The near literal rock-paper-scissors of weapons and defense, coupled with the drudgery of wide-scale warfare. So sue me, I like my space games to be militarily focused. Combat in GalCiv2 was not at all satisfying to me.

Sword of the Stars I just don't get. I know I need to sit and read/watch how everything in the game works, because I jumped in initially and I felt completely lost. Last game I built some scout ships with weapons that I figured would be useful for feeling out whatever enemies I encountered, except they did nothing (combat, like GalCiv2, is all automatic) and just sat there while enemy ships dragged them into a planet with tractor beams. So the problem now is that my aborted attempts to play the game have sapped all my motivation to learn to play it. It's a catch-22.

You guys have piqued my interest in AI War.

Quintin_Stone wrote:

Sword of the Stars I just don't get. I know I need to sit and read/watch how everything in the game works, because I jumped in initially and I felt completely lost. Last game I built some scout ships with weapons that I figured would be useful for feeling out whatever enemies I encountered, except they did nothing (combat, like GalCiv2, is all automatic) and just sat there while enemy ships dragged them into a planet with tractor beams. So the problem now is that my aborted attempts to play the game have sapped all my motivation to learn to play it. It's a catch-22..

If you're looking for good combat, SotS is the way to go IMO. The tactical battles end up being a lot of fun, totally different from the automatic ones in Galciv2. I know I found myself experimenting with different fleet compositions just to see how they played out on the tactical battles. Huge change between controlling a line of battleships vs. maneuverable and heavy hitting short range cruisers vs. a swarm of mothership-based fast attack ships.

The best part, though, is the tech tree and ship design systems that go hand in hand. There are a bunch of different weapons that have interactions beyond just varying levels of dps on different defenses.

Missles provide long range guaranteed damage, but are vulnerable to point defense systems. There is a whole range of beam and laser weaponry that provide nice consistent damage at varying ranges. Massive spinal mounted heavy beams can tear most ships apart, but are ineffective when some mass driver weapons that actually knock the position and aim off for their targets are thrown against them. Add in fighters, boarding parties, different types of armor and shields for a really engaging experience.

All of these toys are made available through a semi-random tech tree which keeps you on your toes and doesn't allow reliance upon any perfect killer strategies. Highly recommended.