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.

I thought it was time we had another contest at Space Sector. So, I’m proud to announce that Space Sector has teamed up with Paradox Interactive and we’ll host a giveaway contest at Space Sector. Paradox will offer 10 copies of Sword of the Stars 2: Lords of Winter, this 28th of October. But that’s not all. Paradox was generous and in addition to the 10 SotS2 copies it will also offer 20 copies of Sword of the Stars Complete Collection (the entire SotS original series).

This means that the lucky 10 will get Sword of the Stars II and Sword of the Stars Complete Collection. The next set of 10 lucky ones will receive a copy of Sword of the Stars Complete Collection, which is a great way to enter in the SotS Universe also. So, in total there will be a total of 20 prize winners in this contest.

How to enter in the contest

1. Follow on twitter: @spacesector, @swordofthestars, @PDXinteractive - OR – like Space Sector, Sword of the Stars and Paradox on facebook
2. Tweet for Sword of the Stars. Example: “I will eXplore, eXpand, eXploit & eXterminate the universe! @spacesector @swordofthestars @PDXinteractive to win a copy” – OR – share this blog post URL in facebook
3. For the social network non-users out there (that don’t want to join these networks) you can still enter the contest. You folks can forget about points 1 and 2, you just need to subscribe the Space Sector newsletter (in the sidebar to the right) and Paradox’s newsletter by registering in their forum. This is not a big deal to ask I guess, and you can unsubscribe both newsletters later at any time if you wish. Although I think you’d lose a great opportunity to stay in touch with Space Sector’s news ;)
4. Make a comment in this blog post below. Submit your name and email in the comment form (we’ll use that email to contact you if you’re one of the winners). Let us know also what you’ve done regarding point 1,  2 and 3. Don’t forget to include your twitter id or facebook id (for points 1 and 2) or the username you used to register the Paradox forum (for point 3).

I will give examples of how you guys should post your comments to become eligible:

@<your twitter name here> has followed @spacesector, @swordofthestars and @PDXinteractive and tweeted

Another example:

<your facebook name here> liked Space Sector, Sword of the Stars and Paradox and shared this post in facebook

One more:

Registered Space Sector newsletter and registered in Paradox’s forum with username [the username you used to register in paradox's forum here].

We’ll pick the winners on the 28th of October 2011 at 12:00 am EST. I’ll check those to see if they fulfilled all points, if they shared and what it was. Edit: I forgot to mention. Contest closes on 27th October 12:00am EST. After that point you can no longer enter the contest. I’ll signal that by changing the contest status to [CLOSED].

The contest winners will be generated randomly with the help of random.org

Games will be provided via Steam.

Games’ info:

• Sword of the Stars 2: Q&A with Chris Stewart
• Sword of the Stars 2: Opening Cinematic Sneak Peak
• Sword of the Stars 2: New Video Interview With Martin Cirulis at GDC
• Sword of the Stars Complete Collection – Review

Good luck!

Cheers

Adam Solo

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

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.

Some months ago I’ve made a quick first impressions of 10 Min Space Strategy. The game was still in Alpha stage by then but there was already a demo available. By then I thought the game was already fun to play. There were no crashes or bugs, a few quirks here and there but nothing too serious to report.

Some days ago Goblin Lunatics has released the final version of 10 Min Space Strategy. Now it’s time for some more serious business. Here we go.

I downloaded 10 Min Space Strategy, installed it, configured the graphics, audio and language settings. By the way, have I mentioned that this game is free? Yes, completely free. No trial, micro-transaction, premium or any other babble. I think this is probably the most finished, playable and complete game I have ever played that it’s 100% free.

Races configuration

You are allowed to customize your race in 10MSS. That’s right. Not just the name and color but you can also pick from 20 different (interesting) traits, your homeworld type, and an overall credo (which means your race’s belief system). The credo provides you with special bonuses and special buildings.

10 Min Space Strategy: Race Configuration Panel

Being able to customize your races and choose your traits through a points system is a rare asset to be found these days in space strategy games. 10MSS delivers more than a sufficient number of race styles and traits to satisfy your customization needs. Traits are meaningful also. Although a great deal are modifiers (bonus percentages) others provide special abilities like the possibility to capture enemy ships, to be a tolerant race to hostile environments, to be more efficient against space monsters, etc, etc.

Exploration and Exploitation aspects

Once you start your game you see your planet and some other planets around. Some of them have a funny icon on top that looks like a scorpion. That signals the presence of a space monster on that planet (it took me several minutes to figure that out for myself  I confess).

In 10MSS the maps don’t contain stars and start systems, as usual in these types of games, but only planets. One can imagine perhaps that the entire map represents one single star system. The starmap concept is pretty abstract in this sense however that does not hurt the overall game experience in my point of view.

10 Min Space Strategy: Game Start

One very interesting thing to notice in the map is that besides planets there are also anomalies around. These anomalies provide extra bonuses when they’re under your control. These anomalies can be asteroid fields (that I think should slow down ships) that provide a production boost. There are also gas clouds (that I also think should also slow down ships) that provide a population growth boost (although I did not grasp the reason for this last bonus). There are also alien wrecks that can be explored to increase your research speed.

But there’s more to anomalies. First of all they vary in size which also varies the bonus level they provide and the number of ships you need to control them. Another aspect about anomalies is that they are finite. I think this was a great design decision. By being scarce the anomalies are like gems to be exploited only when the time is right.

One interesting improvement would be the ability to know when a resource is being exploited, without the need to go the “Empire screen” to check that. If the resource is being exploited it would be nice to see it glow for example. This is a minor quality aspect, but important nevertheless in my opinion.

Concerning Planets

In your planets you can build Factories, Research Centers, Cities, Bomber Factories, Supply Depots or other special buildings depending on your race credo. These buildings provide you with almost everything you need to thrive in the game.

I find the planets buildings construction, and the overall production system, quite elegant. It’s all very simple to manage but there is considerable depth to it. For starters you have a limited number of slots available in your planets (that swing around and glow so that you know that that planet still has slots available) so you have to plan carefully what to build on those slots. The game also allows you to build multiple structures of the same type if you decide so (I’m glad they did it that way). Too many factories and you create larger fleets faster but if you lack research centers you will stall your technology advance. Nothing is left out, population plays also a major role in production. So you need also to balance your population capacity and growth to decide what to build.

In the beginning you control one single planet, your homeworld. Your homeworld will be of your natural environment type but you can colonise other types of planets, although with a penalty.

Another great feature of 10MSS is that planets have special abilities (as far as I could tell all of them have one, maybe not the best decision). And there are plenty of these special abilities. Some examples are Natural mineral resources, Remains of a lost civilization or an Alien defensive structure just to name a few. These features provide bonuses and another layer of strategy since players must decide what’s best to build on each planet in order to take more benefit from its special feature. As a minor remark currently it’s not possible to rename planets, I think it would be nice to be able to do that.

Another nice thing is that some planets are guarded by space monsters. You need to wipe those out before you can colonise them. Although I like the space monsters idea I think it would be preferable not to disclose which planets have monsters until a spaceship arrives there. This would increase curiosity and the surprise factor, two crucial things that increase fun in a game.

Research

There are 5 tech research areas in 10MSS: Environment, Industry, Propulsion, Warfare and Empire. The first deals with populations improvements (capacity and growth), the second enhances the spaceships construction speed, Propulsion increases your spaceships reach and scanning ability, Warfare increases your combat ability and Empire deals with limits (the number of things you can build).

The research system, as with almost anything else in 10MSS, is simple yet effective. Each research center produces +1 research point for each population unit present in that planet. Therefore it’s not only production but also research that is dependent on population which makes population a key constraint in the game. And rightly so in my opinion (not like in some other games where it does not matter how much population you have you can always produce the same, but is a talk for another day).

You can pick which tech area, from the 5 above, you would like to focus your research on (only one at a time).

But there’s more to research. In addition to the 5 research areas, that if researched increase the “power” of each area, the game provides you also with “Research Traits”.

10 Min Space Strategy: Empire Details (Research Traits)

These research traits are kind of special projects that can be unlocked as soon as you reach a certain level of research for each of the 5 main research areas. These special projects may require just one research area to reach a certain level but normally it takes two research areas. This research traits feature is a cool aspect about the research system that makes it less 1 dimensional. This surely enhances strategy decisions to be made.

Space Combat & Planet Bombardment

There are only three types of spaceships in 10MSS: Fighters, Bombers and Colony Ships. Fighters are the backbone of your armada. Bombers are used to bombard planets. Colony ships are used to colonise planets and build space stations, a very important asset to deploy in more demanding times.

Space combat is completely cinematic. When two enemy forces engage in battle a screen is shown where you can watch the battle unfold. In the meantime, or after the battle ends, you can look at both yours and your opponent modifiers/bonus (and usually there are plenty of them). Most of the modifiers depend on the races traits, others depend on research you do in-game.

10 Min Space Strategy: Battles

Fighters are the ones (and only ones) that engage in direct combat. The Bombers mission is to bombard planets, but they can also be very handy when indirectly used in combat, if you happen to have the “Heavy Torpedoes” trait. When you have this trait your bombers don’t count for your overall ship numbers but they add up as bonus when your armada engages an enemy fleet. If you attack an enemy fleet composed exclusively of bombers the combat ends prematurely, you win and the opponent looses all bombers.

Although combat sounds very simple (and it really is), since there are no tactical aspects to control, it is still very engaging and fun because although you don’t control what happens during the battle your decisions before the battle do matter. You often  ask crucial questions like “Which mix of fighters and bombers should I use?“, “Should I mix Fighters and Bombers at all?“, “Maybe I should split my armada into 2 or maybe 3 additional fleets“.

A potential criticism that can be made to 10MSS  is that it provides only a small bunch of ship types, and you cannot customize any aspect of them either. Normally you would expect to have corvettes, cruisers, heavy cruisers, battleships or dreadnoughts in these kind of games right? Or at least some ship customization abilities. In 10MSS the spaceships concept is more abstract than usual, so there are only fighters and bombers to do all the war, and all your industry and research, the ALL game, revolves almost exclusively between these two types of ships alone.

In my personal opinion that criticism is more than acceptable before you try 10MSS, but after you play a couple of games you don’t notice that lack of ship types at all. The ships concept is so well abstracted that you don’t feel so much the need for more ships (although it wouldn’t hurt to have a couple more).

Planets can’t be conquered in 10MSS, so there’s no invasion concept. To remove your enemy from a planet you must bring bombers to bombard that planet. Each turn, depending on the number of bombers you bring, the enemy population will drop. Every turn you lose some ships in the bombardment process. When no population is present in the planet it becomes empty and it’s time to bring in your colony ship.

The planets siege process is quite straightforward, however it wouldn’t hurt to allow planets to be conquered and to provide a report on damage and possibly even allow the player to decide if it wants to destroy facilities. After a certain amount of population is massacred the remaining could be conquered and not completely annihilated. This would avoid the need to bring colony ships, a very tedious process, specially in late games.

Another very interesting concept in 10MSS are space stations. You can build as many as your Empire tech level allows you to. You need a colony ship to build a space station (awkward?). Ok, maybe it should be another type of ship but  I figure that for simplistic and economic reasons Goblin Lunatics choose to give the colony ship a double purpose.

10 Min Space Strategy: Space Stations

Space stations have an effect radius (that can be seen in the picture above) and can hold 1 module that you choose from possible alternatives from military strength, increased ship movement among others.

There is a catch to space stations however, you cannot dismantle space stations after you build them. You can build many of them but it would be nice to be able to scrap them when they’re not needed anymore. I only built a couple of space stations in my games but I imagine that they can be quite important, specially in very large games or multiplayer games, so the ability to dismantle them would be important in my opinion.

Other aspects

Music is great! It can become a bit repetitive however, especially on larger maps, but nothing too serious since the games don’t last for that long.

The game text fonts are a bit distracting and take a while to get used to. Another esthetic minor aspect is that information can sometimes overlap, especially on smaller planets. Maybe there should be an option to toggle some information on and off, like the planets population or name.

Explosions effects in the strategy map and in the cinematic map are simple but at least they’re there.

Battles feel balanced. I don’t know all the numbers behind combat but I didn’t feel the need to know them also. There are so many bonus modifiers that it’s always a bit unpredictable what the battle outcome will be, I like that.

A minor detail about space combat when sieging planets is that it would be nice to have the name of the planet appear in the cinematic dialog. It’s a minor detail but everything helps to immersion. Not being able to rename planets also bugs me a bit.

Personal suggestion: Besides gas clouds, asteroid fields and alien wreaks the game could also offer wormholes or stargates (fixed from game start, with no need to create additional ones). This would increase strategy complexity dramatically since these gateways would need to be watched carefully. Done right I don’t think this would hurt the simple mechanics of the game.

Another thing that would be useful would be to have a relocation feature to send ships produced in a planet automatically to a designated planet, space station or any other place. I surely missed that during my late games.

End game is simple. You win, that’s it :) There could be stats, plenty of stats. But maybe some highlights like the maximum number of fighters and bombers built, the elapsed time and a score would be nice to have.

10 Min Space Strategy: End Game

10MSS provides hot-seat multiplayer. I’ve tried it, it’s simple and looks flawless.

Graphics are simple but more than appropriate for these kind of games.

The user interface is practically perfect. It provides you with plenty of tooltips. I would say that all the information in the UI is self-evident or if not the tooltips will do the trick for you. No tutorial? No manual? Who needs it? After 15 minutes you already know 90% you need to know and the other 10% will come later in natural pace.

One minor issue with the user interface though is that it provides no information about how many turns a building or a tech will take to construct or to research. Was that on purpose? I must confess that bugged me in the beginning a little bit but then I got used to it and it didn’t bother me at all in the long-term.

There are no diplomacy options, none whatsoever. You are always at war with your opponents. That being said however it’s funny that I think I was successful in doing a certain kind of abstract diplomacy. What I mean by this is that in the beginning of my large game I did not attack my opponent and the AI did the same. We carefully monitored each other and no one wanted to make the first move (like in chess). At some point the AI was present in a planet I found interesting to claim mine so I “declared war”, not explicitly of course. So, although there are no diplomacy features in 10MSS there is some degree of implicit or imaginative diplomacy you can apply. But that being said yes, it’s a minus for the game not to have at least the basic diplomacy options, especially one that candidates to be named 4x. In my opinion a game is only pure 4x when it provides a minimum set of diplomacy options.

An important remark is that I found 10MSS a little bit too easy. I played 3 games, one small, other medium and another large and I won all three of them without the need to restart or load once. I guess the AIs probably squabble between each other too early and never reach (this is just a guess) critical numbers. I do amass fleets so I found quite easy to put AIs fighting each other and then after they weaken themselves I attacked with my huge fleets and steam rolled them.

This is what happens when you don’t have diplomacy options. If we could forge simple nonaggression treaties or military alliances we would know, and the AI also, who is enemy and who is not. This is surely one aspect that these kind of simpler games lack.

However I did find the AIs decently competent. I never saw a unescorted colony ship or any too apparent suicide mission in 10MSS (so unfortunately common in some AAA games that claim to have “great” AI).

One thing that the game lacks though are events. Things that surprise the player and increase the fun of playing.

The extermination phase, like in so many other space strategy games is very boring, after some point you know you’ll win so probably there should be a “the AI surrenders after some point option” or something.

Conclusions

It was a long review but I think 10MSS totally deserves it. It’s not because a game is Indie, free and simple that it doesn’t deserve to be thoroughly reviewed. Moreover I did have fun playing and that surely helps the review become a bit more extensive.

10 Min Space Strategy holds to its promise, it is great to play quick games. I think this game would be perfect for you if you’re travelling in a plain, train or waiting at the doctor. But it can also be a great joy to play a quick game at home, at work or at any other place where you have your PC or laptop.

If you’re a space strategy fan you have to try 10MSS. I guarantee you will not be disappointed, just be warned that it is a simple game so don’t expect anything too flashy. Even if you’re not a fan of Sci-fi 10MSS is still a good strategy game that surely deserves your time, after all it’s free and will only take you about 10 min to try it, so you really have nothing to lose have you?

Maybe in the future Goblin Lunatics will also do a tablet version of 10MSS. If that would be possible, or easy, it would be just natural to do that. However my advice to Goblin Lunatics is never to lose sight of traditional PC players, they are the backbone of players that play these kind of games, at least these days.

Goblin Lunatics deserves our appreciation for having developed this precious gem, and to letting us play it for free. I’m sure they will come up with ideas to monetize it, they surely deserve the credit for it.

10 Min Space Strategy	Space Sector score: 8.2 (about the score system)

In Gratuitous Space Battles you assign your ships, arrange them into fleets, give them upfront orders of engagement and then site down and watch the result of your deployment strategy: It’s all about wondering if all the decisions have been done right and if you can come out victorious from battle.

Ship Design

Spaceship design is the heart of the game since the construction decisions you make can ultimately mean the difference between victory and defeat.

Gratuitous Space Battles: Ship Design Screen

You begin by choosing a Hull for your ship, that can be a Fighter, Frigate or Cruiser, these are the three ship hull classes available in GSB. Each hull contains a certain number of slots that can be of two types: standard modules (squares) or hardpoints (exagons). The hardpoints can be used to put weapon modules, the standard slots are used to insert the other type of modules.

Spaceship Design Modules

When designing your ships you can insert several types of modules. These are: “Weapons”, “Defenses”, “Engines” and “Other” .

GSB: Weapons Modules

In Weapons you can insert several types of missile launchers, and a collection of energy beams (lasers, plasma, proton beam, etc). In Defenses you can insert several types of Armor and Shields.

GSB: Defense Modules

In Engines you can choose from a variety of engines, but beware that the bigger and the faster they are the more crew and energy they will require.

GSB: Engine Modules

Finally there are the Other modules. These vary from a range of modules like crew modules, energy modules, tractor beam, auto-repair systems, etc.

GSB: Other Modules

The Races

In the original GSB there are 4 races the player can choose from: The Federation, the Rebels, the Alliance and the Empire. Each race has its own art work which reflects into different hulls and different modules styles. This variety alone is enough to provide a different game experience to the player.

(Races from left to right: Federation, Rebels, Alliance, Empire)

Spaceship Combat

Spaceship combat is the core (and probably the single) gameplay mechanic of GSB. This is where everything happens. The player can choose from a set of missions that will be unblocked as soon as the player finishes the previous mission.

GSB: Fleet Deployment

There are three difficulty levels to choose from: Easy, Medium and Hard. The harder the challenge the more enemies you have to fight for to win the battle. In the Harder difficulty level you aren’t even allowed to know the size of your opponent.

Combat is not tactical but all about Strategy

Once you hit the “Fight!” button the battle begins and all you can do is watch it unfold. All your decisions have to be made upfront before everything begins in the fleet deployment panel. Decisions to be made account the types of ships you will use, the formation of these ships, the specific orders you can set to each ship and the amount of ships you will ultimately use. However the more ships you use the less honor points you receive. Honor points can be used to unlock new modules, ships and races as I will explain next.

GSB: Spaceship Battle

Among the different orders you can assign to your ships for instance you can instruct your fighters to escort your frigates and tell your frigates to protect your cruisers. There are many orders you can issue: Rescuer, Protector, Formation, Vulture, Escorter just to name a few.  So that’s why GSB is more about strategy than tactics since all decisions have to be made before the battle begins. After you start the battle you cannot instruct your ships to attack A or B neither you can give orders to specific modules of the ship, albeit you can see what each module status is, what they are aiming to, recharge rate, damage, etc.

You can unlock Modules, Ships and Races

As said above the player can win honor points if he fights battles with lower odds and came victorious (that is if he wins battles with less spaceships than the ones he was allowed to use). The player can trade these honor points later in the game Fleet HQ.

GSB: Fleet HQ Screen

The Fleet HQ is a panel screen where the player can trade his honor points to unlock new modules (new weapons, more potent shields, stronger armour, etc), new ships and new races.

Three Expansion Packs: Tribe, Order and the Swarm

Since the original GSB came out three expansion packs have already been released. These are called: The Tribe, The Order and The Swarm. Each of this expansion packs brings a new race with corresponding fighter, frigate and cruiser hulls, new modules, ship bonuses and new scenarios to fight for.

(From left to right: the Tribe, the Order and the Swarm)

Aesthetics: Music, Sound and Graphics

The Music score of GSB is certainly a plus feature. The battle sequences music transmit a dramatic feeling which helps the player to forget that he’s just watching the battle and not really taking any action. The sound is also good. From the big cruiser beam weapons firing to the small fighters blasters. Graphics are also good. In conclusion aesthetically GSB sounds and looks nice which is very positive since if this would not be the case the game appeal would drop significantly since the battles don’t require the player actions and the player must be kept entertained by other means.

Bottom Line

GSB ultimately is a fun game to play. Since I begun reviewing the game I may have fought now 90% of all the available scenarios straight on so you can get the feeling of how addictive the game really is. Most of this addictive factor comes from the honor points and the desire to trade them for new toys and new races. The introduction of the three new expansion packs have brought another degree of depth to the game since now there are more ships to fight with, new modules to unlock and new scenarios to fight.

Considering that the game has been developed by an Indie company and the fact that the gameplay is quite limited, since you cannot fight your battles but rather take only the decisions and design your ships, it is quite an achievement for Positech Games to have developed such an enjoyable game that will keep you entertained for many hours. Haa.. and I almost forget, you can also play online by establishing challenges and then connecting your friends to them which is another good feature that indeed enhances replayability.

For more information on Gratuitous Space Battles check the official GSB site at positech games.

Buy Gratuitous Space Battles Collector’s Edition	Space Sector score: 7.5 (about the score system)

Sins of a Solar Empire does all that but in real-time, but this is not really a novelty since Imperium Galactica and StarWars Empire at War are also 4x RTS games. Sins provides a very interesting mix of real-time and 4x mechanics which results in a much more tactical game like Starcraft or Command & Conquer but still preserving a good depth of strategic options. So Sins is nothing like Master of Orion 2 or Galactic Civilizations but much more like Homeworld, Imperium Galactica or Star Wars: Empire at War.

But enough of comparisons, now its time to talk about Sins of a Solar Empire.

The Story and the Races

The game offers three races for the player to choose from. These are the Humans, the Advent and the Vasari. The intro cinematic is quite good and unveils a bit of the game story. The adventure takes place somewhere in the future were Humans control now several systems and operate trade among them. The Advent is a race that possesses mystic powers and want to spread their religion; the Vasari are the nasty Aliens that just want to take control of everything and everybody.

In terms of gameplay the races are “skins” of each other with respect to units and the infrastructure that can be built though however the research path is substantially different and the capital ships powers and other small details are also different. Albeit all that the three races do offer a different and unique experience to play and possess specific sound effects, music and concept art.

In the Beginning …

Like in a regular 4x space strategy game you start with your home planet. You then start to collect additional resources (metal and crystal in Sins) nearby and develop the infrastructure to increase population (in order to increase credits). In Sins you can construct labs, trade centers, refineries, resource extractors and other military and civilian infrastructure.

Regarding warfare you can build three types of spaceships (in increasing order of size and importance): frigates, cruisers and capital ships. You need to pursue your way through research to unlock many of the spaceships prototypes but the types of ships that certainly will catch your eye are the Capital Ships.

Capital Ships are the Queens of the Sinful Empire

Capital Ships are the backbone of your fleets, they possess special powers that you can unlock with time as long as you allow them to survive and gain experience from battle. And this is one huge fun factor in Sins. Not only they are gorgeous, big and powerful they can gain experience and level up. In this sense Sins offers a certain degree of RPG element to the gameplay.

You tend to really care about your capital ships since you cannot build many and so you tend to look at them as special, as your heroes in the battlefield. Their powers bring a lot of strategic and tactical depth because their special powers are diversified and serve specific roles. Some powers are for fleet carriers, others for bombing capabilities, others for support, others for offense. You have to think wisely how and where to deploy these ships and when or not to use them in the battlefield because their loss may cost you the battle.

Playing Sins is Fun

A lot is going on and lots of decisions can be made when playing Sins. And being an RTS all this happens in real-time in a nicely balanced tensed environment. Yes, RTS is more for the gamers that enjoy the adrenaline over comfortable chair experience.  When you are not developing your infrastructure you may be thinking in evolving your research. When fighting battles you may need to take control of your capital ships powers or acquire new powers as soon as they level up. If you’re not fighting wars you may, and should be, preparing for them and building ships.

From time to time your foes will give you quests and you should pay special attention to those since they may bring you closely to an opponent and prevent an imminent war. When you successfully complete some quests for a specific opponent he may be willing to agree on a cease-fire with you or even to accept a peace or trade treaty. And although the diplomatic options of Sins are basically these, until Sins Diplomacy expansion was released at least,  they are sufficient to give you enough strategic options when grouping and forming alliances to decide who to attack or not next.

Another fun aspect of Sins is the Pirate System. Pirates are a third-party opponent that is generally present in all games. As pirates you expect them to be treacherous, they don’t takes sides, their single purpose is to profit from bounty. Throughout the game players may put bounties on other players and Pirates will be driven to attack those players. So one interesting side-plot in the game is to fight this bounty war with your rivals since you can raise the bounty and in an instance divert the attention of the pirates from yourself and use them to strike your rival while you happily mass up your fleet to attack him next .

The User Interface gives you great control and is very functional

You may find all this overwhelming, and so did I thought at first, but surprisingly Sins plays very smoothly in an almost comfortable pace. The game is so well-balanced that you never feel too overwhelmed while battling or developing your empire at the same time. And part of the blame for this nice balance is the User Interface.

The UI is very well-built to help you achieve your goals as it provides you a great sense of control and overview over your empire. And your empire can be quite big with lots of planets and lots of ships fighting diverse battles. Planets and fleets are organized  in a very useful way and so you are as far as a button click from a fleet fighting a battle as you are a double-click from jumping to inspect a planet or give a construction order on another planet. Therefore it’s easy to give navigation orders to fleets, to retreat or to engage a determined planet all almost at the same time. In summary all these inter-galactic orders can be obtained at a distance of a single or double-click mouse button which is quite an achievement.

Graphics, Music and Sound

Sins looks and sounds great. The ships and structures models are really well done that even when you zoom in the maximum they still look fine and even have interesting details like bleeping presence lights. The User Interface is also beautifully well crafted with the information well in place with pretty icons.

The sound effects and dialogue also do a very good job. The music also helps establishing the right atmosphere depending on if you’re in peace times or war times.

A word about Entrenchment

The first expansion pack developed by Ironclad and Stardock for Sins was Entrenchment. They call it a micro-expansions mainly due to the small amount of changes it adds to the game and the fact of being sold for a relatively low price (~$10).

As the name suggests, Entrenchment brings new defensive options to the game. And these are good additions since sometimes you do feel a bit nervous about leaving your planets undefended while you strike the enemy, and splitting fleets is not always an easy decision. To alleviate a bit this stress Entrenchment unlocks Starbases, Mine Fields and new Tactical Defense upgrades. Entrenchment also allows you now to increase the speed of the game.

Starbases are very powerful and albeit expansive to build and upgrade they do take care of the job pretty decently. A single starbase can some times defend a planet single handed. Minefields are also a good defensive addition. The tactical defense upgrades also enhance substantially the global planetary defense network.

A word about Diplomacy

Diplomacy was the second and last micro-expansion to be released for Sins and as the name suggests it brought new diplomatic options to the game. Among the additions are a completely new technology tree specifically devoted to diplomatic options. Diplomacy finally unlocked one aspect that was surely lacking in the original title: – the capability to launch missions or quests to your rivals, this is surely a nice new feature.

Among the additions you also account a new panel called “relations” that gives you a nice overview of your relation status with each rival and also relations between themselves. There are lots of modifiers that affect your relations, as examples: – resources given in the past or the size of your fleet. Many more factors will affect the overall relations.

The Trinity product, this that is being reviewed, includes both the Entrenchment and Diplomacy expansions.

The bottom line

Sins of a Solar Empire – Trinity – is a very nicely done game. It excels on providing a rich gaming experience that will no doubt entertain you for many hours. Ironclad and Stardock deserve an applause for having created a game that successfully mixes the RTS mechanic with the 4x genre in such a fantastic way.

Sins of a Solar Empire is a very fun experience and I strongly recommend it to all Sci-Fi fans that love Real-Time strategy, this is a must title for you guys. For the Sci-Fi Turn-Based fans that enjoy more the traditional 4x experience I also recommend you have a try, I include myself in this last bunch and I can assure you that I have a lot of fun playing the game.

Sins of a Solar Empire – Trinity  (Buy at Gamestop/Impulse)	Space Sector score: 9.2 (about the score system)

So what we cannot live in real life we experience in the virtual one. Movies and games have been offering this possibility. Computer games in specific have been putting people in command of space faring civilizations that explore new worlds, meet new races, establish new societies and gain the ultimate knowledge of the Universe.

Like so many of you I’m a space lover in general and a computer game space strategy lover in particular. I’ve been playing computer games, and specially space strategy computer games, for a long time now. I assembled a chronological classification of what I consider to be the space strategy game landmarks, games which I’ve been playing intensely over the years. The question is what’s next and where should we go from here.

The Beginning [1993]: Master of Orion ^[1]

This game is consensually considered the father of space strategy computer gaming. You could for the first time experience what would be like to be in control of a space faring race with most of its core elements like trade, technology evolution, space ships construction and more importantly its customization, colonization of planets, creation of armadas, diplomacy and ultimately war. The game is turn-based which means that you play “your turn” and then wait for all other computer players to finish playing “their turn” and so on. The game offered single player only possibility, i.e. no human-human multi-player offered yet. Two sequels were made for this game: “Master of Orion II: Battle at Antares” and “Master of Orion III”. Both offered human-human multi-player possibility.

The Branch to Real Time Strategy [1997]: Imperium Galactica ^[2]

This game takes on the Master of Orion legacy and makes a leap to a new level. The most important innovation of this game resides on its gameplay style. It abandoned the “turn based” concept to become the first real-time space based strategy game of its kind. The most notable features also include improved graphics and detailed planet management. This game did not offer multi-player possibility though. One sequel was made: “Imperium Galactica II” which offered multi-player experience.

The Adaptation to a Franchise [1998]: Star Wars: Rebellion ^[3]

Lucasarts took the space strategy concept genre and adapted it to the StarWars franchise Universe. For the fans this was seen as the perfect marriage of StarWars lore and most loved space strategy gaming, the concept had it all to succeed. The game offered the possibility to play as the two sides of StarWars: – the Rebel Alliance or the Galactic Empire in single-player or multiplayer mode. The gameplay is a mix of real-time and turn-based elements.

The Evolution of a Franchise [1998]: Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri ^[4]

Sid Meier, one of the most successful individuals of the gaming industry, literally took his Civilization franchise to the stars. Alpha Centauri is basically civilization in another planet with all its alien aspects. The story is simple but sound. The technology tree, units, buildings and diplomacy are creative and very polished. Although not on a true “Master of Orion” genre, since Alpha Centauri action is all played in a single star system: Alpha Centauri, the game is definitely 4x “eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, and eXterminate” only at a different scope.

The Remake with a Twist [2003-2007]: Galactic Civilizations ^[5]

Stardocks’s Galactic Civilization is neither a branch nor an adaptation of the original Master of Orion series but rather its remake. It is basically Master of Orion but in the present (in this case we are in 2003). It delivers better graphics, more polished mechanics that have been perfected over the years on-top of turn-based gameplay single player only mode. Its major innovation was not on the logic or the product itself but on the business concept. It is distributed with no copy prevention that allowed extensive modding by the community. It was also based on the principle of delivering constant updates to customers that featured among patches for bugs also improvements on what the community would want to see in the game. Several sequels and expansion packs were developed which include Galactic “Civilizations II: Dread Lords”.

The Next Generation [2010]: ___________________?

Since the early 90’s space based strategy gaming has been evolving at the rhythm and pace of available technology, creativity and also adapting to the trends of the modern society. In spite the concepts still being basically the same the delivery of these concepts is radically changing nowadays, or at least broadening.

The question is where we should go from now to keep the concept appealing at the same time expanding its coverage. The network society demands ubiquitous products which can be accessed quickly, easily and anywhere with no requirements for special tools or products. Current technology already offers this reality with the Internet and the global range of telecommunication services and products.

So the question we now face is: Which of the following features would we like to see explored in future ubiquitous space gaming experience or which elements do we favor more and in which order? Or basically what do we want to see next?

• Human-Computer VS Human-Human experience
• Thin Client Browser based approach vs Normal Client based
• Free content with paid extensions VS Paid to use
• Reward system importance
• Eye candy factor importance
• In-game movies?
• Technology tree depth
• Spaceship customization depth
• Races number and customization level
• Story depth
• Universe depth
• Overall customization
• Others …

^{[1] Master of Orion:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_of_Orion}

^{[2] Imperium Galactica: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperium_Galactica}

^{[3] StarWars Rebellion: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars_Rebellion}

^{[4] Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sid_Meier%27s_Alpha_Centauri}

^{[5] Galactic Civilizations: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galactic_Civilizations}