Peter and Andre from Novacore Studios (Legends of Pegasus)

Legends of Pegasus is a new 4X space game that is currently under development by Novacore Studios, with a target release date for Q2 2012. I’ve been following this title for some time now, but apart from a few screenshots I sensed that I knew very little about this new 4X space strategy game. So, I got in touch with the developers at Novacore Studios in order to know more about the title, and to share with you guys what I could unveil about this new promising title. Novacore Studios’ CEO Andre Overhagen kindly accepted to supply some of his time to enlighten us a bit more on their game. Here is what Andre had to say about it:

SS: Where did the idea for developing Legends of Pegasus came from?

Andre Overhagen: My partner Peter Seydel and I have always been big fans of the 4X genre. We’ve grown up with titles like Ascendancy and the Master of Orion series and loved them. So it was only natural that our first game should fall in this category. In the beginning, we chose Pegasus just as a working title, but over time we’ve grown so fond of it that we decided to develop the story based on the name. And this is how Legends of Pegasus came to be.

SS: Tell us more about the different real-time and turn-based gameplay mechanics. How, and when, are they used, and how do they mix together? I mean how is the transition between the two modes achieved?

Andre Overhagen: The game is a classic turn-based strategy title. The only difference is that encounters take place in real-time. This means that if you encounter an enemy faction, you’ll switch to a real-time combat at the end of the turn. Instead of loading an instanced combat map however, the combat takes place right where the enemy ships met. So you may end up fighting next to your settled or upgraded planets, leaving them as well as structures in the orbit open to real-time attacks. Resulting changes to the game environment will be reflected in the following strategy phase.

SS: Please talk a bit about the graphics, sounds and music in Legends of Pegasus.

Andre Overhagen: Our graphics is based on DirectX 9 to make sure that even players with older or less powerful graphic adapters can enjoy Legends of Pegasus. Nevertheless the game offers high resolution textures for impressive graphics that are basically unrivalled in this genre. All sounds and music tracks were created by our own composer in collaboration with external music and sound designers. Our dynamic music and sound system creates a very distinct feeling for each race and offers an atmospheric sound environment for space encounters. A live voice kit enables varying messages from allied ships and background radio messages during combat.

The fact that Legends of Pegasus will have a big single-player campaign is very interesting, since this deviates from the 4X tendency, where games are usually played in sand-box mode. Tell us more about the campaign, and the story behind it (also a bit of the lore). How does that all fit with the game’s victory conditions (the end game)? Is there a sand-box gameplay mode also available? If not how have you planned to tackled a possible lack of game replayability?

Andre Overhagen: During the campaign, you play as the main character “Daniels”. As you guide him through all three factions, you’ll have a chance to try out all playable races in the game. The story is set during an attack war on Earth. You’ll start out with a few surviving human space ships that get sucked through a wormhole, unaware of what happened or why they ended up in a totally unknown galaxy. In the course of the campaign, players will unveil the details and reasons behind this event.

The campaign contains several mission targets that players must complete. However, how you achieve your targets, how many planets you colonize and whether you opt for a more defensive or aggressive approach is completely up to you. Virtually all of the free game features are also available in the campaign mode. The storyline itself consists of three consecutive campaigns with several missions. During the whole story, the universe remains persistent, meaning that your next mission starts of exactly where you ended the previous one. So choose your actions wisely as they will have an impact on your future approach.

SS: I understand that there are different races in Legends of Pegasus. How will they play exactly? Are there different campaigns available for each race? How many races are there in total? Are all of them playable?

Andre Overhagen: Legends of Pegasus offers three playable races. Each race has its own economy system and different flaws and strengths in terms of production, combat power of the space ships etc. Apart from the race, players can choose an origin. These origins all have a different focus and introduce even more flaws and strengths to the races to further differentiate them. Players can even create their own origin to fully customize a race; e. g. set the focus on research, production or trade. These customizations can be saved and reused in future matches.

SS: The ship modularity concept seems fantastic. Tell us more about it. Can ship modules be damaged / targeted individually? What about the ship design itself, Kalypso Media talks about ship design as an “intuitive building system”. What does that mean exactly?

Andre Overhagen: The game contains a ship editor which players can use to freely create their ships. The available components depend on what you’ve researched so far. Based on the general body size (e. g. Corvette or Destroyer) players will equip their ship with different modules. These modules have special purposes. Players can e. g. opt for military equipment to achieve better armoring and more weapon slots or research equipment to improve sensors and scanners. This basic setup offers slots for different components like weapons, drives, scanners etc., which are added by simply dragging and dropping them on the ship. The different components equipped determine the ship’s abilities. As players become technologically advanced, they can specifically target the different systems of an enemy ship. If a ship is hit, all equipped components will suffer damage, impacting and eventually destroying their function.

SS: Will Legends of Pegasus focus more on some aspects of 4X, like space combat, ship design or colony development? Or will it offer a balanced mix of features. Tell us more about the available features. For example, will there be diplomacy options? Espionage? Trade?

Andre Overhagen: Legends of Pegasus focuses mainly on its complex economy management, custom designing of space ships and tactical real-time combat. The economy management comprises expanding and managing colonies, relations and trading with other factions as well as gathering resources. During real-time combat the aim is to command your custom designed ships into battle and put their abilities to best use. Aside from devising a clever tactic, your success also depends on whether you picked the right abilities of your ships and the right constellation of your fleet.

SS: Now, about the research system, what can you advance more about it? Kalypso Media announces “hundred of technologies to research in dynamic and extensive tech trees”. Does that mean that there will be random elements to the tech trees? Tell us a bit more about it.

Andre Overhagen: Each race in Legends of Pegasus has its own tech tree. Depending on the race’s focus, these trees contain some exclusive technologies that cannot be found in other tech trees. On top of that, players can add so called “free tech trees” at the beginning of a game. These trees have their own focus and offer more aggressive or more defensive technologies or boost your research or industry. With this system, players can pick the tech trees that best match their playing style, offering lots of different combinations.

SS: So, we can develop our colonies using a slot (1 unit per slot) system. What kinds of structures can we build in our colonies?

Andre Overhagen: Apart from classic structures like factories, research institutions and defense structures you will be able to build structures that target economy and environmental factors. Players are not only able to build structures on the planet itself, but also within its orbit, e. g. space stations where you can build your ships. This is done via a very simple and intuitive drag-and-drop system.

SS: How will the game be released? Both in physical and digital form? If digital which digital distribution platform(s) are you planning to sell it on?

Andre Overhagen: The game will be available in store as well as online. Digital copies will be available via Steam.

SS: Legends of Pegasus release date is targeted for Q2 2012 in Kalypso Media’s website. Can you advance a more detailed release date at this stage? Kalypso also mentions PC DVD-ROM in Legends of Pegasus’ page, so does this means that LoP will be released exclusively for the Windows PC? Will there be a demo?

Andre Overhagen: Sorry, but we can’t give you a more specific release date yet. We can only confirm that we’re aiming for Q2 2012. I can definitely confirm however that the game will be a Windows-PC only title by the time of release.

SS: Can you tell us some of your lessons learned in developing Legends of Pegasus? Successes, failures and doubts you have bumped into, so that other people may benefit from your experience in developing even greater 4X space games in the future?

Andre Overhagen: My advice is to create a playable version that reflects the basic concepts of the game as soon as possible. Like this, you are able to identify weaknesses in the game design at an early developing stage to avoid major changes to basic elements later on. In our opinion, the key to a good game is combining proven game mechanics with innovative gameplay. You should also make sure to separate the game in main and side features from the very beginning. This gives you the flexibility to react if certain components don’t work out the way you’ve planned it without compromising the original idea of the game.

I would like to thank to the Novacore Studios Team, and particularly to their CEO Andre Overhagen for taking the time out of their busy day to do this interview.  You can check out the official Legends of Pegasus website.  You can also check the Novacore Studios homepage.

StarDrive is part of the Space Sector’s sci-fi/space games you can’t miss in 2012 list, and it is definitely a very promising space game to look for this year.

For the ones of you that are not yet familiarized with this title, StarDrive was announced to the world in December of last year through the kickstarter crowdfunding platform. The pledge was a success and Daniel DiCicco (StarDrive’s single-man show developer) received support from 647 backers to finish his game (+135% more than he asked for).

StarDrive is a real-time 4X space strategy game with a bit more action to it than usual in 4X games. It will provide more action because on top of the traditional 4X features StarDrive will let you control your flagship in an arcade shooter kind of way. The game is currently in alpha stage and is available at Desura, where you can pre-purchase it and have access to the current alpha builds all the way through closed beta (to happen somewhere in spring time), followed by final release, which is targeted for this summer.

I played around with the current alpha for a bit. The game is not really playable yet, since a lot is still missing but here is a small preview of what you can expect later this summer. Enjoy!

The 4X Universe has become prettier

The first thing you notice when you launch the game is the music, which is excellent. I don’t know where you got that music from Dan but let me tell you that it’s just phenomenal! The next beautiful thing you notice is the planet’s and stars rendering quality, and the ships models that look great also.

But before launching a game you must setup a few things first, which includes the need to customize your race. In this customization process not only you need to choose a name and a flag for your empire and race, but you also need to choose between a set of negative and positive traits (your race’s specific abilities). Those will be your strong and weak points that will make your faction unique. Thank god, Dan! Finally someone included this key feature in a 4X game again. It was about time.

The starmap is 2D but you can tell (and experience) that the objects are projected in an isometric 3D kind of way. This is particularly interesting because you can take advantage of a more realistic presentation but without having the hassle of real 3D map navigation, which can be a cumbersome experience sometimes (like in Star Ruler or Sword of the Stars for example).

So, if you approach one of your ships from one side and zoom-in you experience a sense of depth. Well done. Not only it’s very easy to navigate through the various star systems, but the objects (planets, stars, asteroids, ships) also look wonderful. The stars rendering when you zoom-in an zoom-out are absolutely fantastic. StarDrives offers the best stellar representations I’ve seen in 4X games to date, for sure.

Now, the game unfolds in real-time which may be seen as a downer by many. After all, most 4X gamers are TBS lovers, so, this may be seen as an obstacle. In fact it doesn’t have to be a problem at all if the pacing is the right one. For example, Distant Worlds unfolds 100% in real-time but it offers a pause mode, and multiple time span speed options, which resolves the real-time pacing issue completely and offers the best of both worlds (at least for me it did the trick). So, Dan, if you read this preview (that I’ll make sure you do :) ), please have a careful look at this timing and pacing issue. I strongly recommend that you implement a timing control mechanism, if you’re not planning that already that is.

The diplomacy screen is not functional yet, however you can get a small taste of what’s to come when you interact with other factions when you meet them. The contact with the races is cool and feels good. I don’t know, it has something to do with the game’s tone, combined with the music and the sound. Everything in StarDrive seems to transmit a feeling of lightness, which I’m loving.

Another important aspect worth noting already at this time is the quality, the lightness and the accessibleness of the UI. All StarDrive screens are very sharp, simple and easy to use. I didn’t have a single doubt using them. They are simple but as everybody knows it’s not that simple (it’s very hard in fact) to come up with such quality and elegance. All is looking good in this front also. I just have a remark/suggestion to make in the planet screen. The sliders. They need locks. Pretty obvious suggestion ok, but never hurts to stress that.

I found the research system to be quite simple yet compelling. Basically you accumulate research points and then use those points to unlock techs. It’s not your traditional research, wait a bit and breakthrough tech system (which is a more realistic way to approach it in my view), but I guess this simplified mechanic of accumulating points and spending them to unlock techs could work out ok in the end. We will see.

Ship design is probably one of the game’s flagship features. I played with it for a while and got absolutely fascinated by its simple yet fun mechanics. You can allocate your components freely (power, defense, weapons, etc). You actually decide in which part of the ship you put them (in the rear, the middle or in the front). And on top of that you need to design your ship in a way in which all your components must get connected with the ship’s power network (you even have power conduits to connect components to power sources!).

Ship design in StarDrive indeed feels like … design. It’s like having a mini game inside the game. It looks very promising. Just one remark. Be careful with the references to “vulcan cannon”, “vulcan scout” or even “United Federation” for the human race. You don’t want CBS (that owns the Star Trek franchise) after you because of that ;)

Conclusion

Looking good Daniel! Keep up the good work, I think you’re in the right track to develop a very enjoyable game. Many things are still missing of course, but the music is great, the art is phenomenal and the tone awesome. Everything looks great.

Playing your game’s alpha build was a pleasure and it brought me the good old Master of Orion feel days. In a way the game does capture some very good elements of the Master of Orion series. I’ll be watching StarDrive’s progress closely. Everything seems to be headed in the right direction.

You can pre-purchase StarDrive in desura for $19.99 USD. You have a few more screenshots here.

Star Prospector has launched a week ago. Intrigued by this new sci-fi RTS I decided to take Star Prospector for a spin. Not to write a full-blown review yet but to get a taste of the game, and to let you guys know my first impressions playing it.

I played the first two missions (not the demo, the full game). But after finishing the second mission I realized “Hey, maybe I’ll just play one more!”. The article could almost end by now :) No, seriously, here are my first impressions of Star Prospector. Enjoy!

A smooth entry

First of all the intro is really nice. This is something you don’t see much these days and is surely a very important asset to set the right mood. I navigated very comfortably through all the menus. I choose my rig, its weapons and a first mission assignment, which was kind of a basic tutorial one.

With the help of the tutorial learning to play the game was very easy. The user interface is very accessible, which also helps a lot. Everything seems to be in the right place and feels right. There is enough information available (descriptions, damage inflicted by units, unit’s experience, power required for each building, etc).

There are several types of missions available to you, which I find particularly interesting. I could find already prospect, eliminate and archeologist missions. In the prospect missions you are assigned a task to assess if a particular planet is suitable for exploiting a particular resource. In the archaeologist missions you need to investigate some event or events, take necessary action and bring back a report. So, in a sense the archeologist and the prospect missions are kind of survey missions you undertake on the various systems and planets.

After every successful mission you’re rewarded with credits and experience. With those you can upgrade your rig with better weapons and defenses or decide to invest in unlocking new units or buildings (which is understood in the game as new “techs”). So, mission after mission you gradually upgrade your list of possibilities which is a nice thing that increases replayability and mitigates a bit mission repetitiveness. You know, build ore facility, build bot factory, build bot, extract ore, build fuel extractor, etc…. To mitigate this repetitive pattern I think some missions (some, not necessarily all) could start already a bit advanced (with the basic buildings and units) so that you don’t need to start every time everything from scratch.

One other very interesting aspect about Star Prospector is that every game you start is randomly generated. So, you will end up getting different missions every time you play a new game. This is a very important aspect because it increases game replayability. In my game session I completed 2 missions of a total of 101 for that game (2% accomplished in 1 hour or so of play). That’s a lot of play potential.

A pure RTS with a twist

Star Prospector is an RTS, a pure one in the sense that you need to use your workers (in this case bots) to collect resources nearby your base (which gladfully are finite). Then you need to bring that ore into an ore processing facility to be later used for constructing new buildings and new units. You have two types of resources available, ore and fuel. This is the game’s core mechanic, and there’s really nothing new here.

However, although Star Prospector is a pure RTS its pace may not satisfy all players at the start. The game has a kind of more calmer and leisure feel to it, certainly not the case of your typical RTS where everything happens instantly and you get to places very fast. Not in Star Prospector. Things don’t take that much time to build alright but units do take their time to move around, scout and reach a destination. Including your rig. So, don’t expect a full adrenaline rush coming out from this game but more of a casual and joyful experience, certainly a kind of a twist to traditional RTS games.

I have nothing against this calmer pace. Actually, for me the fast pace (sometimes even frenetic like in StarCraft) is something I don’t fancy that much. So, this game will be perfect for you guys that like RTS but like to take your time.

The music and sounds are very decent. I found the sounds particularly interesting by the way. The sounds of bot miners extracting ore or the sounds of lasers firing from laser bots and laser towers are particularly nice.

In terms of graphics Star Prospector doesn’t bring anything new really. There are no spectacular explosions (that I could experience in two games at least), no revolutionary camera moves or fully detailed models. But overall graphics are quite nice. Very clean and crisp. I have nothing to complain here.

Conclusion

Star Prospector seems like a very nice and decent sci-fi RTS game that every RTS gamer should have a look at. The experience evolves at a calm pace featuring a very interesting blend of RPG elements (progression, experience gain, level up, items purchase), strategy elements and action.

I found my first incursion into Star Prospector a very joyful and entertaining experience. The decision of including Star Prospector in the Space Sector’s sci-fi/space games list for 2012 was indeed a fortunate one. It was the first title of that list to come out, and it came out as a good surprise.

In case you missed it there’s a demo available. Try it for yourself and let me know your own impressions about the game.

Star Prospector is available on Impulse/GameStop for the Windows PC, for a price of $19.99 USD.

Two of Space Sector’s game’s choices to look for in 2012 are XCOM: Enemy Unknown and Xenonauts. They are both remakes, or re-imagined versions (the difference is only subtle really) of the original X-COM games from the 90′s where your job is to lead a squad of elite fighters against an alien incursion on our planet.

On one side there’s Xenonauts, produced by Goldhawk Interactive, a <24 manpower indie video game studio founded in 2009 based in London, that uses the alpha-funding model to fund their games. On the other side there’s the giant (at least size-wise it is) game publisher Take-Two interactive (that owns 2K Games). Take-Two has given the job to Firaxis Games (a respected game developer studio responsible for game titles like Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri and Sid Meier’s Civilization 3, 4 and 5), to build a new X-COM franchise sequel. Take-Two owns the original franchise trademark that belonged to Microprose by the way.

I can’t tell you well enough how excited I am, as surely thousands and thousands of other X-COM fans spread around the globe are, to hear that after a long wait (of more than a decade) this year we will finally be able to get the chance to play a new X-COM style strategy game, that is worthy of the original titles. I’m not referring to one of the games in particular although I have to confess, understandably I guess, that I am a bit more excited to hear that a new X-COM game was going to be produced (the Firaxis one) than when I learned about Xenonauts, a long time before. Firaxis and 2K only announced their game now but Goldhawk Interactive, also due to it’s alpha-funding scheme, have announced Xenonauts many months ago.

We can imagine the shock this new XCOM announcement has caused on Goldhawk Interactive, seeing a “AAA” XCOM announcement for the same year they are expecting to release Xenonauts. In fact Xenonauts people talk about on receiving this news (see Goldhawk Interactive’s recent post about their reaction to 2K/Firaxis’ announcement). See a clip below.

“Mid-January is upon us and the festive season has been left well and truly behind. It’s time for another update on what’s been happening on Xenonauts, plus a few words on a game being made by a little-known studio called Firaxis. I’ll start with the elephant in the room, the Firaxis X-Com remake. I’ll admit that their announcement was not the ideal way to usher in the New Year, but the more information that is revealed about the game the less I worry for Xenonauts. I have a lot of respect for Firaxis and I imagine that their remake will at worst be a good game, but there are a lot of differences between what we are aiming to do and what they are. I therefore don’t think they’ll erode our target audience a great deal. In fact, they may even increase it.” ~Goldhawk Interactive

We have only to gain with this because now there’s a little competition going on between these two to see who pulls it off better, so, we have everything to win with this little dispute :)

Does Xenonauts has everything to lose?

I’m a huge X-COM fan, and I’m sincere, right now my preference, in terms of expectation level is for Firaxis’ “XCOM”. It doesn’t have anything to do with what they promise to offer really, since we barely know anything about the two games at this point. It is just natural to assume that an official sequel product is likely to be a better one, at least more true to the original. But this preliminary preference works both ways really. Although it may seem that Xenonauts starts way behind, they actually have one (well, I’m sure they may have more), one big thing in their favor: people don’t have so much expectations for their game as for Firaxis’ one.

Another Xenonauts advantages is that being a smaller studio in size they may benefit from all the hype behind the new XCOM franchise remake and take the opportunity to cash-in through that hype. Moreover it’s understandable to think that many XCOM fans will also want to try Xenonauts, if not for the sake of pure interest in the game, at least from a pure curiosity point of view, as much as prices will allow of course.

What made the X-COM series fantastic in the first place?

It’s a fair observation to make that there would not be a Xenonauts game if it wasn’t for the original X-COM titles (such as UFO Defense, Terror from the Deep and Apocalypse). But it isn’t less unfair to note that there wouldn’t be an XCOM: Enemy Unknown made by Firaxis either. The true credit must be given first to the original X-COM series, the one that made all this host of remakes, clones and re-imagining “XCOM” games possible.

So, but what made the franchise a huge success in the first place? – you may be questioning now. “What is all this great XCOM thing about? This seems to be one of the most loved sci-fi strategy games ever. But why?”

The answer is: many things. Many observable (the gameplay, the visuals, the music) and probably such as many not so observable (the people and the companies behind the projects). But with respect to the game itself the great characteristics, for me at least, are: the setting, the game’s atmosphere and of course the elegant turn-based and real-time mechanics gameplay mix.

I could be here all morning saying good things about the original games but if I had to choose the best aspects I would definitely say the setting, the game’s atmosphere. It’s that killing suspense, the horror, the surprise factor that so many people neglect how important it is to capture a player’s attention and provide a fun experience that made X-COM great. Examples of these surprise horror moments are “WTF will I see behind this door?”, “What horrors, what alien or number of aliens will be there?”, “WHERE ARE THEY??”, “My GOD, not one of THESE!! I’m F*****!! (Castle Wolfenstein any one?). It’s that tension, the grim and compelling atmosphere that builds and builds the mood higher and higher that glues the player to the screen. Ultimately you could almost feel you’re being part of what’s going on, what we can define as game immersion.

But there are lots of other details worth noting. The music was also special, it had momentum and also helped build tension. Then there’s the tanks and hovercrafts. You could actually move inside tanks and use them to blow up houses, and the poor aliens. Another interesting aspect of the game is that although the game was not linear, in a sense that it didn’t start and ended following a linear sequence of events, it had a story, and a storyline that you would need to follow more or less closely to allow you to finish the game, but you could always make some choices along the way that could accelerate or not the end-game progression.

Another key aspect in the original X-COMs is that you really cared about your squad of men and women. And you had good motives for such because as your men gained experience that would make them experts and very critical assets to have. The loss of one squad member could mean sayonara to the entire game. You really had to look out for your men and protect them from danger at all costs. This tension, this life-or-death confrontation is slowly disappearing in today’s games, where dying doesn’t mean anything anymore and if you’re in bad shape you just need to look around and find some health flask, wait for mana recharge or simply don’t care at all, die and happilly start over. What’s the fun with that? In the original XCOMs you could always save your game yes but if you made some bad moves that could cost you the entire battle or the even the entire game (NOOOOO!!! I killed the lobsterman navigator!! I needed that bastard alive for questioning, I’m F*****!!). Damn, those were good times.

Screenshots Mano a Mano

Now it’s time for some quick comparison show-down between the two titles. In the end it all comes to “what have you brought?  ~Indy 3″.

Remember that these are all “under-development” screenshots, both games only get released by the end of the year (Q3 2012 to be more exact).

Terrain

Terrain look & feel is a very important aspect of these games because thats where most of the gameplay mechanics unfold (there are usually several terrain settings involved in XCOM games, from deserts, jungles, ships and cities). In the next three shots you can see the original game’s terrain look & feel, followed by Xenonauts proposal and then the one by Firaxis.

XCOM: UFO Defense Terrain (1993). shot from electrondance.com

Xenonauts Terrain Screenshot

XCOM: Enemy Unknown Terrain

Xenonauts went on a more “clean and crisp” approach that somehow makes me remember the original games more. XCOM: Enemy Unknown has much more graphical effects, which is nice but ultimately not that critical for me.

Planet Monitoring

The Planet Monitoring screen (aka Geoscape) is where you manage your base and can see the world view. It’s in the Geoscape where you fight the strategic war with the aliens, where the “Battlescape” is where you fight the tactical battles. More info on this in the UFOpaedia.

XCOM: UFO Defense Geoscape

Xenonauts Planet Monitoring Screenshot

XCOM: Enemy Unknown Planet Monitoring Screenshot

It’s really hard to tell anything from the screenshots alone besides the fact that both visions look good. Xenonauts in flat 2D world view, XCOM followed the “3D” (original) formula.

See more XCOM: Enemy Unknown screenshots here. More Xenonauts shots here.

Gameplay features close look

Both games are still in production and are due for release only by the end of the year so it’s not possible at this time to be very exhaustive in features, simply because they are not known yet (firmly at least), and I don’t have access to neither game’s builds at this point :)

In a general sense gameplay will be pretty much the same in both games, as expected if you’ve read this far. The real-time element of both games is set on a global view (the “Geoscape”), where the player tracks UFOs, and alien incursions happening on the entire world. You should also be allowed to conduct research and develop your XCOM / Xenonauts bases at any time (although I couldn’t confirm this yet). This is the games’ real-time strategy part.

Combat is all fought in turns, in a normal turn-based fashion. Both teams have a series of “movement points”. Each unit spends its points and when those are exhausted you pass to the next unit in the team till all are left without enough movement points to conduct any action or till you’re content with your movement. You hit end-turn and now it’s the Aliens time to play.

And while gameplay is basically the same in both games it’s possible already to enumerate a series of details from what I could manage to dig up. As I don’t have first hand information I decided to use some quotes along the way to summarize the features.

Re-imagining vs Remake?

What they say.

“The game [Xenonauts] is heavily inspired by the classic X-Com / UFO: Enemy Unknown, released in the mid-90s by the now-defunct Mythos / Microprose. It is not a straight remake; though the core mechanics remain similar much has changed or been updated – so much so, in fact, that we prefer the term ‘reimagining’ to remake’. ~Goldhawk Interactive

“Re-imagining is probably a better term. Firaxis’ XCOM: Enemy Unknown doesn’t directly copy the underlying game systems – for instance, soldiers have different stats than they did in the 1994 original – but the concepts are still here. Players still have to manage multiple resources and threats on a global scale in a seemingly hopeless war against extraterrestrial forces with far better technology and capabilities.” ~GameInformer (Game Informer has an exclusive coverage deal with 2K/Firaxis for XCOM: Enemy Unknown)

Squares vs Hexes

The original series featured squares as spatial movement unit. Xenonauts seems to have kept the formula. XCOM: Enemy Unknown apparently innovates this aspect and now uses hexes as spatial movement system instead.

Base Building

In the original series you could see and manage your base from above. Xenonauts keeps the traditional base view, XCOM: Enemy Unknown innovates a little and offers vertical base building.

From left to right: X-COM: Terror from the Deep, Xenonauts, XCOM: Enemy Unknown.

Other differences

In 2K forums there’s talk that XCOM: Enemy Unknown may feature some original gameplay streamlining. Elements like ammo now being unlimited or we now having one main base only to manage (where before you could build sister bases all around the globe). Fog-of-war now prevents seeing an alien from too much distance and something about squads having a cap of 4 soldiers max. Frankly from what I could tell these are all speculations still.

Conclusion

It’s definitely too soon to take any definite conclusions on who will stick closer to the original X-COM formula and conquer more X-COM fans (if sticking to the original formula is the best strategy at all). It all comes down to who will provide the best gameplay experience, and that’s much more complex than knowing only who will offer the best graphics or if one of the games offers some detail exactly equal or not as in the original series. For me the winner, from a nostalgic point of view, will be the one that is able to recreate those classic moments of tension, suspense and that overall horror setting as it was provided by the original X-COMs. All that with believable gameplay and lots of surprises sprinkled throughout the experience should be the winner’s ticket.

We are still 9 months apart from both games release date, since Goldhawk Interactive has announced a couple of days ago that they’re planning to release Xenonauts about the same time as XCOM: Enemy Unknown, (i.e. this autumn 2012). And as if all this would not be enough there’s also Chaos Concepts’ UFO2: Extraterrestrials coming in 2012 :)

Guess this will be the X-COM remakes year. And… I couldn’t be happier.

I hope you had as much fun reading this article as I had writing it :)

Cryptstone Games, a computer game development company located in Vancouver Canada, is developing Star Prospector, a single-player real-time strategy game set in a future science fiction universe.

Star Prospector’s devs have released a trailer of their game a couple of days ago. By watching you can see that they mixed elements of RPG and real-time strategy. In Star Prospector the player takes the role of a prospector, and in each mission you take you will mine, salvage and build a base on remote planets across the galaxy in search for resources, technology and adventure. That’s the strategy part. The RPG part is where you end up getting loot drops and skill points that at each level of experience increase will allow you to access new units, buildings and items.

Features

• 100 randomly generated missions (including story centric missions) within a galaxy that is unique for every player.
• Earn experience, skill points, and credits from missions to purchase units, upgrades, and weapons.
• Battle against brutal Scavenger forces as well as a myriad of hostile creatures.
• Scan and mine ore, build wells to collect fuel, defend your base with turrets.
• Units gain combat experience and level-up within each mission and can be upgraded with shields, armor, damage, and other attributes.
• Collect loot from enemies. Use your rig to salvage wreckage for unique items.
• Outfit your Rig with weapons and modules to boost your stats.

The Story

It is the year 2158, and after a hundred years of space exploration humanity has still only visited a small fraction of our galaxy. Corporations routinely send out one-man prospectors, via warp gates, to locate energy-dense resource locations on remote planets and asteroids. Based on the prospector’s findings, and if they manage to survive, the corporations launch large factory-builders to start full-scale mining operations.

The Prospector Guild is an organization established to train, regulate, and provide jobs for the prospectors. Prospectors have become more than just mere miners. They are explorers, mercenaries, archaeologists, and entrepreneurs. The Scavengers were once human exiles of Earth. Now they are cyborgs, spread in sparse groups across the unexplored worlds.

Star Prospector looks and feels pretty much like your typical Command & Conquer or Warcraft 3 RTS game set in space. Much like StarCraft. Star Prospector seems to incorporate a few nice touches of exploration with randomly generated missions per galaxy, but the core seems to focus around base building and real-time battles in alien worlds.

For more information please head on to Cryptstone’s website. In there you will find more screenshots and a few very interesting gameplay trailers too.

Star Prospector was recently in beta stage so it’s expected to release soon, and exclusively, for the PC. So, stay tuned!

Looks like free-to-play MMO games are here to stay. Possibly we’re even only seeing the tip of iceberg still, from what I can tell. Every day there seems to be a new free-to-play online game that gets released or announced. Three of the latest strategy MMO big shots were Command & Conquer Tiberium Alliances, Jagged Alliance Online and UFO Online. Three big franchises that now see their new installments go free-to-play online.

UFO Online: Fight for Earth is a new sci-fi browser-based MMO developed by Gamigo, that is obviously inspired in the turn-based tactics X-COM series (UFO: Enemy Unknown, X-COM Terror from the Deep among others). Powered by the Unity 3D graphics engine, which is becoming a serious case of success on browser games btw, UFO Online looks quite amazing for a browser-game, as you can witness by the screenshots and the gameplay video below that was presented at Gamescom 2011. Long gone seem to be the days of walls of text and constant server-side calls that lagged your playing experience on the web browser. Now, with AJAX and game engines like unity, browser-games look better and better by the day.

UFO Online takes place in a near future where Humanity has split into three factions that are competing for the few remaining resources left on Earth. Energy is in short supply and, to top it all, first contact has been made with extraterrestrials. They seemed friendly at first, but nah, not really. They plans were dark. This is where you come in.

Features

- Sci-Fi strategy MMOG with tactical battles;
- 3D graphics battles in your browser;
- 3 playable factions. Each side has its advantages and disadvantages and its own goals;
- A variety if classes with unique skills to choose from (tank, medic, sniper and more);
- Upgradeable weapons and items;
- Tactical battles against the AI and other players (PvE and PvP);
- Storyline with countless quests;
- Expandable base for conducting research and training troops;
- Free to play

By MMO HDTV.

UFO Online entered closed beta around a month ago, so, we’ll probably have some news about open-beta soon. I’ll keep you guys informed!

I compiled a list of 15 titles. This list is a sample of the best space strategy games available for Android phones judging from the games descriptions, user reviews, screenshots and videos alone. Keep in mind that I don’t own (yet) an Android device so I could not test the games myself. Although most of the games are for Android phones some may also work on Android tablets too, check on the games description for that information.

Enjoy exploring and conquering the universe in your Android! Let me know if you played one of these titles already. Also, if there’s one title that you think should be in this list please just mention it in your comment below.

The games are sorted in no particular order.

Star Armada

Star Armada is a recently released space-based real-time strategy game where you explore deep space, establish planet bases, research upgrades and build and command your fleet to destroy the enemy.

Features

Multiple ship types – Fighter, Destroyer, Battlecruiser and the fearsome Dreadnought;

Randomly generated space maps and AI tactics;

Customize ship weapons and ship orders - engagement, targeting, damage control and power priority;

Ships gain XP points for leveling up to better classes for improved attributes;

Build energy resource, ship generation and weapons research facilities;

Tablets supported.

GalactiConquer

CalactiConquer is another recently released action-strategy real-time space title. The objective is to colonize all the habitable planets in the galaxy. You will need to build mining facilities on the non-habitable planets and sell the mineral in your colonized planets.

Features

Use your earned money to expand your colonies;

You are not alone in the universe, and your planets will be attacked by your enemies, so you will have to upgrade the ship and its weapons;

Game implements real physics so your space ship will be attracted to planets and stars;

Full version provides:

- No advertising, all ship upgrades are available, all galaxy sizes and difficult levels available, HD Graphics, bigger planets and ships.

Asteroid Defense 2

Asteroid Defense 2 is a tower defense space game. It is an evolution of the original Asteroid Defense title that features more than 300 user reviews and 100.000 games sold. Asteroid Defense I and II seem to be very popular Android titles.

Features

Vivid awe-strucking graphics that will amaze you;

Great gameplay, develop your own strategy and tactics;

Campaign mode (Earth, Moon, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune and Kuiper’s Belt);

Survival mode with global leaderboard and achievements with Beintoo.com;

Your game is automatically saved so you can play again later.

Galcon

Galcon is more suited for a high-paced action-strategy experience. You basically send your ships to nearby planets as fast as you can to defeat enemy planets and conquer the universe. You can play online against other players too.

Features

Equip your space stations with blaster lasers, solar panel, shields and freeze cannons;

Protect your command center away all incoming asteroid waves;

Infinite mode gameplay;

Beat other players and put your name on a global leaderboard and achievements;

Share the app on twitter, facebook and other;

Fun and challenging for kids and grown-ups.

Battle for Mars

Battle for Mars is a space turn-based strategy game set in … Mars :) The game seems to be fairly popular judging from the number of user reviews (1195) and allows multiplayer.

Features

Turn-based strategy gameplay;

Support for online multiplayer. Each game can have up to four players;

Use soldiers, robots, hovercraft and spaceships to battle 3 enemy alien races;

Fight in the mountains, forests and at sea;

17 unit types,

6 building types;

13 quick maps and 12 map campaign;

Space STG 2 – Death Rain

Space STG 2 is a free to play real-time space strategy game. It is the continuation of it’s very popular predecessor Space STG.

Features

Explore solar systems;

Manage cities, develop technology and a create space fleet;

40 missions in scenario (1 special surprise mission) + unlimited quick missions;

8 ships with (ex. Transporter, Fighter, MotherShip);

8 upgrades of ships (ex. shoots from distance to planet);

7 special technology (ex. nuclear missile, electrical storm);

7 technologies (ex. turn back in time, tunnel, enemy confusion);

There is an STG 2 version for tablets.

Solar Wars

Solar Wars is a free to play turn-based space strategy game. The goal is to conquer all planets on the map. To do this you need to send fleets to enemy planets.

Features

Turn-based strategy gameplay;

Select your planet and create fleets;

Select fleets and send them to enemy planets;

You start with one planet. Each turn you will increase ships available on your planets;

Goal of the game is to conquer all planets on the map;

Winning with 1-2 AI players is easy, try to win with 9 enemies!

Command Crisis

Command Crisis is a free to play space-based massively multiplayer online real-time strategy game (MMORTS). There are both PvP and PvE against a non-player character (NPC) that emulates a player.

Features

MMO real-time strategy gameplay;

Build defenses, ships, deploy units;

Pick your character class and gain special abilities. Work alone or with a team within an alliance;

Play online, on facebook, android and other mobile web devices;

In-game tutorial, help and FAQ;

Use in-game credits to buy resources and ships;

Galactic Empires

Galactic Empires is a free to play real-time action-strategy MMO game. You start out with just one undeveloped world and go on from there and turn that into a galactic empire.

Features

Various types of missions: espionage, attacking other ships, transporting resources and harvesting;

Players can have armadas of spaceships;

Alliances allow players to band together for protection and free trade;

Can research technology to improve units and defenses;

Three resources for players to hoard: crystal, deuterium, and metal;

Ranking system that displays the top players;

Space Squadron

Space Squadron is a turn-based space strategy game in which you command an elite squadron of fighters. You need to devise an attack plan, set your moves, time the firing of your weapons, then end the turn and watch events unfold in real-time.

Features

Strategic turn-based gameplay;

7 friendly ship classes from turrets to heavy assault ships, 11 enemy classes;

Use cannons, rockets and homing missiles;

10 level campaign with increasing difficulty and mission duration. Hours of game play;

Several mission types. Convoy assault/escort, base assault/defense and skirmishes;

Earn medals and promotions.

War Path

War Path seems to be a pretty complex real-time space strategy game. You can explore, exploit, build, fight, mine and trade.

Features

Real-time strategy gameplay in single-player or with up to four players online;

Explorable galaxy of planets to be exploited for resources, colonized or subjugated;

Develop planets through investment in agriculture, defense, industry, education, mining and space dock;

Equip your ship with shields, pods, and weapons by shopping on friendly planets;

Unlocks additional weapons and upgrades with tech improvements;

Dogfight with other ships or battle planets directly with bombs;

Star Battle

Star Battle is a free to play action-strategy game where you fight to conquer the Universe. All planets generate ships and players can use their ships to get other planets. Get all planets and kill all enemy fleets.

Features

Real-time action-strategy gameplay;

Generate ships on your planets and use these ships to get other planets as fast as possible;

Defend, expand and reinforce your planets;

Get all planets and kill all enemy fleets;

Very fast games in harder levels

The one, who first colonize all enemy’s planets  and makes sure the enemy has no more rockets wins the battle!

Space Station Frontier

Space Station Frontier is a tower defense space strategy game. You need to mine asteroids, harvest energy and build up your defenses in order to survive the alien onslaught.

Features

Construct weaponry & mining tools using an intuitive tower-defence style interface;

Design & power vast networks of structures, then defend against alien assault;

Earn upgrades & unlocks for your Space Station to increase its power and abilities;

Enjoy the story-based campaign mode or one of the freeform endless modes;

Online leaderboards & with lots of achievements to earn;

Includes tablet layout/HD support for capable devices.

Space Uncharted

Space Uncharted is a free to play space-based Massively Multiplayer Online (MMO) strategy game. Games take place over several weeks to 1-2 months.

Features

Players colonize planets, construct buildings, create fleets of ships, explore the galaxy, form alliances with friends, & conquer other enemies’ territory;

Each game can support thousands of players in the same galaxy;

Space Uncharted runs slowly to allow players to choose actions carefully and collaborate with allies. Each game can take several weeks to a month, so players need only check in on their progress a few times a day;

In-game, email, and/or txt notifications alert you to unfolding events, such as discovering new planets or being attacked;

Full stats and a visual timeline of the map from each completed game as well as an overall player leaderboard are posted on our website.

Galactic Conquest

Galactic Conquest is a turn-based space strategy game, along the lines of Risk or Axis & Allies. Produce ships at your planets and use those ships for upgrading planets and attacking your opponents.

Features

Capture planets by dragging the selected number of ships to send to that planet;

Each planet you capture will reveal adjacent planets, if there are any. Soon you will run into other ambitious souls attempting to take over the Universe;

Fortify our planets and upgrade their radar ability to higher levels;

Build radar stations to monitor enemy movement and determine weaknesses.

You can conduct research once per turn.

So, if you want to be one of the first to have a look at Renations then jump right in through this link and share it with your friends if you like. You can all pick nearby places when choosing your race and city locations so you’ll be able to interact early in the game.

First Impressions

Renations is a strategy game set on a post-apocalyptic world. For a brief overview of the game I invite you to read a Renations’ preview article I wrote a couple of months ago.

At first look Renations seems to be just another of your typical browser-based resource-gathering free to play MMO. Yes, the main mechanics are common to many other browser-based MMO games currently available in the market. However there was something about Renations that caught my attention. Maybe it had to do with its background story and the sci-fi setting, or perhaps it was just a god damn good pinch press release.

Anyway there were some key aspects about Renations that made me follow this game since it was first announced a couple of months ago. Things like the devs stating that “accessibility has been a key design driver in Renations“, or that “RENATIONS is different to other similar games as it features extensive lore and emphasizes the art of storytelling“, or perhaps it was the devs punch line “The game reinvents the genre“.

For some reason I was captivated by this title and today I got a chance to have a look at it, a couple of days before it gets open to the public.

So, what’s interesting about Renations?

Actually when you start your game you can’t help but feel a bit overwhelmed with all the different buttons, icons and tabs available to you. And at first glance the graphics don’t look that nice. But after a while you get used to the UI look & feel and you start to navigate around very comfortably. And this is a strong point about Renations that I would like to point out first.

The UI is clean, usable and intuitive. The game features plenty of tool-tips that help you get a good grasp on the game. The majority of the game functions are at the distance of a click and the rest of them probably not more than a couple. The menu is very well organized, and so, after a few minutes you’ll be quite familiarized with all that the game has to offer. But don’t be fooled with this apparent simplicity, Renations has plenty to offer.

The UI can take some seconds to respond at times but nothing too serious (remember that this is a browser-based game). There are some obvious things still left out to finish. Things like some art assets still missing (“Portrait coming soon!”). I guess the devs will take care of that shortly, during the open beta or right after that.

In the beginning, I recommend you go through the tutorial, which as usual in this type of games will introduce you to the resource gathering and building mechanics of the game. Mission after mission you will become more and more familiarized with the game, so, this tutorial alone is probably all you need to get on track with the game and I strongly advise you start there.

Story unfolds with your progress. This is probably one of the aspects I like most about Renations, if not the major aspect that got me interested in the game in the first place. In contrast with many other MMOs I’ve played, Renations features a central story which unfolds as the player progresses in the game. As time unfolds you will be decoding parts of the story in what the game calls “log books”. Actually the game server that can be played now has the layout of a book. As the game progresses new chapters will be unfold, and so on. Possibly in the future there will be more servers (more games, or books) to be unlocked, but this is just a guess.

Heroes, quests and events. Besides the main plot Renations also features a very interesting PvE side-quest system, also vulgarly known as instances or raids. As you progress you will be able to perform these side quests, even cooperatively at times, although I only managed to complete a single-player instance yet. If you’re successful you gain loot and possibly level up your heroes when you finish your quests.

To embark in PvE quests you need heroes. There are several types of heroes available for recruiting, each one with their own traits. RPG fans will be pleased since heroes level up and can be equipped. You recruit your heroes at a tavern and you can buy them equipment there too. The more improved your taverns are the more and stronger your heroes will be available for recruiting there.

In addition to PvE quests Renations also features events that occur from time to time. When these events unfold you are given a choice on how to address them. On one of my games I had the chance to apply a surplus of money. Miners were requesting increased wages in order to ease their burden. I had the choice to use that surplus money to raise their wages or to invest the money in the construction of warheads. So, your decisions, your play style, will affect the game accordingly. In my case I decided to attend the miner demands, and for that I got a temporary boost of production in my city.

Interesting tech trees. Renations features research. Nothing really new here. However I found Renations’ tech trees to be rather meaningful. You research new techs to unlock new buildings and new units, nothing new here alright, but each faction has its own different tech tree, adapted to their style and background story. Although I’ve only played two factions by now (the Ocean dwellers Myrmidons for the most part, and the Order for some time) there seem to be plenty of choices and different kind of buildings and interesting units to unlock.

Other Aspects

The monetization model is pretty standard. The game is free to play, however if you want you can subscribe temporary advantages called subscriptions with game currency called Game Credits (GC), that you can buy in-game. These subscriptions include research and production boosts and extra queue building slots (the ability to build several things at the same time). In addition to these subscriptions you can also buy special equipment (called implants) to equip your heroes.

There are some rough edges still. As not unexpected at this time (since the game is still in beta) there is still some unpolished stuff and some annoyances too. Examples of these are the missing art assets. Some pictures are still unavailable and some icons look a bit too similar in places. As an example of this: the unit icons, which are very similar and uninteresting. Looks like the Art department has still a lot of work to do. There is occasional lag on UI response here and there but nothing too serious as I already mentioned above. There is also some bad wording in the descriptions when starting your game and choosing your faction.

Bottom Line

Renations did not disappoint me. This is actually a MMO game I enjoyed playing. It features a nice bundle of features. At times, and in a way, it made me feel like playing Civilization on a browser with a post-apocalyptic setting.

Only time will tell if Renations has enough depth (and not too many annoyances) to keep me interested, but for now I will play it in the background to check-in from time to time.

I’ve witnessed some bad releases in my time. This one has been no doubt one of the most disappointing. It’s sad how this is becoming a pattern these days and how the players are being turned into beta testers more and more. Add on top of that the fact that people had extremely high expectations for SotS2 (since the original SotS is a game loved by so many) and you get one of the most dramatic releases of the last years.

It’s fairly known by now that Paradox Interactive and Kerberos Productions have announced that there were (major) problems with the game’s release, so, I am sure many of you are not being caught by surprise. On the release’s very next day the publisher’s CEO Fredrik Wester made a statement on Paradox’s forum apologizing for the current state of the game. One day after that, it was Martin Cirulis time to apologize on the developers forum. In that post Kerberos’ CEO asked for patience and promised that things will be fixed as soon as possible.

Having heard so many horrible things about the release I decided to get my hands into SotS2 as fast as I could. So, in the meantime of my work on the review here are my first impressions.

So, how bad is it?

It’s bad, really bad. Consider that I based these impressions on the latest available patch at the time of this writing (which would be the one from last Friday’s 11th November patch (several patches have already been issued since release day).

3D Map is a bit cumbersome to navigate

Let me start by saying that the worst part of this all is stability. It’s really hard to play the current release because it’s almost impossible to play 20 or more straight turns (actually trying to do something) without getting into a random crash to desktop (sometimes on the fleet manager, others on the “diplomacy” menu and on other places). Other times the game will just freeze, when you try to access the game menu for example. I know this is not happening just here because I’ve been checking forums where people are discussing the game, and they are saying the same there too.

But it’s not just stability. The game feels incomplete, it’s unpolished in many aspects and you can tell that there are features that are dummy or still work in progress. I think a couple of pictures will show you better what I mean.

But it’s not only the incompleteness. Some things are just plain missing. Trade for example is not yet functional from what I could tell. You adjust your sliders to divert production to trade but nothing happens, you don’t get more income as you’re supposed to. (Edit 16/11: So it seems that trade should be already functional by now – from what I could learn in the Kerberos’ forum – however apparently the player is required to build the right kind of station, research the right tech, build freighters, and then trade routes will eventually be established, but I can’t confirm this yet. And surely this is not documented anywhere, and nothing in the game leads you to think you need all this) Another example is diplomacy. At first I could not see any diplomacy options, that’s ok, I had not encountered any opponent yet. Eventually I found an opponent and I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Most Diplomacy options are just a placeholder, a dummy version barely 20% functional perhaps. See below.

Diplomacy options are currently a placeholder

It looks better than it actually is. The buttons “System Data”, “Slaves”, “World”, etc, are all placeholders, when you click nothing happens. At first you think you’re doing something wrong but after a while it becomes evident that you’re not. This is what you get if you request or demand something (I don’t know what the difference between the two options is since both lead to the same screen above). If you click treaty you can’t do anything (maybe you can’t yet? At this point you can’t help to start thinking otherwise).

Then there’s the random crashing and freezing (that I already talked about) and the annoying lag-time between menus that can go from a normal 1 to 2 sec time to more than 5, 10 or more seconds in some cases (again I know that this is not happening just here).

Then there’s more unpolished stuff and more annoyances proper of an Alpha/Beta release. Things like:

• No in-game tutorial.
• Options and cinematic in the game menu greyed out (unavailable).
• Not being able to select multiple fleets to strike a system (having to go and assign one by one).
• Not being able to distinguish explored from unexplored systems in a user-friendly way.
• Finding a gaseous planet (and a barren planet) with an Earth-type model rendering when you zoom-in.
• Many Terran planets have Very similar models (if not the same).
• Having to switch continuously between tech trees to pick the one I want (very tedious process).
• Info panel states 6 turns for a fleet to reach a destination but actually it takes 3 or less (at least with the Morrigi engines - the ones I played more). This is a very serious problem.
• There is “salvage research” and “special project” sliders on the empire manager screen that I don’t have a clue what they are for (even after reading both the manual and the beginner’s guide entirely – the Manual is very nice BTW). And what about the locked “Immigration Rate” slider? More tool-tips would help.
• There’s not an empire wide fleet overview screen, so we lose track of fleets very easily.
• Sotspedia (or Encycolopedia – not a typo, it’s how it’s written in the game) doesn’t help much and it’s incomplete.
• Station build order costs can’t be seen upfront, and while you can cancel the order after seeing how much it costs to upgrade the station it’s clear that that’s not the way it should be implemented.
• We don’t get a sense of distance between stars in the 3D map. To know that you need to simulate sending a fleet there… (couldn’t find another way)
• UI rendering is very poor in places (some ugliness when over-zooming). Clearly something that’s probably easy to fine-tune with proper testing.
• Overall UI clunkiness (from not very responsive to some serious lag at times)
• Can only rename planets right after colonization but can’t rename them ever since and systems can’t be renamed either (if they can please let me know)
• No random galaxy generation. Currently only a collection of fixed sand-box maps are available (scenarios are greyed out at game setup). The Manual states that systems details, stars and planets change from game to game but systems disposition (galaxy appearance) is fixed. This must be changed.

There’s more but I’ll save that for the review.

Anything good?

Plenty of it, great stuff, but unfortunately you can’t experience it for long because of all the bad stuff already mentioned, especially the stability issues.

There’s the beautiful ship models (some are just ok but others are gorgeous). The color palette may not be the best in places but the ships detail is generally awesome. You can even see inside the bridge/cockpit of some starships, I’m not talking about a painted model feel I mean you can actually feel you’re peaking inside the ship’s bridge. Awesome stuff (see below).

Want to peak inside a Morrigi cruiser?

There’s plenty of depth on the new stations concept. You can build many kinds of stations and you can upgrade them with new modules. This needs to be done carefully since they are very expensive yet very powerful. I really like this new stations feature. There’s Naval, Civilian, Diplomatic, Science, Gate and Tribute stations. Each of them level up several times till they become Science Centers, Star Cities, Star Bases, among other important base establishments that seem to have a strong impact in the game.

Gorgeously detailed stations

The lore is very interesting. The races background-story is detailed, rich and immersive. The races description is probably the best part of the manual by the way, and surely one of the best parts of the game also.

Other good and great aspects:

• Overall graphical rendering detail is very beautiful (planets, ships, stations).
• The missions concept is refreshing (survey missions, colonization missions, strike, invade, etc).
• Leaders: I could only see Admirals for now. For every fleet you need one of those. Each leader provides its own set of positive and less positive traits. Good one.
• Research randomization is kept from the original SotS and now there is the “Feasibility Study”, required before researching techs. Good addition in my opinion.
• There are small nice touches here and there. The tech icon rotates faster with more research spending and when there are ships under construction the build icon flashes to indicate you’re building something.
• Combat is overall nice although I experienced some clunkiness here and there. At some point I lost sight of my ships and it was hard to find them back … then the battle ended. Nevertheless space combat does feel epic, perhaps one of the best to date in 4X space games. We’ll see.
• There are independent races in the game that will not expand as much as the other major races. Finding them is supposed to be rare and you need to survey systems intensely in order to spot them (at least it’s what the manual states). Sounds good.
• There’s also a province concept where you can combine systems into provinces for economical bonuses and possibly other benefits I couldn’t grasp yet. Sounds great.
• The Survey missions, although a bit rough on the edges still, deserves an applause. eXploration has always been a weak link in 4X games, SotS2 does a great step in the right direction.
• Empire manager screen is rich in options and allows a good level of detail and control over the economical part of the game.

There’s more but that will also be in the review.

Bottom Line

In summary there’s plenty of good and even great stuff on SotS2 but there’s also plenty of horrible stuff as well. Some of the issues can (and will mostly probably) be resolved with patches to come (which the devs stated they are strongly committed on undertaking). When the stability issues are resolved, the trade made functional (Edit 16/11: or better explained) and the diplomacy complete I think the game will be fairly playable and probably already very enjoyable. At this moment however I think it’s not possible to enjoy playing, at least in my neck of the woods.

The release has been a disaster, that’s a fact, however both the devs and the publisher have made a sufficiently in-time mea-culpa, apologized and committed right away to support the game evolution through the coming months.  Moreover in order to help mitigate all this Paradox and Kerberos have offered a copy of the original Sword of the Stars Complete Collection to all the people who have bought SotS2 (or just the ones that have pre-ordered it, I’m not sure on this one).

For the ones thinking about buying the game at present state consider yourselves warned. For the brave and generous souls that are going to buy the game at this moment I think you have a good chance of not having your money badly spent since you’ll be supporting the devs through the patching process, now that all has been said. For the ones of you that have pre-ordered the game I guess there’s no big drama here either since you can choose to keep your faith in the game and on the devs or just decide to ask for a refund. I can’t see what’s the big fuss about this, at the very most people had their money tied-up alright but not lost.

All things considered I think SotS2 has all the ingredients to become a great game, perhaps even one of the best 4X space games of all time, but at the moment it needs many hours of polishing, tweaking and improvement still in order to aspire to reach that far.

I think I carried myself a bit with this first impressions article, it came out quite longer than I first anticipated, for an article of this nature, but I think it can be helpful for people to have an in-depth overview of the game’s current state. Thanks for reading and good luck to the devs on the major task ahead!

Anno 2070 is the new game of the Anno series that takes place in an Earth’s near-future where the sea’s rising level has destroyed the coastal cities. The player will need to gather resources, engage in diplomacy and trade with competitors in order to build a new society.

The player is offered the choice between two factions, that represent the two extreme ideals that we now face in our present time. The player may choose to play with the efficient and proven technology moguls called Tycoons and the eco-friendly sustainability seeking members called The Ecos.

You can grab the recently available demo to get a taste of the game. You’ll be able to play the first two missions of the campaign mode.

Key Features

• Build massive cities
• Choose between two factions: the industrious Tycoons or the environmentally-friendly Ecos
• Evolving and dynamic world. You decisions directly affect how the game looks over time
• Sea depths exploration. (e.g. algae farms, tidal turbines and oil exploration)
• Multiple game modes. Story-driven single player campaign, sand-box mode and multiplayer and online features
• Forge alliances with your opponents
• Smuggle goods between cities

Trailer

Screenshots

Star Supremacy is currently in closed-beta (till 7th November). It should then open to the public officially (go open beta) 15th November 2011.

Trailer

Screenshots

Fighter seeking refuge in an asteroid field, they can't repair like the larger Corvette below it.

If one were to compare Star Hammer Tactics, Gratuitous Space Battles immediately comes to mind. There are major differences that set them apart however, and that will be lightly covered in this preview.

Star Hammer Tactics for the iPad is a quick and dirty space tactical game meant to be played in short sessions (what is wrong with long sessions on the iPad?) through a campaign or skirmish mode.  The single player campaign cuts right through the chase with a simple briefing, then off to combat.

The Australian developer Black Lab Games makes no bones about this, Star Hammer Tactics is all about tactical space combat and nothing else.  There are only two sides the Alliance and Nautilids.

When escorting better maintain a screen, or one round exposed means failure.

The basic decisions presented to the Alliance player are where and when to move,  when to fire your missiles, adjusting offensive or defensive postures, and when to engage in direct combat.

In skirmish mode you can create your own custom fleet, and then use that fleet against the AI or a friend via Hot Seat (Pad?). While you can control your forces in the battle, there is no customization.  The Alliance player has 4 ship types that basically vary with power and the number of missiles, and ability to repair between turns.

Isometric 3D close-up battles

Black Lab Games did a great job with the AI, which forces the players to really think tactically (DOH!) because you are limited in what you can do.  If you fire your missile, does it have a clear path to target?  Can you follow up with an attack to maximize the use of your limited missiles?  The AI is crafty enough to make you pay for bad tactics, because when your missile does hit it will withdraw that unit to repair.

If you’re looking for a quick space tactical game where you don’t have to read a WIKI to learn how to play, then definitely look for this come early November.

iPad Trailer (alpha)

PSP mini Trailer

Kyle Rees “Lordxorn” has been a Space Sector contributor since May 2011. Kyle is a credited tester on games like Distant Worlds: Return of the Shakturi, and Panzer Corps, and an avid World of Tanks player. See all Kyle’s posts here.

Matrix Games and Code Force announced Legends last September 2011. The list of additions to Return of the Shakturi (DW’s first expansion) is very promising so I decided to write this Legends’ preview to try and condensate these changes and present them in a nice wrapper for you guys, so that you know a bit more about what to expect in November 2011, current Legends’ release date target.

So, what’ll be new in Legends?

The major additions and changes to Return of the Shakturi, that I could take note of, are:

- Leaders / characters
- Influence spheres
- New ships models (around 600!) with better graphics
- Ability to track where your ships are heading (ship vectors overlay)
- Potential colonies, scenic and research locations shown on main map (more overlays)
- Expanded technology tree (e.g. cutting lasers, new planetary facilities, wonders)
- Race-specific events and victory conditions
- Improved fleet management and automation, including fleet postures
- Improved modding support, including full race and character modding
- Improved refueling system (more intelligent fuel management)
- Improved diplomacy system with refueling and mining rights and immigration policies
- Improved performance, memory usage decrease and sharper graphics

Wow! Where to begin.

The major new addition of Legends is no doubt the new character system. Legends brings Leaders, Admirals, Generals, Ambassadors, Governors, Agents and Scientists to scene. All of them with their own skills and traits with the opportunity to advance and improve them along the way. The character you start with, in the beginning of your games is your leader. Leaders have effects that are empire-wide, that is, they influence your entire empire, every planet, base, etc. Some factions are more likely to get certain types of characters than others. Characters can be lost along the way though due to violent events, accidents or retirement.

Each character has some skills. Next to each of these skills there’s a progress bar (0% in the example below), that measures progress towards the next level in that skill. You can increase skills (or acquire new ones) through experience in areas related to those skills. Characters also have traits. Your characters may start with one or more traits and may acquire more based on their experiences. You may start with additional characters. For example Randul Shokia (seen below) is a special scientist character.

Randul provides bonus to research, in the research base you decide to put him in. In the example above he adds bonuses to all types of research fields. If you assign Randul to a particular Energy Research station with a +15% bonus to Energy Research, his +34% would add on top of that to give you a combined +49% bonus to Energy Research at that location. Besides skills Randul also has a special trait. Randul is methodical which means that your empire is less likely to suffer critical research failures (critical research is a new feature in Legends, which can give you a spontaneous crash program or a boost in a research area). He gives more reliability to your research in that sense.

One feature I found particularly interesting in the character’s system is that some characters remain mysterious until you actually use them and find out about their abilities. In the example below Kweeki Woppit has known traits but unknown skills. This is an interesting touch in my opinion since it adds an element of surprise and gets the player a little curious (two essentials elements in 4X strategy games) of what to expect from their characters.

Kweeki is a Colony Governor. You can assign Colony Governors to a particular colony and their bonuses apply only to that colony. Similarly, Fleet Admirals are assigned to a particular Fleet or Base, Troop Generals to a particular Fleet or Colony, and so on.

You can assign more than one character to a particular location and bonus from them will add up, though they may not be purely additive. In Erik Rutins’ own words (one of DW’s main developers) «(…) if for example you have a Fleet Admiral who is great at combat and another Fleet Admiral who excels at Fighter Operations, assigning both to a fleet that has Capital Ships as well as Carriers can lead to better results than just having one or the other. However, since you generally will have fewer exceptional Fleet Admirals than fleets, you have to weigh the benefits of having one exceptional fleet against the flexibility of having two fleets that are each pretty good».

Another important aspect in Legends is that the devs state they’ve implemented a better memory management method. This should allow for better performance and memory usage decrease. They also state that this has allowed them to remove the compression mechanism they were using previously, on many of the ship and planet graphics. The result is that Legends should look better, or at least sharper from what I was lead to believe (less blurriness that you could spot in RotS here and there).

In addition to sharper graphics Legends shall also feature 22 new high resolution ship sets (added to the existing ones from Distant Worlds and Distant Worlds: Return of the Shakturi), all obtained from one of Distant Worlds’ players and modders, artist Martin Wood. Here’s an example of some of the new Teekan ships.

That’s approximately 600 new ship/base images right there in Legends! (if you didn’t use Martin Wood’s mod before that is). This was one of the weakest points in Return of the Shakturi in my opinion, and now that seems to have been properly addressed. Big plus! Don’t know if planets and ruins have also been worked at or not though. We’ll have to see.

Legends also brings spheres of influence, or borders. The actual use for them is still a bit unclear to me. My best guess is that they tell how likely foreign colonies are to flip (turn to other empires) if they are inside an empire’s influence sphere. In that regard I think they serve as cultural/influence borders but I’m not sure of their full scope. In Erik’s own words «Spheres of influence are not quite the same as the way we think of borders here on our planet. They project from your colonies and define the space that you could control. Systems within your sphere of influence that you have at least explored are considered under your control. Borders in space are enforced within each controlled system but not in the deep space between systems. Also, building a mining station (for example) outside of your sphere of influence does not give you control over that system (though colonizing it does)». 

An interesting feature would be for these influence spheres to represent a race’s space territorial dominance. Aggressive races would tend to get annoyed if their space was trespassed or if other race’s colonies or mining stations are built inside their influence zones, but I’m just speculating here. It would be cool to have that kind of territoriality though, although I now that theme is a bit controversial and would not be appreciated by some.

In addition to all this Legends will feature new faction-specific victory conditions that can completely change how a faction plays, to faction-specific special events and resource bonuses. In the example below the Ugnari have 4 particular victory conditions: two of them (as examples) are to get 25% most trade and 25% most mining stations.

Another aspect where Legends devs invested a bit was on a new UI system that provides overlay information directly on the main map. At the choice of the player it shall now be possible to switch on/off layers for ship vectors, i.e. see where ships are going, potential colonies, scenic and research locations all in the main map with no need for more actions and clicks through secondary screens. This is a brilliant new addition that could be exploited for even more overlays that may be considered useful in the future.

Potential colonies shown directly in the main map are a particularly interesting feature to have in my opinion since they’ll surely help late game expansion, where there are simply too many planets to look in the expansion planner and what you simply need is a quick way to see where are the potential worlds for suitable colonies in favorable strategic locations. I was very happy to see these new overlays. The UI accessibility was already very good in RotS, now it will be brought to the next level.

Besides all that has been described already there are more things new in Legends. Examples are the expanded technology tree, the improved fleet management and automation (including fleet postures), the improved modding support (including full race and character modding), the improved refueling system (more intelligent fuel management is also a big plus) and the improved diplomacy system with refueling and mining rights and immigration policies (which should provide even richer diplomatic experiences).

Bottom Line

This preview is by no means thorough. Believe it or not, it is more a sneak peak on major changes. Legends adds much more stuff (judging from what I could understand in the game forums, from what I didn’t have access to and others I couldn’t find in detail in my digging). The preview was based on information provided by the devs and the DW’s community on matrix games’ distant world forums. If you want to get more information on Legends, or Distant Worlds in general, that’s the place I suggest you have a look at. I’m sure I missed a lot of things but judging from the changes featured in this preview alone it’s amazing the amount of new things this new expansion will bring, on top of so much RotS already offered.

I am really looking forward for Legends. And if you’re a 4X space strategy game lover, as I am, I think you cannot afford to miss this one either. I think they’re making history here. In my opinion Distant Worlds Legends shows enough potential to be running for the best 4X space strategy game ever made. That’s a very controversial and bold statement to throw I know, but I’m totally convinced that Legends may be that good.

\Edit (23/11/2011): Legends is out! Get it here.

VTA was developed by Chris Carson from Gamesare Studios. Chris has developed other games but VTA was his first iOS title. I don’t own an iOS device so I thought I would not be able to try VTA out. Fortunately Gamesare Studios provides a pretty good demo in their website so I gave it a spin (afterwards Chris was kind enough to provide me with a custom PC build so I could have a look into the unlocked features of the game).

The demo does not allow you to play with all races. It also only allows you to play Quick Battle mode. In the unlocked version VTA allows you to play all 4 different game modes. These are Conquest, Quick Battle, All Against One and Rag Tag Fleet (this last one is flying around the stars looking for home).

First Impressions

VTA allows you to choose  from 5 races to play with. Each has its own bonuses and negative traits. You can see the trait modifiers for the Dev’orn race below. Some races specialize in offense (like the Dev’orn), others in defense, diplomacy or research.

The Dev'orn are the VTA Galaxy Bullies

Race variety is good, they really offer a good mix. From Humans, to a Female Society, to a Hive Collective of Scarabs to Giant Warriors and Clones. The only negative aspect to note is that in-game they all feel a bit alike. Ok, so ship designs are different (this is good) however their specific personalities are not fully explored. For instance, game text is the same for all races, from research suggestions, to mission summary (from what I could tell).

When you start your game you’re presented with a 2D starmap. Navigation is smooth. Owned planets glow with the color of each race. Unexplored planets don’t glow. Game looks great. Music is also nice by the way.

VTA 2D Starmap. Planets only jump to some planets.

So, what can you do in the game. You can build ships (colony, fighters, frigates or capital classes) or decide to improve your fleet strength. With respect to planet options you can explore planets to find sources of cash, derelicts, research bonuses or you can decide to improve your gates to increase planet range.

You can also do research, although you can only choose from options presented to you. You can move your fleets around, attack your opponents or engage in diplomacy. Diplomacy options range from making peace, declaring war and proposing an alliance. Basic but present.

Peace, War or Alliance. Quite to the point.

All these decisions, and game actions, are really one-planet-one-click actions so you can only instruct one order for each planet each turn. When you’re through with all of your planets possible actions you hit Next (for next turn) or if you don’t want to micromanage so much you’re also offered a convenient Auto option to let the computer decide what to do with the remaining planets.

VTA spaceship combat feels like a mini game inside the game.  There are many tactical aspects to choose from, which is great. First you choose your fleet formation, then the fleet’s movement and finally the firing directions (you are allowed to see your opponent’s tactical decisions upfront).

Choose your formation, movement and firing directions.

The tactical decisions variety has sufficient depth and really forces you to think since there’s not much you can do after the battle begins. In this sense VTA puts you in the fleet commander’s seat, figuratively speaking you choose your battles tactics, the battle itself is left to your pilots.

If everything was thinked carefully you win the day!

You can’t control your fleet during the battle however you can still make some more decisions during battle. You can decide to bring your heavy cavalry: frigates or capital ships or plant mines.

A less positive aspect of VTA battles however is that they can become a bit repetitive, since you can’t skip them (you always have to fight them to finish). There is no skip or automatic resolve button, so, this can be a bit annoying in larger games.

Conclusions

Vincere Totus Astrum was a nice surprise. I confess that I never thought that playing a casual iOS 4x space strategy game could be so engaging and be able to suck you in so successfully as VTA manages to do (although this is my first true iOS space strategy game experience for what it’s worth).

VTA is quite intuitive and easy to play. It’s clear what you can do from the start. A nice tutorial is also offered to clear any remaining doubts you may have. So, in this sense VTA achieves the objective of being a casual game for casual gamers perfectly, but at the same time it keeps true to the genre which makes it the perfect vehicle to attract more fans to the genre.

Remember that I didn’t play the iOS version (I don’t have an iOS device). I only played mostly through the website VTA demo and a bit more using the PC build Chris was kind enough to provide me with (this build helped me further on understanding what the locked features were). So, I don’t know how stable the game really is or if it has bugs or quirks, or other iOS types of problems, so proceed on your own risk.

Anyway, and overall, Vincere Totus Astrum is a great experience. The 4 different playing modes, the variety of races, starmaps, the battles mini-game and the amount of stuff you can do should be enough to keep you entertained for some time. The App is cheap so while this article is not actually a review I guess I can recommend VTA to all space strategy fans that own an iOS device. I hope casual fans will like it, since in my opinion, as I’ve already said VTA is a great introduction to the genre.

You can buy Vincere Totus Astrum at iTunes App Store here.

Further Notes

Chris told SpaceSector that he’s planning for a VTA update. He plans to include the following features in chunks or chapters as he calls it:

• Ground combat (building carriers to transport tanks for battle).
• Each race gets new race specific techs to research, which will assist each race in various ways
• New planet management overscreen to quickly scroll through planets and check stats
• Introducing Antik Artifacts, once found can be turned off/on in options during game and affect gameplay various ways
• New Playable race (Caretakers)
• New Enemy AI (Ve’Dikeen), not playable
• New Purification and Destruction terraforming technology available to counter Ve’Dikeen threat
• New Enemy AI (Antik) not playable

Chris mentioned that these updates are being planned (if not already in the works) but he said that the extent of what he’s able to do will depend on sales. So, in conclusion I don’t know when/if they will become a reality in the near future. They are nice improvements though.

Chris has also a deal on the way to port VTA to PC to be sold via Impulse. He also mentioned that a possible android version could be on the way.

Gameplay Trailer

Anyway everything leads to believe that Sword of the Stars 2 will come out this Fall of 2011.

SpaceSector did an interview with Chris Stewart (Producer and Designer of Sword of the Stars 2) in order to anticipate some of SotS2′s new features.

Here follows the interview we did with Chris. I think it came out great, revealing a lot on what to expect from SotS2. Hope you agree. Enjoy!

1.Firstly, what can we expect from the story in Sword of the Stars 2?

The main thing you can expect is that all the hints and foreshadowing from the first series comes to a point with the return of the Suul’ka. From the very first of SotS1, players have been bumping into alien derelicts, which ultimately proved to be abandoned and damaged chunks of Suul’ka armor.

The second thing players can expect is that we didn’t reboot the story – the game universe reflects the passage of time in a number of ways. All six alien races from the first series are in SotSII from the start. The tech tree starts at a later tech era – no reinventing all the basic techs yet again. We also know where we’re headed with the SotSverse, so SotS2 will set the stage for future expansions the same way the first series did. There are even linked scenarios that tell little pieces of SotS lore.

2. Could you describe a bit the new race – The Suul‘ka?

Simply put, they are ancient Liir. Biologically, Liir are incredibly long lived, limited only by their size. Most elder Liir are very zen when their time comes, but a few seek to cheat death and do so by using their psionic powers, which are very well developed by their age, to dominate the population, and use the population to build them the suits they need to leave planetside and live in space. The Liir rebelled against the Suul’ka, destroying many of them – a few escaped. Now they’re back and just as dark and un-Liir as they were before, maybe moreso.

3. Are there any changes to the existing races?

There are small changes, some have even allied up with one another, so they are a playable faction moreso than a playable race. The biggest change to all the races is that the psionic powers of the Suul’ka have started a psychic arms race, as all the races rush to develop members of their population to act as offensive weapons or defensive shields against the Suul’ka (and more often than not, the psionic officers from the other alien empires.) Psionics are a whole new branch of the tech tree in SotS2.

4. Diplomacy was rather limited in SotS1. Has it been overhauled/improved?

Diplomacy in the first SotS is exactly what one would expect in an era of gunboat diplomacy – SotSII is meant to reflect what comes next in a new era, where empires have already been established and now have to live with one another. So, to that end a lot of the systems in the game, from trade to research to politics now factor into diplomacy in new ways. Your ability to develop provinces, which are internal diplomatic matters, impact things like local trade. Stations can now be developed and modified to suit various needs, including a range of stations with diplomacy in mind. And most importantly, how you play the game will impact diplomacy, as how you act in the game dictates where your government falls on a political spectrum, and depending on where the other players fall on the political spectrum, your ability to deal with them diplomatically can be easier or harder or outright impossible.

5. How does the starmap work in SotS2? Are there any new features, or it’s practically the same?

Starmaps in SotS2 will be familiar to people who played the first game, with a variety of 3D maps of different shapes and sizes. Some changes have been made – for example, certain areas of space are labeled, for new players that need more geographic reference. And the change from the abstracted one star – one planet system of SotS1 to whole solar systems has meant that the overall size of the galaxy maps have decreased.

300 stars in SotS1 meant 300 planets, which was fine for people playing epic games. But 300 stars in SotSII would be a thousand planets at a minimum – that’s way too large. So, overall the scale in terms of planets has been maintained, meaning a smaller number of stars per starmap. Plus we have cool space features, like nebula that players have to travel through or around.

6. About colony management. Do we still colonize abstract systems or individual planets? Are sliders still the primary form of control?

I got into that a bit above – SotSII now models each star as a solar system, with each star having zero to a handful of planets and asteroids. Setting up on them is the same easy-access sliders as in SotS1, and as your worlds develop, you now have more options. Planets can be developed into capitol worlds for a province of planets and stars. You can develop planets more towards specialized gem worlds focused on research and trade, or forge worlds focused on production. And around these worlds you can set up and develop stations, starting with small trade or naval stations that over time you can grow into massive trade hubs, or diplomatic stations or massive military installations.

7. Is ship design overhauled? Will we have more sections to swap out, or are we still limited to three?

Ship design is one of the core features from SotS1 that carries over mostly the same – through research players develop and unlock new ship sections; command, mission, and engine. Player can then mix-and-match the sections depending on the functions they need their ship design to serve. As before, they also get to set which weapons go into which turret banks on the ship. However, in SotSII things go even further  – ships can now be outfitted with modules, which have their own functions. Depending on what players want, they can add even more of a ship’s ability by adding a module, or they can use modules to cover their bases.

SotS2: Ship Design (footage source angryjoeshow.com)

So for example, they can leave out a Deep Scan section, preferring to put a more martial section in there – but they can add a sensor module, which while not as good as a Deep Scan section, does give the ship more than just the basic sensor range. As well, new carrier classes allow players to build, design, and equip a new range of battlerider ships that can be carried into battle. We also added a weapons test sub-screen on the design screen, so players can test out and admire their newly unlocked weapons and sections without having to worry about a raging battle going on around them.

In battle, players will notice ships now have armor, rather than the abstracted hitpoint system of the first game, and a whole interior life involving power-systems, crew, and supplies, which have to be taken into account when managing a fleet of ships, and can be negatively impacted in battles. All things players will want to keep in mind when designing their ships and composing their fleets.

8. Could you detail a bit more the new Leviathan and Battlerider ship classes?

The Leviathan class is the new massive ship class – these ships are as rare as they are mighty. Acquiring one will take a lot of research, time, and money, and as such, losing one will be devastating. Just as in SotS1, players have to remember that the game isn’t binary obsolescence – armor 3 makes lasers 2 useless – a weapon may become less effective, but it will still have an effect. If you can multiply that effect – more of that weapon, either on a single ship, or by having more ships together – you have multiplied the effect. So, a Leviathan is definitely a monster in battle, but a careless player can still lose one to a fleet of smaller ships if they’re not smart or careful.

SFS Leviathan (footage source angryjoeshow.com)

Battleriders, and their cousins the System Defense Boats, are the refinement of the destroyer class ships in the first game. Players can design then and outfit them with weapons as they wish, then assign those ships to a carrier, for battleriders, and solar system for SDB. SDBs have small drive systems for moving around a solar system fast, whereas Battleriders only have basic thrust engines – they cannot move between the stars themselves and have to be carried into and out of battle.

9. In lieu of these larger ships, will combat be fought on a larger scale?

SotSII is definitely more of a capital ship class tactical wargame when it comes to the real-time combat side of the game. Bigger, more durable, more complex ships fighting over an entire solar system means a very different type of combat from the first game – there’s a reason we let you name your ships in SotSII!

10. Besides any new technologies, can we expect other improvements to the technology system?

A cool new addition to the research system is the feasibility study. As in the first series, the randomized tech tree is a key feature for keeping the game highly replayable and avoiding the stagnation you get with static tech trees. So as before, players aren’t aware of what they do and don’t have as technologies (not counting the core technologies that everyone has every game) until they research the technologies that come before.

However, players now have the option to spend a couple of turns on a feasibility study, in which their scientists are able to tell them how hard researching a particular technology will be. This is extremely useful if your plans are betting on a certain technology within a certain period of time – if it’s not going to happen, you don’t want to find out the hard way, mid-plan execution. You want to know in advance and cook up another plan.

11. If you had to choose the one improvement you’re most proud of, what would it be?

I think the MARS2 engine cannot be overlooked. As much as we were able to immerse people in the real-time battles in SotS1, using physics and polygon accurate targeting and weapons fire with an actual presence in the game world, I look at pictures for SotS1 and SotSII side by side and I’m blown away by the new look of the game.

Thank you for your time Chris.

Zachary Cryer has been a SpaceSector contributor since May 2011. Besides having assembled the questions for this interview he also did a review of Sword of the Stars Complete collection. Zachary has done many other reviews on his Gamespot page.

Jupiter’s Folly is a (slow) real-time online board game developed by Iron Helmet Games. And I say slow because short games might last a week or so, while epic games may last months.

It is a perfect game for you to try if you don’t have much time on your hands. Things happen in real-time but events take a long time to unfold.

It’s one of those “login-twice-a-day-to-check-things” type of game but in this case without the stress of other similar games that force you to wake up at the middle of the night to check if nothing terrible has happened. In Jupiter’s Folly that should not happen.

Moving units across nodes in the map takes a long time (each move takes 8h). In addition you are only given new cards and money each 24h. And this applies to everybody else playing the same game.

It is an RTS but feels like a TBS

So in the end Jupiter’s Folley is a game of real-time strategy but at a slow pace, a tick-based RTS, which makes it almost like a turn-based game. It can actually be turned into a turn-based game if you go for the premium account, more on that ahead.

It is a real-time strategy game, no doubt about that, but after you’re done you can sit back, relax and wait for everybody else to finish. Then everybody will sit back and wait for a next round and so on. You can still do stuff like cancel orders.

I played the tutorial, which is very quick and nice by the way. That combined with a few minutes reading through the site and 30 min more exploring the game gave me a good overall picture of what the game is all about. I had fun, the UI is cool and usable but this is not a review so I will not enter into details (and I don’t have much more to say either with <1h of play anyway).

The game is really easy to play. Rules are simple and clear. In the farthest reaches of the galaxy you are looking for Crystal, the ultimate resource everybody wants. You build mines to extract Crystal but you have to counter hostile aliens and rival miners.

Each game has a Crystal quota. Meet it before everybody else and you win! :)

So basically you log-in once or twice a day to check point of status, build mines and command your armies.

It’s Multiplayer but it’s also Single-player

It is a multiplayer game where you should mind your own business but you should also keep an eye on other real players in order to trade and engage with them in diplomacy. The idea is to forge alliances if I understood correctly. You can play single-player games also.

If you play single-player you’re given the ability to do 4h boosts, so, you can play your games almost continuously. This means that you can play whole games in just a few hours.

JF is a card board game, so in the end your actions are dependent on the use of cards. There are cards to create armies, build mines, extract crystal from mines, increase your hand, and supposedly others I didn’t saw yet. There are also special cards and cards you can only lend to other players.

In terms of business model JF is freemium. So, it’s free to play, however to be able to create your own games, and to be able to unlock all the game features you need to subscribe a premium account.

The game is at open beta stage at the time of this preview.

Checkout the Jupiter’s Folley official site for more information, and to play :)

Let us know if you tried it and what were your impressions about it.

Beyond Beyaan is heavily inspired by the 4x classic Master of Orion series. When you start playing you can easily tell that many aspects are inspired by MoO1 (the sliders, ship design and research for example) and others by MoO2 (some parts of research and ship design also). The starmap and ships movement also remind you of MoO.

I’ve been following Brent’s work for some time now. Considering that he’s working almost by himself (and that this is his first game) I think his progress is amazing. I believe there’s much still to be done and polish but I think the game is already solid enough to be looked at more closely. There is no release date established yet though.

Next follows a brief hands-on preview of the current development/alpha version Brent was kind enough to share with me.

Game Setup

When you start your game you can choose the players (Human or Computer) and some galaxy generation parameters. When you’re done with that you generate your galaxy. When you’re happy with your galaxy you click next and start your game.

Beyond Beyaan: Game Setup Screen

The game customization screen is probably not finished yet. It needs a bit of polishing but it already contains the basic stuff, and looks fine. There are only two races currently available to choose from: Humans and Zero People. Brent will probably add more races in the future.

In-Game

When the game starts you’re presented with a starmap. You can see your star system containing your homeworld and probably other planets of different types. I already saw Tundra planets, Desert, Terran, Asteroids, Jungle, Steppe and Dead, and all of this diversity in a single system. Amazing!

You decide your planet’s output by adjusting sliders to manipulate what’s to be produced. Here the similarities with MoO1 are striking, but also in Sword of the Stars, although SotS got inspired in MoO1 in the first place :)

By adjusting your sliders you can choose to allocate funds to Agriculture (impacts population growth), Pollution (impacts max pop, not fully implemented yet), Commerce (not yet implemented), Research (implemented), and Construction (implemented).

Beyond Beyaan: Colony Screen

From what I could tell 1 population unit standing on a planet generates 1 BC (billion credits if I’m correct). You then allocate the amount of cash generated to areas like research, pollution containment, construction, etc.

Planets have special characteristics I believe, since some feature an icon representing some kind of treat. I could not tell which types of bonuses are offered though (tip: tool tips always help a lot).

To move ships around you click on your fleet (represented by a bunch of small ships next to your systems), set the amount of ships you want to send and then right-click on a location.

Beyond Beyaan: Ships Movement

To colonize planets, if I understood correctly, you transfer population by building transports. At least that was what I did since I could not find a colony type of ship. So, to colonize, you send your transport(s) to an ninhabited planet, in the same system or in a different one, and choose a planet to land. Multiple empires can inhabit the same system (something that also made me remember MoO2).

On the bottom of the galaxy screen there is a “taskbar” with 9 buttons that contain the menu options. From left to right: Game Menu, Galaxy View, Diplomacy, View Fleets, Design Ship, View Designs, View Planets, Research, and End Turn.View Designs isn’t implemented yet.

Beyond Beyaan: UI Menu

Brent confirmed that ship Design is fully implemented, but the UI layout isn’t final. Here again the similarities with MoO1 and MoO2 are evident. You can choose weapons, hulls (the models resemble MoO models a lot), number of mounts and special equipment like computers, engine, armor and shields.

Beyond Beyaan: Ship Design

Although you can tell that the models are heavily inspired by MoO I don’t remember seeing them exactly as such in MoO games. Some of the models are quite cool actually.

Research is implemented, you can already research stuff. You allocate the research points you generate from each planet throughout the different technologies you want to research.

Beyond Beyaan: Research Screen

The research mechanics feels also very MoO’ish. You manipulate sliders (and can lock them) to distribute your research points, which is clearly inspired in MoO1 (other games also use this mechanic like Armada 2526 for instance), and you can choose from multiple research options in the same “field” (which resembles MoO2 way of choosing  from multiple alternatives).

Nothing seems to be left out; there is also diplomacy in Beyond Beyann.

Beyond Beyaan: Diplomacy Screen

The options presented are pretty much standard, maybe the reconcile empire and harass empire are two innovative options on this topic.

So, what’s new or different about Beyond Beyaan?

So far my experience playing Beyond Beyaan was not so different from playing a mix of MoO1 and MoO2, but subpar. I also had a few flash experiences from other space strategy games.

Beyond Beyaan’s major strength though resides on its high moddability.

Brent states that the player will have the ability to modify different aspects of gameplay. You could mod galaxy generation to create custom galaxies for example.

But the biggest things that you will be able to modify are the technologies.  From Brent’s own words:

“This game will focus on space combat and technologies, so you can create your own technologies and plug them in.  For example, if you want a torpedo to bounce off a ship towards another ship, you can script that torpedo’s “OnHit” function to tell it to bounce instead of disappearing. Or perhaps you want a missile to split into multiple missiles (not just internal code, but visibly splitting), you can script that in “Travel” function after a certain time amount has passed” – Brent Patterson.

This sounds great so I asked Brent how players could modify the game. He replied the following:

“At main menu, before starting a game, there will be a drop-down showing different game files that you can load, the normal gameplay would use “Default”.  You can add new folders, and create your own races, technologies, AI scripts, galaxy generation scripts, artwork and sounds for the game.  The game will allow you to select one of those folders and load it, so you don’t have to overwrite any of the game files. So in theory, it’d be possible to mod the game to be similar to older 4x games, or create your own game.” – Brent Patterson.

Pre-Order and Donations

Brent has plans to set up a Pre-Order service soon in order to try and raise money to fund art work and other resources of the game. Currently he has set up donations on his website. He explains what he plans to do with the funding. There will be perks involved to donors.

Brent would be delighted, for sure, to hear your comments on what you’ve seen so far. If you want to support his project, then feel free to do so! You can reach Brent through his blog.

Good luck on your project Brent. I will watch it closely.

About Brent Patterson

Brent shared his motivation on developing Beyond Beyaan with SpaceSector.

Brent is a professional programmer and a space game enthusiast that wants to see a worthy Master of Orion successor.

“I was not happy with the new 4x games being released, that I find to be too complicated or in real-time. So, I decided to create my own game, picking up from the features I liked best from MOO1, and some other 4x games” – Brent Patterson.

Brent maintains a blog where he keeps his advancement on Beyond Beyaan up to date.

Starjack Online is a 4X real-time strategy, massively multiplayer online game that can be played for free. However it is not browser-based, you have to download client software in order to play.

The devs mention in their starjack online website that in terms of 4X, the game “will focus more on the technological, economical, military and political development of an empire”. I wonder where exploration fits in Starjack, normally it is a rather weak aspect of space strategy MMOGs.

But the basics seem to all be there – “you can extract resources, develop your colonies, launch your fleets, research new technologies and watch your empire flourish”

LGS also promise to offer automation options to remove what they consider to be “tedium and the need for micromanagement“.

Being an RTS everything in SJO evolves in real-time. All happens within the same persistent universe, so, all actions done by every player affects all other players after the moment they occur, no matter if you’re online or offline. This is the standard for MMOGs.

An intriguing aspect of LGS is that the devs state that almost everything within the game is player created. Colonies, ships, troops, prototypes. They also state that the game offers tools so that the player can interact and manage that content. Interesting.

You can register and download the game for free from the Starjack Online website.

As typical in these free online games there are premium features. Subscribers will enjoy special benefits. There is also a special resource (usually rare or that can only be bought). Typically this kind of resources are needed to access premium content or to facilitate certain tasks. In the case of SJO that resource is crystals.

I’ll check out Starjack Online in more detail to see what it has to offer, especially what’s different about it.

Screenshots

Come and discuss Starjack Online in the forums: http://www.spacesector.com/blog/forum/showthread.php?tid=686

Astriarch – Ruler of the Stars is a turn-based single player space strategy game implemented in Silverlight (a Microsoft framework to develop web-browser plugins), which means that Astriarch is a browser-based game (at least for now).

Astriarch was previously released as free public beta. In the gold version Mastered Software added music and sound effects. The game is still free. They plan to develop future enhancements which will include multiplayer mode, a research tree and the desktop version of the game (i.e. a non-browser-based version).

In their website Mastered Software says that Astriarch was inspired in many aspects from other classic space strategy games like “Master of Orion 2 (MOO2), Stellar Conflict (1987 Amiga), and Star Control“. I can speak for MOO2, they really captured some aspects of the MOO2 soul. You can notice it here and there while playing.

As a curiosity the devs explained that the name Astriarch comes from the Ancient Greek words for star (ástron) and ruler (arkhos).

First Impressions

I went to the Astriarch homepage, watched the two video tutorials and started playing right away. All of this was done in the same web page. No registration page, no download required (although I had Silverlight already installed, you will need to download it in order to play). I setup a game versus 3 computer players and started playing.

As I previously watched the video tutorials I jumped into the game very quickly. I built my first farms and mines and started hitting the end turn button. Then I strolled around to see what each thing was for. The tool tips are very nice providing you all you need to know, short and incisive information.

The game is completely sandbox, so there is no story, campaign or anything like that. You setup a scenario and off you go.

User Interface

The User Interface is very simple, clean and intuitive. You get your main interaction with the game from the main strategy star map. You can see your stats, your ships and select your different planets. You have two additional panels to interact with: the planetary management window, which is the heart of the management decisions you need to make, and a fleet window in order to move your ships around.

The interface is not pretty but it does not have to be. It is functional and it completely captures the retro feel of this type of games.

The Economy System

In Astriarch your resources are food, gold, ore and iridium (a very hard high melting point metal).

You need enough food to feed your population and keep them happy (or  they revolt). You need the other three resources to build your structures and your space ships. Iridium is key to build your spaceships as I understand it is the material needed as an alloy.

Production in Astriarch is a factor of the number of Farmers, Miners and Workers you assign using the sliders in each planet to that effect. More farmers with more farms produce more food, more miners with more mines produce more ore and iridium, and more workers with more factories build things quicker. But there is a limit to the number of structures you can build in each planet and to the number of people you can hold.

The type of planet you own will affect your food, mining and production levels as for your maximum population and maximum building slots. But nothing has been left out; you can increase your population number by building colony structures.

I find Astriarch’s economy system elegant. It’s simple and easy to grasp while at the same time it is sufficiently rich and realistic. It is very well done.

Combat

There are five types of spaceships in Astriarch: Defenders, Scouts, Destroyers, Cruisers and Battleships. Some of which require certain buildings to be present at planet in order to be produced.

Combat is auto-resolved with a presentation of a screen pop-up informing you of the results. Combat is not tactical but has a very nice twist. Each spaceship type has advantages and disadvantages against each other so there is a nice degree of strategy that you can play with. For example, Scouts are good against defenders and cruisers are good against battleships. These bonuses are definitely a very interesting mechanic that really adds depth to the gameplay and to the overall what-to-build decision-making process.

There is no ground combat, no troops and no ground invasions. When your spaceship forces defeat all the garrisons holding a planet that planet is immediately captured to your side. From what I saw there is no option to bombard planets, i.e. to siege planets. You attack and win or lose. There are no retreats.

A Word about the Music

Astriarch’s music is … how shall I put it? Brilliant! It creates a great sci-fi atmosphere that transports you to the stars and really helps immersion. Great job!

Left Outs

There is no spaceship design, no research and no diplomacy in Astriarch, although Mastered Software has promised to develop a research tree in future game improvements.

Suggestions

A minimal diplomacy system would be nice. It would not need to be very complex. Just a peace and war option could be interesting to have. Right now your only interaction with the computer races is through war. To be qualified as a 4x game this is a key aspect to include, if that is what you are aiming for, of course. There could also be trade but that is probable asking too much for now.

If you could pull it off easily enough it would be very nice to add some RPG elements to the game. The minimum would be for ships to level up. This system would not need to be very complex. Each time a ship wins a battle it gains some points. After some threshold is hit they gain a level and that could give them a bonus percentage in combat. I think this is probably not too hard to implement (although I understand it’s not that easy also) and would improve, in my opinion, space combat fun dramatically.

I understand that research is planned to be a future game improvement. Minimum research options like attack and defense improvements and production enhancements, just to name a few examples, would be nice. This is another requirement, in my opinion, for the game to be qualified as 4x (you’re very close).

Optimally there could be more spaceship designs in the future, maybe a Carrier type and a Dreadnought for example. And even better, being able to tweak the ships somehow would be great.. There could be a custom ship that the player could design. Now that would be something.

Another important factor would be to introduce the element of surprise more often. It is more than proven in game design theory that fun goes side by side with surprises. If done well even negative surprises can be good elements for fun. Maybe you could add events like strikes (you already have revolts), derelicts or special features or bonuses in planets that could boost or decrease production and habitability even more, just to mention a few examples.

I think all these suggestions could be implemented quite simply without complex mechanics, fancy graphics or exquisite interfaces. It’s my 2 cents for your future plans for game improvements.

Bottom Line

Astriarch is probably one of the simplest space strategy games I’ve ever played and its brilliance is only surpassed by how strikingly simple it is to play. At the same time it provides more than enough gameplay complexity and requires that you make enough decisions to qualify it to be really worth your time.

I recommend you try Astriarch out. It should be more than enough to satisfy your space strategy craving for an easy, quick, or not so quick, game experience.

Astriarch is being discussed in this forum thread which was started personally by the Mastered Software developers. Feel free to participate in the discussion about the game and to present your suggestions directly to the devs.

Bigpoint and ArtPlant developed Battlestar Galactica Online, a Browser-Based MMORPG set on the Battlestar Galactica Universe. The game was released to the public on Feb 2011 as open beta. As I write these first impressions, the game is still on open beta, although it feels quite solid and probably is almost finished by now.

Bigpoint is one of the biggest publishers and developers of browser-based games. Their most popular titles include Dark Orbit, Seafight, Farmerama or Zoomumba. BSG online is being announced as the best launch of Bigpoint to date. Strong marketing punch indeed. So, I decided to have a look for myself to see if the product really meets the hype.

Let me start by saying that I’m a long time fan of the Battlestar Galactica Universe. I loved to watch the original TV Series (1978). BSG was one of the reasons why I fell in love with science fiction in the first place, along with other titles of course. I also watched the entire re-imagined BSG series that aired some years ago.

BSG Online is Free

BSG online is a free MMORPG that only requires a web-browser to run. As usual with this type of games, and with this type of business models, the game is offered to players for free. Bigpoint, and other companies alike, offer their games, in return they receive compensation from optional micro-payments that can be made in-game through a game currency commodity (in BSG online the currency is Cubits).

You can still play the game without paying for it, and usually you can have the full game experience without doing any micro-transactions. The trick is that normally the developers are keen on seducing the player to do these micro-payments through a number of ways. Sometimes micro-payments unlock special features, premium content and other times they offer shortcuts so that you don’t need to wait for something that takes a long time to build or to happen.

BSG Online First Impressions

I registered an account on the BSG online website and started playing immediately (I didn’t even need to confirm my account on my email). You start by choosing which faction you would like to play, Cylons or Colonials. After you’ve made your choice you jump straight into the game tutorial where you learn the basics of the game’s combat mechanics.

You learn to maneuver your ship and to destroy your enemies by targeting drones. The tutorial is nicely built, smooth and is not too much time-consuming.

The interface is very usable; all you need to do or know is at a distance of a click. You can right-click on your mouse to set the course and with the left click you select things and increase or decrease your throttle, among other things. You can even zoom in and out with your mouse scroll. So cool! It is that simple.

BSG Online sets in True 3D

BSG online has a true 3D engine behind that allows you to move freely around the game universe. BSG online uses the Unity Game Engine.

UGE is a game engine designed by Unity Technologies that allows developers to make fully fledged 3D online games that run in the web browser. BSG online with UGE really looks and feels amazing. The game runs very smoothly without hangs, bugs or crashes to report, all this in a simple web-browser. Great job!

Setup your Character and Review your Assignments

When you finish the tutorial you are transferred to a roster screen where you can set up your appearance and choose your ship. If you’re a colonial you can choose between a Viper MK II (if you prefer dogfight combat), or a Raptor (if you prefer reconnaissance or combat support). If you’re a Cylon you can choose between a Raider and a Heavy Raider, these last two share the same kind of characteristics as the Viper and the Raptor respectively.

After you set your looks and choose your ship you’re headed to the CIC, the command center of the Galactica battleship. There you can review your assignments with Admiral Adama himself. The complete list of assignments is also listed, and always available to you, in the screen at your right through a tab that you can hide if you want.

In addition to being debriefed about assignments you can also request some background info on the current war status from Adama. In time you can even request the command of the Pegasus from him. The Pegasus is Galactica’s sister ship, it is also a Battlestar class battleship like Galactica. But for that you need to acquire more experience and much more merit from duty.

Hang out at the Bar or do some Shopping

If you don’t feel like jumping right for your next assignment you can stroll around the CIC and head straight to the recreational area (the bar). Anyone familiar with the re-imagined BSG TV Series knows how important the bar scenes were to set the mood and the right atmosphere.

You can use the bar as a place to hang out and acquire information from Starbuck and Apollo (two other main characters from the re-imagined BSG TV series). You can also acquire some more background information and current war status from them.

You can also get extra assignments from Apollo for a chance to earn extra Cubits (the game’s currency) which can be exchanged for advanced items and other resources. You can also earn extra Tilium (ship fuel) from these side missions (or quests) that can be exchanged for other common items. By the way, other game resources include water, a precious supply that can be exchanged for cubits, and Titanium, that can be used to restore durability and can also be exchanged for Tilium.

I don’t know yet the full extent of the bar usage. Who knows, maybe you can get the chance to fly other ships not directly available to you from the main assignments. That part you will eventually figure out by yourself.

When you’re refreshed with a drink and ended your conversation with Apollo or Starbuck you can stop by for a visit to the Galactica’s Hangar, the fleet store.

In the Hangar you can equip your ship with better weapons, hulls, engines and computers. You can also resupply your ammunition.

You drag and drop your items to your ship in order to do this, in an exchange for Tilium, Titanium or Cubits. In addition to making ship improvements you can request a maintenance crew to restore your ship’s health (for a cost of titanium or cubits), you can also change your ship assignment and choose the ship you want to use from a vast list of ships that the game will eventually allow you to command. You can also buy a new ship. When buying ships you may be forced to transfer from Galactica to another war front on another sector.

When you’re ready for your next assignment get right back to the CIC and receive your debrief from Admiral Adama. My first assignment was a recon mission.

You can be a Cylon

You get all the above if you choose to side by the Colonials. You will be able to interact with Adama, Apollo, Starbuck and Chief Tyrol among others. Now imagine if you choose the Cylons! I’ll let you venture and discover that for yourself. Here is, however, a quick preview of what to expect. I leave you with Number Six (Caprica) and Number 2 (Ledben) for a nice conversation at the Cylon Basestar (the Cylon flagship) bar.

Music, Sound and Graphics

The sound is more than adequate for this sort of game. Your gun fire sounds nice; the menu sounds serve their purpose without distracting you. The music is great! This is a not so common feature among browser-based games (some don’t even feature music at all!). The music score is taken from the BSG re-imagined series soundtrack. Overall the music is of very high quality and really helps you feel more immersed in the game.

Graphics are great (and consider that you’re playing in a web-browser). It may have a few anti-aliasing problems here and there, but nothing special. The Unity Game Engine is really something. My experience with the game has been smooth, enjoyable, with no glitches, bugs or crashes whatsoever.

Bottom Line

BSG Online succeeds completely in capturing and recreating the re-imagined BSG TV series atmosphere. Can you believe that this game is played in a web-browser? Amazing! And it’s free. If you like games like EVE online and you love the Battlestar Galactica Universe then this game is for you. If you’re new to these types of games BSG Online is a good start.

I highly recommend anyone to try this game. It’s easy and free to play, so, if you don’t enjoy it in the end, you’ll only have lost a couple of hours. That is all that is required to register, play around with the engine in the tutorials, stroll around in the Galactica battleship, or on the Cylon Baseship, and make a quick assignment.

I had a blast playing and doing these first impressions! I hope you have enjoyed reading it.

You can enter the BSG online universe here.