Sid Meier's Starships

[fragger]

I took a punt on this and bought it from Steam. What the heck, it was only twenty bucks.

It's a sort of interesting space strategy game, nothing world-shattering but engaging. Being an online purchase there is no manual, although like the Civ series there is an ingame help - the "Spacepedia". It's a different kettle of fish to the Civ games but is still slightly akin to them. You choose a faction to be (there are eight to choose from) and you start in your home system, and you choose one of three overarching ideologies to follow (this feature is a holdover from Beyond Earth). Whichever one of these you choose gives you an overall benefit in one area or another. Each faction also comes with its own inherent strength or special bonus, like the cultures in Civ.

The main gaming screen shows your home planet in space, with others nearby that you can visit. Your ships have a limited range at first so you can't immediately go haring off to the far reaches of the galaxy, and you start out with a rudimentary fleet of two of them, which can be modified to various extents once you get the money, science and materials together. You can purchase new ships later as you accumulate more resources. Ships can be upgraded in weaponry, shields and armour, engines, can be modified to carry fighters and torpedoes, and a few other things. Upon visiting one of the nearby planets you will be presented with a mission, which you can accept or decline. Accepting and accomplishing that mission will earn you an influence point with that planet. Amass four influence points with the planet and it will join your Federation. Whichever player in the game can be the first to get at least 51% of the galactic population into their Federation wins.

Of course the other factions are trying to do the same thing as you. As in Civ, you can go to war with them if you want, or you can elect to simply try and get along with them. It's up to you. Until you accumulate those four influence points with a particular planet however, it doesn't belong to anybody's federation. I completed three missions for a planet and thus earned three influence points, but when I pulled my fleet out to send them elsewhere, one of my opponents moved in and did a mission for that same planet, gaining themselves an influence point while knocking mine back down to two. At the end of your turn you can leave your fleet in orbit around whatever planet you're currently at and the other factions can't come and do missions there without declaring war on you. So more than one fleet may be required to hang on to what you've earned but at this point in the game I don't know if you can actually have more than one.

Each planet that you earn influence with will supply you with additional resources, of which there are four or five types. Once a planet has joined your Federation you can build cities and improvements upon it to increase their output, and there are one-off "Wonders", like in Civ, that you can build. Unlike Civ, you don't actually build these things but buy them outright once you have the credits. You also buy new technologies, so unlike Civ these things don't take x number of turns to complete, you just buy them when you have whatever resources are required.

The most fun is when you accept a planet's mission and the game goes into tactical mode. You and your opponents (which may be pirates, aliens, or some other kind of galactic upstarts) are placed in a hex-gridded space battlefield to duke it out in a turn-based fight. The battles are fun and there are good tactical elements to them, such as asteroid fields that act as cover but also obstruct your lines of fire and movement, and the fact that the shielding on your ships (and your opponents') are stronger at the front than they are at the rear. So it's a case of trying to get on your opponent's tail to get the best hits. The weapons are all ranged, unlike in Civ where most units have to get into an adjacent hex to attack a target, but the weapons such as lasers lose their effectiveness the further away the target is, so it's a cool tactical affair to try to manoeuvre into a position where you can inflict the most damage. Put a laser right up their engine port from a hex or two away and you'll score a whopping hit, but hit them from extreme range front-on with a bunch of small asteroids in the way and you might barely scratch them. The missions are quite varied so they don't get too repetitive.

One interesting aspect is that the more you make your ship crews do, the more fatigued they get, requiring you to give them "shore leave". This also gives you the chance to repair your ships should they need it. You can also wheel and deal in resources and equipment whenever you put into a port, which gives you scope for trading stuff you might not need right now for something you do.

This battle screens look nice, with the hex grid seeming to hang in space, and is zoomable to quite an extent. The backdrops look great and the map has a quality of depth to it, almost like you could reach your arm into it. Even though the battles are in space they're still two-dimensional affairs in gameplay, but the map can be rotated from left to right and tilted up and down so that you can swing it around and move it to view all the way from directly above to plane-level. It only does this while you hold the right mouse button and move the mouse around - as soon as you let go of the button it smoothly swings back to its normal orientation.

I mucked around with it for a couple of hours and while it has nothing like the depth of Civ, it's quite a fun game. It has a nice futuristic atmosphere to it and while the graphics wouldn't set the world on fire they're still excellent. Like all games that bear Sid Meier's name and which actually include him in the design team, the user interface is very friendly and easy to w@&k with while being attractive to look at.

I can't see myself getting hooked into this like I did with Civ, but for the time being I'll definitely be going back for more :)

[PZ]

Nice write-up fragger  :-X

Doesn't look like a game I would appreciate, but it is nice to know of the new titles.

[fragger]

Cheers :) I like these kinds of games, provided they're well-conceived and engaging.

There are actually four ways to win: Science (be the first player to raise a particular technology category up to level six), Wonders (be first to control seven Wonders), Population (get at least 51% of the galactic population into your Federation) and Domination (clobber the other players and be the last one standing). You can elect to have just one of these victory types enabled, or you have them all active - they don't appear to be independently selectable as they are in Civ. My first game I got whupped but good, didn't even come close to winning, but I didn't really know what I was doing, quite :-\\ In my second game I squeaked home with a Wonders victory, even though I was going for Population and was within a whisker of doing it.

It's a tough little game, even on Easy difficulty (lowest of four levels). There is more to it than immediately meets the eye, it's quite absorbing. It's not enormously complicated but is structured in such a way that you can try all sorts of different approaches. There is no tech tree as in Civ but instead there are eight tech areas to level up in (level six in any of them being the max), which will give you faster ships, better weapons and shielding, greater tactical advantages, and so forth. This in addition to being able to customize the individual ships in your fleet.

Which brings up some nice strategic elements. Do you go for an even spread of equipment for all your ships, or do you focus on creating one capital ship and use the others in tactical support roles? Do you concentrate on upgrading a small number of ships to be bristling with weapons and armour, or do you go for more numerous, lighter and less well-equipped ships and try to overwhelm with numbers? Do you concentrate on equipping your ships with more offensive weaponry, or do you go for adding more fighter launch bays, extra torpedo tubes, better scanning technology or cloaking devices? A huge fleet doesn't necessarily mean dominance - it's how you put them together, and how you use them tactically in battle, that counts.

It's not as time-consuming a game as Civ. I guess it will depend on map size, of which there are four, and number of players. So far a game has typically lasted about three-four hours on the second-smallest map size with three opponents. I imagine it would last a lot longer on the biggest map size, with the maximum number of players. There is no turn limit in Starships, the game just keeps going until someone wins. There is diplomacy in the game but it's very rudimentary, nothing like Civ.

The whole game is a little like Civ-Lite in space :-()

I actually can't wait to have another go, I am having fun with it. I can take screenies, I'll try to remember to grab a couple next game :)

[fragger]

Oops - I forgot to grab screenies, got too engrossed :-[ :-D

I played a couple more games and I really like it. I came within another whisker of winning a Population victory but some other space-dog snatched it away from me at the last minute :D So I had another game and this time I won.

Funny, I was reading some reviews of this online. I don't think I've ever seen such a wide range of responses to a game. Some sites rated it as high as around 80/100, while some gave it a big fat zero. I think some people were expecting a sprawling Civ-style micro-managerial space extravaganza and felt let down by the fact that is isn't. Well, it doesn't pretend to be - it's designed to be a relatively quick, fun little game with just enough strategy elements to keep you occupied for a couple of hours, then make you want to come back and try a different approach. There's a reason why it requires "only" about 700MB of disk space and costs about US$15.00. It downloaded in about five minutes when I bought it.

Some critics complained about the antiquated look of the graphics, but I believe it was deliberately made to resemble a retro-game. For what it is, I think it's fine, and it adds to the quirky character of the thing. Looking at it, it's more sophisticated graphically than some seem to give it credit for - it just happens to be designed to look like a classic old-school game. I think some folks have become spoiled by all the high-end visual candy these days so if a game doesn't have a "wow factor" appearance they tend to diss it. Personally I'd rather play a game that has (deceptively) simple graphics but is engaging and fun than one that has all the animated whizzbangery in the world but is as enjoyable as having polyp surgery.

But then these are "professional" critics, who are probably about the most opinionated people in the world.

[Art Blade]

 :-D

[PZ]

... it requires "only" about 700MB of disk space and costs about US$15.00. It downloaded in about five minutes when I bought it...

Dang fragger, I remember when a 700 mb download for you would take 700 days  ????

[Art Blade]

 :-D

[fragger]

 :-D True, PZ! That occurred to me after I'd posted. Just goes to show how quickly one can become blasé when one has it good :-()

Here's some screenies. Due to the nature of the fine linework, these pics show up a bit better when expanded - and of course even better on uncompressed fullscreen mode. Compressing them to post here kills a lot of the fine detail.

This is the strategic display, showing you the overall picture (one small part of it, it can be scrolled around and zoomed in and out to quite a large extent):

[smg id=7755 align=center width=600]

The planets with four blue arcs around them are the ones I've brought into my federation. The heavy blue lines linking some planets are warp gates, which you can build. These enable your ships to "jump" from one planet to another without fatiguing your crews. The thin grey lines connecting other planets indicate that you can travel between these worlds but only in "normal" space, which tires out your crews. My home planet is Lyncis 20, above left of centre, and my fleet is currently in orbit around the central planet, Carinae 30. The planet at lower right, Serpentis 40, is one I'm working on. When you visit a planet, a mission is offered, which if accomplished will give you anywhere from one to four influence points, depending on mission difficulty. Each coloured arc around a planet represents an influence point with the corresponding player. A planet my have influence points with more than one player at a time, in which case you would see arcs of differing colours, but whoever earns all four gets the planet, e.g. if another faction has three points with a planet and you earn one point with that same planet, the other player's points will then drop back to two. Here I've earned three influence points with Serpentis 40 without any competition. If I earn one more point this planet will join my Federation.

This is the tactical display, or battle map. It's scrollable and zoomable, and can be temporarily rotated and tilted. This is where you go when you accept a mission, of which there is a variety of types. I'm at max zoom out here. My two ships are at centre right, the enemy to the left. The maps are animated, with slowly tumbling asteroids and rotating planets. The asteroids act as barriers and/or cover. The red whirlpooly things are jump gates, presumably left by an ancient alien civilization - move a ship into one and it will pop out of one of the others, you'll never know which one. This can be good for making hasty getaways, or for trying to outflank your enemies - if you're lucky. The grey outline around my fleet indicates the current movement range of my selected ship:

[smg id=7756 align=center width=600]

Here are the same two ships of my fleet, at max zoom in. The "7" under each ship is its movement allowance this turn, i.e. seven hexes. This of course changes as the ships move around, as does the movement range outline. Neither ship has moved yet this turn:

[smg id=7757 align=center width=600]

A different battle map, rotated and tilted. You can change the direction of your view by holding down the right mouse button and moving the mouse around - when you release the button the display swings back smoothly to the standard view angle. It's handy for checking the positions of other ships, and it looks cool:

[smg id=7758 align=center width=600]

When you fire, the program tracks your shots through space, which is fun to watch. This enemy ship is about to get some plasma right up the kazoo. The small "flash" indicates that part of the salvo has hit an asteroid. You can fire through some of the less-dense asteroid clusters, but at reduced weapon effectiveness:

[smg id=7759 align=center width=600]

This screen is where you upgrade and repair your ships, or buy new ones. The appearance of your ships reflects the new hardware:

[smg id=7760 align=center width=600]


There's lots more to see, but I don't want to post too many pics here.

For a $20 game, I'm finding it very addictive. I may get sick of it eventually - maybe - but so far it's been great value for my dough :-X

[Art Blade]

looks good :)

[PZ]

 :-X

[fragger]

I found one somewhat annoying flaw - well, not a flaw exactly, just an irksome bit of gameplay design. There are four victory types - Domination (conquest), Population, Wonders and Science. At the start of a new game you can enable just one of these victory types, or you can select "all", which enables the lot. I thought that selecting, say, "science" would mean that the only way any player can win a game is by achieving a science victory, but no - it means that only you, as the human player, can win by science alone. The other players can still win by any of the other means. This makes it pretty danged tough as not only are you restricting yourself to a single mode of victory but you have to block the other players from achieving any of the other victory types "behind your back" as it were. Frigging difficult, and a tad unfair.

I had a somewhat longer game last night that lasted for about five hours, by playing on a bigger map and with harder difficulty. There are four difficulty levels: Easy, Moderate, Hard and Impossible (yep, that's what it's called). I started out playing on small maps (four sizes) with three opponents on Easy mode while I learnt the ropes, which doesn't take too long, and a game would typically last from one to two hours. Ramping up all of these settings results in a substantially longer, and tougher, game. Moving from Easy to Moderate difficulty also caused some extra options and features to appear in the game, which were actually pretty cool.

One feature in the battle part of the game (in all difficulty modes) is the inclusion of "Battle Cards". With every battle you will start with a randomly-chosen Battle Card (which appears as an icon in the corner of the screen, doesn't actually resemble a card) which can be played once per battle. One might boost the shield strength of the currently selected ship for the duration of the current battle, another might double the weapon strength of the selected ship for one shot. There's heaps of different ones. Moving from Easy to Moderate difficulty brings a new feature onto the main map, patches of space called "Dark Matter". Visiting one of these (and returning) will cost your crew a couple of fatigue points but will add an extra Battle Card to your next battle. You can do this as often as you like before your crew becomes too fatigued and thus rack up a small stack of Battle Cards to go in with next battle. These can give you quite an edge.

You have ten fatigue points. In pic #1 above this is seen in the lower-left corner of the screen, the row of heads. Here I only have two crew left who are unfatigued. Every time you fly through "normal" space instead of taking a warp gate, one head will turn red. If they all turn red you can no longer move your fleet for that turn. Fatigue level has no effect on battle (not as far as I can tell), it just limits your travel between planets per turn. Building warp gates on planets negates this, allowing unlimited jumps per turn between planets so equipped, but you can't build a Warp Gate in a Dark Matter area, so travelling there and back again will cost two fatigue points. At any time, when you're in orbit around any planet, you can click on the "Shore Leave" button (lower right in the same picture). This will remove any crew fatigue, and also ends your turn.

One thing the game sorely needs IMO is some sort of overall situation display. On a large map, a lot of scrolling around is required to keep track of all the planets in your Federation. The main map won't zoom out far enough to be able to see it all in one go. The scrolling is fairly quick so it's not too much of a chore, but occasionally I'll scroll around and find a far-flung planet or two that I've forgotten about...

It's a fun game, if you're into turn-based space strategy. There's a deeper strategy element to the game than first meets the eye and quite a number of different ways you can go at any point. Sid does these things pretty well :-X

[fragger]

Here's a bit of bad news followed by a bit of good.

The bad - I was in the middle of a game when it abruptly crashed to desktop. One second I was playing the game, the next second it was gone and I was looking at my desktop wallpaper. Very soon after that I was muttering epithets - both at Firaxis for making a game that contained the possibility of a CTD event, and at myself for not having had the presence of mind to do a save at any point during the preceding two hours.

The good - I immediately fired the game back up, hit "Continue" from the main menu and it put me exactly back to where I'd been in the instant before the crash, so I didn't lose the previous two hours' worth of gaming. I immediately recanted the epithets directed at Firaxis, but not those directed at myself :-[

You can save the game at any point, but evidently there is some sort of internal autosave that takes place not only at the end of each turn, but every time you make a move, which is a pretty cool feature as well as being a nice little bit of fault tolerance. Well done Firaxis - if I could give you a kudo here I would :-X

One could argue that the game shouldn't have crashed in the first place, but the fact that I could pick up immediately from where the game crashed without me having done a save mitigated that particular sin to a large extent.

Fatigue level has no effect on battle (not as far as I can tell)...

Actually, it does. If you go into a fight with a fatigued crew, you won't do as well. Who would have thought...?

[PZ]

...The good - I immediately fired the game back up, hit "Continue" from the main menu and it put me exactly back to where I'd been in the instant before the crash, so I didn't lose the previous two hours' worth of gaming...

lol, you'd never get that in a Ubi game - crash and likely you'd lose everything 8-X

[fragger]

Probably ::)

[Art Blade]

 :-D